Divided (3 page)

When Gary turned off the engine, he and Sonya stared at me.

"You look a little better," Sonya commented.

I stared at the house, feeling a little brighter. "It's just so—I don't know." I looked toward the front door where I could now see some sort of sports car painted on the large pot and above that, the name "Devlin." "It sounds stupid, but it feels like him, doesn't it?"

Gary looked around and shrugged, but then smiled indulgently at me. "You're ridiculous."

We got out of the truck and Gary put his arm around my shoulders, guiding me in the direction of the front door. We got about ten feet from the door when it was thrown open by Dev's mom.

"I'm so glad you came." She rushed forward and hugged me. She smelled like vanilla and warmth. There was no hesitation in her hug. She wrapped her arms around me as if I was her own child. In my ear, she whispered, "It's so good to have you here, Evie. You bring a piece of him with you, you know that?"

Tears sprang to my eyes, surprising me since I'd banished all tears from my life months ago.

"Elizabeth." Gary stepped forward and put his hand on her arm. "I'm smelling that chicken I love so much. Tell me you made my favorite."

She chuckled lightly as she took my hand and pulled me toward the door. "I swear you and Dev share the same stomach. It's his favorite, too. I didn't know what Evie's favorites were so I just made all of Dev's. Sonya, sweetie," she called behind me. "You still managing okay with this one?"

"He's a handful, Elizabeth." Sonya laughed genuinely. "But I got him under control."

Gary and Sonya argued behind us about what "under control" meant, but I wasn't paying much attention. I was trying my best to take in absolutely everything about Dev's house and imagine him in every inch of it. The smell of roast chicken had my mouth watering. It hung in the air like turkey on Thanksgiving Day, making me feel all the more at home.

Elizabeth patted my hand. "How about a tour? I don't think Dev showed you around the last time you were all here."

I nodded at that, and she led the way through the spacious, high-ceilinged living room that opened into the kitchen and dining room. She paused at the mantle, pointing out at least twenty pictures of Dev and his parents, friends, and other family members. Something buzzed in the kitchen, and she ran off to check on it.

Seeing Dev at various stages in his life made the tears come back with a vengeance. He was adorable as a kid and looked just as goofy and stubborn. When I reached a much more recent picture of him on a horse, I picked it up, my hands shaking and pressed my fingers to the glass.

"That's Chopper, his horse," Gary explained. "I'll introduce you two later." He put his arm around me. "You okay?"

I nodded and a few tears fell down my cheeks. Batting them away, I sucked in a deep breath and put the picture back. "I don't have any pictures of him. I haven't seen his face in seven months."

"Seriously?" He looked so sad for me. "I've got hundreds I can give you. And he has a bunch of you two together."

I shook my head. "What?" How could that be? We'd never taken pictures together, not even at the Homecoming dance.

Gary smirked like he always did when he knew he had big information to share. "He bribed the yearbook staff with donuts to give him copies of all the pictures they had of you. They were doing a thing on you about being the new girl. They took a ton of pictures of you both together those last few days before all hell broke loose. He got his hands on several before the dance."

I just stared at him. I had no idea. "How long had he been bribing them?" I couldn't quite believe it.

"Uh—he was hiding that from me, but I've been in his room. I found a couple just a few weeks after school started."

"That—that can't be?" We barely knew each other at that point.

He focused on the pictures on the mantle, and I could hear how much he missed Dev. "Vaughn's a pain in the ass sometimes. He gets his mind on something, and you just don't stop him. He's always been like that—never about girls before, but you're no ordinary girl." The pride in his voice made me smile.

"Sorry about that," Elizabeth called out as she came back over to us. "Let's continue."

Up a wide wooden staircase, she showed us a small guest bedroom, the large master suite, and finally, a bedroom that made the tears demand time in the spotlight on my cheeks.

Dev's room wasn't quite what I'd expected. I thought it would be incredibly male and filled with girlie pictures or sports posters. Instead, it was sweet. He had a black wooden bunk bed with a twin mattress on top and a larger mattress on the bottom. He had a matching black desk with his binder on top, and he had pictures in frames all over one wall. I stepped forward and my breath caught in the back of my throat. Staring back at me were six pictures of me in frames. In addition to the pictures of me, there were several with his family, two with his brother, and one with Dev embracing the horse I'd seen in the picture downstairs.

Dev's mom excused herself, saying she had to check on dinner again, but by the almost sad smile on her face, I could tell she was just giving me some time to take it all in. I was thankful for it.

The burning pit in my stomach increased, and I was drowning again in my desire to be close to him. Walking over, I sat on his bed. Everything around me smelled like him. I don't know if it was his cologne or just the smell of being around Dev's things, but I had to close my eyes to calm myself down.

Gary and Sonya stepped out onto the balcony through double French doors on one wall. I took the opportunity to try to gather myself together. Lying down on Dev's bed, I breathed deeply from his pillow. I wanted him there with me so badly. I didn't want to be weepy, though. I didn't want to be the girl that falls apart when the guy breaks up with her. And Dev didn't even break up with me. He wanted me. We just had to wait a little longer to be together. Forget Dr. Avery. I had to have faith that Dev hadn't been put into my life just to be taken away so quickly.

I stood back up and walked to the bookcase built into the wall across from his bed. Sports-related trophies cluttered the bottom shelves along with yearbooks, but the top two shelves had smaller items on them. On the left shelf, there were several pieces of sports memorabilia, some were even signed. On the right shelf, there was a picture frame, an ordinary-looking baseball, a couple Matchbox cars, and a brand new toothbrush I wondered about. Behind those things sat the tickets from the Homecoming Dance, his crown, a few folded pieces of paper, and several pictures.

Snoopy or not, I couldn't resist the temptation to find out what was on the papers. As I pulled them down and opened them up, I had to smile. They were his rough draft from the Shakespeare essay I typed for him. The words were unchanged from the last time I had seen them, but the pages were far more worn.

Dev's dad's presence in the doorway made me flinch a little, especially since I'd been snooping through Dev's things.

"He'd kill me for telling you this." Brian leaned against the doorframe. "But he used to smell those. He said your perfume or something was on them. I gave him hell for it." He chuckled and while Dev's voice was smoother, the notes were so similar it gave me goose bumps at the reminder.

I shook my head, a true smile grinning out from my heart. "Lotion. They probably smelled like my lotion."

I put the papers back and stared at a framed picture on the same shelf. It was Dev, and I was guessing, his brother. Darren didn't look anything like I'd imagined aside from being thin and looking a little sickly. He had gray eyes instead of blue, his hair was much lighter than Dev's, and he had Elizabeth's smile. Dev looked the same but younger and goofier. They were laughing and Dev was trying to put bunny ears behind Darren's head while Darren was grabbing at Dev's arms to try to stop him. Dev was obviously not the broad football player that he'd grown up to be, but he was still tall and strong looking. His eyes sparkled with happiness. The picture was in a wooden frame with the words "Best Big Brother" hand-written on the top and painted yellow. "Is this—Darren?" I wasn't completely sure if I'd remembered his brother's name right.

He looked taken aback for a moment then shook his head. "I don't know why it surprises me that he talked about Darren with you. Obviously, you're very special to him. He doesn't talk about Darren with anyone, not even me, but he keeps that picture on the same shelf with the things that relate to you."

I picked up the loose pictures that sat next to the frame. The first one my eyes fell on was of the two of us sitting on a bench smiling at each other. I remembered the day it was taken—when Jay had started spreading rumors about me. The next one was amazing, and tears came to my eyes again, spilling down my smiling cheeks. It was from the gym the day that I'd pushed Nicole off Dev and kissed him for everyone to see. I was sitting on the floor with my Calculus book in my lap looking up into Dev's eyes as he stared lovingly at me. The intense expression on his face made my heart pump so quickly and so painfully.

"I miss him so much." I hadn't meant to say it out loud or to sound so pathetically mournful, but it just came out.

"I know what you two had was so different for him. Dev's my son, but he's always been sort of my best friend. He talked about you nonstop. I'd never heard him so taken with a girl before and so torn up about it. When you two finally got together, he was so happy. I can't imagine what he's feeling being away from you—from all of us."

I flipped through the other pictures. There were several more of us in the gym, and one of us walking to class hand-in-hand.

Gary came back in and put his arm around me. "Can I borrow these, Brian? She doesn't have any pictures of him or of the two of them together."

Brian pulled away from the doorway and nodded as he stepped out into the hallway. "Borrow whatever you'd like. I'm quite certain he'd outright give you anything you wanted of his. Gary, bring her out to the barn when she's ready."

Gary grinned. "Yeah, I'm dying to see Chopper's reaction."

Brian's chuckle gave me goose bumps again. "Me too."

"You look a little overwhelmed," Sonya said.

I was. I hadn't been around Dev in seven months. In that time, as silly as it may sound, I didn't have anything concrete to prove he was real at all. Being in his room with pictures of us in my hands was seriously overwhelming, but in a good way. I pressed the pictures to my chest and looked back at the items on the shelf. "I wonder what the baseball is from."

Gary pulled out the chair at Dev's desk and threw his legs out in front of him. "If you tell him I told you any of this, I will disown you as my best friend."

I felt a little giddy at that warning. It meant this would be a good story—something I could smile about. Maybe it was a childhood story that would make me feel closer to Dev. "I promise."

"Does the baseball look familiar?" he asked with his eyebrow arched high on his forehead.

I looked back at it, but it looked like an ordinary baseball. "Should it?"

"Well, the way he tells it, your eyes were on him more than the baseball, so I'm not surprised you don't recognize it."

I threw my hand to my face and felt the heat rising to my cheeks.

Gary laughed loudly. "I told him he was full of shit so many times, and it's true? I can't believe this. You were really all over him that day he tried to teach you to pitch? But you barely knew him at that point."

I grimaced, and Sonya put her arm around me, sheltering me. "Leave the poor girl alone. She was in love with him from the second she nearly plowed the boy over in Leadership."

"I was trying to piss Nicole off," I defended to Gary.

"Sure you were," Gary teased.

How embarrassing and incredible. He kept the baseball. I couldn't believe it, and it made me smile so wide my cheeks hurt.

"Oh, crap!" Gary jumped up. "I can't believe I forgot about it. I could've given you this months ago." He walked to the black door next to the bookshelf and opened it, revealing a closet. Kneeling on the floor, he shifted some things around before pulling out something dark. "I gave him so much shit for this. Here, he got you a Halloween present."

I laughed. "A what?" I hadn't been given something for Halloween since my mom had been alive. She loved Halloween.

"Yeah, that's what I said," Gary explained. He held the thing out to me and turned to Sonya. "I told him you don't buy chicks gifts for dumb reasons."

She kissed him, so I was pretty sure there was more to that than I needed to know. I tentatively took the item, and started smiling like an idiot when I turned it around. It was the most adorable stuffed German Shepherd dog with a football helmet on. The jersey he wore had the number 21 on it—Dev's number.

I hugged him to me. "Where did he find something so specific?"

Gary turned back to me. "You can find anything online, Evie. He spent a lot of time on the computer when he was sick." He put his hand out to me. "Come on, let's go meet Chopper."

I glanced back at Sonya as he pulled me toward the French doors. Her smile seemed so "Evelyn." It was full of warmth and a little relief as I hugged my Halloween present closer to me.

Gary led me outside to the large barn. It was only slightly cool outside, so I can't say the comfort level had anything to do with temperature, but the inside of the barn oozed warmth and coziness. It was much larger than I remembered from our last very brief trip to Dev's, but other than the size, it felt very familiar. When Dev was with me the last time I'd entered the building, I could tell how much it meant to him just by the way his smile lit up.

Brian looked annoyed as we walked up. He stared at my Halloween present. "Now where did you find that? I've been looking for that since it came in the mail."

Gary slapped him on the back. "And that's exactly why he hid it from you."

That didn't make any sense to me. "Why was he—"

Brian looked a little sheepish as he kicked at the dirt. "I teased him about it a little."

"A little?" Gary laughed and put his arm around Sonya's shoulders. "He told Vaughn he was gonna give it to the football coach and have him show the team what a tough guy their captain was."