Turn 14 of 15

Kiss him and tell him Mika isn't going anywhere

You close the distance between you in two steps, and this time the kiss isn't clumsy. Your hands find his face, both of them, cupping his jaw, and you pull him down to you, and his mouth opens against yours with a sound that's almost a sob. He tastes like salt and champagne and the peppermint gum he's been chewing all night, and his hands come up to your waist, hesitant at first, then gripping the fabric of the green dress like he's afraid you'll dissolve if he doesn't hold on tight enough. The necklace burns warm against your collarbone, and your whole body sparks with it, every nerve alight, and you kiss him until the shaking in his shoulders slows, until his breathing steadies against your mouth, until the tears on his cheeks have dried against your thumbs.

When you pull back, you don't go far. Your forehead rests against his, and his eyes are closed, and his hands are still on your waist, and the apartment is dark and still around you, the streetlight painting you both in amber. You can feel his pulse hammering through his fingertips where they press against your hip.

"Mika isn't going anywhere," you say. The words are quiet, steady, certain in a way that nothing about your old life ever was.

"I'm not going to disappear. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow and take this off and go back to being someone who can't tell you how they feel. I'm right here. I've always been right here, Jack. You just couldn't see me."

His breath hitches. His eyes open, wet and searching, and he looks at you like he's trying to memorize every detail of your face, like he's preparing for a test he's terrified of failing. His thumb traces a slow arc across your cheekbone, and the touch is so gentle it makes something inside you crack open.

"What if it's the necklace?" he whispers.

"What if I take it off and you look at me and feel nothing?"

"Then I'll put it back on," you say simply. "And if I still feel nothing, I'll put it on again. And again. And again, Jack, until you believe me. Because this isn't about a piece of jewelry. This is about the fact that I have known you for six years, and I have loved you for most of them, and I was too scared and too hidden and too much of a coward to say it until this body gave me the courage to stop pretending."

Jack stares at you. A tear slips down his cheek, catching the light, and he laughs—a broken, wet, disbelieving laugh that sounds like relief and terror having a fistfight. His hand moves from your waist to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair, and he pulls you close again. Not for a kiss this time. For a hold. He presses your face against his shoulder and wraps his arms around you and holds on like you're the last solid thing in a world that's gone liquid.

"I've been so stupid," he murmurs into your hair. "Six years. I've been so stupid for six years."

"Yeah," you say against his shoulder, and you can feel his heartbeat through his shirt, fast and alive and real. "But you're here now."