Love is Hell

“I think I speak from experience,” he says.

I want to be mad at him, but I can’t. And as messed up as it sounds, it feels really good to cry. After Emma died, I wasn’t allowed to show even a speck of emotion, and now it seems too big to hold back.

Travis holds me for way longer than anyone else ever has, until all my Emma tears have dried up.

“Thanks,” I say, wiping my eyes, trying to regain composure.

“Sure.” He smiles and reaches for my hand, gives it a squeeze, then moves past me to go into the closet. He pulls the necklace from my old tennis shoe. “I watched you hide it in here,” he says. “I gave this to my mom on Mother’s Day. I still remember that morning. I had tried to make French toast, but it turned out to be more like soggy bagel bites. We ended up eating cornflakes.” He laughs and runs his thumb over the heart-shaped pendant. “Anyway, I gave this to her, along with a bouquet of wildflowers. The day I was killed, that bastard ripped it off her neck and chucked it across the bathroom. It landed in the radiator, but she was never able to find it.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to you.”

He shrugs. “That’s life, I guess. There are no guarantees. Like with my dad .nbsp;.nbsp; as far as everyone knew, he was in perfect health. But, then, one day, he just never came home.”

I nod, thinking how it was like that with Emma, too. “Did you enjoy your life at least?”

“It had its moments.” He smiles again and his eyes lock on mine. “I only have one regret.”

“Which is?”

“Not living long enough to tell my mother that what happened wasn’t her fault. I stepped in to help her—to distract that asshole from beating her—because I wanted to. It was my choice.”

“But you were only seventeen.”

“I know.”

“And you aren’t angry at all?”

He shrugs again. “What good would that do? My mother did the best she could, but she wasn’t a strong woman. I knew that. Her boyfriend knew it, too. That’s why he beat her down so bad. Plus, you could totally turn things around and say it was my fault. If my mother was too weak to do the right thing, maybe I should have reported him long before anything like that ever happened.”

“I guess,” I say, wondering how he can be so forgiving.

“Besides,” he continues, “life’s too short to live with all that guilt. That’s what my mother’s doing now, even twenty years later. And that’s what you’re doing, too, isn’t it .nbsp;.nbsp; with Emma?”

I shrug and look away. “How do you know so much about me?”

“I’m inside your dreams, remember? I know all about you.”

I nod, slightly disappointed that this is a dream, that I eventually have to wake up.

“So, will you help me?” he asks, dropping the necklace into my palm. “Will you bring this to her? Will you tell her that I don’t blame her for my death?”

“And what’ll happen then?” I ask.

Travis bites his lip and touches my face. His fingers feel like velvet against my skin. “I’ll be able to pass on.”

“That’s what I thought,” I say, hearing the disappointment in my voice.

“But I want to spend more time with you first.” He runs his fingers along my jaw. “I want to see you as often as I can before that time comes.”

“And when will it come?”

He whisks a lock of tear-soaked hair off my face and leans in a little closer, his lips just inches from mine. “Whatever you do,” he whispers, ignoring the question, “don’t wake up now.”

A moment later, I feel his kiss. It presses against my mouth and makes my skin sizzle. “We don’t have much time,” he says, once the kiss breaks. “You’re going to wake up soon. I can sense it.”

“So what now?”

“Now I hold you while I still can.”

We lay in my bed, Travis cradling me in his embrace. I try to stay asleep, to relish the moment for as long as I can. But the sound of birds chirping outside wakes me up.

I roll over in bed to look for him. His mother’s necklace rests on the pillow beside me. But Travis is nowhere in sight.

Ten (#ulink_c245f31d-bdb3-5429-b55c-0bb7ce414a30)

I SPEND THE NEXT SEVERAL days sleeping whenever I can—drinking lots of warm milk, switching to decaf, and reducing my intake of sugar, carbs, and anything else that might keep me awake. Raina tells me she can see the difference, but attributes it to her stellar makeup tips and not to the fact that I’ve been going to bed early each night, taking catnaps during the day.

And seeing Travis.

In my dreams, Travis and I talk about everything—about his favorite ’80s flicks (Back to the Future and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), how I’d like to start swimming again, and how he misses the taste of fudge ripple ice cream. We talk about music we love and places we’ve visited. And places he never got to see.

We even talk about Emma.

While my parents won’t even allow me to say her name, Travis listens as I talk about the day of Emma’s accident, the six months that followed while she was in a coma, and the day that she died—when her ghost appeared to me.

“I think about her all the time,” I tell him on our last night together. “I wonder what she’d be like now, if we’d be close and if I’d teach her stuff—like how to make butterscotch candy—my culinary specialty—or how to trap and dribble in field hockey. I just hope she’s happy .nbsp;.nbsp; wherever she is.”

“She is,” he says, pulling me close. “There’s no need to feel bad about anything.”

“Are you sure?”

He breaks our embrace to look at me. He cups my face and stares into my eyes. “More than sure.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” I say, fighting the urge to well up.

“There’s still right now,” he says. “So, don’t wake up.”

“I’ll do my best.”

We end up taking a walk by the lake, where he and his dad used to go fishing. Travis picks a spot close to the water and lays out a thick blanket. We sit down facing one another, holding hands, and entangling legs.

“I wish you could stay,” I whisper.

Travis threads his fingers through mine, sending warm and spicy tingles straight down my back. “I’ll always be with you,” he says.

“But not like now. I won’t be able to see you.”

“It wouldn’t be fair of me to stay. You have your own life to live.”