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“I know.” I cut in. “Your mother told me. I know about Sophie.”
“You do?” Her eyes glittered, and she looked over her shoulder to the driveway and the street beyond. Slowly, she looked back at me. “I’m not saying losing a friend is the same as losing a sister or a mother, but...I do know that you can’t keep fighting it.”
“You sure about that?” I asked with a grimace. “Because I’m getting pretty good at it.”
She gave me a half-smile. “You can become a master at it, but you’ll never truly be happy. You might always be angry when you want to be sad.”
Such a simple sentence spoken by such an innocent girl, yet it harboured wisdom that stabbed me through the chest and made me gasp.
For the first time in weeks, I stopped adding bricks to the wall between us and stood before her with nothing in the way. I met her eyes with no barriers, and sucked in a haggard breath as yet more words tumbled from my lips unbidden. “Who are you, Nerida Taylor?”
The tension in her shoulders flowed into the pool and her half-smile turned into a full one. “If I told you, you’d probably run.”
Once again, absolute shock that she could make me feel anything other than furious caught me by surprise. I wanted to say something light-hearted. To crack a joke. To do my best to be normal. But my tongue disobeyed. “I heard you, you know.” I flinched and cursed myself.
What was it about this girl that kept me failing at keeping secrets?
Why did it feel so wrong to just talk to her when her parents were gone and the night hid so much?
“Heard what?” She trailed her fingers on the water’s surface.
I could back out.
I could swallow everything that I’d heard her say in the corridor with her father, but I found I didn’t want to choke on yet another thing. She wanted to be my friend? Well, for the first time...I actually contemplated it.
A sixteen-year-old boy who’d had to run from all his friends without a goodbye was ready to accept a kid as his confidant and most likely fucking therapist.
Scrunching up the bottom of my t-shirt, I wrung it out as I murmured, “I overheard Jack telling you the boundaries that have to exist between us. I was heading to the bathroom and didn’t mean to listen, but...” I shrugged. “I didn’t leave. I have no excuse. And at the end you said—”
“That I was going to marry you.” She laughed loudly and sank into the water but popped up again, her eyelashes twinkling with droplets.
Her reaction wasn’t what I expected.
Where was the embarrassment? The denial?
I watched her warily.
“Do we need to have a chat about those boundaries your dad explained?” I crossed my arms.
She shook her head, laughing again. “Nah. I’m good.”
“So...what you said in the corridor...” I raised an eyebrow. “That was a joke?”
“No. It wasn’t a joke.” She held my stare. “I know you’re special, and I know I found you for a reason, but...if that reason is just to help you find a new life after your old one has been stolen, then...I’m happy with that.”
“Oh.”
“You sound disappointed.” She winked. “I mean...why wouldn’t you be? I’m pretty freaking awesome.”
“Pretty freaking annoying more like.” I chuckled as she splashed water my way, amazed that she’d defused my temper and somehow made all of this—us and night and water and friendship—utterly understandable and acceptable.
It was the first time I could take a breath without the ghosts inside me trying to steal it. The first time I could just be, without fearing what came next.
I sighed heavily. “I think...I think I rather like you, Nerida Taylor.”
A flash of something in her blue eyes before she dipped her chin and replied quietly, “I think I rather like you too, Aslan Acee.”
“It’s Avci.”
“Oh, sorry. I suppose I better learn how to spell it if it’s going to end up being mine.”
I froze.
But then she threw herself backward and swam in a lazy stroke. “Relax, Aslan. It’s a joke. Friends can joke. Friends can tease. Or at least, here we can.” Her gaze landed on my soaking clothes. “Now...seeing as you’re already wet, join me.”
“I don’t think—”
“There are no piranhas in here.” She splashed me again, the droplets not reaching the shore. “Nothing to be afraid of. First step to reclaiming water: start with the pool. Otherwise, I might be tempted to push you overboard next time we’re on The Fluke.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“I would, and you know it.”
I glowered at her.
She glowered back.
And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, agreeing to be friends with Nerida—officially and wholeheartedly, on my terms and not being coerced—set me up for a world of pain.
Pain that I hoped would eventually heal me...somehow.
Pain that I knew would break me in so many other ways.
