Living Out Loud (Austen, #3)(15)

Annie tried to smile and almost succeeded. “He wasn’t even sick. That’s the hardest part, I think. If he’d been sick or old, if we’d had any idea it was coming, it might have been easier. I keep telling myself that at least.” She took a breath. “It was a car accident. Mama survived, but she lost use of her legs.”

“Jesus,” I whispered under my breath, my mouth dry as bone.

“My uncle—her brother—lives here and offered to help us out while we try to…I don’t know. Figure out how to go on, I guess.”

“But it doesn’t feel like there’s a way to move on, not really. Does it?”

She shook her head. “Most of the time, it feels like wearing a plastic mask over the truth my feelings. Or wrong, like I shouldn’t even consider my own happiness or try to move on. But then I remind myself that it’s what he would have wanted. In fact, I think he would have insisted on it.”

“I understand how you feel,” I said, my voice quiet. “My mom died a few years ago.”

Her eyes met mine, wide and shining with understanding and connection. “Greg…I’m so sorry. I know that doesn’t mean anything—”

“It does. There’s no real consolation to give, only the offer of acknowledgment.”

She nodded. “That’s exactly it. I’d rather that than, Just give it time, or, It’ll get easier. Because I know it won’t. It’s a wound that will never heal, no matter how much time passes. I’ll just find ways to live with the pain.”

“Years have passed, and I still sometimes forget she’s gone,” I said, half talking to myself, though I knew she understood. “The holidays are the worst.”

Tears sprang in her shining eyes out of nowhere. “Daddy died just before Christmas.”

Her hand rested on the table, and I didn’t think, just reached for it, hoping she could feel that I understood as best I could.

She nodded again like she’d heard me, her throat working as she swallowed. “It’s never going to be okay, that holiday. It used to be my favorite. The magic, the lights, the love, the food. And now…now, it’s only going to remind me of what I lost.”

“Do you have any siblings? Because that’s what got me through—being there for them, with them and my dad.”

“I have two sisters—one older, one younger. They’re all I have left, besides my loss.” She drew a breath. “It’s just so hard to grasp how quickly everything changed, everything I’d ever known, all in the span of a moment. A stoplight. A phone call. A sentence. And now, I’m here. But I can hear him in my mind and in my heart, telling me not to waste the chance I’ve been given moping around.” She laughed, her nose a little stuffy. Then, she smiled. “So, I’ll listen to him like I’ve been taught.”

I smiled back. “I bet he’d have approved of that.”

“I hope so.”

She moved her hand out from under mine to pick up her sandwich again, and I reached for my own.

The moment passed.

But the connection didn’t.



Annie

Greg and I finished lunch—courtesy of the pocket money Susan had been keeping me stocked with—and as I stuffed the last bite of the meatball sub in my mouth, I found I felt lighter than I had in some time. I’d shared my grief with someone who understood, someone who could shoulder it.

Grief was strange that way. It was a constant companion, one my family saw and felt and understood too well; we could share that grief, but sharing sometimes made it harder. Because my loss was heavy, and they had their own weight to bear. I felt compelled to keep my grief to myself so I wouldn’t weigh anyone else down more than they already were.

But Greg understood. He’d been through it too, in his own way. And the sense of connection, forged by sharing an experience so profound to both of us, was so strong and alluring, I yielded to the heady desire for more.

He was telling me a story about his younger sister, who was three years older than me, his face alight with love for her, and I listened, amused and enchanted.

His smile was bright and handsome, his jaw square and strong, the line sharpened by his dark scruff. Finger ruts cut through the top of his long hair, the sides neatly trimmed, the effect a contrast of clean and casually chaotic. And his eyes were the most stunning mixture of blue and green, the color deep and dark and rich as velvet. I tried not to stare at the tattoos on his forearms that rested on the table between us—I hadn’t seen a lot of tatted up guys in Boerne—and I wondered what their stories were, thought about how tall he was, how broad his shoulders were under his well-fitted shirt that hugged the curves of what appeared to be quite substantial biceps.

Really, Greg was gorgeous. Gorgeous and funny and clever.

And he’d graduated high school when I was in the second grade.

It was just too weird to even consider—although I had in some detail—even if he were interested in me, which he absolutely wasn’t.

No way would a guy like Greg be interested in a kid from Nowhere, Texas, who had never been kissed.

For years, I had considered ad nauseam why I had never been kissed, had never had a boyfriend, hadn’t even entertained the idea of any of the guys I knew.

One reason was that I’d known the vast majority of the two hundred kids in my class since we were in kindergarten. When you grew up knowing everyone’s business, it was hard to see anyone in a new light. I watched some boys go from pigtail-pulling bullies to pigskin-throwing jocks. Some went from country boys in plaid pearl snaps to drama boys with enviable eyeliner skills. Everyone wanted to reinvent themselves, but we all saw each other as we had in Mrs. Clary’s first-grade class. I was sure they only saw me as the sick girl with eyes too big for her face, the girl who always had a book in her lap and laughed a little too loudly. And even though new kids occasionally moved in—Boerne was becoming an up-and-coming spot for new families—they were quickly absorbed into one of the defined social cliques.