Page 11 of After All The Wreckage
I grabbed a handful of popcorn with some of the candies mixed in, and shoved it at his mouth. Half of it fell to the seat and beyond, but as he started to laugh, some of it made it inside. His lips were surprisingly soft, and my fingers tingled at the touch. A now-familiar heaviness grew in my chest and stomach as I watched him chew around his laughter.
“So?” I asked. “What’s the verdict?”
“It’s not entirely despicable.” The saying was his little brother’s. Whenever anyone got Monte to try something he thought he’d hate and ended up liking, he would say the samething but in his cute toddler voice that couldn’t quite get all the syllables right.
Sometimes, I wondered if my parents would have stayed together if they’d had another child besides the one who’d driven a spike down the middle of them. But then, I thought about Gage’s parents and how having Monte hadn’t healed their broken parts. According to the gossip I’d heard, Gage’s mom had stuck around for longer than normal after Monte had been born, but she’d still left. Like she always did.
I wasn’t sure what was worse, knowing you’d never see your parent again because they’d died like Shay’s mom or knowing your parentchosenot to see you because they prioritized everything in their life over you. My hero, Veronica Mars, would know. She’d been abandoned by her mom the way Gage and I had been abandoned by one of our parents.
The theater lights lowered, and I almost squealed. The previews lasted way too long, and then, there she was—Veronica! With her snark and attitude, coming back to the town she’d sworn never to get stuck in, doing everything to solve the case for Logan. The antihero. The morally gray kid who grew up to become a Navy Intelligence officer. The guy no one thought she should end up with… except the fans. They were perfect in their own imperfect way. I didn’t see themevergetting married, which was fine by me. I didn’t want to get married either.
I didn’t want a husband. A cheater. A man who left.
I wanted someone who chose to stay because they couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
When the lights came up at the end, I was filled with loss because I didn’t want it to be over. I needed more of Veronica. I needed to know how her life turned out because, in some strange way, I felt like it meant something in the scheme of mine.
As we left the theater, Shay darted inside the bathroom, leaving me alone with Gage. He put his arm around myshoulders, drew me close, and my entire body lit up like a sparkler.
“Pipsqueak, you don’t seem all that happy for someone who just watched her hero on the big screen.”
I looked up at him, and it was as if he could read my mind. As if the turmoil in me over my dad and leaving and my future was all laid out for him. Gage tugged a strand of my hair.
“She seems pretty badass for a marshmallow,” he teased. “Maybe a bit like someone else I know.”
How could I not fall for someone who saw me in that light? Who saw through the broken parts to the person I most wanted to be? There was no way I could stop my heart from giving itself to him even knowing I was moving back to D.C. in a few months. Even knowing he’d be off to Kansas, chasing his dreams about tornadoes and weather.
No matter how our lives pulled us apart, there’d always be a part of me that belonged to him.
? ? ?
SEVEN YEARS AGO
The third time I fell for Gage, it was for his motorcycle.
I hadn’t been to the enormous Victorian Gage lived in with his dad, his brother, and their housekeeper for over two years. But Mom and I were in Cherry Bay, visiting Nan for a few days, and Holland had invited us to an end-of-the-summer party. It wasn’t an official gathering of the 5-H club, because Gage’s mom was back. She was upstairs, laughing and chatting with the other adults while the kids congregated in the finished basement. I wondered how long she’d stay this time. I wondered what Gage thought of her being there.
When I went in search of him, I found him leaning with his elbows on the patio railing, staring out at the darkening sky. A storm was coming. Would it be anything like the ones he’d spent his summer chasing with a storm company in the Midwest? This one promised to be full of lightning and thunder, bolts of electricity shifting through the air just like they shifted through me whenever Gage was near.
Standing at the base of the garden stairs, I took a moment to catalog the differences in him since I’d seen him last. If possible, he was even more beautiful, with wider shoulders and a narrower face. He hadn’t shaved, so there was scruff along his jaw that made him much more man than the teen I’d first met. As I watched, he dropped his head, shoulders sagging as if a heavy burden had suddenly hit him, and my entire being cried out.
I was just about to call his name when the French doors behind him opened and a woman stepped out. She looked like Monte. All strawberry-blond hair and blue eyes. Thin. Willowy even. From inside the house, I heard Monte call her, “Mommy!” and come running after her. She bent and said something to him that made him smile before he skipped back inside.
The woman crossed over to Gage on feet so light it was as if she was floating.
When she reached him, the look on his face made me inhale sharply—dark fury. I’d never seen Gage angry. He’d always been calm. Easygoing. Even laughing.
“You can almost feel the electricity buzzing through the air, can’t you?” she asked.
“Why are you here?” Gage growled. I instantly wanted to go to him. To reassure him, but I also knew, from years of listening at doors and windows and hallways, that this wasn’t a conversation to interrupt. “How can you do this to Dad and Monte? He’s calling youMommy.”
The word was scathing. As if it was the worst word in the world. She stared at the sky for several seconds before she finally responded. “I want to be here, Gage. It’s the only place where the darkness doesn’t drown me. Where I can stand in the light for a few moments.”
“It’s selfish,” Gage grunted out. “Because when you leave, as we both know you will, you’ll take the light with you, and we’ll be left in the dark. Monte’s going to cry himself to sleep for days. Dad’s going to retreat into his quiet shell. But you won’t give a shit because you’ll be out there flitting around like a queen bee going from flower to flower, sprinkling the light you took from us onto others.”
“Gage—”
“No. I don’t want to hear whatever ridiculous excuse you have about wandering feet and an inability to stay in one place, Demi.” The way he refused to call his mother by anything but her name was telling. As much as I was hurt by my father’s cold indifference, I still called him Dad.
