You and Everything After (Falling #2)(83)

There’s a long silence while my sister sits in the car, keys in her lap, and a dress on her body that’s fit for a night out at the club. I’ve gotten so used to seeing my sister wear this part, and she’s good at it. I never thought in a million years that she didn’t want it.

“I don’t know, Paige. I just don’t rule anything out as an option. That’s all. You…you sort of rule things out, without even trying,” I say.

She laughs lightly at my suggestion, turning her attention to our parents’ house straight ahead. “You have no idea how true that is, Cass. No idea,” she says, biting at her lip and squinting her focus to the nothing in front of her before pulling her purse from the center console and finally stepping out of the car near me. She looks down at her feet, then at the heavy bags surrounding mine before she meets my eyes.

“I’m really sorry about Chandra,” she says, pausing short, her breath held, her tongue held, her mind deciding if she has more to say. “I never thought she would use what I told her to hurt you, but…”

“But…” I almost finish it for her, my heart absolutely ripping in half because I know what she’s going to say.

“But there was a small part of me…that sort of wanted her to,” she says, her lips open, more words needed. But there’s nothing more to say. I can see the regret in her eyes, but she respects me enough not to lie, not to throw fake apologies on top of her confession.

I let her walk away. I wait for the door to close completely behind her. My sister is gone. Somewhere on our path together, our roads split, and I lost her.





Ty


“You come up with your big move yet?” Nate asks, flopping down on the sofa next to me. He’s making that annoying sipping noise, puckering his lips to try to suck up the spillover around the top of his Orange Crush can.

“No, someone had to go and write their girlfriend the Nicholas Sparks of all love letters, so now the expectations are out there at, like…well, let’s just say they’re unrealistic expectations now! And dude, can you stop licking the top of your soda can? You look like a junior higher learning how to French kiss!” I might be a little irritable.

Nate chuckles while he takes a full drink from his soda, and I secretly wish for him to inhale some of it, make it come out his nose. But no, he goes back to the sipping.

“Why don’t you just write her a letter then, since it works so well,” he says, his legs crossed, all relaxed and shit on the coffee table.

“Don’t get too comfortable there, Casanova. You still haven’t heard from Rowe yet. You don’t know that your letter worked.” He deflates a little when I say this, and I’m hitting below the belt. I know his letter worked. And I know when we head to Arizona for his tournament tomorrow she’s going to be there to surprise him. Of course his letter worked. Hell, he even picked up my girlfriend with his apparently poetic, Shakespearean prose. Nate’s letter is all Cass has talked about.

“Your brother’s letter, oh my god, Ty. Beautiful…Nate’s letter was so amazing…OMG, I can’t quit thinking about Nate’s letter….”

Yes. There have been OMGs. I hate OMGs. Cass is not an OMG girl, and OMG, Nate’s letter has turned her into one!

As much as I want to give him crap for it, I can’t. It was a damn good letter. So good that I’ve gone to jewelry stores—actual jewelry stores, where women in suits have to pull things out of cases for me to look at—just to find the right…something! I keep putting the jewelry back, though, because no matter what’s inside, when you give a chick a small velvet box like that, it gets weird. Even if it’s not a ring—and it’s totally not going to be a ring—there’s the small moment, that brief second where she thinks “what if” and you think, “oh shit, she thinks it’s a ring.”

I’m done looking in jewelry stores.

I’ve been trying to tell Cass I love her now for days. It was easier to say it to her dad. When I get with her, when we talk on the phone, there’s just this block, like my brain falls apart.

“Dude, I know you want to make this special, or whatever, but I gotta tell ya, you’re way overthinking it,” Nate says.

“Easy for you to say. You’re practically a damned Disney fairytale,” I say, moving back to my chair to head to my room.

“Don’t call me Disney until I get the girl,” he yells as I move farther down the hall. “If that letter doesn’t get a response soon, I’ll be more like one of those depressing gangster movies you like where everybody dies.”

“No, you’ll be like Leo in Titanic,” I yell back over my shoulder. “Martyr. You’ll be a total martyr.”

“Your obsession with DiCaprio is not healthy!” he yells, sending one of Mom’s throw pillows down the hall behind me with a fling. It falls short, which makes me smirk. He missed.

“Don’t dis Leo. And pick that up, Mom doesn’t like it when you throw her things around,” I say, waiting for three, two…

“Nathan! I don’t throw your things on the floor,” my mom says, stepping out of the laundry room to pick the small pillow up and put it back in its place. The child in me still loves getting my brother in trouble, even when it’s meaningless.