Page 35 of Break Your Fall

I laugh in my stomach, my muscles clenching from humor to pain.

“I’m so sorry,” Reyna says in a soft voice that makes me wish it was her between my hands instead of this ball. “What can I do?”

I squeeze the ball. “I just needed you there.”

I resume my toss-catch-toss game, counting out66in my head as that slow, heart-thudding silence stretches between us.

67.

68.

69.

“You listen to that a lot,” she comments on my millionth rotation of my nineties playlist.

“I think about you a lot.”

Reyna swipes the ball mid-air and we lock eyes. She glances down at the ball like she’s surprised to see it in her hands, then glides her gaze back to mine. My throat is thick as I try to swallow the words that tumbled from my mouth. How am I supposed to show her that nothing has to change between us if I keep spiraling, saying things I shouldn’t? Things that can bring that awkwardness I’ve tried to avoid, that can keep giving her opportunities to reject me, to remind me that her feelings are nowhere near my own.

I leap off the bed, the mice screaming at my sudden movement, and hit the OFF button on my stereo. The quiet is abrupt, and I keep my back turned a moment longer before I face Reyna again. She’s focusing on the ball, twirling it between her fingers, and—dear God. I’m hit with the memory of the time she caught me staring at her in aweird way—as she called it—as she was holding one of my basketballs and wouldn’t quit questioning me until I told her that seeing her hands around a basketball kind of turns me on. Though, I couldn’t put itthatway, so like a moron I told her how much I love seeing my balls in her hands. I should’ve gone with my first thought.

Reyna looks over at me with a laugh. “You remember when you—”

“I was just thinking about that, actually,” I say through a laugh of my own.

“That was funny.”

“That was hilarious,” I deadpan, which makes her laugh more, and I smile despite myself. Pink shades her cheeks as she stares down at the ball, not letting it go right away. I have to avert my stare until she rolls the ball onto the bed, then tucks her hair behind her ear as she turns to me, the pink in her cheeks flushed to a deeper red underneath shiny eyes.

“I feel like everyone’s laughing at me.” Her confession pushes me back against my desk, my hands gripping the edge. “I should’ve seenthis, I should’ve seenthat, I shouldseeandknoweverything, and maybe I did. Maybe I do. But … I don’t know what happens. I get lost in the big picture and ignore the details, I guess.”

I shake my head with a smile. It’s a small, slow pull of my lips, but I’m smiling and Reyna’s face is now a mix of concern and confusion.

“What?”

“You care, Reyna.” I murmur the reminder before telling her, “You’re the most caring person I’ve ever known. You care so much and you do so much and you love just as hard.” The smile slips as I hold her stare, my chest deflating with a long exhale. “You’re just looking for the same thing.”

Consistency. Stability. Family. Love. Reyna’s tried to find and hold on to all of that within our families and within our friends. She’s tried to find family in mine, in Julian’s. She’s dated outside our group, but she’s always held on to that love for and with Julian. He’s the one she laid her eyes on, the one she gave her heart to.

“I guess I’ve been looking in the wrong places,” she says with a sheepish look.

“Maybe,” comes out of my mouth as a fearful mutter. “But don’t quit looking, Reyna,” follows right behind as a nervous plea.

She wants love. She deserves love. She has love.

Her eyes bounce between mine as I hurry to add, “And I meant to tell you this before, but … that’s the biggest difference between you and your mom. You can love. You’re not afraid to love or to want love. You’re not afraid tofeel. You feel everything,” I end on a whisper.

“So do you,” she says back, holding my stare a long moment before she moves in close to me. “I can’t be sorry about the jet ski.” I tense. “I was happy. I’m tryingsohard to be happy. I’m too stubborn not to be,” she says with a small self-deprecating laugh. “But I’m so sorry I scared you. I remember when you got blacked out drunk and we couldn’t wake you up and. . .” She looks off past my shoulder a brief moment and I see the memory of that night in her stare. A memory that’s fuzzy for me, but our feelings are the same. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to me. I don’t, I promise.” That promise lolls my body to relief. “I’m having a hard time feeling like myself, which … is kinda a good thing and a bad thing.”

Bad night.Something happened to Reyna to provoke this night. Something unrelated to me, or to Julian, or to Camille. Something that’s made her feel low about herself, and the last thing I want to do is push her lower, add salt to this. She saw my face, she heard my words down at the beach. She felt what I felt.

I don’t stay upset. I don’t stay mad. I don’t stay scared. I just stay, holding her pensive stare with my own, and I tell her again, “Think of me. Whatever it is, whatever you’re going through, think of me. I’ll be there for all of it.” A strained breath deflates my chest. “God, no matter what it is, Reyna, I’ll be there.”

There’s shame in her eyes that brings out a fear in mine. “I didn’t want you to be there.”

“Do you still feel that way?”

She shakes her head, but it’s not the answer. “I’m embarrassed. . .”

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