Page 25 of Reckless Roses
“It’s not.” I lightly place my hand on her thigh, enough to comfort but not enough to show her just how badly I really want to touch her. I’m always riding that line. “You should write what you’re compelled to write. It means you have something to say, which means there might be someone out there who needs to hear it, even if you haven’t found them yet.” I shrug, turning over on my back to stare at the ceiling. “Or, worst-case scenario, it sucks, and the only people who’ll ever read it are you and me.”
Her pretty face interrupts my view a moment later, hair falling like a curtain as she drops her head to look at me. “Why do you assume I’d let you read it?”
I roll my eyes. “Of course you’d let me read it. You need my opinion.”
“You wouldn’t be honest. You’d tell me it’s great even if it wasn’t.”
“No,” I argue. “I’m always gonna be your number one fan, but if you wrote a book that truly sucked, I’d never let you publish it. I wouldn’t let you embarrass yourself like that, even if it hurt your feelings.”
She snorts, and I’m still staring at the ceiling as her weight leaves my bed. “All right, let’s go then.”
I sit up and she’s standing in front of my doorway, a perfect hip kicked out against it as she crosses her arms. “Go where?”
“Well, I need some inspiration. I’m never going to start writing a novel if I’m just sitting here in your room. We need torun around in the dark, be weird and creepy. I need to get into the mind of a villain.”
“You’re not asking me to like…kill someone, are you? I mean, I’d definitely help you bury a body, but I’d hope it’d at least be manslaughter.”
“Augustus,” she mutters, caramel eyes rolling. “No, I just need to get out of the house. Let’s go.”
I laugh, getting up and following her. Both of our parents are out in Carlsbad tonight, watching Zach and Everett play football. Elena and I don’t normally attend the away games.
Leo didn’t go tonight either, but he’s at home by himself. All he tends to do nowadays is sulk and surf. Despite only knowing her for a couple of months, and knowing it was just for the summer, Darby did a number on him when she went back to Kansas in August without saying goodbye. He fell way too hard for her, way too fast, even going so far as to make me tattoo her name on his chest.
She got a tattoo for him, too, and the worst part is, she wouldn’t let him look at it.
She left, and he never saw the dainty scroll I inked across her hip with his nickname. I feel weird telling him about it now. I’ve decided it’s not my place, so we don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about Darby at all. Elena hates her for leaving Leo, but I think she was hurt by it herself, too. Darby was the first real girl friend she’d ever had, and she didn’t say goodbye. She just disappeared.
We tried having an intervention for Leo last month because he wouldn’t stop writing Darby letters and leaving them on her grandmother’s doorstep, despite the fact that Darby hadn’t returned a single one. He’s still wearing the necklace she gave him—a simple chain with a gold ring attached to it—around his neck. We urged him to move on, even tried setting him up ondates. He wouldn’t have any of it, told us not to bring her up again, and isolated himself until we finally stopped.
Their mom, Monica, said that as long as he was eating, surfing, attending school, and not doing drugs, we needed to give him space to mend his broken heart on his own. She promised he’d be okay eventually, but she looked sad when she said it, like she wasn’t sure if she believed herself.
So we give him the space he needs for now, but I miss him being around more often.
I don’t have to ask Elena where we’re going; within ten minutes of stepping out my door, we’re crawling through the shrubs we’ve spent two years clearing a pathway between, and emerging onto our secret cliffside.
It’s a new moon tonight, so it’s darker than usual, but the stars are brighter than ever.
“The stars lookinsanetonight,” Elena gasps, voicing my thoughts.
She runs ahead of me before plopping down in the center of the field and lying on her back. I take my time walking toward her, admiring how beautiful she looks when she’s invested in something. She goes through small phases of hyper-fixations, whether it’s crystals, tarot reading, a certain book series, or her most recent one, astrology.
Once she shows that kind of interest in something, though, it never really goes away. She has an incredible talent for remembering everything. She could’ve read a random fact about Scorpios on the internet two years ago, and she’ll still use it to judge someone now.
Luckily for me, she says my Taurus moon and her Pisces moon make us compatible, though her Aries rising and my Aquarius rising could make us butt heads.
I silently lie down beside her.
“Can you find Leo for me?” she asks, pointing at the sky.
I have a better knack for finding the constellations than she does. She says the stars morph together in the sky and she can’t make out their shapes unless I point to them for her.
I tilt my head up, tracing the stars until I find the nine dots that make up the symbol of the lion. I raise my hand, pointing to the north. “There.”
I turn to her, watching her eyes squint as she attempts to follow my arm. “I can’t see shit.”
Laughing, I reach into my pocket and pull out the fine-point pen I was shading with at home. I can’t remember why I tossed it in my pocket when we left—what I thought I’d need it for—but I’m glad I have it now.
I roll up, moving into a cross-legged position at Elena’s side. “Give me your arm.”
