Exhale

by Jennifer Snyder

  “Seriously?” I grumbled as I realized I was going to need to press down on the lid while the page was being printed in order to get the book flush so the entire page could be printed readably.

  I pressed the lid down to flatten the book and was contemplating pressing the button with the heel of my shoe when a familiar chuckle erupted from behind me.

  “Need some help?”

  Goose bumps prickled across my skin. I shifted on my feet to hide the involuntary shiver that ran along my spine due to Derek’s sudden nearness. “Uh, yeah, actually I do.”

  He reached around me for the book. “Let me see it, I’ll show you the correct way to make a copy with a book this size.”

  “I don’t want to lose my places, though,” I said without letting go.

  “Ah, okay.” His arms were now on either side of me, his chest pressed against my back. His familiar, fuzzy-warmth inducing guy scent surrounded me for the first time in three months, and I felt my lips twist into a smile. “Here’s what you have to do. You need to copy each side of the book as a separate page, that way you don’t have to squish your hand or mash the book itself in the process.” He moved the book, with my fingers still in place, so that the left page was lined up with the lines on the machine evenly before reaching across to push copy.

  “Oh, that makes a lot of sense,” I admitted sheepishly. Why had I not thought of that? “But how do you do the other side, won’t my fingers be in the way?”

  “Your fingers aren’t going to make a difference as long as the page itself is flat.”

  “Huh, thanks.”

  Our eyes met and for the first time in forever, I saw a genuine smile twist up the corners of Derek’s lips and crinkle the edges of his eyes. “Sure, no problem.”

  “I honestly didn’t think copying freaking papers would be this hard.” I laughed, but it sounded odd even to my own ears. My stomach twisted. I didn’t know how to act around Derek anymore. It was like we had time-traveled back to somewhere before that very first kiss, then added in one hundred times more awkwardness because of Kyle’s passing and that was exactly where we were.

  In that excruciating state of uneasiness, or at least that’s where I was. Derek was still a closed book, even with the first real smile I had seen in months twisting his lips.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The scent of garlic and onion mingled in the air. It was Sunday night and I’d just finished chopping up the last little bit of onion into thin slivers and scrapped it into the homemade spaghetti sauce my father had been making on a whim. The upbeat sounds of Fleetwood Mac filled the small area known as our kitchen. This was our typical Sunday night now. Derek and Kyle’s parents would be over any minute, and I wondered if they would have Derek in tow this time, he’d missed last week and all the others before. His parents obviously weren’t as pushy as mine. I hadn’t missed a family Sunday night since they began shortly after Kyle’s death. I’d been forced to attend each and every one.

  This was the first one though that I had been looking forward to. The first one that I hoped Derek would make an appearance at. I knew that he had skipped all the others previous, but since I had seen him smile on Monday, when he’d offered to help me make those copies in the library after school, we’d made a tiny fraction of progress in getting back to being friends. I didn’t think we could ever be more than that, not without disrespecting Kyle on some level, but just friends would be nice. It would be better than what we were now, which was nothing.

  “Who wants to do the honors of testing the spaghetti tonight?” Mom grinned, looking back and forth between Dad and me. “Anyone?”

  “My vote goes for Katie,” Dad said, glancing at me from the corner of his eye, as he tasted another spoonful of his spaghetti sauce.

  “Katie it is then,” she insisted, handing me a fork.

  I rolled my eyes, but cracked a smile still. After all, this was the best part about spaghetti night. Scooping out the noodle from the boiling pot of water, I tipped my fork back and flung the single strand against the cherry wood cabinet doors to my right. It stuck. “All done,” I shouted and then laughed.

  I would never admit it if asked, but the Sunday nights that we cooked for the Connors were my favorite. The three of us listening to music, talking and laughing while we made our way around the kitchen, cooking scrumptious food without a care in the world, it was priceless. I knew this was the very reason why it had been invented, that it was a way for my parents to spend extra time with me, because Kyle’s death had reminded us all how fragile and short life could be.

  The front door opened and a musical voice called out. “Hey, you guys, we’re here!”

  Mom wiped her hands on a dishtowel as she rounded the corner from the kitchen and into the living room to greet Derek’s parents. I held my breath while I scrubbed the scent of onion and garlic from the skin of my hands and underneath my fingernails, waiting to see if Derek sauntered in behind them.

  “Smells good in here, guys,” Tim, Derek’s dad, said as he entered the kitchen.

  Dad and he became engrossed in conversation as I tried to listen beyond their voices, the music, and my mom for any hint of Derek’s presence. I heard nothing.

  “Hold on a second, Julia,” Darlene, Derek’s mom, muttered as she started to enter our tiny kitchen too, but then spun around. “Derek! Bring that catalog from the coffee table, will you? I want to show Julia some things in there.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Derek was actually coming to dinner tonight.

  “He’s coming?” Mom asked Darlene, raising one perfectly arched blonde eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” Darlene said with a wide smile. Her bright green eyes, the ones Derek and Kyle had inherited, twinkled in the kitchen lights as she came back in. “I don’t want to jinx myself, but I feel like he’s finally starting to come around some, like we didn’t lose both our boys in the accident.”

  Something burning tickled my nose. “Mom, the garlic bread!” I yelled as we both raced for the oven mitt on the counter. I lost and was nudged aside by her hips.

  “It’s not going to be burnt. I just put it in a little bit ago,” she said as she removed the baking sheet with thick slices of blacked bread. “Or maybe it was a while ago.” She shrugged.

  We all laughed, even me, until Derek walked in—that was when I stopped.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked with a slight grin, as he sat the strawberry cheesecake his mom had made for tonight’s dessert on my kitchen counter.

  “Julia’s charred garlic bread,” Darlene said as she took the catalog that she had sent him back to retrieve from his hands.

  “It is not charred,” Mom insisted. “It just has a little bit of character…character that we might just have to scrape off a little bit,” she added, using a spatula to unstick them from the baking sheet.

  “Whatever you say, honey.” Dad chuckled, as he counted out enough plates and forks for all of us. “Here, why don’t you two make yourself useful and set the table.” He handed the forks and plates out to Derek and me.

  My eyes flickered to Derek for a split second as I took the forks from on top of the plates. He still had a smile on his face from looking at my mom’s charred garlic bread. I went to the dining room and began setting the forks down on napkins, my heart hammering in my chest because I knew he was directly behind me.

  “Those two need to let go of the distance between them,” I heard Derek’s dad say when he thought we were out of earshot.

  Derek scoffed at his dad’s words and I didn’t know if that meant he agreed with them or not. I did. I didn’t say so though and continued busying myself with folding the napkins just right and laying the forks down straight.

  “Is it like this every Sunday night?” he asked me from across the table.

  “Yeah.” I didn’t raise my eyes to meet his like I’d wanted to. Instead, I focused on folding another napkin in half and making a perfect crease before I placed a fork on it.

  “This is nice,” he said sim
ply.

  I raised my eyes then and realized he was staring directly at me, still holding a stack of plates. The same cute little smile I had always loved formed on his face and I felt my stomach flip-flop at the sight.

  Derek was back. At least I hoped.

  Besides the charred bread, dinner was good. Derek and I went out into the backyard afterward and sat on top of the old wooden picnic table beneath the stars. The three of us used to sit like this, on top of the table, and talk for hours about everything and nothing when we were growing up. Beneath this table had been our very first fort. We had shared birthdays here and summer cookouts. A lot of memories had been made in this very spot. And now, I could add one more to that list—the very first time Derek and I sat here together without Kyle.

  “It’s nice that they’re happy again, isn’t it?” Derek asked, his voice so low I could barely hear him.

  There was a slight chill to the air now that the sun had gone down. I zipped my jacket up and leaned back on the tabletop with my palms holding up my weight. “Who, your parents?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, gazing up into the dark, star-speckled sky above us. The wind blew, making his hair sway this way and that. I fought the urge to reach out and run my fingers through it. “There were days when I never thought I would see them smile again.”

  I didn’t know what to say, we hadn’t really talked about Kyle’s death. Derek and I had simply just allowed ourselves to drift apart as we wallowed in our own sorrows.

  “There were times when I didn’t think we’d ever talk again, too,” he admitted, leaning back on his palms the way that I was, his fingertips nearly brushing mine as they splayed out to balance his weight. “Why did we block each other out, Katie?” The way he said my name, the way that sentence passed between his lips, it squeezed all of the breath out of my lungs.

  I knew the answer to his question for myself, but I wasn’t sure this was the right time to tell him. I swallowed hard and grasped the first deflective answer that came to mind. “I don’t know. I think it just sort of happened.”

  Another cold breeze slashed across my exposed skin. I turned my head, resting my chin against my shoulder; I stared at Derek, waiting for what he would say next. This wasn’t a conversation that I wanted to have. In fact, it was one that I never even allowed myself think about. My muscles tightened when I noticed the downward turn to his lips.

  “It wasn’t because I remind you too much of him?”

  “No.” That wasn’t even close to the true reason.

  “Then what was it?” He turned his intense stare to me. “Tell me, I can handle it now.”

  The shadows across his face made his eyes seem even more pleading. I hated to deny him the truth now that we were finally talking again, but there was also that fear that once I said it, I could never take it back, even if it ruined the place that we had just finally gotten to.

  My stomach twisted as I forced myself to answer him. “With as close as we were, and as close as I wanted us to be, I felt like we were disrespecting Kyle in some way. So I took a few steps back.”

  My throat felt thick. I’d expected to feel a sense of relief of some sort when I finally managed to say all of that out loud, especially to Derek, but I didn’t. Instead, all I felt was a new sense of guilt swell within me. “I had a feeling that’s how you felt.” Derek sighed as another burst of cold wind bit at my cheeks. “But why?”

  The image of Kyle kissing me flashed through my mind as his heartfelt confession echoed through my soul. My stomach knotted as the answer to Derek’s question formed on the tip of my tongue and then released without a second thought. “Because right after he kissed me, Kyle told me that he loved me. That he always had.”

  My eyes grew moist with unshed tears as the shift in the energies surrounding us due to my sudden confession became palpable. Derek drew himself back up, his elbows resting on his knees, as he stared out into my leaf-covered yard.

  Silence grew thickly between us and I began to regret saying what I had. Our parents’ laughter flowed through the cracked kitchen window and I wondered if our relationship, Derek and I, would ever be that easy again, if we would ever be able to laugh again freely in each other’s presence.

  “Is that how you still feel, that we’d be disrespecting him if we were together?” he asked, finally breaking the silence that had built between us.

  I hesitated in my answer, only because I knew it probably wasn’t the one he wanted to hear. “Yeah…it is.”

  Derek stood up and walked across my backyard and into his, before disappearing through his back door, leaving me sitting on top of the picnic table beneath the stars utterly alone in the chilly October air. We had managed to fall backwards. I’d felt it the second he’d walked away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Another week passed, Derek kept his distance. He smiled and nodded in greeting when he saw me in the hallway, but he didn’t attend Sunday night dinner. I didn’t think that he would.

  I didn’t know which was better—having him completely ignore me and the rest of the world, or this awkwardness that now drifted between us after that night on the picnic table in my backyard.

  I sat in the computer lab during first period, searching for an author who would fit in the category of classic authors in literature for our newest English project. I knew nothing about any of the classic novels, let alone their authors. Oliver Twist was the last classic book I’d tried to read and failed.

  I scrolled through another website with a long list of strange-named authors with creepy black and white pictures beside them and let out a loud sigh. This was my mom’s forte, not mine. It was her Oliver Twist book that I attempted to read. She’d read this magazine article a few years ago about how to use old-timey looking books as decorations around your house for a more comfortable feel. She had gone into the attic and pulled down a box full of old leather-bound novels and a few tattered-edged paperbacks. None of them struck me as interesting.

  I enjoyed reading. My Kindle was filled with books. All of them were recent novels though, novels involving some sort of paranormal aspect or at least targeted toward young adults. They weren’t full of large words and written in a language I couldn’t understand.

  “He’s staring at you again,” Missy nudged me with her elbow. “Don’t look yet, I’ll tell you when.” My insides tingled as I struggled not to shift my eyes in Derek’s direction. “When,” Missy whispered, bumping me with her elbow again.

  I flicked my eyes to the front desk of the library where Derek had been sitting when I’d first walked in, checking back in others’ books; he’d just resumed flipping pages in the magazine he was looking at. I wondered what he was thinking about. Why he kept staring me. A shiver of excitement slithered through me, causing my heart rate to spike slightly.

  “Why did he even take Library Science? That’s such a lame class,” Missy grumbled.

  I shrugged a shoulder and shifted my gaze back to my computer screen before he caught me staring. “Maybe because it’s an easy class?”

  “Eh, too boring for me. So, what’s going on between you two? Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you guys are finally acknowledging each other in the halls again,” Missy said, flashing me a sinful grin. “Are you guys going to hook up again, or are you just going to keep pretending that you both don’t want to jump each other?”

  My jaw slacked. “Blunt much?”

  “Oh please, it’s the truth and you know it.” She smacked my arm and rolled her eyes.

  “I don’t know about that,” I scoffed, my cheeks flaming bright red.

  “Can you say denial?”

  “Anyway…” I dragged the word out. “Have you found anyone to write your project on?”

  Missy’s piercing blue eyes fixated on me. “Mmmhmm, that’s what I thought.” She huffed and shifted her eyes back to her computer screen. “Change the subject, that’s fine. No, I haven’t found anyone. Think Mrs. Preston would mind if I wrote my report on my favorite new genre ins
tead?”

  “You have a favorite genre?” I asked, my eyes bugging out slightly.

  Missy was not a reader. Any large amount of reading we had to do, she would put her “fail proof” system to work—read the first, middle, and last paragraph of every page. Sometimes, if that was too much reading, she’d cut the paragraphs in half and only read a few sentences from the beginning, middle, and the end of every page. It generally depended on whatever mood she was in or if she had a date or something of equal importance going on.

  “Yep.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “What?”

  “Why are you acting like it’s such a big deal? Contrary to popular belief, I actually know how to read.”

  “And…?”

  “I don’t really know what you would call it…erotica, I guess. And no, I don’t mean the trashy little paperbacks that have covers with women dressed in Victorian-looking clothes and guys with long, shaggy hair.” Her lips turned downward and her nose crinkled as if she smelled something disgusting. “I’m talking about the new age erotica stuff like Fifty Shades of Grey.”

  I didn’t have to think long, I knew exactly what book she was talking about without her even having to say the author’s name, because we had just been looking at that entire series in Wal-Mart together about a week ago.

  “Are you serious? Mrs. Preston would flip if you wrote about E. L. James. And when did you even read that book?”

  “Mom bought all three. She devoured them in like three days. Since then, she and my dad have been going at it like rabbits,” she said, obviously without gaining a mental image of her parents like I did. Yuck. “I figured they must be really good and that I might learn something from reading them.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me in a suggestive manner and her lips twisted into that devious smile of hers once more.

  “And?” I prompted.