Page 3 of The Way We Fell

“Smells good, Roo,” I say, slapping her hand away as she reaches in to steal a stick of pepper. I’ve arranged the thick sticks of pepper neatly, stacked by colour, and the julienne cuts of red onion are stacking up beside them.

“Thanks, bro,” she says, swatting me back. She pours the chicken and its marinade into a large baking dish and covers it with foil before sliding it into the oven. Her door phone buzzes three times and she skips across the room.

“That’ll be Katy,” she calls to me, checking the tiny screen on the intercom before pushing the door release button.

“Which one is Katy?” I ask, feigning confusion.

“Uh, the one who isn’t Amie or Paloma?” my sister responds sassily. I pick up a stick of pepper and launch it directly at her head. It misses, but it grazes her ear as she ducks to avoid it. I don’t really need to ask. I know who Katy is. She’s the curvy blonde with the coffee eyes and pouty lips. The one whose hand on my arm ignited nerve endings I thought long dead. The one who invited me to lunch.

She’s the one whose calm, reassuring smile has, for reasons unknown, been floating behind my closed eyelids every night.

There’s a loud shriek and I hear my sister making demands, talking a mile a minute before Katy has even entered the flat. It’s mostly unintelligible noise, but I think I make out the wordshighlightsandfuck me dress.

Fuckme.

I plaster on a smile as Katy comes into view—thankfully, not wearing a dress,fuck meor otherwise—although I wouldn’t complain about seeing it. Instead, she’s wearing jeans that mold perfectly to her hips and a long-sleeved tee that hugs her narrow waist and shows off her boobs with a deep V-neck.Fuck meindeed.

“Oh, hey Jay,” she sings as she shrugs out of her leather jacket. She lays it over the back of the sofa. “I didn’t know you were joining us. Wait—areyou joining us?”

She looks over at Ruth, who is busy packing away her laptop.

“There’s plenty of food,” Ruth replies. “And I do kind of owe him for putting him to work all afternoon.”

“And Ihavedone half of your meal prep for you,” I chime in, pointing a spoon in her direction. I’ve finished slicing veggies, and I’ve moved on to mixing a cheese sauce for nachos.

“So, you’re staying, then.” My sister hides her laptop bag behind her closed bedroom door and grins mischievously. I glance at Katy, who is eyeing me with a hopeful smile. Something blooms in my chest.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I say with a cheeky smile, popping a carrot stick into my mouth and crunching loudly.

Between my sister and Katy, the conversation is loud and full of laughter, and I sit back to let them take the lead. When Paloma arrives, followed soon thereafter by Amie, the volume increases tenfold.

I study my sister and her friends. She and Amie are almost the same height; both slender, with barely a handful of curves between them. Paloma is a few inches taller and downright skinny, with a wide smile that shows off perfectly straight teeth, and almost ghost-white skin exploding with vibrant colour.

By contrast, Katy is several inches shorter than my sister—making the height difference between her and Paloma almost comical. She has a classic hourglass figure with a narrow waist and curvy hips that have my fingers itching to settle in their dips and valleys. She beams at me from across the room, her smile smacking me right in the chest with the warmth of a summer morning.

Desperate for a brief reprieve from the shrill laughter, I excuse myself to the kitchen to prepare the nachos, while Ruth holds court from the sofa. What I don’t expect is a small hand on my shoulder, and the smell of fresh citrus filling my senses as I pile tortilla chips on a serving platter.

“Are you okay? You looked… like you were struggling.” Katy takes a moment to find her words.

“Just a little loud,” I answer carefully. Truth is, since coming home, being surrounded by noise is hard. Silence is equally hard. I haven’t found a happy medium yet. Everything is either overstimulating or not stimulating enough. Everything either reminds me too much of what I’ve lost or too much of what I’d rather forget.

“Yeah, they—we”—she pauses to correct herself—“can be a little… boisterous. Unhinged. Mostly Paloma, but we all take our share of the blame. Still, if it’s too much—if we’re too much—I can ask them to tone it down. I’ll ask them.”

Her brown eyes bore into me, and I’m pretty sure she can probably read my whole soul. Hell, if she continues to bite her lip like that, I might just let her. I might just let her get a little too close, and fuck the consequences. Her eyes are earthy and deep, searching my face with concern.

“Don’t,” I plead. “Don’t do that. It’s fine, really.”

Her eyes search my face further. Mine connect with them and in a split second, the dizzying notion that we might have known each other for a hundred lifetimes crashes into me. Something in the universe wants me to know Katy Keller.

“If you’re sure,” she says eventually. But it doesn’t escape my notice that she laughs a little more quietly for the rest of the night.

Chapter two

Katy

Lolo

is it me or is that eugene bond dude actually rly sexy now hes grown a beard

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