A/N: I know that the rest of Aza's life is basically laid out in the last chapter, but I ship Aza and Davis a little too hard to let that be the last word. And, as John Green himself says, books belong to their readers. Nevertheless . . .
Disclaimer: Anything worth having here is John Green's.
The first text came about two weeks after Davis left for Colorado.
Davis: Hi. I miss you.
Me: I miss you too.
I more than missed him; I felt his absence like a callous I couldn't touch, but he'd been the one to break up with me, and also the one to leave, so I felt like, if we were to resume contact, it would have to be on him. Otherwise I was just the clingy ex. I didn't know what else to say, so I waited for Davis to type something. After a few minutes of tapping my phone screen so it wouldn't go dark and watching the . . . that meant Davis was typing, I received
Davis: I thought I only wanted you up close. But maybe I want you any way that's possible. Do you still want me like this, separated by our phones?
Me: Brought together by our phones.
I thought about it. About the inevitable doomed-ness that was a long-distance relationship in high school. About the impossibility of anyone possibly wanting to shackle themselves to me, knowing what I was. Then:
Me: Yes.
Davis: You don't have to say yes.
Me: I'm saying yes.
How is Colorado?
Davis: I think it's good for Noah. Which is all I want.
Me: But how is it for you?
I waited awhile, through what I was sure was typing and deleting and more typing on Davis's part, and then:
Davis: My father wasn't in the news as much out here. So that part's nice. The anonymity. Otherwise . . . there are people I miss. Mostly you. It'll take awhile to get to know people.
Me: And then you'll move on?
Davis: Aza . . . that's not what I meant.
Me: You're allowed to. If you want.
Davis: You have no idea how extraordinary you are.
Me: Extraordinary simply means unusual. And I'm aware that I'm that.
Davis: Aza.
I like you.
I really like you.
Me: I like you too.
I should sleep.
Good night, Davis.
For a while he texted me, "Good morning," and, "Good night," every day, and usually also at least one literary quote that the day made him think of or that reminded him of me. I told Daisy the day after the texts started, and her response was an immediate, "He loves you!" followed by a gushing imagined relationship arch for the two of us, which she laid out in just enough detail to make me deeply uncomfortable before spotting Mychal and running off to kiss him.
Texting led to Facetime, which led to lots of talk about visits but no actual visits because neither of us had enough money for a plane ticket. And then my spirals got tighter and I stopped responding to texts, and after a while he stopped texting. By the time I got well enough to hold a conversation, he wasn't so sure about things anymore, and I respected his space.
But the thing about Davis Pickett was that we could go five years without contact and still be just as interested in each other as we were the last time we saw each other. And so it was that I found myself waiting in line at a Starbucks in New York five years later, having just started a job at a web media company, when I heard someone say, "Aza Holmes?!"
I turned around in what felt like slow motion. "Davis Pickett?!"
The three people between us in line glared at me for raising my voice, so I dropped back in line to join him. He had filled out a bit since I last saw him, becoming less gangly and more like a man than a boy, but his deep brown eyes still entranced me. "It's really you!" I said in something near disbelief.
"It's really you," he replied. "How have you been?"
"Good," I said, and then I remembered that he was one of the people I didn't have to lie to. "Well, up and down. But I survived college and actually kind of enjoyed parts of it, and I landed a job, so things have turned out better than expected. You?"
"Same. Got a job at a publishing company. Where are you working?"
I told him about my job, and he told me about his, and we ordered our drinks separately but found a spot at the counter by the window together and sat down and talked. There had been places I'd been planning on going, but it was a Saturday and nothing was terribly urgent, so I let the conversation roll on for the hour it lasted. I was impressed, as always, at his ability to hold a conversation with me despite my penchant for saying very little. Few people other than Daisy could talk to me for more than a few minutes, and it was thrilling, then as in my teenage years, that Davis was one of them.
Finally, Davis checked the time on his phone and said he had to run, but he said, "We should do this again," before he left, so I wasn't too surprised when a text from his number popped up on my phone that evening.
Davis: Where are you living these days?
Me: Because that's not a creepy question at all.
Davis: Ha. Sorry. I was wondering where the best place would be to meet you next time.
So I told him approximately where I lived, and we met up the following Saturday, and it became a weekly thing. I called Daisy after the second time and told her that I'd met up with Davis and we were both living in New York, and she said, "My life might be a buddy comedy, but yours is a rom-com for sure," and we laughed about that.
When I didn't show up one Saturday, trapped in my thought spiral as I was and too busy checking and rechecking my Band-Aid to leave the apartment, Davis called, and I answered the call and put my phone on speaker so I could keep reapplying hand sanitizer. "Aza," he said.
"Spiraling," I replied, hoping he would understand.
"Do you want me to come over?"
"I don't know," I said. "Can you handle me being crazy?" None of the therapists I'd cycled through had been able to convince me to stop using that word to describe myself.
I heard Davis take a deep breath. "I think so."
"Then yeah, maybe." I gave him my address and said goodbye, and then I got back to bandaging my finger.
I had progressed to sitting on the couch motionless by the time Davis arrived. I let him in, and he asked, "Can I touch you?"
"What?" I asked, wanting to say more, about how I thought we were just friends but some part of me would have been happy to be more than that, but not sure how to put everything into words.
"I just meant hug," Davis clarified as I led him to the sofa.
"Not right now," I replied.
"Okay," said Davis, and he sat down as far from me as possible while still being on the same couch. He was quiet for a while, and then he said, "Look. Aza. I think I know you by now. I mean really know you, like, the real you. In all your spiraling glory."
"Yeah," I said. I was managing not to take the Band-Aid off and check again, but only just.
"I want to be with you," he said. "If that's all right. If it's not, then I hope we can be friends, but I understand if that's weird. But. If you're interested . . . I've always been interested in you. And I know I was awful about sticking with you when things got bad when we were seventeen, but I think I could do better now. I want to try."
"Really?" I said.
"Yeah," he said.
"I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to kiss you."
"Aza. I've always been interested in you."
I ducked my head. "I've always been interested in you, too."
He stayed for five hours, until my roommate came back. He sat on the couch while I went to the bathroom to recheck the Band-Aid, and he scrolled through something on his phone while I reread the Wikipedia article for C. diff, and he made us both lunch when I couldn't manage to do it myself.
It didn't take long for me to start thinking that Davis Pickett was perfect.
It didn't take much longer for me to move out of my apartment and into his, his roommates having found other accommodations. The whole thing felt fast, but it also felt like it had been coming since we were ten. Both old and new at the same time.
My mother was more supportive this time, now that Davis wasn't rich. And Daisy had always been supportive, with the exception of that one car ride that we didn't talk about but couldn't forget. My college friends took longer to understand, but directing people to Davis's blog generally did the trick. He wrote more now, and even more beautifully than he had when we were younger, and these days he wrote a lot about me.
He'd lived through two of my bad spirals by the time he proposed. I was incredulous, but not as incredulous as I'd been the first time he'd asked me out. By this point, I knew that Davis loved me and that he was in it for the long haul, OCD notwithstanding.
I said yes.
A/N: I didn't do much research into jobs or New York living for this fic; I know that's a weakness, so please don't flame me about it. I just needed to get this out.