CHAPTER 2 #2
Jamie took the napkin carefully, angling his head to peer at my drawing. “It’s… two bananas in a trash can?”
“Apparently I’m a worse artist than I thought if you can’t tell.”
Jamie glanced up, amusement in his eyes. “It’s our ice cream.”
It’d been a simple sort of drawing in an even simpler style, and horribly done, since the napkin was a material that the marker bled into easily. “Throw it away if you want,” I told him, going back to stirring my ice cream. “But I’ll take it to mean that you hate me and think I’m untalented.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
“You love that about me.”
Jamie just shook his head, folding the napkin up and tucking it into the pocket of his NYU hoodie. “I’m surprised. I didn’t think you drew anything that wasn’t death and gore.”
“I didn’t think your weak stomach could take it.”
Jamie, refusing to be ragebaited, only rolled his eyes.
There was something comforting about drawing death in graphite or marker, where the blood pooling on the ground was a result of aggressive lines, and, uncolored, it could’ve been anything. A pool of nacho cheese. A goopy glob of maple syrup. Blood that’d drained out of the body it sat beside.
And like I’d said, it wasn’t like I always sketched dead bodies. Sometimes I drew flowers.
I only drew dark stuff when the weight on my chest became too much. If I hadn’t gone to Jamie’s this morning, I was sure I’d have added a new scene into my sketchbook.
“It’s weird without Nellie.” I leaned my fist onto my chin. Jamie was trying to scrape an M&M from his cup, and his mouth was a little tight with concentration. “It feels like we’re on a date.”
Jamie froze, and then lifted only his eyes. His glasses’ lenses made them look larger and brighter. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it does.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
I gave him a challenging stare. “You can’t tell me what something feels like to me.”
“You complaining the whole time and not eating the ice cream I bought you does not feel like a date.” Jamie gave his head a slow shake. “If it does, you must’ve been on some really crappy dates.” And then, once more, he stilled. This time, Jamie’s eyes didn’t rise to meet mine.
The awkward hush fell over the table. We both knew I’d only ever gone on dates with one person—Dalton Giovanni.
My ex-boyfriend. AKA the biggest loser on the entire planet.
Possibly in the entire galaxy. I couldn’t imagine there being a bigger loser than a guy who dumped his girlfriend of two years because he didn’t want to be “held back by his hometown.” Direct quote.
Or because she was a “talentless loser who had no ambition.” Paraphrasing.
I turned toward the road, watching the few cars drive by, trying to get my mind’s eye to erase the image of my ex. “You’re so right,” I said, scooping a spoonful of ice cream soup. “To be fair, Addison doesn’t have that many good date spots.”
Jamie said nothing. He’d stopped trying to scoop up more M&M’s, but I now pretended not to notice. That was what I was good at, after all. If I could just pretend, if I could fool him—and everyone around me—it’d become reality.
The dark feeling circled me, waiting to pounce.
“Except, you know what?” I stirred my ice cream more aggressively. “I like things the way they are now. You, Nellie, me. No one else. Let’s just leave all the relationship drama out of it.”
“I can’t get a girlfriend?”
The question hit me harder than the cup to the face earlier this morning. “You want one?”
Jamie pointedly looked into his ice cream cup. I wasn’t really sure why—he didn’t have any ice cream left to scrape up. His spoon scratched against the side of the Styrofoam uselessly. “I’m sure I’ll have one at some point.”
The concept of Jamie having a girlfriend was…
strange. Jamie, like his sister, had never been in a relationship.
He was so introverted, kept to himself—what kind of girl would complement him?
Definitely not someone loud and energetic.
But if she was quiet, too, would they just be quiet together?
Would she fit in well with our trio if she was quiet?
I didn’t like the idea. “Who are you thinking?” I made a kissy face at the dark feeling. “Raelynn?”
Jamie did not like Raelynn Meyer, but she liked him.
A lot. Enough to corner him in the library at one of the more recent Alderton-Du Ponte parties and try to unbutton his shirt.
From the way he’d blushed and stumbled over his words whenever he talked about it, I now wondered if it was because he’d liked Raelynn more than he was letting on. And that was… weird.
Jamie ignored me. “I might meet someone at college.”
College. The mention of the no-man’s-land line between us, forbidden, yet danced around. I looked at his hoodie, even though it wasn’t NYU he meant. Columbia. The fancy college he dumped our lame NYU dream for.
The sugary ice cream left me sick to my stomach. “I still have you for the summer,” I said brightly, because that was the only answer that chased away the icky feeling. “You have your sister, and you have me. What more do you need?” And then I gave him a smile.
Jamie didn’t have much of an expression on his face as he looked up at me, but his eyes were soft. His gaze dropped to my lips, watching the way I smiled. He echoed the words I’d said minutes ago. “You’re so right.”
One final summer before everything imploded. I just needed it for a little bit longer. I needed to grip my normalcy for just a smidge longer.
It turned out, though, that I wouldn’t get normalcy for even another minute.
“Ah, it is you two over here.” The voice was light, right over my shoulder, and a shadow fell over the table. “I thought I recognized that fiery hair.”
A descending sound started echoing in my ears, like something falling out of the sky, and my stomach dropped to my toes. Just as he’d recognize my hair, the voice was one I could still hear in my dreams, and one I still fantasized about even nine months later.
On a slow pivot against my will, my head turned to look up at who eclipsed the sun.
Dalton Giovanni. My ex-boyfriend who appeared as if conjured by my thoughts.
He grinned. “Hey, DD.”
Over the nine months since our breakup, I’d wished many things upon Dalton Giovanni.
Many things I wasn’t proud of. I’d wished his hair had fallen out, but here he stood with the same luscious black mane of hair he’d had a year ago.
I’d wished he’d never be able to grow facial hair—his obsession in high school—but here he stood with a faint five o’clock shadow that I knew boosted his ego.
His legs were working, he still had two arms, and he was alive. It seemed that none of my horrible wishes nor his well-deserved karma had reached him.
I’d overheard Collin from fourth period say Dalton would be coming home for summer, but I thought I’d have more time to build the wall around my heart and fortify it with barbed wire.
Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered—Dalton had always been my kryptonite, and he would’ve been able to blast through any shield I put against him with ease.
That was Dalton. So easily able to rip me apart.
But more than anger, I felt an even more traitorous emotion, one that, deep down, I’d always known would come back—longing.
“Wow, man,” Jamie said suddenly. He even stood up and offered Dalton a handshake. A handshake. Like they were old friends and not actual enemies. “Crazy to run into you in Jefferson. Aren’t you still supposed to be back in… Arkansas?”
“Arizona,” Dalton corrected, as if Jamie hadn’t gotten it wrong on purpose. “I just got home for summer break. My grandma lives in Jefferson, so I was just on my way to see her.”
His voice. The same voice that I’d fallen to sleep to when we’d talk on the phone until late. The same voice that used to tell me that he loved me before he kissed me. Every single time.
Come on, Daisy, get a grip. Find a quip. Insult him. Something. But I couldn’t even form a word.
I hadn’t seen my ex-boyfriend since the day we broke up mid-August when he’d stood on the porch of my house with a box of my things in his arms. Things I’d left at his house, in his car, things I’d bought for him—they were all tucked neatly inside a cardboard box.
It’s been fun. A two-year relationship reduced to three words.
And then several more hurtful ones followed.
I’d thought everything had been going smoothly.
Sure, Arizona State University was over two thousand miles away, but we’d made a game plan of texting every morning, calling every night before bed, and FaceTiming on weekends.
We’d talked it through, planned it out, and it had just come down to execution.
I’d just been preparing for the wrong kind of execution.