Say Yes (Nostalgic Summer Romance)

His words mixed up the wildest tornado inside me, thoughts I’d never had before swirling and blowing a hundred miles an hour, knocking everything off the walls, ripping the house I’d built my entire life from its foundation.

“I think there’s a lot of beauty and poetry in what you just said,” I finally whispered. “But… I also don’t think we can live expecting tragedy and death around every corner. Because what kind of life is that?” I shook my head, pulling back a little so I could look into his eyes. “It’s a hopeless one.”

He let out a breath of a laugh, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine. “Well, that’s just it,” he said. “Hope is the most dangerous of all.”

A long silence fell between us, the tears drying on my face, and then all I could feel was the overwhelming need to be close to him.

I climbed into his lap, straddling him, pressing my lips to his, and winding my hands up into his hair as he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me into him. All I wanted was to soak up his sadness, to replace it with the love he insisted didn’t exist.

What a treacherous game to play.

It went on like this, the days bleeding into the nights. We watched Naim Süleymanoglu win his third gold medal and comfort the man he beat as we struggled for our first championships and held each other up along the way. We watched Kerri Strug endure heartbreaking pain and injury to bring honor to her country while we endured discomfort and pain of our own to honor creating something worth existing.

But in working the way we were, our previous boundaries we’d set were completely obliterated.

We were together every waking moment of the day — if not in class, then after, and all into the night. I slept in Liam’s bed, or he slept in mine. We ate every meal together. The only time we had to ourselves was when I was at the museum — and he usually took that time to nap or hang out with Thomas.

Angela didn’t have to tell me she was worried. I could see it in the way she watched me, the way her brows furrowed every time she saw us together.

“I hope you know better than I do what you’re getting yourself into,” she said to me one morning, pouring a cup of coffee for herself before getting two more mugs down for me and Liam. She filled them to the top and handed them to me, her eyes heavy with warning. “Remember what he told you. Remember what he said he can give you, and what he can’t.”

“I know,” I assured her.

And I did know. I hadn’t forgotten our arrangement, and every day, he dropped subtle reminders in our conversations.

He didn’t believe in love.

He didn’t believe in anything.

He had nothing to give to anyone.

He didn’t even know what he wanted in his own life.

And then, as if he could sense the thin line we were walking, too — Liam pulled away from me that very same day.

It was sudden and abrupt, so much so that for a while I wondered if I was just imagining it. But he didn’t come over after my internship that evening, or the next, or the one after that. For three days, I only saw him in class, and even there he seemed cold and distant, like he was retreating back into the shell I’d found him under at the beginning of the summer.

He’s having a bad week.

He wants to be left alone.

He doesn’t want to be with me all the time.

He doesn’t want me like that.

He doesn’t want to give himself to me like that.

All of this I knew. I repeated it to myself over and over, as if the repetition would make it sink in and become an unchangeable truth.

Yet, on July twenty-eighth, when news of a terrorist bombing in Centennial Park reached Italy, and the world watched our Olympians with bated breath, I felt an overwhelming sense of urgency to seize the day, to soak up life’s precious dew, to heed every verity Liam had breathed into existence for me.

The school called for a three-day suspension of classes, and that was all the permission I needed.

“Come away with me,” I said breathlessly on Liam’s doorstep after running the few blocks to his dorm.

He looked at the small suitcase in my hand, then back at me, and for the longest time, he stood there with his chest heaving each new breath.

And though his frown warned me that we shouldn’t, and his shoulders tensed as if trying to restrain him, to keep him from giving in, to remind him of all the reasons he should say no — his eyes lit up like I was all he’d ever wanted.