The corner of his lip twitched, but he asked in a low voice, “How are your folks?”

“What?”

“Don and Shelby. Your mom and dad. How are they?”

He hadn’t asked about my parents since…I blinked. It’d been before Ethan’s death. A different tension filled my body and I was rigid from my eyeballs to my toenails. “Why are you asking?” I couldn’t keep out the anger and I grimaced against it. I hadn’t wanted him to hear that.

He looked over this time, but didn’t say anything for a second. When he returned to the street, I caught the slight frown on his face. “Is something wrong at home?”

That got a laugh out of me. “Are you kidding?”

The frown vanished. There was nothing again.

I couldn’t stop another laugh and the sound was ugly to my own ears. “No, Jesse. My family’s great. Don and Shelby have mourned the loss of their son in their own way, and me, I’ll be just fine. I’m just screwing his best friend at times.”

And then I stopped. I had so much more to say, but I held it back. What good would it do? It’d only scare him away. At that confession, my heart shifted a bit. I felt it shrink or move or slip further away. I was with Jesse with the hopes that he’d give me anything, even a crumb of his touch. I was that girl. I sat back and stared straight ahead. I was that girl, just hoping for anything.

Shame filled me.

Jesse didn’t say anything more until the car started to slow down. I saw that we were at the ocean. When we got out, the salt in the air stung my eyes. That was why I was crying again. It had to be the reason. But I didn’t have time to continue my own lie as Jesse was already down a hill. I followed behind on the path and slowed as I watched where he was leading us. When he sat on the sand where there was no one around, I stopped in my tracks.

Why there? Why then? What was he—?

“Would you stop thinking and sit beside me?” Jesse patted the seat beside him and I obliged. Of course I would oblige. Where else was I going to go?

We sat in silence for awhile, longer than I could handle. My heart kept pounding. It got louder the longer we sat until I thought I was going to burst.

Then he sighed. He had his arms draped over his knees as he stared out at the ocean. “Your brother and I were supposed to go surfing here last year after graduation. We made the plans that day. It was our stupid way of celebrating together, even though Sarah wanted me to have that damn dinner with her parents. I didn’t go to the party that night.”

I looked down. I’d forgotten that fact.

He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I’m going to Grant West, you know.”

“I know.”

“I won’t be here anymore.”

Tears filled my eyes. He hadn’t been here for a long time, but I bit my tongue.

He sounded apologetic. “I don’t want to talk about you and me, about—whatever. It’s done. It’s fine. We’ll deal with it, but you’ve got some good friends. Angie’s a good friend to you, so is Marissa. They both care about you, in their ways. So you should be okay, right?”

“Uh, what?”

He looked at me this time, but he never took the sunglasses off. The wall was so pretty and perfect. “You have friends that’ll look out for you next year. I won’t be here and your folks…they’re good parents. Hell, they raised me most the time.”

But that was when he had lost his mother and when his father became an absent one. And that was when Ethan was alive, when my parents could function as normal parents and when they still cared about the little things in life like their other child. That wasn’t now and that hadn’t been for a long time.

I said none of that. Instead, I gave him a small smile. “You’re right. I’ll be just fine.”

“Your brother would want that.”

Ethan would want a lot more, but I didn’t say that either. I sighed. “What are you doing, Jesse?”

The wind shifted and he went with it. The cold Jesse was back in place. I was startled to realize that he had opened to me, just a bit, but it was gone. I couldn’t see through his sunglasses, but I knew his eyes were dead again. “We should go back.”

And just like that, the rare moment was gone. It had slipped through my fingers and I hadn’t even realized I had the chance to grasp something. When he dropped me off at home, I hesitated to ask if he still wanted me to come over that night. I didn’t think I could take more of his rejection, so I waited the rest of the day at home, ignored Angie and Marissa’s text messages, and dressed in something sexy.

I shouldn’t have. I knew that, but as my heart pounded, I knew I couldn’t stay away. He had asked. It was enough for me, so I wore a slinky black dress. It was simple, something that I could’ve worn to a party or to a girl’s night out. I drove to his house.

My heart wouldn’t stop pounding. That was my normal heart rate now. My palms were sweaty and as I knocked on his door, I didn’t know what I was going to face.

When it opened, I held my breath. His housekeeper answered. Before I could open my mouth, she held an arm out and pointed inside. When she turned and waddled away, I heard her mumble under her breath, “Always Alex, he says. Always Alex, he says.”

As I walked through the mansion, the same cold feeling came to me. Goosebumps ran up and down my arms as I turned down the last hallway. His room was the last door, but when I opened it, I knew he wasn’t there.

I took a shuddering breath. It rattled in my lungs and I didn’t know what else to do.

Leave?

But then I couldn’t look away from his bed. It was a king size. The sheets were rumpled from when he had gotten up that morning. I knew how they felt. I shivered from the need I had to curl up among them. The nights I had spent in there had been the best sleep I’d gotten. Before I had fully made my decision, I slipped off my sandals and crawled underneath his sheets. They were so soft to the touch. I nestled under them.

My body started to relax and the fatigue started to slip in. My eyelids grew heavy, but before I drifted off to sleep, I thought I saw a black shape in the doorway. But then it didn’t matter and I was asleep.

“What? What is she doing here?!”

A shrill voice snapped me out of my sleep and I jerked upright.

“Shut up.” It was a low command.

“I won’t shut up! Look at her! What’s she doing there, Jesse? I thought you wanted me tonight and we find her in your bed!”