In This Moment (26 page)

   
I stroke her long hair and pull her into my side.

   
“Don’t let me go,” she says so quietly that I have to replay her words in my head to make sure that I heard them right.

   
I run my thumbs over the bumps of her spine. “Don’t worry,” I reply. “I won’t.”

Cole

“
It’s way too hot for this shit. Where is autumn? It’s almost November and I’m still sweating my balls off over here.” I drop to the grass.

   
Daniel laughs, takes a rasping breath, and bends over to reach for the blue plastic water bottle that he tucked beside the base of a scraggly pine before we took off on our run. “It’s going to be like this until a storm breaks. A patch of warm air is pushing its way inland. Don’t you ever check the weather?”

   
“Do I look like someone who checks the weather?”

   
Daniel ignores the question. “I think that you’ve lived in Florida long enough to know that changing seasons are a myth anywhere south of Tallahassee.”

   
“Then no more afternoon runs.”

   
“Hey, you’re the one who couldn’t go later on—not me. If we had waited to run until seven then it wouldn’t have been so bad,” Daniel says as he lowers himself to the ground. We’ve just endured a brutal eleven miles and now it is time to sprawl on the lawn in front of the track and field offices and let our muscles cool down.

   
“I told you already… I have plans later.”

   
“It’s Friday and we don’t have practice tomorrow. What kind of plans do you have that are so important? It wasn’t too long ago that the only planning that you did revolved around getting drunk and getting laid.”

   
“Things change.” I don’t tell him that my plans happen to be showering, putting on presentable clothes, and picking Aimee up to go to some swanky party at her parent’s house. Just the thought of managing small talk and eating off a tiny cocktail plate has me cringing, but when Mrs. Spencer invited me, I couldn’t exactly say no.

   
“So you’re really in this, huh?”

   
I glance over at Daniel. “What do you mean? In what?”

   
He pushes damp hair away from his forehead and takes a large gulp of water out of the bottle in his hand.

   
“You and Aimee,” he clarifies, stretching one arm over his head and bending his knees so that they crest above his chest. “I don’t know. It seems sort of serious.”

   
How the fuck am I supposed to respond to that?

   
The corners of my mouth twitch. “I don’t know that serious is the right word, but yeah, things are good with us.”

   
Things
are
good. Shit. They’re better than good. Ever since that night at the beach—the one that I keep on a steady repeating pattern in my head—things are more settled between us. When I close my eyes, I can almost feel her small, tight body against mine. It was unbelievable and if I let my brain drift too much longer I’m not going to be able to keep my hard-on at bay.

   
“I’ve got a ton of shit to do. We should—” The roar of an engine drowns out my voice. I pick my head up off the grass in time to see Adam’s car screech to a stop near the curb. “What the hell?”

   
“Cole!” Adam calls out the open driver’s side window. “Get over here, man. Your sister has been trying to call you for the last hour but you forgot to take your fucking phone with you.”

   
A nasty sensation shoots down the column of my neck and settles deep in my stomach. I stand up and cross the distance to Adam’s car.

   
This can’t be good. Not a fucking chance.

Aimee

“Door!” Mara shouts over the noise of her hairdryer.

    Grappling
with the bottom of my dress, I dart a quick look at myself in the mirror and decide that the lipstick that my sister suggested is too much. It’s a shade that belongs on the sorority and pageant circuit. I wipe at my mouth with my thumb as I scramble down the hall to answer the knock.

   
The door swings wide, pulling in a puff of sticky air. “We’re almost r…” The sentence shrivels up and dies in my mouth. I drop my pink-smudged hand to the doorjamb and crease my forehead.

   
Cole is standing on the paved walkway in his sneakers and sweat-stained gym clothes. He tilts his head up and I see that his skin is pulled taut and pale over his cheekbones and his eyes are a starker green than I’ve ever seen them.

   
“What’s wrong?” I ask immediately, bile creeping up the back of my throat.

   
“It’s going to rain,” Cole says absently.

   
“Um…” I can smell the impending storm in the air and feel it like an electrical charge crawling over my skin. A strange, sudden breeze rushes over us and the light shifts. I watch shadows slide into place over Cole’s face. “What’s wrong with you?”

   
He narrows his eyes, trails his fingertips over the uneven bridge of his nose and shifts his weight to one foot like he’s uncomfortable. He coughs. “You look nice.”

   
My eyes fall to the dark grey sheath dress that I borrowed from my sister and swing back to him. “Cole, what the hell is wrong?” I repeat my question for the third time.

   
Cole looks away, nudges the rock-lined path with the side of his foot. “I was going to call you and just tell you over the phone but I… I…” His voice is gruff, filled with an emotion that I don’t understand. He shoves his fingers back into his light hair and shakes his head once, then twice. “I can’t go to the party with you tonight.”

   
Feeling shaky, like the ground beneath me is moving as fast as the gathering clouds, I take a tentative step forward. “I-I’m getting that from your clothes, but that still doesn’t answer my question. What’s wrong?”

   
“I know that it was important to you that I make a good impression on everyone and—”

   
“I don’t care about my dad’s thing,” I say firmly, laying my palms on either side of his biceps. His muscles stiffen and he moves back out of my reach.

    He brings
his hands in front of his body like a shield. “Aimee, I can’t right now. I just…”

   
My indrawn breaths are shallow. I feel a stabbing, cramping sensation starting low in my belly.
This is wrong. All wrong.
“Cole,” I whisper, my body shifting back and forth. “What happened to you?”

   
I don’t understand the carved-out look in his eyes. I talked to him earlier and everything was fine. We made plans for him to come over at seven so that he could ride with Mara and me. He was laughing, joking about getting dressed up for my parents.

   
Cole turns so that I’m looking at his back. The grumble of distant thunder punctuates the quiet. His head falls back and he lifts his shoulders as he drags air into his lungs. “I can’t talk to you about it right now. Maybe later, but… I just wanted to let you know about tonight. Tell your parents that I’m sorry. Tell them that something really important came up and I couldn’t get there, yeah?”

   
“No.” My throat is closing in on itself. I’m only inches away from Cole’s body but I know that he doesn’t want me to touch him and that feels a bit like dying. I squeeze my eyes tight and bite down on the inside of my cheek. “No, I won’t tell my parents that you’re sorry because I don’t understand any of this. Cole, I-I want to know what happened and why you’re acting like this and looking the way that you look right now. You’re scaring me. Ha-have I done something?”

   
“Fuck,” he moans loudly. “Fuck!”

   
I blink my eyes open in surprise and see him pacing the walkway, murmuring and seething air between his teeth. He stops and rests his clenched hands on his hips.

   
“You haven’t done anything,” he says tightly. “It’s…it doesn’t have anything to do with us. I got a call from Sophie and she told me that my mom showed up there today.”

   
Another gust of wind moves over us. I take an involuntary step forward. “Cole…”

   
“She’s dying, Aimee.” His voice catches and his eyes reach into mine. “She’s got a terminal fucking brain tumor. She has six months—maybe a year—and she’s at my house with my little sister and my dad and they want me to fly out there and pretend that we’re all of a sudden a normal family again or some shit.” He curses and hits the wall next to the door with the flat of his hand.

   
My insides are twisted and tight like a thorny vine is growing straight up my middle. I don’t know what to say. Cole and I have come so far and I want to hold him and brush the pads of my thumbs across his lips and kiss a circle around his red eyelids but I know that’s not right. My voice is thin, barely above a whisper. “Did you speak to her?”

   
He moves his head sharply. “No. She tried to get on the phone to talk to me but I-I just couldn’t. Not yet.”

   
“Cole, you have to talk to your mother and hear what she has to say. I know it’s hard, but if she’s—”

   
“But nothing,” he cuts me off. “And where do you get off telling me that I should talk to my mom? When do you talk to your mom about anything important? When have you faced anything?”

   
His words scorch my skin. I’m shaking. “Cole…”

   
He closes his eyes. “Look, I know that you’re trying to help but you don’t know what you’re talking about. And I really can’t do this right now.” He gestures to me and backs away before I can protest. “I’m fucking sorry, but everything is messed up and I need some time to think.”

   
“Please?” I don’t even know what I’m asking him for. I just know that I don’t want him to leave. Not like this. 

   
He waves over his shoulder without even looking at me. “I’ll call you.”

   
My head spins. When I hear the familiar sound of his truck engine coming to life, I keep my eyes trained on my bare feet, not trusting myself not to run after him.

***

I don’t expect the cars spilling out from the driveway to the street. Even over the sound of the rain battering the pavement, I can hear music and voices hammering from the house.

   
“Are you ready?” Mara asks.

   
I turn and look through the darkness fanning across the interior of the car. Mara is watching me. Jodi is searching the floorboard for her purse and an umbrella, holding her blue hair out of her face with one hand.

   
“I don’t know,” I hedge, turning back to the house. I’m nauseated. An awful feeling is sloshing around inside of me. “Maybe just showing up like this wasn’t such a great idea. They’re obviously throwing a party and Cole didn’t tell me anything about it…”

   
“Aimee!” Jodi’s voice is authoritative and snaps my attention back to the car. “I have just spent the past two hours building you up to talk to Cole. Now I don’t really care if he’s sleeping or jacking-off or having a party. There’s no way in hell that you are going to back out on me now.”

   
“I know, but…” I’m a wimp.

   
“No buts,” Mara insists, grabbing hold of my left hand. “I know what’s going on with Cole’s mom is scary, but it’s a not an excuse to leave you hanging the way that he did.”

   
“If you don’t talk to him, it’ll be like a wound that festers and gets infected and starts oozing yellowish puss all over the place,” Jodi adds.

    “
That is disgusting.”

    Mara chokes.
“Seriously, Jodi.”

   
“I’m already lightheaded and you are not helping.”

    “Y
ou called me and asked me for advice but you’re not willing to hear it.”

   
“Technically, I didn’t call you. I texted you.”

    Jodi
tilts her head to the side and cocks one eyebrow up toward her hairline. “Aimee, stop disagreeing with me and get your ass in there before I pick you up and throw you over my shoulder.”

   
I almost laugh. Jodi is barely five feet tall in heels. There’s no way that she’d be able to throw me anywhere.

   
“Those are fighting words.”

   
Her grin stretches wide. “Damn straight they are.”

Cole

The burn feels good. Clamping my teeth together until my gums tingle, I press two fingers into my eyelids and swallow hard. Acidy heat radiates up from my chest and pours out of my nostrils.

   
Damn. That’s good stuff.

   
Every sip takes me further away from shore. I’m out there, rocking with the motion of the water, floating under an open sky. I don’t give a fuck if I drift like this forever. I don’t give a fuck about anything. Wait. How does that old Papa Roach song go?
Cut my life into pieces.
Damn, I’m nauseous.
I’ve reached my last resort, suffocation, no breathing. Don’t give a fuck if I cut my arm bleeding.