“I will if you will,” she whispers, when they both hesitate in the hidden alcove as the chime for curfew rings through the corridors. She has less to lose, the kitchens are much closer to her dorms than his, but he can hear the sentiment in her voice, the promise she means. They’re in this together, bonds of friendship only the mind of an eleven-year-old could form so quickly and tightly hold them. She won’t desert him. He reaches out, links his little finger with hers, and she turns. He can see the glint of excitement in her eyes through the gloom. “For cake!” she whispers fiercely, the greatest battle cry a child could ever dream of.
He can’t believe she thought he might forget her. She’s taller now, but still much smaller than him, and not as skinny anymore, having lost the childlike athletic body in favour of a much softer one, but she’s still the same girl he met in the park almost two full years ago. He’d be offended by her suggestion if he wasn’t so overwhelmingly happy to have her back. He’ll remember her forever, for the rest of his life, and he declares this to be so with grand gestures and bonecrushing hugs. Won’t she do the same for him? She smiles, and some tension he hadn’t noticed drops away from her. “I will if you will,” she promises.
“Forgive me?” He can’t keep the pleading tone from his voice. The next stage is to fall to the ground and beg. Already he can feel his knees buckling. There’s too much emotion trying to cram itself into his awkward, barely teenaged body, he can barely hold himself together. It doesn’t feel like before though, and he’s glad he could get over her without getting over her friendship. There really never will be anybody else in his life like her, he’s realised. If only she’ll forgive him for breaking what they had before.
“I will if you will,” she replies, her eyes filling with tears and something that could be hope.
It’s not the same, now she’s with Azrael. He’s not really jealous that she chose someone else anymore, although there’s a hurt feeling whenever he sees them kiss that he carefully locks away somewhere he can ignore it. He just never realised he would have to share her. She’s busy now, and he suspects that some of the reason she can never go off on adventures with him is because she’s going off with Azra instead. He can see her now, across the courtyard, but she only has eyes for the other boy. He can’t remember the last time they spoke outside of class. ‘Are you forgetting me?’ he wonders, a frown crossing his face. It’s almost unthinkable, that she could be capable of cruelty, but there she goes, and she hasn’t noticed him there at all. She might forget him, by accident, and he doesn’t want to be forgotten. ‘I will if you will,’ he thinks. He won’t be one half left alone.
She’s giving him this look, like she expects him to have some kind of strong opinion either way. He might, if only he wasn’t so similarly confused himself. She’s never asked him for relationship advice before, why is she starting now? Her eyes are wide. She’s uncertain, he realises. She doesn’t know if it’s okay for them to do this. He doesn’t know for sure either, for all his bravado. Is it okay for best friend to date both halves of an ex-couple? There might be some kind of protocol involved that nobody has told him about, some rule of dating as yet undiscovered. But he trusts Kai to look after her, and Lacey’s pretty and fun and nice (a lot like her, he definitely doesn’t think). So he shrugs, and grins at her. “I will if you will!” he announces.
“Can you sleep?” he asks her gently. She jumps at the sound. She startles easily lately, and walks around with a far away expression, like she’s lost somewhere inside her head he can’t reach. Some deep pit of grief he never knew she had. They spend most days on the couch, her wrapped in the softest blanket he has and him wrapped around her. The desperate way she clings to him now is the closest they’ve been in a long time, maybe ever. He can feel himself slowly noticing her again; everything that captured him before, and all that has changed since they were dumb and thirteen; the way her waist curves in and the shape of her mouth. He pushes it out of his head, she needs him to take care of her, not make unwelcome advances. Again, he asks her to sleep, and she blinks up at him.
“I will if you will,” she agrees, but she doesn’t try to stand, just moves her blanket to cover as much of him as she can reach and leans against him. She’s burning with excess body heat, and as he looks down at her in surprise their eyes meet. She winks, smiles slightly, and for a moment she’s the fiery girl he knew before. Brushing her hair from her face, he decides that she is going to get better, and he’ll be there the whole way.
She’s whispering in his ear while she holds him, she has been for some time. It’s only now that he’s tuning into the words she’s breathing as they rock back and forth. “Please stop crying,” she says, over and over like a mantra, “please, please stop crying, please.” Is he crying? He hadn’t noticed, but now he can feel the dampness across his face, in her hair, soaking her shoulder where his cheek rests. He must have been crying, and for some time. Time passing has been abstract, the changing light seems to suggest they’ve sat here all afternoon. Slowly, as he comes back, he begins sensing the world outside again. Her constant whispering pleas, the damp feeling of tears staining clothes, the way his limbs have fallen asleep and seized up. “Please stop crying,” she says again, her voice breaking on the last syllable.
“I will if you will,” he murmurs into her hair, stiffly reaching up an arm to embrace her. It’s the end of his world, but she’s here to share it with him, and that’s something.
He’s bringing the last box up the stairs when it finally hits him that they’re really on their own now. He has to stop, to sit for a moment and deal with it. They’re on their own, but together, and they’re adults. Mature, and responsible. They have jobs now. Entry level, low-paying jobs, but they have to wake up every morning and go to work. She might work shifts, actually. How will they deal with her working shifts? What if she’s only working in the afternoon, but he wakes her in the morning by accident? He doesn’t know how to be grown up. For a moment, his throat is choked with memories of the people who hadn’t made it far enough to see the two of them move into this tiny apartment, people who might have had answers to all of these questions he has. He swallows, hard, and opens the door with a shaky hand. She’s inside, her shoes have been kicked off into a corner, and she’s making snow angel shapes on the bare carpet. He laughs. “Are you ready for this?”
Her reply is immediate, and coupled with a mischievous grin. “I am if you are!”
