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I take another deep breath, try to banish my darker thoughts.
“You know what I think sometimes?” she asks quietly.
I shake my head, avoiding her eyes.
“Probably at most, we’re not even a fifth of the way through our lives right now. Isn’t that weird to think of? Whatever or whoever we feel like we are right now, we’ve got a whole other four-fifths of life left. Even people our parents’ age—no one’s life is locked in.”
My eyes throb…because I want to believe her—more than anything. But I know that’s not how it works. Maybe for someone like Elise. But not for me.
I feel her eyes on me as I stare at the bedroom door in front of us. Then I look down at her and make myself say something normal. “That is weird to think about. One-fifth, though, wow.”
“Do you think that’s a lot?”
I shrug. “It seems like a lot.”
“I guess so. But most of it is just totally unwritten. And I think this first fifth or so of our life is for scouting locations, you know?”
I think so, but I want to hear her explain it, so I shake my head.
“It’s like—do you ever think how Paris is just sitting there, and you could walk around on those streets right now if you were there? But since you’re not, it’s just going on being Paris without you. Australia is just there with waves rolling in. And as big as New York City is, Tokyo is three times as big and half a world away. I think about London and San Francisco and all of these places, and they’re out there just waiting. Even though I know they’re not waiting for me specifically. But they could be. If I wanted them to be.”
I feel her let a breath out. “All the options, all the possibilities make my brain feel tired. It seems crazy how we have this giant world, and we’re in one single spot, having just this one experience.” She sucks a deep breath in. I hear the smile in her voice as she says, “Do you think that sounds crazy?”
Crazy? “No way. I feel the same way sometimes.” Except those aren’t the places waiting for me.
“It’s just like…narratives. I think about things like that, since English class last year. There are these…I don’t know, like infinite possible narratives. For every person and then for all the other people. So many options. Life is nothing but a bunch of choices.” She swallows and goes quiet. “I feel like I have none. But I’m not trapped. That’s not true. I’m trapped but it’s my own trap. Because we could do anything, at any time. That’s what’s true,” she murmurs.
She heaves this big sigh, but it’s quiet. I ask her, “What would you do if you could pick anything, Elise O’Hara? What’s your number one choice?”
“Provence. France,” she adds helpfully.
“That was fast.”
“It’s been my place for a while.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to rent a little stone house with one or two rooms and exposed wood beams and no dishwasher. And then I want to read. I want to read one book per day. And eat fresh bread and drink grape juice and eat apples and walk in lavender fields.”
“Maybe that’s why you like balconies.” I’m not really one for making assumptions. But she seems like someone who likes speculating; I can do that, too. So I push myself to say the thing in my head. “Maybe what you like isn’t the balcony. It’s the view.” She looks up at me—I can feel her eyes, even though I don’t have the nerve to look into them. “Maybe you like looking out and picturing the locations. Where the boats are going. Where they could go.”
I don’t really plan to press my face against her hair. I do because she’s soft and small and smells so fucking good, and I think she seems sad.
Something shifts inside the house, like I guess someone changes the song, so I feel the base start bumping through the balcony’s floor, reminding me of where we are. We’re not alone, but it sure as shit feels like we are. Elise curls up a little more against me, and I shift us so her head and shoulders are on my lap, so I can wrap an arm around her back and run my fingers through her dark hair.
I know she likes the feel of that because she makes a little sound. And that’s when things go sideways. Having her on my lap becomes a bad thing because now I’m hard. I take a deep breath, swallow. Try to think of something that’ll get this to go down a little. But there’s nothing. My heart starts beating harder—because my body wants to fuck her.
I rub my forehead with my free hand and brush her hair up off her nape. I rub at the base of her skull with two fingers, the same spot where my neck hurts sometimes. I’m rewarded with a little groan, and a sharp throb that sends a wash of good feels from my dick down to my knees.
