It was raining. Of course it was raining. My whole world was about to freaking explode, and we wouldn’t want the sun shining down on that, now would we? Nope. Just doom and gloom.
I wiped at my eyes and tried to see past the gray mist, but it was no use. Where was he?
By the time I reached the opposite side of the street, the crowd had thinned a bit, and I turned in a full circle, eyes darting everywhere, but again I came up with nothing. How can someone vanish like that? He was nowhere. And maybe he’d never been. Maybe I was crazy. Maybe I was like the crazy lady who sat at the park sometimes, talking to ghosts that only she could see.
Maybe I hadn’t seen him leaning toward another person. Maybe I hadn’t seen his arm around that someone else. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
“Hey, Everly. Hold up.”
Trevor strode toward me, cutting through the crowd, his eyes heavy with concern. I saw it there, and it made me more emotional than I already was. This was all so wrong and not the way I’d thought our night would be. Why had we come here?
“Everly, what’s wrong?”
I shrugged, a small pathetic sort of thing, but I knew that if I tried to talk, I’d start to cry. Emotional crier. That was me. My throat was so plugged that I knew it would be a big ugly cry too, the kind that you don’t want the guy you’re hung up on to see.
Trevor’s arms slid around my shoulders, and the next thing I knew, my nose was pressed up against his shoulder.
His T-shirt was damp from the rain, but his skin was warm and I felt his heat through the fabric. It felt so good to just be there, in his arms, taking in his warmth and strength. I don’t know how long we stood there, the two of us entangled in each other’s arms, but I do know that when I finally pulled away, my face was wet and it wasn’t from his clothes.
“Can we just walk?” I managed to say.
His hand engulfed mine, and we followed the crowd toward the Mississippi where there were supposed to be fireworks. Fireworks that I’d been looking forward to. Fireworks I no longer cared about.
Where was he?
I craned my neck, eyes searching and searching. I suppose I should have asked myself what I was going to do if I actually ran into him, but at the moment, I wasn’t doing the question thing. I was just doing. I was reacting.
“Everly.”
I was reacting badly, because I knew that I was going to cry again. Dammit.
“Hey.” Trevor’s hand was underneath my chin. “What’s going on? Why is the sad girl back? What happened?”
I stared up into eyes that I could lose myself in. Eyes that made me believe I could finally unload some of the burden. Did I do it? Did I trust Trevor with my secret? I exhaled and lowered my gaze, staring at the stubble on his chin. It was easier than the eyes. So much easier.
And eventually my heart slowed enough for me to speak.
“There’s been stuff going on at home.” My eyes squeezed shut on their own, and I saw it again. The back of his head. The way he tilted to the left when he was listening. His familiar shoulders. His favorite blue shirt.
All the pain and anger and disappointment that had filled me for the last year threatened to come crashing down like tidal waves slamming against the rocks. It was big and painful and raw, and I knew that if I let it take over, I would break down completely. Right here in Baton Rouge on the Fourth of July.
Awesome.
So I fought it. I fought it with every scrap of strength that I had, and finally I managed to get some more words out, but none of them made any sense.
“Things with my parents. I heard a phone call. My mom, she took pills, and my dad is lying to all of us.” Trevor squeezed my hand but remained silent. “I thought I saw him here with someone.” My voice faded to almost a whisper. “Someone who isn’t my mom, because my mom’s in another state, visiting my uncle.”
We were just inside the alley, so the noise from the street was muted a bit, but my heart was still pounding so hard that it didn’t matter. Everything was loud and noisy. Everything hurt. My heart hurt.
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” Trevor finally said, sliding his arms around me again. “Everly, there’s, like, thousands of people here. You might have seen someone who looks like your dad.”
Doubt crashed in hard. Maybe Trevor was right. Dad was always going to New Orleans, not Baton Rouge. Maybe I was just seeing things because I wanted to see them. Broadcasting or whatever they called it.
“Can we just keep walking?” I asked.
“Sure.” Trevor’s hand slid back to mine. “Whatever you want.”
We continued down the street and eventually ended up near the banks of the Mississippi. I kept glancing around, my eyes constantly searching, but I didn’t see my father. Was I relieved? Kind of. Disappointed? Not sure. Probably a bit of both.
“Hey, we don’t have to stay for the fireworks,” Trevor said. “It’s your call.”
“What do you want to do?”
He smiled and kissed my cheek. “I want to do whatever is going to make sad girl go away.”
Trevor moved so that he was in front of me. His hand still held mine, and I glanced down, reading the tattoo along his knuckle. Strength. That’s what he’d said the symbols meant. Or was it…
I ran my thumb across his skin. “Which one is this?”
“Courage,” he answered.
Courage.
I traced the symbols on his other hand. Strength.
“I want to get a tattoo,” I blurted.
“What?” He was smiling now. “You’re crazy. You don’t just get a tattoo. I mean, I guess some people do, but ink is personal. Ink means something, you know?”
“So you don’t think I’m cool enough to get a tattoo?” I don’t know if I was annoyed or hurt, but I was something.
“I think that a tattoo on any part of your body would be very, very cool.” His hand grazed my shoulder and then up along my neck. “Like right here,” he murmured following his fingers with his mouth. “But it needs to be right. It needs to be you, and well, until you turn eighteen, you’d need your parents’ permission anyway.”
Oh. Right. Downer.
“Do you want to go back to the cottage?” I asked. The rain had stopped, but still, I was done with this place. Done with Baton Rouge. The only place I wanted to be right now was with Trevor back at the cottage, preferably under the covers.
“Like I said, I’m up for whatever you want to do.” His tone was teasing, but the look in his eyes was anything but. The look in his eyes told me that he was as affected by this connection that we had as I was.
I thought of his tattoos. Strength. Courage.
Maybe it was time for me to stop living a life that was a lie. To have the courage to stop hiding behind the secrets and sins of my parents and worrying about what everyone else thought. Maybe it was time for me to just be me and to let myself experience the things that I wanted to experience without any of the guilt. Without trying to be someone other than me.
I wanted to be with Trevor. I wanted to kiss him and touch him and see him. I wanted to experience all of him.
Could he see that in my eyes? Did he know?
“Let’s go,” I said before he could change his mind, or maybe it was more like before I lost the courage that I’d just gained and changed mine. I tugged on his hand, but instead of following me, he kind of stumbled to the left.
“Shit,” he said roughly. “Hold on.”
He looked up at me, and I knew that something was really, really wrong. “Trevor?”
But he was shaking his head, and oh God, his eyes were wonky. I was scared out of my mind, so I couldn’t imagine what he was feeling.
“Trevor!”
He bent over, hands on his knees, and the fear in my gut shot up so fast and so hard that I thought I was going to be sick. The crowd around us suddenly moved back, like they knew something was about to happen. Like there was a disease among them and they didn’t want to touch it.
He glanced up one more time, and I barely managed to grab him before he pitched forward. He half landed on me and the wet muddy grass, but I had him. I had him. His body was shaking, his hands twisted, and I shouted for someone to call 911. I tried to remember what Mrs. Henney had done in the library.
Nothing. She’d done nothing.
So I did the only thing that I could do. I held him and tried not to cry, pushing his hair out of his face and trying to protect him from the crowd that had gathered. I didn’t want them to see. Didn’t want them to be anywhere near him.
I kept shouting “move back” until my voice was hoarse, and then someone shouted that the EMTs were on their way. Okay. I could do this. I could hold on until they got here. But it seemed that the minutes were hours, and when I felt a hand on my shoulder, I wrenched back, ready to fight or I don’t know, do something, but it was a uniform.
They were asking questions, and some of them I knew, others I didn’t. I told them about Trevor’s brain injury and the seizure he’d had a few weeks earlier. They asked about medication, and I thought of the small bottle I’d seen at the cottage, but again I wasn’t sure. They wanted to know where we were from and where his parents were, what his blood type was, his age, any other pertinent medical history.
He was a boy I liked. A boy I thought that maybe I was falling in love with. I knew that and not much else. Pretty pathetic.
And then they said they were taking him to the hospital.
By this time Trevor was coming out of it, but nothing he said made any sense, and that terrified me. Alone and afraid, I scooped my cell from my purse and hit the first saved number.
When he picked up on the second ring, I could barely speak. My teeth were chattering, and I was shivering so badly that I nearly dropped my cell. “Dad, are you in Baton Rouge?”
There was a long pause, and by this time I was crying again. I was crying so hard that I could barely see, and I scrubbed at my face, tearing hair from my eyes as I tried to keep up with the EMTs.
“Everly, are you okay? Where’s your mother?”
But I wasn’t okay. I was so far from okay that I didn’t think I’d ever find my way back. “No, no, I’m not. I’m in Baton Rouge, and I need you.”
“Calm down.” He didn’t hesitate, and his warmth crept through the phone. “Tell me exactly where you are, sweets. Everything is going to be all right.”
“I’m down near the river, by the Buffalo Bakery. They’re taking Trevor to the hospital, but I can’t ride in the ambulance and I don’t think I can drive and I think he just had another seizure and I don’t…I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m less than a minute away, Everly. Hold on.”
And he was. His warm arms were around me, and he gathered me in close, murmuring things I couldn’t really understand. By this time I was nearly incoherent, so I didn’t take the time to ask the questions. Or wonder about the fact that I spied Kirk Davies, his old college friend, watching us from a few feet away.
I would wonder about them, but those things could come later.