Prologue #2
Then, as the dinner crowd replaced the lunch crowd, she spoke quietly.
“I lost my parents when I was sixteen.” The slight guard she had been carrying lowered just a bit. “A car accident. Today’s the anniversary.”
I didn’t say I’m sorry because “sorry” never feels like enough, and she didn’t look like a woman who needed to be handled carefully.
“My auntie raised me after—Silverrun born and raised, both of us. But Airalynn is here, and I got tired of loving my sister through a phone. So I transferred. New school, no friends, and a date circled on the calendar.”
She turned her glass in a slow circle, eyes on the table.
“And my sister thinks I should just have it all figured out like she does. Which is insane, and therefore why I don’t have time for a professor that opens class so damn rudely.”
“Am I talking too much? Now that you’ve gotten me started, I’ll never stop. Oh, and thanks for the milkshake, too. I did need it.”
“Glad to hear I succeeded in making your day a little better. Talk all you want, I’m all ears.”
She stopped moving and looked at me, deciding if she could trust me.
“You aren’t one of those jock types that will tell all my business in front of your friends? Or worse, the campus hoe hellbent on fucking all the virgins are you?”
I didn’t even acknowledge that shit with a response.
“Why you keep changing the subject? Every time I get close to what fucked your day up, you clam up.”
A sigh slipped out of her lips as she looked out of the diner window.
“Being a flight attendant was my mother’s dream for me.
She flew for twenty years, and she swore I was built for it.
I believed her until I had to bury her. Now every plan she made for me feels like a grave I’m supposed to lie down in.
I know I have to do something. Life is coming at me fast; that’s all. ”
The diner felt quieter.
Not because the noise had changed.
Because she had.
The girl who challenged professors and threw statistics around suddenly looked twenty years old and exhausted.
“Do you want to know what I think?”
Her eyes lifted.
“What?”
“I think most people are making it up as they go and pretending to have it all together. Fake it till you make it. And having everything planned for you ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
I looked down at my watch and realized we’d been at the booth talking for close to three hours.
We’d been here long enough for Millie to refill our drinks twice and for me to realize I wanted another three.
I knew we had to part. I just hated how I felt about it.
I stood and helped Skye out of the booth.
We made our way outside. She took a slow breath and let it go, in no more of a hurry to leave than I was.
She turned to me and smiled.
“You may have been moved up to best friend. I need to sleep on it, though.”
“Well, take my number down so you can confirm if I earned that title or not in the morning,” I said, handing her my phone.
“Damn Ducane Simmons, that was smooth. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
She turned and walked back toward campus.
I decided right there that I was going to have her back. She hadn’t asked me to. She didn’t need to. Some things you know.
spring semester senior year
I was on my bed with my legs in the air, singing Yuna like I was her background singer and on payroll.
I had found my rhythm at Coupeville and made friends, even some outside of my best friend and lover boy, Ducane.
One milkshake had turned into the most intense feeling of love I had ever felt.
It felt unhealthily healthy. It felt crazy.
It felt like butterflies erupting every time I said that man’s name.
Boy, you bubble wrap my heart
And all the things that I used to be afraid of
Suddenly, it all disappeared
I stood and grabbed the hairbrush beside the Dean’s List letter sitting on my nightstand.
I had read it four times since yesterday.
I was not above celebrating myself in private, and today that looked like bare feet, short shorts, a sports bra, and Favorite Thing on repeat loud enough that Fee had knocked twice before I heard her.
She opened the door with her shoulder because her hands were full.
I removed my headphones with wide eyes.
“What the hell? Ophelia, you got a secret admirer?”
“Girl, you know this delivery is for you,” Fee, my roommate and best friend, said.
She walked into my room carrying a bouquet that had no business being that large.
I clocked the garment bag draped over her arm and the small envelope balanced on top, with my name in handwriting I knew without needing to see.
“Tell Ducane, unless he’s delivering these heavy ass flowers himself, he needs to keep it at a medium.” She set everything down on my desk with her whole chest.
I stared at the flowers and melted before falling back on the bed with a squeal.
From not knowing what’s next to the Dean’s list. Proud of you, Skye. I’ll be there to pick you up at seven. I hope you love the dress. – Sugar Cane
I rose from the bed and unzipped the garment bag.
The gold dress was beautiful, and it screamed Ducane.
“Damn, that dress is beautiful. Skye, it’s BCBG. He’s got taste. I’ll give him that.”
Fee grew up much like Ducane, born to parents with means and living to rebel against it, at least for a little while.
She was always clear that she’d eventually take over her family’s finance business.
She knew exactly what things cost and what it meant when someone spent intentionally rather than just spent.
I looked over at the clock. A little over an hour to get ready. Fee and I kicked into high gear. I showered, did my hair while she handled my makeup, both of us moving around each other without a single collision, a system built from years of getting ready in the same tight bathroom.
Ducane and I were attached at the hip, so we had gone out plenty of times: parties, games, late lunches at The Diner. But a fancy dinner was a first, and some silly, giddy part of me wanted him to see me walk out that door and forget how to finish his sentence.
He knocked at seven on the dot.
I sprayed my Juicy Couture perfume, checked the mirror one last time, and met him at the door. My smile was so wide that it hurt my cheeks.
I watched him open his mouth, close it, and start over.
“You look—” He shook his head and laughed at himself. “Exquisite, Spot.”
“And you look so handsome.” I wiped his shoulders off. “I love you in a suit.”
He smiled and led me to the car. We made small talk until we pulled up to Glorify, a new restaurant that had been the talk of Coupeville for two months.
Inside, the dining room glowed with warm candlelight. The smell of fresh bread and garlic hit me before we even reached the hostess stand.
The host led us to a quiet corner table. Before we’d even opened our menus, champagne was being poured. I tried to do the math on what this night was costing him and stopped myself because he would hate that I was doing it.
Our waiter made it to the table, and we ordered.
I’d gone with the salmon for the night. Normally, he ordered for both of us, but tonight I wanted to be the one deciding what I wanted.
I’d made the Dean’s List, and that may not have been a big deal to anyone else, but it was for me.
After losing my parents, I'd had a hard couple of years. I’d bounced around, dealt with side-eyes, missed my parents and my sister like crazy, then moved here with no friends and no real direction.
I’d been becoming someone new all semester without giving myself credit for it, and tonight, ordering my own dinner, I finally acknowledged her.
“Look at you,” he said, amused and a little thrown. “Ordering for yourself and everything.”
“It could be the dress, or you. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Anyway, what’s the occasion?”
“You.” He set his menu down. “Congratulations on the Dean’s List. I wanted to do something nice.
You deserve nice things.” He turned his glass slowly.
“You make it easy for me to be myself. You push me in the right direction. I don’t think you even know you’re doing it.
” He paused. “I won Tolliver’s appeal today.
The administration is pissed, but I feel good about it. ”
“Sugar Cane.” I reached across the table. “That is so special. You are special. I know the pressure they put on you, but it’s okay to be good at something because you believe in it. It’s okay to look out for people. It’s okay to lead with love.”
He stared at our hands together on the table, working out whether he believed that to be true.
“I can honestly say I was never raised with that mindset.”
“I know.” I squeezed his hand. “That’s why I’m here.”
I had gotten to know Ducane, even the things he hadn’t said out loud.
His parents loved him. I believed most parents did.
But some only loved you when you could be managed.
When they could play puppet master. Ducane loved law.
There was no denying it. But he loved people too.
He was humble. Kind. He wasn’t a pushover, but he carried the weight of their expectations like it was his job, and nobody had ever told him he could put it down.
I saw that. I had seen it for a while.
“We could always run away, you know. Assume new identities. Witness protection type stuff.”
I snickered. “You couldn’t leave it. The law. Your family. I couldn’t even ask that of you.”
“I would for you, Skye.” He held my eyes. “I love you.”
I felt a brick settle in my throat.
No one outside of family had ever said those words to me. And whatever that was with Zay in high school did not count. This did. This meant something.
“I love you too,” I said. “Obviously. I’ve never been in love before.”
“Me neither, Skye. That’s how I know what we share is real. No mountain high enough, no valley low enough. I’m always coming for my light in the sky.”
“You better.”