My dad floored it, ripping our hands apart.
“Put your head in! And roll that window up!” Dad barked. “You’re letting all the mosquitos in.”
But I was still hanging out of the window trying to see Anna until the very last second. Dad punched the master control, forcing the glass up, cutting me across the stomach. I dove over the console and into the back seat, my eyes trained on her as she grew smaller and smaller in the distance.
I shouldn’t have looked back. That was a mistake. The windows were dark with tint. Anna couldn’t have seen how hard I was crying. But I could see her, crumpled in on herself as Lemon wrapped her in a hug. Until we rounded a corner and she disappeared from my sight.
That goodbye haunted me past the Mississippi, beyond the Grand Canyon, and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. But it didn’t stop there.
No. It’s been with me every day since.
4 Years Later
CHAPTER 2
anna
HER SOPHOMORE YEAR OF COLLEGE
Ipulled the metal door shut as a gust of late September wind shoved me against the cinderblock wall of my dorm, Jefferson Hall. As always, the door popped back open. “Stupid thing is older than Thomas himself,” I muttered as I yanked it hard, forcing the lock to catch.
No sooner had I shrugged off my backpack than the sounds coming from the common room prickled the back of my neck.
“Blue Bishop is at it again!” an overeager college football announcer cheered from the TV down the hall. “Every week, we watch this kid annihilate the competition. Is there nothing this quarterback can’t do?”
I went stiff as my eyes narrowed and my fingers balled into fists.
“Absolutely phenomenal!” another announcer broke in. “You never know where Knoxville is going to use him. He’s the most versatile player I’ve seen in a decade. Tonight we’ve seen him pass, block, and now he’s running it in for a touchdown. And his speed! I’ll tell you what! Growing up in a single-wide in the middle of nowhere, Virginia, hasn’t hurt him one bit!”
“Go Blue!” Brooklyn screamed.
“Are you kidding me?” My molars clenched so tight a sharp stab of pain shot across my right masseter. My bag hit the tile floor with a thunk. I sprinted for the TV.
I was sick to death of everyone fangirling over my ex like he was some kind of movie star. Like he didn’t pull his pants up one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. And yeah, maybe it was a really nice butt he pulled those tight pants up and over, but still. Just a butt. And just one leg at a time.
“He drops to the fifty. Now he fakes to the right, completely shaking the opposition! Forty-yard line and no one can catch him. The kid is a ninja, a pronghorn, and a stealth missile all rolled into one!”
I rounded the corner, furious to find my two best friends and roommates, Tally and Brooklyn, dead center in the pile of people gaping, open-mouthed, as my ex-boyfriend streaked across whatever football field he was on this week. So mesmerized, in fact, that they didn’t hear or see me come in.
“Thirty yards and he’s picking up speed! Twenty-yard line now. Will Treyvon Anderson be able to catch him?” the announcer continued. I wondered if they ever listened to themselves after it was all over. They should feel embarrassed about the idol worship they considered a job.
“It doesn’t look like it!” the other commentator screamed.
“Ten-yard line! Five!”
I reached up behind the flat screen and yanked the cord from the wall, silencing the grown men who were making idiots of themselves on national TV, all over a stupid boy just because he could run really fast.
A collective groan erupted from the couches.
“Are you serious?”
“Anna, no!”
“What is wrong with her?”
“She needs medication!”
“What a freaking?—”
