Page 246 of Sweet Nightmare

Stevie then reaches over and straightens the lapel of my coat, even though it doesn’t need straightening. It’s such a Stevie thing to do. To fuss over me when she’s the one saying something that makes my chest ache.

“Your mom wants the world for you,” she continues. “And for years, she’s watched you. We’ve all watched you. We’ve watched you be strong and capable and independent, watched you carry so much on your own shoulders, and all the while, we’ve known that someone as extraordinary as you deserves all the magic and love in the world.”

Crack.

There it is.

That sweet yet painful ache in my chest, the one that always seems to find me whenever Stevie does or says something sweet.

I look away for a moment, taking a deep breath as I try to gather my thoughts.

I don’t appreciate being tricked. I don’t appreciate being maneuvered into situations I never agreed to, and I certainly don’t appreciate my mother and best friend conspiring behind my back as though I’m some particularly difficult cat they need to coax out from under a bed.

But this feeling in my chest, this warmth, this unfamiliar happiness that follows me even when I’m alone with my thoughts...and that man.

God, that man.

I wouldn’t have discovered any of it if it weren’t for the two people who have spent a lifetime pestering me more relentlessly than anyone else in the world, loving me with a devotion that is sometimes unconditional and sometimes downright suffocating.

I look at Stevie.

My best friend. The most beautiful soul I know, carrying scars no one sees and hurts she rarely speaks about, yet somehow still finding reasons to smile. Still finding ways to make other people feel loved, even when life hasn’t always been particularly kind to her.

Sometimes I wonder how easy everything would be if I were more like her. If I knew how to wear my heart on my sleeve, how to be soft without feeling exposed, how to give love without first examining every possible way it might hurt me.

But I wasn’t born that way.

I’m not Stevie. I don’t think I’ll ever be her.

And maybe that’s all right, because I’ve had the extraordinary luck of having her in my life, loving me exactly as I am while somehow making everything a little sweeter along the way.

Even when I insist she’s only making things difficult.

I don’t know how to be as soft as she is.

But damn it, Stevie deserves that softness from me, too.

So I do the one thing I only ever seem to do when she’s sick, when she’s hurt, or when it’s New Year’s Eve.

I hug her.

She makes a surprised little oomph when I wrap my arms around her, probably because she wasn’t expecting me to respond to her emotional speech with actual physical affection.

For a second, she stands perfectly still and then her arms wrap around me, tight and warm, and she buries her face against my shoulder. We stay like that for what feels like forever, wrapped in the quiet of the estate, with the moon glowing around us and the cold mountain air brushing against our cheeks.

I hold her a little tighter.

“Thank you for showing me how to fly, Stevie,” I whisper.

That makes her go still.

“Before you, I only ever drifted with the current.”

A small, strangled sound escapes her and I swear I hear her sniffle.

“Thank you for being my friend.”

She trembles in my arms, and I pull back just enough to look at her, keeping my hands resting on her shoulders.