True (True Believers #1)(61)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Twenty minutes later, the door opened and Jessica came in, wearing her pajama pants and a giant sweatshirt. Her hair was tousled. “Hey.”

“Hey. Where’s Bill?”

“I made him go home. I don’t want him to get the wrong idea about what this was.”

“What was this?” I asked, curious, as she flopped down next to me and drew her knees up to her chest.

“Just bored, and he has been flirting with me for weeks. I wanted to have an orgasm and so I did. I told him straight out I wasn’t going to screw him.” She made a face. “Don’t judge me. I get enough of that as it is.”

I shrugged. “I’m not judging you. I figure as long as you’re honest with the guy, you have a right to do whatever you want.” That kind of casual sex wasn’t for me, but if she could handle it, more power to her.

“Good. Because I get so sick of slut shaming, you know? It’s like a guy can f**k anyone he wants and no one says a word. But we’re not supposed to have physical urges at all. We’re supposed to want to have sex only because we’re in love, and the truth is, my body doesn’t seem to know the difference. It just knows it likes touchy.” She grinned at me. “Lots of touchy.”

“I envy you the touchy right now,” I told her honestly. It had been far too long since I had been touched.

But I also knew that I would never go backward. I wouldn’t undo what I had done with Tyler. I was never going to be able to emotionally distance myself from the people around me the way I had most of my life, and I didn’t want to. Being a loner was ultimately selfish, and if you never gave of yourself, you never got in return. The risk of being hurt was higher when you put yourself out there, but it was worth it.

My phone beeped to indicate a text.

My heart jumped and I grabbed it, a small seed of optimism planted.

It was from Kylie saying she wuv’d me.

Sweet, but not what I wanted.

I tossed my phone back down, disgusted with myself.

“He’s miserable,” Jessica said, quietly. “He looks like hell, you know. And he asks about you.”

“It doesn’t matter.” It didn’t. He had shattered my faith, my trust, my heart.

And yet the sun rose again the next day.

And I still loved him.

***

In March, Tyler’s mother overdosed and died. Jessica called to tell me and I sat there on my bed, in shock. “What? Oh my God. How?”

“Heroin. That black heroin they buy because it’s cheaper, only it’s way more dangerous.”

“Oh, no.” I closed my eyes. “Was she at home? Who found her?”

“Tyler. His brothers were still at school.”

I was grateful Jayden and Easton weren’t home, but I couldn’t imagine how Tyler had felt. How helpless and sad, and maybe in a small part of him, relieved. His mother’s suffering was over.

“She died last night. They’re burying her tomorrow.”

“That fast?”

“Yeah, they can’t afford to do a wake or anything.”

What a sad ending to a sad life. “I’m going to go. I have to,” I said.

“I think you should.” Jessica gave me the details, the time and the cemetery.

That night I went on another of my nocturnal walks, the weather still grim, still firmly in the grip of winter, the paths around campus filled with slushy, muddy snow that melted each day and iced over each night.

And for the first time in over two months, I gave in to the urge to text Tyler. I simply wrote

I’m sorry.

It said many things to me. I was sorry for his mother’s death, sorry for the reality of his life, sorry that I had been given so many more opportunities than he had. Sorry that I had screamed at him, sorry that for whatever reason, he couldn’t trust in my feelings for him. Sorry that my future no longer held him in it.

I didn’t know if he would answer me. But he did, immediately.

Thx. Me 2.

So he hadn’t deleted my number.

And I was entitled to read all the subtexts I wanted into that brief text. That “me, too” meant he was sorry not just for his mother, but for us.

Maybe that wasn’t logical. But I had learned that sometimes logical didn’t feel as good.

Chapter Twenty-one

I saw Tyler for the first time in two months, bent over his mother’s grave, his arm around Easton’s shoulders.

Jessica and I had borrowed Robin’s car. Kylie had gone with Nathan earlier. It was raining, a steady, drizzling cold mist. The snow had all melted, except for what clung to the curbs and the giant piles in parking lots. The ground was soft, wet, as we crossed the grass to reach the grave site. The attendance was low. There were Tyler and his brothers, Kylie and Nathan, their aunt Jackie, and a woman who I thought might be their next-door neighbor. That was it. Ten people, including Jess and me.

Without saying anything, we just slid into place beside Kylie, listening to the priest, who was softly speaking a prayer. When I looked down at the simple casket, I saw there was a picture on it of Tyler’s mom when she was much younger, when she had still been Dawn, a girl with dreams and a future. I was amazed to see her wide smile, to see the joy and life on her face, to see the care she’d taken with her hair, teasing it to enormous heights, her eyeliner a dramatic teal color. I thought maybe it was her senior portrait.

Jessica squeezed my hand, and I knew she was thinking the same thing. “I’m never touching that shit ever again,” she murmured to me. “Never.”

“Good.” I glanced over at Tyler, unable to resist, wondering if he had seen me.

He was looking right at me, and he gave me a nod of acknowledgement. He was dry-eyed, his expression closed. Easton was silent, too, but Riley was wiping at his eyes, and Jayden was openly crying. My heart broke for them.

When the priest was done, giving the sign of the cross over the casket, he turned to Tyler and Riley and spoke quietly to them for a minute. Then he moved off, giving the family their last moments alone with their mom.

But none of them lingered. Jess and I drifted back a little to give them privacy, but Riley immediately came over to us. He hugged me. “Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.” He nodded to Jessica. “Thanks.”

“I’m so sorry,” I told him. “I lost my mom, too. I know how hard it is.”

“Well, this wasn’t exactly unexpected. She was on borrowed time. But it’s still a kick in the gut.” Riley glanced over at his brothers. “Going to be hard, all the way around.”