“Are you trying to convince me to date her?”

My eyes narrow in annoyance, although he’s right—I do sound like I’m trying to up-sell her. “I just don’t understand.”

“Isabelle is a great person. Some guy is going to be very lucky one day to be with her, but that guy will never be me because I don’t feel anything when I’m around her except for friendship. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone I care platonically for. I want someone that is going to make me think and will constantly push me to improve. Someone that distracts me while I’m in boring-ass business meetings without even being present because I can’t stop thinking about the way her hips move and the many things I want to do to hear those sounds again.”

“What sounds?”

King shifts in his seat, his eyes returning to mine for another fleeting second. “Tonight you’re going to have to stop watching so much and listen.”

MY BACK is pressed firmly against King’s chest, our legs intertwined down to our ankles. I definitely saw stars tonight, an entire sea of them. After we had both been exhausted and sated, I curled up in the large chair in King’s room wearing a pair of his sweatpants and an old T-shirt as I sketched the outlines of five different expressions of King that I wanted to ensure I would never forget. I don’t know why I did it. I know without a doubt I won’t forget them. Even if I tried, I don’t think I could. He’s become a part of me.

“I thought you were exhausted?” he asks, brushing his fingers over my arm.

“How’d you know I was awake?”

“You’re a loud thinker.”

I shift to my back so I can see him, but it’s too dark to make out more than the faintest of outlines of him.

“Want me to close the window? Is the storm too loud?”

I shake my head, nestling closer to him. “I love the rain.”

King kisses the tip of each of my fingers, pulling them back slowly, deliberately so that they drag across his bottom lip.

“You’re like the rain,” I whisper, turning so that I’m completely facing him. “No matter what kind of barriers I tried to put up, you slipped through all of them. You’ve coated every last part of my skin and have worked your way into every depth of me, parts I didn’t even know existed.”

“Everyone else hates the rain.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Are we speaking metaphorically?” I ask, suddenly confused and slightly flippant since I was trying to be sweet, and I’m pretty certain he’s trying to be a pain in my ass.

“I thought we were talking about the rain.”

“You’re so freaking annoying.” I shove King and roll to the edge of the bed. The floor is cold beneath my feet, making me even more angry with him because I was warm and comfortable mere seconds ago.

“Where are you going?”

“We fight. Like all the time. That’s not healthy. How can we be in a relationship when you constantly see the left side of the map while I see the right? That’s setting ourselves up for a collision.”

“We barely fight anymore. I, for one, kind of miss it.”

I lower my chin and glare at him even though I know it’s too dark for him to see. The light beside his bed flips on and I squint, completely ruining the effect.

“People only fight with those they either really hate or really care about. Everyone else no one gives two shits about. We started fighting because you wanted to hate me. Now we fight because you don’t want to love me.”

My eyebrows rise and my eyes stretch wide with disbelief. Love? “You’re crazy.”

“When it comes to you, I’m in need of an institution. You get so damn stubborn, and you do things that aren’t safe, or even smart—”

“You do tricks on a bike for a living! I’m not the one living a life of danger.”

“You’re so difficult, and as much as it drives me crazy, I love it.” A heavy breath blows through his open lips. His brown eyes close for the briefest of seconds and then settle on my own. “I love your passion. Your passion to be right. Your passion to be independent. Your passion to help others. Your passion for art.” He smiles widely, erasing that slight variance of his lips. “In case you haven’t caught on, you’re really passionate about everything.”

“Except cooking,” I add, lifting a shoulder.

King raises a fist and puts it in front of his mouth as he laughs hard enough his eyes close. It causes that warmth in my chest he’s brought to life to swell and a smile to spread across my own lips. He nods once and lowers his hand. “Except for cooking,” he agrees. “I don’t care if you ever learn to cook. Or if you don’t get accepted to Florence. I just want you to keep painting the beauty in this world that so many forget to notice. You can paint it on canvases, or walls, or with spray paint on abandoned buildings, or chalk downtown, I don’t care. You can paint every square inch of the shop and this room.

“You wanted labels, I gave you them. Now I want you to start realizing that what we have isn’t going to end in June.”

My heart aches. Physically aches. I wish I hadn’t opened that letter today. I wish I didn’t know I was accepted to Florence.

“I love you, Lo. This shit isn’t going anywhere, certainly not in a few weeks.”

Tears course over my cheeks and my nose runs. I can’t see King clearly, but I hear the sheets shift and feel his arms encircle me seconds later.

“You got in.” There’s no inflection to his words because they aren’t a question. He knows. “Lo, you can’t be upset, babe. This is great! It’s amazing! You worked your ass off for this!” He briskly runs his hands up and down my arms as if trying to spark some enthusiasm.

“How am I going to leave you?”

“You aren’t,” he says adamantly. “You’re going to go on a work trip, and then you’re coming back. We’ll figure out where you’re going to live, but you’re coming back to Portland. And while I think long-distance relationships seem like hell on earth, we’re going to walk through the fire together, and we’re going to come out on the other side. I don’t care how hard it is. I don’t care that it’s going to be a fucking pain in the ass to find time to talk because you’re going to be nine hours ahead. You and me, Lo, we can do this. We’ve got this shit.”

“I love you.”

“I know you do, and that’s how I know we’re going to make this work. We’ll figure it out.”

“King, I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I love you.”

“Now tell me you believe we can do this.”

SATURDAY ARRIVES too fast. I’m sitting in the stands between Summer and Mercedes, waiting impatiently to see King for his first event. He’s just been announced, and my heart is beating a mile a minute with anticipation and nerves.

“He’s gonna kill it,” Summer says, changing the lens on her camera. “The cocky bastard is going to create a name for himself today.”

I see Kash first, his bright red hat visible in a sea of helmets and other baseball hats.

“This is going to be epic.” Mercedes is calm, poised in her seat, ready for things to start, fully confident in King’s abilities.

“Alright, any special shots or you just want as much as I can do?”

“The latter.”

Summer laughs softly and brings her camera to her face, obscuring the expression I know is mocking me.

King rides along the top of the rink a couple of times and then proceeds to bounce the bike in place a few times on the back tire. I’ve seen him do this a hundred times and still I’m captivated, watching the fluency he has with the bike. He slides down the ramp and does a single flip, landing seamlessly on the next one, which he pedals down with a fierceness and determination that I can feel in my own muscles. He goes up and rotates so many times I lose count before he lands again, this time securing to the concrete with only the front tire and swinging the bike around as he stands on a peg, precariously close to the edge. The crowd is insane. They’re cheering and screaming, so amped up on the show he’s delivering that I’m realizing everyone is feeling the adrenaline rush he’s creating. He bounces the bike a couple of times and then soars back down the ramp, landing and then flipping along with the bike so that it looks like the bike is doing a back handspring with him along for the ride.