Archive of Our Own

Spring.

It’s 3 AM in California when Jo decides to text him.

I broke up with Celia

She pauses, and adds,

btw

The last message in the conversation was from him, of course, over a month earlier. No matter what im still here, he’d written. And she hadn’t answered him, because she makes something of a specialty out of being a terrible person. Figures.

Despite it being in the middle of the goddamn night where he is, Jo sees the three dots pop up a second later. She chews on her thumbnail and shuts off her screen, even as the notification pops up that she’s received a message from Teddy Laurence.

Jo ignores her phone and picks up her book instead. After a minute of reading the same paragraph over and over, she relents.

Whoa. Are you ok?

She exhales through her nose.

Go the fuck to sleep

Predictably, Laurie ignores this.

Wanna talk?

That’s the thing – she does. She really, really does. She misses Laurie’s voice, his stupid face with the laughter that’s always hanging around his eyes, that ridiculous swoop of his hair.

“Holy shit,” is the first thing Laurie says when he pops up on the screen.

“Do you actually have that much work? How busy can a run-down little community college like Stanford be keeping you?” Jo asks, but can’t fight her smile as she watches Laurie’s jaw drop open further.

“Your hair,” he says.

“Like it?” Jo rubs a hand over the short bristles covering her scalp.

It’s not meant as a serious question, but Laurie, being Laurie, considers it for a few seconds all the same. “I do,” he finally says, and it’s so quiet and earnest that Jo’s heart clenches. “It’s very… you.”

“So why aren’t you asleep, huh?” Jo steers them out of danger territory.

Laurie smiles at her and she can see the bags under his eyes. “Two midterms this week and a research project due tomorrow that I officially started, uh, forty-two minutes ago.”

Jo’s eyes widen and he laughs. “You suck.”

“Yeah, we knew that,” Laurie says. “But this isn’t about me. How are you? How are you holding up?”

It takes Jo a moment to remember why he might be asking that question. “Oh, right, yeah. Uh, we actually broke up a few weeks ago.”

Why only tell me now? is the natural follow-up. It’s always a coin toss whether Laurie will employ his tact or not. He isn’t unaware of etiquette – for better or for worse, that’s never the issue – it’s his love of stirring the pot that’ll make him run his mouth. Well, Jo supposes they have that in common.

But right now, Laurie blessedly lets the question remain tacit. “Hard feelings?” he asks instead.

Jo shakes her head. It’s going to take a long, long time to get used to not having any curls bounce around her face as she does so. “No, it went really well.”

Laurie narrows his eyes.

“Okay, fine, it went well for me. I’m not sure Ms. Norton took it in the kind spirit it was offered. We haven’t really talked since-” Jo kicks herself, but the words are already out there.

Now, Laurie does bite. “Since you broke her heart?”

And they’re back in danger territory. Jo looks away from the screen. “Something like that.”

Laurie is the one to break the tension this time. “But you still got a breakup haircut.”

She gasps, scandalized. “It is not.”

Laurie’s biting the inside of his cheek. “You went full Britney circa 2008.”

“I’ll have you know she is an icon.”

“Not as much as Jo fucking March,” Laurie says, with such a straight face that Jo barks out a laugh of surprise and pleasure.

“So how is California in springtime? Do you wake up every day and shove orange blossoms up your ass?”

“That’s precisely what we do,” Laurie says in an equally conversational tone. “In the evening, the local bros surf up to our windows and we rub lavender over their tanned abs. We snort poppies to put ourselves to sleep.”

“Ted,” Jo says, clucking her tongue. “You’re using opiates now? My, my.”

For a moment, they grin stupidly at each other through the screen.

Jo’s missed this. Truly. If her sisters and Marmee are the foundation of her home, then Laurie is her decoration, the art on the walls and lamps casting twisted shadows on the wall.

Or some overwrought metaphor like that.

“You still writing a lot?” Laurie says, right on cue.

Jo scrubs a hand over her face. “God. Not nearly enough. It’s all literary analysis, talking about other people’s stuff. Not writing anything myself.”

“Aren’t you editor-in-chief now?”

Jo pauses. She hadn’t expected that email from the student board of the Daily Collegian, least of all in the middle of an entire year away from campus. “How’d you know that?”

Even through the pixelation, Jo can see Laurie’s blush. “I get the newsletter.”

She’s not sure whether to be flattered or indignant, and settles on both. “You shouldn’t.”

“I like to read your stuff. C’mon, Jo, you know that.”

“Teddy.”

“Jo.”

And just like that, they’re in danger territory once again.

If Jo’s being honest with herself – and it’s not something she makes a habit of these days – she’d admit that she called Laurie precisely because she wants said danger. From the first day, when she’d knocked on the neighbor boy’s door and invited herself in, she’d been hooked by that same invisible quality. Laurie is many things – loyal, proud, kind, too selfless for his damn good – but below the surface lurks an edge, the inclination toward chaos that Jo had tried and failed to drag out of her sisters.

Laurie takes a deep breath.

Jo groans. “Please, don’t.”

“We have to talk about it,” Laurie says quietly, earnestly. “At least let me say what I want to say.”

Jo doesn’t answer, just squeezes her eyes shut in silent assent.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Laurie starts. “Writing you that letter was… not one of my finer moments.”

She doesn’t agree or disagree, so Laurie continues.

“I still stand by every word I said,” Laurie says. “I love you, Jo, I do. No – come on, don’t make a face. That’s been true for years, and you can’t change that.”

Jo picks at the threads in her sweater unhappily.

“But.”

She looks up at him, and he takes another deep breath.

“But I understand that – that you don’t feel the same. And it sucks. And hurts like hell, yeah. But I realized – well, I guess a couple of things. First, I’m not gonna put my life on hold because of this.”

“Good,” Jo blurts, and Laurie grimaces.

“Second, that you were right about one thing, which is that whatever happens, I can’t afford to lose our friendship. I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize… us, I guess. You mean way too much to me for that.” Laurie stops, choking on the last few words. “The past month showed me that.”

Jo is already familiar with the sensation of her heart snapping cleanly in two. She looks at Laurie’s face and knows instinctively that the bags under his eyes are a product of much more than a few all-nighters. I’m an asshole, are the words that won’t come. “Teddy.”

His shoulders drop. “Missed you saying that,” Laurie admits, just above a whisper.

“I’m so sorry,” Jo says. “Truly.”

Laurie shakes his head. “Stop. I don’t want your pity.”

“No, I mean-” Jo takes a deep breath of her own, “for just… ghosting, I guess. Here I was, thinking I was protecting you. But really, I was just being selfish.”

“You did what you thought was right,” Laurie says, and the gentleness and forgiveness behind his words increase her self-disgust tenfold.

“Yeah, well. I was really fucking off-base, and a coward, and wrong. And if you hold that against me, I can’t say I’d blame you.”

Laurie is silent, and for a second Jo is gripped by the insane notion that he might say Oh, okay then, fuck you forever, bye, but then he just smiles his sad little smile and shakes his head. “Naw, come on. We’re Jo and Laurie, right? I don’t think a meteor hitting Earth would stop us.”

“That’s a tall order,” Jo says, breathing easier. “Maybe let’s start with our friendship surviving the nuclear apocalypse.”

“Easy,” he deadpans. “Nuclear apocalypse, zombie apocalypse, goddamn climate change-”

“So does the nuclear apocalypse cause the zombies, or?”

“Mhm,” Laurie says, and his smile is wider now, no longer weighed down, but reaching his eyes in a glint of mischief. “I think you and I could take on some radioactive undead, no?”

She laughs. “I’m recruiting my sisters, though.”

“Yeah, please,” Laurie says instantly. Jo kicks herself yet again – it’s one whole can of worms to keep herself apart from Laurie, but it was downright cruel to cut him off from the other Marches. “How are they? How’s Beth?”

“She’s okay,” Jo says, sobering. “Homeschooling this semester again. Marmee is taking good care of her, but I can’t imagine she’s happy to be home for a whole year when she’s supposed to be starting college. Not that she says anything.”

“Of course,” Laurie says softly.

“Meg is breaking hearts – she’s got some soft library boy hooked, though she’s being really coy about the details, which makes me somehow think that she won’t be dragging Mr. Darcy home for the summer-”

Laurie snorts.

“-and Amy is becoming a woman, my God. I’d be horrified if she weren’t so damn cute. I can’t believe I’m about to lose a second one of you to fucking Stanford.”

“It’s the best community college west of the Mississippi,” Laurie says with a straight face, and Jo scowls.

“Well, you should be excited, anyway. Only eight more months and then she’ll be eighteen.” Jo wiggles her eyebrows.

Laurie fakes a gag. “I think trying to pawn off your underage sister on your best friend should be some kind of crime.”

“She won’t be underage anymore in November.”

“A special circle of hell, maybe.”

“Oh, I punched my ticket there a long time ago,” Jo dismisses. “If I can marry off the two of you, maybe I can even redeem myself.”

“I was seeing someone,” Laurie says, abrupt and offhanded.

Jo’s heart skips a beat. “Was.”

“Yeah, you know how it is,” he says. Jo doesn’t. “You both get busy, you have a million other priorities. She wasn’t right for me, which made it hard to justify. I felt like I was wasting her time.”

“And why wasn’t she right?” Jo demands. It comes out sharper than intended, and she’s not sure why.

Laurie looks up evenly. “She wasn’t you.”

Well, goddamn. She walked right into that. Jo indulges the urge she’s had all morning and lets out the yell that’s been building behind her teeth.

Laurie blinks.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jo says, snapping her mouth shut. “Just - you can’t say shit like that, okay?”

To her surprise, Laurie smiles. “Okay. But you have to stop trying to set me up with your little sister.”

“Deal.”

And for some reason, this last exchange lifts the remaining tension, and something unclenches in Jo’s chest.

“So what’s on the docket after your midterms? Are you turning up in Cabo?”

Another mischievous grin. “Actually, I was thinking about a tiny little trip abroad. Maybe to the outskirts of London?”

Jo gasps. “Oh, Teddy! Are you serious? Would you actually?”

“The airplane tickets are literally in my cart right now,” he says, and laughs when she yells again, this time with joy. “Just say the word.”

“I’m saying it! Oh my God, come visit, you do realize it’s been-”

“Six months? Since you decided that a semester abroad was déclassé and instead chose to fuck off for an entire year? Um, yeah, how could I forget?”

“Uh, you went to Italy for a whole-ass four months and never even bothered to visit, so, rude-”

“The nuns held me captive, okay?” Laurie says, and he’s definitely laughing now, loose and unfettered, just how she’s always loved it. “And you were too busy seducing Celia. Only to stomp on all her hopes and dreams, you vixen.”

“She would’ve loved you, too,” Jo says.

“Oh, I’m sure we’d get along swimmingly. Maybe we can meet when I come? And have the inaugural meeting of the Jo Broke Our Hearts Club?”

Laurie’s still laughing when she hangs up on him.

Summer.

July is usually too hot and humid for Jo’s taste, but the Fourth is perfect this year. Their little neighborhood party spills across the Marches’ and the Laurences’ lawn, so when she disentangles herself from Amy’s practiced hands - determined and ultimately victorious in forcing her into red lipstick, all in the spirit of the day - it takes her several minutes to find Laurie.

He does the slightest of double-takes. “A bold lip, huh?”

Jo groans. “God, that’s what Amy called it, too. Look, I didn’t squeeze into a crop top and shorts with my ass hanging out, so can we all relax? Collectively?”

Laurie half-smiles. A year ago, he would’ve said something like “shame,” and she could’ve punched him on the arm. Now, though, he just “mhm”s, maddeningly.

Right. Because of Carolina.

The worst part, Jo had ranted - to herself and to Meg, who’d listened with infuriating sympathy until Jo had huffed and stormed off - is that Laurie didn’t even tell her. Not right away. Not until she saw the selfie of the two of them, arms draped over each other in a horrible approximation of candor, her with her perfect hair and skin and teeth, and immediately picked up the phone to call Laurie. But, recognizing how insane it would’ve made her look, Jo waited a very appropriate three hours and texted him instead.

Carolina was a senior, like Laurie, and she was on the swim team. She spoke French, Arabic, Italian, and some Japanese, and she was nauseatingly perfect.

“Swimmer, huh,” Jo had said when they finally video chatted several weeks later. She smirked. “Must have a nice little body.”

“Jo- absolutely not,” Laurie had said instantly, the picture of true horror. “You are not stealing her from me, no way. Not again.”

“It was one time,” Jo protested, laughing, not knowing why she felt so off-kilter.

She knows now - now that it’s been a few months and nothing has changed, not really, except that it’ll sometimes take Laurie a few more hours to text her back than before. And it’s not like that’s the end of the world, either; she’s been writing again, playing with some creative nonfiction ideas, and the Oxford finals were no joke. Her sisters are a full-time job, as is looking after Aunt March, something she does to scrape up enough income and/or clout in an eventual last will and testament to put grad school on the map.

Besides, she can’t deny that her first reaction, after the shock wore off, was joy so powerful she could almost have called it pure. She’s genuinely pleased for Laurie to have met himself a nice girl, and more selfishly, she finally sheds some of the guilt she’s been harboring for all the things Laurie’s had to put up with from her. Especially over the past year.

And the jokes about why a ten would ever settle for him don’t get old, either.

“You didn’t invite Stacy?” Jo asks, clinking the neck of her beer against Laurie’s.

He scowls at her.

“Becky with the good hair?”

Maybe it’s the alcohol, but he chooses to be indulgent this time. “Carolina, my girlfriend-” Jo imagines he doesn’t ever tire of saying those words, “-is from California-”

“-misleading,” Jo mutters.

“-so no, she sadly had to miss today’s festivities, owing to them being, uh, here.”

“I’ll never meet her, at this rate,” Jo pouts. “Can’t believe I’m stuck with you.”

He takes her by the elbow gently. “C’mon. There are a couple of lawn chairs with our name on them.”

“Did you deface our chairs? I’ll kill you,” Jo says and stumbles a little on her way over. She is, just maybe, drunker than she’d expected.

Laurie snorts. “First of all, they’re actually our lawn chairs, and second of all, shut the fuck up.”

“Cheers,” Jo says, plopping herself down without spilling any of her beer.

They finish their drinks before the fireworks start; Jo paws at Laurie and he materializes a bottle of whiskey like some kind of alcoholic magician. Then, when she makes a face, he laughs, runs off for a bit, and comes back with wine coolers and a thin blanket he drapes over them both.

Carolina would hate this, Jo thinks smugly when they tangle their legs together and she rests her head against Laurie’s skinny bicep. Then again, no, Carolina’s probably the chill sort of girlfriend who operates on trust and the knowledge that only a crazy person would cheat on her. And Laurie, the chill sort of boyfriend who wouldn’t know how to cheat if he read the instruction manual.

It isn’t close to cheating, anyway. It’s two best friends sharing wine coolers and a cuddle on a not-too-hot summer’s night.

“Climate change is a hoax,” Jo observes on a hiccup.

Laurie turns his head toward hers. If she moved in about three more inches, their noses would be brushing. “If this writing thing doesn’t work out, I strongly suggest a career in politics.”

“Oh, I’ve put way too much filth and vitriol on the internet for that,” Jo says, waving the hand that’s not holding her glass. “They’d find the skeletons in my closet in a heartbeat.”

He smiles and takes a sip.

“But you. You have all the trappings of a baby Congressman. When are you running for office, hm? I’ll write your speeches. Maybe even for free.”

“Honored,” Laurie says. “I’m not sure that’s in the cards for me, though. Grandpa’s been spending all summer setting me up with all these connections he wants me to network with.”

“And? Sucked enough dicks to make junior analyst at Blah Consulting yet?”

“I’m leaving,” Laurie says sternly.

She lifts her head off of his shoulder. “Get me another one of these while you’re up. Strawberry, if you’d be so dear.”

“No - Jo. I’m leaving. The country, I mean.”

She whips around to face him. He’s picking at the label of his bottle, not meeting her eyes.

“Wait, seriously?”

Laurie nods.

For once, Jo is speechless. Laurie’s got a look about him she’s only seen a handful of times - somehow defiant yet contrite at the same time, like he’s asking for both forgiveness and permission. It’s exactly how she imagines him as a little kid.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, curling his fingers around hers.

She resists the urge to pull away, understanding why he’s always rejected her pity so vehemently. “Why?”

“Ah, because I feel bad for leaving y- well, leaving, I guess.”

“And because we were supposed to go together.” They’d come up with the plan in high school, shortly after they had met - travel the world together after they both graduated, no itinerary, no return ticket. They talked about it often, their respective lists of destinations growing all the time. Laurie wanted to see Casablanca, Phuket, Cape Town; Jo wanted Tokyo, Lima, Berlin.

“Yes,” Laurie admits. He’s blushing.

“And now what, huh? You couldn’t just wait another year?” A horrible thought seizes her, and she voices it before she can stop herself. “Oh - you’re going with Carolina, I suppose?”

She feels his fingers twitch. “I haven’t told her yet. Actually.”

Jo’s heart picks up speed. “Huh?”

“Look,” Laurie sighs, “can you just - not look at me like that, for a second?”

She eyes him mistrustfully, but when he says nothing else, she relents and leans back against Laurie’s shoulder. He puts his arm around her.

“I’m not doing this instead of our world tour, okay?” Laurie says finally, thumb sweeping up and down her arm. “I’ll come back for your graduation, and we’ll pick it up where I left off.”

“Come back for- you’re going for the whole year?”

“It’ll only be, like, eight months or so,” he says. “Don’t be mad, Jo, please? I only decided this recently. You’re literally the first person I’ve told. I don’t even have plane tickets yet, just a train to New York, since it’ll be easier to fly out of there.”

“Why are you going?” Jo demands, and he sighs.

“Look-” he says again, and pauses. “It’s nothing personal, okay? It doesn’t have anything to do with you, I promise.”

It has everything to do with me, the petty part of Jo’s brain says. Thankfully, she can clamp down on this thought before it escapes her.

But Laurie must read something in the tension she’s holding, because he goes on more softly. “It’s been a challenging year, and I’ve learned enough about myself to know that I’d flame out very quickly if I entered the workplace now. And don’t worry, I’m not one of those self-absorbed white guys who go abroad right after graduation to Find Themselves and grow their hair long and start a vlog.” Jo snorts. It’s exactly what he’s doing. “A lot of it will probably really suck! But I need to get to that point.” He stops, hesitant. “I need a reason to come home.”

I’m right here, Jo wants to say. This time, she doesn’t need to suppress it - she wouldn’t be able to voice the thought if she tried.

“Please say something,” Laurie says after a beat of silence.

Jo shakes herself. “Sorry. Sorry for freaking out. I think this might take a second to process.”

“Yeah, of course,” Laurie says, and in that moment she despises him for his ongoing gentleness.

“What’s gonna happen with you and Little Miss Sunshine?”

She doesn’t need to look up to see Laurie’s grimace. “I don’t know. The relationship is so new… I’m not sure. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. In the next few days, I think.”

Jo doesn’t want to ask, but she does anyway. “When are you leaving?”

“The train ticket is for October first.” Laurie grips her tighter, giving her an affable shake. “I have to see you off to your senior year, don’t I?”

“Yeah.” Jo considers the wine cooler, then sets it down in the grass next to her. Enough of that. “My sisters are gonna be really bummed.”

Laurie huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, the way any of them have yet to talk to me tonight really makes that clear.”

“Stop, they will,” Jo insists. She goes quiet for a moment. “Beth’s gonna miss you.”

“I’m gonna miss her, too,” Laurie says softly.

There’s an explosion. Both of them startle. The sky lights up: purple, blue, orange, red. They gasp and ooh and aah, and for a moment, Jo lets her anger and self-pity give way to childlike wonder.

Marmee and Mr. Laurence have outdone themselves this year. The fireworks probably don’t last more than ten minutes, but Jo loses track of time in Laurie’s arms, watching the colors explode overhead and laughing, trying to guess what might come next.

There’s a long silence after the last one goes off.

“I never want to know where they get them from, anyway,” Laurie says. His levity is only somewhat forced. “Pretty sure this shit is illegal.”

“Jersey, I think,” Jo says. Her head is pounding, and not from the noise. She remembers why she only drinks wine coolers once a year.

“I’m just glad Grandpa doesn’t set them off himself anymore.”

They stand and fold up the blanket. Jo looks at it and realizes she doesn’t know whose it was originally; it’s traded houses so many times it could really belong to either of them. She hands it over to Laurie, who presses it against his chest.

Laurie opens his mouth to say something.

“Jo?” she hears, distantly - Meg, or Marmee, and she doesn’t want to know what it says about her family and growing up that she can’t immediately tell the difference.

Laurie closes his mouth and just smiles.

“I should go,” Jo says. “Thanks for - uh, thanks, I guess. I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

“Count on it,” Laurie says. “Goodnight, Jo.”

“Night, Teddy.”

She doesn’t return home right away, but stands there and watches him leave.

Fall.

It’s Laurie’s last day, which is obviously why she’s hiding out in her forest clearing by herself.

In all fairness, she’s spent enough time socializing already. Her family is hosting a goodbye lunch at their place, and it’s well-attended enough to make Jo almost resentful: all of her sisters, her parents, Mr. Laurence, some of Laurie’s friends from high school, and even a few of his college buddies. Meg brings John, and privately, Jo figures that the addition of a plus-one takes the event from “small lunch” to “social gathering” status.

She doesn’t know why she’s feeling so twisted up about it, but she’s old enough and mature enough not to make a fuss and detract from Laurie’s moment. So when he’s sufficiently distracted - her dad reciting what's probably the entire 36 Hours in Reykjavik article from the Times, verbatim, and Amy begging him for one more tale of fountain-hopping at Stanford - she makes an Irish exit.

Laurie finds her anyway.

“Hey,” he says. Jo’s sitting on a fallen log, trying and failing to make progress in her book.

She closes it and puts it down. “Hey, Teddy. Party over already?”

“I helped Marmee with the dishes, okay? Let it be known that I’m a good house guest.”

“Twenty-two years with your grandpa, and I sure hope that’d be true.” Jo gives him a wan smile.

Laurie sits next to her, gently replacing the book on another dry spot. “You okay? You took off kind of early.”

She avoids his eyes. “Yeah, fine. I just felt a little people’d out.”

“Jo.” He’s not touching her, but she can feel the heat of him all along her side, his gaze burning steadily on the side of her face. “I know you better than this, right? You upset?”

“I mean, obviously,” Jo says, forcing a laugh. She looks up. The trees haven’t started changing color, but they’re thinking about it; the sun goes down earlier now, and leaves shiver in the twilit breeze. “How can I not be? You’re going to be gone for… for longer than you’ve ever been gone.”

Now Laurie leans in - it didn’t take too long, after all - and hooks his chin on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and damn, how she hates that. “I’ll write?”

Jo looks down at him, frowning. “You better.”

“I can send a postcard from every place I visit. Every week. Every day, if you want.”

Iceland. Surprisingly, it hadn’t been on their combined list, but it’s a logical first destination for his trip. Plane tickets are cheap, hostels cheaper still, and it’ll be an easy gateway to the rest of Europe. As far as she knows, Laurie hasn’t decided on his next destination yet, but she suspects he’ll go to Paris. Or Barcelona. Then head to Greece as winter approaches, or back to Italy. “Every day is a lot,” Jo says, managing another laugh. “Send me just one first. Or two. See how that feels.”

“You’ll write back?”

“Of course,” Jo murmurs, and means it.

They stay like that for a moment. The wind picks up and she trembles in spite of herself. Laurie’s got his coat around her shoulders in a flash; it’s so cliché she feels ill.

This whole time, she hasn’t cried. Beth cried, as did Amy; even Marmee looked a touch misty-eyed.

There must be something wrong with her.

Questions she’s unable to voice tumble through Jo’s mind. She wants to know about Carolina - all Laurie had told her, a few days after the Fourth, was “she ended it,” and shrugged and looked down and seemed so lovelorn Jo didn’t know what to say. She wants to know what Laurie the bachelor intends on doing abroad, to anticipate the string of French and Indian and Singaporean ladies whose hearts he’ll break, or maybe who will break his heart. She wants to know about them, the two of them, what he’s thinking and feeling and not telling her. He hasn’t said anything since that last talk in the spring, after the threads holding them together loosened; Jo wonders now if it was enough to unravel, and shame at this line of thinking burns in her.

True to his word, Laurie had spent several days that spring visiting. He’d crashed on the futon and not complained about its various lumps, laughing with her well into the early hours of the morning and never broaching the topic of them again.

Ask to stay with me, Jo tells her memory of Laurie, who hugs her goodnight and curls up on the futon under inadequate blankets. Knock on my door, sleep in my bed. Try me, try me.

The memories are corrosive.

“You still with me?” Laurie asks. He looks amused, at ease. It’s the happiest Jo has seen him all summer, and she’s so glad for him, she really is. She’s learned by now that happiness for others can coexist peacefully with self-pity.

“Yeah. Sorry.” Laurie takes both of her hands; she swallows around a lump in her throat. “I haven’t exactly been the easiest person to be around today, I know. I’m... trying to be less selfish. I think that’ll be a lifelong battle, to be honest.”

“Jo.” Laurie’s brow is furrowed. He’s looking at her with deadly intensity. Jo can’t meet his eyes for more than a second. “You’re - you are incredibly kind.” Jo takes a breath, glances up and back down, at where her fingers have curled into fists beneath his. “You’re one of the kindest people I know. And you’re brilliant, and funny, and compassionate, and so - so sure of yourself, so dedicated to rightness in a way no one is, because we’re fucking cowards compared to you, you know that, right? You’re brave, you’re loyal. I’ve never met anyone like you, and if I’m being honest, I know I never will. Jo, I care so much about you. I’ll care about you forever.”

Jo closes her eyes, wishing she could cry. Laurie - how is it so easy for him? How does he just walk around, spilling love wherever he goes?

“How am I supposed to respond to that?” she says.

Laurie huffs. “Something like thank you, Teddy. I love you too, Teddy.”

“I’m not the person you think I am.”

Jo expects a rebuttal; to her surprise, Laurie shrugs. “Yeah. Isn’t that the point? That we’re all kind of unknowable and love one another anyway?”

She’s so startled she laughs. “I didn’t realize you were an English major.”

“I’m not.” Laurie smiles wryly. “I just pay attention to one.”

Jo isn’t sure what makes her do what she does next. The writer in her wants to say it’s the way that the late-afternoon sunlight catches Laurie’s curls, lights his dark eyes into a brilliant amber. The way that his thumbnail is brushing the heel of her hand so carelessly, with no agenda. The way that his last sentence ended in a period, not a question mark, a statement that wants nothing in return.

In reality, it’s because she wants to.

She kisses him. Neither hard nor soft, desperate nor chaste. Jo leans in like it’s a goodnight kiss, her lips slightly parted, pulling away just in time to catch his sharp intake of air.

“Jo?”

The question mark crept in after all, like it does too often. That won’t do. Jo goes in more forcefully this time, catching Laurie’s bottom lip between her teeth. He gasps again, and then she feels long and glorious fingers coming up to curl around her neck, brushing the soft tips of hair that have just started to reach. And finally, finally, he’s kissing back-

Laurie pulls away.

They stare at each other, not more than an inch apart. Laurie’s hand is still on her neck, but there’s uncertainty blazing in his eyes.

What took you so long? is the question she wants from him, something to hold her accountable, sharp enough to puncture the familiar guilt that’s swelling inside of her. And she knows, instinctively, that it’s the question she won’t get. Instead-

“Are you sure?”

This isn’t out of pity? Jo hears. It’s not just because I’m leaving tomorrow?

And again, she knows without being told that no matter her response, he will never ask her again.

“Yes.”

The fingers at her neck tremble and he’s pulling her in. Laurie kisses her with no more hesitation; she opens her mouth and he dives in, licking into her mouth in silent reverence. It’s imperfect. The unspoken years that have led up to this moment come rushing in between them, a needy crescendo. Even with Laurie’s hand settling on her waist, his jacket over her shoulders, and the heat gathering low in her stomach, she can’t stop shaking.

Her own hands have curled into the fabric of Laurie’s t-shirt, and his chest is rising and falling beneath them. Jo angles her head and Laurie follows. He tugs just slightly and she lands half in his lap, and oh, she thinks. None of this is new.

She sighs into the kiss as if it’s the hundredth time they’ve done this, the thousandth. Every part of him is so known to her that there’s no revelation, just the quiet sense of homecoming. Laurie’s other hand comes to rest on the small of her back, and it’s like sliding between the sheets after a long day.

If there is any surprise, Jo thinks as she rubs idly through Laurie’s hair, it’s that there’s no desperation or urgency in his response. He kisses back slowly, and there’s an upward curl of his lips she can feel against her own. He’s savoring it; so is she.

Still, Jo has half a mind to pin him to the forest floor and see this through to its natural conclusion. Pandora’s box has been opened, and fluttering out are her lust and greed and shame. The force of her desire startles her, leaving her breathless.

Matters of the heart can be convoluted, but those of the body rarely are.

She takes both of his shoulders with the intent of pushing him down, and Laurie pulls away. Once more, they stare at each other, chests heaving. A smile breaks over Laurie’s face, radiant and free.

He leans toward her, and Jo thinks that he’s going to kiss her again, but he presses his lips against the shell of her ear instead.

“Thank you,” Laurie whispers, and brushes a kiss against her temple. “Jo. My love.”

Laurie rises and puts his hands in his pocket, whistling tunelessly as he walks away.

Jo looks at him until he’s swallowed by the fading daylight. Then she sits there, shivering under the jacket Laurie left behind, wondering about the fragile line separating love from loss.

Winter.

When she hears Laurie’s voice in the foyer, mixing with the indistinct buzz of her sisters’, she doesn’t recognize it at first.

Jo takes a second to get oriented, and then she’s sprinting down the stairs.

Her first thought is that, contrary to what he’d promised on the Fourth of July, Laurie did grow his hair long. It spills down to his shoulders in dark waves flattened by precipitation. It’s sleeting outside, that miserable late-December mixture of snow, ice, and rain too wet to be satisfying winter weather.

Jo mistakes the frozen droplets clinging to Laurie’s eyelashes for tears. She blinks and the illusion rights itself.

“Spent Christmas with Grandpa, actually,” Laurie is telling Meg, Beth, and Amy. “I took a redeye from Istanbul and landed on Christmas morning. Not too jetlagged anymore-”

Collectively, they notice Jo, standing with one foot still on the first step. Laurie breaks off, and if her heart weren’t pounding so ferociously, Jo would find it comical how quickly her sisters seem to shrink away.

“Jo,” Laurie offers after a moment. His voice is stilted but warm. “Happy New Year’s Eve.”

She takes a step toward him, then another one. Muttering vague excuses - chores they’ve only suddenly remembered, the cat that needs immediate petting - her sisters vanish.

“You’re back,” Jo says, and even she can’t tell if she’s angry or excited at his sudden appearance.

“Yeah. Surprise,” Laurie offers, somewhat lamely.

Jo takes another step and then she’s there, hugging Laurie tightly, raking one hand through his damp hair and pressing him toward her with the other. He doesn’t hesitate to hug her back. He smells like snow and leather, and Jo closes her eyes to take it in more fully.

“Hey,” she says. “Happy New Year. Almost. I didn’t think I’d see you until graduation.”

“Me neither,” Laurie admits as they break apart a little, still holding on to each other’s forearms. “It was sort of a last-minute decision, and only because Grandpa offered to pay for half of the ticket.”

“That still must’ve been expensive,” Jo says. The beginning of a smile tugs at her lips.

Laurie hesitates for a moment too long. “Yeah, it was,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “Worth it, though, right?”

Jo scowls. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Laurie pauses, but when all Jo does is raise her eyebrows, he relents. “Actually, your mom funded the other half of the ticket.”

Jo drops his arms. “She what?”

“I didn’t ask, okay?” Laurie says. “In fact, I tried refusing her about seventeen times. But when I say that she wouldn’t take no for an answer- uh. You know Marmee. She and Grandpa bought it anyway and said I might as well.”

“Where is she?” Jo casts about murderously. “I want a word-”

“Jo,” Laurie interrupts, gentle. “I wasn’t happy about it either. C’mon, there’s plenty of time to get mad later. I’m starving. I hear there’s leftover cake?”

Jo’s thoughts are still racing, but she takes a deep breath and pushes them down. “Yeah. It’s like a week old, though. Come here.”

She drags him into the kitchen, where he drapes his jacket across the back of a chair. They take their usual spots at the table and she cuts him a too-large slice of cake that’s only a little stale. Laurie attacks it, looking pleased. “Thanks. Grandpa’s been out the past few days. I’ve been surviving on ramen and beans.”

“All that traveling and you’ve forgotten how to cook, huh?” Now that they’re seated, knees brushing under the table, Jo can take closer inventory of her feelings. Seeing Laurie there, a spot of icing on his upper lip, is surreal: he’s a stranger who never left at all. Jo finds she’s furious that he left and furious that he had the audacity to return, tampered by relief that he came back and bitterness he didn’t announce himself the second he came home. It’s too much; she halts the self-interrogation in favor of watching Laurie eat, observing the way water drips from his hair to the table.

“So how’s senior year going?” Laurie asks, and the question is almost normal.

“Fuck that. How is it being home?”

Laurie smiles at her, conspiratorial. “You know, you’re the first person who’s asked about home as opposed to abroad.”

“I’m sort of caught up, aren’t I?”

It’s not quite true. Laurie’s been writing her postcards, and true to her word, she responds to every one, though they don’t always reach him in time before he’s moved on to his next destination. But the things he writes are strange and precious to her - neither a recap of what he’s been up to nor love letters, but existing in some liminal space of their own. Jo’s read some of them so many times she has them memorized. Dear Jo, said one from Prague. Today I saw a man dangling off of a roof. Upon closer inspection, I noticed it was a statue, and apparently it’s of Freud. Isn’t that weirdly layered? Makes me not want to think about the mix of emotions I felt when I first saw it and mistook it for a real person about to fall. Weather’s been nice - I guess it’s greedy of me to be missing the New England fall, but here I am. Love, Teddy.

“Home’s been alright,” Laurie says. “I suppose. Haven’t had too much time to think about it, honestly.”

This, for whatever reason, flares Jo’s temper. “Okay,” she says before she can stop herself. “And that’s why you didn’t swing by earlier?”

Laurie lowers his fork, eyebrows pulling together. “You want the truth?” Jo nods before she can consider whether she actually does. “I wasn’t sure whether you actually wanted to see me.”

It’s this, more than anything, that makes everything become suddenly unbearable, like sliding an inch too close to the fireplace. Too much, too fast.

“We should talk,” Jo blurts, embarrassing herself with the cliché.

Laurie leans back in his chair. She knows by the quirk of his lips that he wants to say something like we are talking, but to his credit, he lets it slide. “Yeah, of course,” he says instead, and if Jo weren’t so keyed up, she’d marvel at how calmly he says it. Distantly, she wonders if he anticipated this moment. It would make one of them.

Laurie puts one hand on hers - not suggestive, not soliciting, just grounding - and she resists twitching away. “Not here. We should go upstairs.”

Jo gets the sense that Meg, Beth, and Amy have only just vacated the stairs; the upstairs landing is on the wrong side of quiet, and the piano trickling out of Beth’s room a beat too late. Jo smirks and pulls her door shut behind Laurie.

He’s grown, she thinks. It’s not true - Laurie, secure in his masculinity, admits easily that he’s not so tall, that he stopped growing junior year of high school. Still, the sight of him in his black t-shirt and hands in the pocket of his corduroy pants, there in the middle of her childhood bedroom where he’s been a million times before, is arresting. Jo has been struck by his features countless ways - the curl of his dark hair, the sunkenness of his eyes, the sharpness of his jawline - but today, an undeniable truth claws at her chest: Laurie is beautiful.

She squeezes her eyes shut against her untimely desire and takes a seat on the bed. Laurie sinks into her desk chair and examines her various knickknacks - half-empty pens, thinking putty, a Rubik’s cube - as if it’s the first time he’s encountered them. To Jo’s frustration, he doesn’t speak. His eyes light on the stack of his postcards, the only neatly piled thing on her desk, and he does a tiny double-take.

Every movie, every TV show, every novel Jo’s consumed before has prepared her poorly for this talk. She doesn’t want to say what are we, nor does she want to accuse Laurie of some personal or emotional failure, as if he’s the one responsible for her ongoing misery.

“Admittedly, I’m scared,” she says finally.

Laurie looks up, interested. “Scared.”

Jo nods.

"You?" He surprises her with a laugh. “Jo March? Since when have you been afraid of anything?”

“Scared, not afraid,” Jo says, momentarily derailed. Laurie cocks an eyebrow at her, the distinction clearly lost on him. She shakes her head, refusing to be sidetracked. “Look, I don’t even know where to start. Or how to tell you something that makes sense.”

“Write it down, maybe,” Laurie suggests, and she thinks he’s only half-joking.

Jo laughs. “I’ve scribbled things down until my wrists hurt. Seriously considering an ergonomic keyboard.”

“And then?”

She rubs her hair. It’s getting longer and softer by the day. “And then nothing, I guess. My protagonists always end up so happy, riding off into the sunset. Because that’s the kind of shit that sells. Either that or you have to go scorched-earth, obliterate everyone and all their hope. Readers just want to feel. A catharsis, in either direction.”

Laurie rests his elbows on his thighs. “And neither of those were working out for you?”

She glances at the postcards. “Is it possible to just have - nothing? No throughline, no satisfying narrative, and no happily-ever-after or fuck-you-they’re-all-dead?”

Laurie laughs, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Is that what you think of us? Nothing?”

“No - Teddy.” It’s imperative for him to understand this part. “Real life, it’s a whole series of nothings. I would love for it to be episodic, and for all of this to be building to some grand climax where I’ve learned everything I needed to, have fundamentally transformed as a person, and now I get you as this... static, two-dimensional prize. It’s over, the reward for successful character development is one Theodore Laurence, and the audience gets to sigh and clap and go home satisfied. Like, now we know, if we do X then Y happens, and the world continues to make sense.”

Laurie smirks. “You said climax.”

She scoops a pen off the floor and throws it at him.

His laughter is genuine now. “And that’s what you’re scared of? That it’s not a good story?”

It’s shameful when he puts it like that. Jo clenches her teeth. “Yeah. Kinda.”

“Jo, you’re the girl next door that I’ve been in love with since high school. Nearly a decade later, and I’ve still never loved anyone the way I love you, and I get more skeptical every year that goes by that I ever will. It doesn’t matter where I am - in an art gallery in Berlin, taking pictures of stray cats at the Alhambra, fucking clubbing in Venice - I’m always thinking about you. What you would say if you were there. What it would take to make you laugh.” He pulls a ridiculous face, eyes crossed and tongue sticking out, and she can’t help herself. “Not much, obviously. How is that not a story?”

Jo’s heart is racing and she doesn’t know why. “But that’s the issue, don’t you see?” When Laurie shrugs, she huffs and goes on. “Don’t you notice how many of our stories spend 99 percent of the time in the before? Then there’s the big damn kiss and seconds later it’s curtains, everyone can go home. We fantasize about the getting together so much that we never think about the days and months - years - that follow. There’s no such thing as a second big damn kiss. Then it’s shit like applying wart cream to their feet and fighting over taxes and taking the kids to the doctor to check out an ear infection.”

Laurie’s out of his seat before she can so much as register his presence, and then he’s on her, his mouth on hers, hot and insistent and pressing her down into the mattress. She gives in far more easily than she’d wanted, letting him lick his way inside her mouth. Jo has one hand tangled in his hair before she realizes, and when she does, she pushes him away with gusto.

Laurie grins at her, too cocksure for his own good. “Just disproving a point.”

“Fuck, Teddy.”

“I mean, if you want,” he says in false innocence, leaning in again, and she indulges the third kiss for a beat too long.

Laurie makes a show of wiping his mouth when she pulls away, and laughs at Jo’s scowl. “That aside,” he says, putting a hand on her knee, “everything you just described is honestly way, way more interesting than any kiss. Or, you know. Tasteful fade-to-black sex scene.”

“What is?”

“The warts and taxes and gross children.”

Jo snorts. “It sounds way better on paper than it does in practice. And it doesn’t even sound that good on paper.”

Laurie shrugs, but for the first time since their reunion, he looks actually troubled. “Only you can know that about yourself. Maybe you’re someone who loves the chase and nothing else.” The words, spoken in a low voice, flow out of him too easily for this to have been the first time the thought has crossed his mind. Jo’s self-loathing makes its unwelcome return. “And if that’s the case, then yeah, this will never work.”

A heavy silence falls between them.

“But I doubt it,” Laurie says. “When all is said and done, I feel like you almost dislike your own characters and the ones you read about. No - that’s not it. It’s like... you kind of pity them. Like they’re stuck on paper, doing X and getting Y out of it, and you’re out here in the real world and it’s free. And chaotic. And uncontrollable.”

“I hate free, chaotic, and uncontrollable,” Jo says.

Laurie looks at her. “Do you?”

“I’m scared of hurting you,” Jo tries.

Laurie laughs. “Yeah, okay. If that were true, we’d have been dating since freshman year of high school. I would’ve lost my virginity to you and not Sara McCarty in her childhood bed surrounded by stuffed animals.”

“You probably still dodged a bullet,” Jo says, just to hear his laugh again. “Look - sure. I’ve been acting in my self-interest this whole time. And right now my self-interest really...” she trails off, looking at the long line of his neck, the feminine swoop of his eyelashes. Has she never seen these things before? “Just kind of wants you.”

“Then have me,” Laurie says quietly.

She grabs his shoulder, not to pull him in for another kiss, but to anchor herself against the wave of fear that crashes through her, physically nauseating. “Okay, and what about tomorrow? And the day after that? The day after that?”

“I don’t follow.”

Of course he doesn’t, the person who’s wanted her since they were kids. “Tomorrow I could wake up and not love you anymore. Maybe I’ll want to change my name. Or my gender. Or get full-body tattoos, or throw away all my electronics and move to a farm in Cambodia.”

Laurie frowns. “That doesn’t scare me.”

Jo drops her hand. “It should.”

“Why, because people change?” Laurie smiles and it’s almost rueful. “Jo, if you only ever loved me for a day and never again for the rest of your lifetime, it would still be more than enough.”

She has to close her eyes. It’s too much. “Did I write that?”

“I did,” Laurie says, and he’s kissing her again - her hair, her jaw, her temples, the hollow above her clavicle. “You’re not the only one who can make something out of nothing.”

Jo presses a hand against her eyes. Her fingers come away wet. Finally, somehow, she’s learned how to cry.

Laurie sees this and his expression doesn’t change. He bundles her against him, pressing her face into his shoulder, rubbing one of his hands up and down her back. She holds him back and doesn’t let go.

They stay like this for a while. It’s hard to tell how long - maybe seconds, maybe hours. When she lets go, Laurie is looking down at her, and it doesn’t take much to close the space between their mouths.

When they pull apart, there’s an explosion, and faint colors fill Jo’s room: purple, blue, orange, red. Fireworks.

Tomorrow, Laurie is probably leaving and going back to Istanbul, or Athens, or Taipei. In a week, Jo will go back for her last semester of college. They’ll send postcards. Maybe they’ll FaceTime. Jo will meet people on campus, men and women, various ex-lovers. She might want them. She probably won’t.

Right now, Laurie is seeking her eyes through the darkness. She finds his gaze and holds it. “And what happens now?”

He shrugs, so minutely she’d never feel it if they weren’t wrapped up together. “Whatever we want,” he says, and smiles. “Nothing.”