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I recognize the song right away: “Run Away with Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen. The dancers start out in a few staggered lines, all controlled movements. Arms, legs, hips in slow rotations. Then they break apart, allowing their dancing to get bigger, louder, skipping along the grass and bouncing off one another and throwing their hands high.
It’s a million times better than any video I’ve watched.
“Did you know about this?” I ask Miles, heart in my throat as a trio of dancers body-roll in front of our picnic blanket.
“You’re the one who brought me here,” he says. “How could I have known?” He eyes me carefully, and I do my best to hide my face from him. “Are you… are you crying?”
I swipe away a tear. “It’s really amazing how in sync they are!”
I think he might be laughing, but when he presses his shoulder against mine, it’s clear it’s an appreciative kind of laugh. A you’re weird but I’m into it laugh.
At the end, the flash-mobbers whip off their shirts, and the tank tops they’re wearing underneath spell out the name of the song. The crowd bursts into applause.
“I think that might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I say, still clapping.
“Was it as magical as you thought it would be?”
“Even better. You really didn’t plan this?” I ask, though of course he couldn’t have. He didn’t know we were coming here.
Miles shakes his head, a breeze catching some of his dark hair. “Just a perfect coincidence.” Then he shifts on the blanket, digging his hand into the fabric. Loose threads everywhere must fear him. “I—uh. Wanted to give you something.” He reaches into his backpack. Anxiously, like he’s been working up the nerve to do this, but as soon as I see what it is, my heart starts racing and my lungs tighten and—and I can’t breathe.
Miles is holding a single yellow rose.
My whole world goes sideways, and suddenly I am back in high school. Opening up my locker and sitting in homeroom and feeling like a fucking idiot, throwing all those flowers away, those flowers that were only meant to make me feel awful about myself. Wishing so desperately for school to end.
I hold a hand to my chest, as though if I press hard enough, I can keep all of it inside.
No. Not here. Not now. Please.
“I wanted to thank you for today,” Miles continues. “I looked through the museum gift shop, but most things seemed silly, because you wouldn’t be able to take any of them with you the next day. But then there were so many flowers at the market, and I realized there’s a metaphor there, since those don’t last either, and in my mind it was almost poetic. So I got it while you were waiting in line for empanadas….” He stops his rambling when he sees my face, his eyes going wide. “And… oh. Oh no. Do you not like roses? I shouldn’t have assumed. This was a terrible idea, I’ll just—”
“No no no,” I say quickly, dragging a hand across my face so he can’t see whatever emotion is no longer hiding there. “You didn’t—you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Okay.” The rose drops to the blanket, its petals slightly mashed from its time in Miles’s backpack. Then he glances back at me. “Holy shit. You’re really not okay, are you?”
I press my lips together tightly, terrified of what might happen if I don’t. And yet that might be worse, because I can’t get a proper inhale and my lungs are screaming and the more I will my body to calm down, the more it protests.
Don’t.
Can’t.
Please.
I gasp out a breath, squeezing my eyes shut. As though maybe if Miles can’t see me, I’ll disappear.
“I don’t—I don’t want you to see me like this,” I manage, eyes still closed. Fuuuuuck. “People are—they’re probably staring.”
I can hear Miles moving closer, feel his hand landing on my back. “They’re not,” he says softly. “No one’s staring.”
My breathing races away from me, hard and fast. My chest is on fucking fire and my throat might be closing up, but maybe—maybe that would be okay. Then I wouldn’t have to tell him why.
The world slides away from me again, and I’m no longer in a quaint park on a picnic blanket with Miles stroking my back. I’m in the hotel room, asking Cole to turn the lights off. I’m in a bed that’s too big for us, a thousand new things happening all at once. I’m opening my locker at school on Monday.
“You’re going to get through this,” Miles says from somewhere. “Do you want to try breathing with me?”
I nod, forcing myself back to the present, listening to Miles’s steady breaths. I do my best to match mine to his, but they’re too loud, too shaky.
“You can do this,” he says, and I want so badly to prove to him—to myself—that I can.
