Page 40 of The Last Love Story

I sit on the bed as the engine rumbles underneath me, pressure under my feet, and suddenly we’re airborne.

She winks as she closes the door. “There are slippers under the bed.”

Orion wasn’t the kind of boy who would tell you how he felt, and I knew that. It made sense. His whole life, he’d been trained to keep his emotions in check. But beneath the surface of his emerald-green eyes, I knew emotions flared bright and deep. Injustice, at the wrong. Drive, to make things better. And when he looked at me like that, something slippery seemed toanswer in me. Desire, he felt deeply too. And I was starting to realize, I did too.

I’m surprised Spindle hasn’t been wiped, and it’s probably foolish to access it from a presidential aircraft, but right now, I need to read those words.

This is something that would happen to Saffron, not me. Saffron could navigate these geopolitical waters. She’d be smart and cunning and charming and find a way to save not just herself, but her relationshipandher people.

The aircraft wobbles slightly, and I grab the arm of my seat, letting my fingers dig into the soft leather as I squeeze my eyes shut.

I need to be more like Saffron now. Which is hard, since I don’t really know who she is. When I stopped writingWritten in the Starswith the maturity and shame that came with fourteen, I didn’t kill off Saffron, but I locked her in cryosleep, because that’s how my life felt in the After. I felt like I was sleepwalking.

But I need to wake up.

For the next two hours, I read the words that I’d written. The ones that, to my surprise, people seem to love.

As much as I thought I remembered, it shocks me how much I’d forgotten. How much Callum had faded into the recesses of my mind.

I forgot how we shared everything, in that way you dowhen you’re young and with the same person all the time. Our parents both worked long hours together. My mom used to work with an education department, and my dad handled cybersecurity. Whenever my parents had to stay late, I’d go to the Graveses’.

It takes a village,his mom used to say to mine.

Some weeks, I’d spend more time at his house than my own. There was a place for me at their dinner table.

I flip through the files, remembering the inspiration for each entry, the way his smile had lit me up.

Saffron and Orion stared down a brewing war, knowing something dangerous was happening. Because that’s when we both noticed that his dad was changing.

Arthur Graves announced he was running for president. That’s when the trees in our neighborhood came down.

None were spared, not even the one in between our houses; the one I loved.

And Callum tried to stop it.

They’ll have to take me down with it. I joined him, and to our credit, we lasted until he fell, cutting his hand open. Seeing all that blood, I didn’t think—I just jumped down to help him. Eight stitches, but the tree was down before we had even pulled away in the ambulance.

Two months after that, when Callum’s dad was endorsed by the administration, the campaign videos in my DopaMine featured videos of my neighborhood and the “technological advancements.” The empty streets, no longer tree-lined. Thejumbo screens erected and cables laid to beam Alba into every home.

Return to the Streamlining.He was elected on a promise to bring us into the next and last phase of the war, but it sounded like he was talking about the next and last phase of the world.

When the trucks came to move the Graveses to the White House, Callum climbed onto my roof to say goodbye. A thousand things ran through my mind, but all I could do was hug him. He grabbed my hand, and I looked at the scar on his palm.

Eight stitches.

I knew what Saffron would do. I was too young to think about kisses, but I knew I loved him. I knew he was my person. And Saffron would have told him.

But as Callum looked at me, his gaze desperately searching mine, all I could find was anI’ll miss you.

Because I wasn’t Saffron.

Saffron was taken to a base in the Quadra system. She was cut off from Orion.

Every letter to Saffron was intercepted. She didn’t know if Orion was alive or dead. But she knew that if he was gone forever, she’d feel it in her bones, right? She’d know. So he had to be fine.

I wrote down all the adventures we’d had and every adventure we’d never had, as my parents turned into shells ofthemselves and I adjusted to my beige life in Post Angeles. I needed to recapture some of that color.

And as the years passed, I realized that I couldn’t keep living in a fantasy. Even writing lost its color, so I put Saffron into cryosleep, freezing her and my memories of Callum.