this is my hello

+++

Josie picks me up after work. 

We grab takeout and she says we’re going to eat it at Shane’s. I don’t question her, but the time on the dash reads 10:12 PM. It’s late, and I almost wonder out loud if Shane will even be awake by the time we get there.

I think back to the first time we ever spoke on the phone since reuniting. I was absolutely shattered that day. I worked a double and spent my time in between shifts in the break room with my head on the table. 

Shane had picked up on the third ring later that night. I remember savoring the way she sounded over the line. Delicate, a little sluggish as the call prolonged. We never had that when we were kids: the late night phone calls or sleepy conversations. I felt like a hoarder trying to keep as much of her time as I could. It backfired on me when we agreed to take a rain check instead. 

I remember the next time I called her, too. Drunk and thriving off of liquid courage. There wasn’t much going through my head at the time. I just knew I wanted to hear her. She’d sounded tired then also, yet she still came out to meet with me. 

I count my blessings every day. 

The car smells like chow mein. 

Josie mumbles something about catching the look on Shane’s face when she opens the door, and I picture it too quickly: wide, brown eyes and parted lips. She’ll blink at me first - shocked because we don’t do this, and I’ll look foreign standing in her doorway - but then she’ll collect herself. Take the bags from our hands and usher us inside. Ever the welcoming, warm host. 

I’ve never seen her apartment before. 

I’m curious. 

“She keeps saying she hates her place,” Josie mentions, exiting the parking lot of the restaurant.

“Wait, why? Is everything okay?” I sound panicked, and I have no way of explaining it other than the fact that I’m still hooked on every little thing she does. 

Josie turns in my direction, and she sees right through me, knows me too well. It makes my stomach uneasy. Shane is not a secret between us, but talking about her like it’s all I fucking know... Jesus, it still makes me feel neurotic. 

“She hates being alone,” Josie says, nods her head towards the backseat where the takeout sits, and that’s where her explanation sits as well. I get it. I get why we're doing this. If only I knew sooner. “I worry the girl gets too lonely, man. She’s grown on me, you know. Soft spot and everything.” 

I smile at the radio dial. “Sleep On The Floor” by The Lumineers plays quietly between us, and at first I’m pleased, knowing of their fast friendship, how easily I pictured the two of them getting along and actually being right about it, but then I can’t stop thinking about sunset conversations. Mom’s porch. Her head on my shoulder. Promises. I think I still smell the grass exuding off my t-shirt, the stains on her jeans to match. 

That was my biggest fear back then, loneliness. I remember confessing it to her that summer, believing every word she’d said after as I poked my finger through the tear in her jeans, trying to tug her closer. 

It was impossible to feel alone when I had her by my side. I don’t think I would have made it through freshman year if it wasn’t for her. 

Is she lonely now? Will she feel inclined to tell me that herself? Can I make her fears go away? 

“Dude, you should take her out on a date or something. I can see it with my own two eyes. You look just as mad about each other as you must’ve been when you were kids. I mean, come on. There’s obviously still something there.” 

I frown in her direction. Is she sure she’s been watching us? What a careless thing to assume, Josie Lou. 

“What?” she half-laughs, almost sounds offended. “Just hear me out -” 

“I just got her back, Jo,” I have to cut her off, have to tell her what she doesn’t want to hear. What I don’t want to hear. “I’m sorry, but the last thing I want to do is scare her off by asking her out, alright? It’s just not… It’s not like that anymore.”

I’ve been clinging onto every conversation I’ve had with Shane since the night she woke up in my apartment, dazed out of her mind. We’re not what we used to be, but the thought of being without her still makes me sick. 

I suppose it’s always been that way. 

Josie’s brows pull together, always ready for a fight, but she bites her tongue and I love her eternally. I silently thank her. 

I get the reaction I’m looking for when we show up and Shane opens her door. Difference is, I’m graced with the sight of her in shorts and a giant t-shirt, her legs and collarbones visible enough that heat makes its way up my neck and face. I pray to God it goes unnoticed. 

She grabs for the bag of takeout in my hand and I catch a whiff of mint as she whispers a soft greeting to me. I was right. She’s just about ready for bed. 

“Come in, come in,” Shane insists, and soon we’re gathered on her living room floor in front of the TV. 

I don’t realize I’m starving until Shane hands me a pair of chopsticks and I scarf my plate down. 

I finish my food first, and instead of watching what Josie picked for us on the TV, I watch Shane as she eats. She pokes at her food in even bites. Every portion on her plate is kept consistently the same, and if I hadn’t been staring at her, I’d guess that she’s using measuring cups instead of her fork and knife. 

There’s a pull in my brows. I never picked up on that before. When we were younger, I mean. Must be a new thing. 

Josie howls at something she sees on her phone, and like always, I want to know what it is. But then Shane gathers her hair with one hand and drapes it over her shoulder, and I forget everything around me. I even feel like I forget how to breathe. Her neck is exposed and I can’t help it - my eyes follow her skin to the collar of her shirt. Am I greedy for wanting more? 

God, I want more. 

+++

I’ve done the right thing, I tell myself as I stand in Shane’s living room, leaning against her couch. She’s still by the front door. Fingers grazing over the handle. 

I’ve somehow gotten her to agree with spending the weekend with me, and I feel an itch to do everything. Whatever she’ll allow. 

“Your place isn’t so bad, you know,” I comment through the silence, through the empty spaces of what I think she calls home. I smile but I want her to confide in me the way she’s confided in Josie Lou. I want her to admit it to me herself that it’s too desolate for her liking, and I don’t want to keep pretending like I’m clueless. I want to talk about it with her. See if we can work something out together - make it a win-win: I’ll get to see her every day and she’ll get as much company out of me that I can provide. “Jo’s always telling me how much you hate it,” I try some more.

She looks at me as she locks her door.

Come on.

Tell me your secrets, Shayna Marie. I’ll tell you mine. Just like when we were younger. 

Let’s play pretend. We’ll be ten years old again. You’ll tell me my teeth are funny, and I’ll tell you your hair makes you look like a witch - just to say I can come up with comebacks on the spot. I’ll stick to loving your hair in silence, and then I’ll tell myself years later to compliment it for all the times you thought I hated it. Let’s even pretend we’re freshmen again. You’ll confess that Alan isn’t the one, and I’ll confess that it’s always been you.  

I watch her walk to the opposite end of the couch. She’s too far. Is it me? Do I smell funny? I did just come from work. 

I give her time to answer, looking at everything but her. Josie’s heinous blue sweater is thrown on the back of her couch. She only wears it now just to spite me, and I almost comment on it, but Jo isn’t even here to hear it. Shane looks at it, too. I wonder what she’s thinking. 

“Eh, just gets really quiet when it’s only me here,” she tells me with a shrug. And then she’s straightening out her shirt, a habit of hers I’m actually familiar with. She’s skirting the truth, and it stings, knowing she can’t talk to me freely anymore. 

Can I change that? Will she let me?

“Water?” Shane asks, voice high. I want to calm her nerves. Maybe if I show her I can relax, she will too. 

“Sure,” I nod, and then aim for plopping down on her couch, making myself comfortable. She watches my leg sling over the back, and I try to keep my face neutral, thinking I might just have overdone it.

“Do you want ice?” I hear her call from the kitchen. She’d slithered away so quickly. I sit up and try a new position. 

“Yes, please!” I say back. “Where’s your remote?”

“Uh…” A pause. I find it cute that she has to think about it. “Check betweens the cushions.” 

I snicker, eventually finding the remote behind me. I choose the first option I see. It just so happens to be The Office, the same thing Josie had picked for us to watch last week. It continues where we left off. 

When Shane returns, she hands me a glass and I ask myself if I’m done choosing how to fucking sit.

“Thanks,” I tell her, taking a sip out of the cup. I can see her staring at me so I tense and tell myself, no, I’m not done. I lean back, keeping my eyes on the screen. I have to warn myself not to look at her because my head shifts and I almost do, and I think I’m more so anticipating what would happen next if I do catch her eyes. “I could watch this scene ten years from now and still find it funny,” I say just to say. To distract us both.

Shane giggles as Kevin sends a flat look at the camera, and I’m thinking, alright. This is good. We’re doing well. 

I playfully sing along with Michael and Andy to “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees, and it works. It gets her laughing more. I’m high off the sound. I feel like I’ve just smoked one of Josie’s blunts. 

It stays this way for as long as we’re both sitting on her couch. I enjoy every second, relish in it because this is the most normal we’ve been in five years. 

And then it’s like I’ve spoken too soon. 

Shane gets up and clears her throat, and I’m drawn to her. To the twitch in her fingers, the tension in her shoulders, the look in her eyes that I can’t quite place. Every time I think we make progress, two steps back are taken. 

I push myself up. “You alright?”

Shane stutters, “Yeah, I, um…” She uses her thumb to point vaguely behind her. “I just remembered I still have the clothes you lent me. I’m gonna -”

“Oh, it’s fine.” Stay. Please. “I can always -”

“No, I’ll go get them,” she interjects, and I watch as she shuts her eyes tight and turns around. Shane stands there for a moment, huffs quietly, and then she’s off, heads down the hallway and doesn’t look back. 

I blink at her retreating figure, can’t help but tell myself I’ve ruined everything. She’s so skittish. So slippery. Should I leave her be? My heart races. It tells me not to make the same mistakes. 

I go after her. 

I know I’ve located her when I see that the only door closed must be the one leading to her bedroom. Her hallway is as barren as the rest of her apartment. I have to see her room. Will it be empty, too? Or will I find memorabilia and photographs and piles of her stunning artwork? 

I knock lightly on her door. “Shane. Are you okay?” 

There’s an exhale on the other side. I wonder if her head is down. I want to tilt it up and keep it there. Head always up. Stand tall, Guzman. 

“Y-yeah. I’m sorry,” she says. 

And then she’s opening her door to me, her room. 

Funny. I don’t see anything but her. Am I spellbound? 

She’s spaced out. My hands land on her arms. I step into her, and it might be too close. “Hey, what’s going on?” I press my fingers in a little more, and Shane takes a breath. Possibly mine.

Her mouth opens and closes several times, and that’s where my eyes land. I watch her try to piece her words together, and at first, she’s staring at my chest. But then her gaze lifts up to meet mine, and I see Rickson Elementary School, the bike racks and braided pigtails and her bloody arm and my scraped knees. 

I feel a tug in my brows. I’m fucked. I’m feeling too much in my chest, standing in front of the same girl I swore I’d cross oceans for. 

“Niall.”

She had me then, and she has me now. 

I want more.

Shane inhales and then she’s confessing and I’m being granted all that I’ve asked for. She’s still stiff between my palms. I doubt I should be celebrating just yet. 

“I can turn back time.”

My eyes want to blink, but they can’t. 

I’m frozen as I stare at her, waiting for her to finish. 

She is done. 

And then I gather something awful. I see regret in her eyes, fear. I see her gazing back at me like she’s made the biggest mistake of her life. I’ve never wanted anything more than to make it go away. There’s a fuckton of things I want, have wanted, and will always want, most of which have everything to do with the girl in front of me, one of them wishing she never looks at me that way again. 

She can go back in time. 

Okay.

I believe her. 

She can tell me the sky is green and the air we breathe is just a fucking myth, that in order to be alive I must rely on physical touch and standing too close and brown eyes and toothy grins and that’s it. She’s it.

Yeah, I’ll believe her. I’ll believe whatever she tells me. I realize I’m still holding her arms. She is air, a myth. Her touch, the distance between us, her eyes. Smile for me, Shane. I exist because of you. 

I have to make her see that. 

Shane can barely move, but her lips keep quivering. She stutters, tripping over her words, shocked that she even said anything to begin with, and it’s still there. The regret. 

Her widened eyes play table tennis with mine. 

I almost laugh. Or maybe I do. She can’t possibly think I’d scare that easily. I’ve been the one fearing she’ll bolt for her life, running at the mere thought of me asking her to be mine. Scarred from the first few chapters of our story, not wanting to endure it again.

“What?” I dare ask, wanting to understand her expression, wanting to read her mind. 

“I…” Shane swallows. Her eyes are watering. She still hasn’t blinked. “I’m…” 

I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I follow it. Her hand places itself between us. She’s going to push me away. 

No. 

No, no, no, Shane. I don’t want that. 

She loses sight of my eyes, and it kills me. Her hand is shaking. 

“What -” I’m trying to even my breathing. “What are you doing?” I have to ask. 

Stay here. With me. Stay close. Stay present.

“I can’t -” 

Shane says my name alongside an apology, and I want her to stop. I want this all to stop. I feel like time is slipping from me, like I don’t have enough of it to change her mind, and I’m frantic, panicking that she’s doing it now. Going back through time to try and take this all back.

She’s spilled a secret. Why does this one feel like it means more than the others? I watch her gulp. It looks like it pains her. She tells me she’s joking, and then she tries to smile. Regret. It’s still there. 

Don’t lie to me, I want to say, but she is fragile. It’s just me, I want to say next, but it still might be too much. She’ll break if I’m not careful. 

My palms are damp. I feel it in my left hand first as I drag it down her arm, meeting with the one she’s placed between us. She’ll really do it. She’ll go back in time, terrified of having confessed something so absurd and ridiculous and nonsensical. 

But I believe her. 

I believe it all. 

The sky is green and air is a myth.

Fuck.

“Don’t,” I tell her. Shane blinks at me rapidly, and I worry her vision’s gone blurry. “Whatever it is you’re about to do, don’t do it.”

I watch her carefully, refusing to look away from those wide, brown eyes, and I move her slowly. Enough to have her hand back at her side. Did she notice? Is she aware of my touch? Does she trust me? Will she listen? 

She looks back at me and I know the twitch in her brows before I even see it. She wants to fight me on this. To object. To make me forget.

“Stop,” I find myself saying, a frenzied laugh slipping from me like spilled salt. My hand is wrapped around hers and I feel how we press together against her hip. I’ve never felt her there. I try to focus, try to fight the dizzying feeling of knowing what her bones feel like against mine and wanting more of the sensation. “Come on,” I say, watching her confusion dissipate. “I know you, Shane. Your eyebrows twitch when you get all… Conflicted.” 

Shane is stuttering again. She can’t quite say what she wants to, and it’s amusing to me but it’s frustrating to her. 

“Please,” I beg. Can she tell I’m desperate if I lock our fingers together? I do it anyways, spinning her hand so our palms meet, our fingers sliding together. Her skin is so soft. I feel bad for making it wet from perspiration. I’m nervous as hell. I want her to see that she can trust me again. That she has nothing to worry about, that I’ve got her. “Shane…”

She gasps at the sound of her name, eyelids fluttering, and I nearly reel into her. I feel like I’ve been blindsided. Is this how she’ll react every time now? Because I’ll call out her name again and again. Always. Forever. I love the breath she needs to take. I’ll be her air like she is mine, myth and all. 

Shane’s head drops, and I feel her forehead against my chest. I worry about my pulse. It’s beating and it’s loud and it’s all for her. Her sigh makes me sigh, and I feel relief slowly swimming through my veins. 

Did I do it? 

I squeeze her other arm, the one I’m still holding, and I bring her closer, pulling her to me. Her fingers, the ones interlaced with mine, finally relax, and I use that moment to wrap my arms around her. Shane’s hands remain at her sides, but she hums beneath me and then I’m hugging her tight. 

“Tell me everything,” I murmur over her head, chin on her hair. She smells like my happiest memories, my better days. 

She is a time traveler, and I feel young again. It’s coincidental, I swear. 

I feel her chest expand against me when I brush through her hair, straight and silky between my fingers. 

I always loved that she never styled it. Except for that day - I still curse it every chance I get - when I biked over and told her that Tia had asked me out. She’d done something to her hair to make it look big, and I was able to tell, even though it seemed like she tried hiding it with a bun.

It was the press of her shirt where no wrinkles existed that I knew something was off, that something wasn’t sitting well with her. 

A frizzy curl had slipped and framed her face as she muttered a cold, very sarcastic thank you to me. I remember reaching for her arm before I could reach for her hair and plead her not to change anything about her again. Had I done that instead, maybe I would’ve gotten her. Maybe she could’ve been mine. Jesus Christ, maybe two weeks later I would’ve already known how she tasted without flitting around the feelings I had for her but needed to contain. 

Or maybe, she would’ve told me off, point and huff at me about telling her what to do. And maybe I would’ve laughed and nodded, apologizing before breaking into a grin and pulling her towards my chest, because I’d listen. I was a fool for her and everyone knew. Everyone but her. 

Shane is crying into my chest now. I feel my own eyes water, because what are we even doing anymore? Is this what starting over is supposed to feel like? It hurts and I hate it. Is it even any different between us this time if I still fall at her feet? 

She is a time traveler, and I dread that she can make this moment between us disappear forever. Maybe I can stop her from doing so. 

I’ll beg if I have to. I’ll drop to my knees.