Page 52 of Finders Keepers

My heart skips a beat, then feels like it might implode as I take in the full force of Quentin standing there in front of me. I flung the door open so quickly he didn’t even have time to do anything with his hands, one still extended toward the doorbell.

I suddenly can’t seem to form words. I am empty of thoughts, which are crowded out by the intense emotion taking up every available inch. I don’t quite know how to describe it, except…well, I guess I do, actually.

My arms go around his neck and I bury my face in his shoulder.

He freezes at first, likely caught unawares by the intensity of the greeting. But he softens into my embrace and wraps me in his arms, holding me tightly and murmuring my name over and over into my hair as if it’s an incantation that might keep me from ever disappearing from his life again.

“Quentin,” I whisper. “I love you. I love you so much.”

After a moment, he slides his hands to my shoulders and holds me just far enough away to look into my eyes. “I thought I loved you before. When we were kids. But I understand now that I was wrong.”

“Oh.” The world comes crashing down, one of those controlled demolition videos taking place in my chest. Maybe that incantation was actually one of future banishment.

Surely I haven’t…There is absolutely no way I could have misread this.

I glance away, quickly, in an attempt to hide how startled I am by his words, but he gently cradles my cheek and directs my face back toward his.

“It was only a pale imitation,” he whispers, a slight smile forming at the corner of his mouth.

“Because as gigantic of a feeling as it was, as all-encompassing and demanding…it’s nothing compared to what I feel for you now.

This thing that makes me simultaneously make the stupidest decisions and want to be the best version of myself.

That makes me ache with need and hope. I am so, so gone for you, Neen, and I don’t know what to do about it.

I’ve never quite known what to do. But, if you’ll let me, I promise I’ll keep trying to get it right, with everything I’ve got, for my whole life. ”

The sweet, soft words reverberate inside me, an echoing ring that feels like it could continue for as long as I’ll let it. “If it makes you feel better, I’m not sure I know what to do with any of this either,” I confess. “But I think that the first step is probably…kissing me.”

“That, I can do.”

Quentin’s lips brush against mine tentatively before settling into something deeper, something that feels certain and steady and like it could last a lifetime.

A throat clears somewhere in the room behind me.

We turn our heads as one, our lips separating as we find my mother sitting on the couch.

In my hurry to get to Quentin, her presence in the living room completely evaded my notice.

“Oh, would you look at the time!” she says, not looking at anything that actually indicates it.

She puts down her e-reader, stands, grabs her purse from its hook by the front door, and scoots around us, talking all the while.

“I need to go to…the store! For…onions. Hope you’ll join us for dinner tonight, Quentin.

We’re having…uh…something with onions, I guess! Six o’clock? Great! See you later.”

Quentin and I exchange smiles, too amused to be annoyed by the interruption.

“Where’s the box?” he asks.

“Upstairs, in my room.”

He leans down and whispers into my ear, his words hot against my already flushed skin. “Funny, that’s where I was going to suggest we go anyway.”

Quentin stops on the threshold of my bedroom, his hands grabbing the doorframe as he peeks inside without entering. “I haven’t been in here in a very long time.”

“I guess you haven’t.” I didn’t even realize that, of all the times he came over to my parents’ house this summer, he never did have reason to venture upstairs.

And when we were teenagers, there was a strict “No Quentin in Nina’s Room” policy instituted when we turned ten.

At the time I thought it was absolutely absurd.

What did they even think we were going to get up to in there?

But I understand the concern now. Because it turns out we were pretty much the last ones on earth to notice that we were into each other.

My parents can be forgiven for assuming we were smarter than we apparently were.

“Hasn’t changed too much, to be honest.”

“That comforter,” he says.

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?”

“I kind of like it. I remember you being all excited when you told me you finally got your parents to buy it for you. Or, you told the Moon, rather.”

“What? Why do you remember that?”

“Because you were happy, and it made me happy. And we were like, fourteen then, I guess, and I was just starting to understand that my feelings toward you were changing into something very different from the friendship I was familiar with, and I was so annoyed that I found you cute.” He leans against the doorframe and flexes his hand in front of him.

“I tried to punch a hole in my wall because I saw someone do it on TV and it seemed like what a tough guy would do. But these walls are lath and plaster and I wasn’t even particularly strong, so all I did was make my knuckles bleed and probably get a hairline fracture in one of my thumb bones.

Still doesn’t always bend right.” He grins at me.

“I was not kidding when I said I’ve never known what to do with the way I feel about you. ”

“Wow. You really weren’t.” I press up against him in the doorway and take his hand. I place a gentle kiss on his knuckles. “I know I’m a bit late, but I hope that still helps make it better.”

“Let me see.” He cups one of my breasts and gently squeezes as his thumb swipes over where my nipple is beneath the fabric of my shirt and bra. “Hey. Look at that. It’s a miracle.”

I roll my eyes and reach for his face, kissing him until both of his hands find purchase on my body. “Do you want to open the puzzle box now?” I ask when his mouth drifts to my neck.

“No,” he answers simply, walking us into my room and turning me toward the bed.

A short time later, stretched out atop my comforter on the floor—the bed wasn’t anywhere near big enough—our clothes hanging in disarray from our bodies as if we tried to get dressed inside one of those hurricane-strength wind machines that used to be at the mall, Quentin traces the shell of my ear with his finger, then drifts down to my collarbone.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

“I’m…You…Too good. Can’t again,” I say, still too drunk on the aftermath of pleasure to express coherent thoughts. “Not yet.”

He laughs. “That’s very satisfying to hear. But I meant are you ready to open Fountain’s box?”

“Oh.” Best-case outcome: We open the box and there’s something so incredibly wonderful and valuable inside that the Conservancy insists on giving us a reward even though they don’t have to.

Worst-case outcome: The treasure isn’t a treasure at all, but a trap—something super toxic that causes a slow, painful death for everyone in the house.

Most likely: It’s…a coin? A tiny brass figurine of a whale?

I don’t know. I really never expected us to get this far, nor do I have any clue what someone as unpredictable as Fountain would find worth creating a whole posthumous treasure hunt around.

But whatever is inside that box, once we see it…

well, this is kind of all over, isn’t it? Maybe not immediately, but soon.

Things will have to change, for better or worse.

Delaying opening the box isn’t going to delay the inevitable, though. We’ve waited so long to know. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

Quentin reaches up to his right and grabs it from where I left it on my bookshelf. “I don’t know if it’ll work here…” I say, rising up on my knees. I clear the top of the nightstand to make space. “It may need a larger table.”

Once there’s nothing in the way, Quentin places the puzzle box in the center of the small surface. “Now what?” he asks.

“Now we…spin it,” I say, gently pressing my fingertips to opposite sides of the box.

I give it a good flick. It makes two rotations before stopping, right on the edge of the nightstand.

Quentin nudges it back to its original starting point, and I try again.

This time it flies off and lands on the floor, the comforter thankfully softening the blow.

“Maybe you should do it,” I say. “This is apparently not an area in which I excel.”

“Took a couple decades, but we finally found one,” he teases, then leans over and kisses my shoulder.

He keeps his head resting against mine and his other arm wrapped around my waist as he takes a deep breath and gives the puzzle box a proper spin.

It comes to rest in approximately the same location it started.

“That was a good spin,” I say quietly, as if my words might disturb it.

“Check it,” he says, nudging me with his nose as he presses his mouth against my skin.

My hands shake as I reach for the box and find the top loose. I slowly, slowly raise it up, until the bottom sits there, open.

I look to Quentin to find him already looking back at me, his expression somewhere between victory and defeat.

“There it is. That’s the look I’ve always loved most,” he whispers.

“The one on your face right now. Like you’ve just conquered the world.

Hard to mind you beating me at anything when it always put that look on your face. ”

It’s hard to tear my eyes away from him, the deep longing and affection living in the space between us palpable enough that it feels like something I might be able to package up and carry with me. He smiles ruefully and says, “So what’s inside, cookiepuss? Don’t keep me waiting.”