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I force in a deep, shaky breath and finally gather up the courage I need to exit my taxi, shutting the door behind me as I glance up his driveway—only to find him patiently standing there in his doorway with a soft smile, the light from the inside of his house illuminating him like an angel.

Like the angel he looked like the very first time I saw him. Golden halo and all.

Fifty-six Before

THE TIME FORour poetry presentation finally came. It felt like a lifetime, yet no time at all had passed between those first days with Greyson in class and now.

“Ms. Martinez, Mr. Hayes, you’re up next,” our teacher called.

We stood from opposite sides of the room and made our way to the front of the class. My heart raced as I stood next to him, all eyes on us. I didn’t realize yet, that my heart was pounding away in anticipation of something else entirely.

Greyson cleared his throat and started our presentation, clicking through some of the slides we’d put together. I didn’t hear any of it. I was standing there, feeling the weight of his presence beside me, hearing the tone of his voice carry across the room, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, tell you what he was saying. I was too busy swallowing down the hurt that came with standing so close to him while feeling lightyears away.

He’d never felt more out of reach.

And then before I knew it, it was my turn. I swallowed, and I swallowed again. And then I recited the last few slides of our presentation through memory alone. Greyson ran through his closing statements, but still, I didn’t hear any part of what he’d said. He turned it back over to me again. The entire class shifted and focused their attention on me, waiting.

I’d practiced my closing words over and over again, but in that moment, I couldn’t find them. I tried, for a stuttering few seconds, to dig them up from wherever they’d ran off to and hidden, but it was a lost cause; they were long gone.

Instead, a new set of words spilled themselves forward. Eager and ready.

“We disagreed a lot,” I said, “on whether it was romanticism or insanity that Poe suffered from. I was so sure it was one way or the other.Insanity, clearly.Am I right?” I forced a laugh.

“But I sort of get it now…how they go hand-in-hand,” I said, feeling the truth of it pressing down on my chest. “Because when you find that person that ultimately changes the core of who you are, and you feel yourself falling for them…you can’t justtellyourself to stop. Even if you can see the train wreck and heartache coming from a mile away, even if youknowthat there’s no way that person could ever actually be yours…it won’t stop you from loving them with all of your heart. It won’t stop you from handing both it and a sledgehammer over to that person and sitting back while you willingly watch them—intentionally or unintentionally—smash it to smithereens.

“And that notion in itself…is pure insanity. I mean, it doesn’t get any crazier than that.” I laughed humorlessly, swallowing back the pressure of my tears surging forward, breathing against the weight that had fully settled in my chest. I looked up at Greyson, holding his gaze for a few agonizing seconds before tearing my eyes away from him, focusing back on our classmates again.

“Love doesn’t care about any of that shit,” I finished quietly. “It only cares about that single person who makes your heart beat faster just from looking at them. Everything else is collateral damage. And in Poe’s case, it was his own sanity.”

My heart beat wildly, reverberating through my body, echoing in my ears. Thewhoosh, whoosh, whooshwas all I could hear. My hands were shaking, and my breaths were, too.

I was pretty sure I’d just told Greyson that I loved him, without actually saying the words.

All it took was one look at him to know I was right.

Fifty-seven Before

THE BELL RANG,and I walked out of class as fast as I could without making it obvious. Through the door, and down the hall, and halfway into the quad before Greyson caught up to me.

“Jess. Jess, wait. Please. Slow down.”

I slowed my pace and stopped, slowly spinning on my heel to face him. I knew I couldn’t avoid this; I’d willingly put my feelings out there, and now I was going to have to face them.

I didn’t find myself regretting it, though.

Because I did love him.

It was stupid, and inconvenient, and the worst timing on the planet,andGod really must’ve hated me,but there it was. I loved him. I couldn’t have helped falling for him even if I’d tried.

And I think I had tried, but I still fell for him anyway.

I loved his crooked smile and his green eyes that easily swum into the depths of my soul. I loved the words he sang from his lips but the ones he spoke even more. I loved the way he viewed the world as if it were full of unlimited possibility and not all the ways it had tried to break him, and I loved his unfailing belief in a better future…his ability to twist all that negative into the positive.

Looking at him now, I knew it was the kind of love that would stick with me long after he left. All these little pieces of himself had slowly sunk their claws into me, burrowing themselves deep, altering the way I viewed life, too—the way I viewed myself—through a glass half-full instead of one that was mostly empty.

“Jess?” Greyson stepped forward, hesitantly reaching his arm out. His fingers slid around my elbow as he stepped another foot closer.

I took a deep breath, and our eyes locked together. I had no idea what he was going to say, but his eyes…in his eyes I saw a few things I was absolutely sure of:Resignation. Relief.