The phone rattled, just slightly, as my grip clenched tighter around it. “What are you talking about?” I turned and looked down the hallway.

I was far enough so they couldn’t hear, but Bryce stood in the hallway. He watched and I saw that he knew. I couldn’t see anyone else. The hallway cut off my vision of Corrigan, his perfect girlfriend, and the perfect doting mother.

A look of exhausted resignation came across Bryce’s face.

“He ‘has to work,’” I quoted Bryce’s words to his mother.

“Yes, he does and he’s going to be noticed and you’ll be in his dust. Mark my words. You’ll be gone.”

Bryce took a step and said, “Hang up.”

“He didn’t quit soccer because a college scholarship wanted him to, did he?”

AnnaBelle laughed.

“He quit because the pros don’t want him to get injured before their trainers can work with him.”

Bryce stopped just before me and he said again, softly, “Hang up.”

My fingers gripped tighter and I breathed, “Where?”

“Far far away.”

It was wrong for a mother to enjoy a daughter’s torment. It didn’t matter whose daughter stood at the end of that torment. That person, that soul, was someone’s daughter.

“Sheldon,” Bryce breathed.

Broken, I whispered, as her words whipped inside of me, “If I had a daughter and her eyes were his…would you want them to be crying?”

AnnaBelle stopped abruptly.

Bryce cursed.

He took the phone from my numb fingers and turned away as he quickly murmured into it. I saw the tension in his shoulders. I saw how stiff his back was.

When he hung up, I breathed out, “You’re leaving.”

“Sheldon.”

“Why are you leaving?” I cried out. “This was before I messed up.”

Bryce closed his eyes and I saw the turmoil inside of him at that moment. It raged inside of him and I slowly, in awe, pressed my palm against his chest. Bryce sucked in a breath at my touch, but didn’t move. Neither of us moved.

“You can’t move,” I whispered.

His eyes opened, slowly, almost lazily, and he whispered, “I don’t want to.”

I closed my eyes at his words.

“Hey,” Corrigan called out from around the corner, ignorant, and unaware. “We should get going. Mom wants to do something before we head to the shindig tonight.”

My eyelids snapped open and I looked up.

Bryce watched me and I saw an answering ache.

Bryce turned to the side. My hand fell away. And we walked back to find Corrigan and Logan snuggled close together on one of the couches.

Bryce and I sat on a second couch. We didn’t sit at the ends, but there was an easy breathing space between us. I sat back and Bryce leaned his elbows on his knees.

Katrice came back down the stairs a final time with two bottles of wine and five glasses in her hand. She uncorked one and poured the first glass.

To my surprise, she turned and handed it to me. Warmly, she murmured, “It’s a toast to Leisha Summers.”

I took the wine glass and felt the smooth fragile contour between my fingers. The wine was a deep red and it screamed of texture.

“Thank you,” I murmured, surprised and quieted.

Katrice smiled warmly and I knew in that moment that she wouldn’t have been another AnnaBelle. She would’ve been someone I’d never known if Corrigan had been Bryce.

Katrice nodded and turned to me, heartfelt and unaware of how startling a person she was, “She was your friend. Corrigan told me. He said that you liked her and there aren’t many that you like.” She smiled again, sparkling, “This is a toast to your friend, Sheldon, because I know that she’ll be missed by many if she passed the tests to your heart.”

She poured four more until all of us held a glass of that textured wine.

Corrigan raised his and said, “I didn’t know, but…I remember her crazy outfits.

And she had some wild hair. I remember that.”

Logan giggled before she drank to his toast.

Bryce glanced at me and I knew a temporary truce had been called. His eyes were clear as he said clearly, “I liked her. She put up with our crap that one day and…I don’t know…I liked her. She seemed like a good person.”

Numb, I watched as he drank to his toast.

They all waited for me now.

“She…wanted to be cool,” I spoke the truth.

Corrigan, Bryce, Logan grew somber as they heard what I said.

It was the truth and it made the moment even more heartbreaking.

“She…did what I told her to do because she wanted to be popular. She wanted to be liked and I knew that. She skipped class one day and she never would’ve done that except that I asked her to. She only did it because…I was popular and she wanted to be popular. She put up with our stupid games.”

I cut off, for a moment.

“I—what kind of person does that? Willingly lets someone…I never would do that. I would never go along for the ride, knowing that I might be humiliated by the people I’m with.”

“It wasn’t about that,” Bryce spoke up. He shifted closer. “We invited her to go with us and she did. She sat at a table with you all year. She started to get to know you.”

“Yeah. She…,” Corrigan spoke up. “She was your friend, Sheldon. You looked out for her at the end. That’s what we get because we’re your friends. You look out for us. You’re loyal even if it makes you a bitch.”

“And besides,” Bryce grinned softly. “This isn’t about how horrible you are, whatever you’re thinking right now—this is about Leisha. And she seemed like a right chill girl.”

“Yeah, but…”

“No buts,” Corrigan said firmly. He scooted to the edge of the couch and leaned towards me. “No buts, Sheldon. Leisha saw in you what we all see in you and that makes her okay in my books.”

I grinned, “She wrote swear words in her notebook when she was mad.” I laughed, “I thought that was hilarious when I saw it because…” My smile died. “I wouldn’t have done that. I would’ve just told the teacher what I thought. I wouldn’t have been…she was nice.”

“She was,” Logan spoke up, timid at first. “I had Spanish with her and I thought she was always really cool—kinda like you, actually.”