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I huff, but it comes off dry. My entire goddamn life has felt like a thunderstorm. If there wasn’t lightning, there was thunder, and if there wasn’t either of those, then darkness found a way in.
She drops a heavy head to my shoulder. Showing me more gentleness than I deserve. The night around us is as flat as it is somber.
Air pulls from her nose. “Know the best part about a storm? Sometimes, if we’re lucky, there are also rainbows at the end.”
I blink back the moisture I hadn’t asked to settle along the bottom part of my lids. Now we are both crying. A soft hiccup leaves my throat when she lifts her cheek. Wiping away the droplets rolling down mine.
They don’t stop and for some reason in all this, I find myself smiling. We both are. The more she wipes them away, the more fall and the bigger my grin is.
“God, you’re turning me into such a sap,” I complain, fake disgusted.
“It’s about time,” she shoots right back.
Hailey knows how I am and never once has judged me for it. Emotions are a hard thing for someone like me. Something I struggle with. Shutting people out is so much easier than letting them in and risking the chance of being hurt.
Her determination from the very beginning the sole reason we’d become friends, to begin with. If there is one thing you can always count on with Hailey Williams it’s to be consistent in this one fact. Once her mind is set, there’s no changing it.
“You’re the best—the worst—but the best,” I say, sniffling out my gripes.
“You love me, I know,” she hums in her own self-approval. “But don’t worry because I love you right back, bestie.”
Then in true Hailey fashion, she’s hugging me, but I give it right back, that is until Eli walks in.
“Did I miss something?” he asks, scratching at the back of his neck. No doubt both our cheeks as puffy as our eyes.
“Girl talk, you wouldn’t understand,” Hailey says, waving him off.
“Is that mine?” I ask, eyeing the object in his hand.
“I guess you left it downstairs, but it’s rang a few times, so I thought you might want it back.”
My breathing shallows out. I get what Eli’s saying without saying it. Cole might be calling.
Only one problem, when I glance down at the number, it comes up as unknown. Not something saved to my contacts.
As if thinking it, that same number calls again and it unsettles me. Rattling that thing underneath my ribs at the sight.
Dread pools, filling its way the longer I take to answer. Instead, I listen to it ring. I don’t know which is louder, the ringing or the sound of my heart beating.
“Hello?”
“Is this Aurora Casper?”
My eyes find Hailey’s, instantly alert. I don’t recognize the voice.
My fingers start to shake. Why are they doing this? What’s going on? This person is too professional, being too formal.
Something’s wrong, I can sense it deep in my gut.
Dread.
I thought I was fearful before, but nothing could prepare me for this. For what tumbles out next, from that too-formal mouth on the other end of the line.
“There’s been an accident.”
thirty-nine
Cole
