The Falling (Brightest Stars, #1)(46)

“Ha, ha,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You were gone awhile, sooo—”

Laughter bounced around the room.

“Fair enough.” Austin took a bite of pepperoni pizza.

Cheese slid down the slice and he caught it with his tongue. He was so much like a younger teenage boy sometimes, as if he had stopped maturing after tenth grade. It was part of his draw, I guess—the innocence of him. He really did have a good soul, and it was easy to see. He was the kind of boy who would start a fire and then save you from it.

I wondered if this new girl understood what she was in for, if she knew she was playing in the brush on a hot day. A pretty brunette with a smattering of freckles across her cheeks, she had deep blue—almost navy—eyes. Her shirt set off her coloring, and the style of her loose peasant top resembled her hair—ruffled sleeves falling in waves down her arms, mimicking the curls in her long tresses. She was sitting on the floor by Austin’s feet, looking up, a flower tilted to the sun. The attraction she had to him was clear as day. The way she almost willed him to turn his face to hers, to say something, anything, to her. The way her shoulders were angled toward him, pulled back to expose her long, graceful neck. She wasn’t sitting cross-legged like the others on the floor. The awkward child’s pose was not for her. She had folded one leg on top of the other, ankle to knee, and she was tilted sideways so that her legs formed an arrow pointing toward my brother. This girl was vulnerable and open. Calculating, too.

Body language could be so obvious.

Did Austin know that she was planning their first kiss, their first date?

The paper plate in his hand slipped a little and she lifted the corner for him. He looked at her, smiling, thanking her, and then she did this pouty thing with her lips, and a flippy thing with her hair. It was impressive as hell, even to me, and I wasn’t the intended target. I looked away from my brother and the girl. I’d seen this movie before.

“Mendoza seems great,” I said to Kael.

“Yeah. He is.” Kael looked at his friend, who was offering his special tequila to someone who had just come in. I thought I had seen the guy before. In the kitchen, maybe. I remembered his black-and-white checked T-shirt. From the way he reeked of cigarette smoke, it was clear that he had been outside for a smoke break. At least this group of friends was respectful enough not to smoke inside the house, unlike some Austin had had in the past.

“He’s married?” I asked.

Kael’s forehead scrunched up a little and he nodded.

“Cool.” I was about out of small talk. I could have talked about the weather or the alcohol, but that would have seemed desperate. I was buzzed from the drinks and getting paranoid about Kael’s silence, and while I may have been anxious, I wasn’t desperate. I wasn’t going to be the needy girl at a party. A party at my dad’s house, of all places.

Kael nodded again and then . . . nothing. I should have been used to the barriers he put up, the distance between us, but he had let down his guard since coming to the party, so much so that I was beginning to forget it had even existed. But there it was, brewing next to me.

And that was why I didn’t like dating. Or whatever this was.

I knew I was being ridiculous. I mean, it had been only about twenty minutes since I’d decided to admit to myself that I was more than just attracted to him. I was completely fascinated. Enamored. We had been standing side by side in the kitchen and I could feel that heat of his. It didn’t matter that we weren’t touching. I could feel myself being drawn toward him. It was strong, this pull. Almost animal in its intensity. I lost myself in the physical for a moment, and then my brain took over and started to dissect the reasons he wouldn’t like me, or why this couldn’t—wouldn’t—work. I was such a romantic.

I looked around the room, to friendly Mendoza pouring Austin and the ruffly brunette a shot. To the three guys sitting on the floor, and the voices coming from the kitchen. Everyone was alive in their own way, talking, listening, drinking, laughing, playing with their phones. Everyone except the one person I really wanted to connect with.

My frustration grew and grew inside my head, and by the time Austin and the girl were making out (which took less than five more minutes) I couldn’t sit there anymore. I needed some air.

I got up from the couch, and if Kael noticed, he didn’t care to show it.





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE




I sat down on my mom’s swing, feeling the heaviness of the situation with Kael. Not for the first time, I thought of it as a mood swing. My own little joke. Only it wasn’t funny.

I’d lost track of the number of times I’d made my way out to the porch at this house. If I was feeling anxious and alone, if I wanted to think something through or just daydream, I’d head to the swing. I was out there a lot after my mom left; sometimes I thought maybe she would be sitting there. And when Dad was talking about shipping Austin off to live with our porn-king uncle, you’d find me on the swing. There was something soothing about the gentle back and forth as the seat pushed into its arc and then returned. I could be close to full-on panic, but after a few minutes on the swing, my breathing would slow, and I’d feel myself calm down. Most of the time, anyway.

When Brien and I were on the rocks, I’d planted myself out here, trying to get some perspective. But more than once, Estelle had followed me out to see how she could help. She’d give me this look that I could tell she thought was sympathetic. To me it just seemed obnoxious, like she was trying to sell me something. A used car, maybe. A used stepmother was more like it.