All the Bright Places

VIOLET
The day of
Around three o’clock the air turns cool again, and we drive to his house to
shower and get warm. His house is empty because everyone comes and goes
as they please. He grabs waters from the fridge, and a bag of pretzels, and I
follow him upstairs, still damp and shivering.
His bedroom is blue now—walls, ceiling, floor—and all the furniture has
been moved to one corner so that the room is divided in two. There’s less
clutter, no more wall of notes and words. All that blue makes me feel like I’m
inside a swimming pool, like I’m back at the Blue Hole.
I shower first, standing under the hot water, trying to get warm. When I
come out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, Finch has music playing on
the old turntable.
Unlike his swim in the Blue Hole, his shower lasts no more than a minute.
Before I’m dressed, he reappears, towel around his waist, and says, “You
never asked me what I was doing up on that ledge.” He stands, open and
ready to tell me anything, but for some reason I’m not sure I want to know.
“What were you doing up on that ledge?” It comes out a whisper.
“The same thing you were. I wanted to see what it was like. I wanted to
imagine jumping off it. I wanted to leave all the shit behind. But when I did
start to imagine it, I didn’t like what it looked like. And then I saw you.”
He takes my hand and spins me out and then in so I’m tucked against him,
and we sway, and rock a little, but mostly stand still, pressed together, my
heart pounding because if I tilt my head back, just like this, he will kiss me
like he’s doing now. I can feel his lips curving up at the corners, smiling. I
open my eyes at the moment he opens his, and his blue-blue eyes are shining
so fierce and bright that they’re nearly black. The damp hair is falling across
his forehead, and he rests his head against mine. And then I realize his towel
is lying on the floor and he’s naked.
I lay my fingers against his neck, long enough to feel his pulse, which feels
just like my own—racing and feverish.
“We don’t have to.”
“I know.”
And then I close my eyes as my own towel drops and the song comes to an
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end. I still hear it after we are in the bed and under the sheets and other songs
are playing.
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