Page 49 of Over You
“Alright. There you go.” He leaned back against the wall, his attention directed at his phone.
Disappointment was evident in the deep frowns on the girl’s faces. Smiling, I handed their camera back. There was nothing worse than meeting someone you admired and thinking they were an arrogant ass. I knew. It had happened to me plenty of times. I almost told them he wasn’t usually like that, but they had already fallen back in line.
Spencer must have felt me looking at him because he glanced up. “What?”
“Nothing.”
The phone went into his pocket, and he tossed up his hands with narrowed eyes. “What?”
My back bristled from his tone. “Don’t get pissy with me.”
“Don’t stare at me like I’ve killed a puppy.”
The couple in front of us glanced over their shoulders. I closed the space between Spencer and me. “Stop acting like a dick.”
“All I can think about is how my muscles ache and that I’ve got chills shooting up and down my spine.” He inched toward me. “You want me sober, here it fucking is, babe.”
I stared at my reflection in his sunglasses. My jaw tightened. Withdrawals were a double-edged sword. The mood swings were the worst, but they were a symptom of him coming clean, so I’d have to take them. For the next few days, maybe weeks, he’d be on a pendulum, and I’d be right there with him.
He wiped a hand over his mouth before his chin dropped to his chest. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. I shouldn’t have called you a dick.”
His foot tapped the pavement. “It’s not easy.”
“I know.” But I didn’t. I’d never been in his shoes.
A breeze blew across the field, catching my hair. Strands stuck to my lips, and Spencer brushed them away.
“I don’t want to be like that with you.”
“I’d rather you be that way than high.”
A deep furrow formed between his brows.
“You weren’t you when you were high, Spencer.” I caressed his cheek. “I want the real you. The good. The bad. The ugly.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
A bus sputtered to the stop, spitting a black cloud of exhaust into the air. The doors unfolded with a creak of the hinges. Spencer and I followed the line of tourists up the steps and to the very back of the bus.
“Welcome to Stonehenge,” The announcer’s muffled voice was barely audible through the crackle of the old speakers. “Where you’ll walk in the footsteps of your Neolithic ancestors.”
The engine rumbled. The gears shifted, and the bus took off, bumping along the road.
“Stonehenge would have taken a huge effort by many people. . .” The driver’s educational information faded into the background.
Spencer’s forehead was to the glass, his gaze aimed at nothing. The hardest part about loving someone: No matter how close I was to Spencer; I never knew what went on inside his head. After all, in the end, we’re all incredibly alone with our minds.
Tourists chattered, then plastered themselves to the windows when the dark silhouette of the stones against the horizon came into view. Cameras flashed. The bus came to a grinding stop. Brakes hissed before the door popped open.
Passengers pushed and shoved to be the first out. And Spencer’s head was still against the glass.
I stood. “You want to get out or stay here?”
He rose to his feet and moved past me, along the aisle and down the steps. Gravel crunched beneath our feet as we followed the herd toward the pathway. Instead of focusing on the silence, I turned my attention to the thick clouds and their sagging, gray bottoms, wondering if it might rain.
“You never came here?” Spencer took my hand in his.
