Page 1 of The Truth About Love

PART I

Chapter One

Auden

The first time I see her, she’s standing on the sidewalk beside the gas station. Her head is tilted towards the sky as clouds burst and raindrops splash heavy and warm into her open mouth. Her eyes are closed, her chest heaving. It’s like she’s trying to breathe in the downpour. She’s beautiful.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Even in the pale light from the station’s canopy fascia, her skin takes on a golden glow. For anyone else it would make them look yellow, but not this girl. Nope. For her, the pale flickering light does what Midas’s touch did to the world. Even her hair looks to be woven from long strands of gold.

I noticed her the second I pulled into the gas station.

Maybe it’s because I could sense the sadness in her straight away. It practically bleeds from her. It’s in the way she stands, I think, with her hands wrapped around her middle like she’s trying to replicate the sensation of being held. Already, only seconds after laying eyes on her for the first time, I ache to do it for her.

Or maybe it’s the expression on her face that betrays the darkness inside her head. A kind of pained serenity. Like she’s in agony, but resigned to her suffering. I’ve seen the same expression on my Mama’s face more times than I can count.

I know of the kind of monsters that haunt people. I’ve watched them eat away at my mother from the inside out for years, so I can tell that the girl has monsters too.

What I can’t tell is why a girl who can’t be any older than me is standing alone at a gas station in the early hours of the morning. Florida isn’t always a safe place to be for a woman on her own. Especially at this time of night. I’m only here myself because I unwittingly landed the role of designated driver to and from a party that ended a little over twenty minutes ago.

A snore from beside me reminds me that my best friend Freddy is passed out cold in the passenger seat. The boy never has known how to hold his liquor and I’d be worried about him blowing chunks all over my dash, if he hadn’t already done worse in my beat up old Chevy. But it’s late and my bed is calling me home, so I refuel and pay at the kiosk where I convince the checkout clerk to sell me a packet of cigarettes for Mama.

All the while, I think about the girl with golden hair drinking in the summer rain just outside and by the time I’ve finished up inside the gas station, I’ve made up my mind to offer her a lift home. Maybe even learn her name.

But when I make my way back to my truck, whoever she was has gone.

***

Three days later, I see her again.

It’s the first day of senior year and, as I stand beside Freddy loading books into my locker, the girl I’ve been thinking about for the past seventy-two hours stomps down the corridor.

I haven’t been able to get the image of her standing in the storm out of my head all weekend. She’s as beautiful as I remember, even wearing boots too chunky for her tiny frame and an expression that warns the world not to fuck with her. Her face has been forever burned into my memory and yet, I still don’t know her name or even the colour of her eyes.

“Who is that?” I hiss to Freddy, who up until this point has been tapping away relentlessly on his phone. One glance at the screen confirms that he’s arguing with his latest girlfriend. Again.

Finally, he looks up and scours the hallway until he finds the object of my fascination. “New girl.”

“And?” I wait. The dude has more information than that. I know, because if there is one thing to know about Freddy Nelson it’s that he knows everything there is to know about everyone.

He sighs, huffing like I’m an inconvenience. “She’s a transfer from some private school in Cape Coral. Rumour has it her parents are loaded. Likeloadedloaded. Surgeons or CEO’s or some shit. Whatever, they’re hot shit apparently. You’d have known this if you’d bothered turning up to assembly this morning.”

My eyes roll.

I had some shit to deal with earlier that set me back an hour. I wasn’t expecting to wake up on a Monday morning to my mother passed out cold in the kitchen with vomit in her hair and a half-drunk bottle of merlot trapped in the vice-like grip of her cold hand. She normally remains lucid long enough to make it up the stairs and collapse in her bedroom. I couldn’t leave for school until I’d helped her wash the vomit out of her hair and tuck her into bed. On her side, obviously. Don’t want her choking on her own vomit while my history teacher drones on about the Philadelphia convention.

So, Fred can forgive me for being a little late to school.

I ignore his pissy attitude and turn my attention back to the girl. Her hair is tied into a loose ponytail that swings back and forth with every step she takes. She stops at the locker directly opposite mine and curses when her combination doesn’t work on the first try.

It’s not an uncommon problem. The locks on these shitty things are so old it’s a wonder they still work at all. Junior year, I started bringing a butter knife with me to school for the sole purpose of wedging open the door when the lock sticks. Of course, I couldn’t get away with it when the school introduced metal detectors and bag searches, so I learned just to heave the thing open and hope it doesn’t break.

I’m about to approach her when the bell for class rings and Fred shoves me by the shoulder down the corridor in the opposite direction.

***

Summer-Raine Taylor.

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