The phone buzzes against the nightstand like an alarm we forgot we set. A cheap electronic chirp that cuts through the gray morning light, and I feel Liam shift beside me, his arm sliding off my waist as he reaches for it without opening his eyes.
I watch him fumble for the screen, his thumb finding the button by memory. The buzzing stops. He drops the phone back onto the wood and his hand returns to my hip, fingers spreading across my skin like nothing happened.
"What was it?" My voice is rough with sleep, the words coming out before I've fully decided to speak them.
"Nothing." He presses his face into my hair, breathing deep. "Just a reminder I set months ago."
I don't let it go. I turn my head, squinting at the screen on the nightstand. The display is still lit, showing a notification I can read upside down: 90 days til graduation. The number has changed since he set it. The number says forty-two now.
Forty-two days until he walks across a stage in a cap and gown and I sit in the audience, clapping, knowing that everything changes after that.
"You counted down to graduation?" I ask. My hand finds his on my hip, my fingers threading between his.
"Marcus dared me. Said I wouldn't make it to senior year without dropping out." A pause. "I set it the first day of fall semester. Didn't think I'd actually want it to slow down."
He can see the screen from here. He knows the number I'm staring at. His thumb stills on my waist, and the silence that settles between us is heavier than any conversation we've had all week.
"What happens after?" I ask.
The words come out quiet. Careful. Like I'm testing a door I'm afraid will open into nothing.
His thumb resumes its motion — a slow, absent tracing of the curve of my waist, the dip above my hipbone. He's memorizing me. I can feel it in the way his touch lingers, the way his palm cups my skin like he's trying to hold the shape of me in his hands.
"I don't know," he says.
The honesty lands harder than a lie would have. If he'd said I'll figure it out or we'll be fine, I could have believed him halfway, could have tucked the doubt into a drawer like I used to. But he says I don't know, and there's no armor in those words. Just him. Just the truth.
I roll over to face him. The sheet slides down my chest, and the morning air raises goosebumps on my arms. He's watching me with those pale blue eyes, his hair a mess on the pillow, the scar above his eyebrow catching the light from the window.
"You've thought about it," I say. Not a question.
He holds my gaze for a long moment, then looks away, staring at the ceiling. His jaw tightens. "I've thought about it every day since you sat next to me in that class."
My chest tightens. "Liam—"
"I applied to colleges last year. Got into a few. One in California, one in Oregon, one in-state." He swallows. "I was going to go. I had a whole plan. Leave this town, leave everything, start over somewhere I didn't have to be the quiet kid who never said the right thing."
His hand is still on my hip, but his fingers have gone still. I cover his hand with mine, press it against my skin.
"And now?" I ask.
"Now I have a reason to stay." He says it like it's simple. Like he didn't just hand me something fragile and ask me not to drop it.
The air in the room shifts. The fan hums, stirring the scent of his laundry detergent and the faint salt of sleep-sweat. Dust motes drift through the sunlight, spinning slow and aimless.
"I don't want you to stay for me," I say. The words feel wrong in my mouth, but I push through. "I want you to stay because it's what you want. Not because I'm here."
He turns his head, looking at me with an expression I can't read. "What if you're what I want?"
"That's not—" I stop. Bite my lip. Try again. "That's not a plan. That's a person."
"I know." He reaches up, his thumb brushing my lip where I bit it. "I've been trying to figure out the difference."
I don't pull away. His touch is gentle, callused from years of lifeguarding, and I feel the heat of his skin against my mouth like a brand.
"Forty-two days," I whisper.
"Forty-two days." He drops his hand, letting it rest on the pillow between us. "And then I don't know what happens after. But I know I want you in it. Whatever it looks like."
I want to believe him. I want to let the words settle into my bones and trust them. But there's a part of me that still remembers crossing an ocean, still remembers the sound of Maya's voice on the phone saying this isn't working, still remembers believing in a future that never came.
"I'm scared," I admit. The words feel like glass in my throat. "I'm scared because I've never done this before — had something good that wasn't already ending. And I don't know how to hold it without waiting for it to break."
His eyes don't leave mine. "I'm scared too."
"You are?"
"Terrified." He lets out a breath that's almost a laugh. "I've spent my whole senior year waiting for you to realize you're too good for me. And every day you don't leave, I get a little more scared because that means I have more to lose."
I press my palm to his chest. Feel his heart under my hand, steady and fast. "I'm not going anywhere."
"I know." He covers my hand with his. "I'm starting to believe it. That's the scary part."
The fan hums. The light shifts. Somewhere outside, a car starts, someone's morning commute beginning without us.
"Tomorrow," I say. "Your mom."
He groans, but there's a smile in it. "Tomorrow."
"Tell me about her." I shift closer, my knee brushing his thigh under the sheet. "Not the version Marcus tells. The real one."
He's quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing lazy circles on my hand. "She works at a hospital. Front desk. She's been there since I was a kid, and she hates it — the hours, the fluorescent lights, the way patients yell at her like she's the one who makes them wait. But she never quit because it has good insurance and she needed me covered."
I listen, watching his face as he talks. The way his eyes soften. The way his mouth curves, almost imperceptibly, when he says her name.
"She's funny," he continues. "In a dry, sarcastic way that most people don't get until they've known her for years. She tells terrible puns and doesn't care if you laugh. She keeps every drawing I ever made, even the ones from kindergarten where I drew her as a stick figure with too many fingers."
I smile. "She sounds wonderful."
"She is." He looks at me, his gaze steady. "She's going to love you."
"You don't know that."
"I do." He says it like a fact, like gravity. "She's been waiting for me to bring someone home. She's already been asking Marcus about you."
My stomach flips. "What did Marcus tell her?"
"That you're the reason I stopped going to his garage to drink cheap beer and sulk." A pause. "Also that you're too good for me, but I already knew that."
I roll my eyes, but I'm smiling. "He's not wrong."
"I know." He leans in, his forehead brushing mine. "That's why I'm keeping you."
His breath is warm against my lips, and I close my eyes, letting myself feel the weight of him — the solid warmth of his body, the steadiness of his hand on mine, the quiet certainty in his voice when he says he's keeping me.
I open my eyes. "Tell me something true."
He pulls back, just enough to look at me. "Something true?"
"Something you haven't told me yet. Something you've been scared to say."
He studies me for a long moment. The fan hums. The light crawls across the bed. I can see the thought moving behind his eyes, the calculation, the hesitation, the moment he decides to trust me.
"I saved your number before we ever spoke," he says. "That first day of class, when you sat down next to me. I watched you take out your notebook, watched you write your name on the first page, and when you left your bag on the floor while you went to get a pencil, I looked at your syllabus and found your email. I wanted to message you later that night."
My breath catches. "Why didn't you?"
"Because I thought you'd think I was a creep." He laughs, a short, self-deprecating sound. "And because I didn't know what to say. I just knew I wanted to say something. To you."
"Our first conversation," I say slowly, "was about whether the homework was due Friday or Monday."
"I know. I spent the whole night trying to come up with a reason to talk to you. And then you asked me about the homework, and I couldn't even get the date right. I told you Friday because I didn't want the conversation to end."
"It was Monday."
"I know." He grimaces. "I spent that whole weekend convinced you thought I was an idiot."
I can't help the laugh that escapes me. "I just thought you were nervous."
"I was. I'm always nervous around you."
"You don't seem nervous now."
"That's because you're in my bed." He says it simply, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "I can't be nervous when you're this close. It's like my brain just shuts off and all I can think about is touching you."
His hand moves from mine, sliding up my arm, over my shoulder, until his palm cups my jaw. His thumb traces my cheekbone, and I feel the heat of his gaze like a physical weight.
"I want to meet your mom," I say. "I'm terrified, but I want to."
"She's going to love you."
"You already said that."
"I'll say it a hundred times until you believe me."
I close my eyes, leaning into his touch. "Forty-two days."
"Forty-two days," he repeats. "And then I'll figure out the rest. But I'm not going anywhere without you."
"Promise?"
He shifts, pulling me closer, his arms wrapping around me until my face is pressed against his chest. I can hear his heartbeat, steady and sure.
"I promise," he says. "Forever. Remember?"
I press my lips to his collarbone, feel the warmth of his skin, the slight tremor in his hands as they hold me. The key is on the nightstand, next to his phone. I can see it from here, the metal catching the light, a promise forged in a shape I can hold.
"I remember," I say.
His hand finds the key, picks it up, presses it into my palm.
"Keep it forever," he says. "I mean it."
I curl my fingers around the metal, feel the teeth against my skin, and I think about the word forever and how it used to terrify me. How I crossed an ocean for someone who couldn't say it. How I found someone who says it like it's the easiest thing in the world.
"Forever," I repeat. The word feels different in my mouth now. Heavier. More possible.
He kisses the top of my head, and I press the key against my chest, and the TV still flickers in the other room, silent and blue, playing to an empty couch.
The morning stretches around us, full of dust motes and the hum of the fan and the warmth of his body against mine. And somewhere in my chest, the fear I've been carrying starts to loosen — not gone, not yet, but lighter. More breathable.
"Okay," I say, my voice muffled against his skin. "I want to tell my parents about you."
His hand freezes on my back. "What?"
I pull back, meeting his eyes. "I want them to know. About us. I've been hiding it because I didn't know how to explain, but I don't want to hide anymore."
His eyes search mine, looking for hesitation. "Are you sure?"
I think about my mother's voice on the phone, the way she asks me if I'm okay, the way she doesn't push but I can hear the worry underneath. I think about my father, who hasn't met any of my friends because I've never given him a name to hold onto. I think about the distance between here and there, the ocean between me and the life I left, and I think about all the ways I've kept Liam a secret because I was afraid of what it meant to stop being a ghost in my own family.
"I'm sure," I say. "I want them to know I found someone good."
He doesn't speak. He just looks at me with those pale blue eyes, and something shifts in his expression — something raw and unguarded, like I've handed him a piece of my future and he's trying to decide if he's worthy of holding it.
His hand finds my cheek, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. "I don't know what I did to deserve you."
"You showed up," I say. "You stayed. You said I don't know when it would have been easier to lie."
He leans in, pressing his forehead to mine. "I'm going to spend every one of those forty-two days proving I'm worth staying for."
"You already have."
He kisses me — soft, slow, his lips warm against mine. The key is still in my hand, pressed between our chests, and I feel it there, a metal heartbeat, a promise I can carry.
Tomorrow I meet his mother. Today I tell mine. And somewhere in between, I learn what it means to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and start believing the shoes that are already on my feet.
The fan hums. The light shifts. And Liam's hand finds mine under the sheet, fingers lacing together, holding on like he's never letting go.
Forty-two days until everything changes.
But right now, in this bed, in this moment, nothing needs to change at all.