Letting Go (13 page)

“
Wanted Dead or Alive” was not a romantic song, but it was slow enough for Harper to torture her. She was stiff and clumsy, so embarrassed that her hands turned clammy, and her cheeks red.

“Relax
. I don’t bite,” he whispered in her ear and all that did was to make her body tighten up more, her heartbeat quickening. Now she wished she’d had a drink or two so she could relax and not come across as such a socially inept twit.

“
Listen to the music.”

At first, she couldn’t. But then he started quietly singing the lyrics and she listened to his dreamy voice and she didn’t hear it, she felt it. It was like her body was enveloped in velvet, that’s how warmly his voice hugged her all around.

The song was over and she realized her entire body was pressed against Harper’s, snug in this slow dancing embrace. There was a second, perhaps two, when she savored this closeness, his warmth and the smell of aftershave, before more blood rushed to her face and she stepped away.

When she looked at
Harper, he didn’t seem indifferent either.

“Listen,
Isabelle,” he started, and then cleared his throat before he continued. “Why don’t we go grab a drink at Earl’s?”

“
I’m not twenty-one, they won’t let me in.” That was all she could think of to say. Harper’s invitation caught her off guard. The past fifteen minutes felt surreal. She couldn’t decide whether Harper was hitting on her or making fun of her.

“
They will if you’re with me. Come on, Jamie is having fun with his buddies, you said so yourself. He won’t even notice if you spend half an hour with me.”

“Why?” She caught herself feeling flattered that
Harper wanted to be with her. But it somehow didn’t make any sense. Just last week he was dating a cute brunette, a girl that was nothing like her. She wasn’t even his type.

“Hm?” He stood too close.
Isabelle made a step back; she needed to breathe.

“Why would you want to
be with me?” She frowned as she was trying to figure him out. But even after months and despite being on friendly terms with him, she felt that she didn’t know him all that well.

“I like you.”

Could it be so simple? The way he smiled, warm and soft, suggested it was. But this was Harper. Nothing about him was simple or straightforward. He always had an ulterior motive.

“Is that so?”

“You sound like you don’t believe me.” He seemed surprised.

“That is probably because I don’t,”
Isabelle said.

“Why not?” he asked, shaking his head so that a lock of black hair fell in his eyes. He needed a haircut.

“The better question is, why would you like me?”

“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”

Isabelle raised her eyebrows.

“What’s not to like,
Isabelle?” Harper asked softly, catching her hand in his palm.

She could almost believe him
. For one millisecond, she wished she could. Then she pulled her hand free. It unsettled her, this unexpected longing, but she suppressed it, wiped it out of her mind, eradicated it.

“Is this a joke?” she asked because she knew how he’d react to it. Because of that moment of weakness, she was afraid to be alone with him for much longer; she had to push him away. She knew him well enough to know how to
achieve that.

His eyes turned dark and the gentle expression faded from his face.

“Well, you had your chance, Isabelle. I won’t repeat my offer.” Harper smirked and bowed. “Thanks for the dance.”

Before she could answer or move, he walked down the dark hallway and she hugged herself,
enveloped in a strange sense of loss.

Later, she found
Jamie and told him she’d go home because she was tired. She tossed and turned in her bed until she fell asleep at seven in the morning, only to dream of Harper. It annoyed her, but frightened her too. She thought it would be best to spend the next few days with Jamie to get Harper out of her head.

The next day, they met at a cafe in town. He was there when she arrived, and he seemed
exhausted.

“When did you
get home last night?” she asked, caressing his hand on the table.

She ordered juice and croissant, while he drank coffee. Black and lots of it.

“Around four a.m.”

“Hm, I figured,” she giggled when he yawned.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t get much sleep. Harper and I got into a fight,” he said, watching her.

Isabelle
had a sinking feeling that it was because of her. Jamie knew that Harper and she danced, she was certain.

“Jackson told me he saw you two,”
Jamie said as if answering her unspoken question.

Isabelle
waited for the waitress to leave, before she responded. “I’m sorry if that upset you.” When she looked in his lovely blue eyes, she regretted causing him the tiniest bit of discomfort. He was her entire world, her soulmate. They were so alike she sometimes had trouble distinguishing where he ended and she started. They were one in every sense.

“He asked me to dance,” she explained. “I didn’t want to be rude.”

Jamie looked like he understood. But for Isabelle that was not enough. She had to come clean. Lying to Jamie was something she refused to do. And not telling him everything was a lie.

“He invited me for a drink.”

“And did you go?” Jamie frowned.

“Of course not. I just wanted you to know.”

He seemed reassured.

“Was that what you two fought about?” she asked worriedly.

“That and a bunch of other things, like always.” His finger traced the crack in the Formica table. He seemed moody.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” she admitted. “I kept thinking that what I did was wrong. I didn’t want to hurt you,
Jamie. I’m sorry.”

Surprised,
Jamie looked up at her. He took hold of her hands, cupping them in his large, smooth palms. They felt different than Harper’s had last night. Somehow more reassuring, less … unsafe.

“It’s not your fault.
You know how Harper is. He does stuff to annoy me. Try to keep away from him.”

“But how can I? He’s your brother. He’s always around and we’re ...
friends. I mean, he’s not that bad,” she said frustrated. She wasn’t even certain he’d asked her to dance to annoy Jamie. He seemed genuine when he asked her out. But that made things even worse if he was trying to seduce her. Either way, she was in a mess.

“I know.
Maybe just avoid being alone with him,” Jamie said. “I wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed every finger slowly and gently.

She nodded. “Sure.”

“You’re
my
girl, Izzy.”

She liked that, being ‘his’ girl.

She didn’t get to see Jamie much the next week. She had a lot of things to prepare for her trip to Paris and he was busy with lacrosse practice. They talked on the phone and met up at her place the day before her departure. They cuddled in her room, discussing their plans for the summer, the colleges they applied to, the exams, everything and nothing. Neither mentioned what they would do if they got accepted into their first choices that were thousands of miles apart.

She only saw
Harper once during that time. She was having a drink with Chloe on Saturday, before she left. The day was warm and sunny, the kind that declared that spring had truly started. Isabelle and Chloe sat outside at the coffee shop across from their school. She saw Harper sitting alone at a table inside. He lifted his eyes just as she looked at him. He smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.

She’d hoped being away from him for a week would help her forget about the dance and the confusion that it brought her. And it did, until she ended up in his car the minute she
landed in Atlanta.

Now, he nodded at the radio, noticing her pensive expression. “Did that bring back
memories?”

She made a face at him.

“Admit it, you enjoyed our dance,”
Harper said.

She watched his smiling profile, thinking about the things she’d learned about him
in the past few hours.

“Okay, I did. A bit.”

“It seemed a whole lot to me, not just a bit,” he said. “The way you snuggled up to me, mmm ...”

“I did not snuggle,
Harper. We danced; you can’t do that standing a yard apart.” She knew he was teasing, but his comment incensed her.

“A yard? There wasn’t a molecule of air between us,
Isabelle.”

“Shut up.
”

“
Admit it and I will.”

“I’m not admitting to anything,” she said annoyed. He
could be like a dog with a bone.

“Are you afraid?” he asked,
the smile vanishing from his face.

“Of what? You?”

He didn’t reply right away, as if he were choosing his words carefully.

“Of the consequences, maybe?
”

“There can’t be any
consequences when nothing happened.” She fidgeted with her fingers. She considered calling Chloe just to end this conversation. The fact that she didn’t know where he was going with it worried her.

“Something happened and you know it. But you won’t admit it because then you’d have to face it.”

He looked at her long and slow. “Isn’t it so, Isabelle?”

“No, it’s not,
Harper. We danced. That’s it.”

“You didn’t
feel tempted, even for just a moment, to leave Jamie and go with me?”

Isabelle
prided herself on not lying. She’d told Jamie about dancing with Harper, she’d told Dad that she’d taken Mom’s necklace when he thought the cleaning lady stole it, and she told him when she ditched classes in her junior year to go to Chloe’s when she was sick. She didn’t lie. Unless she really had to.

“Not for one second,” she enunciated each
word to drive the message home, feeling sick for doing this to him.

Harper
was staring through the windshield; he nodded and frowned, but didn’t say a thing.

She’d expected him to taunt her some more, tease her until she blushed to her hair roots. But he didn’t. His uncharacteristic reaction bothered
her so much that ten minutes later she couldn’t keep silent any longer.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Huh?”

“The dance
, the cooking lesson this morning, and now trying to get me to admit things? What is this about?”

“I thought it was obvious,” he said moodily.

It wasn’t to her.

“I like you. But for some reason you won’t believe me. Why?”

She was at a loss for words. She’d thought he was trying to make her do something stupid so he could then throw it in Jamie’s face. But she’d come to think that he wasn’t the mean big brother that Jamie was sometimes trying to make him out to be. He had his differences with Jamie, true, but not all of them were his fault. And he didn’t dedicate his entire life to tormenting his brother. He taunted him and insulted him for a laugh sometimes. But he wouldn’t hurt him. That much had become clear to Isabelle on this trip.

But could he
have meant what he said? And then what? How could any of it matter when she was with Jamie?

“
Harper ...” She sighed and tried again. “I love Jamie.” Her voice was faint, barely perceptible in the noise of the rain and the music from the radio.

“None of this means anything to you?”

“What is
this
?” she asked exasperated. “If you mean you saying you like me—I’m not even sure I should believe you. Besides, in the ten months that I’ve known you, I’ve seen you date at least five girls. You don’t seem to be a relationships sort of a guy. And how can I be certain this is not some elaborate joke of yours?

But if you mean us being friends, talking about important stuff, trusting each other, then yes, this means something.
It means a great deal. But I’m still in a relationship with your brother, Harper.”

“And if you weren’t?” It upset her how hopeful he sounded.

“It doesn’t work like that, Harper. You know it doesn’t.”

He didn’t
speak.

“
You can’t expect me to ditch my boyfriend so I would see if I could have more fun with you,” Isabelle said. She would hate to ruin everything now that they’d become good friends, so she couldn’t let it go. She couldn’t allow him to be angry with her.

“Fair enough.”

She risked a tentative glance his way. He must’ve felt it and he looked at her. The trace of a smile on his lips, albeit a little sad, made her heart lighter.

“So we’re okay?”

He nodded. “Sure. But when you two break up, and you will when you end up in different states when you go to college, promise to give me a chance?”