Rebecca:
Can you come pick me up?
We haven’t talked since the night outside the shop, and as far as I know Rebecca hasn’t been over to swim in that time either. It had felt like the end, like she was done with me, so when I get her text and the pin she drops for me, I don’t stop to think what might have changed or might be going on. In truth, I don’t care. I grab the keys to my grandmother’s car—mine has been temporarily confiscated after my impromptu and unannounced trip to LA—and am out the door in less than a minute. If my grandparents hear me leaving, that’s another thing I don’t much care about. They can ground me for longer later. In that moment, all that matters is Rebecca and the chance to fix things between us.
I pull up and see her out front with her arms wrapped around herself despite the heavy, humid air promising rain later. I stop to suck in a breath, not just because I’ve been aching with missing her, but because she’s stunning.
Her curls are pulled up and pinned with little clip things that sparkle under the light as she moves to meet me. She’s got on a nice dress too, silk or satin, in a pale yellow color that makes her skin look more golden than any metal she could forge. But that just-soothed ache comes back with a vengeance as I walk toward her.
The shimmer above her eyes can’t hide how red they are or distract from the mascara smudges under them. There’s a big red smear of marinara sauce on her dress and her knuckles are—
“Bec, what did you do to your hands?” I drop to a knee and reach for them, turning her hands to better see the angry scrapes in the dim moonlight.
“What’s that old movie with Brad Pitt?” She snaps her fingers a few times trying to recall it. “Fight Club!”
“You hit somebody?” There’s no keeping the horror from my voice.
“No, but doesn’t that sound better than narrow stone doorways?”
“Narrow stone doorways?” I frown until she pulls her other hand from mine and mimes pushing her chair, her gashed-up knuckles sticking out on the side.
I point at the restaurant. “In there?” I’m standing again and moving toward the entrance, ready to do I-don’t-know-what when I realize something else that turns my aching chest ice cold.
“You’ve been drinking.”
Her grin doesn’t come close to touching her eyes. “See? I told you you weren’t stupid.” Her voice grows thin, hard as she brushes a light finger over her scraped knuckles. “Me, on the other hand. So dumb.” She glances back at the restaurant that looks like it was built back in the forties or something. “I know better than to try to go to a place like this and anybody who loved me should have known that too.”
“Rebecca!”
Her mom is pushing out a heavy-looking door with John right behind her. She catches sight of me and hesitates. I figure she’s about to order Rebecca to go with them, but she only looks at her daughter for a moment before directing her words to me.
“She can’t transfer by herself if she’s unsteady.” There’s another quick glance at Rebecca. “And then when you get her home, she’ll need—”
“Stop!” Rebecca says, staring at her mom like she’s never seen her before. “What are you doing?”
Her mother blinks. “Making sure you get home safely without falling or hurting yourself.”
“That’s what you care about right now? Not that I’ve been drinking for the first time since I broke my back and Dad—” She clamps her jaw shut and sucks in a breath through her nose. “Not why? How do you not care about that?”
Her gaze flicks to me and then John. “We’ll have to talk about that later.”
Rebecca laughs and the sound raises the hair on my neck. “Right, ’cause we talk so much and you never shut me down when I try. No, you’re right, Mom. Great plan. So go on, tell Ethan what to do, or tell John. Or maybe you can go get another waiter, anybody but you.”
She doesn’t wait for a response so she doesn’t see the way her mom clutches for John’s hand to keep herself upright. Rebecca ignores everyone and wheels over to the car door, banging it against her chair a few times before she moves clear enough to open it all the way.
I meet her mom’s gaze as I move to Rebecca’s side, unsure what I’m looking for there, but knowing that it’s not just Rebecca I’m talking to when I say, “Let me help you.”
She shoves me away at first, but even that move lacks coordination. “I’m fine!”
“Are you?”
“No.” Her response is almost snotty so it takes me a second to hear the actual word. “But I don’t want any help right now. I just—” She looks up at me and we’re close enough for me to see that she’s...barely holding it together. “Can we go?” she whispers. “Please?”
I nod and she doesn’t protest when I scoop her into my arms and lift her into the car, but she doesn’t look at me either when we drive away.
I don’t head home and she doesn’t tell me to, she doesn’t tell me anything, not even when I turn off down some residential street and pull over, shifting into Park and then immediately pulling her easily into my arms.
Beside me, Rebecca makes a sound, soft, like she’s trying to hold it in but can’t. “I told her tonight. That I see it, this whole new life she’s making without me. She said it’s not true but it is.” She starts nodding. “It is.”
“Then she’s a fool,” I say into her hair. “Anybody would have to be not to want you.”
Rebecca pulls back just enough to search my face with her tearstained one.
And then she kisses me.
It’s soft, unsure, like for once I might be the one to push her away.
My arms slide up her back and pull her close, swallowing the little gasping sound she makes before her hands rise up to twine into my hair.
She tugs just enough to send my head spinning. A feeling no artificial high could ever give sparks in my chest, pulses through my limbs as I drink her in, almost crushing her to my body, deepening the kiss until I can feel her heartbeat hammering against my own. Until I can taste the wine on her tongue and the salty tears slipping from her lips to mine, until—
I pull away, panting, wanting to hold her to me again with a need that’s almost painful, that is painful when I see her glassy eyes spilling over.
“What?” She searches my face, her hands still in my hair, but loose now.
I shake my head at her. “Bec...”
She goes stiff, her arms jerking away from me. I can almost see the thoughts assaulting her as those same arms that held me moments ago, encircle her now like a vice. “You’re leaving again.”
“What? No. I told you before that I would stay, but you were drinking tonight.” I let her see in my eyes what that means to me, and she knows better than anyone what that means to me. “After everything and now you’re kissing me...? I’m not okay with that and I know you aren’t either.”
She flinches back with every word, so I reach for her hand to flatten against my chest so she can feel the way my heart is still pounding because of her, because of that one moment when everything I ever wanted was mine.
But her eyes don’t soften, they narrow.