Page 2 of Feathers From the Sky

“Calm down. Your sister’s okay. Just trust me. Wait until we get there.” The glare I give him doesn’t begin to make up for the terror he’d just made me feel. “No one is dead,” he says softly, and I exhale in relief.

I stick my arm out the window, trailing my hand through the cool air as I gain speed on the highway. My fingertips smart, the weather just too cool because of last night’s rainstorm. Hale’s not telling me what’s wrong because he’s waiting for the bomb squad, and I resent him for it.

It’s not fair Hale thinks I need a handler, and it’s not fair for Sasha to be the handler. Sasha’s mother, Angela, was the only mom I’d ever known, and it’s my fault she’s dead. Mothering me is the last thing I should let her do, especially since the two I’ve already had have died.

Minding me is an offense punishable by death.

We spend the rest of the drive in silence, Hale’s leg jiggling as he finds anything to do but look at me. When we get out of the car, I feel like I’m being watched. But when I look around, I see no one. Hale walks ahead of me, and I decide to check my phone, pulling it out of my pocket as it vibrates. My battery is still in the red, and I see why when my notifications show over a hundred texts and countless messages on social media. For a half-second, I think it might be birthday wishes, but I didn’t get that many messages on my actual birthday the day before.

Listening to my friend for once, I shove the phone back into my pocket as the smell of cooking food washes over me. I’m simultaneously starving and sickened. When I see a little girl with a wide grin and hair styled in French braids pop her head over the back of the booth, I am distracted from my body’s complaints.

“Penguin!” Charlotte yells, the nickname making me smile as usual, and she tries to wiggle free from Sasha’s grasp. When I slide into the booth beside her, she launches at me, accidentally smacking me in the nose. For only being four years old, she packs a punch, and I laugh once I catch my breath.

“I missed you,” she asserts, all big brown eyes and serious pout.

“I missed you too, little one. Are you excited to spend the weekend with Sasha?”

She grins as she wraps her arms around my neck. My sister watches the little girl every weekend, sacrificing her own so her friend can work her night shift. As far as I’m concerned, my sister is a saint.

“How’s school?” I ask, and the little girl begins to babble about her friends, and I’m only able to make out half of what she says.

Hale sits in the booth across from us, furiously texting, and a frown screws up his brows. My stomach twists sour, and I squeeze the girl in my lap, getting a good whiff of her sweet smelling hair product. I settle Charlotte farther down my knees with a kid’s menu and crayons, and just as I’m about to ask Hale what is going on, my older sister elbows me in the side.

“Maya texted me,” she says. “I wish I could say I was shocked.” She arches a perfect brow before pushing her curls off her shoulder. They are a vivid red right now, one of her favorite colors to wear during the fall.

“Shocked about what?” I ask, dancing around what she means. I’m not eager to be scolded, and I know I’m being immature when I say, “All the orgasms I gave her?”

“Christ, Gwyn. Little ears.” She frowns at me before reaching forward and grabbing one of Charlotte’s crayons, beginning to doodle on her menu with her. I hate feeling like I’ve disappointed my sister, but I’m annoyed she’s starting shit with me. “You know what I’m shocked about,” she says, voice low.

“No, I don’t. Because right now it feels a little like you’re…” I pause, glance down at Charlotte, then mouth the rest of the sentence, “slut-shaming me.”

“You know that’s not what I’m doing,” Sasha says, rolling up her sleeves and revealing her tawny skin. She prepares for a verbal fight like a physical one. She is pure calculation, and it bothers me she doesn’t seem to feel as deeply as I do—about anything. It is especially irritating she doesn’t seem to be as affected by the anniversary as I am. “I don’t care what—orwho—you do; I care what you say. You said one thing and did another. I care how you heal. Coping with sex and alcohol doesn’t give me much faith in you.”

“Good thing I didn’t ask to be worshiped.”

My phone vibrates loudly, and Hale tosses his on the table between us, spinning it toward me.

“Hate to interrupt what I’m sure will be a very productive conversation, but this is why your phone—ya know what, give it here. I’ll handle it,” he says, hand held out, long fingers beckoning.

I ignore him, distracted by the picture on his screen. Sasha’s hand is on my thigh in an instant. She murmurs something to Hale about his impatience, and he grunts in return. A man is proposing to a woman on the screen, and my nausea strikes as the air in my lungs disappears. I close my eyes and see her face screwed up in ecstasy, panting as a bead of sweat rolls down her forehead. I see her naked body writhing onmybed. She is pliant and in love, perfectly light and blissful, not bogged down by responsibility and sorrow.

Like me.

The thought is a betrayal, a picked scab of a wound barely healed. I close my eyes and try not to envision what I walked in on all those months ago.

The woman beams at the man as he kneels before her, a perfectly manicured hand outstretched toward him. Her hair is longer than the last time I’d seen it, still distractingly blonde, and she has tears in her eyes.

“Alexa and Josh got engaged,” I say simply. Hale stares at me, and Sasha squeezes my thigh.

“Fuck Alexa,” Sasha says, and Charlotte whips her head to look over at her babysitter, an adorable shocked expression on her face.

“Fuck Alexa,” Hale agrees. “And Josh. Fuck Josh especially.”

Finally, I let my eyes move from my former best friend to my ex-boyfriend. He looks apprehensive, as if he thinks she might say no. As if a woman who throws away a friendship to fuck her best friend’s boyfriend would deny him. As if they weren’t fucking made for each other.

“Serves them right,” I say. “Wait. Was this—did he propose to her on my birthday?”

“Yep,” Hale supplies, and my stomach hollows out. It is anything but accidental, and the malice behind their actions does what they intended. I am cast back to those pitiful moments in which I begged him to stay. Clinging desperately to keep to him when life was taking the things I feared losing most.

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