Page 79 of Just Friends

“I don’t think I wanted you to either,” she says after a moment, and my mind spins. The kind of swirling you feel when you get off a Tilt-A-Whirl, where everything is upside down and shaken up.

“I didn’t want to read to you that night in your bed.” My voice is sandpaper, scratchy and rough, grating against this fine line of friendship I’m so desperate to buff away.

She watches me carefully, throat bobbing in a swallow. “What did you want to do?”

A million things flash through my mind, but I feel too vulnerable to say that, most of all, I wanted to hold her. That I was so wrecked when I saw her blood on that rock that I needed to feel her skin against mine just to reassure myself she was still there. To make sure she was whole and safe and with me when she so very nearly wasn’t.

I end up saying, “A gentleman never tells.”

Hazel’s bottom lip catches between her teeth, and her eyes are heavy on me. “Time,” she says, and it comes out scratchy. “Can I have some time? To think about everything.”

“Yeah, Haze,” I say. “Take all the time you need. I’ve been waiting a long time. It won’t kill me to wait a little longer.”

Her eyes dart across my face, never landing on any one spot for too long. “How long have you been waiting?”

A knot forms in my throat, but I’m too embarrassed to tell her. To let her know just how long I’ve pined for her. So I just let a small smile slide across my lips and sidestep the question. “A while.”

“You love me,” she says softly, and it comes out like a question.

I lean forward until my lips are at her ear and whisper, “I love you, Hazel Lane.”

A shiver races up her spine, and her breath comes out in a heavy exhale against my neck. I want to dip my face into her shoulder, drag my lips up the column of her neck until I cantastethat shiver, until it’s as much a part of me as it is of her. I bet she’d be sweet like ice cream on a hot summer day and warm like sitting beside a crackling fire. She’d be better than any wish I could make on the flap of a butterfly’s wings.

“Alex,” Hazel says into the curve of my neck, and I have to flex my hands at my sides to keep from threading them in her hair, to keep from breaking her request for more time.

“Yes?”

“Everyone is awake and watching us through the window right now,” she whispers, and my head falls onto her shoulder, muffling the groan deep in my throat. Her laugh rings out, echoing off the trees. It sounds like music, the kind you can only get in nature, and feels like peace.

Whenit’stimetoleave the lake house and drive to Fontana Ridge, I don’t want to. The day was just as perfect as the one before it. The rain that felt like a promise never broke through the clouds, and the sun made its appearance just as we finished eating a huge salad topped with fresh peaches and pecans from the farmer’s stand down the road.

Alex let me put sunscreen on his back, and we kept sharing secret glances every time Wes yawned or Lo mentioned that she was tired. We tracked sand through the house and got the jitters from drinking too many of Wes’ homemade iced coffees on the dock. Our skin pruned and our hair frizzed, and by the end of the day, we smelled like sunscreen and bug spray and sweat and lake water, but we were happy.

It was the kind of perfect day you never want to end, the kind that makes everything else in your life melt away like popsicles in sunshine.

But now, as I’m pulling out of the driveway while the rest of my friends load their belongings into the trunks of their cars and Alex waves in the reflection of my rearview mirror, everything comes rushing back. That crippling fear has the kind of grip on me that makes my stomach hurt and nausea roil in my gut.

I can still hear Alex’s whisper perfectly, feel it against my skin.I love you, Hazel Lane.

With each passing mile into the mountains, it echoes in my mind. For the first half of the drive, I have to talk myself out of picking up my phone and calling Alex to tell him I love him too. For the second half, I have to convince myself that Alex isn’t Sebastian, or Oliver the hardware store owner, or Noah the insurance salesman, or any of the other guys who have come and gone from my life without realizing they left damage.

The sun has just set when I pass the Fontana Ridge welcome sign, lit only in the faint blue hue of twilight. Alex’s ghost is all over this town now, and I can’t tell if that makes me infinitely happy because he’s here with me in my favorite place, or desperately sad because he’snothere, and my hometown will never feel the same without him.

I pass the turnoff for my parents’ house, driving farther up the hills and deeper into the woods before steering my car down a dirt road you’d probably miss if you weren’t looking for it. Dust kicks up behind my tires as I drive through the twist of trees, the smell of moss and earth blowing in through my open windows.

Up ahead, nestled in a copse of trees, is a silver Airstream, reflecting the deep violet and inky blue of quickly falling night. Wren’s old yellow Volkswagen Beetle is parked behind Stevie’s beat-up pickup, and I come to a stop right behind them, dust settling behind me. Just seeing their cars here, the same ones they’ve had forever, makes something settle in my chest and the tight knot of anxiety ease.

When I climb out of the car, seventies rock music filters out of the vintage record player Stevie found at a garage sale when we were in high school. This whole piece of land feels like nostalgia. It was formerly owned by a kind elderly man with waist-length white hair who never minded when high schoolers would sneak up here to smoke joints on his property on weekend nights. Stevie bought it from him a few years after graduation, when she’d saved enough money working for my dad. Then she found the most decrepit motor home on Craigslist and somehow made it feel homey before she finally upgraded to the Airstream two summers ago.

Stevie and Wren are laughing at the weathered, rain-bent picnic table, café lights illuminating the whole space in a warm, golden glow. At the sound of my footsteps, their heads swivel in my direction.

“What’s wrong?” Stevie asks immediately, her dark eyes filling with concern.

I throw my legs over the bench seat, sliding down next to Wren. The table is covered in an assortment of colorful dishes. “Who said anything is wrong?”

Wren props her chin on her hand. “You texted the group chat saying you needed to have dinner with us tonight,” she points out.

“I just wanted to see you,” I say, unsure of why I’m deflecting. Maybe I’m scared that if I tell them about Alex, if I try to explain my reasoning out loud, they’ll tell me I’m being irrational. Maybe I’m worried that Iambeing irrational. But even if the fear is irrational, it’s real, and it’s suffocating me.

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