Page 52 of The Two of Us

“You said he jumped in to save me. Is he alright?” I’m becoming frantic now.

My dad’s jaw goes slack. “Brandon didn’t save shit. That boy clammed up the moment you hit the water. Ambrose is the one who pulled you out of there.”

“Ambrose?” I whisper.

“What Brandon did was very irresponsible. We’re just glad Ambrose was there and you’re okay, Mara.” Alima’s voice is soft, but her jaw tightens around Brandon’s name.

My eyes scour my room. “Where is he?”

Cat and her mom look to each other, exchanging looks I can’t decipher and my heart thrashes in my chest.

“Where is Ambrose?” I demand more firmly.

It’s my dad who answers. “He’s stuck in bed, just like you. He’s alright—just has a nasty ear infection.”

I ignore the tightness in my body as I climb out of bed to pull a pair of sweatpants over my sleep shorts. Alima holds her hands up as if to say, slow down there.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. You’re not going anywhere, little lady.”

I yank a hoodie over my head.

“Mara Jimenez Makinen, you get back in that bed this instant,” my dad orders. He never uses my full name and if I didn’t hurt so badly, I’d laugh. It sounds foreign on his tongue.

Cat sighs. “I don’t know why you two even bother. You know she’s not going to listen.”

The truth behind her words must resonate with them because no one stops me as I leave the house and head toward 164 Winsome Lane. I take the stairs two at a time, biting the inside of my cheek from the pain and don’t stop to knock before letting myself into Ambrose’s room.

I close the door swiftly behind me, huffing from the exertion.

“Why do you look like you’re running from the cops?”

Ambrose is sitting up in his bed, a book perched on his knee. His contacts are out and his black glasses frame his green eyes. They look like honeydew today. He’s shirtless and I allow myself a self-indulgent glance. I did almost just die for crying out loud.

“I always thought you were dumb, but I didn’t realize you had a death wish,” I say, lowering myself to the empty spot at the bottom of his bed. My near-death experience has made me feel rather bold. Ambrose eyes me with curiosity.

“It’s not like I could let my little sister’s best friend die. What kind of brother would that make me?”

“You could have let Brandon save me. I’m his girlfriend.”

Ambrose’s laugh is hollow. “If I’d left it to him, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

The weight of that truth slams into me. He clears his throat and says, “Or maybe he would have saved you. I don’t know. I didn’t really give him a chance—I jumped in right after you fell through.”

He’s trying to ease the embarrassment I feel at my own boyfriend leaving me for dead and it’s a kind mercy I wouldn’t have expected from him.

I chew at my nail—my worst habit. “You’re like the young George Bailey.”

Ambrose scrunches his eyebrows.

“George Bailey. From It’s A Wonderful Life. When he was a kid, his little brother falls through the ice while they were sledding. George jumps in after him, saves him, and gets an ear infection. You’re George. I’m little Harry Bailey, the damsel in distress,” I ramble. “I guess technically, he couldn’t be a damsel in distress since he’s a boy. The very fact that there isn’t a male equivalent to damsel in distress is so sexist and—”

“Why does he do it?” Ambrose asks almost to himself.

“What?”

“Why does George risk his life to save him?”

I shrug, tracing the stitching on his quilt with my thumb. And when I look up, I hold on to his gaze like he held on to me under that ice.

“Because he loves him.”

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