My hands move higher. I gently brush his lips with my fingertips. “Do you have to use the smile with the dimples? It’s too… too much.”
“What does that mean? Too much of what?”
“Too much of everything.” I roll my eyes and sway to the right. “It means that it’s distracting. It means that I think about your dimples way more than I should.”
Cole closes his eyes and captures my hand in his. He bends his head so that I feel his breath, hot and tingly against my ear. “Then maybe we’re even because I think that everything about you is too much.”
I scrunch my nose, but before I can work out the words to respond, Cole moves his arm and instructs me to duck my head.
Confused, I look around.
Black upholstery. A windshield. This is a car.
Mara is leaning back on the seat next to me with her legs crisscrossed underneath her body. I peer out of the open door. Cole’s arms are on the roof of the car and he’s looking down at me.
“I’m in a car,” I say to him.
Cole chuckles and nods his head slowly. “Yes, you’re in my friend Adam’s car. We’re taking you home now.”
“How do you know where I live?” This seems like the question that I’m supposed to ask in this situation.
“I told them,” Mara says and lets her eyes fall closed. “I think we should have stayed away from those shots, Aimee.”
I vaguely remember the shots of tequila but I’m not sure how many either of us had. “Huh. I’m not usually so… I don’t know… unsafe.”
Cole slides in next to me and I rest my head on his shoulder. He feels so nice.
A car door slams and someone new says my name. I pry my heavy eyelids open and see Daniel Kearns looking at me from the front seat. His hair is darker than Jilly’s and his face is rounder, but he’s got his sister’s caramel eyes and his sister’s oversized nose.
“Daniel? Are you? Is that…” My voice is so hoarse. Unhinged thoughts swirl around in my head like a strong wind. “D-did you know that Jillian always wanted to get a nose job?”
Daniel looks perplexed, like he doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. I think that I feel the same way. It’ll be fine. Cole’s arm wraps around my shoulders. I feel the pressure of his fingers on my bare skin.
“Aimee, are you okay?” Daniel asks me from a million zillion trillion miles away.
Warm tears prick the backs of my eyes as the familiar surge of sadness pulls me under. Suddenly the question is screaming in my head—the one I’ve wanted someone to answer for over a year. My voice is faint—made of air and hot, steamy breath. “Daniel, do you think that she hates me?”
And maybe I’m dreaming him. Maybe I’ll stay asleep so I can hear his voice in my head, like gentle waves lapping at my toes.
No, Aimee. Never. She’ll always love you.
CHAPTER FIVE
Aimee
I moved to Portland because I wanted to live in a world where Jillian Kearns had never existed. I wanted the air in my lungs to be air that had never touched her lips. It sounds cruel, but I wanted to stop remembering. The goal was to get lost so I ran.
Running, it turns out is the easy part.
It’s the not getting found where things get complicated.
My grandparents, both older than their actual ages and hard of hearing, let me be by myself for the most part. No one at school bothered me. I spent my senior year as the quiet, slightly off transfer student who ate lunch alone and never looked anyone directly in the eye.
In Portland it’s the norm for people to march to their own beat so no one thought it was particularly odd that I didn’t go to football games, or join the drama club, or hang out at the Depot after school. No one asked me questions about my past. No one cared enough to try.
By the fifth month of my self-imposed exile from Florida, I was speaking but I wasn’t talking. There really is a difference.
Even my therapist ran out of letters and words that made sense so we fell into a pattern of obligatory conversation and empty promises handed over on my end. She reported to my parents that I was getting better and I stayed quiet and nodded my head when I was supposed to.
I started to forget. I stopped dreaming about Jillian. I stopped talking to her while I got ready for school. Weeks passed by without incident. Life moved along.
I discovered that normalcy can be like an extra layer of clothing that you put on in the morning. Underwear—check. Pants—check. Sweater—check. Normalness—check. No one worries as long as they can’t actually see that you’re naked.
And then, all of a sudden, it was a year. A year since Jillian Kearns had made a stupid joke. Or called me up just to tell me that I was her bitch. Or twisted her hair into a spiky bun on top of her head. Or laughed. Or brushed her teeth. Or squinted into the sun.