Someone I Used to Know - By Blakney Francis Page 0,102

a thick envelope from his back pocket and handed it to me.

It was heavy in my hand, and while it wasn’t addressed to anyone or marked with postage, three messy words were scrawled largely, nearly spacing the entire rectangular shape.

“Just read it”

I looked up at him questioningly. I’d seen his handwriting on enough grocery lists and battered notebooks to know the edgy slants didn’t belong to him.

He shrugged, with the slightest hitch sheepishly pulling at his lips, showing just a hint of one dimple.

“Declan asked me if he could give you this, and after some thought, I agreed…It’s time.”

The words weren’t strange. They made perfect sense, and I had no problem understanding them, but the way he said them niggled at the back of my mind. I stared down at the fat envelope, curiosity burning in my gut.

The envelope was almost too full to seal, but somehow, the task had been managed, closing off its mysterious contents from me with the barest amount of glue. I squeezed it once, feeling the paper bend against my touch easily, like a stack of letters had been folded inside.

I just knew that whatever I held in my hands was dangerous. I could sense its power – its importance. I had no idea what it could be, but I knew it was something that would change me.

It was too bad that I’d already accepted my fate and had no desire to alter the path I was headed down.

Ignorance really was bliss. After one last look, I tucked the envelope into my bag. I felt relief without it in my grip, like I’d just gotten rid of a grenade.

“I’m sorry,” one of us said. Later, I wouldn’t be able to remember which one of us voiced the emotion we both felt. And in the end, it didn’t matter anyways.

I left California in a blur, happy to be numbed from the overwhelming feeling that I’d just made a horrible mistake. But it was one I couldn’t stop myself from making.

And, maybe, that really was the worst the part of all.

Chapter Nineteen

Adley

Three Months Later

“You always do that,” my coworker commented. I hadn’t felt him watching me, but I wasn’t surprised. I caught him looking at me a lot.

I jerked my hand away from my mouth, destroying the evidence that backed up his observation. It was an unfortunate habit I’d picked up.

“Do what?” I asked, feigning ignorance, while my hands went back to work scanning the stack of returned library books in front of me. I knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Sometimes you get this real far off look in your eye, and you’ll always hold your fingers at the corner of your lips,” he continued to obliviously push the subject I could have not more obviously wanted to drop.

If it had been anyone other than Graham, I would’ve already snapped at them. Sweet, dim Graham, however, was just that clueless. Ever since we’d been assigned to the late afternoon shift, he’d been doing his damnedest to try and charm me.

He smiled sincerely, and I knew that there were quite a few girls on campus that would’ve killed for a guy like him to look at them in the same way. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you wanted to be kissed.”

I didn’t.

I’d made a promise that no one would ever kiss me there again. That spot belonged to another. It was owned by someone who’d never kiss me again, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to consider it my own. It was Declan’s, and I feared it always would be.

Graham wasn’t the only one who took note of the unconscious gesture. I caught myself doing it all the time. Even my roommate, Hannah, had mentioned it, and she was the most unobservant person I’d ever known. She didn’t see or care about anything that wasn’t about her.

I’d never faulted her for her natural preoccupation, and considering the unstable climate of my return to UNC, I wasn’t about to complain that the last person on campus unaware of my tie to Declan Davies or The Girl in the Yellow Dress was my roommate. It was nice to have an escape from the stares, giggling, and hushed comments that followed me more frequently than my own shadow. For the most part, people kept their distance. North Carolina wasn’t Los Angeles, where mauling people in public was acceptable, as long as their star-power justified it.

“Why don’t you man the desk for a while? I’ll restock the shelves.”