Bo
Kissing Falon is like heaven. Her lips are soft, and she smells like jasmine and vanilla, and I am not thinking about a single thing that isn't this moment.
Three months. Three months of talking myself out of it, talking myself around it, telling myself I was being honorable and responsible and keeping my word. And now Falon Williams is kissing me on a dance floor in the middle of Everwood ‘s Fourth of July.
Her hands are warm on my chest.
I can’t break away from her.
The music is playing in the background. The lights are glowing overhead, and the summer air is sweet and clean.
I hum when I open my eyes and see her blushing like it’s our first kiss. I would do anything to see this look on her face every day.
Then, a slight movement from the corner of the dance floor catches my attention. My heart sinks, and I still feel slightly. Tyler is standing twenty feet away, staring straight at me.
Falon sees something in my eyes, and I know she knows something is wrong, but I can’t let her know how much my heart betrays me. The fiddler is still playing something slow, the town is watching the band, then,Bang. Pop. Bang.The firework show starts, and the park is bathed in red and white light.
Tyler looks terrible. He’s thinner than when I last left him. The cast on his arm makes him look almost sad and broken.
I’ve known Tyler since kindergarten, and Tyler doesn’t show anything. He’ll take all he can before letting out a grunt. But looking at him now, the wreck took its toll. By the looks of him, he most likely just walked off a transport and came straight into the worst possible moment.
His eyes bore into mine as I hold his sister in a kiss. I can’t imagine a worse way for him to find out about us and a worse moment for him to come home.
Surgery had taken its toll, and too many sleepless nights wear a person down to the studs. The cast on his left arm contrasts against his civilian clothes, and he's standing at the edge of the dance floor with his good arm folded across his chest, and his jaw set like concrete.
He's just watched me hold his sister on a dance floor in the town we grew up in, and the look on his face is the quietest, most controlled version of fury I have ever seen on another human being.
I lower my hands from Falon's face, and she turns.
I step up beside her. Every instinct urges me to protect her. To place myself between them and take the brunt of his anger.
The three of us stand there while the fireworks go off overhead. My PTSD is on high alert, but not because of thefireworks. They are just background noise compared to the tension roiling off Tyler right now.
Tyler pays no heed to the show going off overhead.
Neither do I.
Rowdy presses into my leg from the left. He'd been at the bench, but he knows. He saw my posture and felt my tension from his post near the edge of the dance floor. Never taking his eyes off me.
"Tyler." Falon's voice comes out carefully and softly. She takes one step forward, and he shifts his eyes to her, and I watch something move across his face. It’s pain, anger, love, and disappointment. It's an emotion that only comes from loving someone and being terrified for them.
"Hey, bug." His voice is quiet. Just for her. "You look good."
"You look exhausted," she says.
The corner of his mouth moves. Almost. "Long flight."
Then his eyes come back to me, and the almost-smile is gone.
We look at each other, and a whole conversation happens in that one look.How could you? What were you thinking? I thought I could trust you.Years of friendship between us and a childhood promise have been broken.
"Bo." He says my name flat and even makes it sound like a curse.
"Tyler." I’d expected him to be angry, and I thought I’d be able to explain before he saw us, but here he was, and I had nothing to say. Not now.
He says nothing, but turns his back and walks away, slinging his duffel over his shoulder.
My mind stutters for a moment. Do I stay, or follow? Falon’s grip on my arm tightens when he turns his back, andI can tell her heart is breaking. A few tears streak her cheeks.
