Whatever Randall Meyers used to soundproof the staff room at Breaking Point with was impenetrable. I'd be surprised if a bolt of lightning could make it through the walls, let alone a sound-wave. This is why it’s the ideal spot to take my shift breaks. There’s nothing but silence and the faint hum of the refrigerator.

I stare at the spiral bound notebook before me, doodling squiggly lines in dark blue ink. Words written, scratched out, placed in a different order and scratched out again. I link my hands through my hair and try to grasp whatever it was that used to made the words come so easily, only problem is, my parents left that part of me in California when we moved here five years ago.

                                                                      ***

Finn's held my heart for two years and in that time, I've never seen him cry. I've never seen him without that goofy grin I'd grown to love, so it goes without saying that the tears in his eyes are alarming. My own eyes sting and I chomp on my bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

He moves his gaze from me to the floor and rolls the corner of a wayward post-it note that says "KITCHEN" between his fingertips. He's done looking at me and I know exactly why, because if he looks, it's real.

I get on my hands and knees and crawl over to where his long legs are stretched out in front of him and straddle them. He still doesn't look up, but I hear him say, "Stay with me. Don't leave, Laney."

 Oh God, I wish I could. "I have to go."

"No," he says, shaking his head. "Stay. We can get a place. I'll get a job. We can make music. We're good at makin' music."

"You can't drop out, Finn. I won't let you." I look at my watch. My parents gave me until 3:00 pm. 15 minutes. "Kiss me."

He shakes his head like an insubordinate child. Like his kiss will cut the last remaining thread that keeps us anchored to each other. Somewhere inside me, I know it will. "Please," I whisper.

He grabs my face in his hands and presses his forehead to mine. I can feel the warmth of his breath on my face. His body shakes underneath me as he kisses my forehead first, then my cheeks. "I love you," he says. "I'll love you until forever. Even longer than that."

After he says the words, his lips crush mine. I wind my fingers through his hair, trying not to acknowledge that this is the last time I'll kiss him. I can't help it though, and the thought grips my heart and pulls, twisting, turning and leaving a gaping, hollow feeling in my chest. The weight of my sadness and his is suffocating.

"I love you too." I rise to my feet and slap a hand to my mouth to stop the sobs from coming and walk away. From him, from the person I am when I'm with him, from us

I don't look back because it hurts too much.

                                                                        ***

 Mae shoulders the door open and the sound of Optimal Overdrive, the band playing tonight, pierces my sanctuary. My head snaps up just as she and Claire, the new girl, enter the room. I swipe a tear from my eye before it falls, before they can see me and pretend to be enthralled with my paper.

Mae looks me over with a knowing air, than turns to Claire and says, "Don't mind Delany. She's Finn-ta-sizing.”

"Am not," I fire back despite doing exactly that.

Mae wags her finger. "Are so. You get the same sad look on your face every time." She flops on the couch and crosses one leg over the other. "It's okay. If someone loved me like that, well, I'd be broken too."

I feign massive offense to her statement. "I am not broken."

"Whatevs," she says with a shrug. "Young Claire here should learn from the two of us. Love is a crock. A sham designed for no other purpose than to ruin you."

"I'm not ruined."

"But you still love him?"

"Huh?"

"Finn. You still love him? Even though you wrote all those letters that he never replied to."

Ugh. Why did I ever reveal that little piece of info to Mae? Why do I tell her anything at all? She's such a big mouth. I don't dignify her question with a response.

"See Claire, she loves a guy who all but abandoned her. If that's not all kinds of messed up, I don't know what is."

I smell like beer, I need a shower and don't want to argue so I shove my notebook into my locker and get back to the bar to finish my shift.

Despite the fact that it's April, the temperature has dropped and it's freezing outside. I wrap my coat snugly around my body to keep warm but when I round the corner of the club, the blood in my veins turns to ice. There's a dark figure leaning against the old brick building in the alley. For the briefest of moments, I consider running the other way but there's a calm in my belly urging me forward. Something about this is familiar.

I cautiously move forward and the closer I get, the more the overhead lights cast a glow over the shadow. Before I have time to process anything, my heart wedges itself somewhere between my lungs and my throat and I can't quite breathe.

His hair is a shade darker but otherwise the same. He's put on weight, bulkier but still remarkably lean and when his eyes shift so they are on me, they are exactly how I remember them. He straightens and smiles. "Hey pretty girl."

 My knees suddenly feel like they're buckling underneath me and I think I unintentionally gasp.

 His eyebrows draw together in worry. "Delany?"

"Finn." I want to pat myself on the back. To congratulate myself for being able to speak it. I search every possible corner of my brain to try and put a name to what I'm feeling this very moment but it's utterly impossible.

I love him. I hate him. I miss him. I loathe him. I want him. I love him.

"In the flesh," he says. He holds his arms out to the sides as if to showcase a prize I can never have.

"What are you doing here?" I want to tell him to go back where he came from. To leave me alone just like he had five years ago when he promised to write and never did-- but for some reason, I can't. On the contrary, it's taking all the willpower I possess not to reach out and touch him.

"Came to find you," he says. "Is there somewhere we can talk?"

Ten minutes later I'm wondering what the hell I was thinking as Finn stands in my apartment and takes off his coat, revealing that he has a tattoo that snakes the length of his arm. It looks good. He looks good. He's wearing a plain, black tee and faded jeans and he flops on the sofa like he hasn't been gone this whole time. "You're a hard girl to find."

"You managed," I say cooly. I turn the stove on and set the kettle on the burner hoping the most mundane of tasks will somehow take my mind off of how it feels to see him again.

"It wasn't easy. Took a while."

I remove two mismatched mugs from the cupboard and hope he doesn't notice how shaky I am. "How long is a while?"

"Four years," Finn says.

Not what I expected. "You've been trying to find me for four years?"

"Maybe more like four years and seven months or something." He stands and walks over to his coat, pulling a small stack of papers from the pocket. "Right around the time these started coming back."

I squint my eyes at the stack in his hand and take a step closer. "Letters?"

"I wrote you hundreds. These are just a few."

“You're lying,” I say. “You never wrote.”

“I wrote every week. I can prove it.”

What? "I didn't move," I say. "I didn't move until I left home my second year in College. That doesn't make any sense."

“Are you kidding me? Your dad was waiting to get rid of me,” Finn says, waving his stack of envelopes. “This didn't surprise me at all.”

“You're lying.” The kettle starts to scream at precisely the same time I point a finger at Finn. "They would never do that."

"I can prove it, Laney. Return to sender, not at this address. I can prove it."

I cannot possibly wrap my head around the idea that my father would have had to do anything with keeping Finn from me. They knew how much it hurt me. They wouldn't do that...would they?

He comes over to where my feet have nailed themselves to the floor and takes the kettle off the stove. Now that he's here, so close to me, I want to wrap my arms around his waist and put my head to his chest. I want to listen to the beating of his heart and prove that I'm not dreaming.

"You didn't think it's because I stopped loving you, did you?"

What else what I supposed to think? I turn and start scooping sugar into the mugs, feeling free to speak my mind now that I'm not forced to look at him while I do it. "Yes."

"Never.”

I spin back around to face him, ignoring his words, ignoring the burning in my eyes. "Why now, Finn? Why after all this time?”

The left side of Finn's mouth turns upward in the crooked, boyish smile I fell so hard for. "So we can make music," he says. "We're so good at makin' music."