I shake my head.
She smiles. “Blue, I know you. You’re drunk right now, and that’s the only reason you’re talking to me.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
She keeps her smile. “Okay, then prove me wrong.”
I look forward. “I’ve been talking to you all night.”
She leans over and looks me straight in my eyes. “Sober and not at two in the morning, Blue.”
I look at her face. “Okay, yeah.”
Her lips pull to one side. “I don’t believe it for one second, Blue.”
“No?”
She shakes her head and laughs. “No way.”
I look down at her in my jersey.
“You have a guest room, right?”
“I think Drew’s in there with Mara.”
Melly makes a face.
I look at the floor of the porch. “Take my room.”
Her head turns. “Blue.”
“I’ll take the couch.”
“Blue.”
“Mel.”
The name comes out before I can stop it.
Mel.
I haven’t called her Mel since we were seventeen and lying next to each other in the dark. I haven’t let the syllable past my teeth since that night. I’ve kept it locked behind the wall I built with both hands when I left her in that bed at five in the morning, and tonight, the wall has cracked enough to let one short word through.
She hears it.
She looks at me, searching my eyes.
I don’t know what she thinks she’s going to find, but whatever it is, I’m not hiding it from her anymore.
Chapter 9
Melly
Mel.
He says it the way he used to say it. Soft. Low. The kind of low that’s only ever been for me.
I can’t look at him. If I look at him, my face is going to do something it can’t take back. So I look at the jack-o’-lantern instead, the lopsided one with the gap-tooth grin, and I watch the candle wobble inside it. The porch swing creaks when he shifts his weight. His thigh isn’t touching mine. There’s an inch of cold air between us, and I can feel the inch.
