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Every night, Ian keeps his phone next to his pillow.
It takes him hours to fall asleep each night. He used to be an easy sleeper, he remembers. When he was Sam, he used to fall asleep on buses or at the movies or the second his head hit the pillow. The dark didn’t make him jumpy like it does now. As Ian, a part of him is always waiting, always expecting that familiar ping to announce another round of tempting fate. Another game.
Instead, almost every night, his phone rings.
“Vee?” He always answers her calls the second they come in, and he’s never able to hide the frantic note in his voice. Isn't able to stop the sweat from prickling along his hairline, just in case she's heard something he hasn't. In case something has happened.
“Ian.” He can hear her sigh on the other end of the line. “I just had to check.”
“I know,” he says. She does this when she stays over, too, wakes him in the middle of the night to make sure he’s still breathing. They both know the game doesn’t work like that—there aren’t microscopic robots waiting to suffocate them in their sleep—but all the knowledge in the world doesn’t stop that primal fear that they’re still one misstep away from losing each other.
He can’t blame her for worrying. Every night she falls asleep next to him, he lies awake, watching her until he can’t keep his eyes open any longer. Just to be sure she’s safe.
He can’t lose her.
She’s silent on the other end of the line, and Ian is in no rush to hurry things along. It doesn’t matter that he’s barely slept the last few nights or that the call came in less than an hour after he’d finally passed out. He knows that Vee would feel bad if she knew, and she’d probably promise to stop. He doesn’t want her to do that. The middle of the night phone calls when they’re apart are more comforting to him than she knows. He wonders if she wakes up in a cold sweat, too.
“See you tomorrow?” Vee asks, and he smiles.
“I’ll see you at noon.”
It takes him a long time to fall back asleep again.
***
Ian knows she loves the carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park. It’s the only place he’s seen her smile for the last three months. So that's where they meet, every chance they get. Walking towards her, seeing her watch the laughing kids race to the horses, makes him smile.
“There she is,” he calls as he gets closer, the shake in his voice from their late night phone calls gone. She’s cute when she waves at him, crossing one ankle over another. Things seem safer in the daylight.
“You’re almost late,” she says, pushing off from the railing and taking a couple steps towards him. “I was starting to think you might stand a girl up.”
Ian scoffs playfully. “Who, me?” He reaches for her, hands settling on her waist. “I’d never keep someone like you waiting.”
Vee leans against him, tucking her arms up between their chests. “Don’t be late, okay?” Her voice is soft, and when he was Sam, he probably would have laughed. Would have teased her for being clingy, made some joke about not being bound by the arbitrary constraints of time and then purposefully shown up fifteen minutes late the next time just to mess with her.
But he isn’t Sam now—he hasn’t been Sam ever since Seattle. New York, and the game, have turned him into Ian. And Ian knows exactly what Vee means.
“I won’t be,” he says softly, pressing his lips into her hair and holding her close. “Promise.”
***
They walk around Brooklyn all afternoon, like they do most afternoons when they aren’t working. Vee points out places she’s gotten to know growing up, and Ian pulls her into a coffee shop he discovered tucked away on a side street. They eat croissants and drink Americanos, and both of them try to pretend that this isn’t Vee’s last week in New York before she leaves for school.
They make it almost until sundown.
“You know, I hear rent isn’t cheap in Los Angeles.” The words are out of Ian’s mouth before he can stop them, and he sees Vee’s shoulders dip just a little. They’re sitting on a bench by the bridge, the city lights starting to come on across the water.
“Valencia, specifically. And I thought we weren’t going to talk about that.” She presses her lips together.
“Seriously, though,” he says with a sigh, trying to be gentle. “You’re leaving soon. We can’t just…”
He sits in silence for a minute, searching for the words, until she helps him out. “I don’t want to take off one morning and pretend like none of this ever happened,” she says slowly.
“I don’t think I could if I tried,” he says.
“I know.” There’s a smile on her face again, but this time it’s sad. Almost wistful. Ian wants to kiss it away. “I just hate the thought of you picking up your whole life for my sake.”
“I did it once.” He tries not to think about Seattle.
“Yeah, and look how that turned out.”
He reaches for her hand, wrapping it in both of his. “I met you,” he says, one corner of his mouth turning upwards. “That’s not so bad, huh?”
Vee rolls her eyes, bumping his shoulder with hers. “You almost died! Twice!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t,” Ian points out, forcing a smile onto his lips. It’s what he does every time the memories come flooding back—a tall crane, strong wind, a terrified scream. A gunshot. The drop in his stomach when he thought he’d lost her. Usually, smiling through it works. “So I call that a win.”
“You had a whole life before the game. Before me,” she says. She shakes her head. “I can’t imagine giving it all up if you could have it back again.”
“Who says I can have it back again?” He leans back, looking down at her.
“We haven’t heard from Nerve in three months. I don’t think anyone’s pulling us into a new game.”
“Your nighttime phone calls disagree,” Ian points out, and then winces at the flash of annoyance that crosses her features.
Vee ducks her head. “I’m just saying. You can probably go home.”
“Do you really want me to?”
Vee’s expression softens. When she answers, her voice is quiet. “No…”
Ian squeezes her hand, and when she turns her face towards his, his lips are there to catch hers right away. She’s always warm against him, and he likes all the things he’s learning about her—that her breath hitches when his teeth graze over her bottom lip, that she melts a little when he pulls her close. The feel of the skin beneath the hem of her shirt. Every new thing he learns is like unlocking another piece of the puzzle that is Venus, and it’s shaping up to be even more beautiful than he first thought. He isn’t letting her get away before he gets to see the full image.
“I’m not Sam anymore,” he whispers when they break apart, leaning his forehead against hers. “I left that life behind and I don’t want to go back. I’m different now—better. I like who I am this time. I like who I am around you and I can't lose you.”
Her smile, when it’s genuine like this, makes him a little dizzy.
“I like being Ian. And if you want me to stay, I want to keep being Ian.”
Vee sighs, leaning back and running her hand through her hair. She’s quiet, and the look on her face says she’s tossing his words over in her mind. It’s the same look he saw on that very first night at the diner, when he peered over the top of his book, watching her try to decide whether to go through with her first dare.
It’s a look he loves.
“I swear to god, if you hate California, you absolutely cannot blame it on me.” She looks up into his eyes and smiles again, and Ian thinks that the one that erupts on his own face must look ridiculous. But she kisses him again, happy and playful, so it must not look that goofy after all.
***
They move into an apartment in Valencia, within walking distance of CalArts. It’s small, only a studio that’s under Vee’s name, because a one-bedroom would’ve been five hundred dollars more a month and neither of them had that kind of cash on hand upfront, let alone every thirty days. They have to dodge the landlord, who would ask questions about two people living in a one-occupant apartment, but Ian gets to come home every night to Vee so he doesn’t mind too much. The two of them often hear yelling outside at night, and sirens become the soundtrack to their dinners, their conversations, their sex. But Vee has her classes and Ian gets a job at the gym nearby, and every day he gets to see her come home with her camera under her arm and a light in her eyes he hasn’t seen in three months. And that’s worth all the rent money and sirens in the world to him.
But the best thing about Valencia takes them two weeks to notice.
They can sleep.
He realizes it in a bleary morning moment one day, when he rolls over and sees the blurry numbers 9:14 am on the bedside clock. He counts back the hours as his fingers play with Vee’s messy hair as she sleeps next to him, and when the number passes five, he grins to himself. When she wakes, he kisses her bare shoulder and whispers, “Good morning,” truly meaning it. He tells her his discovery. From there, they take notice.
They feel like two completely new people.
He doesn’t watch her every night when her eyes close, ignoring all signs of drowsiness in himself to keep her safe. She doesn’t roll over in the middle of the night and shake him awake, just to check that he’s still breathing. They sleep, long and deep, the yelling and the sirens like a lullaby of safety in their new city. Their new life.
And every night, instead of sitting next to his pillow waiting for the ping of a new game, Ian’s phone stays on his nightstand.