Page 34 of The Echo of Regret

“Oh. That makes sense.” I take a sip. “Although I’m not sure why someone would want to go up onto the roof of a burning building.”

“My guess is that any direction is fine as long as it’s not the one where the flames are.”

I wink at her. “Touché, Professor Ventura.”

She looks out in the distance, over the campus that stretches out below us. “One of my students called me that during the first week.”

“Oh, yeah? How’d that feel.”

“Weird. Being a teacher—even if it’s just an afterschool thing—is so not something I ever assumed I would do.”

“Don’t say just an afterschool thing like that, like it’s less than being a regular teacher.” I bump my shoulder against hers. “If they let you make copies in the administrative offices, you’re just as important of a faculty member as anyone else.”

She smirks at me. “Is that an official identifier? Does it go on the name badge?”

“Obviously. You get a little X in the corner.”

“And the X is for?”

“Xerox.”

Gabi laughs. “I hope they’re sponsoring the badges.”

“They are. It’s very official.”

“Sounds like it.”

We watch each other for a moment before we each take another sip of beer. This. This is what I missed the most. The easy banter. The back and forth. The teasing playfulness we’ve had since the first day we met…I do the math in my mind…ten years ago.

That number sounds so wild.

“Did you know we’ve known each other for more than a decade?”

Gabi rolls her eyes. “We haven’t seen each other in four years, so saying we’ve known each other for a decade is kind of misleading.”

“Fine. Did you know we met more than a decade ago?”

She pins me with a look. “And?”

“And? What do you mean and? It’s a long-ass time, that’s all. We were little babies going through puberty and we were talking about…I don’t know…if we were going to get a phone for Christmas and how much we hated doing math homework.”

Gabi’s lips tilt up. “You were definitely talking about how much you hated math.”

“I still can’t believe Bellamy majored in that shit and share nearly identical DNA. Fucking nuts.” Shaking my head, I take another sip of my beer.

“Ten years, huh?” she says, kind of to herself. “It does feel like a lifetime ago.”

“You came into homeroom looking like you wanted to light everyone on fire, and you held that sketchbook close to your chest like someone was going to rob you at any minute.”

“I did want to light everyone on fire.”

I bob my head. I don’t doubt it. If I’d been in her position, I probably would have felt the same, and the way she dealt with her emotions back then was sketching. Any time she was alone, she was drawing—landscapes, buildings, people—but drawing people was her specialty. Face close-ups and stark emotions. She held her sketchbook like it was her most prized possession—I think it might have been—and rarely let anyone see inside, including me.

I know I was one of the lucky few who got to see some of them. I even still have a few. They hung in my room freshman year and then got tucked into a drawer after we broke up. There’s one I still keep with me. It’s a small drawing that stays folded up inside my wallet.

“You still sketch like that?” I ask, setting that memory aside.

She glances at me then turns away. “Not so much. Most of my time has been consumed by my pottery work.”

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