Come to Me Quietly(10)

On the lounger, Megan was lost in Sam, a tangle of limbs and whispers.

A soft snort escaped my nose. She was making him work for it, all right. I couldn’t blame her, though. I’d never seen her look at someone the way she’d been looking at him tonight. I just hoped he didn’t turn out to be a complete *.

I glanced back at Gabe. I hoped Sam and Gabe were alike because I was sure he wasn’t anything close to an *. Gabe offered a tiny grin as he grabbed a towel for himself, a silent affirmation of my perception.

I realized tonight had been nice, that I felt good, and maybe spending time with Gabe didn’t really hurt all that bad. I smiled back at him.

I turned away, laughing at a few of our friends who decided it was late enough and they’d had enough to drink to peel all their clothes off and jump in the pool.

Glad I climbed out before I ended up a party to that.

Megan rose like a shadow in the darkness, her voice hoarse. “Hey, Aly, I think someone keeps trying to call you. Your phone is lighting up like every five seconds.” She reached for it from the small table where I’d left it, held it up while the backlight glowed, the ringer silenced. “Oh, looks like it’s Christopher calling,” she said, turning it toward me.

Barefoot, I tiptoed to where Megan still lay curled up with Sam. The backlight faded as I took my phone from her. I ran my finger over it and saw I missed three calls from him. “Weird,” I mumbled as my nerves spiked.

“Everything okay?” Megan asked.

I lifted one shoulder as I redialed. “I don’t know. He tried to call me three times.” Christopher never checked up on me.

Over the years, things had changed so much between us. When we were younger, Christopher had done his best to ditch me while I did my best to keep up with him and his friends. Funny, it was his idea that I move in with him once I graduated from high school. Since then, we’d grown really close. We looked so much alike, his green eyes just as bright as mine, though his hair was a shade darker – so black it was almost blue. He was tall, built in all the right places, and thin everywhere else. It made me laugh at how many heads he turned. When I moved in, I’d needed some time to get used to the constant string of girls he had parading in and out of his room. In the end, it came down to respecting each other’s privacy. We’d worked it out. He did his thing while I did mine.

I wandered out into a quiet corner of the yard. A slow dread seeped over me as I dialed the phone. I held the towel close to my body as if it were a cloak of protection. The call rang twice before Christopher answered.

“Hey,” I rushed out, “is everything all right?”



“Yeah… ,” he said, his voice doused with distinct relief when he spoke. “I just needed to catch you before you got home.”



The small panic that had built up in my chest subsided, curiosity taking its place. “Oh… okay. What’s up?”



He hesitated, then practically begged as he whispered, “And please don’t get mad, okay? Because I really need you to be okay with this.”



I felt a frown form between my eyes. I could almost see him shifting uncomfortably as he sat on the edge of his bed. The vibe of this conversation was completely out of character for my typically carefree brother. “What’s going on, Christopher?”



He blew out a gush of air. “Do you remember Jared Holt?”



The name was enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

Did I remember him?

When I looked back now, I wondered how it was possible for a heart to be broken at fourteen. But my heart had, because it’d broken for him. Still it was something my young mind could never fully comprehend. My feelings for Jared had haunted me, left this hollowed-out place deep inside me. I’d held on to that remnant of pain for so long, until it faded and transformed and became this mystery that inhabited the deepest recesses of my mind. A shadow of a memory.