Seeing Zoe felt like having a bulldozer drive across my chest, breaking my ribs one by one. Like splinters of bone drilling into my heart, which for a moment must have forgotten that it’s more than the muscle that’s supposed to be keeping me alive.
What the hell is she doing here, of all places? She knew I would be here. I told her about it. That was the only note where I didn’t need any of her questions to tell her one of my secrets.
She could have gone to any other school. Practically the whole world is open to Zoe. Instead, she stayed in Boston. Why couldn’t she have chosen another ballet academy?
The answer to that question is very simple: There was no reason for her to. She wanted to go to one of the best schools in thecountry, and she doesn’t give a shit whether I’m here or not. It doesn’t matter. Not to her.
For me, on the other hand, it matters very much. I don’t want her anywhere near me. Not now or ever again. Fuck. I wish she would disappear.
“Jase.” Skye nudges me and snaps me out of my thoughts. I look up and meet her worried gaze. Skye has the darkest eyes I’ve ever seen. Brown, almost black. Abysses from which you can’t be rescued if you fall.
I’ve already fallen. Not for her. But she pulled me out of my own personal abyss, and I still don’t understand why. She simply decided I needed a friend and that she would take on the job. She constantly ignores the fact that I didn’t ask to have her in my life.
Skye believes that everyone needs someone, and she’s definitely right about that. But I’ve fallen flat on my face far too often when I try to let others get close to me. She doesn’t care much about that either.
She’s here, and she’s staying. And if I listen very, very closely to my inner voice, there might even be a tiny part of me that’s happy about that.
“Huh?” I say, taking a swig from the can I’m holding. The beer tastes stale, and I make a face. Whoever organized the drinks this year did a rotten job.
“Are you ever going to talk to me about it?” she asks gently, and I immediately tense up. I’ve never heard her use that tone of voice with anyone else. Only with me, and I deserve it the least. She may have decided that she wants to be my friend, but I’m totally incapable of giving anything back.
The concept of friendship has lost some of its appeal over thepast year, after all my friends dropped me from their lives without a single word. At the thought of Caleb, Reed, Tristan, and Nick, my chest tightens painfully, and the back of my neck gets hot.
One awful night was enough to lose everyone who had made me feel like I wasn’t alone in this world over the last few years. Because I made a mistake. Just one single fucking mistake. But it was obviously enough.
“Come on, Jase. Talk to me,” Skye pleads, this time more insistently. The ugly memories that were rearing their heads slip back into the cave where they belong.
“About what?” I take another swallow, because even the worst beer is better than having to talk.
“About the little redhead who has obviously moved in next door. You know each other.” She doesn’t even ask. She says it firmly, as if she knows. As if it were an indisputable fact that I must know Zoe.
“Who are you talking about?”
I play dumb, but Skye just rolls her eyes and doesn’t let herself be put off. She could see through me from the very beginning, although I refused to talk to her about my problems. But she knows that I have some. They’re hard to miss.
She points at someone behind me. “Her.” I know who’s standing there long before I turn around. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to see her, but I can’t help it, because Zoe is Zoe, and that was always enough.
In the theater, I endured exactly seven seconds of staring back at her when I turned to see why it felt like someone was staring at the back of my head.
It only took seven seconds to realize that she was still the sameperson she was before. The girl with the copper hair, which she likes to wear in two thick braids, and those big hazel eyes that shine like amber, depending on the light. She is still beautiful, still tiny, almost too small for a dancer. She’s petite with long, lean muscles and cute freckles on her nose and cheeks that are so pale that you can only see them if you stand right in front of her.
Now Zoe is standing in a group with four other girls. She’s wearing the gray school sweatshirt that everyone gets at the beginning of the first year over a short floral dress, and I look at her legs for a second too long.
The warm glow of the fairy lights makes her bare skin shimmer golden, and I can’t look away. My gaze drifts from her legs to the dress and sweatshirt to the ends of her red hair. Tonight it’s loose, falling in soft waves down her back.
She laughs, and even though the music echoes over the roof terrace and a couple of guys near me are shouting a conversation at each other that I couldn’t care less about, I can hear her laugh. Bright and melodic, and much too Zoe-like.
“See, that’s exactly what I mean.” Skye leans toward me until we’re almost touching. “You know her, don’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t look at her like that.”
I don’t answer, because even if I don’t want to tell her the truth, I’m not a liar either.
She sighs, giving in. “That’s okay, you don’t have to talk to me. But you know that you can if you want to, don’t you?” Her eyes narrow.
“If I ever want to talk to anyone, it will be you,” I promise her, completely seriously. If I needed to confide in someone, it would be Skye.
However, I realize that will never happen. The last time I opened up, everything blew up in my face. I won’t make that mistake again.
Skye nods, apparently mollified. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”
