She crosses to the living room and sits on the couch across from me. “I know you really loved him, and he really loved you. I’m sorry how it ended, but if it makes you feel any better, I’m proud of you.”
“What?”
My friend exhales a little whimper of sympathy. “You admitted everything at the hardest time to do it. You could have denied it, butyou told the truth in front of the entire town—in front of your parents. That should mean something to you. You should be proud of that.”
I shake my head. “Two nights ago, Stone looked at me like he ...” My throat knots up and I can’t get out the wordsloved me, which is what I’m yearning to express. So I blow out a breath and say, “He looked at me like he cared. But last night, he didn’t even seem to recognize me. There’s nothing to be proud of.”
“Hey.” She bends until our gazes latch. “You told the truth when it would have been easier to lie. That’s brave.”
She hugs me, wrapping her arms around my neck, and I sigh into her. I’m broken, shattered into a thousand pieces that are so scattered I don’t think they’ll ever find their way back to one another again.
But still, I hold Cristina tight. She’s probably all I’ve got left after last night.
When she pulls away, my friend sits and talks to me for a few minutes, but there isn’t much to say. After she leaves, I lounge in the living room for a while, reliving the moments of horror from last night until I finally shake it off and take the coffee back into my bedroom, stopping by the kitchen window to peer out.
There, in the distance, sit the ley lines. They pulse weakly, as if they, too, have been drained of the best part of their life—like they just lost the piece of themselves that, when it was locked into place, made sense of the world.
I climb into bed and pull the covers to my chin.
All I want to do is disappear.
Maybe I will.
Chapter 45
Coco
My mom calls later and asks if I’d like to come over for dinner. I simply don’t have it in me, but she’s got her whole “Mom” voice on, which means if I don’t go over there, she might load up the truck and bring herself, along with others, to my tiny cottage decorated in doilies.
So off to their place I go.
When I arrive, it’s late afternoon. No one’s outside, which is good. The last thing I feel like is being surrounded by my entire family.
I enter the house and call out, “Mom! Dad!”
“We’re in here,” comes Dad’s voice from the basement.
I weave through the house and go downstairs, where I find my dad, Mom, Brittany, and Jet playing pool.
“Just in time,” Dad says. “I just whipped Brittany’s butt. Now it’s your turn to try to take me.”
It’s impossible not to smile. “All right. Rack ’em up. Let’s see if I can do it.”
For the next half hour we talk about everything but what happened. The whole situation is soft—no harsh edges. Brittany isn’t trying to one-up or embarrass me, or for once make me feel like the little sister who screwed up every day in middle school.
No, it’s the easiest conversation I think we’ve ever shared as a family.
We even laugh. I mean, really laugh, because my emotional walls, which are usually up, have disintegrated. Wow. If I’d known publicly humiliating myself would bring me closer to my family, I might’ve done it ages ago.
Just kidding.
Even though they’re being super nice, there’s still a hole in me, an ache that lingers. It feels as if it’ll never be filled. So when Mom tells us dinner’s ready, my appetite isn’t there. I haven’t eaten anything since the coffee Cristina brought me this morning, and I don’t think I’ll be able to manage much.
But still I go up, and stop, instantly hit with the familiar smell of shrimp Creole, my absolute favorite dish on this planet. I look over at Mom, and she smiles with encouragement.
She made it for me.
Nu-Nu walks in when we’re sitting down. “Looks like my sixth sense was right. I had a feeling y’all were about to eat. I’m surprised no one called me. Hell, I only live down the road.”
