Page 43 of Lovefool

17

THE CALM AFTER THE STORM

SUTTON

Lake Capitano is a hurricane. Not in the sense that she’s messy and unpredictable, but in the sense that she’s strong, unyielding, passionate. She loves without caution. She loves without boundaries. She channels her emotions into actions, and that’s more than I can say for myself.

I can’t believe I just stood there and let that snooty piece of shit speak down to her. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t my place—I should’ve had her back in there. I insisted on coming with her to the meeting. She had every right to lash out at me.

And fuck, don’t even get me started on the terrible things her brother said. It was bad enough that he took some gnarly punches, but from one of his hockey teammates? The people who are supposed to have his back on and off the ice?

As we sit on a bench in the peculiarly warm weather—a respite from what seems like a perpetual pall of ground-hugging fog—ice cream is a temporary fix. I can’t bring myself to eat.

Unspoken words stall on my tongue, and my stomach rolls with a nausea that can’t be tamed into clarity. I stare down at the overprocessed mound of sugar sinking into the biodegradable lining of my cup, and tiny runnels of condensation fall down the mountain range of my knuckles.

Meanwhile, Max happily laps at his ice cream a few feet away from us. Either he’s genuinely forgiving, or this is all just a ruse to make it seem as if his heart isn’t currently breaking into two.

Lake, on the other hand, is in the same boat as me. She hasn’t touched her treat since she sat down. She reminds me of a feral animal that’s still unfamiliarized with the good nature of humans—one that’s only eaten from a generous palm a single time in the past and deemed it a fluke.

A line of tension runs through my shoulders—which just so happen to be crowding against hers—and I silently negotiate with my heart to be still, as if she can hear the incessant jackhammering from where she sits. She’s uncharacteristically quiet. I can only imagine the things she says to herself when no one else is around to hear.

None of this is her fault. She knows that, right?

When I gather the smallest metric of courage to speak, my voice is an overture to the crackling chorus of a vindictive storm. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t going to fix anything,” I say in a hushed whisper, falling prey to my hyperactive thoughts.

It takes a few seconds for Lake to snap back to the present. Wherever she went, I couldn’t follow her.

“Huh? Oh. No, this is”—she glances at her brother, who’s still blissfully lost to a sugar-induced haze—“this is perfect. Thank you.”

“It’s not enough,” I blurt out, watching her expression fall in real time.

I hate the way despondency clings to her brow, darkening the light that I’ve grown to look for in every room I walk into. Light as luminescent as Lake’s can’t be replicated or bottled. It exists in its own vacuum, and I’m one of the few idiots lucky enough to have experienced it.

A frown flits over her lips. “It is. I lost my cool back there, and I made my brother look bad. I made you look bad by association. I should be the one apologizing.”

“You shouldn’t apologize for being human,” I tell her, wishing that I could reach out and hold her hand right now.

She hyper fixates on the ski slope of sorbet glistening underneath the midday sun. Her inextinguishable self-hatred is a match that catches flame even despite the wind that forbids it.

Realization dawns a moment later. “Neither should you.”

I can’t help but chuckle. It’s flat, sure, but it’s a sign that I’m not completely numb. “You have an astounding track record for being right, you know that?”

“Mm-hm. It’s my greatest quality,” she says.

With my free hand, I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear with a reverence I only employ when it comes to her. She looks at me as my fingers delicately brush her skin, her pupils doubling in size.

“I think your greatest quality is empathy.”

“Empathy? I nearly bit Max’s principal’s head off back there,” she scoffs.

“Because you were protecting your brother. That asshole was out of line with you and was more concerned about upholding the school’s reputation than getting justice for Max.” I feel a growl crescendo at the back of my throat, and I reflexively squeeze the cardboard cup in my other hand. So tightly that I don’t even register the overflow of ice cream that has spilled down the rim and adhered to my fingers. I wipe the carnage off with a napkin.

Where I’m smoking like a fired gun, Lake wallows in a doldrum that’s been established for what I can only assume has been years. She’s tirelessly clawing her way up from the depths of a sinkhole just to lose her footing and slide back down into a mess of topsoil and groundwater.

“Why are you being so nice to me? I hid my true self from you. I intentionally kept my past a secret.” The capillaries in her glossy eyes are close to bursting.

“I’m not entitled to know everything about you. You weren’t keeping your past from me to deceive me. You were trying not to relive the worst moment of your life.”