Page 41 of Remember Us This Way

I press my lips into a hard line and nod. “He’s holding me to a hundred percent attendance and a B+ average as well. If I start to slip, I’m done.”

Zoey leans back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, her dinner still untouched. “The way I heard it, Coach Martin isn’t the only one putting limitations on your enrollment,” she adds, but how she knows about my conversation with Principal Daniels doesn’t sit well with me. Our conversation about my enrollment was private, especially considering the end result was forcing me into counseling, and it sure as fuck isn’t something I want to openly discuss at her dining table.

I don’t respond, just hold her stare, daring her to push me on this. Electricity pulses between us, her leg practically burning hot against mine, and that tether tightens between us once again.

“Speaking of school,” Mom says, defusing the situation before it gets ugly. “Have you guys had a chance to hang out much?”

Zoey sputters again, and I can’t help but wonder if she’s going for a record. “That’s a joke, right?” she asks, gaping at my mom and pulling her leg away from mine, sending a searing pain through my chest that I can’t quite understand. “Noah and I certainly aren’t hanging out at school. I’m the straight-A student who spends her days memorizing every single lyric of Taylor Swift’s ten-minute version of ‘All Too Well,’ while Noah is a heathen who spends his days burning schools down. We don’t exactly run in the same circles.”

“You only wish we did,” I murmur, earning a spectacular eye roll out of her.

“Would it really be so terrible if you did hang out?” Zoey’s mom suggests, taking a sip of wine. “I know there’s social circles and a hierarchy at high school that I can’t even begin to understand, but you guys don’t need to lower yourselves to those standards. Your friendship has spanned over your whole lives. Perhaps it’ll be good to reconnect, and instead of glaring at each other across my dining table, you could find comfort in one another like you used to.”

Zoey glances at her mother, and I watch her a little too closely, hating the way those bright green eyes seem to darken, unshed tears welling, but she refuses to allow them to fall. She shakes her head, this time not even bothering to spare me a glance. “That ship sailed a long time ago,” she murmurs before standing and clutching her plate. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m not very hungry.”

Zoey walks away, taking her plate with her, and I watch as she dumps it on the kitchen counter before hightailing it to the stairs and taking her ass back to her room. I listen to every step she takes until I hear the familiar sound of her bedroom door closing behind her.

A heaviness weighs down on my shoulders. I’m not going to lie, the idea of falling back into our old patterns and dragging her kicking and screaming back into my life fills me with the kind of elation that no man should ever be so lucky to possess. But she’s right, that ship sailed three long years ago. We can’t go back to how it used to be. Too much has changed. I broke her heart and tore her to shreds, and despite the way she holds her head up high, I can still see just how broken she is.

The rest of dinner passes in an uncomfortable silence, at least for me anyway. Mom and Erica hound Hazel about how she’s settling into middle school, and I curse myself for being so fucking self-centered that I didn’t even realize she was starting this year. I can’t help but think back to what Zoey said to me in the school bathroom, how my avoidance of her is also a punishment for Hazel, and seeing how grown up she’s become and how much of her life I’ve missed, I see just how right Zoey was.

The guilt eats at me, and after dinner, I make my way up the stairs. Music trickles from beneath Zoey’s closed door, but I slink right past it until I’m leaning in the open doorway of Hazel’s bedroom.

My gaze shifts around her room, taking it all in and realizing just how different Hazel is compared to Zoey at her age. There are makeup and hair products spread out from one end of the room to the other, but when Zoey was eleven years old, her room was filled with . . . me. Our photos were stuck up on the walls, and she had a collection of teddy bears I’d won for her at every fair we’d ever been to piled up in the corner.

Hazel relaxes back on her bed, holding her phone above her head, and from the sound of it, she’s listening to a makeup tutorial. Clearly not having noticed me in her doorway, I gently rap my knuckles on the frame and watch as her head snaps up.

Hazel peers at me from her bed, abandoning her phone on the blanket and sitting up, her gaze narrowing as she crosses her arms over her chest. “Well, well. If it isn’t Noah Ryan coming to beg for forgiveness,” she chides, proving that while she’s certainly very different from her big sister, there are also a lot of striking similarities. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Ha. Ha,” I say, laying the sarcasm on thick before pressing my lips into a hard line. “You hate me too, huh?”

Her gaze falls away, and sadness creeps into her eyes as she sits there, not knowing what to say.

I let out a breath and stride into her room, sliding her desk chair out and dropping onto it. I lean forward, bracing my elbows on my knees, not really knowing what to say either. “I’m really sorry, Hazel,” I tell her. “After Linc died, I didn’t know how to handle it. I still don’t, and I pushed away everything good in my life. I was drowning in my own grief. Linc was . . . you know. And Zoey—” I let out a breath, needing to figure out what I’m trying to say and how to explain something so complicated and deep to an eleven-year-old. “Your sister made me happy. She was everything good in my life, and I wasn’t ready to feel that happiness. The guilt I felt for even thinking about smiling when Linc was gone ate at me, so I pushed her away. I distanced myself from everyone without a thought about who I was hurting in the process.”

Hazel pulls her legs up on her bed, crosses them, and tugs the blanket over her lap, unable to look up and meet my stare. “I lost Linc too, you know?” she murmurs. “He was my best friend. You had Zoey, and I had Linc, then he was gone. But you were gone too, and Zoey was sad all the time, so I had no one.”

“I’m sorry, Hazel,” I tell her, probably one of the sincerest conversations I’ve had in over three years. “I was selfish. I was thinking about my own pain when I should have been thinking about all the people who needed me. I’ve hurt a lot of people over the past few years.”

“But you’re back now,” she says in a small voice, as if not quite sure, and honestly, I’m not sure either. “Things can go back to how they used to be.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Like Zoey said at dinner, that ship sailed a while ago. I hurt her really badly, and to be honest, even if we were ready for it, I don’t know if I’m capable of making it up to her. But I promise, I won’t be a stranger to you. I’ve missed three years of your life, and if Linc was looking down on me, he’d be ready to kick my ass for allowing that to happen.”

“I can kick your ass for him,” Hazel suggests in all seriousness before a ridiculous grin stretches across her face, her eyes shining just the way Zoey’s used to.

“Oh really?” I laugh, feeling part of the darkness starting to chip away. I lean back in her desk chair, feeling the ease of our old friendship falling into place. “And how the hell do you think you’re going to do that? You’re all but three feet tall.”

“I am not,” she argues, and the music from Zoey’s room hitches a little higher as if trying to drown out our conversation.

I nod my head in Zoey’s general direction. “Does she do that a lot?”

“What? Listen to music so loud it bursts her eardrums? Yes. Just be happy she’s not screaming the songs at the top of her lungs like she usually does.”

Warmth spreads through my chest, feeling as though I’m getting a little insight into Zoey’s life for the first time in three years, something I lost the right to know, and fuck, it wasn’t until this very moment that I realize just how much I miss it. All the little things that make her happy, the things that put a smile on her face or make her feel content. I’ve been missing it all, and while I still know all the big things, there’s so much about her I don’t know anymore. She’s grown up without me, and that realization stings.

“Wanna know a secret?” I ask, feeling as though I don’t need to hide here, not with Hazel.

“Umm, yeah,” she says, slightly leaning forward as though she’s about to hear the gossip of the century.

---