Rebound (Boomerang #2)(37)

“Engineered?” I offer. But I think “manipulative.” And empty.

I move my cards around, arranging them in a full house and keeping my face neutral.

This is the man I’m entering into a business arrangement with, and that worries me. Worse, he’s Alison’s father. As the night wears on, I find that worries me even more.

When I wake up, the sky is just starting to lighten from black to purple.

Saturdays are harder because I don’t have a company to rush off to in Century City. They’re calmer and I have more time to think, and thinking usually takes me to Chloe.

She hated early mornings. Anything before nine was an ungodly hour to her.

It’s been a few days since she’s been on my mind this clearly. Maybe even a week. That makes me bury my face into my pillow and press my eyes shut until they ache.

I don’t want to stop remembering her, but it’s the guilt, it’s the f*cking guilt that somehow I avoided the pain and it felt good. The guilt of knowing that it wasn’t work or surf that gave me the relief. It was another girl.

Even with the work complications aside, even if she wanted me, if I could get to her, if I could somehow hold onto the girl who jumped into my arms at the Gallianos’, Alison and I can never happen. I don’t have room for her in my head, or in my life. I don’t have the heart to f*ck up again and lose the girl I love.

Just . . . no.

I roll onto my back. Then I glance at the sketch that started in Chloe’s notebook and ended up on my skin.

I remember the day she drew it.

She was lying on her stomach under a tree by the art studios on campus, the white page slowly filling with birds and clouds under her sure artist’s hand, her battered combat boots just peeking out of her long dress. At 5'2" and petite, everything was long on her. Everything she wore had frayed edges—and usually ink or paint stains—like her hands almost always did too.

In my button-down shirts, with my computer science major, she was completely exotic to me. My opposite in every way. My compliment. We were just freshmen at Princeton. Barely there a few months. I was already in love with her.

I remember noticing that day how her long auburn hair looked red when the sunlight hit it. At night, by candlelight, it looked almost black. I remember thinking she was like that. Fire and darkness, rolled into a beautiful girl who had my heart.

Chloe had set down her pencil. She’d looked at me and laughed.

So her, I’d thought. To laugh when most people would only smile.

Something on your mind? she’d asked.

And I remember being too embarrassed to tell her how much I felt right then, under a tree on campus. Just watching her. So I nodded to her sketchbook.

“Why birds all the time, Chloe? They’re kind of beaky and their scaly legs are freaky. They’re freaky and beaky.”

“No way, Adam. Birds are perfect creatures! But not all of them. Just the flying ones. Ostriches? Chickens? Dumb. A waste of feathers. Birds are supposed to fly. They’re supposed to soar up the clouds—not be stuck on land. Why be something if you can’t actually be that something?”

“I love you, Chloe. But sometimes you make no sense.”

“I love you, Adam. But sometimes when you pretend I make no sense, yet you clearly think I make the most sense ever but you’re too proud to admit it? Then I really love you.”

My throat gets raw, and my chest feels like it’s stretching, about to rip open. I look outside and watch the waves through my window blur and then clear as I lock it back down. Shut everything back.

Will I ever be free of this? She’s not even here anymore. Why doesn’t it stop?

The lockdown isn’t working. My skin feels like it’s going to break open. I feel like I’m going to break open.

My mind seems to want to torture me, because I remember that it’s Saturday. Alison has her Boomerang date tonight.

And that puts me over the edge.

I jump out of bed. “Grey!” I yell. I pull on swim trunks, yank sweats over them, and tug a beanie onto my head. By the time I grab my keys off my dresser, Grey’s standing at my bedroom door, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Fuck, it’s early. What time is it?”

“Early. Six.”

He lets out a long breath. “I think I’m still drunk.” After poker, Brooks and Grey went out to the bar at Malibu Inn. Grey’s bloodshot eyes finally focus on me. “How you doing, bro?”

“How do you think I’m doing?”

He frowns at the anger in my voice. I rarely let my temper go.

“Get your board loaded up.” I want the water. I want his company. I want to shake off the image of Chloe drawing in her sketchbook, and of Alison, staring at my shoulder like she wants to know. Like she’d listen and understand.

Grey doesn’t move. “You know there’s no magic wave, right?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He shrugs. “You act like going out there and surfing is going to fix it. Like this film company’s going to be the thing that saves you. Same thing you did with Boomerang. Same thing you’re doing with me. Nothing’s going to save you, Adam. Not until you face your shit. When are you doing to do that? When are you going to face your shit?”

“Good advice from someone who’s wasting his life sitting around. You call partying every night facing your shit, Grey? Avoiding Mom’s calls? You’re like a three-year-old having a tantrum. You’re making her—and Dad—miserable.”