come out to get my cleats, which had been drying on the step. It’s almost ten at night, so the cleats are dry, only there’s this cat curled up to them.
“Excuse me,” I mutter, bending with the intention of easing my shoes away. But the cat peers up at me balefully, tail twitching, and I snatch my hand back. “They’re mine,” I inform the cat, gesturing lazily to the shoes.
I watch in surreal disbelief as this cat extends a paw, spreads its toes, and sinks five long claws into the top of a shoe.
“You gotta be shitting me.”
The cat gives me a look that clearly says ‘I’m not shitting you one bit’.
I sigh, peering around the yard, wondering who this jerk belongs to. “I’ve easily got a hundred and sixty pounds on you.”
The cat doesn’t even blink.
I’m still engaged in this staring contest when the side yard is suddenly flooded in a wash of porch light. When the door to the neighbor’s house begins opening, I know there’s only a twenty-five percent chance that it’s Emory. Maybe I’ll be lucky.
I’m not.
Because standing there in the doorway is Vandy Hall, sweater wrapped tight around her body as she crosses her arms. There’s a long stretch of silence where we just stare wide-eyed at one another, nothing but the distant sounds of crickets and a purring cat filling the space between us.
She visibly swallows, eyes dropping to the cat. “Firefly, come.” Firefly kneads a paw full of claws into my shoe and stays right where it is. Vandy makes a ‘pss-pss-pss’ noise and holds the door open, coaxing the cat into the house. Firefly is clearly having none of this shit, because the cat simply adjusts, making itself more comfortable.
Vandy meets my gaze again, and she probably tries to hide it—that reluctant, fearful thing swimming in her eyes—but I can see it. It’s even worse than watching her limp across the distance between us, this agonizing realization that she’s afraid of me.
“I’ll just...” She gestures to the cat, but before she can reach down to pick it up, the cat springs to its feet and darts across the yard, disappearing right into the open door of Vandy’s house.
Asshole.
Vandy tugs the sleeves of her sweater over her fists, eyebrows low in a surly expression. “Okay, then.” She turns to leave and I jerk forward, like there’s a fishhook in my chest.
“Wait.”
She freezes, slowly turning to give me a blank look from over her shoulder.
And I’m not even sure why I asked her to. So many things need to be said that it feels like I’m drowning in the tidal wave of it. She could stand there all night, her pretty blonde hair rippling on every passing breeze, and I’d still only be able to scratch the surface.
I want to say that I’m sorry. I want to tell her what I’d told Emory before—that I wish it’d been me. I want to say that I think of her every night when I fall asleep and every morning when I wake up. I want to say that I spent the last three years paying for it in sweat and blood and isolation, and that it still isn’t enough, and that I know it.
I want to say that I’ve missed her.
I release a long exhale, shoulders slumping. “Wait here.” I don’t catch her reaction as I turn back into the house, pulling my bookbag from a kitchen chair. I dig around in the front pocket until I find it, shuffling back to the door.
She’s facing me now, something both defeated and defensive in the way she hugs her middle, eyebrows pulled tightly together. Her face instantly goes slack when I hold up the tube of lipstick, though. I broadcast the throw with a couple bobs of my hand before tossing it over the distance.
She catches it against her chest a bit clumsily, eyes wide as she inspects it. “How did you...?”
I shrug, turning to head back inside.
“Yours now.”
5
Vandy
I don’t know what’s stunned me more.
Seeing Reynolds standing there on his porch—a pair of loose grey sweatpants slung low on his hips, threadbare black tee stretched tight over his broad chest—had been like a punch in the gut. The porch light just barely illuminated the sharp angles of his cheekbones, and with the way he was standing, so inhumanly still, he looked like a statue carved out of midnight and obsidian. In the low light, his eyes were nothing but two dark hollows of vacant shadow, but it