This Is Falling(32)
“How do you feel about jumpers?” She’s holding up a one-piece cotton…thing…that is like a tank top and shorts sewn together. I scrunch my nose at it, and she drops her posture with a heavy sigh. “Fine. No jumpers.”
She works through several more hangers, but I notice there’s one she keeps coming back to. Finally, she just stops and looks down, her hand on a deep-blue cotton dress. “Come here,” she orders, so I slide my feet toward her. “Turn,” she says, flipping me so I’m now facing Cass, my back to her.
If I weren’t so shell-shocked from her helping me, I might have seen it coming. But without warning, Paige unzips the back of the dress I’m wearing, and the garment falls to the floor. My mother, my doctor and the surgeons who fixed me are the only ones who have ever seen my scars. Cass and Paige are both seeing them now. They’re too big to conceal—running from my hip, up to my right ribcage: deep divots, where bullet fragments penetrated my skin and lodged themselves into my body, and cuts where emergency surgeons had to go in and remove them. I can’t bring myself to look Cass in the eyes, and their silence is making me start to shake.
“Here,” Paige says, turning me to face her head on. My eyes are glued open, wide, as I turn; when I finally square myself with her, I’m expecting to see the disgust and judgment on her face. Paige is, perhaps, the last person I would ever want to see this. I try to keep my gaze focused on the clothes beyond her shoulder when I face her, but she reaches her hand up to my chin and tilts my eyes to meet hers.
“This…” she swallows hard, and then her lips curl into a soft, tight smile—her eyes sympathetic, and, for the first time since I’ve met her, real, “this is my favorite dress. It’s long enough that you can sit at a game and not have to worry, but it will show off your shoulders and really accentuate your legs and the color of your eyes. Arms up.”
She slides the dress along my arms and over my head, pulling the draping of the skirt down quickly over my scars without ever once mentioning them. There are a few small snaps along the back, and she pushes them in place before she reaches her hands into my hair and starts to gather the waves into her hands. She moves me closer to the mirror as she does this, and then she meets my eyes. “You should wear your hair up. Like this. It’s pretty,” she says, giving me a quiet but reassuring face. I’m unable to stop my eyes from watering, so I wipe the palm of my hand up both cheeks and sniffle.
“Thanks,” I say, and she reaches for my hand with her free one, squeezing it once before letting go.
Chapter 13
Nate
“Yeah Mom, we’ll just meet you there. You’re already parked. It would take you and Dad a long time to walk over here…Okay, love you.” My parents wanted to come see our room, but it’s still pink. In fact, Ty and I decided just to leave it pink—and, just to show Cass and Rowe how much it doesn’t bother us, Ty went to the Target in the city and bought Barbie comforters and pillows for our beds.
I am actually nervous about tonight…and Rowe. I can’t help but feel like maybe I bullied Rowe into going to the game tonight. Ty won’t let me talk about it anymore though. He says I’m turning into a girl, and I kinda am.
September in Oklahoma is strange. It’s pretty damn hot all day—and then at night, it’s super cold. I’m usually okay with being cold, so I keep my shorts on with the black long-sleeved shirt Rowe wore the other night. It smells like her, and I may never wash it again. Fuck, I am a girl.
We’re walking from our end of the hall to theirs when they walk out their door, and my god…
“Pick up your chin, bro. Your girl is smokin’,” Ty says, and I just smile because yes, she is. She’s wearing this blue dress that hugs her body and sways around her legs when she walks. Her feet are in flip-flops, but her hair is up, drawing my eyes to her bare shoulders and neck. I want to be a vampire.
The closer she gets to me, the more she blushes, and her hands are clinging to the wallet and thin sweater in her hands. She’s going to get cold later, and I should probably tell her to grab something a little warmer. But I don’t. This is a strategic move on my part.
“Hi,” she says, almost a whisper, her eyes looking down. My heart is pounding so loudly—I’m convinced everyone around me can hear it. Rowe and I haven’t talked much since the night on the ball field, and it feels like we’re starting over a bit. I want to hold her hand in the elevator, so I make it my challenge.
We step in, and Ty pulls Cass down on his lap; Rowe smiles when she watches the two of them. I wonder where Cass has been my brother’s whole life, because watching them just seems right. They’ve been dating for three weeks, but it feels like Cass has been a fixture with him for forever.
As the door closes, I slide my hand along the bar in the back until it bumps into Rowe’s, and when she doesn’t move away, I loop my pinky in with hers. Sparing a glance at her, I see her lip twitch into a faint smile. That’s a relief, because I’m not letting go now until I have to.
Rowe and Cass look more like sisters than Cass and Paige. Both are wearing their hair pulled high on their heads, and even though they’re both in dresses, they look like they just rolled in from the beach. “You look pretty,” I say, leaning closer to Rowe as we walk through the main lobby, and I take advantage of my nearness by threading my next finger through hers.