Cool night air shivers against my skin and Jackson pulls me tight to his side. He’s so close I can feel his heartbeat through my shirt. He’s warm and, god, I want to sink into him.

Bad, bad Natalie, I chide myself, then giggle. I shouldn’t have let myself drink so much.

Jackson and I walk quietly, side by side through downtown. Everything’s closed: the pharmacy, the deli with homemade fixings and the biggest dill pickles I’ve ever seen, Papa Gino’s Pizza—one of the very few chains that has thrived in Swan’s Hollow. Chalk covers the bumpy sidewalks, the states listed out in a child’s uneven scrawl: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas. We walk all the way through Iowa before Jackson stops in front of an apartment building a few blocks from the bar.

Oh, I realize all of the sudden. He’s taking me home.

It feels foreign and weird to climb the stairs to the second floor with him, to watch him open the front door to the place he lives. I’m so used to this picture of him stuck at seventeen, eighteen, in his messy bedroom, his desk cluttered with books and baseball mitts, and this apartment is yet more evidence that he’s grown into someone I don’t completely know.

I want to look around and explore his apartment but he skims his hand down my side, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. I can’t pay attention to anything else but his touch. I want him to keep touching me. I want to not want that.

I’ve told myself a thousand times that I don’t want Jackson, that I can’t. This is Jackson who broke my heart. Jackson who failed me when I needed him. But my body’s still singing for him, still lighting up.

Jackson moves his fingers away from my sides and then reaches for my hand, linking his calloused fingers through mine. He gives me the tiniest tug forward.

“Come on, let’s go take care of you.”

I stop breathing for a minute.

Is this what it all comes down to? Me and Jackson, drunk and alone at night? Everything I’ve been fighting against, the past pushing up against me.

But no. He leads me into the tiny bathroom. I blink in the harsh light of the overhead bulbs.

“Sit,” he commands, and I perch on the edge of the bathtub. The porcelain seeps through my jeans, cold and shocking. I bite my lip as I wait.

Jackson picks out three pills and tumbles them into my hand. “Ibuprofen,” he explains. “And Vitamin C.” He hands me a glass of water and waits for me to drink. “You can sleep in my bed. I’ll take the couch.”

I tilt my head to look up at him, half disappointed that he’s going to leave. “Thanks,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for.” When he turns to go, I stand up quickly—my body loose-limbed—and I sway ever so slightly on my feet. Jackson reaches out to catch me and my chest collides with his, his hands landing on my hips.

Time stops and it’s all warm skin and his fingers just under the hem of my shirt. If he wanted to, he could slip his fingers below the waist of my jeans. I know in this moment that I wouldn’t stop him.

I lean my forehead against his chest. Jackson smells like whiskey and soap, the fabric of his shirt soft under my fingertips. His breath comes out in ragged spurts; he’s unsteady because of me. I smile even though he can’t see. He wasn’t bluffing all those times he flirted with me and it fills me with wonder that I can have this effect on him. I am worthy and confident and invincible.

But the minute his body shifts under mine, I’m drawn back to that moment when everything fell apart. I’d come home for the summer after freshman year of college and we all just had this feeling of killing time.

Jackson showed up at my door wearing a T-shirt that read “Save the chubby unicorns” above a silhouette of a rhinoceros. “Come to this party with me,” Jackson pleaded. I wanted to reach out and touch the words across his chest.

Why was it still me? Why did he pick me when he could have had anyone?

He looked at me with one of those floppy, easy smiles on his face, the kind that made me say yes to things. I hadn’t seen him for months. I’d missed him.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m driving.”

At the party it was just a bunch of people back from their various colleges, Jackson in the corner talking about California with Travis, who’d gone full scholarship to UCLA.

College had made me different, or maybe just being away had made me different, and the conversations didn’t hold my interest. I didn’t care about the same things my old friends were talking about. I blew out a breath, trying to release the dull ache in my chest. Had I ever cared, or were my friendships just based on convenience, based on the fact that we had all been stuck in this town together?

Jackson found me in the kitchen, filling my red Solo cup with tap water.

“Need a break?” he asked, and when I nodded we walked outside. The air and the space had been a relief, and we sat on the hood of my car to finish our drinks. My water was warm and tasted skunky from the beer, but I drank it anyway, settling the empty cup against my windshield.

Jackson nodded back at the house. “Same old, same old, huh?”

I tipped my head up to the sky. “Pretty much.”

Jackson rocked his shoulder against mine, familiar and brand-new. “I missed you, you know.” He said it quietly, under his breath, so I hadn’t been quite sure of it until his body stilled. But then he turned to face me and it was this: Jackson’s hands in my hair, music filtering through the windows from the party inside.

He looked at me for a moment, his eyes drinking me in, a slow smile spreading. I could feel the heat of that look through my chest, something warm and catching.

“Natalie.” My name on his lips was a whisper, his voice rumbling and low.

And, god, for all the time I had waited for him, I was tired by then. So I closed the distance between us.

The second I kissed him, it felt like he was my Jackson, the secret one that no one in that party ever saw. The one with big dreams. The one who knew my secrets.

Jackson dragged a hand along my jaw, tilting my face to his, and it was everything. All my senses filled with him, with the press of his lips, his inquisitive, dangerous tongue.

He kissed me like he had been waiting for this, too. And it was really, really good.

But then a door slammed somewhere inside the house and suddenly Jackson stumbled away from me. Jackson Wirth, who I had never once seen lose his shit, looked panicked.

“I can’t do this,” he said. Like a coward he wouldn’t meet my eye.

Stupid, stupid me. Out of all the people who should have known better, I had become another one of those heartbroken girls. And if I let this happen tonight, I’ll be no better off than I was then.

My defenses have been down, but I can’t afford to be foolish around Jackson. I’m not making that mistake again. I take a step back from Jackson now, almost painfully, and drop my hands to my sides. I feel empty without the heat of him. The distant buzz of the fluorescents out in the hallway sound in my ear as I lower my eyes to his tile floor.

I’ve spent so much time having this unrequited love for him, but it’s not romantic. It’s just a sad imbalance, like sitting on a see-saw, all askew. Someone’s in the air, sure, but the other person has their ass on the ground with no relief. When you’re the one on the bottom, your feet start to get dusty and it gets heavy to carry your feelings around inside of you with nowhere for them to go. You just want the other person to get it together and play the game fairly, only they never do.

“I need…Can I have a minute?” I ask.

“Of course.” Jackson swallows thickly before backing away.

When he shuts the door behind him I sink onto the bathroom floor. I sit on the cool tiles for a long time, trying to calm my wild heart. When I finally come out and walk into the bedroom I find a pair of boxers and a T-shirt waiting for me on Jackson’s bed. Jackson himself is gone.