Beverly

Chapter 35

35

BLAKE, 1999

18 years old

I stood there like an idiot, watching as Beverly stormed down the hallway with her bag slung over her shoulder, her face turned away from me like I wasn’t even worth a second look.

My feet felt glued to the floor, and my mind was racing in a thousand directions at once, but none of them led anywhere useful.

None of them told me what to do.

None of them told me how to fix this.

I didn’t breathe until I heard the front door slam.

“Blake?” Mom’s voice cut through the air like a blade.

Reality hit me like a punch to the gut. I snapped out of my daze and turned to face her. She was wrapped in her black robe, arms crossed over her chest. Her hair was pinned back in one of those loose, messy buns she always wore when she was exhausted.

Her eyes flicked from me to the door. “What’s wrong?”

I tried to speak, but the words just wouldn’t come.

Everything I had been holding inside was caught in my throat, trapped and unwilling to make its way out.

I didn’t even know where to begin.

How could I explain any of it?

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice hollow. “I have no idea.”

The words felt wrong even as I said them.

Like I was trying to convince myself, not her.

She narrowed her eyes and took a step forward, her gaze sharp. “That didn’t look like ‘I don’t know.’”

I shifted uncomfortably, feeling the weight of her gaze on me. “It’s... I don’t know.” The words came out too sharp, too brittle, like I was trying to push her away with them.

For a long moment, she stood there, watching me closely. I could see the tiredness in her eyes, the way she was holding herself together in a way that only moms did—always putting the pieces back together even when they felt broken.

She sighed softly, her shoulders sagging as she rubbed her temples, as if the weight of the world had settled there again. “Alright, Blake. If you say so.” Her voice was softer now, quieter, like she was talking more to herself than to me. “I’ll be in bed. We’ll talk tomorrow, alright?”

I nodded once.

She didn’t believe me.

But she was too tired to push.

She gave a quiet shake of her head, muttering something about Beverly and me before turning to head back to her room.

Feeling the weight of everything pressing down on me, I walked back into my room, closing the door quietly behind me.

Sydney was still sitting on my bed.

Her face was scrunched with awkwardness like she wasn’t sure if she should stay or leave. “Are you okay?” she asked carefully.

I barely heard her. All I could see was Beverly—her face when she walked in, the way her fingers slipped and the bikini hit the floor. The way she’d looked at me like I’d ripped something out of her chest and stomped on it.

“Are you okay?” Sydney tried again.

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because I was a mess—a tangled-up wreck of emotions I couldn’t even begin to untangle.

I sank down onto the edge of my bed, elbows on my knees, my hands dragging down my face. I had made a decision months ago, and now I was watching it unfold in real time—watching the consequences of my own actions crash down around me.

I wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of Sydney. Not at all.

“Blake?” Her voice was softer now.

I felt the bed shift as she moved closer. A hand on my back. Warmth against my shoulder.

I didn’t want it.

I didn’t want her.

I wanted Beverly.

I wanted to hear her slam my door open like she always did, hear her voice filling the room like she owned the air in here. And I wanted her to throw that stupid pink bikini at me and demand that I tell her she looked good in it, just so she could roll her eyes when I said something dumb. I wanted her back here, yelling at me, hating me, anything —because even when Beverly was pissed, she still felt close.

“I’m sorry if I caused trouble,” Sydney said. “I didn’t mean to.”

I shook my head. “It’s not you.”

It wasn’t.

It was me . It was the last few months of pretending I didn’t care, of shutting Beverly out because I thought it was safer that way. It was letting her walk away instead of saying the one thing that might’ve kept her here. It was everything I didn’t do.

Sydney must have mistaken my silence for something else because the next thing I knew, her arms were wrapping around me from behind, her chin resting lightly against my shoulder.

I didn’t shrug her off. Because I was too tired. Too hurt. Too messed up to tell her that her comfort wasn’t what I needed.

“This was your sister, right?” she asked.

The word curled in my stomach like poison.

Sydney must have felt me tense because she pulled back slightly, her arms still draped loosely around me.

Something about the way she said it made me want to tear my own skin off. I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply through my nose, trying to steady myself, trying to get rid of the pressure pressing against my ribcage like something was going to break.

Sydney pulled me down onto the bed. I let her.

I let her fingers brush through my hair.

I let her hold me like she actually thought she could fix me.

And I hated it. Because it wasn’t Beverly’s hand. It wasn’t Beverly’s voice. And no matter how tightly Sydney held me, I still felt like I was falling apart.

Because she wasn’t Beverly Price.

Because her arms weren’t home.

* * *

Sydney hadn’t moved, hadn’t pulled away, hadn’t taken the hint that I wasn’t really here. Maybe she was waiting for me to say something, to explain whatever the hell had just happened, to make this less awkward for both of us.

But I didn’t have an explanation.

At first, I stayed stiff, arms at my sides, breath slow and even, like maybe if I kept perfectly still, I wouldn’t feel anything.

Maybe if I didn’t move, I could pretend this wasn’t happening.

Then Sydney shifted against me, adjusting so she could lay her head on my chest. She smelled like something faintly floral, something forgettable. Her fingers traced absentminded patterns against my chest, light enough that I barely noticed.

For some reason, I didn’t pull away. She was warm.

I was cold, and she was warm. And maybe that’s what I needed.

Maybe I needed someone who wasn’t Beverly sitting here with me. Someone who wasn’t looking at me like I had just ripped her heart out and handed it back in pieces. Someone who didn’t have blue eyes that had haunted me for years.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked quietly.

“No.”

She hummed. “Okay.”

No pushing. No prying. Just a simple okay.

I exhaled slowly, relaxing just enough to let my muscles stop aching from how tense they were.

Sydney didn’t know Beverly. She didn’t know that the last time I laid in bed with someone like this, it was her. Maybe that was a good thing. Because the last thing I wanted to do right now was think about Beverly, let alone explain her place in this mess.

Sydney shifted again, tilting her head slightly to look at me. “You guys fight a lot?”

“Something like that.”

She ran her fingers over my chest, slow and lazy.

“She seemed pretty mad,” she said after a moment.

I turned my head to look at her. “Can we not do this?”

She studied me for a second, eyes soft, searching, like she was trying to figure me out. Then, mercifully, Sydney nodded. “Fine. You don’t have to think about her right now,” she murmured. “I’m here.”

I swallowed. Let my eyes drift shut.

Sydney was easy.

And Beverly…

Beverly was gone.

So I let it go. I let Sydney keep tracing invisible patterns against my chest. I let my body relax into the bed. I let myself forget, just for a little while, that there was anything outside this room.

Because what was the point of thinking about someone who hated me?

“You should get some sleep,” she said.

“I don’t sleep much.”

“Yeah, I figured. You’re always at the gym at like, four in the morning.”

I glanced at her. “You been keeping tabs on me?”

“No, you’re just hard to miss.”

I didn’t answer.

“You don’t talk much, huh?”

I shrugged.

“Good thing I like quiet guys,” she mused. “Less exhausting.”

I arched a brow. “Less exhausting?”

“Yeah. Most guys just talk to hear themselves talk.”

“You do enough talking for both of us?”

“Exactly,” she murmured. “See? We’re already compatible.”

I huffed out a breath, shaking my head.

“You don’t have to be tense, you know. I don’t bite.”

I didn’t answer.

Her fingers traced the edge of my palm, slow and deliberate. “You don’t have to be alone tonight.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Maybe she was right. Maybe I could let someone else take up space in my head, even if it was just for a night. Even if it was just for a few hours of relief from the noise in my mind.

“You wanna talk about something else?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“Anything,” she replied. “Tell me something random. Like… I don’t know, what’s your favorite cereal?”

“I don’t eat cereal.”

She gasped. “What? Who doesn’t eat cereal?”

I shrugged.

“That’s actually kind of sad, Blake,” she sighed. “No childhood nostalgia for Frosted Flakes or Froot Loops?”

“Never really had that kind of childhood.”

She didn’t pry. She just hummed, like she was absorbing the weight of my words, and then nudged me again. “Okay, fine. What’s your favorite color?”

Blue.

But not just any blue. The exact shade of Beverly’s eyes when she was excited. The color that made everything around me blur, as if time itself stopped when she looked at me.

The one that had ruined every other color for me.

I sighed. “Don’t have one.”

Sydney gave me a dramatic roll of her eyes, as if she’d been waiting for me to say exactly that. “God, you’re difficult,” she said, her voice dripping with playful frustration. “You could at least try to be a little more interesting.”

I let out a quiet breath, something almost close to a laugh.

“You’re a lot more complicated than you let on,” she added. “You’ve got that whole brooding, tortured math-genius thing going on. Big ‘I hate everyone’ energy.”

I snorted, but she wasn’t finished.

“But you’re also weirdly sweet in your own way. Like…you didn’t have to help me tonight, but you did.”

“I’m not sweet,” I told her, simply because I didn’t know how else to respond. The last thing I expected to hear about myself was being sweet . It felt like one of those words people used for people who were good at showing emotion, who were natural at making others feel cared for. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be nice. Helping her tonight had seemed like the right thing to do in the moment. Nothing more, nothing less.

“You are,” she insisted. “You just don’t want people to know it. Probably because you’re scared they’ll use it against you.”

That hit a little too close to home. I shifted uncomfortably. “You psychoanalyze all your friends like this?”

“I only do this with people I like,” she shot back with a smile.

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“I get it, though,” she said, her voice quieter now. “It’s easier to push people away. Easier to just…stop trying. Especially when it feels like they’ve already decided who you are.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

She propped herself up on one elbow, her face half-shadowed in the dim light of my room. “You need to loosen up, Blake.”

“I’m loose.”

“That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.”

I sighed, shaking my head.

She tapped my chest lightly. “Seriously. Whatever’s going on in your head? Let it go. Just for a few hours.”

I stared at her. Let it go. Like it was that simple. Like I hadn’t spent every second of the last five months trying to do exactly that.

But maybe for one night… Maybe I could pretend.

So I let my body relax, just enough to let Sydney shift closer, enough to let her presence fill the space where Beverly used to be.I needed one night of forgetting. One night where my hands weren’t empty, where my chest didn’t feel like it was caving in, where I wasn’t waiting for someone who had already left.

“You know, I can go if you want. I won’t be offended.”

I should’ve said yes.

But the thought of being alone in this room felt like being locked inside a burning house.

“Stay,” I said before I could change my mind.

I don’t know how long I lay there, staring at the floor, feeling like I was sinking into it. My ribs ached from holding my breath too long, and my head throbbed with every stubborn beat of my heart. I was holding on to the feeling of something warm against me, something that wasn’t sharp edges and unsaid words, something that wasn’t blue eyes burning into mine before disappearing down the hallway.

And then there was a knock.

A sharp, no-nonsense kind of knock.

Sydney tensed slightly beside me, like she wasn’t sure if she should move or pretend to be asleep.

The door cracked open. “Blake?” Mom’s voice.

I sat up immediately, running a hand through my hair like it would make me look less like I was just lying in bed with a girl.

Mom was still wearing her robe, her expression unreadable as she took in the sight of us. Sydney, to her credit, didn’t panic. She blinked up at her like this was the most normal thing in the world. “Hi, Mrs. Price,” she said, offering a polite, friendly smile.

Mom lifted an eyebrow but returned the smile, not even blinking at the fact that there was a random girl sprawled across my sheets. “Hi, sweetheart.”

Sydney hummed, stretching slightly like a cat before pulling the blanket up over her legs.

I, on the other hand, was staring at Mom, trying to gauge how much trouble I was about to be in.

She turned her attention fully to me, her eyes sharp in that way that meant I wasn’t going to like whatever came next. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

She didn’t look convinced. “Are you sure?” she prodded, stepping inside. “Because Beverly just called. Said she’s staying at Tiffany’s tonight.”

My stomach twisted. “Yeah?”

“You two fought, didn’t you?”

I shook my head, forcing myself to meet her eyes.

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. She just stood there, studying me like she could read every thought I was trying to hide.

Then she sighed, that familiar tired sound that made me feel eleven years old again. “You know,” she said softly, “when you two were kids, I used to think you’d outgrow this whole…thing. The fighting. The bickering. The way you’d drive each other crazy one minute and then act like you couldn’t breathe without each other the next.”

My jaw clenched. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh, Blake,” she said, giving me that look that made me feel like I was made of glass. “It’s always been like that.”

I didn’t say anything. Because what could I say?

“Whatever’s going on with you two,” she continued, “please…fix it. Okay? You’re both too stubborn for your own good.”

I swallowed hard.

“You’ll figure it out,” she added, like it was that simple.

“Sure.”

She stepped closer, pressing a kiss to my temple like I wasn’t too old for it. “Get some sleep,” she murmured. “You look like hell.”

I waited until the door clicked shut before I exhaled, long and shaky, as if I’d been holding my breath since Beverly left.

I knew sleep wasn’t coming.

Not tonight.