“You’ve always been my friend,” I said. “You were my first friend. I don’t know how we fix any of this”—my throat tightened, but I kept going—“but nothing can change that.”
The truth of it settled into the air like dust motes catching the sun. One of the heavy stones lodged under my ribs, one I’d been carrying around since his confession, eased just a little. Lightened.
By the way Coop breathed out—slow, shaky, like someone had loosened a knot in his chest—it helped him too.
We stepped out of the car at the same time, doors thudding shut in an uneven echo across the parking lot. The sunlight hit us full-on—Texas autumn, bright and brown and pretending to be cool.
Coop slung his bag over one shoulder, still looking a little unmoored from our conversation. His hair looked even worse out in the open—wild, flattened on one side, and sticking up like a tuft of rebellious wheat on the other.
“You know,” I said, locking the car, “they make combs for a reason.”
He blinked. “Huh?”
“You look like you stuck your hand in a light socket.”
Coop stared at me, affronted, then self-consciously patted at his hair. His fingers immediately raked through it again, making it worse. He groaned, and I tried not to grin.
“Oh, real nice,” he said, giving me a once-over. “And you look like Tinkerbell sneezed on you—glitter is everywhere?—”
He stopped. Completely froze. His eyes widened.
“Frankie… you dyed your hair?”
I instinctively reached up, fingers brushing the violet underlayer Rachel had braided back yesterday. I smoothed the strands down like I could hide the streaks from the sun—or from him.
“I think I’m going through a rebellious phase,” I said lightly.
Coop stared for one more second, then cracked up—full laughter, bright and startled and real. The kind that pulled one out of me too, even if I tried to fight it.
“Can I go with you?” he asked once he caught his breath. “Into the rebellious phase, I mean.”
I snorted. “I’ll think about it.”
His smile widened, soft at the edges and warm in a way I hadn’t seen in… God, too long.
“That’s not a no,” he said.
And he was right.
It wasn’t.
A breeze slipped across the parking lot, warm and dusty and very Texas. We fell into step without planning to, walking toward the building. And something in the space between us—this awkward, painful, fragile all-thumbs mess—shifted.
The heaviness eased.
The stiffness dissolved.
And our friendship… slid back into place, not whole, not fixed, but familiar. Like stepping into a room we’d lived in our whole lives, only to find someone had moved the furniture. Different. But still ours.
We hadn’t fixed anything.
Not yet.
For the first time in days, maybe weeks, it didn’t feel like the whole world was tilting under our feet. Just… shifting. Maybe even making space for something steadier than the mess between us.
Chapter
Sixteen
