Page 36 of It Was Always You

I picked up my plate. "Um, yeah. I just need to grab a few things from my room."

Easton grabbed his backpack and then turned back to me. "Well, I'm gonna head out if you don't need a ride."

I nodded, trying not to let him see how relieved I was that he was leaving early. "See you at school."

Easton looked at Noah. "Try not to break Raven's heart too bad, okay? She was in abadmood after the game last night."

Noah ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I feel kind of bad about that, but she'll realize soon enough that she's better off without me."

12

NOAH

Lexiand I both watched from the windows in the living room, waiting for Easton to pull away. Soon his beat-up Mustang was headed south on the road.

"You still want to get that shower in?" Lexi looked up at me.

"Yeah." I grabbed my backpack from the floor in the kitchen and then followed her down the hall to her room.

"You can just use my shower. There should be an extra towel in the cupboard above the toilet.

"Since when do you have a shower in your room and Easton doesn't?"

I'd never been in Lexi's room before, but it only seemed fair that the older sibling would have the nicer room.

She shrugged. "When Maddie and Grant moved outlast summer, I got to move into their room. Easton likes it in the basement."

Now that she mentioned it, I remembered her and Juliette moving her stuff across the hall and complaining to Easton about him not helping them push her heavy dresser.

Lexi pointed to a door in her room. "That's the bathroom. You can use whatever you need in there. I'll just wait for you downstairs."

I swallowed, glad she wouldn't be waiting for me in her bedroom. This was already awkward enough as it was.

When I got in the shower, I realized too late that I'd somehow missed packing my bar of soap into my backpack. I must have left it at the school in my gym locker. I looked around the steam-filled shower, hoping against hope that she had something that didn't smell like a floral shop or bakery. But even nerdy Lexi's taste in scents wasn't on my side. I really should have insisted on using Easton's bathroom.

I found the least girly-sounding container along the tub wall—pomegranate and mango body wash—and lathered up. I'd just use an extra spray of cologne to cover it up.

Two minutes later I was out and toweling off. I skipped my morning shave, since we were running late on time, then went downto find Lexi.

"So,since I know that you're not going home, what do you plan to do now?" Lexi asked me as we walked to my car after school.

"I don't know. I've been going to the library a lot lately."

Her eyebrows raised in shock. "You've been going to the library? That's surprising."

I laughed. Yeah, the library was probably the last place anyone would expect to find me. "People do crazy things when they have nowhere to go." Then I remembered that I was running low on clean clothes. "Actually, I'll probably head to the laundromat and wash my stinky clothes."

I'd never done laundry before, but it couldn't be that hard to figure out.

"How are you paying for all of this, anyway?" she asked. We stopped at the edge of the sidewalk and waited for a guy—who looked too young to have a license—pull his giant brown truck out of its parking spot.

"My dad puts money into an account for me every month." I looked down at her. "I had to use a lot of my money on a second sleeping bag, but I think I should have enough to do laundry."

"You think?" She frowned. "Are you going to have enough for food still?"

The traffic stalled, so we continued toward where I'd parked my car in the back of the parking lot. "I should be able to go back this weekend. I think I'll have enough money until then." Not that I actually wanted to go home that badly. If it had been summer instead of winter, I'd probably never go home. Not after the way my parents had treated me. Why would I want to go live with a bunch of people who didn't want me around—who actually got mad at me for being part of their family?

I flexed my jaw, hating the way those thoughts made me feel. I needed to change the subject. My life was more depressing when I thought about it. It was much better to just live moment by moment and not worry about what I'd be doing tonight. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.

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