The Failing Hours (How to Date a Douchebag #2)(43)

“Look at me Win.” I raise my pale, sunless arms, running my palms along my narrow hips and stomach. “Do I look like the type of girl he would want to date? Do I s-sound like his t-type?” Pfft. “G-get real.”

She straightens, sitting up. “What is that supposed to mean? Have you looked in the mirror lately? You’re beautiful. If he isn’t interested, then he’s a freaking idiot—not that I’m telling you to date him, but if you wanted to, you could…not that I want you to.”

“Good, because I’m not.”

“I’m just saying you’re freaking incredible.”

“No, you’re just saying that because you’re family.”

The family I created for myself when I got to school: Winnie, Melinda, and our friend Rory, who still lives in the dorms.

Winnie leans back, propping herself up by the elbows. Rolls her eyes toward the ceiling. “I just know how you are, okay? You’re so…what’s the word I’m looking for? Compassionate. Not everyone has a broken wing that needs mending, Violet. Maybe this guy isn’t worthy of your special brand of caring.”

But she’s wrong.

He is.

She goes on. “I mean, he sounds like a total asshole. Please consider that before you sleep with this guy.”

I slip out of my bra and replace it with a ratty old t-shirt, Winnie’s deafening silence filling the room. Her eyebrows speak a thousand words.

I turn away.

“I hope next time you put the moves on him you know what you’re getting yourself into. I don’t mean to be a creeper, but dude, I was checking to see who was in the driveway when you guys pulled up. Totally was not expecting that giant truck to be parked there, and then the cab light went on, and I could see that it was you, and, well, I couldn’t look away.”

She rambles on. “I know it was you who kissed him first—he wasn’t going to make a move on you. If you could have seen his face from where I saw it—you kissed the stuffing out of him, Violet. He was in complete and utter shock.” She laughs, tipping her head back. Her shocking black hair hits my purple bedspread. “I about died. Died! Swear to God, if Melinda had been home…” Her head gives a shake.

I pad barefooted to my dresser and pull out a pair of yoga pants, stepping into them one leg at a time. “I assure you, I am in no danger of falling into anything with Zeke Daniels without thinking it through.”

“I think you’ve missed my point, Violet,” my roommate says. “Maybe you’re in danger of…him falling into you. Because from where I stood, he didn’t look that terribly awful.”

I go to the closet and pull out a sweatshirt, slide it over my head. “He’s not.”

“Because everyone online makes him sound like a shitty human being.”

“He has his moments, trust me, but…mostly he has no filter. He’s coming around—he’s better with the kids.”

Winnie hands me a pair of fuzzy socks from the drawer of my bedside table. “So what was it like? Kissing him?”

“I don’t know.”

She recoils, face scrunched up. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Your lips were all over him—what was it like?”

I laugh, joining her on the bed. “It was…” I sigh. “Electric.”

My roommate groans. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. Crap, I’m going to have to monitor this situation.”

“There’s nothing to monitor, but be my guest. And get off my bed, I’m tired.”

Once Winnie finally goes back to her own room and I finally climb into bed, I lie atop the covers, twisting the new bangle on my wrist, the metal warmed by the heat of my skin.

In the dark, the pads of my fingers trace the etched sunflower, the beautiful words engraved in the metal.

“Everything happens for a reason,” I murmur, marveling at how the heat from my body now radiates from the bracelet.

Everything happens for a reason.

I know this.

I’ve been learning it the hard way my entire life, one disappointment after the other, starting with the death of my parents—both of them—when I was young. I’ve had time to recover and grow and move on with my life, but—

I never do.

Never.

What I’ve done is adjust. Bend. Amend.

Change.

Learn to live without the things I once had.

That’s what you do when you lose people you love.

They say that once someone dies, they’re always with you in spirit; it’s something I know to be true, because I feel my parents every second of every day. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It only hurts less.

Their memories remain, but I have to work so hard to retrieve them, fragmented as they are. They’re pieces I struggle to puzzle together, obscure and fleeting with every day and week and month and year that passes by.

I was so young when they died. So young.

They were so young when they died.

But I’m here.

I’m alive.

Lying in a bed, staring up at a ceiling I pay for with money I earn myself.

The death of my parents is what led to my stutter; I don’t remember ever not having it, but my cousin Wendy does. I stayed with her family for a while when I was in elementary school, until they couldn’t afford to keep me anymore. They just didn’t have the money.