Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,250

year? I mean, okay, at first you bled all over them.”

Taylor laughed at that, and he was glad she no longer looked like death.

“But eventually,” he said with a shrug, “a few commas here or there. It wasn’t like I was you or Nelson. I didn’t have to get awards or hundreds for anything I wrote. All I cared about was passing.”

“So you didn’t need my help?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t need it. Just… not as much as you thought I did.”

Slowly Taylor nodded, absorbing it all. “So then this all started, what like sophomore year?”

That brought an actual laugh out of him, and Greg sat back and laid his arm over the back of the pew between them as he brushed at his eye with his other hand.

Confused by that, Taylor tried again. “Freshman year?”

He shook his head slightly and looked up at the ceiling.

“Come on, Everett, help me out here,” she said, but it wasn’t a taunt, more of a hopeful request.

Greg glanced at her, sent his gaze back up to the ceiling, and closed his eyes. “Okay, well, remember playing tacks?”

The thought struck her so hard, it jolted her all the way into bewilderment. “In third grade?”

With the tiniest of laughs, Greg sighed. “What can I say? You were fascinating even back then.”

“In third grade?”

“Yes, in third grade,” he said, mocking her. He came forward, put his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his hands together. “You weren’t afraid of anything.”

“Me?” she asked in utter shock.

“Yes, you.” Coming up, he turned on her. “Who was it who got up there and won the Spelling Bee against Haddie Johnson?”

“Eagh,” Taylor said, scrunching up her nose. “Ugh, I hated that girl.”

“Yeah, you, me, and the whole rest of the class. She had her nose in the air so high a bird could’ve flown into it.”

Taylor laughed.

“But you,” Greg said as he looked at her. “Man, you never backed down from a challenge. You stood up to her that day she made fun of Nolan Malone. Remember that?”

“In the cafeteria,” Taylor said, having completely forgotten. “What was that, like fourth grade?”

“Fifth.”

“Fifth grade,” she said in awe. “And you remember that?”

“I remember everything. You were always on top of your game, too. Always. Everybody was in awe of you.”

She laughed softly at that. “I don’t think it was quite awe. The way I remember it, a lot of people hated me.”

“Only because they were so jealous,” he said as his eyes softened. “Anybody that dared to challenge you got put in their place very quickly. Remember Dublouski?”

“And the tree?” she asked, and for a second, her mind rewound to that day. “Yeah, but he had it comin’, saying that girls were weak and stupid.”

“I’m not saying he didn’t. I’m just saying, you left the poor guy up in the tree, man.” Leaning over, Greg laughed harder than he realized he would. “The fire department had to come get him down. Poor guy never was the same after that.”

As he grew quiet, Taylor surveyed him. He carried more memories of her than she even did, and he was so gentle with every one, like each one was a precious gem to him. How could she have missed this all those years?

She wanted to hug him, to touch him, something, but she was afraid he would pull away so she kept that in her heart and asked a new question. “So what happened tonight?”

He flinched as if that question hurt.

“No, Greg, I want to know,” she said as gently as she could. “I need to know. What happened back there?”

In all the world, Greg did not want to say these words. They were going to kill her, and they might kill him as well. He put his face into his fingers and rubbed his eyes hard. They hurt from crying and trying so hard not to. “Is that a thing?” The sigh slid out of him. “Do we have to talk about that?”

“I think we do,” she said. “I think we need to know where we’re standing… both of us. No secrets.”

No secrets. Yeah, that was a tall order.

He let out another long breath and searched for a place to start. “You know the whole plus-one thing.”

Taylor nodded, listening carefully, her gaze never moving from him.

A moment and Greg shrugged. “You said no strings, and I respected that. At least I wanted to, I tried to. I knew this thing between us was one-way from the beginning, and that sooner or later, you