AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For a moment, I didn’t trust myself to speak. So, instead, I shoveled more pasta into my mouth. It was cold now. Cold and mushy.Yum. “He moved out three weeks ago.”
Saying it aloud never got easier, even though I’d been living the new reality for nearly a month.
“Three weeks?” The words shocked Reed more than I thought it would’ve. “Does Rachel know? She’s never mentioned it.”
“She knows, but we haven’t really talked about it. I think it’s hard for her to talk about it…after everything with your dad.”
His dad, who I agreed to work with literal minutes ago. Reed’s hand fisted on the table, fingers curling into a white-knuckled grip. The fist oddly juxtaposed his expression, which belied mostly confusion. Something hot stirred in his eyes, though. “Did your dad do the same thing?”
“No, he didn’t cheat.” It was an ugly word, and I found myself unable to look at Reed. Despite the line of awkward I was tiptoeing, the desperate urge to talk about it rose up again. Reed. He was one of the only people who would understand. “Uh, it’s nothing crazy like that. They fell out of love, I guess. Fell in love with their careers, fell out of love with each other.”
From what I gleaned from the rare arguments I heard Mom have over the phone, it all came down to this: Dad and her settled down right out of high school, and they were each other’s firsts. First significant other, first kiss. Theironly. And Dad, twenty years later, couldn’t get past thatwhat if?
I’d spent so many nights trying to pinpoint when things had changed, flipping through my memories like I was sorting through a filing cabinet. I’d finally narrowed it down to one defining moment—when Mom quit styling hair in our basement and got her realtor’s license. That was when she’d started being out of the house more, staying out later, getting dinner on her own. Dad, in turn, started putting his own time into his career.
Love was a fickle thing. The risk versus reward didn’t seem worth it.
“Okay, enough depressing,” I said, pushing to my feet. I hadn’t finished my bowl of penne, but my stomach felt too tight and unsettled to keep eating. “Come on, let’s go look—”
Reed grabbed the fork from my bowl before I could pull it away and carry it to the sink, and before I could protest, he stabbed a penne noodle and popped it into his mouth.
There were only two thoughts in my mind:he’s eating my cold, mushy noodlesandhe just wrapped his mouth around the fork I’d been using.
I watched him try to fight a grimace.“This is…”
“Fantastic? A culinary masterpiece?”
Reed swallowed hard, gently placing the fork into my bowl. “I’m thinking you don’t know what Michelin stars are.”
An odd feeling stirred in my chest, a buzz like electricity. The bantering was weird. I wanted to laugh—I nearly did—and I wanted to return a witty retort of my own, but either option seemed…strange.
I walked toward the sink and heard his chair screech as he stood up. “Ava. Have you been talking to someone about all this?”
“What do you mean? Like Rachel or Maisie?”
“Like a therapist.”
Instinctively, my nose wrinkled. “No.”
“Therapy isn’t a bad thing. We went when we found out Dad was cheating.”
I remembered that. Reed and Rachel’s mom had signed them up for a few therapy sessions in Jefferson after the discovery, hoping they’d be able to work through their feelings. Rachel had complained about it the entire time, but then again, she had been a human-shaped bundle of anger then, a dragon ready to breathe fire over the slightest thing. Growing up, she was a total daddy’s girl, and the complete betrayal had left her broken.
“I’m okay,” I told Reed, scraping the noodles into the garbage disposal. “But if I need to talk to someone, I’ll stop by the counselor’s office.”
Principal Oliphant’s words from earlier resurfaced.If you ever want to speak with the counselor, please let me know. About the list or about anything else.I wondered if she gave out the offer to everyone or if I looked especially burdened.
When Reed spoke again, his voice was so much closer, so much softer. “You can talk to me, you know. I’ve got a lot of free time since quitting the team, and…I’m a good listener.”
Okay, now the buzzing became stronger, like instead of electricity, it was actually a hive of bees hidden inside my ribcage. I braced my hand on the porcelain edge of the farmhouse sink, the line of my shoulders stiff. “Why would you even want to?”
Reed propped his arm on the counter beside the sink, leaning down until he could see my face. The sun shined through the window, sifting through the sheer curtains, catching him in his eyes. “You’re Rachel’s best friend. It’s the least I could do.”
His face was probably a foot and a half away from mine, far enough for the space to feel casual, but close enough for me to imagine what it might be like to kiss him again with the sunlight shining on our faces. In the light of day instead of in the gloominess of night. “Just because I’m Rachel’s best friend?”
“Yeah, you’re like a sister to me.”
“Ew, don’t say that—you kissed me!” I couldn’t keep my hands to myself this time, and I shoved at his chest. Hard. Harder than necessary. But the word rocked me to my core.Sister. He might as well have said “you’re one of the people on the planet I’m least attracted to.”
