Red Nights - Shari J. Ryan Page 0,10
a weak smile. It’s a start. I guess those facial muscles do still work.
“Come on, Lady. Time to put you back on a leash.” Hayes gives me one last glance, showing me the hint of a smile, too.
I’ve always heard that guys with dogs pick up more women. This guy has it down to a science.
* * *
“Good morning,” Aspen chirps. Her eyes look a little puffy, like she didn’t sleep well. Or maybe it’s from the crying. She steps out of her bedroom and stops dead in her tracks, scanning the room. “What did you…”
“I hope you don’t mind, but I clean when I’m stressed out.” And your apartment was so messy I felt like running away last night.
“Oh!” I’m not sure if that was a sound of delight. “I almost forgot what the carpeting looked like.”
She looks annoyed.
“I made coffee,” I say as a peace offering. I lean over to the counter and grab the two mugs, handing her one of them.
She eyeballs me warily while taking her first sip. “Something has gotten into you. I thought I’d have to revive you today just to get you dressed.” She looks down at my clothes, which are the same as I had on yesterday. “Stay here. I have something you can wear today.”
Please be clean. Not that my current clothes are any better.
I hear her slinging hangers over a rod, and then she shouts, “Got it!” She returns with a black dress and flings it at me. “How’s that?”
“This will work.” I hold the dress up, matching up the size to my body. It should fit. I think we’re the same size. “Mind if I hop in the shower?” I cleaned that this morning, too.
“Of course. There are towels in the closet.”
I walk past her, clutching the dress in my hand, ignoring the sight of her room as I walk past it. It’s the only place I didn’t get to.
“Hey, Felicity—or Liss, eh?” She giggles. “Where did you go last night? I woke up to use the bathroom, and you were gone.”
Shit. I know I shouldn’t be worried about an explanation. I just went to smoke a cigarette…and ran into a random hot guy in the middle of a dark, empty park. Totally normal. “Ah, I went out for a walk.”
“In the middle of the night?”
I shrug her off and continue toward the bathroom.
“That’s not the Felicity I know—Miss I-lock-the-fifteen-deadlocks-on-my-door-and-never-go-out-alone-after-dark.”
I’m not that person any more. But I don’t respond.
“Well, if it means anything, I like the new, ballsy you,” she says.
With a firm crank, the shower roars to life. After a couple of minutes, the small room fills with a hot fog. It looks like smoke. It makes my pulse race. Sweat beads on my forehead and my limbs turn ice cold. Breathing is hard, and my lungs ache.
Great. Now I’m having anxiety attacks in the shower.
I soap up with Aspen’s high-end shampoos and body wash, and I rinse off quickly, all while feeling dizzy and weak. I can’t get the towel around myself fast enough as I fall heavily against the sink, gripping the edge. I look in the mirror and examine the puffy bags under my eyes. My skin is so pale; my light eyes make me look sick. I’m a poster child for depression, and I don’t see an end in sight. Well, I guess I did for a split-second last night. I just have to get through today.
Suck it up, Felicity.
* * *
“Wrong place and wrong time, but you do look nice today,” Tanner says, looping his arm with mine as we walk through the headstones, approaching a scene I’ll want to burn from my mind forever.
Sometime between the time we got here and the time they lowered Blake’s coffin into the ground, I allowed Tanner to hold me like he used to. Now, standing behind me, his arms tighten around my shoulders, his chin resting on my head. It feels right, but if Blake were here, it would feel very wrong. It’s not like that, though. It’s the simple affection between two friends who are agonizing over a mutual pain.
Everyone has left except Tanner, Aspen, Mom, and Dad. My heart is heavy. So heavy, I don’t know if I can move. If I leave here, is that me saying good-bye? It’ll be like I’m closing his book and saying the end. He’s been gone for a week, but now it’s undeniably clear that heaven and earth have come between us. This is officially the