Since You've Been Gone

“You can’t just leave people behind because you think it’s going to be too hard to commit to a friendship. You can’t live your life that way.”

It just gets hard, always being someone’s second choice.

He laughed softly and shook his head, and I leaned back to be able to look at his face, which was close to mine, closer than it had ever been. “What?”

“Just . . . you,” he said after a moment, with a faint smile. “Crashing a wedding.”

“Your idea.”

“I know,” Frank said. “But I was just thinking about that first night at the Orchard.”

“What about it?” I asked. I was trying to focus on having a conversation with Frank, and trying not to think about how close together we were, that he was touching my waist, that he was holding my hand.

“You just seemed so . . . diminished,” he said after a moment. “Like you were hoping nobody would see you.”

I kept my eyes on his, not letting myself look away. “And now?”

He looked right back at me as he gave me a half smile. “You’re the brightest thing in the room,” he said. He lifted his hand from my waist, and slowly, carefully brushed a stray lock of hair from my cheek. “You shine.”

My breath caught in my throat. People said those kinds of things about Sloane—not about me.

“What?” Frank asked, his eyes on mine.

“Just . . .” I took a shaky breath. “Nobody’s ever said something like that to me.”

“Then they don’t see what I see,” he said. I looked into Frank’s eyes and knew, without a doubt, that he meant every word. I started to say something when the chorus kicked in and Frank moved closer to me.

I had stood up in front of a crowd and performed, and it had gone fine. Nothing horrible had happened, and I’d gotten through it. But bigger than that, I had kissed a stranger. My pulse started to pick up a little as I flashed back to the pantry, to Benji’s hands in my hair. I had kissed someone tonight, which I certainly had not been expecting to do. Not that I wanted to make a regular practice of kissing Collins’s relatives in dark pantries, but for just a moment, it had made me feel brave

“Nothing worth doing is easy,” Frank said. “Especially not in the beginning. But I’m not about to give up.”

Frank turned to look down at me, and he was right there, so close. “Hi,” he said.

I looked up at him. Now that the moment was here, it didn’t feel scary. What would happen would happen, and I couldn’t know or control it. But I was ready for it to begin. “Hey,” I said.

“In a well-ordered universe,” he said, and I could hear how nervous he was, “I’d be able to do this.” He leaned his head down and kissed me softly, then pulled back, making sure this was okay.

I smiled at him. “Then we must be in one,” I said. And as the sun rose behind us and he bent his head down to kiss me again, I leaned forward.

Toward him, and to whatever came next.

though this one wasn’t marked for tourists, and we were the only ones seeing it. All around us was the view of a gorgeous valley, slowly being lit up by the rising sun

Sloane may have mentioned something about one of her favorite spots,” he said, making another turn.

I glanced over at him, surprised. “Where are we going?”

He smiled at me. “You’ll see

Without knowing I was going to, without thinking about it first, I slid as close to him as my seat belt would allow and rested my hand on his.

He smiled without taking his eyes off the road, turned his palm up, and threaded his fingers through mine.