“Why? Seriously, why? You don’t stop loving someone overnight, Jill. It doesn’t work like that.”
“It wasn’t overnight.”
“One night we’re plotting your first kiss, and the next you barely say a word to him. You aren’t your mom. You don’t have to give up on Sean just because your mom gave up on your dad.”
I started to feel ill, listening to her. I would swear the paint fumes were making me dizzy, except Claire always bought the environmentally friendly kind that you could probably eat if you wanted to. “Is that what you think?”
Claire lowered her voice. “You won’t talk about it, so what am I supposed to think?”
If Claire had spoken to me in anything less than the gentlest tone known to man, I might have been able to deflect her.
“I just woke up, okay. Sean is my friend and that’s all I want from him anymore.”
Claire sat quietly staring at me until I started painting again, then with a deep sigh, reached for her own brush. “Okay, but are you sure that’s all he wants from you?”
CHAPTER 16
Ididn’t regret telling Claire about Daniel. Sometimes her borderline friend-brain comments were helpful. She’d had plenty to say about Daniel and some of it had nothing to do with Sean at all.
Over the next few days, I told myself that it made sense for me to think about him—Daniel, not Sean—given that his house was a mere pop can’s throw away (ha!). I didn’t overhear any fights between him and his mom. I didn’t even hear his Jeep when he came home at night—always a good hour after his mom—which caused me a moment of pride at how quiet his brakes were.
But then I’d think about him in his room or somewhere and I’d wonder if any other part of his life was getting better.
Or if, like his window, it was just taped over.
And then one night he walked out his back door.
Unlike the first night we “met” I didn’t try to hide. I sat up on my roof facing his yard.
Daniel leaned against the side of his house for only a few seconds, looking up at me before scaling the wall and pulling himself onto my roof. He sat next to me a second later.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
“This okay?” he asked, before meeting my eye.
I hesitated. “Would you leave if I said no?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
I’d kept pretty busy all week. At the shop and running with Sean and Claire. My thighs were screaming proof of the latter. I’d almost given up on the roof that night when my muscles protested as I climbed out the window. But I’d gone up anyway. Not because of Daniel, but not entirely not because of Daniel either.
I’d thought my roof was my sanctuary, my way of escaping from everyone and everything. But it wasn’t. It was kind of nice to think about sharing it with someone who needed it maybe more than I did.
Daniel relaxed when I shook my head. I didn’t want him to leave.
“So we’re clear, I didn’t have a birthday in the last few days.”
He glanced at me sideways, a smile lighting his face like the moon lit us. “We’re joking about this already?”
What was the alternative? “You never told me how old you are.” I almost didn’t want to know. I was glad he was looking up at the sky and couldn’t see my face when he answered.
“Twenty-one.”
Five years. He was four years older and however many months, if I rounded down. Not that four years was any better than five. I didn’t need Claire to tell me that. I suddenly understood Daniel’s initial reaction to my age so much better.
“Yeah,” Daniel said with a humorless laugh. “Exactly.”
