The Other Side of Tomorrow

“True dat.” Harlow lifts her smoothie cup in salute.

Perry’s head perks up, thinking he’s about to get some.

Spencer’s words hit home with me. It’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to, my own mortality. There’s an endl

ess list of things I want to do before I die, most fairly mundane, but it scares me to think I might not get the chance do them.

But I did cross off one very important thing.

My first kiss.

Jasper texts me again that night, unable to sleep just like me, and I meet him outside. Once again, I lead him to the back on to the beach where we sit side by side.

Tonight, we sit close enough that our legs touch.

My skin prickles with his nearness.

“I haven’t felt … right since T.J. died. Like I’m lost. I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore and then …” He looks at me and I look back. “And then I’m with you and I feel like me again, and I know that’s crazy, we don’t know each other yet but I can’t help it.”

“I feel it too,” I whisper.

I knew from the first time I saw him many months ago that he was different. I honestly never believed I’d see him again, and yet here we are. That has to mean something.

“Yeah?” he murmurs, almost surprised.

“Yeah,” I echo.

“The night is the hardest,” he admits. “I don’t know if it’s because he died at night or because when I lay down to sleep all I can think about is his body in that mangled car. Then my chest gets tight and it’s like I can’t—”

“Breathe,” I finish for him.

He snaps his fingers. “Exactly.”

I know what he’s talking about. I feel it too, but for an entirely different reason.

The emotions of receiving a transplant are off the charts, especially when you’re convinced you’re falling for the guy whose brother died to give it to you.

Life has a fucked-up way of mocking us.

I’m, sadly, getting used to it.

Sometimes I think I’m not meant to be happy.

But then I tell myself I’m being pathetic and to stop complaining.

Things aren’t always happy. They aren’t always easy. They just are.

You either roll with the punches or get run over.

“I’m glad I stopped you the other day at the beach,” he admits, his green eyes flashing with an emotion I can’t quite decipher. “You’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to about it since it happened. My friends … they don’t get it. I mean, they feel sorry for me, but that’s pity not sympathy. And my parents are grieving too, I don’t want to add to their pain, same with my grandparents. But you? You get it. You let me talk. I’m afraid if I don’t I’m going to suffocate. I feel like before I met you I was a balloon floating away, and then you grabbed the string and you’re slowly pulling me back to Earth, reminding me that I’m not lost I’m just figuring out how to live after.”

“You see it too?” I question softly, my eyes flashing from his down to the sand in nervousness.

“See what?”

“The distinct line between before and after when bad things happen? How it changes your life so distinctly that it’s never the same again.”

“Yeah,” he whispers, drawing something on my hand. Goosebumps prickle my skin and it’s not from the night air. “Yeah, I see it.”