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Where I dropped his things from my rooftop.
But it never happened. My stage of grief over Sean was singular. I’d cried a lot until I didn’t.
And it was all his fault.
If Sean had been like Mom, he’d have switched his schedule at school so that we wouldn’t have any classes together. He’d have moved lockers so his wouldn’t be next to mine anymore. He’d have found a new lunch period, let alone a new table.
He’d have completely blotted himself from my life, left those shattered, splintered shards of my heart to fester whenever I thought of him.
Unlike Mom, Sean didn’t do any of that.
He kept up his attempts to talk to me, to explain something that was unexplainable. I shot him down again and again and again. How could I do anything else when at home Dad still started every time the phone rang or someone came to the door, thinking it might be Mom?
Claire didn’t help either, not the way I wanted. She’d always been Team Sean where I was concerned. She knew something had happened between me and Sean the night my mother left, but she had restrained herself—barely—from prying too much. It wasn’t a story I was eager to remember, much less tell, and even though it killed her not to know, Claire could see I wasn’t ready to talk about it. For about three weeks she left well enough alone, which was about two weeks and six days longer than I’d expected.
“I need to tell you something,” she’d said, linking her arm through mine after school one day. “You’re probably not going to like it, so I’m holding on.” She drew in a deep breath, the kind that almost always precipitated a speech of some sort, and I braced for impact.
“I don’t know all the facts, and that’s okay,” she’d added when I tensed. “I understand that you don’t want to talk about it. What I do know is that three weeks ago your mom walked out and you’ve barely been able to look at Sean since.” She let out a gust of breath and dropped her bomb. “I know there’s a connection.”
The blood drained from my face. I actually felt the sensation, and it left me light-headed, unable to protest when Claire led us to the field before tugging me down to the grass beside her. I’d been fending off Claire’s increasingly probing questions, dreading and yet somehow feeling like this moment—the moment when Claire would connect the dots—was inevitable. It was almost a relief to get it over with. Until Claire started talking again.
“I’m not going to speculate wildly here, I know who’s involved and that’s enough. On one hand, there’s your mom. I don’t want to say anything bad about her, but I’m struggling to find anything good to say. She’s made you cry a lot, I’ll leave it at that.”
My eyes were dry at that moment, but only because I’d already cried that morning.
“Then there’s Sean. He’s been the guy to pick you up when you’re hurting over her—sometimes literally—and get you past it. So if something bad happened with both of them on the same night, I’m not going to look at Sean afterward, I’m going to look at your mom. And if you can’t tell me why I should do otherwise—” she held up her hands when my head jerked to face her “—and I understand that you can’t right now—then I have to believe it was her and not him.”
Her and not him. As if it were that simple. As if I hadn’t replayed that night over and over again, looking for ways to exonerate him. Because I missed Sean, I did. Seeing him had always been one of the best parts of my day, and now that was gone.
Claire shifted onto her knees. “Think about it. Your mom has been gone all this time without a word. Whatever she did and whatever damage she caused, she doesn’t care enough to wade back in and try and fix things. Whereas Sean has done nothing but try to fix things, and I don’t see him stopping anytime soon. You of all people should see that for what it is. Something is broken between you two, I’m not denying that, but if there’s a chance that it can be fixed—and he really seems to want to—how can you of all people not try?”
To fix me and Sean.
She didn’t have all the facts, but I couldn’t argue with the ones she did. Everything she’d said about Sean and my mom was true. Historically, Mom was the one who hurt me and Sean was the one who helped me heal. But that one night had changed everything. Sean was there. He’d stayed. He’d said he was sorry.
Maybe Sean and I could be fixed. Maybe the damage could be buffed out, repainted, polished until it hid something only the two of us would ever know about. But that wasn’t the question. The question was...did I want to? Did I want to forgive him for the role he’d played in Mom’s leaving? Could I look at him and not see the ghost of her wrapped around him?
There was no going back. Despite the often-conflicting signals I got from my heart and my head, I couldn’t love Sean anymore, but I didn’t want to hate him either. I didn’t know where that left me, and I wouldn’t know until I tried.
So I did.
Sssslllloooowwwlllyyyy. And trying was predicated on one very clear but unspoken rule: Sean and I would never talk about that night.
At first he was just there, a presence floating around in my peripheral vision, a nod when we passed in the hall. When I stopped flinching every time I saw him, he moved to short conversations and even an awkward high five when I aced a test. After that, I didn’t freeze when he smiled at me—though there was a tension around his mouth that had never been there before. I didn’t move away when he sat next to me or hesitantly bumped my shoulder with his. Slowly but steadily, I was acclimating to something I never thought I’d be able to accept again, much less enjoy: him.
And when summer came and we started running with Claire, shoulder to shoulder, mile after mile, I stopped torturing myself with flashbacks. Because I decided that Sean and I could be fixed. We weren’t an us anymore; we became something else. And we did that because he was right there next to me, not giving up—never giving up. Cautious but determined to fix us.
That was the thing about me and Sean Addison: I wasn’t in love with him anymore, but if I was, it would be entirely his fault.
CHAPTER 5
I kept my steps slow and even as I closed in on Sean’s car. Each time it was a little easier. I hadn’t felt completely at ease around Sean since puberty anyway, so I told myself this was just about exchanging one kind of discomfort for another.
I no longer got flustered or felt that overwhelming sense of euphoria when he was around. The one that made me say stupid things and get caught staring at his eyes. None of that happened for more than a heartbeat or two before I was thrown back to that night in my living room.
I halted several feet away and bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to make my face throb. I wasn’t doing this again. I focused on that pain and pushed all thought of that night into the dark recesses of my mind, and vowed for the hundredth time to finally let it die there.
I was fixing us; we were fixing us.
I chanted that with each step and was relieved when I didn’t have to force a smile as I reached the Jetta.
I approached the driver’s side door of Sean’s Jetta and saw his head tilted back and his mouth open, exhausted but there because he wanted to fix us too. Like a balloon releasing, that knowledge eased the pressure in my chest.
It was getting easier. As long as Claire was close enough to keep between us.
I slapped the window and bit back a laugh when he jumped awake, his hands flying up to the steering wheel.
Sean grunted as he got out of his car. He wasn’t smiling, so the dimple that used to spike my blood pressure was noticeably absent, but I caught a hint of it when he turned to me. “That’s low, Whitaker. I was having this awesome dream where I got to sleep without a small blonde girl yelling at me to—”
“Hurry up, you guys! Those miles aren’t going to run themselves.”
Sean scrubbed his face with his hands. “That. Exactly that.” He eyed me sideways. “Tell me you don’t find her energy level offensive?”
“I can hear you, you know,” Claire called out, already warmed up and bouncing from foot to foot. “So, I’ve been doing some thinking.”
I gratefully turned my attention to Claire, almost not caring that her ideas usually ended with me sweating a lot.
We joined her on the track and I casually moved to place her between me and Sean before sitting on the grass to stretch. “Spill it.”
“I think we’re ready for phase two. What would you say to adding a half hour of bleacher sprints each morning and a ten-mile bike ride on Saturdays?”
Sean’s answer was a colorful decline.
“I can lend you one of my brother’s bikes, Sean,” Claire said.
I choked on the water I’d just sipped and tried not to laugh.
Sean focused a slightly deranged look at Claire. “You think I said no because I don’t have a bike?”
Claire’s eyebrows drew together, as if she couldn’t imagine another reason for him to object.
I reached out to tap Claire’s calf. “Offer to loan him a bike again.”
Sean half bent to rest his hands on his knees and started laughing. It still caught me off guard when he let go so completely like that. I both envied and resented him for it.
“I’m just trying to make you a better athlete,” Claire said. “Trust me, the other guys are training like this.”
“Other guys?” Sean straightened up and gestured his arms around the track. It was empty apart from a pair of silver-haired ladies power-walking in matching purple sweat suits. One of them appeared to be listening to a Walkman. “Who are you talking about?”
Just then the duo walked past and we all stopped to wave.
“Look, I know this doesn’t mean as much to you—either of you—as it does to me.” Claire glanced in my direction. “But I know we can be better. I can be better.”
Sean’s irritation slipped away as he moved to stand in front of her. “In case you haven’t noticed, Claire, you’re already awesome. I mean, look at you. You’ve worked really hard to get healthy and you’re doing great—”
She was. It was more than all the weight she’d lost. Claire thrived on working out.
“Jill and I look like The Walking Dead after running—”
“Thanks,” I said.
“—but you, you barely get winded. Maybe you can do more, bleachers and biking and all that, but this is my limit. Neither the flesh nor the spirit are willing.” That earned him a small smile. “Hey, you need to do more? Go for it. But, Claire, and hear me when I say this...” Sean lightly gripped her shoulders and widened his stance so she wouldn’t have to look up to meet his eyes. “I will never, never, run those bleachers with you.”
Another smile, slightly bigger than the one before it, crossed Claire’s face. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I didn’t really expect you guys to agree.”
“This is just me talking. Jill is probably totally up for it.”
They both looked at me and I froze, a water bottle halfway to my mouth. Sean winked.
“What? No, my flesh is way weaker than his.”
Claire spent our first mile once we moved on to the canals trying to convince me, but fortunately I had the perfect thing to distract her.
Sprinting ahead, I turned to jog backward so I could face them both. “I committed an act of vandalism last night that heroically ended a fight between my new neighbors.” I relayed what happened, omitting the mom’s more violent outbursts. I wouldn’t have wanted those details shared if they were about me.
“Were you scared?” Claire asked.
“Well, yeah, that’s why I threw the can.”
Claire matched her pace to mine, letting me face forward again while Sean hung a few strides behind us. “I mean when he caught you. A potential criminal goes psycho on a...a...”
“Shed.”
“—and then turns on you? I’d be scared.”
Sean came up along my other side, close enough that our arms brushed a few times. “Claire, you get scared watching animated kid movies with your brothers,” he said.
I shot him a tentative smile while pressing closer to Claire. “Besides, he wasn’t the scary one. He was...normal, nice. He wouldn’t even let me pay for the window.”
Claire had tried and failed to defend herself on the movie front several times, and wisely chose not to renew her case. Instead she said something equally asinine. “Are you sure you’re not maybe overidentifying with him because of your mom?”
I came to a sudden halt. So did Sean. I bent forward, resting my hands on my knees and panting while sweat dripped into my eyes, making them sting. All my physical responses were eerily similar to that last night I saw Mom. I looked at Sean, and that immediately made it worse.
Claire stopped several feet away and turned back to us with wide eyes. “That came out wrong. I just meant maybe—”
“Seriously, Claire?” Sean shook his head, and then placed a hand on my back.
“Don’t.” My voice came out harsher than I’d intended, but it wiped the sympathetic look off Sean’s face, so I didn’t regret it. How could he, of all people, look at me like that?
Claire walked back to us, slowly, hesitantly. Unlike me, she was barely out of breath. “I’m sorry. I completely turned off my friend brain.”
“Yeah, you did.”
Claire’s stepdad was a psychiatrist and she used to spout analytical stuff like that constantly. It got so bad that we came up with our own way of identifying it, “turning off her friend brain.” She’d gotten a lot better about it but still sometimes slipped. Her psychoanalyzing me was usually only mildly irritating or something I could tease her about, but when it involved my mom...it was a lot harder to shrug off.
“For the record, I’m not identifying with him because of my mom. I saw something I could fix, so I did, okay?”
Claire was quick to nod. “Okay.”
“Is your friend brain back on?”
“Yes, super on.”
“Then let’s go.”
The last mile was awkward, but by the time I collapsed on the grass back at the school, I was too tired to care.
Claire cared. She made me promise we’d hang out that night.
“I want to run again after dinner, but I’m free after.” She picked up her water bottle and started jogging backward toward her mom’s minivan. “Call me when you get off work.”
I shot up, hoping she’d see the panic in my eyes at the thought of being left alone with Sean, but her back was already toward me. I could call out, but that would only draw more attention to the situation.
From the corner of my eye I could see Sean lying in the grass a couple feet away with an arm thrown over his eyes. I felt a strong urge to slink away, and also the urge to reach out. The conflicting impulses were not mixing well with the remains of Claire’s energy drink, and there was a good long minute where I could have thrown up.
I decided it was because of the running.
Just as I became moderately sure I wasn’t going to vomit, Sean sat up and tugged me to my feet.
“Come on, I won’t be able to sleep until Claire’s energy drink wears off. Let me give you a ride.”
And because my father didn’t raise a coward, I said, “Okay.”
CHAPTER 6
The walk to Sean’s Jetta felt like my own green mile. The idea of being alone with him in a car with barely two feet between us brought my nausea trickling back. We hadn’t done that yet—been alone.
I cast Sean a furtive look while unlocking my bike, trying to ascertain if he was as uneasy about the prospect as I was. But after one fleeting expression, he took my freed bike and started walking it to his car, defaulting to an easy tirade on the evils of running while we wrangled my Schwinn into the backseat of his Jetta. We knew from previous experience, even if the Jetta occasionally forgot, that it would fit, but only if you got the angle perfect.
“I think it needs to go to the right. I can’t see, am I hitting something?”
Sean squatted down. “Tilt it left.”
I tilted, and the bike slid in.
Sean straightened, a grin on his face. “And you doubted me.”
Yeah, I kind of had. But his smile was light and I found myself matching it, releasing the breath I’d been holding since Claire left.
Until his smile changed as his eyes moved past me. I turned and saw Cami Gutiérrez waving at us from across the parking lot.
I should have been relieved at the sight of another person to put between me and Sean, but that wasn’t my first thought, seeing Cami. Or my second. Or my third.
Not because there was anything off-putting about Cami—the opposite, actually. Just looking at her, you could tell Cami was the kind of girl who dotted her i’s with hearts and rescued kittens from trees. She’d transferred to our school at the end of last year and already had more friends than I did.
Not that I was bitter.
And I was used to noticing girls noticing Sean, both before and after I stopped loving him. Sometimes he noticed them back, which unfairly sucked just as much now as it had before.
With her soft brown hair and matching skin, and the dimple that was nearly as legendary as Sean’s, Cami got a lot of notice. I almost felt like I needed to duck when I got caught in the cross fire of their combined dimples. I gave the edge to Sean though. I still had a hard time not getting a little dizzy when he smiled at me, and I’d had years of practice. Cami had only recently moved to Mesa and was therefore totally defenseless.
“Cami G,” he called when she reached us.
“Sean A.” She let the sounds run together so it sounded like Seany.
My stomach prepared to sour at the hug I knew he was about to give her, but he surprised me by high-fiving her instead. Cami didn’t register the omission like I did; she beamed at Sean, then wisely broke eye contact before she did something stupid like fling herself at him. Smart girl. She turned to include me in the conversation.
“So how’s cross-country? Did Claire convince you guys to go out for the team yet?”
Sean launched into the many reasons why hell would be hosting the Winter Olympics before that happened. Cami hung on every word, laughing. She had a great laugh.
I looked back and forth between them, noticing the way she touched his arm, and the way he fed off her laughter. It wasn’t nearly as hard to watch as it used to be. Good on me.
“I don’t understand why you don’t just quit then?” she asked.
Sean’s gaze slid to me, but I didn’t meet it. He never explicitly said it, but I knew why he worked an eight-hour night shift and then ran five miles with Claire hounding his every step. On bad days, I told myself it was penance.
“Because then he wouldn’t have anything to complain about,” I said. “Plus he gets to verbally torture Claire every morning and she has to take it.”
“Poor Claire,” Cami said.
I felt Sean’s gaze linger on me a second before renewing the role of Claire’s long-suffering friend. He waved a hand in front of Cami’s face. “Poor Claire? Did you just say poor Claire? Try running with us sometime and see how sorry you feel for her.”
Cami’s eyes lit up. “I would if I didn’t need to practice.” She hoisted her duffel bag higher and pushed her still-damp hair over one shoulder. “You could maybe try swimming with me.” She flushed and rushed on before Sean could answer. “Speaking of, I have this awesome pool at my house. You guys should come over sometime.” She looked at me. “Claire too.”
I nodded, knowing Claire and I were an afterthought, a genuine one, but an afterthought all the same. She wanted Sean, and from where she was standing, I couldn’t blame her. I also couldn’t watch their love connection unfold two feet from my face. I’d rather brave the car alone with Sean.
I moved to the Jetta’s passenger door. “Guys, I need to get going. My dad keeps threatening to fire me if I’m late again.”
With effort, Cami pulled her gaze away from Sean. “Do you need a ride? I’m going past your shop so it’s no prob—”
“No way.” Sean cut her off a second before the opposite response rushed to my mouth. “I’m not loading that—” he tapped a knuckle on the back window toward my bike “—into another car.”
Cami shifted her feet. “Oh, sure. I’ll catch you later.” She took a few steps backward and the distance between herself and Sean did wonders for her confidence. She pointed at both of us. “I’m serious about coming over. I’ll text you guys next weekend, okay?”
We said goodbye and I opened the passenger door, watching Cami walk away and hating that I checked to see if Sean was watching too. He wasn’t. “Did she convince you to go out for swim team?”
Sean shrugged. “I’m not looking for a new sport.”
I gave him a look. “You know that’s not why she asked you.”
“Well, I’m not looking for that either.”
Once upon a time I’d have lived off a comment like that for weeks, trying to read more into it than was there. I didn’t do that this time. There was no point.
Inside the car, Sean reached across me to grab his sunglasses from the glove compartment. I inhaled before I could stop myself, and let my gaze stray to the stubble lining his jaw. It’d be rough and scratchy if I touched it. I curled my hands into fists and gazed out the window. He was saying something, and I felt his words drift over me like he was running the back of his fingers along my arm.
And then he was running the back of his fingers along my arm.
I jerked away. “What?”
“I said you can pick the music.”
I hit the first preset and didn’t change it when a commercial for life insurance came on. While he drove, I focused on the view out the window like it was my job to catch every detail. I berated myself for caring if Cami’s crush on Sean went both ways, for reacting in the wrong way to his closeness, for wanting to bring him nearer instead of pushing him away, for forgetting—however briefly—that we were broken.
I slammed the door a little harder than necessary when I got out at my house.
“Watch it!” Sean killed the engine and followed me.
“The door’s fine. Besides, I’d just fix it if it wasn’t.” I didn’t add that it was just a Jetta, but I thought it.
“The thought of you in coveralls does good things for me, but that’s not the point. And, hey.” He darted in front of me when I turned to get my bike. “What did I miss? We were okay like two minutes ago.”
No we weren’t, but I didn’t say that. Every day was a struggle not to swing wildly from one emotion to the other, a pendulum that he controlled whether he knew it or not. I couldn’t slip back into the way we used to be as effortlessly as he could. It was like trying to put on an old coat that no longer fit. I felt sweaty and constricted whenever I tried. And then I’d get angry, because he didn’t seem to have the same problem.
“I’m just exhausted from not sleeping great and all the running. Sorry for slamming the door. I’ll be nicer to the Jetta, promise.” I petted his car.
Sean exhaled, and it ended in a laugh. “That’s funny, you talking to me about being tired. Check out my eyes.” He caught my hand and tugged me close—real close—and it was all I could do not to step back. “I look like the biggest pothead on the planet. I’m pretty sure my mom is secretly drug testing me even though she knows I work nights.”
I should have been able to dismiss a casual touch from Sean as easily as he did from me. Not that I was able to casually touch him yet, but that was the goal.
The casual part, not the touching.
I freed my hand without effort. “They are pretty red.” But still that same achingly perfect blue.
Through the windows of the garage, Sean noticed my dad’s truck was gone. “I thought you were kidding about your dad firing you for being late.” Sean gestured with his chin toward the garage. “That a bad sign?”
“No, I woke him up climbing through my window this morning, so he was going to go in early. It’s cool, I’ll just ride my bike.”
“I didn’t know you were still doing the roof thing.”
I saw my own discomfort mirrored in his eyes and realized his comment had reminded us both that we hadn’t talked much in months, and never about anything of consequence.