Page 24 of Reckless Roses
Zach
I assume she’s with you?
Don’t forget what I said.
August’s door opens a moment later, and I quickly turn back around, pretending I hadn’t seen Zach’s message. He hands me a glass of water and two pills. I take them while he pulls back the comforter on his bed and crawls into the right side, the side he always sleeps on. I walk to the left—my side. The side I lie onwhile we’re reading, the side I sneak into when I fight with his brother in the middle of the night and need a safe place to sleep.
He flips off the light, and we both lie on our backs, staring at the ceiling. It feels as if the words hanging between us penetrate the darkness, but we’re both too afraid to voice them.
I’m fighting the urge to reach for his hand and feel his skin.
I think he’s fighting those urges too, and as I hear the click of a lock toward the front of the house, the echo of quiet footsteps, and a door shutting across the hall, reminding me of the third variable in this fucked-up equation, I’ve never been more uncertain.
8
AUGUST
“GUILTY AS SIN?” - TAYLOR SWIFT
AGE SIXTEEN - NOVEMBER
“My brain isn’t working, Augustus,”Elena mutters from behind me where she sits on my bed.
“It must be working a little, or you wouldn’t have been able to say that.”
I can practically hear her rolling her eyes at that, even though I’m not looking at her. I smile to myself, shading in the mountains that stretch across my sketchbook page. I’ve been working on my landscape skills because as more kids from school ask me for tattoos, I’m finding just how many people want that kind of artwork permanently marked on their body.
Not that I’m complaining. I’m making enough money to cover the cost of my license as soon as I graduate high school. I also met an incredibly skilled artist in San Diego this past summer who offered me an apprenticeship once I turn eighteen. It feels good to be the only person my age who knows exactly what I want to do with my life. Well, except maybe Leo. I don’t think he's capable of being anything but a professional surfer, so it’s a damn good thing he’s the best at what he does.
I push back from my desk and spin my chair, taking in the sight of Elena. She’s cross-legged on my bed in a worn-out Vans T-shirt and a pair of shorts, her dark curls falling around her shoulders as she stares down at the notebook in her lap, tapping her pencil against the page.
“Why isn’t your brain working?”
“I forgot words.”
“Well, there’s three right there.”
She lifts her head, and despite the glare on her face, I see the amusement in her eyes. There’s just enough that I’m able to dodge the pencil that comes flying at my head a moment later, laughing as I get out of my chair and flop onto the bed beside her.
“I’m kind of over writing poems,” she says.
“Yeah?”
Elena has been writing poems for years. Sometimes, she writes them about us—her brothers and myself, and I assume Zach too—but she never gives them to us directly. She slips them into my backpack when I’m not looking or leaves them under my pillow. She writes them in Italian, and while I can’t read them, I have no doubt they’re filled with the most beautiful words I’d ever read. I keep every single one in a box inside my nightstand, right alongside all the drawings I’ve made of her beautiful face that I know I’ll never show her.
“I might want to write a book.” She tilts her head at me, biting her lip. “Is that stupid?”
“No,” I say immediately. “That’s amazing. Fantasy? Romance? Thriller?” Elena reads all those genres, and I could see her writing any of them, or all of them at once.
“Romance, but maybe with some elements of suspense? Like an episode ofCriminal Minds, but how fun would it be if the horrible villain was actually just misunderstood, and in the end, they get the happy ending?”
I laugh. “You do have a ton of empathy for the villains in those shows. You’re always so eager to figure out what shaped them into who they are.”
She shrugs, looking almost embarrassed.
“I think that sounds like a lot of fun, Elena. I think if there is anyone out there who could do it, it’s you.”
“I don’t know. It’s stupid.”
