Page 13 of Tell Me When It's Over

A giddy look crosses her face as she turns to me, her contagious smile spreading that I can’t help but return. “I can’t wait to start unpacking. Is that weird?”

“I don’t think so.” I can’t say I feel the same. Usually, I just hire people to do this shit for me, but Leighton refused. Her exact words were, “We are perfectly capable of doing this on our own, Kyler Casey! Don’t you dare throw money at others. It’s lazy.” And shit, how could I argue when she pulled out the middle name?

“We need music.” Fumbling with her new phone, an old hand-me-down Mia gave to her that she didn’t use, she thumbed through her playlist until she wiggled her brows at me.

“If you play what I think you’re going to, I may have to reconsider this arrangement.” We both know that’s bullshit. We signed papers and made everything official days ago. There’s no backing out now, not that I’d ever do that to her. We’re moving forward.

Together.

Instead of the rival band I thought I’d hear come from the small speaker, I’m surprised to hear my own music. Rolling my eyes when she starts mouthing along dramatically to my first solo single, I can’t help but chuckle. She pretends to hold a microphone as she attempts to mimic my dance moves from the video, but she nearly trips in the process, making me catch her arm to stop her from cracking her skull open.

I laugh harder. “You’re going to kill yourself, then this whole thing would be for nothing.”

She puts a hand on her hip, sticking her bottom lip out. “Wow. You think I’ll die trying to dance and all you’d think about is how you’d have the house to yourself?”

I shrug. “I’d miss you…after a while.”

Her eyes narrow, but a playful tug of her lips ruins her attempt at looking offended. She changes the song to something from the recent Billboard Top 100 charts before setting her phone down on the table. “You’re mean and a liar. I don’t think you’d survive another day without me in your life, Kyler Bishop.”

She doesn’t give me time to reply before turning her back and walking over to one of the many boxes piled in the room and undoing the tape. It gets me thinking, though, that she’s right.

I missed Leighton all the years we weren’t together. I survived, and thankfully she did too. But what would have happened if we never got separated? It’s a scenario my mind has wandered to way too many times, and all I want is to be sure we’re not pulled apart again.

And before I know it, my eyes travel back down to the cloth-covered ass bending down to pick up a different box.

I peel my gaze away quickly.

Fuck me.

I knock on the open door and look around the pale-yellow bedroom that’s only a room away from mine. “Pizza’s here.”

Lenny is flattening a black and white comforter across her bed that has some sort of floral design on it. It’s nothing like the “plum purple”, which is not regular purple as I was corrected by her once before, that she used to have when she lived at Harry’s with us. She’s always been into HGTV and home magazines and obsessed with paint samples and interior design. There’s a shade for everything, and she’ll almost always know it.

The room is half-empty. Barely any decorations, and only a few pieces of furniture, take up the space. Nothing matches. The bedframe is made of aged wooden bars bent into random ass shapes, the nightstand is black plastic and looks like it’s missing the handle, and the dresser is brown wood with marker and stickers all over the side. If I hadn’t known Leighton before, I wouldn’t think twice about the naked walls bearing no posters or pictures, or how there’s a lack of books stacked in the corner that would be taller than her if they were piled up.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks sheepishly, sitting on the edge of her bed. At least that’s new. I bought us both queen-sized mattresses much to her dismay.

I walk in and study the one frame resting on the top of her dresser. The glass is cracked, and the photo looks faded, but it’s Katherine and Leighton from when she was younger. Younger than when she first came here based on the braces I don’t remember her having in the big smile she’s showing off.

Leighton walks up beside me. “Wasn’t I just adorable?” she asks sarcastically, picking up the frame and making a face at it.

“Yes,” I answer without a second thought, taking it from her. In it, her hair is in two braided pigtails that fall past her shoulders like they always were before and the dress she’s wearing has a picture of the sun on it and “be happy” printed in block letters. Putting it back, I trace my fingers along the marker-drawn pictures on the side of the dresser. “What’s all this?”

There’s a lapse of silence. “It’s from home. Used to be my mom’s, but then we had to share it. That was hard because she had a lot of clothes that didn’t fit in her closet.”

My face screws. “You had to share a dresser?”

She shrugs, not giving me a direct confirmation, and it bugs me. “Anyway, whenever I’d get mad at her for something I’d draw on it. I’m not sure why because I always cried when she yelled and put me in time out, but…” Her lips rub together as she stares solely at a picture of two stick figures holding hands. “I guess I just wanted her attention in any way she would give it to me.”

I back up, looking around at the boxes left. I’m not going to push her on sharing what happened between her and her mother. The heaviness, the longing in her tone warns me she’ll tell me when she’s ready. “If you need help finishing up, I can give you a hand after we eat. Pizza is getting cold.”

Scoffing, she elbows me in the side as we exit her room. “Like you care. I remember you eating cold leftover pizza from the fridge. Mia and I would always tell you how gross it was.”

Grinning, I let out a soft chuckle. “Our mom eats it the same way. Anytime we’d get pizza for dinner, she’d have a leftover slice for breakfast the next morning. Cold.”

She says, “I remember you telling me that. Do you two still talk a lot? She used to call every other day to check in.”

I haven’t spoken to my mother in a few days because she knows I’ve been busy. When I left California, she praised me. I think she was genuinely proud of me for walking away like she was afraid to do for so long. Since telling her I was moving back when I saw her at Mia’s the first day, things have been…tense.

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