Page 16 of Past the Broken Bridges

“I hope you didn’t drive,” Sawyer says a few minutes later.

My pen pauses over the paper. “What?”

“Last night,” she elaborates. “I hope you didn’t drive. You were wasted.”

“I was fine,” I grumble. I know the roads around here like the back of my hand.

Was it smart to get behind the wheel when I’d had one too many? No. But I wasn’t about to crash at my father’s place or waste money on an Uber when the college store barely pays minimum wage. One ride from the Garden District to here would be half my paycheck.

The girl beside me deadpans, “You could barely walk straight, Just Banks.”

I eye her humorlessly. “It’s Banks.”

That subtle grin tilts her lips again, showing straight white teeth. A pretty smile is a dangerous one.

Chuckling under my breath despite myself, I go back to my drawing and let her watch. Silently.

Thankfully, it doesn’t take long after that for the white-haired professor to walk in wearing a purple button-down and bright-pink bowtie that matches his suspenders. He stops at the podium, dropping his belongings onto it. “Welcome to creative writing,” he greets us with a clap of his hands. “I hope you all have vivid imaginations and a love for the written word because you’re going to need both in this course.”

Sawyer perks up, her attention fully on the man in charge and away from me. It gives me time to look at her profile, noting her feminine features that look delicate somehow. Innocent. Her excitement over the introduction of class is…cute.

I do my best to ignore her the rest of class, not wanting the drama that would come with even the mildest of interest in the girl from across the hall.

Chapter Seven

Sawyer

“Are you using that face wash I bought you?” I ask Bentley over video chat as he shovels food into his mouth. “Looks like you could use it.”

From the background, I hear, “Be nice to your brother, Sawyer.”

Snickering at my mother’s chiding, I say, “If I can’t pick on him from fifteen hundred miles away, what’s the fun in being his older sister?”

Bentley grins, a piece of lettuce stuck between his front teeth that I point out. “It smells girly,” he tells me, picking at the spot with his finger.

“I got it from the men’s section,” I tell the little shit. It took me thirty minutes to find one I was sure he’d use thatdidn’tlook or smell feminine because I knew he’d do this. “It’s supposed to smell like the woods or some manly bullcrap like that.”

Mom yells out, “Language.”

She acts like Bentley doesn’t know any curse words, butI’ve heard him playFortnitewith his friends. Their conversations are more colorful over their stupid video game than mine are with people in real life. “I said bullcrap!” I defend, laughing. “Sorry. I’d hate to corrupt his virgin ears.”

Bentley snorts as Mom comes into the frame with a disapproving expression on her face. She takes the phone and starts walking to the kitchen with it. It looks like she’s stress cleaning again—something she’s always done to quiet her anxious mind. Once after my first week of chemo when I’d been so violently sick I couldn’t keep anything down, I found her on her hands and knees using a toothbrush to scrub between the kitchen floor tiles.

“Speaking of virgins,” she says, “are you taking your birth control pills?”

My brother gags in the background, and I turn pink, grateful I have an entire apartment to myself to be embarrassed by my mother on a different coast. I can’t imagine what I’d do if I had a roommate who overheard her. “Geez, Mom.Yes. Although I don’t know why you think I’ve been hoeing around when I’ve only been here for a couple days.”

“First of all,” Mom says, using that tone of voice you don’t want to argue with, “sleeping around doesn’t make a woman a ‘ho.’ That term should have died and stayed in the past. There’s nothing wrong with being sexually active as long as you’re being safe.”

“Oh God,” I groan, burying my face into one of the couch pillows. “Can we not talk about this? There isn’t even anything to talk about.”

“All I’m saying is that I want you to be safe,” she reiterates, unfazed by the embarrassment she’s causing me as she sprays a cleaner onto the countertop out of frame. “That’s why I asked about the pills. I know your father wasn’t totallyon board, but it was a smart move now that you’re in college and surrounded by opportunities.”

Oh my God.Did she really just imply opportunities with men are like campus jobs I’m trying to apply for? “Well, I am,” I squeak out, clearing my throat. “Taking them, I mean. So you don’t have to worry.”

I can tell she’s amused by my tone. “Oh, honey. I say it because I care. But I’ll let it go. Are you taking your other medications? The vitamins that the doctor prescribed? What about—”

“Mom,” I cut her off. “I’ve got it covered. I’m taking everything I need to like I promised I would.”

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