Page 281 of Tell Me I'm Enough

Mason grins. “That’s my girl.”

After several more drinks, he throws an arm around my shoulders and pulls me through the crowd toward the living room, where a couch is barely surviving under the weight of too many bodies. He drops back first and then tugs me down on top of him without thinking about it, like it’s just muscle memory. And I let him.

His hands settle on my hips, and he looks up at me like I’m the only thing in the room.

He’s the only thing inmyroom.

Always is.

Regardless of whether that feeling is also accompanied by fear, sadness, and anxiety.

It’s still alwaysjusthim.

“You know,” he says, brushing a strand of hair from my face clumsily, “we’re gonna look back at this and laugh one day.”

“At what?” I ask.

“At all of it.” He gestures vaguely around us. “This. College. Partying. Being dumb.”

I study his face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He grins. “We’ll have a house somewhere. You’ll decorate it all cute. I’ll pretend I don’t care but secretly love it.”

My heart stutters at his words, at him painting me in his future.

“Is that so?” I whisper.

“Mm-hmm.” He nods like he’s completely certain. “And we’ll tell our kids about how cool we were.”

The mention of kids hits me right in the chest.

Ourkids.

It hurts. And I don’t fucking understand why. Because if I were pregnant right now, I would be completely freaking the hell out. I would be terrified; I would feel like my life was over. Yet the pain for something that was real and then ripped away still feels like a hammer that keeps hitting my heart over and over again.

I want to tell him. I want to lean down and whisper it in his ear—I was pregnant, Mason. I was pregnant with your baby.

But one look at him tells me he wouldn’t even remember the words tomorrow. His pupils are blown wide. His words are loose. He doesn’t even know what he’s promising right now.

“Yeah?” I say softly, leaning over him and looking down at his beautiful face—the one I feel as addicted to as I’d imagine him to be with alcohol. “You think we’re that cool?”

He grins up at me lazily. “We’reiconic.”

I laugh despite myself. “That might be pushing it.”

He shrugs. “I don’t do anything halfway.”

Hmm, yeah. That’s the problem, isn’t it?

The party is loud, and the room around us is packed, and the alcohol is hitting me just right to the point where I don’t care who sees. I grab Mason’s face and kiss him without a carein the world, wanting to feel all the good parts I’m holding onto about us. His hands tighten on my hips, and I press into him, intoxicated by this boy who can both make me feel so alive and also scared as hell.

The party blurs around us; people shout, someone falls into the couch, bouncing us slightly, and we both laugh against each other’s mouths. For a second—just one single second—I’m back in the old version of us. When it was still fun. When he wasn’t drowning, and I wasn’t grieving, and nothing had gone wrong yet.

He pulls back and smirks at me. “You hit like a drunk cigarette.”

I roll my eyes, but I’m still stuck smiling at him. Then he sits up suddenly, dragging me with him, and pulls me toward the kitchen. “Come on. We’re playing flip cup.”

“I suck at flip cup,” I protest.