The Moment We Fell

by Kelli Warner

  For the next hour, we try on half her wardrobe. Fortunately for me, we’re the same size. By the time we’re ready to leave for the beach, I’ve thrown my own outfit back into my bag and borrowed a cute, lacy top from Quinn’s collection, along with a soft, button-up sweater and a to-die-for pair of jeans that I silently hope I won’t ever have to return.

  “You look perfect!” Quinn says from her vanity, which is cluttered with an obscene collection of cosmetic tubes, bottles and compacts. She’s placing the last few curls in her silky hair with her hot iron.

  “Is it wrong that we’re going to a Halloween party but we’re not wearing costumes?” I ask.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered,” she says, hopping up and heading back into her closet. When she returns, she’s holding two headbands with black cats’ ears on top. “What do you think?”

  “I think that looks like we’re phoning it in,” I reply. A flimsy headband does not constitute a Halloween costume, not in my world.

  “Do you want to freeze your butt off? A beach house party in late October is no joke. So it’s this or risk hypothermia. Your choice.” Since I’m not used to the change in weather here yet, I take one of the headbands from her.

  “Will I know anyone else at the party tonight besides Miranda?” I ask, sliding the headband into place and checking my reflection in the vanity mirror.

  “Mmm, I think she invited Dane and a couple of his buddies. Miranda’s had a thing for Dane since sophomore year. She’s not exactly subtle about it.”

  “How come they’ve never gotten together?” I ask.

  Quinn shrugs. “I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure he has a thing for you right now.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “He practically fell all over you the first time he laid eyes on you. And Dane’s not really the fall-all-over-girls type of guy. Girls fall for him. All he has to do is catch the ones he wants.”

  I’m surprised and flattered, but a little confused, thinking back to that day outside the bookstore when he couldn’t seem to get away from me fast enough. I think Quinn might be a little off on her assessment.

  She stands and fluffs her hair, her own cat ears perfectly in place. “How do I look?”

  “You’re the cat’s meow,” I say, and we laugh at my stupid punch line.

  After Quinn gives herself one final approving look in the mirror, we head for the stairs. She pauses beside a closed door. “Oh, shoot, I forgot something.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Nothing big. Just go downstairs and grab my coat, will you? It’s the blue one in the closet by the door. I’ll be right down.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, of course. Go. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  I nod and descend the staircase, but just before I reach the landing, I hear a door open at the top of the stairs and Quinn’s muffled voice.

  I hesitate, but curiosity propels me back up the stairs. I move carefully, making my way to the door. It’s not my intention to eavesdrop, but the door is ajar, and I hear Quinn softly speaking to someone inside.

  “Mom, Paige is here.”

  A woman moans. “I can’t see her, sweetie, not now.” It must be Mrs. Talbot, and there’s a note of panic in her muffled words.

  “It’s okay,” Quinn says, her tone low and soothing. “You don’t have to. Just rest. We’ll be fine. We’re going to watch movies and order pizza.”

  There’s a soft whimper, and I hear the woman’s tormented and broken voice ask, “Did he call?”

  The bedsprings creak. Quinn either sat down, or her mother rolled over. “No, he didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  A small, emotionally saturated cry escapes past the door, and I take a quick, surprised step backward as Quinn urgently tries to calm her weeping mother. “Shhh, take it easy. Here, drink some water.”

  “You’ll tell me when he calls, won’t you?”

  “Yeah, of course I will.”

  “Promise me,” Mrs. Talbot begs. “I need to talk to him. I need to tell him—”

  “I promise. Now, lay back and get some sleep, okay?” Quinn gently says. “Things will be better in the morning. They always are.”

  After another small whimper and a sniff, her mother mumbles something unintelligible.

  I’m trying to process what is happening, what it is that’s wrong with Mrs. Talbot, when Quinn backs out of the room, softly closing the door. I freeze because there’s nowhere for me to go. Biting my lip, I flash Quinn an apologetic look. We stare at each other for a long beat, then Quinn sighs and hurries past me for the stairs.

  “I told you to wait for me in the living room.”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” I say, trailing after her down the staircase. “Is your mom all right?”

  “Yeah, she’s fine. I think she might have the flu.” She rummages in the foyer closet for her jacket.

  “She seemed fine at school today.”

  “It came on pretty suddenly.”

  “Do you want to stay home and make sure she’s okay? I’m all right with staying,” I say.

  “What? No, she’ll be fine. She’ll be asleep soon, if she isn’t already.” Quinn grabs her wallet and keys off the entry table. “Which means we’re in the clear, so let’s go.”

  “Quinn—” I glance back up the stairs and then return my eyes to my friend, who looks like she can’t get out of this house fast enough. “What’s going on?”

  “I told you.” She opens the door, and a gust of crisp evening air wafts in.

  “You know you can talk to me if you want. Besties and all that?” I remind her.

  Quinn pales. “You’re being ridiculous. Can we please go now?”

  “I don’t feel right leaving your mom like this,” I say. From what I just heard, Mrs. Talbot isn’t in any condition to be left alone. She might need a doctor.

  Quinn closes her eyes. When she opens them, she peers down at her hand wrapped tightly around the doorknob. After a few seconds of deliberation, she closes the door and steps back. “Fine. You want to know the truth? My mom isn’t sick. She’s a mess.” Disgust laces her words. “She does this every weekend.”

  “Does what?”

  “Falls apart.” A nanosecond after her blunt words leave her lips, Quinn’s eyes fill with anguish, and she sits down right in the middle of the entryway. Her wallet and keys slip onto the hardwood floor as her head falls into her hands.

  I kneel beside her. “What are you talking about?”

  “Swear to me that you won’t repeat this,” she says firmly. “I mean it, Paige. No one can know.”

  “Know what?”

  She tilts her head and stares me down. She’s not messing around.

  “Okay, I swear,” I say.

  Quinn rubs her forehead with the heel of her palm. “I told you, everyone has secrets. Mine is that my dad walked out on us a few months ago.”

  “Oh, Quinn, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” She chuckles harshly. “He’s a jerk who’s been cheating on my mom for months. He didn’t even have the decency to try to hide it.”

  My lips part, but I don’t know what to say. All I can muster is, “That’s awful.”

  “He’s a professor at the university. The distance made it pretty easy for him. At first, he told my mom that the drive back and forth was getting too difficult, so he got an apartment near campus and only came home on weekends. Convenient, huh?”

  I try to think of something useful to say, but I find myself at a complete loss for words that could temporarily medicate her pain. I wonder if this is how people feel when I talk about losing my mom.

  “When she found out about the affairs—because there was more than one,” Quinn sneers, “she confronted him. He wasn’t even sorry.” She throws up her hands, as if releasing an armful of disbelief into the space around us. “Can you believe that? Instead, he told her he wanted a divorce. Then he packed his bags, and we never saw him again.”

  “Never?”


  She shakes her head. “He’s always sending me money to try to make up for the fact that he’s an ass, but no, I haven’t seen him in months. At first, I thought about sending back his checks, but then I realized that would be too easy. So, now I just blow it all on clothes.”

  “Wow,” I breathe, trying to process her words. I’m not quite able to make all the pieces fit, but at least I understand where all the clothes in her closet came from. Each item is her father’s attempt at buying her forgiveness, and I now feel uncomfortable in my borrowed outfit. “I don’t know what to say,” I admit.

  “Because there isn’t anything to say. I mean, what can you possibly say about a man who threw away his family?” A tear forms at the corner of Quinn’s right eye, and she hastily brushes it away. “And you know, I’m fine with that. Whatever. But my mom—she didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve to give twenty years of her life to a creep who just discarded her when something better came his way!” Her eyes drift to the top of the stairs. “She’s completely ruined. And the thing is, I don’t know how to make her better. Somehow, she manages to hold it together at school, but on the weekends she gets depressed, and then she breaks down and completely checks out. It’s like she unravels—and I’m the one who has to take care of her. I hate him so much for that.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Quinn clears her throat and brushes a stray tear away from her cheek. “Well, it would be all kinds of awesome if you could forget about this uncool meltdown that I’m having in front of you on the floor right now.” She readjusts her cat ears and searches my face with pleading eyes.

  “Don’t worry about it. But if there’s anything I can do, please tell me. I’ll help any way I can.”

  “Thanks.” Quinn clambers to her feet, picking up her wallet and keys, and I follow her. “But honestly, the best thing you can do is get me out of here and get me to that party.”

  “Really? I mean, I want to go to this party, too, but what if your mom needs you?”

  Quinn shakes her head, dabbing at her eyes to remove any remnants of smudged mascara. “Once the wine kicks in, she’s out for the night. I spend most of my weekends alone.”

  I make another attempt at mustering the words that will make this better in some way, but again, I come up short. “Have you thought about talking to someone?”

  Quinn rolls her cornflower blues skyward. “Like who? Mrs. Hopkins? How did that work out for you this week?”

  Message received. I’d met with Mrs. Hopkins for our second lunchtime meeting on Wednesday, and it had been exhausting. She’d asked more questions about my mom and my living arrangements with Jay, and I could see she was a little disheartened when I offered her nothing of any value. The consequences of not spilling my guts is that I have yet another meeting scheduled with her for next week. I’m pretty sure she thinks the third attempt at trying to get inside my head will finally be successful. I hate to tell her, but the only thing that will be on next week’s agenda will be another heaping dose of disappointment. I don’t plan on sharing my secrets with anyone, especially not someone trying to analyze them.

  “Look, I’m sorry I laid all this on you. And if it’s all the same, I’d really appreciate you keeping it to yourself. Not even Zoey and Sam know,” Quinn says. “My mom will freak if anyone at school finds out.”

  “I swear,” I say again. “But you shouldn’t have to deal with this by yourself. I’m here for you.”

  “Thanks. You’re good people, Paige. And don’t forget, that offer goes both ways, if and when you decide you want to talk.” We hug, the kind of hug that’s quick but tight enough that we have another separate conversation within our brief embrace. I smile, and she bends down, swiping her coat off the floor at her feet. It feels good to be there for someone else.

  “All right, now that that mess is over, let’s go get our party on,” she says.

  “Okay, but not too late. I’d feel better if we didn’t leave your mom alone for more than a couple of hours. You know, just in case she wakes up and needs you.”

  Quinn nods. “I can work with that.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Cade

  I spot Paige the second she steps out onto the patio of the beach house. I try to convince myself that I haven’t been watching the door for the last twenty minutes, waiting for her to arrive, and that instead, I’ve been preoccupied with the drunk sorority chick and her friend who’ve been trying to chat up any member of the band who will give them an ounce of attention.

  “Is that her?” Jared asks from beside me, ignoring the blonde who’s dressed like a slutty nurse and nearly draped all over him, and instead training his eyes on Paige and her friends. I give him what I think is an inconspicuous nod, but Ash looks up from his drums just in time to catch it, and he’s suddenly a little too interested in our conversation.

  “Which one? The hottie in the blue coat?” he asks, pushing his Batman mask up onto his head to get a better look.

  “The other one,” I correct, my attempt at playing it cool quickly disintegrating now that we’ve also caught Zeke’s attention. He glances up from where he’s kneeling in front of one of the amps and zeroes his gaze on Paige and her group of friends. They’re exchanging a round of hugs with Miranda, who’s dressed as Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin.

  “The hottie in the sweater,” he croons, a little too loud, and I chuck my guitar pick at him like it’s a Chinese throwing star.

  With quick reflexes, probably from all the other times people have thrown things at him, Zeke deflects the pick with his forearm and laughs. “Looks like I hit a nerve.” He scoops up the pick and pitches it back at me. “Seriously, man, she’s cute. What’s her deal?”

  I shrug, because I need them to take it down a couple of notches and quit acting like grade-schoolers. And because I have no idea what Paige’s deal is, and I’ve given it way too much thought since our encounter at the bookstore.

  “All right, let’s do this,” Jared announces, snapping me out of my thoughts. “We’re not being paid to analyze Cade’s schoolgirl crush.” I kick out a foot, but he jumps out of the way with a devilish smile. These guys can be jerks sometimes, and they get way too much pleasure out of reminding me that I’m the youngest one in the group. But they are as close to brothers as I’m ever going to get, and at the end of the day, they always have my back.

  With a grin still plastered across his face, Jared launches into a riff on his guitar to get the crowd’s attention. It works, and heads turn in our direction amid a few whoops and whistles. I lock eyes with Paige for a brief second, and she smiles, giving me a small wave.

  As we dive into our first song, I try to concentrate on the music as Jared croons the lyrics I wrote, his cool, Keith Urban-like persona—shaggy blond hair and all—drawing the attention of most of the female population that’s now gravitating toward us. The guy can work a crowd, I have to give him that. I glance up occasionally and locate Paige beyond the dozens of bodies now pressed in close in front of us. She’s settled on a bench on the far side of the stone firepit, sandwiched between Quinn and—Dane Sloane. I grimace. The douchebag is dressed in a long white coat with a toy stethoscope dangling from his neck. Despite Miranda’s attempts to command his attention, he’s entirely focused on Paige. I exhale against the tension that’s coiled beneath my shoulder blades.

  Paige’s hands are outstretched to the flames, absorbing the heat. Occasionally, she laughs in response to the conversation unfolding around her, and that perfectly pitched sound wafts through the space between us. Then—her gaze lifts and our eyes meet. It’s kinetic, and my first instinct is to look away, to focus on the crowd and pretend that I’m too in to what I’m doing to notice her. But damn, she’s all I see, so I hold her gaze. When her attention shifts to the clearly intoxicated girls dancing in front of us, she frowns and turns away to talk to Quinn.

  And that’s all I get. Paige doesn’t so much as throw me another look during the next three songs. At one
point, she disappears into the house with Quinn, and when she returns, she gravitates to the far corner of the patio, where she’s leaning against the railing. Sloane is practically glued to her side, leaning in too close, and that damn tension is back, biting into my spine like it has claws.

  “Dude, you’ve got total stalker eyes,” Jared says after the song comes to an end.

  “Shut up,” I growl.

  “I get it,” he says. “But unless you’re willing to go over there and talk to her, you need to holster the daggers you’re throwing at that guy.”

  I ignore him.

  “All right, have it your way,” Jared says with a disappointed shake of his head. “I’m sure those two will be very happy together.” With a jerk of his chin, he signals Ash, who nods, then knocks his drumsticks together four times, cueing our next song. This one’s a ballad, and couples quickly begin to form, entwining together and falling into rhythmic swaying. As pathetic as it is, my eyes stray back to the corner of the patio in search of Paige. She’s not there.

  When the song finishes, Jared announces that we’re taking a break. I turn to place my guitar in its stand as I hear a voice behind me.

  “Hey.” Paige offers a single wave, then shoves her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. The three groupies to my left take her in, their expressions souring when their eyes shift to me.

  “Nice costume,” I say, glancing at the cat ears perched on top of her head. The smile that begins to form on her lips immediately derails when the girl in the nurse getup slides between us and leans in to me, nearly throwing me off balance with the force of her weight. She snakes her arm around mine, stroking my forearm with her fingers.

  “Hey, cutie,” she slurs. “Let’s go get a drink.”

  “No, thanks,” I answer, extracting my arm from her grasp. As I step back, she stumbles at the absence of my body. She immediately turns predatory eyes on Paige in a nasty glare that I swear just lowered the temperature of the night air by ten degrees. But thankfully, without another word, she ambles off toward the house with her two friends in tow.