That sucks, I said.
Thirty minutes passed before she texted back: I’m in the fort. I needed to come outside and stare at the stars. You can come over if you want.
K. I pushed send and grabbed my hoodie from the hook on the back of my door.
Dad squinted up from the table where he’d spread the business ledgers and stacks of files, noting the boots on my feet and the hoodie I pulled over my head. He said nothing, but I recognized the disappointment in his tensed jaw before I turned and walked out the front door. If he’d assumed my grandfather’s death was going to turn me into a model citizen, he didn’t know me at all.
There was almost no wind – weird for March. Warmer than it was earlier, too. When I ducked into the fort, I pulled the hoodie off, climbing the ladder and losing my breath at the sight of Melody, sitting against a wall, her lower half wrapped in a blanket, her upper half in a thin-strapped tank.
‘Hey,’ I said.
‘Hey.’ Her voice was scratchy, like an old recording. She’d cried a lot, and recently.
I sat next to her, close enough to touch, but not touching. I knew from experience what not to say – I’m sorry. Not because there was anything wrong or even insincere about the phrase, but because there was no good answer for it.
‘What was your grandma like?’ I asked instead.
Her mouth turned up at the corners, just barely. She rested the side of her face on her knees and looked at me. ‘She was feisty. Opinionated. My parents hated that. They didn’t think she was circumspect – that’s what they used to say to each other. She wasn’t dainty and discreet and easily hushed. They just wanted her to shut up, but no one could dictate to her because she held the purse strings.’
That didn’t sound like a woman who would have urged Melody to let a big brother or boyfriend boss her.
‘She had a ton of grandkids, but I was her favourite,’ she said. ‘She told me so.’
I mirrored her slight smile. ‘I was my grandfather’s only grandkid, so I guess I was his favourite by default.’
‘I’m sure you would have been his favourite even if he’d had a dozen grandkids,’ she said.
My heart squeezed. ‘Why do you think that?’
We were sitting in the dark, a foot apart. Every part of me wanted to be physically closer to her, and now she was tugging on my heart. ‘Well … you’re smart, and determined, and you care about people.’
My lips fell open. ‘You think I’m smart?’
She nodded once, face still pressed against her knee. ‘I know you are. You hide it, though. Because of people like Boyce?’
I lifted a shoulder, one knee up and the other leg sprawled. The underside of my boot was halfway to the opposite wall. This fort was made for six-year-olds. ‘No. Boyce doesn’t rag me about stuff like that.’ Boyce only rags me about wanting a girl I can’t have. ‘I don’t see the point – school, grades, all that. My grandpa quit school when he was two years younger than me, and my dad has a PhD in economics – but what difference did it make? They both ended up working on a boat.’
She blinked. ‘Your dad has a PhD? Then why is he – I mean, why wouldn’t he do something more …’
Lips pressed together, I turned my head to watch her stumble over this knowledge – something I’d not shared with anyone else, even Boyce. ‘More prestigious? Or something that makes more money?’
She shrugged, embarrassed for her impolite question, but still curious.
‘He did. Then my mom … died.’ I stared at the sky. ‘And we moved here. And whatever he learned or did before was just a big f**king waste of time.’
‘So you don’t want to go to college?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, I wouldn’t know how to pay for it if I did.’
I felt my face burn and was glad for the darkness. This was Melody Dover, for chrissake, and lack of money was a weakness to people like her. Weak was the last thing I wanted to appear to Melody.
‘You could get a scholarship, maybe.’
I didn’t want to tell her I’d well and truly blown that to hell. My GPA wouldn’t inspire admiration in institutions of higher learning. I probably wouldn’t be admitted, let alone given a free ride.
I shoved my hand into my hair to push it off my face, and she reached up to trace the tattoo over the back of my wrist with one finger. I brought my hand down, slowly, and rested it between us. ‘I like this,’ she said, moving to the lick of flame over my triceps, tracking it along the cut of my biceps and up under the sleeve of my T-shirt. ‘And this.’
‘Thanks.’ My vocal chords failed me, and the word was a whisper. Our eyes met, lit by stars and moonlight alone.
She pulled her hand back into her lap. ‘Thanks for texting me tonight, Landon. And for coming over. I didn’t want to be alone after this full-of-suck day. Pearl has a ten o’clock curfew, and I guess Clark is asleep – he never answered me.’
I knew for a fact that Clark Richards was closing a deal with Thompson tonight and was currently getting high on the other side of town. ‘No problem.’
LUCAS
She said okay.
I dropped the pad on to Jacqueline’s floor and pressed her to the mattress, carefully, but with no hesitation, the tips of my fingers tracing the pale veins at her wrists. Her heartbeat vibrated under my fingertips, ticking almost double the count of seconds in a minute. My fingers followed those blue trails until they vanished into the crook of her elbows, her skin too fragile and soft to be real.