“I like her,” he said. And I knew he was telling me Greg would have, too.
“I’m sorry about your mom.” And because I couldn’t help asking, I said, “He won’t be able to hurt her anymore?”
Daniel’s jaw locked and his injured hand tightened on the steering wheel. “No, he won’t ever hurt her again.”
I nodded, not caring how or why Daniel knew that. His mom would be safe, and though I’d never met her, I was glad for his sake almost more than hers. “When do you leave?”
“It depends.” He swallowed. “On when she gets released and how soon she can handle the move. Few months.”
“But she will—heal, I mean?”
“Yeah.”
Daniel pushed the passenger seat forward for me to climb out. When my feet hit the asphalt of the parking lot, I turned back to him. “I know my mom would like to see you. I think... I think it would help her to see you.”
The way Daniel lowered his gaze told me he didn’t agree.
“Daniel,” I said. “She knows it wasn’t your fault. We all know that.” When he didn’t respond, I said, “I’m glad I got to see you. I’ve missed you.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Daniel said, meeting my gaze again. “It’s good to see you finally growing into those ears.”
I laughed, and it hurt only a little knowing that I was probably laughing with him for the last time.
“Be good to Arizona,” I told him.
“Be good to your girl,” he said. “And tell your mom—” He pressed his lips tight together. “Tell your mom that I’m sorry, okay? Tell her it should have been me.”
Then he was gone, and I waited a long, long time before going inside.
SEVENTH WEEKEND
December 18–20
Jolene
For the first time in months I felt nervous about seeing Adam. He hadn’t said much after Daniel left on our last Saturday, and on Sunday all we’d done was watch movies. I’d had to bite my tongue, literally, to make myself stay silent.
We’d texted a little over the past two weeks, but he was busy finishing a project for school that he’d been working on with Erica, but...yeah. I guessed they’d decided to finish individually.
My weeks hadn’t been any more fun. Between dodging my mom and her edginess over Tom’s increasingly less frequent appearances at the house, I’d been staying up late to work on the idea I’d finally gotten for the footage I’d captured of Adam and me, one that I wanted to finish while it still seemed good. I’d also been at Cherry and Gabe’s filming the music video.
I’d been hoping to see Cherry and that her latest reunion with Meneik would have run its course, but no such luck. We’d said hi and everything, but otherwise she’d been out with Meneik as much as her parents allowed and on the phone with him every second they didn’t.
Those whole two weeks between seeing Adam had sucked, and because we’d talked so little, I had no idea what kind of headspace he was in. It wasn’t like I could be mad at him for not opening up about his brother. I couldn’t imagine what losing Greg had been like, what it still was like, but I wanted to. I wanted to know about the person he loved so much that, even years later, mentioning Greg’s name or running into one of his friends physically affected Adam.
He and his brother weren’t talking when they entered the empty lobby, and Jeremy’s shoulders slumped as he saw me sitting on the second-floor landing.
“Give him a break, would you? He’ll come find you when he wants you.”
“Now,” Adam said, shoving his bag at Jeremy as he took the steps—two at a time—to reach me. “Now’s good.”
I tried to disguise how happy that made me by shrugging at Jeremy. “Why don’t you go on up? He’ll come find you when he wants you.” Then I caught Adam’s arm and we sped not down the stairs but up. In the past, we’d encountered a few too many neighbors on lower levels, but the last flight didn’t see a lot of traffic even when there wasn’t a blizzard outside to detract people from the roof.
“I feel like we need to hurry,” I told him.
“Hurry with what?”
“Anything. Everything.” He was acting like Adam again, there and present with me instead of lost in thoughts he couldn’t share. “What is the most awesome thing we could possibly do in this stairwell?”
