Page 12 of Dare to Fall

“Eva!” Paulina’s voice broke through my spiraling thoughts.

My head snapped up. “What?”

“Are you down for Thursday night?”

I gaped at her. “I’m sorry, I completely missed it. What’s happening on Thursday?”

Connor put a hand over my wrist, and it took everything I had not to jerk my arm free from his touch. “We’re going out to the new bar downtown. Are you able to come?”

I turned to him. Those steel-blue eyes were transfixed on me. A gentle smile swept across his perfect lips, and my heart sank. He never smiled at me like that, as though I were some fragile thing that was about to crack. Something was wrong. I just knew it.

But I’d already made a scene today with Caroline, and I didn’t even have the words to figure out what was going on with Connor.

“Sure. Yeah, I can do that,” I said, still trying to clear through the mess in my mind.

“Great!” Connor said just as the waitress arrived again and set a plate of food down in front of him.

Caroline continued to scroll through her phone as she moved the lettuce around on her plate. Brent and Connor dove into their burgers and started arguing about the school’s new quarterback and whether he was better than Mike Bowing who had just graduated last year.

Paulina looked to me, her brows scrunched together with a slight tilt of her head.

I ignored it, not wanting to get into one of our silent conversations with peering eyes. Plus, I didn’t even know what to tell her. Something was wrong. I could feel it in my bones. But I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

6

Garth

The smellof old books hit me as I walked through the hallway to my mother’s office. She always had a thing for books. Growing up, I could always find her in our home library, reading in her oversized chair with a fire roaring in the hearth.

“Books are our gateway to other worlds. All you have to do is open the pages, and you can live an entirely different life.”

She said those words to me every time I asked her why she read so much. And it was true. Words on the pages ignited my imagination, often inspiring some of the pieces I created when I was younger. I could envision all the colors of each world, the author’s words perfectly crafted to evoke emotion and to paint their own portrait of whatever vastness lurked in their minds. I had always been in awe of those who wrote. Similar, yet different from painting.

I breathed in the musk of the hundreds of books lining the walls. My mother made a point to track down copies of books that Waterview alumni wrote to celebrate the great accomplishment by having them displayed in the halls lining the entrance to her office. The scent transported me to a simpler time when our family was strong, tethered to one another through admiration and love.

Before everything got fucked.

It didn’t matter. Things would never be the same, and that was just how life was. People changed, and we were forced to move on.

I tucked my hands into my pockets as I approached my mother’s secretary’s desk. Cecilia had been with her from the moment she was sworn in as the president of Waterview University. A knot of gray hair sat atop her head. A pair of featherlight glasses were nestled right at the end of her nose as she peered down at the computer screen. Her soft skin was wrinkled in all the right places, revealing the truth of the happy years she’d lived thus far.

I cleared my throat, and she looked up at me with hooded eyes.

“Well, it appears that trouble has landed on my doorstep once again.”

I smirked. “It’s not my fault you’ve been asking for it.”

Cecilia Parker rose from her seat and made her way around the large L-shaped desk with not a pen out of place on it. She stood before me, hands on her wide hips.

“Well, are you going to just stand there, or do I get a hug?” Cecilia opened her arms out wide.

I chuckled and swooped her into a tight embrace. She patted me on the back a few times, then I pulled back to look her in the eyes. “You haven’t aged a day,” I said.

She swatted me on the arm. “That’s because I’m too old already. Not much else can change at this point.”

I let her go from my hug. “Well, you’re still beautiful in my eyes.”

It was true. The woman had one of the best souls I’d ever encountered. I had seen her carve out hours of time to students in need, doing her best to see if she could alleviate their problems without bringing the burden to my mother. An advocate for the underdog, through and through, Cecilia had stood before councils of powerful people to speak on students’ behalf. While her duties as a secretary were specific to making things easier for the president of the university, her truest desire was to help the students.

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