A Breath Too Late - Rocky Callen Page 0,36

hair. I was to be squished between this new boy at school (I knew everyone in our class except him) and my old best friend who I had divorced when we were twelve years old.

I was quite certain the gods (if there were any) were trying to punish me.

You looked back at the door and smiled. It was the kind of smile that should be illegal.

For the past few years, I studiously avoided you. I had ignored the murals you painted during the art exhibitions, ignored your notes in my locker, ignored your name whenever it came up in conversation. I had blocked you out. My life had been so much easier that way. Letting you in had been a foolish risk with Father always looking over my shoulder, ready to pounce. At least this way, I was safe.

That’s what I had told myself. But then you smiled at me from our Chemistry desk and I could not ignore you. First, you would be one of my partners for the rest of the year. And second, in all of this time of blocking you out, you became someone new, someone … beautiful. I scolded myself at the thought. Your hair had grown out and curled away from your chin. You had stubble on your jaw. And your eyes, those gray eyes, somehow had gotten even bigger, as if the whole world could fit inside them.

Stop smiling at me! I didn’t move from the doorway. I was an awkward roadblock and people were pushing past me. You stood up and gestured for me to take my seat. I looked away from you. Outside. To all of the non-smiling things.

“Ellie Walker!” you said to me, still smiling, when I finally reached our desk.

“August Matthews.” I tilted my head in greeting. You were far too bright and colorful. You were far too much and I wanted to dim you down like an Instagram photo.

“And Henry Jordan, right?” I said to the boy with the buzz cut sitting on the other side of my chair.

He startled at the sound of his name and looked at me and waved nervously. I smiled at him, suddenly feeling a little warmer to him just because he looked as unsure and unsteady as I felt.

I shuffled between the seats and breathed in deeply. The heavy, oppressive feeling, the sadness that often chased me into rooms and out of them, hadn’t lodged in my chest yet. I was grateful for that, at least.

“Wow, Henry. You got a smile out of the infamously non-smiling Ellie Walker.” You said it and that made Henry smile at me. It was a kind, puppy-dog smile. I smiled at him again. I felt you watching us, I felt you roll your shoulders and tap your knuckles on the desk.

“So,” you said a little too loudly, “senior year. What are your plans?” It is hard to make conversation when you don’t want to, and it is even harder to make conversation with someone when you strategically cut them out of your life for years. The words seem forced and simple and ridiculous. What do you care what my plans are?

Henry answered first. “I am getting ready to apply to schools for pre-med.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s impressive.”

Another puppy-dog smile in response. I suddenly wanted to pet his buzz cut.

“I am looking at schools for business.” Your legs stretched out under the table. You were seventeen. Your voice was rougher than when we were kids and yet it was still so familiar, like the whisper of a memory. I blinked at you from under my veil of side bangs.

“Business,” I repeated.

“Yeah, business,” you said back. You looked confused and uncomfortable with the obvious disbelief in my voice.

I blinked again. “Not … art school?”

You shrugged.

I suddenly felt betrayed. It was irrational. It was dumb. But you had been the boy of brushstrokes and color, the artist who made drawings I wanted to live in. I sighed. I really didn’t know you at all.

“Original,” I said finally.

You fake-glared at me. It had been so long since I had seen that expression. I thought my heart would explode and be a catastrophic mess on the table between us.

“Ah, I see you are trying to mortally wound me, dear Ellie, by hurting my pride. But alas, you have already done that, yet here I am, still standing.”

“Sitting.”

“What?”

“You are sitting.” I tried to push past the way you said “you have already done that,” and so I decided to talk about my