Oh. My. God.
“I’m tired of Lila thinking I would look twice at her when you’re on this planet. I’m tired of everyone not knowing I’m crazy about you. I’m tired of everyone not knowing I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world, and I’m desperate to call you mine.”
I swear I nearly stop breathing.
He moves even closer to me so there’s practically no space between us. I have to tilt my head back so I can meet his eyes, which are boring into mine and telling me he means every word he’s said.
“I’m tired of not calling you my girlfriend.”
I honestly nearly pass out.
He dips his head so his mouth is only an inch from mine. A smile is playing on his lips, like he’s not concerned what my response will be, like he knows perfectly well what his words are doing to me right now, like he can hear my heartbeat going crazy in my chest.
“Tell me, Izzy, are you tired of all that too?”
I have no words right now, no words at all to tell him how I feel.
So instead I show him.
I close the distance between us and kiss him. I kiss him like we’re the only two people in the hallway. I kiss him like I’ve wanted to for weeks. I kiss him like he’s the only person I ever want to kiss again.
And he kisses me back. He kisses me right back until my back is pressed against the locker and his body is pressed against mine with his arms wrapped around me, and I swear I have never wanted anyone this badly in my life. If I could stay in this moment forever, I would. I would stay in this perfect moment forever.
Until eventually, of course, we run out of breath and have to pull away from each other.
I’m struck by nerves as I try to get my breathing under control, but when I look up and see Finn smiling down at me, his face flushed and his eyes shining, I know it’s going to be okay. I know we’re together from now on, and no matter what goes on between us, no matter where life takes us, Finn Sullivan will always have my back.
A throat is cleared not so subtly next to us, and we see Ms. Joot stood there. She’s trying to look stern, because God knows our little display was definitely not school-appropriate, but she can’t help the amused smile curving her lips.
“I think maybe you two have put on enough of a performance for this afternoon.” She tilts her head, gesturing past us, and I turn to see way more eyes than I would like watching us—blatantly staring at us. She sends me a wink. “How ’bout you take this show off of school grounds?”
I grin back at her and Finn grabs my bag for me, takes my left hand in his right, and leads me down the hall. Past Lila, who is stood looking outraged beside Evie and some of the other cheerleaders. Past Logan and Matty, who are smirking in our direction, and past Ethan, who is studiously not looking at us.
“So…” My attention turns back to Finn, who is using his thumb to stroke the palm of my hand. “I guess after that, everyone will know?”
“I guess so.”
And I’m glad. I’m glad everyone knows Finn is mine and I’m his.
The next week with Finn feels like a dream, one I don’t want to wake up from. We spend as much time as possible together and it’s still not enough.
With Finn comes Ethan, and I find myself not even minding that. Finn, Ethan, Matty, and Logan are fun to hang around with. They’re loud and carefree, fun and friendly, and when I finally let myself just be around them, I find that I’m having more fun than I have in months.
Ethan likes it too. I can tell.
Now that Ethan and I are spending more time together than we have in years, I start to remember all the great things about my brother that I blocked from my mind. He’s outgoing and positive, quick-witted and confident. He reminds me of our mum so intensely sometimes it shocks me, and I know I should tell him this. I know I should let him talk to me about it without shutting him down, but even now, even with things so good with Finn and me and things finally on the right path with Ethan, I still can’t talk to him about Mum.
“Are you psyched about tonight?” Finn asks Ethan as we sit in our living room, watching TV. He dragged me down here to join Matty, Ethan, and Logan before they all head back to school and start warming up for their game tonight. Personally I wanted us to stay in my bedroom. What we were doing up there was a lot more fun than sitting down here, but Finn’s all about us hanging out with everyone.
Also Ethan very loudly shouted when he came in that if he heard us “doing it” he would come up there and kick both of our arses.
Ethan shrugs. “I guess.”
I don’t know what they’re talking as I examine my hair, looking for split ends.
Finn nudges me in my side.
“What?”
“A bunch of scouts are coming to see Ethan tonight, ones from some of the top colleges in the country. They’re all trying to get him. It’s a really big deal.”
Oh. Okay. I glance over at Ethan and see him already watching me. He instantly looks away when he catches me looking. “That’s cool.”
“You got any ideas about where you might go?” Logan asks.
Ethan shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t know.”
“But you’ll go look around at a lot of them, right?” Matty pipes up.
Ethan shrugs. Clearly he doesn’t want to talk about this.
“Bro, get excited,” Logan says, glancing over at him. “This is your big night.”
Ethan doesn’t respond. His eyes stay fixed on the screen.
“Where are you going again?” I ask Finn. He’s already set on going to college a couple of hours away from here. Despite our new relationship, I’m still set on returning to the UK to attend university there, but I’m not worried. I know we’ll be able to make it work one way or the other.
Finn doesn’t respond. Instead he’s watching me intently. The look he’s giving me is making me feel nervous.
“What?”
“You should come tonight.”
Everything inside me goes on alert at his words.
“You should come watch us play, cheer Ethan on.”
I don’t even have to look to know Ethan’s frozen in his place on the sofa.
“Yeah,” Matty says with a grin. “I can’t believe you’ve never seen a game. You’ll love it.”
I can guarantee with absolute certainty that I will not love it.
Logan agrees with them and tells me about the party they’re already planning on going to afterwards.
“Maybe I’ll meet you at the party,” I mutter quietly.
“No,” says Finn. Of course it’s Finn who’s not letting me brush this off. “You should come to the game. You should come and support us. Support your brother.”
I swallow hard. I can’t do that. I just can’t.
“Please, Biz.” Ethan finally speaks up, and the look he’s giving me is so full of hope that I can’t stand to look at him. “You’re the only family I’ve got. Come and watch.”
I wish I could. I wish I could go watch him play and not get bitter about it, not spend the whole time thinking about my mum and how he was playing the game when he should have been with us in her final hours. The reasonable part of me knows that wasn’t his fault and it’s completely unfair and irrational for me to hold it against him, but I can’t go watch him play football like none of it ever happened.
I wish we could go back to how we used to be. I really do. We’ve proven in the last week we can get halfway there, halfway back to where we used to be, but the truth is we can’t rewrite the past. Too much has happened.
I shake my head silently.
Ethan’s face falls. He tries his best to hide it, but he’s never been very good at concealing his emotions, and the disappointment is written all over his features.
“No worries.” He stands and grabs the empty bowl at his feet and the empty glass. “We better get ready to go,” he tells his friends, already heading for the door and out of the room.
I don’t move as Finn, Logan, and Matty stand and gather th
eir things up around me. They don’t say anything to me as they follow Ethan out the door. They don’t have to. It’s pretty obvious; they’re disappointed in me, really disappointed.
My phone starts ringing beside me as I stir on my bed. I’ve been asleep for the last couple of hours even though it’s already evening and I know it’ll mean I probably won’t sleep tonight. I glance over at it and see it’s Kristen’s number. This is new. She doesn’t usually ring me. I glance at the time and see it’s nearly nine at night. It’s seriously late in the UK, or early, depending on how you look at it.
She must be just getting in from a night out.
I watch my phone ring, knowing it’s about to ring out, and something stirs within me. Maybe it’s the fact that I miss her and I’ve stopped trying to pretend I don’t, or maybe it’s Finn’s influence and, for the first time since I’ve been here, I’m not completely miserable. Maybe I’m just tired, but for whatever reason, I grab the phone and swipe to answer before I can stop myself.
There’s silence on the other end and I bite down hard on my lip, nervous that I’ve done the wrong thing.
“Holy shit,” she finally exclaims loudly. “You actually answered!”
I don’t say anything, but tears well my eyes. It’s her. I’m actually speaking to her after all this time.
“Iz?” she asks after another couple of seconds of me not saying anything. “Are you there? Please tell me you’re there.”
I take a deep breath and a tear slips down my cheek. “I’m here.”
She lets out a sort of delighted laugh and I sit up in bed, holding my phone tightly to my ear, my whole body primed and focussed for this conversation.
“Are you drunk?” I ask. “Is that why you’re calling me? Has something happened?”
She snorts. “No and no. Everything’s fine over here. I’ve not been able to sleep and I was thinking about you. I decided to just give you a call. I was actually hoping you might be drunk because then you might answer.”
I laugh and then she laughs, and instantly everything feels better.
“I love you,” she tells me before I can say anything else. “I love you and I miss you and I don’t care about any of that crap that happened before you left.”
My whole body exhales at her words. I don’t need to ask what crap she’s talking about. “I’m so sorry.”
She lets out a snort, dismissing my words. “Forget it. Do you know what Matthew Stevenson is doing now?”
I shake my head and then remember she can’t see me. “No clue.” And it’s true. I don’t know what anyone is doing from home. I haven’t kept in touch with any of them.
“Nothing.” I can hear the glee in her voice. “He’s a complete loser who scrounges off his parents and keeps banging on about his band making it.”
“He’s in a band?”
“Yup. He’s the singer. They’re absolutely shocking.”
I start to laugh; I can’t help it. The thought of Matthew Stevenson strutting around a stage is too much.
Kristen starts giggling too. “Honestly, Iz, he did a cover of Beyoncé in this pub. I nearly died laughing.”
That properly sets us off, and we both laugh harder at the thought of Matthew Stevenson prancing across the stage. It’s probably the most I’ve laughed in a whole year. Kristen stops before I do, and it takes me a minute to realise. I fall silent too.
“I love you,” she tells me again. “I’ve missed you so much. Nothing is the same here without you.”
“I miss you so much,” I tell her, meaning it with every inch of my being. “It feels so weird not having you nearby.”
“Tell me about it!”
“I’m so sorry, Kristen. I was so messed up.”
“Don’t-”
“The way I behaved is unforgiveable. The way I treated you and everyone else was terrible.”
“Honestly-”
“I don’t deserve you being so nice to me.”
“Izzy!” She jumps in. “You were going through hell. It wasn’t a good way to deal with it but I get it. I know how much you were hurting.”
This is why I love her.
“You’re my best friend,” she tells me fiercely. “Nothing has changed.”
My mouth breaks out into the biggest smile. “You’re my best friend too, Krissy.”
“Thank God,” she says dramatically. “Or else my Christmas present would be pretty awkward.”
I frown. Christmas is still ages away. “What’s your Christmas present?”
She pauses for dramatic effect. “Don’t die of excitement or anything but…Mum said she’d buy me flights to come stay with you over New Year’s.”
I gasp out loud. “Seriously?” Having Kristen here? That seems too good to be true.
“Yup! She says I have to make sure I’m revising whilst I’m there, but she knows I’m desperate to see you.”
“Oh my God.”
“Wait—that’s cool with you, right?”
More than cool. It’s the coolest anything has ever been. “I can’t wait,” I tell her. And I really can't. It seems almost too good to be true that I'll be seeing her before the end of the year.
“Great. And I can’t deny that seeing your brother’s social media is a big pull. When did Ethan get so gorgeous?”
I groan out loud. Here she is, my boy-crazy best friend.
She starts to laugh, not caring at all. “And those guys he hangs out with? Tell me you haven’t been crushing on at least one of them. They’re all unreal. Why can’t they make them like that over here?”
I don’t say anything, but she knows me too well.
“Isabella Kavanagh, spill right now.”
I shake my head, but I have a big grin on my face that I can’t wipe off. She knows me better than anyone.
Her tone turns serious. “But really, how are things with Ethan? When I messaged him, I got the impression that things were…difficult.”
I sigh, not even angry that he messaged her after I told him not to. “Yeah, I dunno. Things have been better recently, a lot better, they really have.”
“But?”
“I don’t know what it is…I just can’t get over it. I can’t let it go. I don’t even know what it is.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I know she understands. She was there when he chose to live in the US and broke my heart. “He loves you a lot,” she tells me. “That much is obvious. From what I could tell, he’s been really worried about you, and I know you love him too.”
And that’s the thing I’ve finally figured out, no matter how much I didn’t want to: I love Ethan too. I really do.
When I finally get off the phone to Kristen after over an hour of catching up on gossip and news from the UK, I get out of bed feeling lighter than I have in a year, happier than I have in a long time, and I smile as I realise my life is finally on track. I’m finally able to start feeling happy. I stretch my body and see that Ethan’s truck is still not back. Either the game’s still going or they’ve moved on to the party. I check my phone but don’t have any messages from Finn. He’s obviously still not happy with me for ditching the game and the party.
Kristen’s words about Ethan play in my head as I think about him, and for the first time since I got here, I find myself not just wanting things to be okay between us but actually wanting to talk to him, really talk to him, and not just about basic crap that doesn’t mean anything. I want to talk about real shit. I want to talk about us. I want to understand what happened to us, and I want to talk about Mum.
I leave my room and glance towards Ethan’s, seeing that the door is ajar, and I stop for a moment. I’ve never been in his room before, never wanted to. I know I should just call him if I want to speak to him, but the pull of his open door is too strong and I find myself stepping towards it. Before I know it I’ve pushed the door wide open and I’m stepping inside his room.
It’s way tidier than mine—I notice that straight away—and it’s a very typical boy’s room. The walls
are adorned with prints of sports stars. He has football and basketball star artwork up on his walls and a picture of some girl with a big bum and big boobs who I don’t recognise but is clearly famous somewhere, but that stuff fades into the background when I see how many pictures Ethan has everywhere.
Pictures of Ethan and his friends span the walls of his room, them playing sports, laughing at the camera, on a beach somewhere, sunburnt but smiling. There’s one of him and Finn when they were younger, and a further glance at the picture has me thinking he’s probably around twelve and had only recently moved to Texas. The pictures of him and his friends are not what I focus on, though. The pictures I can’t rip my eyes away from are the ones Ethan has of his family, not of our dad, but of our mum…of our mum and of me. Pictures and pictures of me and Ethan throughout our childhood are tacked up across his noticeboard. Us as babies and toddlers wearing blue and pink as we pose for the camera, image after image of us baking, covered in chocolate, at the beach building sandcastles, on our first day of school, pictures of us all the way up until we were twelve and I refused to have my picture taken with him anymore.
A memory creeps into my brain from the last summer my mum was alive. Ethan was over visiting for the month and I made sure I was out as much as possible, but I came home one day to see their heads buried in old photo albums. My mum tried to get me to join them, but I refused to take that particular trip down memory lane. A couple of days later I noticed she had made copies of the pictures they’d been looking at. I hadn’t given it a second thought. I certainly didn’t think those photographs would wind up on Ethan’s bedroom wall.
And then there are the pictures of our mum that he has too, of her with us when we were young, her carrying both of us as we squirm away, a bright smile on her face as she looks proudly into the camera. Tears sting my eyes. She was so young. Too young.
I look at all the pictures of her, and I stare and stare. I haven’t allowed myself to look at pictures of her since she died. I haven’t been able to. I thought it would break me, but as I look at the pictures of her now, my heart warms and I feel happy. I feel really happy looking at her and remembering her.
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