The Girl I Was Before (Falling #3)(34)

“Yeah, I know. But she might not remember, and she gets a little freaked out…”

“It’s okay,” I interrupt. I don’t want him to feel bad. Now that I’m over the shock, it’s actually sweet that he wants to make his daughter comfortable with me. “I guess I do kind of look like Barbie.”

“Nah, not really. I just panicked,” he says.

A silence settles in again, but this time it feels different, and it makes me smile.

“So…Paige…” I can hear him relax, and there’s something extra in the tone of his voice that makes me bite my lip. My door is still open, so I get up to close it, feeling suddenly protective over this conversation.

“So…Houston,” I mimic his inflection, and he chuckles—that raspy tired laugh I remember from our late-night studying. It’s probably not good that I remember that sound. And it’s definitely not good that I’m chewing my fingernail. It’s not good because I’m pretty sure we’re flirting.

“How was your Christmas?” His question is so warm, so genuine; it makes my eyes sting. I’ve been holding on so hard—trying to fight off things hitting me from all directions—this simple question from Houston has me floored. How was my Christmas?

“It was…” I pause, letting a tear slide down my cheek, but only halfway before I stop it. “It was incredibly uneventful,” I laugh through my cry, mostly so Houston doesn’t sense my sadness.

“Mine too,” he says.

“Oh I don’t know. All day at Aunt…” I wait for him to fill in her name.

“Jody’s,” he says.

“Right, Aunt Jody’s. I bet you spent the day eating homemade things and playing some games and singing around the piano.” I’m basically imagining his Christmas as every single one of my favorite holiday movies.

“Something like that,” he confirms. “How about you? Why was yours so, what did you call it? Uneventful.”

“We had sushi,” I say. There really isn’t a need to elaborate; that kind of says it all. My entire winter break has been a series of nothing-days and blank-evenings. My dad worked most of the time; he’s been wrapping up my sister’s assault charge. We exchanged gifts this morning, mostly items we all could have easily bought for ourselves, and then we went our separate directions. It’s too bad I don’t like reading more. I could have filled my lonely hours with that today.

“Sushi’s…good,” Houston says, and I hear him fighting against his laughter, finally losing the war. “I’m sorry, I can’t lie. Sushi…for Christmas? I’m sorry, Paige. That’s pretty uneventful.”

“Yep,” I say.

“Well, if you’re living here while there’s some holiday, any holiday, I promise you one thing—it won’t be uneventful,” he says. I shut my eyes and imagine what his house must look like, picturing it filled with plates of cookies, holly, and candles. That comfortable lull drapes over our conversation again, and I let myself crawl into bed and pull my blanket up to my chin. I’m strangely more at ease talking with Houston than I am talking with my sister and parents.

Perhaps too relaxed, as I let myself ask Houston one of the millions of deeply personal questions that have been pecking away inside my head since I met his daughter.

“What happened…to Leah’s mom?” The calm in our silence from before gets icier as my question lingers, Houston’s breath heavy enough to be heard through the phone. “I’m sorry. Too…that’s probably too personal.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s something I talk about. We don’t really keep secrets or hide things in my family,” he says. Maybe I’m jaded, but my mind immediately throws up a dozen flares ready to call him on that bullshit statement. It’s not possible for a family to be that honest. Everyone has secrets.

“That’s novel,” I say, not really masking my cynicism.

“I guess,” he says, with a sharp laugh. “But…it’s sort of sad that you think that. I don’t blame you. Most people do. I guess I mean it’s sad that most people think being honest is strange. I just feel like even the ugliest truth feels a whole lot better than carrying around the weight of lies.”

His argument resonates with me, and even though my instincts are still to reject it, I tuck what he said in the background, on top of that pile in my head of reasons-I-should-respect-Houston.

“In that case, I’d like to hear your story…Leah’s story,” I say, giving in to my natural tendency to charge forward and question, to test his open-and-honest policy.

“Bethany moved here her sophomore year,” he begins, and I don’t know why, but hearing her name hurts inside, as if her name instantly makes her more real to me, even though I never met her. “Her parents got divorced, and she wanted to stay with her mom, and since she had family here—”

“Aunt Jody,” I fill in the blank.

“Ha, yes. Aunt Jody, and about a dozen other people,” he chuckles. There’s a longer pause as he breathes again, almost as if he’s gathering breath to save himself from suffocating through the rest of his memories. “Bethany was pretty much the hottest girl ever to step foot in our school. She had this long dark hair, and a body…”