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I smile faintly. “Anything you want.”

“That’s dangerous to say.”

“I know.”

We keep walking, her fingers stay around mine, until we reach the car. She pauses before getting in and I turn toward her. For a second, I just look at her. Then I lean in and kiss her.

Her lips meet mine and everything goes quiet in me.

I feel it in the smallest parts of me first, like something finally seeing the sun after staying too long in the dark. She does that to me. Her breath catches softly against my mouth and I lean into it because there is nowhere else I want to be, not tonight, not in whatever comes after this.

Don’t go, please, don’t ever go.

When she presses closer again, I kiss her harder. Maybe she’ll feel my love then, and maybe it will make her fight for herself even more. I think I am learning what it means to miss someone who is still standing right in front of you.

When I pull back, she doesn’t move immediately, and neither do I.

“I don’t want you to disappear in your head tonight,” I say. “No thinking.”

“And what do I think about instead?” she asks.

Her. Me. Us.

“Nothing,” I say. “I want you to let go.”

Her expression softens slightly, then she nods once. “I can do that,” she says.

I open the car door for her as she gets in, and close it, exhaling a long breath. I stay there for a second longer than I need to, then walk around to my side.

“Stay with me tonight. Don’t turn into thought again,” I say, meeting her eyes.

She smiles, and I take it as a yes.

Play - Heal by Tom Odell

An hour later, we’re at the beach house. Blue has been observing the world sitting on her lap during the whole ride.

“He really loves being here,” she says, pointing at him exploring the house.

She had changed into one of my shirts and was sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her.

“Bigger house for him to hide and run everywhere,” I reply sitting next to her, taking her hand in mine.

The ocean is crashing violently behind the window. She focuses on it for a while and I notice how quiet she had gone since we sat here.

It’s strange, carrying her absence in advance, even when she is right in front of me.

“You’re tired,” I said.

“I’m okay, don’t worry,” she replies without looking at me.

“No, you’re not.”

She finally turns her head toward me. “You really don’t know how to stop, do you?”

“Every time you’re quiet, I feel sick that I can’t just get inside your head and fight whatever demon you’re fighting alone in there.”

She looks down at her hands, at the scars on her wrists, then I feel her reaching for mine, using my fingers as if they were the pen she uses when she draws her thoughts onto paper. It feels like her first kind of art. And with every movement it’s as if her memories are seeping through me, like I am suddenly standing inside everything that made her think about punishing herself for things she was never supposed to go through.