If He Had Been with Me
: Chapter 71

We are sitting together by the lake. The sky is slowly darkening and the fireworks will start soon. Mom and Aunt Angelina are nearby, but they are not sitting with us. They leave us alone these days, and I pretend not to know why and Finny doesn’t seem to notice at all.

“They should start now,” I say. “It’s dark enough.”

“They will soon,” he says, and then we hear a pop, and the sky lights up.

I lean back, so that when I look up I can watch him and pretend to look at the sky. His chin is tilted up, a smile curling the corners of his mouth gently up. He reaches up and brushes a lock of his hair out of his eyes.

At moments like this, it amazes me that the words don’t come tumbling out of me. I can feel them in my mouth like three smooth pebbles. I can feel them there when I swallow and when I breathe.

His eyebrows raise slightly and I wonder what it was in the sky that surprised him, but I cannot look away.

Is it possible that the last six years were real, and not a dream as they feel to me now? I think that if I concentrated, I could make those memories vanish. I could close my eyes and believe that we have never been apart. I could invent a new past to remember.

I see myself sitting on the bleachers at Finny’s soccer game. He looks up at me and I wave. We are fifteen.

“Autumn?” I open my eyes and he is looking at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m just tired.”

“Do you want to go?”

“No, no.” I smile at him. “Don’t worry about me.” I rip my eyes from him and look at the sky.