Chuckling sadly, I say, “I called you. I even texted. You never replied back.”
I did.
I dug up my old phone that Leah had given me when we moved in with her and Arrow. She’d also fed her and Arrow’s numbers into our cell phones.
Needless to say, I never used it, his number. I’d stare at it though, several times a day.
But I used it tonight.
It kind of felt weird, texting the guy I’ve been writing secret letters to. A clash of modern, cold technology with how I’ve come to love him.
In an old-fashioned way.
“So acting like a jealous groupie it is,” he murmurs.
“I was worried,” I whisper.
As soon as I say it, I press my forehead on his chest and open my mouth. My lips are right where his heart is and I breathe out large puffs of air as if I’m trying to resuscitate it.
His dead heart.
As if I’m giving all my breaths to that precious organ of his. So it comes alive. So he doesn’t feel empty.
But he doesn’t let me revive his heart.
Instead, he grabs my hair and pulls my neck back. When I open my eyes, I find him staring down at me with a dark, intense gaze. “You know, I thought one of the advantages ofnothaving a girlfriend would be that I wouldn’t have to go through the whole ‘I was worried’ routine. Not that I ever went through it before. But still.”
I fist his t-shirt at his back. “Too bad. You do have a girlfriend.”
His frown is immediate and thunderous. “What the fuck?”
“I am a girl. And I’m your friend. So girlfriend,” I say, the most cliché thing in the history of all things.
He watches me a beat. “You learn that from a chick flick?”
I don’t know how he can make me smile at a time like this, but he can and he is. “Yes. We should watch some together.”
“Yeah, over my dead fucking body.”
“Oh, I think you’ll be alive.”
His fingers pull at my hair as if emphasizing every word he’s saying. “I think this friend thing isn’t going to work out.”
I shake my head in his hold and study his features, whispering, “Again, too bad. You’re stuck with me.”
The moon is red again tonight, a fireball, and it highlights the lithe lines of his body and lean angles of his face.
Bringing one hand to the front, I reach up and do what I wanted to do back when he was talking to my sister and smooth out the messy strands of his hair. I push them away now, and he clenches his jaw.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asks, irritated. “In the cold.”
I huddle my shoulders and rub my cheek in his vintage leather jacket that I put on after Sarah left and Leah went to sleep. “You kept me warm.”
His fingers squeeze my scalp, making me crane up my neck even more. “Shouldn’t you be out there, haunting some bridge or empty street somewhere?”
My heart swells in my chest. It becomes so big that it’s pressing against my ribs. It must be pressing against his too, I bet. He must be able to feel it.
Feel the size, the drumming rhythm of my heart.
