Lost Perfect Kiss: A Crown Creek Novel

by Theresa Leigh

  Maybe it was the expression on her face, the serene composure, the shy glance. Maybe it was the blessed distraction from my silent stand-off with my professor. Or maybe it was the small play of a smile across her lips when she looked at me. Like the look of recognition you give to someone right before you open your mouth and reveal you don’t actually know their name.

  She turned her heavy cart into the hall and then stopped short when she noticed that Professor Dorrington was still at her desk. “Oh!” she said and jerked her cart back in surprise. The force of it sent the mops that were on the front clattering to the floor.

  Without thinking, I jumped to my feet. And to my surprise, my hand closed firmly on the fallen mop and didn’t show any signs of tremor at all. “Here,” I said, handing her the one, and then the other. “I got you,” I said. They were heavier than they looked.

  At that moment, Professor Dorrington slapped her laptop closed and stood up. The custodian girl and I both startled and looked at her.

  The expression on her face was one of studied boredom. “You’re all set, Nurse Foster,” she sniffed as she shrugged on her complicated wool coat.

  I inhaled a deep, full breath. “You saw it then? My test?” For some reason I glanced at the custodian girl. She was watching us both with keen interest.

  “Like I said, you’re all set.” Professor Dorrington grabbed her case and turned to stalk out the main entrance.

  I let out that full breath and looked at the custodian again, and for some reason the urge to laugh overtook me. “Oh my god that was the scariest moment in my entire life,” I gasped, falling back to sit down on one of the empty chairs.

  “She’s terrifying,” the custodian whispered with her eyes wide. “Thanks for your help.”

  I glanced at her and she quickly looked down, avoiding my eyes. Her braid was so tight it pulled the sides of her face taut. I found myself wanting to know why she wore it that way. The only people I knew who braided their hair like that were little girls for dance recitals and the creepy cult ladies who moved in packs through town, not talking to anyone except themselves. “I’m Everly,” I said, holding out my hand. “You might have already heard my professor yelling my last name, but in case you missed it, it’s Foster.”

  Then I looked at her again. The edges of her eyes were glittering. She dabbed angrily at them with her sleeve and then lifted her chin. “My name is Rachel.” She looked at my outstretched hand with an expression of grim concentration before taking it with hers. I was surprised by her strong, sure grip even more than I was surprised by the callouses on her palm. “Rachel Walker.”

  She said her name like it should mean something, but I just smiled and nodded. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said. And I really did mean it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gabe

  Even though I didn’t want to, even though I wanted more than anything to stop, I still dragged my finger across the tablet, rewinding the video to the beginning again. The stupid blasting music, the white, italicized letters—how many of the millions of views this video had racked up were mine?

  “I’m Gabe King and I’m the King of Pain!” the tiny, arrogant, unbroken version of me shouted into the camera. I hated his fucking guts, but the urge to punch the tablet screen had faded into a faint buzz in the back of my brain. I wasn’t watching out of self-hatred anymore. I wasn’t watching it punish myself. I was watching it out of...habit?

  The thought made the corner of my mouth jerk into an unwanted smile, like someone had grabbed my lip with a fishhook. I coughed and then laughed, a dry mirthless sound, aware that sitting alone in my bedroom and chuckling to myself didn’t exactly say much for my fraying, already suspect, sanity. Only I could make a habit of watching myself almost die. Only I could get bored of seeing my body broken and dashed against the rocks.

  With a brand new wash of self-hatred, I nearly mustered the strength to turn it off. My finger hovered over the pause button, but I kept watching, transfixed right up to the moment the me on the screen leaped off that bridge.

  “You’re watching that again?”

  I looked up, feeling as guilty as if I’d been caught with my hand down my pants. “What are you talking about?” I asked, trying to slowly drop the tablet out of his sight.

  Beau shook his head as he walked into my bedroom. “The video. You’ve been watching it a lot.”

  “Stalker much?”

  “Obvious much?” he countered. “You were always terrible at hiding things.” A shadow crossed his face. “Hey, don’t look at it anymore, okay?”

  I hated the look of concern on his face because it was the same one he wore when he, Finn, and Claire had confronted me about my pill-addiction after the King Brothers imploded. The same wary sort of caution that you’d wear around a madman with a gun, or possibly a beloved family dog gone rabid. I never thought I’d make him have that look again, and I didn’t want to think about what it meant he was thinking. So I tried for a lame attempt at humor. “Look at what?”

  The concerned look stayed put. “You know what,” he said, his voice so level you could use it to hang a picture on the wall.

  Of course I wanted to protest that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing. Even though I could feel how wrong it was with every sweat-soaked, self-loathing viewing. I could feel it eating away at me. It was like climbing out of quicksand and then belly-flopping back in again for a second go-round. Willingly letting it suck me under. I glanced down at the tablet again. The video had ended, the white, italicized words scrolling by, letting the voyeuristic viewer know that Gabriel King survived his brush with death with two broken ankles, seven broken ribs, and a laceration on his side requiring twenty-two stitches to close and that filming of “King of Pain” was on hiatus, its fate uncertain. I sucked in a huge lungful of breath...

  And then threw the tablet to the floor. “Take it,” I told Beau.

  His nostrils flared slightly. “Gabe, I’m not gonna fucking confiscate it from you like you’re a bad little boy getting his toys taken away.” He snorted. “Fuck, I’m not Claire.” Then his eyes softened. “Just...be careful, okay?”

  All at once my eyelids felt far too heavy to keep open anymore. “Take it,” I urged. It was easier to talk with my eyes closed, easier to tell the truth without seeing him react to what I was saying. “I... I can’t be careful, Beau. You know I don’t know how.”

  His silence was more of a response than any words could have been.

  “Take it,” I pleaded with my eyes still closed.

  "I've got it," he said.

  I breathed a sigh of relief.

  When I opened my eyes, Beau was no longer holding it. Whether he had shoved it up under his shirt, or quickly hidden it somewhere in the room, I had no idea. I didn’t want to know. He knew I needed it gone right then and there.

  Of course he did. He was Beau. “Now what are you going to do with yourself?” he asked me.

  I stared at the ceiling. What I wanted to do was have Everly come over and give me another sponge bath, only this time she’d get in with me. I licked my lips, knowing full well that wasn’t an answer Beau was going to want to hear and I was frustrated. “I dunno. Read a fucking book or something,” I hissed. My eyelids were heavy again. I just wanted to sleep until Everly came over.

  “Mom’ll be happy to hear that,” Beau said.

  For a second I thought he had read my mind, until I realized he was talking about me reading a book. “Oh god no, don’t tell her, she’s gonna come home from work with an armload of books,” I sighed. Beau was the type to sit there in a corner with a giant book in his lap, making frowny faces as he turned the page, but I’d never been able to sit still long enough for reading to work for me. “Oh god, and they’re all gonna be about World War Two, I bet.”

  “Because you were interested in it.”

  “For like three months. In fifth grade.”

  Beau smiled. “Mom doesn’t let go of things easily.”

  “Yeah, I kn
ow. She’s still working at the library even though she and dad could have retired five times over by now. Especially with what we all gave them.” A flicker of something crossed Beau’s face. “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” Beau said, then kept talking. “You gave them a cut?”

  “We all did,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “We talked about this way back when.”

  “I know, and yeah, I gave them mine, and I’m pretty sure Jonah did his but...” he trailed off and I could see the internal fight. Loyalty to the family or loyalty to his twin.

  Because I already knew what he was going to say. “Finn never gave his?” I asked, bristling.

  Beau raised his hand to quiet me as he glanced at the door. “Mom and Dad don’t know.”

  “How do they not...” I trailed off. “Oh.”

  Beau looked sheepish.

  “You covered it for him,” I sighed.

  “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “What happened to his money?” I asked through clenched teeth. I still had most of my King Brothers money left in the bank and it wasn’t like I’d been living a life of Spartan austerity these past few years. “How the fuck did he blow through...”

  “He’s gonna pay me back,” Beau interrupted, waving his hand. “And it’s not like I didn’t have it either. I can’t really think of a better use for my money than helping out my brother and my parents at the exact same time.”

  I mimed retching noises. He rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s not like I didn’t have enough to go out and get some toys.”

  “Toys. Now you’re talking my language,” I said. “What’d you get, an ATV? A jetski?”

  “A fishing boat,” Beau said proudly.

  “What the fuck?” I breathed.

  But he ignored me. “I take it up to Ganagua Lake in the summer. It’s almost trout season too, so I have a few spots I want to hit. The creeks are all swollen with all this rain so it’s not even safe to go out there in waders. You’d need a boat.” His eyes got this faraway look. “Uncle Gid showed all his secret fishing places to me and Grandpa King showed them to him. Like a family secret. I’ll fish them someday with my kids.”

  This was a side of my younger brother I’d never seen before. “You want kids?”

  He grinned. “A whole pack of ‘em. Like us. Only smarter.” He narrowed his eyes critically at me. “And better looking.”

  “They’re gonna have to depend on their mom’s genes for that, then.”

  He eyed the heavens and then gave me the finger as he stood up. “I’ll take you out if you can promise not to be a gigantic prick about it.”

  “Thanks,” I sighed. “I’m gonna need a new hobby soon enough.”

  He looked at me like I had three heads. “Why a new one? Your guitars are over in Dad’s shed just gathering dust.”

  I swallowed. “Yeah, maybe,” I said, trying to sound like I was thinking about it. But I wasn’t. Ever since Noelle, the music that used to ring through my head at top volume fell silent. It was like losing a limb and I had no idea how to explain its loss to my brother who would undoubtedly tell me to just pick it up again and ignore how wrong it felt. I looked up at him, hoping that my expression was one of complete sincerity. “I’ll do that, yeah.”

  Beau nodded. “In the meantime I’ll have mom find you some books on the Battle of the Bulge.”

  “Oh god,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. I could hear Beau’s laughter ringing all the way down the stairs.

  For a moment I closed my eyes in the silence he left behind, hoping for sleep to overtake me and rescue me from the restlessness that crawled under my skin. But after several long breaths I opened my eyes again. A nervous energy was coursing through me. I stood up carefully and hobbled to the window, then gazed out, earnestly scanning the trees, the omnipresent gray clouds, the rain-swollen creek like they were hiding something. I heard my pulse thudding in my temple and realized I was holding my breath and let it back out again.

  She wasn’t coming today.

  She had her boards.

  I knew this.

  But the prospect of a whole day spent without her hard-won smile, without her unexpected laugh, made the day seem even bleaker than the gray clouds could. I missed her.

  I fucking missed her.

  Glancing at my phone, I counted the hours until she came over again. And then called myself pathetic. And then decided I couldn’t get much more pathetic than a half-crippled shut-in standing by the window like a dog waiting for its master to return so why even bother caring? And then I gave myself the mental middle finger. I really was pathetic. I was even standing here imagining I could hear the sound of her terrible car starting, the coughing wheeze of an evil asthmatic, but that was stupid since there was no way I should recognize the sound of her car.

  But I did. I was hearing it, and it didn’t sound right. I felt the back of my neck prickle and before I knew it, I was strapping on my boots.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Everly

  Every morning for the past month I awoke with the same breathless nightmare. That somehow I’d gotten the day wrong and slept through my alarm on the day of my boards.

  But it never happened, and today? Today I awoke before my alarm, jerking out of a half-sleep and sitting straight up in my bed with a smile of anticipation.

  It was today.

  It was today!

  And I was ready.

  I flew down the stairs, the silent house a kind of blessing to my racing heart. I’d barely slept last night. When my breathing had finally slowed enough to let sleep creep in around the edges of my consciousness, my brain had taken over and started drilling me on questions. I dreamed half-formed dreams where I paged through my review books, the words dancing around on the pages, the sentences changing before I reached the end, and then jerked awake to check my phone alarm one more time.

  I knew I must have fallen completely asleep at some point, because there had been a whole thing where it was Gabe King who was administering the exam, but then I snapped awake again before he took his shirt off to reveal that roadmap of scars.

  I felt a flush, then shoved it from my mind. The last thing I could afford to be thinking about today was Gabe King.

  I poured a cup of cold coffee left by my parents in the carafe and stuck it into the microwave. The seconds ticked down. My stomach roiled. I’d been prepping for this for four years and it was finally here. The misting rain hung in dreamlike curtains over the morning, adding to the sense that this wasn’t exactly real. It hardly seemed possible that something I’d been looking forward to for so long was finally about to come true. My life was quiet and ordinary enough that there wasn’t much I could say that about. I’d spent all those years crushing on Jonah and for what? He never noticed me. But he had put me in Gabe’s line of sight.

  The thought made me smile as I leaned against the stove and stared out the window. Gabe was up there in the King house, but I wasn’t going to be seeing him today and for some reason that made me feel a tinge of melancholy. I wondered if it would be weird to go right over there after the boards were over. He’d probably want to hear how it all went. He didn’t seem to mind talking to me, no matter how awkward I got. In fact, he seemed to actually enjoy himself, which meant that I enjoyed it too. I leaned in further, looking up the hill to the King house. His bedroom was on the north-facing side, which meant I couldn’t see it, but that didn’t stop me from craning my neck to maybe catch a glimpse of him hobbling past a window, hopefully wearing his boots like a good boy...

  When the microwave beeped, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I grimaced as I pulled the hot mug out, feeling slightly ridiculous. Like the microwave had caught me and was disappointed by my daydreaming on today of all days.

  I pushed all thoughts of Gabe from my brain and resolutely marched out the door. In all the mental rehearsals I had for this day, the sun had always been shining out full-strength and warm with encouragement. Instead it was another gr
ay day of rain. It was the ninth straight day of rain and there was some talk about dangerous levels in the creek.

  But that wasn’t my concern right now. I got into The Grim Reaper and took a deep breath. “You and me today, kid,” I said with a chuckle, and reached out to give the dashboard a fond pat.

  Then I turned the key.

  He coughed and then sputtered into silence.

  I licked my lips. A faint tremor ghosted through my hands, and then I took a deep breath and laughed. “Oh, we’re gonna be like that, are we?” I leaned back and cracked my knuckles. “Okay kid, you asked for it.”

  I turned the key.

  * * *

  He coughed.

  Sputtered.

  Then the engine caught and he roared to life. “Ha!” I crowed, smacking the steering wheel with the flat of my palm. “That’s what I’m talking about!” I threw him into reverse and hit the gas.

  He died.

  For a moment he rolled silently until he ran out of momentum and ground to a halt, dead in the water.

  Irritated, I threw on the E-brake and blew out an explosive sigh. The ghost of a tremor was back again, but if I gripped the steering wheel hard enough I didn’t have to feel it. I took another deep breath and looked at the dash, gazing at it like I could somehow peer into my car’s evil soul. “What the hell, Grim?” I asked him. “What is it? What did I do?”

  There was no reply, of course, and thank heavens because then I’d know I really was cracking up. I sat for a moment, considering my next move. The engine was flooded, I could tell. I waited. The minutes ticked by and I tried to remind myself that I had plenty of time. I only needed fifteen minutes to get there. Add in another fifteen to find parking, walk in to the building, and take my seat and I was still a good twenty minutes early. I looked at the clock on my cell phone and breathed out and in as slowly as I could, trying to let my breath be the only thing I was concerned about. Forced meditation is still meditation, right?