Faster We Burn (Fall and Rise #2)(33)
Author: Chelsea M. Cameron

“Do you think I’m the kind of person who would tell her friend that her boyfriend slept with someone else right after her father died of a heart attack?”

“I’m not her boyfriend.”

“Whatever, dude. That’s just semantics. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t tell her. She’s got enough shit to deal with right now without worrying about you putting your penis in places it doesn’t belong.”

“I’m going to tell her.”

“Yeah, okay. Let me know how that works out for you. I gotta go, bro. Therapy time is over.” She hung up without saying anything else.

Well, I had that base covered.

A moment later, my phone rang again. Damn, I was popular today.

“Hey, it’s Lottie.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“We’re sort of doing this welcome back kind of thing for Katie, and I thought you should be involved.”

“What kind of thing are we talking about?”

“Like a get-together-to-take-her-mind-off-of-it thing. We were also hoping, maybe, we could use your apartment? It’s bigger than the dorm. I figured you wouldn’t mind, but I thought I’d ask before we barged in.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” I’d have to clean first, that was for sure. I’d left things in disarray when I’d gone to Katie’s house and I hadn’t gotten them back together yet. “Do you need anything else?”

“Nope. We’ve got it covered.” She gave me some more details and then hung up.

God, I had dug myself a hole and it was like it kept getting deeper and deeper.

Katie

Campus was the same. Why I had expected it to be different, I had no idea, but it was like my world had changed so dramatically, I expected the rest to match. Like the sky should always be cloudy, the weather always cold and miserable, the world gray and lifeless. It would have been easier to accept the truth if it was like that.

I got hug-tackled as soon as I walked into my room by Lottie, who had clearly been waiting for me. My side of the room was all made up and it smelled like she’d just sprayed it with something vanilla-scented.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“You didn’t enjoy having the room all to yourself?” I said, giving her a wink. I would have taken advantage of it, if I were her.

Her blue eyes went wide.

“We didn’t—”

“Of course you did. Hell, I would, if I were you.” Not that I was going to be hav**g s*x anytime soon, and it wasn’t just because of Dad. All the reasons I’d used for hav**g s*x before didn’t seem like good reasons anymore. They weren’t even reasons. I just decided I wanted to do it and grabbed whoever was available. It was a miracle I hadn’t ended up pregnant. Or worse.

Dad would be so ashamed of me. Would have been so ashamed of me. Now he’d never know. Somehow, that made me even more determined not to do it. Ever again.

“Maybe we did. A little.” Such a liar.

“As long as it’s not in my bed, you can do whatever you want, girl.” I melted back into my pillows and it was such a relief having my pink things around me again. My safe little pink world.

“How are you doing?” I’d gotten used to this question and all its variations. Pasting on a smile and saying I was doing fine was as easy as blinking now. It was complete bullshit, but no one ever seemed to care.

“Fine.”

Lottie grabbed a pint of ice cream from the freezer, as if she’d been waiting to do it since I walked in. She handed me a spoon and sat down next to me on my bed. I twisted the lid off and sunk my spoon in the cold, creamy goodness.

“You’re getting good at that. Saying you’re fine when you’re not. You forget, I too am a Master of Fine.”

I had forgotten.

She took a deep breath. “After the accident, when Lexie was in the hospital, people would always ask me how she was doing. They didn’t want to know that she couldn’t remember who her parents were, or how old she was, or that she had to pee in a bed pan. So I got pretty damn good at saying she was doing fine. No one wanted to know those other things. They just want to be reassured. It’s like when you ask how someone is; you don’t really want to know, you just want them to say they’re fine and then you can move on. It’s a social courtesy. Like opening a door for someone or saying “bless you” when someone sneezes.”

Sticking a giant spoonful of ice cream in her mouth, she shrugged.

“So, how about you tell me how you’re actually doing and cut the crap?”

“What do you want me to say? My dad is dead and I can’t accept it, and I’ve got a Ziploc bag with some of his ashes, which I stole, and sometimes I just wish I could fall asleep and not wake up. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

I had to give her credit, she didn’t miss a beat.

“You can say whatever you want as long as it’s the truth. You stole of some of his ashes?”

“Yeah. I have no idea why. I thought maybe having them with me would help reality sink in, but no luck. I still have this huge part of me that expects him to walk in the door, or call me up, or something. How crazy is that?”

“Not crazy at all. You’re talking to a girl who couldn’t accept that her best friend was never coming back.”

“How is Lexie?” I took another huge bite of the ice cream, enough to give me a brain freeze.

“She’s settled, I guess, and her mom’s been calling me with updates. I want to go down and see her, but Zan says it isn’t a good idea. I know it isn’t, but I miss her.”

Yet another reminder that Lottie was a much better person than I was.

“I mean, at least she’s alive. Wow, that sounded way better in my head than it did out loud. I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Our spoons collided and she moved hers so I could dip in again. “I just keep expecting myself to break, to have this great moment of realization, but I’m still waiting for it to hit me.”

“Are you sure you want it to?”

“No, I really don’t want it to, because then I’ll probably end up worse than Mom.”

I gave Lottie a brief rundown of my Mom’s insanity.

“Is she seeing someone? Like a counselor?”

“I think Kayla is taking her to some sort of widow’s support group.”

She paused for a second, digging in the ice cream for the best bite.

“And you? Are you going to see someone?”

The social worker at the hospital had sent us home with brochures and phone numbers of various places where we could get grief counseling. I could always go see Dr. Sandrich.

There was one group especially for children who had lost one or both parents and Kayla wanted us to go together, but I was trying to talk her out of it. I couldn’t imagine talking to a roomful of strangers about my dad. And what would I say? That I couldn’t cry? I could just imagine their horrified faces.

“Not right now. I just want to get back to things and go from there.”

“It might help.”

“Did it help you?”

“Uh, no. Not really. But you shouldn’t use me as a measure of the effectiveness of therapy.” I didn’t want to talk about this anymore.

“I really missed you,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine. “You know what I thought when I first saw you?”

“Do I really want to know?”

“I thought that we would never get along. I thought that I should have just sucked it up and lived with one of those bitches from high school. How crazy is that?”

“You know what I thought when I first saw you?” she said.

“I bet I can guess.”

“It was, ‘fuck, that’s a lot of pink.’”

“Surprise, surprise.”

I whacked her with a pillow, being careful not to upset the ice cream. She grabbed one and hit me with it and we laughed.

“I got used to it. The pink,” she said, gesturing.

“You want to know something else? You were a better friend to me in a few weeks than any one of those bitches were in three years. Wanna talk about something crazy.”

“Trish always says that normal people are boring, that normal people don’t get remembered. It’s the crazies who make history.”

“Here’s to being crazy.”

I raised my spoon and we clinked them together again and fought for the rest of the ice cream.

Chapter Twenty-three

Stryker

I could count the times I’d run into Katie on campus on one hand. Of course, one of those times had to be on Thursday after she’d gotten back. I’d thought in the spirit of our newfound friendship that she would come see me, or want me to see her, but she didn’t. That girl gave more mixed signals than the government.

I was just coming away from the Starbucks after having caved and bought a crazy expensive coffee to try to give me a jolt. I’d had a hard time sleeping lately. Guilt didn’t make a soft pillow.

“Hey, friend.” A voice said from behind me. I turned and was met by a tired, but beaming Katie. It had only been a few days since I’d last seen her, but it was almost like seeing her again for the first time. God, she was beautiful. Had I ever appreciated that before?

Her brown hair was up in its usual high ponytail, but it was a little messier than usual. As if she really didn’t care. Her pink shirt was loose and I could see her bra straps resting on her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing makeup, either, and she had her glasses on.

“Hey, friend,” I finally said. I wanted to touch her. Hugging her would be a completely appropriate friend thing to do, right? Yes. There were people glaring at me to move along, but I just gave them a glare back. That made them back off a little.

“What do you want? It’s on me.” I moved aside so she could order. She looked like she was going to protest, so I said, “Friends can buy each other coffee, can’t they?”

She smiled, just a little.

“Sure they can. I’ll have a Vanilla Spice Latte.”

While we waited for our drinks, she stood next to me and I thought this would be a good time for that hug.

“I’m glad you’re back. I’m sorry we left on a weird note.” I leaned and put my arms around her. She hesitated, and then her arms went around me. I’d held her so much during those days I spent at her house. That closeness had been so easy, so effortless. It was a reflex. She needed something to hold onto, and I just happened to be there.

I tried not to hold her too tight, or notice how hard her heart was beating, and how her head fit against my chest as if someone had carved a place for it, just for her.

I tried, but I failed.

“I missed you, friend,” she whispered as I closed my eyes and breathed her in.

“I missed you.”

Our drinks were ready so I had to let go, but I slid my arms down her shoulders, wanting to make the touch last.

“Listen, I have to get to class, but I’ll see you later? We should hang out. That’s what friends do, right?” she said.

“Right.”