Chapter 12
Bridger
Five Years Earlier
The air smelled cleaner in Branmore. Expensive clean. Like they got better air than the South Side or something.
Maybe I was just being paranoid, but the rest of it seemed to be pretty damn luxurious too.
No patchy yellow grass or cracked cement or potholes.
Literally, not a single damn pothole. Rich people always got the good shit.
Everything was quiet too. I didn’t like that, though, because it was giving me too much time to think, and right there in that moment, that was the last thing I wanted to do, because if I used my brain, I just thought about my dad.
The morning hadn’t been good. Yesterday too. Hell, all weekend Dad had been in pain, and me and Mom had to do our best to scrape together as much money as we could to make sure he got his medicine.
The worst part was that he felt guilty. I had seen it in his eyes as I held his hand, as he squeezed at me, as I hoped my skin touching his could somehow pull out every last ache and sting and whatever he had flying through him.
I wished I could take on all that pain for him.
I’m sorry, he kept saying. I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry, Bridger. I’m sorry.
And I wanted to shake him by the shoulders and ask him: what the hell are you sorry for? This isn’t your fault, this isn’t anything to be sorry for, this isn’t something I would ever hold against you. He felt like a burden. He was anything but. He was my best friend.
All that money for his medication—and the list was long—meant that me and Mom had been short on a couple things.
Food and the electricity bill being the main two problems, and me working at the grocery store wasn’t always enough to keep our heads above water.
We had just been barely avoiding drowning even before the accident.
Which was why I had come over here to Branmore. I was skipping class. School was a waste of time for me. Most of the stuff they taught me went in one ear and out the other, and all school did was just take away my free time that could have gone to something better.
Like stealing. Stealing got me money. Money got me the chance to pay for bills and medicine and food so that Mom and Dad wouldn’t have to worry so much. One day, they wouldn’t have to worry about that stuff at all. I’d fix it. I didn’t know how, but I would.
My plan for today was simple: linger around the high-end hotels, waiting for the rich guys to come back or leave with their shopping bags, and then it was my time to shine.
Grab the bag. Run, run, run as fast as I could.
Sell that shit off for a hell of a lot lower than what it was worth, but either way, I was making a profit.
Before that, though, I needed to put something in my empty stomach.
I had hit up one of the fancy grocery stores down the road.
It sold all overly expensive, organic shit.
Chickpeas and banana chips and chia seeds—whatever the fuck that was.
Rich people food I wouldn’t normally touch, but they had a little pre-made sandwich section and I had snagged one easily.
Branmore didn’t have security guards hanging around the place like the grocery stores in the South Side, and a boy had to eat before work.
I had half of the fancy ass chicken and avocado sandwich in one hand as I walked, my other carrying the rest of it in a little triangular cardboard box.
I wasn’t even paying all that much attention when I heard it.
A little sniffle. Sort of muffled, like they didn’t want anyone hearing them.
I turned, and I realized then that I had made it to the front of a school.
There was the source of the sound. Someone sitting on a bench out the front of the big ass building that looked more like a castle.
But the noise had my focus. Whoever was crying had all their hair in their face, chocolate brown locks falling down past their shoulders.
All I could really see was their uniform.
Boring gray blazer, boring gray pleated skirt, just a hint of a boring white blouse.
Those things alone probably cost more than my rent for the year.
My eyes darted left and right. We were alone. And I didn’t like the idea of leaving them out here crying and alone.
“Hey,” I said, voice a little hesitant. “You okay?”
That startled them. Her. A girl. The girl. The girl that had been at my school last week. The girl that I hadn’t stopped thinking about, because she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.
I had been forcing myself to forget, to move on, because guys like me didn’t get to love girls like that, and it was better to slap myself across the face and meet reality instead of fantasizing about a life I could never have.
She jolted, her eyes big. Hazel eyes. A pretty mixture of green and gold.
God, I had never seen eyes like that in my life.
I wondered if she knew how pretty her eyes were.
I wondered if she knew I was about to blurt that out before I realized her eyes were wet with tears, a few streaks running down the pale skin of her cheeks.
Sniffling again, she quickly wiped her hands against her eyes, but not fast enough for me to forget that she was crying.
“Oh,” she said, still rubbing at her eyes. “Hi. I… I didn’t know anyone was out here…”
“Didn’t mean to, uh, interrupt. I’m sorry.” I gripped my sandwich a little tighter. “You remember me?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t notice that hopeful tone in my voice, because I definitely hadn’t forgotten about her.
Not for a second. I was pretty sure I had thought about her every damn day after our little meeting in the principal’s office. Too bad she had been gone by the time I was done getting yelled at.
She nodded, giving me a barely there smile. “Kylie, right?”
“Yeah.” I chuckled. “Well, I got it changed to Bridger since we last saw each other.”
“Ah. That suits you better. I’m… I’m Juliette.”
“Juliette,” I repeated. Pretty name. I liked the way it sounded on my lips. “Wherefore art thee… That… Thou… Juliette… That’s how it goes, right?”
A laugh fell from her lips. “Something like that.”
“Are you… Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head, still giving me that same fake smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Did she practice that or something?
“Nothing,” she said.
“Doesn’t look like nothing.”
“I’m fine. Really.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Your eyes just look like that all the time?”
“Yeah.”
“You got twenty-four-hour allergies or something?”
A soft laugh escaped her lips. I wanted to hear it again. I had heard it the other day in the principal’s office, and all I could think about that whole day and night was how much I loved that sound. Soft and light and airy. I liked that sound a lot better than that croaky, sad tone in her voice.
“No,” she said, sending me a bright smile. “That’s silly.”
I moved in that little bit closer to the bench, nodding behind her. “That’s your school, right? That fancy one back there?”
Her smile and laugh faded. “Yeah. Sadly. What are you doing here?”
“Uh…” My tongue clicked. “I have work in a minute.”
She blinked at me, her eyes all big. Damn, she really did have the prettiest eyes I had ever seen. Green and gold. I had never seen eyes like that before. Bright and deep and dark all at once.
“You have work?” she asked, head tilting. “Right now? You don’t have class?”
“It’s… complicated.”
“Oh. Right. Okay.”
“Shouldn’t you be in class too?” I asked. “I thought you said you weren’t the kinda girl who skips class.”
“I’m usually not.”
“You were out here smoking, right? Can I borrow one now?”
She laughed again, head shaking. “No. I told you I don’t smoke.”
I hummed. “If you say so. Why are you skipping then?”
“My class… The one I’m meant to be in right now.” She fidgeted in her seat a little. “I… I don’t wanna be in that class. I’d rather be anywhere else.”
“What is it? Can’t be that bad.”
“Navigating Economy, Policy, and Global Governance.”
Shifting on my feet, I blew out a breath of air. “Yeah, I took that class last year. Aced it.”
Another laugh escaped her lips. God, that sound. Not just the sound, but the way she looked when she laughed made my heart thump wildly in my chest.
Her pretty eyes would light up and her nose would crinkle a little and her cheeks would get all pink.
I stared at her for a long moment: her in her fancy, boring uniform and me in my torn jeans and old T-shirt and messy hair.
She really shouldn’t have been talking to me.
And I shouldn’t have even been making eye contact with her.
We weren’t supposed to collide the first time yet alone again, but there was something about her that I couldn’t get enough of.
“You’re funny,” she said, voice softer now. Just a whisper as she kept her eyes locked on mine, but then they lowered to her lap. “It’s not even the class itself. I mean, it’s boring and dumb and I almost fell asleep in it last week, but it’s the fact that…”
“What?”
“It’s… It’s a long story I’m sure you don’t wanna hear.”
“No, I wanna hear it. Tell me.”
“It’s just…” She looked behind her, like that school was haunting her, like the sight of that building alone was stopping her from speaking up. From being herself.
“You wanna get outta here for a little while?” I asked.
Head whipping back around to face me, she blinked at me. “We can do that?”
I shrugged. It was pretty obvious that she had never skipped class before, that this was the first time she had ever broken a rule. It was cute. That innocence, that wide eyed stare like skipping class was the most disgraceful thing a person could do. If only she knew half the shit I got up to.
“Yeah, we can do that,” I said.
“What do you wanna do?”
I held up the cardboard box. “Want the rest of my sandwich?”