Page 237 of One Wild Wish

“I really am the luckiest girl, getting sung hate songs and covered in ketchup on my special day. And by the way, you stink.” She cringed at my shirt, making light of the milestone in typical Gwen fashion. If she didn’t make a big deal of her birthday, she wouldn’t miss the family calls and gifts she’d never receive.

“Does this mean I’m forgiven?” I asked.

“It does.” Then more quietly, “I loved the song.”

Her soft words hit me square in the chest.

“Dog’s up,” the vendor said before I pulled her to me and mixed our ketchup and mustard stains. She had to see how perfect we were together, how there was no maybe about us, different lives or not. She at least seemed less tense.

She accepted our street meat as I paid, saucing up our snack with the works. She left off the onions, and my heart gave another twist.

This woman knew how I ate my hotdog, without even asking. She’d taken up extreme sports since we’d last hung out, had a group of amazing friends and a fulfilling career. I’d made acquaintances in new countries, had learned enough German, Italian, and French to get by. I enjoyed cooking now and walking through a market, waiting to be inspired.

We’d changed a lot the past nine years, but I knew Gwen at her core, how she loved blue jelly beans and hated mayonnaise. That she’d listened to Green Day on repeat as a teen and had to knot her shoelaces twice when tying them. A silly superstition. She knew the contents of the time capsule buried in my back yard and the origin of all my scars. She was the only person on the planet who knew I cried during 13 Going on 30 .

She’d been there for me after my mother’s nasty car accident, at the hospital the entire week that followed. I’d played guitar for her daily after she’d broken her wrist.

The little stuff. The important stuff. The things that filled the gaps of our lives.

Losing her now would be like losing my voice.

We sat on the curb while we ate, streaked in ketchup and mustard, sharing bites back and forth. It tasted amazing. Being beside her was even better, and I was done letting her hide from me. “You were right,” I said.

She licked her fingers after her last bite, then gave up and wiped them on her dirty shirt. “About what?”

“I was jumping ahead with us, scared I might lose you. I didn’t ask what you wanted or if you wanted an us , or how you think it might work. I wanted to do everything so you couldn’t say no.”

She rested her arms on her bent knees and stared straight ahead. “You’re a fixer, August. It’s what you do. But this isn’t a quick fix.”

Exactly what Finch had said. The more I replayed it, the more it made sense. Teaching Gwen guitar hadn’t replaced the chill in her childhood home. Bringing her to my house for dinner hadn’t made her silent meals easier to bear. They’d probably accentuated how bad she’d had it. “You don’t have to leave your job or your friends,” I said, trying to find a balance between fixer and compromiser. “We can work this long distance.”

“We have very different lives.”

“If I can guide my career to the States, I will.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Tell me why. Talk to me.”

She picked at her nails. “You didn’t see the wreckage I was after my nineteenth birthday. I was a disaster, could barely function. It wasn’t pretty.”

I wanted to tug her to me, hold her against my chest. Her nail picking was a red flag that kept me away. “I wish I’d known.”

“No you don’t. You wouldn’t have wanted to know back then, and it’s fine. I deserved it. But how far down I spiraled scares me. What I feel for you now, barely a day together, it’s…like, huge .”

I nudged her knee with mine. “That’s what she said.”

She tipped her head back and chuckled. “It is what she said. You have a gorgeous cock.”

There was that fire again, gripping my groin. Sex wasn’t what we needed now. My lame humor probably wasn’t much help, either.

Her face sobered. “Seeing you in there, with that crowd, those eager women—I don’t know how to handle that. I want you, August, more than you know. More than for two days. But there will be stretches of time apart and all sorts of obstacles, and I have the potential to turn into a psycho girlfriend who gets clingy and weird when you’re performing for a crowd of rangy cougars. Which means we might fail. I’m ridiculously terrified of what might happen to me if we fail.”

We wouldn’t. I knew it as sure as I knew the sun would rise. I still understood her fear, how hard our years apart had been. If there was an easy solution, I’d be all over it. Demand she see us as a couple, not a fling. But there was no easy answer to be found. I felt inept. Useless. Stuck. All I could do was listen to her, be here for her the way she wanted. What if it wasn’t enough?

“So you’re not willing to try?” I asked.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”