Page 33 of Lost in the Current of You

When we met here two years ago, I found him picking off bits of the pastry he had bought to eat and flinging them into the river. I had to interrupt him and stop him, telling him it was bad for the ducks.

“What do you recommend then?” He had questioned.

I had just shrugged. “I don’t know, look it up. I just heard about it once that bread is bad for them.”

And that is what started a night-long conversation with a stranger that distracted me from my mother’s incapability to let me live the life I wanted to live.

It didn’t hurt that he wasn’t too bad to look at, either.

That simple night brought us together, and we just clicked. We talked, laughed, and sometimes fed the ducks, until one day, one bit Reece’s leg as he dangled them off the pier. I laughed hysterically, of course, as he swore up and down the park and threatened never to go there again if I kept laughing. It only made me laugh more before he started laughing, too.

I smiled at the memories as we got out of the car. When he was close enough, I pushed him, making him stumble to the side.

“Just don’t stick your hand close to them then, idiot.”

He nudged me back. “You’re meant to be my knight in shining armour, Summers.”

I laughed, throwing my head back. “You got the wrong gal, Fischer.”

His lip twitched like he was forcing himself not to smile. He tsked. “Damn, I thought I was getting pretty lucky with you.”

I hummed as I rested my fists on my hips. “Well, sorry to disappoint you.”

“Ah. It’s okay,” he said, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “You can make it up to me.”

“Uh-huh. And how’s that?”

“I can think of a few ways,” he drawled, grinning as I shoved him again.

Just like that, like the night we met, he made me forget about the dinner with my mother and the feeling of being the child of disappointment to her. It was never easy to slip away from that feeling, but with just a dimpled smile and a few jokes between us, the light dimmed on those words and shone in a different direction.

It was a feeling I chased.

A feeling I wanted to hold onto.

A feeling I grasped for the next four hours as we sat there on a bench next to the river and threw peas around for the ducks, talking, laughing, and dreaming of the unattainable.

Something I wished I held onto.

12

Since the evening by the river with Reece, there wasn’t a moment where we weren’t talking in some way over the following week. Texting, calling, hanging out by the river when we were free.

It was back to how we were before Liam had introduced us, but also… there was something different in the way our friendship evolved. The energy around us had turned more flirtatious, toeing that line between our friendship just to see what the other would do. It was in the little touches in our secret moments by the river and the loaded looks in the silent ones. It was in the way we spent hours on the phone, whispering to each other while my brother was across the hall, risking it all with how paper thin our walls were.

It felt illegal to be talking to Reece, which is why I avoided telling Nate where I was going and who I was going to see when I left the house. In all seriousness, he was my friend first, and it shouldn’t matter so much. But lately, the water had become so murky, I didn’t know where we stood. Every day, another butterfly joined the zoo of them taking residency in my stomach when I was around him. I wasn’t sure how I could hide it all from the nosiest brother I’d ever known.

I lied to Nate every day, and it twisted something in my stomach every time. I told him I was going to see Avery, or going somewhere with Alex. It was like handing myself a double ended sword because even my two best friends didn’t know. I was too caught up in Reece to have time to be with them or talk to them, which should have made me feel like the shittiest friend alive. But my time was so consumed in Reece.

Today was different, though. We hadn’t planned to do anything, so I kept my phone close by the whole morning, having trouble not glancing at it every five minutes to see any notifications from him. By the time it was eleven o’clock, I still hadn’t heard from him. In the past five days, I had gotten used to waking up to a text from him, so I was disappointed when I got nothing. I almost laughed at myself for how ridiculous I was acting.

Nate came downstairs then, distracting me a little from constantly peeking at my phone. He crashed down on the couch beside me as an episode of New Girl played on the screen.

“Want to order some lunch?” he asked, eyes glued to the TV.

I glanced at him. “Sure. What are you thinking?”

He shrugged, pulling out his phone. “Maybe pizza? It’ll be easier since Reece will be here soon.”

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