“Shoot,” he said, biting into a piece of bread.
“Why are you guys best friends?”
He pushed a slice toward me. “Because he’s there for me. Always has been. Even when my family pretended not to see it. I think James saved my life, so to speak. Or at least, he saved me.”
“You mean he’s always been there for you during the hardest times?”
“We’ve shared a lot of things. You remember—” A nervous hiccup interrupted his words. He took a sip of orange juice before resuming. “Do you remember that one day when we were talking about Poppy’s pool party, and I told you I can’t stand . . .”
“The smell of chlorine,” I finished for him.
I vividly remembered the strange sensation that I’d felt when I’d heard him.
“Yeah.” His voice broke.
It seemed like one of those stories that you tell only once to archive it forever.
“I’d already stopped swimming for years.”
A cough brought us back to reality. The steely glare that James shot Will was clear.Don’t tell her anything.
“Did you sleep well, Jamie?” Will asked.
“Well, I could’ve slept better.”
James stared right at me, obnoxious as always.
“Look I—” I was ready to answer back, but Will interrupted me.
“Why don’t we get back to talking about us?”
“Yeah, sorry, Will. Do you want to finish what you were telling me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What kind of story is it?”
I’d never heard even a hint of it. Not even from Poppy.
“It’s unfortunately not pretty, June. I already told you enough that wasn’t pretty yesterday. Maybe . . .”
“I’m here when you want.” I rushed to calm him down.
Our lips pecked each other, flavored with coffee and jam.
“You should head to school, June.”
“Weshould,” I corrected him, as someone snorted behind me.
“This one is a thorn in my side first thing in the morning,” James mumbled as he started to mess with the coffee machine.
“I’ll hit you over the head with a pole, Hunter,” I said.
“Until proven otherwise, you, unlike me, aren’t endowed with any pole. Zero.”
“But I bet there aren’t that many inches separating you from zero.” William burst out laughing, and not even James could hold his back.
“Maybe, but the fact that I might have a small one doesn’t make you less of a pain in the ass.”
