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Ahsoka had decided to take a gap year after high school. Her parents had thought it was a great idea. To work and save money for college. To ease the financial burden of higher education, even with the substantial scholarship money she had been offered. But that had never been Ahsoka’s intent. She planned to do the exact opposite of saving money for college. Well, maybe not the exact opposite. But taking a gap year to travel and see the sights across the country certainly didn’t leave many opportunities to save money for herself. And her parents had made sure Ahsoka knew that.
But after years through middle school and high school, taking every extracurricular activity that her parents thought might set her up for an easier life than the one they’d been through, Ahsoka couldn’t say she’d been excited to do the same thing for another four years. With no time to sit and bask in the accomplishments that she’d already accomplished in her short but sometimes seeming so long eighteen years of life. She wanted to get out. See the world. Go to the parties and get-togethers she could never go to because of an interview for an internship here, the internship afterward, whatever sports team in between.
Her parents had only given her one strict rule. Check-in every day and call them if she needed anything. Though, sometimes checking in every day was a picture on social media. Other than that, they’d decided to trust her.
Ahsoka was also pretty sure that her parents hadn’t thought they needed to caution her against short, summer flings with an older guy mere weeks before she was supposed to start her freshman year. Although to be fair, Anakin wasn’t that much older than her. Still, Ahsoka was keeping this relationship to herself. Not like it was going to last anyway.
“So,” he began, entering the bathroom of the hotel they were staying in together where Ahsoka was using a toothbrush to lay down the edges of her hair with gel. “What do you want to do today?”
Today. Their last day together before tomorrow morning they’d both go their separate ways. Ahsoka, making the four-hour drive back home to prepare to move into her new dorm at school in two weeks. Anakin to go finish off his graduate degree—paid for by his school in exchange for being a teacher’s assistant. Wherever that was. They hadn’t given each other many details on each other’s lives. Preferring to live in the here and now and enjoy the short time they had together. Or whatever the hell that popular space opera movie franchise had said in a movie or two.
Ahsoka almost suggested that they stay inside all day. Order in. Watch cheesy movies. Have a lot of sex. But they’d done that a couple of times before. For her last day with Anakin, she wanted to create a memory that stood out. Something that she’d remember and look on fondly in a few decades when she was maybe married with a nineteen-year-old of her own that wanted to get out and explore.
“There’s a popular state fair I heard about.”
Anakin rolled his eyes. “You and your romantic obsession with fairs,” he teased.
Ahsoka huffed. Then smiled. It wasn’t her fault that this was the fair, a four-hour drive from her home, that her parents had never taken her to. Not seeing the big deal of a fair themselves.
Then he said, “But if you want to.”
“You’ll have fun,” Ahsoka assured. Then with a frown, she said, “And don’t be mean to anyone.”
“I won’t be… to anyone who does deserve it.”
Ahsoka thought they may have different ideas of who deserved Anakin being mean to them. While Anakin was a sweet guy, could even be a little awkward, Ahsoka had learned very early on that he could be a bit of a hothead. Never starting a fight but always itching for one. It didn’t help that he had the size and strength and skill going for him (he’d grown up learning martial arts and fighting, apparently).
Him getting into a fight was how they met, in fact. He intervened between her and two guys that wouldn’t leave her alone at some bonfire without her asking or needing him to. He ended up punching one of the guys. She pepper-sprayed the other. And then they’d both had to run off to avoid the cops that had been called to the scene. She hadn’t been happy with him. Had been a finger press from pepper spraying him too until he very awkwardly apologized and offered to make it up to her by taking her someplace cooler that he’d heard about. And here they were, still together a month and a half and a few hundred miles later.
“Anakin,” Ahsoka said in a long-suffering tone. Then she joked, “I can’t wait to be rid of you tomorrow.”
Anakin hugged her from behind and placed a kiss on her cheek. “Aw, you know you’re going to miss me.”
Ahsoka rolled her eyes and said, “Maybe. Depends on how you act today.”
“Well, then I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Ahsoka let him have it but doubted it. Even Anakin’s best behavior could spell trouble for them. But to her surprise, they didn’t run into any. No conflicts from Anakin taking even the smallest or inadvertent slights personally. No getting into trouble because of Anakin’s curiosity (or her own, though she wasn’t admitting that to him) got them into something like when they snuck into that closed engineering exhibit at a museum. Just them. Eating overpriced, sweet, and fatty carnival food that was nothing to write home about and playing carnival games and riding carnival rides.
“This was fun,” Anakin said as they were leaving.
“I told you you’d like it.”
“Not the carnival,” Anakin blurted out.
Ahsoka turned to him with an eyebrow raised.
“I mean… don’t get me wrong, the carnival was fun,” Anakin assured. He stopped and turned to face her. “But I was talking about… I meant… I meant this last month and a half or so. With you, that is.”
“Oh,” Ahsoka said lamely. Then, “I think it was nice too.”
A long pregnant pause. Then Anakin blurted out, “I think I’m in love with you.”
Ahsoka didn’t have anything to say to that. Because she hadn’t been expecting that. She hadn’t…
“I know it’s only been a month and a half, and we don’t even really know each other. Not… you know. Seriously. But something about this… something is telling me this is right.”
A million thoughts rolled in Ahsoka’s head as a pleasant warmth spread through her. Because she thought it had just been her. She was convinced she was just taking this too seriously. That all the feel-good hormones and the excitement of something new and secret and thrilling were clouding her judgment. And she could hear her parent’s voices in her head. Telling her that this was just puppy love. That it wasn’t serious. That she probably wouldn’t meet that kind of person until she was stable and settled in her career. So why waste any time or emotional energy on something that would never last.
But…
But.
Still.
“I wish…” Ahsoka shook her head. “I’m sorry. We can’t. I… It’s not that I might not—couldn’t—It’s not that I couldn’t feel the same way. But, I won’t have time for this kind of thing. We’re in two different places and….”
And all the other things her parents would sit down and tell her to talk her out of this.
She averted her gaze. Not able to take seeing the disappointment she knew would be in his mesmerizing blue eyes for some reason. Because it wasn’t like she hadn’t done this before. Before him. In the beginning, as she enjoined her newfound freedom and life without so many restrictions and responsibilities, there’d been a few lovers. People she hadn’t wanted anything with besides experimenting with sex. People that she’d been upfront with about and left without a second thought because they’d get over it. They’d be glad for it one day, in fact. But there was something about Anakin… Something that didn’t let her turn and walk away from him and go pack her things and get on the road home early.
She felt his hand on the back of her head, curling into kinky dark hair as he pulled her to him, letting her rest her head on his shoulder.
“I understand. I understand more than you know.”
Ahsoka let out a sigh of relief. Relief that even if he didn’t really understand it, he was accepting it. He wasn’t making what she wanted to be a good, if bittersweet, memory into a bad one. She’d still have this when it was all over.
“Skywalker,” he said the next morning as they were both reluctant to get out of bed and get dressed.
“What?”
“I know we had agreed on nothing that might identify us later. But… my last name. It’s Skywalker, and as far as I know, I’m the only Anakin in the country with that name. You know. In case one day you wanna look me up.”
She wasn’t going to give him her last name. She wasn’t sure that if she did, he wouldn’t look her up. She wasn’t sure that if he did that she wouldn’t let herself be sucked into him. And worse than those, she was sure that if she gave him her name and never heard from him again, she would be disappointed.
“Anakin Skywalker,” Ahsoka tried. Then, “It’s a nice name.”
Ahsoka double-checked the room door, her class schedule, and made sure she hadn’t gotten any emails from her English professor before entering the empty classroom. She was early. Super early. But better that than late. Now she could just leave her stuff and go find the café for a cup of coffee. She barely glanced at the person at the front of the room getting things in place and writing on the whiteboard. He wasn’t Professor Ben, she was sure. She’d seen a picture of him. Must be an assistant or something.
As she was placing her things in her spot in the middle of the room, she accidently knocked down her water bottle. It rolled off the edge of her desk, hit her chair and then the floor with a loud clang.
“Fuck,” Ahsoka said and crawled under the desk to get her bottle. It was unharmed except for a new scratch. Good thing it wasn’t her glass one. It had taken her weeks and dozens of Starbucks to track that cup down.
“Everything okay?”
Ahsoka froze just as she was about to push herself up off the ground to stand, registering the voice that had come from the front of the class. The voice that she’d spent a month and a half hearing every day. The voice that had teased and gone back tit for tat with her when they playfully bickered. The voice that had whispered sweet nothings in her ear in the morning or after sex.
No way.
“Is everything…” he began again, only to freeze when Ahsoka stood up to face him.
He looked at her with wide eyes and opened and closed his mouth in shock before finally managing, “Ahsoka.”
For lack of anything better to do or say because fuck, fuck, fuck, Ahsoka raised an eyebrow and said coolly, “Anakin. It’s been a while.”