Click to Subscribe - By L. M. Augustine Page 0,17
could care for me and care for herself and put us both to bed even though her parents wouldn’t be back until early the next morning. She’s always been the responsible one, the smart one, the one I can count on no matter what because she’s just that great.
“Oh?” I say, quirking my eyebrow. “Is there a boy in your life I should know about?” I give her a playful push against her shoulder.
She rolls her eyes. “Just this idiot one, unfortunately.”
“Uh-huh. Now that I do not believe.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she breathes.
I shift closer to her. “Cat… you look really weird… what’s wrong?”
She just sighs, ignoring me. “What if I told you I had my sights set on one guy in particular?”
“Then I’d ask you who.”
She shakes her head, smiling a little. “But let’s just say you can’t ask me, or I can’t tell you, or something like that.”
“Oh,” I say, and I stare back out at the empty neighborhood before us.
“And what if… what if I was afraid to tell him?”
I frown. “Who are you talking about? If you tell me I can hel—”
“It’s a hypothetical,” she cuts in. “But just answer the question.”
I give her a dubious look. “Well, in my experience, hypotheticals are always real… but I guess I’d tell you to go for it. It’s always better to try and fail than to not try at all. And what’s the worst that could happen? The guy will turn you down and turn out to be a douche. He’ll just be missing out and you’ll find someone better. I know you will,” I say, meaning it.
“You really think anyone who turns me down is a douche?” she whispers, looking up at me. I’m consciously aware of how close her lips are to my own, and I really don’t understand why.
“Of course,” I say, then frown again. “…why?”
“No reason. But okay,” she says, nods, and goes back to studying the car like she’s hiding something on her features. “I think I’ll do that,” she finally says. “If this weren’t a hypothetical, that is.”
“Now are you going to tell me who this guy is?” I say.
“It’s no one, I told you.”
“Yeah, suuure.”
She smiles and rolls her eyes at me. “All right, fine. You caught me. The guy I’m secretly crushing on is that doughboy from the Pillsbury commercials! I’ve always known he’s hot stuff!”
“I KNEW IT!” I shout too loudly, and she shoves my arm playfully and we laugh and laugh until the whole night melts away.
Chapter 7
from: Sam Green
to: Harper Knight
subject: YOU BETTER COME
School is over. Our meet-up is in thirty minutes. The first one better have just been a LOLJKJK moment and this one turns out to be real.
So.
Be there.
Or else.
I type up the email as I sit in my dad’s car in our driveway, thirty minutes before I’m even supposed to leave. I’m too excited to wait, though. I write the email jokingly, but really, I’m nervous. I half expect her not to show again, to stop responding to my email and for all this whatever-it-is between us to come to an end, just like that.
I don’t want that. Hell, I’d rather have anything but that. Harper and Cat are the two constants in my life, the two who I can depend on and lean and not worry about being weird in front of or saying stupid things. I can just talk with them, laugh and be myself and actually, for once, find happiness. It’s like with both of them, we’re in our own little worlds, our special bubbles that there is no way in hell I want to burst. And to lose either of them is like for my whole world to split apart—like it did when I lost Mom.
I sigh. My therapist, if she knew about Harper, (and if I were still her client—Dad deemed her “unfit” after a few weeks, but we both know it was just because he didn’t want to spend money on me) would probably say this whole internet “love” for Harper is just me reverting back to my childlike state, trying so desperately to fill the void Mom’s death left in my heart with the first positive thing I found, and that ended up to be Harper. After all, I met her only a month after Mom’s death. But the thing is, if she said that, my therapist would be wrong. Sure, that might be how it started, but Harper is no longer just a