PREFACE
Young hearts loved just as deeply as an adult heart, only the adult heart was leery—heartache made us that way—and the young heart could love without fear, no heartache yet to speak of.
First love was never mistaken. And it didn’t seek permission.
I loved Gavin Cobalt from the moment we met.
I hadn’t known it at the time, how much my life would become his. At ten, my first reaction to him was the roaring of my pulse in my ears, and a shortness of breath in my lungs. It was harmless, at the same time it was changing my insides. I didn’t want anything more from him then, not as much as I later came to yearn for; I only wanted him to look at me.
The neighbors next door always had a lot of kids around. My parents explained that they were a transition home. They adopted fostered youth to adjust them before they were permanently fostered out. I tried to play with some of the kids, but most of them didn’t want to play. They were all sad, and I was sad for them.
Mostly because I had parents, but those lonely kids looked a lot more familiar to me.
It had been a few months since they’d had a kid next door to play with, and though Mom and Dad insisted I’d have a brother or sister by now, I’d given up hope on ever having one.
It was just me. And that had never really felt stable.
Mom and Dad were always busy, and they weren’t really all that concerned with doting either. I wasn’t a neglected kid, and at ten it was hard to pinpoint that emotion down to loneliness, at least I hadn’t thought I was, not until a little boy walked out of the house next door and sat on the porch, and suddenly, I knew what he was feeling.
I could sense it; with Gavin, I always could. The emptiness, the missing parts in us we hadn’t torn out, and the buzzing of need we couldn’t figure out how to cure. At ten it was simple though. We were sad, and we were mad. I watched him from my bedroom window, fogging up the glass. It was fall in Seattle, and the temperature outside had to be around forty.
Puffs of cold breath blew from his lips.
I bit my lip absentmindedly and watched him pick at the paint on the porch out front. He looked around, rubbed his arms, and then swung his legs. He was taller than me, but he had a youthful face then. Wild brown hair and chubby cheeks.
I traced his figure in the fog from my breath on the window.
I felt a sadness in my chest for him. It burned all the way in the depths of my heart. Even at ten, I knew I was looking at something I’d be looking at forever.
Oh, how I was wrong.
So heartbreakingly right.
I grabbed one of my old sweaters, the least girly one—black, with a white lion on the back—put my own on, and then dashed down the stairs and out the front door. I’d made the sweater myself last summer on the pier. Mom and Dad were at work, where they always were, so there was no one to ask permission from. From an early age, I had to learn right from wrong on my own. Or I feared there would only be wrong.
Or nothing at all.
I walked slowly across my lawn, and then slowly across his. I took the stairs to his porch, and then stood in front of him.
He looked at me, and I looked at him, his pretty eyes holding mine. They were brown on the edge and honey around his pupil. I liked them.
Even then, I loved his eyes.
I saw his sadness in them like holding up a mirror; I saw my own in his.
I held up my sweater. “It’s cold out,” I explained, running my teeth over my braces. I’d gotten them a few weeks ago, and I still hated them.
As if fitting in wasn’t hard enough, I had to add braces to the list.
The boy stared at me. The pain in his eyes made me sad, but his face was screwed up; he was mad. “What makes you think I want your sweater?”
“Because you’re cold?”
“How do you know I’m cold?”
I didn’t want to point out the goosebumps all over his arms. Something told me he wouldn’t like it. I just shrugged and tucked my sweater under my arm. “Sorry.”
He grunted and looked down, swinging his black Converse’s back and forth. The toe was scuffed, and the shoestrings were barely intact. He looked back up at me and glared. “What are you looking at?”
For some reason, his mad face made me smile. A lot of things that Gavin did back then made me smile. He was cute, with sticky toffee eyes and chubby cheeks. His anger didn’t feel scary. It felt forced. My little ten-year-old heart hadn’t even known she was falling. By the time I realized, it was too late, and at that point, I wouldn’t have done anything anyway. Gavin gave my lonely world everything it had ever wanted.
At ten, I got my first taste of addiction. And when it came to Gavin, I was a hopeless addict.
“I’m not looking at anything,” I assured him. “Can I sit down?”
He studied me for a second. Gavin was always doing that. Watching me, looking at me, like he was memorizing me. And then he slid over, giving me room to sit. I joined him, peeking at him at the same time he looked at me. We both glanced away just as fast. I smiled at my lap.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
When I peeked this time, I swore there was a patch of red in his cheeks. My own were inflamed. “Jasmeen.”
“My name’s Gavin.”
“Hi, Gavin,” I whispered.
“Hi, Jasmeen,” he mumbled back.
I smiled shyly.
He smiled back.
And then he put my sweater on.