“Um… sure. What?”
“Can you please, pretty please, come to the concert with me? I don’t want to be alone with those two.” He nods his head at the front door.
“You won’t be alone, though,” I say. “Isn’t Tristan going?”
“He is,” he says with a teasing grin. “But it’d be weird with the two of us.”
I roll my eyes, pretending to be annoyed, but the lightness in his voice is working its way into my heart. “I think you stole that line from me, but it really makes no sense when you say it.”
His grins broadens and again, I wonder just how much of it—of him—is real. “I know, but it worked for you, so I figured it could work for me.”
“Quinton, I really don’t—” I start, but he places his other hand over my lips, silencing me.
“Please, Nova… I don’t want to be alone.” His skin is meltingly warm, and there’s pleading in his tone that stifles the conflict inside me. I’m terrified to death of going and disrupting my order so much, but the way he says he doesn’t want to be alone, with such anguish, temporarily kills the anxiety inside me.
“Okay, I’ll go,” I say, mentally counting the times Landon and I went to concerts—eight—tracking the past, while I move toward the future. I’m actually doing this? Oh my God. What’s going to happen? Am I going to lose control? Going to fall apart?
He smiles, drawing both his hands away, and taking a step back, putting a little space between us. “Now do you want to tell me why you have a handprint on your cheek?”
Sealing my lips together, I shake my head, knowing I can’t say I fell because he noticed it was a handprint. “No,” I say, rubbing my finger along the smudge of charcoal on his cheek, something I used to do with Landon all the time.
“Okay.” He flexes his fingers at his sides as I pull my hand away. “Would you at least let me put some ice on it?”
I nod, and he offers me his hand. I take it, knowing I’m choosing to put myself out on a tightrope, and all I can do is cross my fingers that I’ll make it across and that there’s something to make it across to.
Chapter 11
Quinton
I’m a terrible fucking person. I’ve known it for a year and three months now. The once-good guy who wanted to be an artist and start a family died in the accident and was never revived. Now there’s just loser, stoner, drifter Quinton.
I used to be the kind of guy who loved to help everyone, even when it meant helping Lexi mourn over her dead dog. I was the kind of guy in high school who was friends with pretty much everyone. I volunteered to tutor the kids who had a harder time in school, and every year I’d help out at the homeless shelter during Christmas and Thanksgiving, just like my mom did, although I never did get to see her in action. I just heard stories, on the rare occasions my dad would talk about her, and saw a few pictures. I guess I stupidly believed that being good like her would bring me closer to her, but the only time I really got closer to her was when I was lying on the ground after the accident with my chest bleeding out as my heart willingly stopped beating. I’d made peace with dying, and now I made peace with the dark road I’m stumbling down.
But there are always a few rare instances when the good and the bad coexist, and sometimes I can’t figure out if I’m making a good decision or a bad one. Like when I asked Nova to be my friend. I haven’t had any real friends for a very long time and for a lot of good reasons. But even though I’m fucked up, for some goddamn reason I still think I can help her not look so sad. And after the moment passes, and I realize that I can barely keep myself together let alone help someone else deal with their own problems, it’s too late and I’m already in a sporting goods store shopping with her. Dylan and Delilah went out back with one of the cashiers to make a deal and left me and Nova to get everything on the list. We’re wandering around, looking for tents and coolers and “hot dog pokey stick thingys,” as Nova put it.
“Hot dog pokey stick thingys?” I question with a cock of my eyebrow as I steer the cart around the corner while reading what’s on the list.
“Yeah, you know.” She makes this weird stabbing movement with her hand like she’s trying to reenact the shower scene in Psycho. “Those metal pole things that you use to roast hot dogs over fires.”
I restrain a smile. She’s being too fucking cute for her own good. “I think they’re just called hot dog forks.”
“Really.” Her expression twists with disappointment as she clutches her phone in her hand. She’s been holding on to the thing since we left the house, like she’s worried if she puts it away she’ll lose it or something. “That totally lacks creativity.”
I toss a sleeping bag into the cart. “Yeah, I like your name for them better.”
“Me too,” she says, detouring down one of the aisles. She pauses to lean over my shoulder and read the list. Her hair tickles my cheek, and the contact nearly drives my body mad. “Jeez, outdoor concerts must be a big deal or something… there’s so much stuff we have to get.”
“You’ve never been to one?” I stop the cart when she halts in front of the flashlight section, examining it with her hands on her hips.
She shakes her head, leaning away from me. “Nope, you guys get to pop that cherry.” Her face instantly turns red as soon as she says it.
Millions of comments run around my head, but I decide to let her off the hook. “Well, the list says we’ll need sleeping bags, tents, lanterns, foam padding, and a lunch box.”
Still looking embarrassed, she picks up a yellow flashlight from the shelf. “What about flashlights instead of lanterns? They’re cheaper.”
I shrug and stuff the list into my back pocket. “All this shit is for Dylan. I already have most of it.”
She makes a disgusted face and drops the flashlight back on the shelf. “Then we better get everything on the list,” she says with a frown.
“Not a fan of him, huh?” I ask, pushing the cart forward again.
She pulls an apologetic face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to come out so rude. He just makes me uneasy.”
“Me, too.”
“Really?”
I nod. “Yeah, really.”
This seems to make her happy, and her steps lighten as she walks into the next aisle. She has a funny way to her walk, like she’s trying to make all her steps even, and I’m not sure if she’s doing it on purpose, but she keeps stepping over the cracks in the tile. I thought I smelled a hint of weed beneath her perfume when we were back at her house, and I wonder if she’d been smoking it or something. Maybe she’s high, and that’s why she’s acting a little off. I’m not sure, though. Since she doesn’t look very stoned. And I don’t get why she’d be smoking it. It didn’t seem like she was an expert when she smoked it at my house.
“Nova, are you okay?” I ask, as she continues to walk up the aisle, staring up at the signs above our heads. There’s a really old school song playing from the store speakers, and her lips are moving to the lyrics.
She peers over her shoulder at me, her skin looking soft under the light, her eyes a dark blue, and her lips shiny with gloss. “Yeah, why?”
I glance down at her feet. “Because it looks like you’re walking funny.”
She stops walking and stares at her flip flops. There’s this gnarly scar on the top of her foot. “Yeah, my feet hurt a little bit.”
I inch the cart up to her. “Hop in then, and I’ll give you a ride.”
“Seriously?” she says looking alarmed.
“A… yeah.” I’m really confused.
She eyes the cart and then me before she climbs in, situating herself around the boxes and sleeping bag. She looks uncomfortable with her knees pulled up and her chin resting on them as she grips her phone in her hand. “Don’t crash it, please,” she says.
Her words stab me like a piece of jagged metal, and my heart pulses beneath my scar, reminding me how I got here and who I am and how in no way do I deserve to be here, in this world, this life. With her.
Nova
When he tells me to get in the cart, I seriously about have a heart attack. Because I’m walking around, counting each step, making sure to step over the cracks in the floor while I clutch my phone for dear life.
When I’d went into my room to pack, I’d realized just how bad my routine was going to be disrupted. Not only would I be surrounded my madness and disorder, but my morning routine would be ruined. Sure I could count the seconds it takes for the sun to rise over the hill line, but I couldn’t stare at Landon’s file for the usual five minutes, and the idea of not being able to nearly made me flip out. I tried to take my computer, but Delilah gave me this huge lecture about computers not belonging at concerts. In a panic, I’d sent the file to my phone, and now I can’t seem to let my phone go, afraid that I’ll lose the file or something.
And I’ve never been to this store before, and I don’t know where anything is. Plus, there’s these giant animal heads mounted on the wall in chaotic, uneven rows, and it’s making me anxious.
Then he gives me an out to the controlled footsteps and I want it, yet I don’t at the same time. I end up climbing in the cart, clutching my phone and asking him not to crash it please. For some reason, that makes him tense. Then he pushes the cart forward, without saying anything, and I can tell he’s upset and I don’t want him to be.
My dad used to say then when someone’s upset and you don’t know why, say something random because it’ll make them smile. I never did this with Landon, because I was too afraid he’d think I was crazy, and I’m not particularly fond of randomness. I don’t know if Quinton will smile, but it’s worth it if it means getting him to smile again.
“Do you know that bears are bowlegged,” I say and try not to laugh when he gapes at me. I point up to one of the bears on the wall. “You can’t tell because only half of the body is up there, but it’s totally true.”
He stares at me blankly and then with his forehead creased, he starts laughing. “Please tell me why you chose to share that little fact with me.”
I shrug. “I have no idea, but it got you to smile.”
Shaking his head, he tries to gain control over his smile, but finally he gives up and grinning, he pushes the cart forward. We start talking about music as we load up the cart around me with all the stuff on Dylan’s list. When we reach the tent area, Quinton insists that we need to try out the ones on display in order to know which one is the best to buy.
So I stand up, finally put my phone into my pocket so that I can swing my leg over the cart. He takes my hand and helps me to the floor safely. Then, still holding hands, we crawl into one of the smaller domed tents and lie down on our backs.
“What do you think?” he asks, our hands intertwined between us. “Is it first-time-cherry-popping worthy?”