by Cassia Leo
Dylan had called me in the hospital a few days ago to check on me. He also wanted to let me know Laurel had moved back in next door. It seemed the words I’d said to her in the ambulance had widened the fracture in her marriage. I had to apologize to her.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” my mom called after me as she raced to the front door to open it. But as she stepped between the door and me, she leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Your dad saw her falling down drunk outside her house last night. That’s not the kind of people you should be spending time with right now, sweetheart.”
I clenched my jaw to keep from saying something I’d regret. “Laurel has been through more than you and I put together. You have no right to judge her.”
She swallowed hard and nodded as she scooted out of my way.
As I hobbled down the front steps, I had to keep myself from throwing my crutch through the window of my parents’ rental car. There was nothing that annoyed me more than judgmental people. But my annoyance turned to rage when that judgment was directed at someone I cared about.
I knew my mother was just trying to keep me from getting in over my head. I doubted she knew the gritty details of Laurel’s past or her broken marriage. And she definitely didn’t know I was the latest cause of turmoil in Laurel’s life. If Laurel was falling down drunk in public, I couldn’t deny that I was partly to blame.
I glanced across the street at Edna’s house with the gray siding and wondered if she’d had a chance to meet my parents. I’d have to pay her a visit soon to let her know I was all right. As soon as my leg was up to it, I’d also have to take my power washer over there and hose down the siding for her.
Approaching Laurel’s house, I didn’t see her SUV in the driveway. Maybe she’d finally cleared out enough space in the garage to fit her car in there. In fact, the house looked pretty quiet and empty from the outside. I wondered if she was even home. Maybe she’d already reconciled with her husband.
I knocked on the door and was not surprised when no one came to the door. I turned around to leave, when I thought I heard a moan. Holding my ear closer to the door, I listened for about thirty seconds before I heard it again.
“Laurel? Is that you?” I shouted at the door seam.
Another moan prompted me to try the door handle and I was pleased to find it unlocked. However, I was not at all pleased when I pushed the door open and found Laurel lying on her stomach on the sofa. Her head barely lifted as she watched me through bloodshot eyes. On the coffee table beside her lay an empty wine bottle and an overturned bottle of prescription pills.
“Oh, fuck. Laurel, what the fuck did you do?”
Dropping my crutch, I felt nothing in my leg as I crossed the living room and slid my arm underneath her torso to hoist her up into a sitting position. I took a seat next to her and stuck my fingers into her mouth to see if there were any pills in there.
She pushed my hand away. “Stop.”
“Did you take those pills?”
She shook her head as she made a clumsy, half-hearted attempt to push me away. “The pills are there because I didn’t take them.”
“You didn’t take any of them?” I asked reaching for the bottle to get a look at the label. “This is Xanax, Laurel. Did you take these with alcohol?”
“I said no.” She pushed me off again, hard enough this time to cause her to fall in the other direction. “I drank some wine. I’m fine. Go home, Isaac.”
My mother’s words echoed in my mind. Then, I realized this was just a knee-jerk reaction to Laurel telling me to leave. I knew from experience that when someone adamantly insists on being alone, that’s usually when they need someone to stay. Laurel was alone before I got here, and that obviously was not working out well for her.
The burning pain in my right thigh kicked up as I rose from the sofa and began looking around for a wooden chest or closet where Laurel might have a blanket. I opted instead to go upstairs and grab a pillow and knit blanket from the first bedroom I encountered.
The stitches in my thigh screamed as I descended the stairs back to the living room. Laurel’s eyes were closed as she leaned against the arm of the sofa, her cheek smashed against the gray velour fabric. As I approached, she opened her eyes and smiled, as if it was the first time she was seeing me today.
“You’re awake?” she said, and I tried not to laugh.
“Yeah, just woke up,” I replied, setting the pillow down against the opposite arm of the sofa. “I brought you a blanket.”
She grinned as she reached for my T-shirt and pulled me down onto the sofa. “Let’s go back to sleep.”
Before I could protest, she pushed me against the pillow and laid her head on my chest.
“Goodnight,” she murmured.
“Laurel?”
“Mmm?”
I wanted to tell her that I needed to get back home before my parents started to worry. Or ask her if she knew who I was. Her comment about me waking up made me wonder if maybe she was talking in her sleep. But she had said my name earlier…when she was telling me to leave.
I sighed as I ran my hand over my face. Just then, she wrapped her skinny arm around my waist and snuggled up closer to me, slipping her head into the crook of my neck. I caught a whiff of her hair: strawberries and vanilla.
Fuck.
Shaking my head, I slid my cell phone out of my jeans pocket and dialed Dylan’s number.
“Isaac? Are you out of the hospital?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah. Actually, I just came over to check on Laurel and she’s not doing well. She’s really drunk and there are a bunch of Xanax spilled over the coffee table. She says she didn’t take any, but I’m going to stay here with her until you get home to make sure she doesn’t stop breathing. When are you coming back?”
Dylan let out an audible sigh. “Poor thing. I’ll be home about 5:15. Thank you for staying with her, but are you sure you’re okay to do that?”
I laughed. “I don’t really have a choice. She… kind of fell asleep on top of me. I’m fine. See you when you get here.”
I made one more phone call to my mom’s cell, letting her know I wouldn’t be back for another few hours, but I would be back in time to see them off before they left for the airport. My mother and father were not at all pleased, but there wasn’t much they could do. As I slid the phone into my pocket, I smiled at the way Laurel’s fist was curled around my T-shirt. I hoped to God she wasn’t mistaking me for her husband. I wanted this moment to be mine.
But my mother’s voice continued to seep through the cracks in my confidence. This was a bad idea staying here, letting myself enjoy this moment rather than running from it.
Maybe I was being reckless. Maybe I was going to end up with a broken heart, or worse. But I couldn’t ignore the voice telling me that getting my heart broken by Laurel would be a privilege.
Chapter 9
Laurel
The morning Dylan moved out was dark and dreary, with dense fog hanging low enough to cloak the streetlights and the rising sun. It was perfect weather for the day before Halloween, but terrible atmosphere for saying goodbye to a friend.
Dylan’s best friend Avery was nothing like I imagined. I pictured him as a blonder, more athletic version of Dylan. But Avery was a couple of inches taller than Dylan, with dark hair and a gut that protruded ever so slightly despite the rest of him being a strapping, sturdy young man. But his piercing blue eyes stunned me. They reminded me so much of Jack’s.
Avery opened the trunk of his forest-green Subaru with the yellow and green “O” University of Oregon sticker on the back window. Dylan tossed in his suitcase and his Xbox.
“Is that everything?” he asked Dylan in a deep voice.
Dylan pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head as the first droplets of morning rain began to fall. “Yep, unless you want to hop in there, too,” he said to me, nodding toward the trunk.
I smiled. “Thanks, but I only ride in the trunk when I’m being kidnapped. Plus, I h
ave a ton of laundry to do today.”
Dylan pouted as he reached for me, pulling me into his arms. “I’m going to miss you like crazy, Goldie,” he said, and I wrapped my arms around his waist as he squeezed me tightly. “You’re a hot mess, but no one has ever made a hot mess look quite as exquisite.”
Dylan had taken to calling me by the nickname Goldie lately. I didn’t know where he got the name or why he chose it, other than my blonde hair. But I never questioned it. I missed Jack’s many nicknames he had for me. I missed the familiarity giving someone a nickname implied. I’d probably let Dylan call me Poopie McPoopface just to feel that closeness.
I let out a congested laugh as tears welled up. “Don’t forget about me.”
He let go of me and cocked an eyebrow. “Girl, you’re crazy if you think I’m not going to be texting you every day until you get your ass over to Barley Legal with that app proposal.”
I swiped my fingers over my damp cheeks. “I haven’t even started on it yet. I don’t know if I have it in me to create a good app. I haven’t created an app by myself since college.”
“But you said you always help Jack with his work.”
My shoulders slumped. “But Jack isn’t here.”
Dylan reached forward and tilted my chin up. “Then it’s Jack who’s lost without you. Anything Jack can do, you can do better.”
I smiled reluctantly. “No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Yes, you can.”
My smile widened. “I love you. Call me tomorrow so I know you’re settled in.”
He planted a quick kiss on my forehead. “Love you, too.”
As I watched Avery’s Subaru disappear around the corner, I blinked away tears. Glancing at Isaac’s house as I turned around, I had a sudden memory that I’d dreamt of him last night. He was in my house and I was drunk.
Dear God. Even in my dreams I was a disgusting mess.
I immediately headed inside and took a seat at my mom’s old desk in the downstairs office. I ran my fingers over the smooth silver surface of my MacBook laptop as I recalled the last time I was in this office with my mother.
“Have you seen your cousin Twyla’s new fiancé?” my mother asked as her finger skated over the touchpad on her laptop. “Come and look.”
“Mom, this better not be one of those scare videos where some disgusting monster woman is going to pop out at me, is it?”
“No, it’s a picture of Twyla’s fiancé on Facebook. His name is Giorgio. She met him in Italy. Come here,” my mom insisted as she gathered her wispy blonde hair into a bun at the nape of her neck and secured it with a couple of large hairpins.
I approached cautiously, knowing how my mother loved to surprise me with jump-scare videos and raunchy Magic Mike-style gifs. As I rounded the desk and came up next to her chair, I shook my head at the picture my mother had open on her laptop. It was a gif of a Siberian husky looking like a doofus with it’s nose pressed against a window.
“Twyla’s taste in men seems to be getting worse every year,” I remarked.
My mom looked up at me with a huge grin on her face. “You would have never come over here if I told you it was another dog gif. Instead, I have to promise to show you something you can gossip about. You’ll see when you get older. It’s the dog gifs that matter more than anything in life.”
“Your wisdom is breathtaking, mom. I’ll have to get that quote made into a large vinyl sticker I can plaster on my living room wall.”
She shook her head as she continued to scroll through her Facebook feed, which was overflowing with dog and cat gifs. “Your cynicism is heartbreaking, Laurel. There are a million reasons to shrug off your armor and embrace the beauty and joy this world has to offer,” she said, spreading her arms wide as she said beauty. “One of those reasons is asleep in his Grandma’s bed right now. Yet, you still choose cynicism.”
I wrapped my arms around my mother’s slender shoulders and planted a loud kiss on her cheek. “That’s why you should move in with Jack and me, so your optimism can rub off on Junior.”
She shook her head. “You and Jack are welcome to move in here. I have two empty bedrooms. But I am never leaving this house, nor my garden.”
I stood up and headed for the door. “Think about it,” I said, turning around to watch her from the doorway.
A smug smile curled her lips. “Sweetheart, I love that boy with every molecule of my being. I would give my life for him the way I’d give it for you. But I spent twenty years tending to my garden in my spare time while I worked full-time to support you and your father. Now that I’m retired, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t jump at the chance to give up my life of reading trashy romance novels, cooing at dog gifs, and frolicking in the garden so I can be your full-time nanny.”
“You wound me, mother,” I said, clutching my chest dramatically.
“You’ll understand when you’re my age,” she replied with a warm smile.
I lifted the lid on my laptop and immediately opened my Airmail app. The first year Jack and I were together, while we were still in our senior year at OSU, we broke up for a couple of weeks. We got back together when I received a five-word email from him: Why are you so afraid?
Before Jack, I had only been in one serious relationship, my senior year in high school. My love affair with Todd Germaine ended when he decided to go to college in Florida and I couldn’t follow him. I was pretty sure I packed on my freshman fifteen in my first week at OSU.
The following week, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t get involved in another serious relationship until I’d graduated from college. I loved Oregon too much to end up falling in love with an out-of-state transfer. With my luck, I’d end up moving to Nowhere-ville after graduation to be with my new boyfriend, dooming me to settle for a job as a cashier instead of the tech job I’d worked so hard to achieve.
I spent more than three years at OSU bouncing back and forth between meaningless one-night-stands and excruciating dry spells. But I managed to remain relationship-free, and my GPA was a solid 3.72. My plan to avoid falling in love was working according to plan.
Then, my best laid plans flew out the window the moment Jack laid eyes on me.
Someone was staring at me. Somewhere behind me. I could feel it like a white-hot sunbeam shining on the back of my head. It was him. It had to be him. The guy who always scored highest on all the exams, yet still managed to look like he belonged in an Abercrombie+Fitch ad, with his immaculate dark hair and eyes so blue I could drown in them. He looked like he spent his weekends playing lacrosse, getting shit-faced with his buddies, and having fuck-loads of meaningless sex.
I wished I had a friend in this cloud software development class, but there were a grand total of fifty-four computer science majors at OSU Cascades, and none of them were even my acquaintances. If I had a friend with me, I’d ask them to casually look behind us to see if my suspicions were true. Was the hottest guy in our class — well, on the entire campus — seriously eye-fucking me right now?
I tried to ignore the butterflies in my belly, but I couldn’t focus on anything but the intense feeling of being watched. As soon as the professor dismissed us, I quickly slung my army-green laptop bag across my chest and basically ran out of the lecture hall. But I didn’t get more than ten steps out the door before he was at my side.
“What are you running from?” he asked with a sly grin as he kept pace with me.
The butterflies in my belly were singing a chorus of hallelujah.
“Nothing. I just have to get to my next class,” I replied, keeping my attention focused ahead of me. The last thing I needed was to slam face-first into a door or another human while talking to Mr. Perfect.
“Your next class isn’t for more than five hours,” he replied.
I stopped in the middle of the corridor in the Graduate & Research Center and stared at him. “What did you say?”
He cocked an eyebrow and his icy-blue eyes darkened slightly as his pupils d
ilated. “I said your next class isn’t for more than five hours, which contradicts your claim that you’re in a hurry to make it there,” he said, tilting his head curiously as the fluorescent lighting glinted off his perfect hair.
He was clearly amused he’d caught me by surprise, and pleased he now had my full attention.
“How do you know my next class isn’t for five hours?”
He shook his head as his full lips curled into a smile that radiated confidence. “We’re in the same class.”
I scrunched my eyebrows together. “No, we’re not. I would remember that.”
“You would?” he replied, clearly picking up on the subtext.
I cleared my throat as I began to feel as if my laptop bag was constricting the blood flow in my neck. “I’m pretty sure you’re not in my next class,” I reiterated, but I stopped myself from once again lying about not wanting to be late.
“I changed my schedule. We’re in software engineering and wireless systems together now,” he replied simply, as if that was something he did all the time.
“Oh, really?”
He chuckled. “Really.”
“Why would you do that?” I asked as I lifted my laptop bag a little to ease the pressure on my neck.
He glanced at my hand and my neck, then he looked me in the eye. “Give me the bag. I’ll carry it.”
My stomach did an Olympic tumbling routine inside me. “I can carry my bag, thank you. And you still didn’t answer my question.”
He shook his head. “You’re going to pretend you don’t know why I would change my schedule to match yours?”
I gulped, trying to drink in just a drop of his confidence. “Oh. Am I supposed to make this easy on you?”
His seductive smile stretched into an X-rated grin. “God damn. I like you more by the second.” He reached forward slowly and my heart galloped as he curled his fingers around the strap of my laptop bag. “I’ll carry that. It’s a long walk from here to REI.”
My mouth dropped wide open. “It’s half a mile. And how do you know where I work?”