Page 6 of Free Fall

I swallow before snatching my bag up from the other side of him. “In case you haven’t noticed, that’s already happened.”

I barrel right through Cade and Lex who are coming up behind Reid like usual. Both of them are wearing matching surprised faces as I knock their upper arms with my own. It’s only pure determination that gets me through them because they’re huge football players, and I’m just me. It’s hate that’s driving me now.

I head straight for the main doors and out onto the sidewalk that leads to the parking lot. I refuse to look to my right where the football bleachers rise up in the distance, but I cross the lot, heat rising from the asphalt, to get to the other side. I take a seat just under one of the huge lamplights and fish my cell phone out of my bag. I go into the last conversation I had with Ezra and stare at the last words he sent me.You look beautiful, baby.

Tears start to run down my face. Sometimes I just feel so heavy I need to release things. Emotions, baggage, decisions, whatever it is. It just needs to come out. I send Ezra a heart and clutch my cell phone close.

Sure, some would call him my online boyfriend, but he’s much more than that. He’s the person I tell everything to. He doesn’t care that I didn’t wash my hair this morning and didn’t bother with dry shampoo or makeup. He actually likes my dark hair, and he didn’t balk when I sent him the selfie where you could see the collar of my baggy sweatshirt.

Everyone else had shit to say about it, but he didn’t. He thinks I’m beautiful.

And right now, when I feel like the lowest shit on Earth, can’t I just have one person who thinks I’m beautiful?

3

I’m lying on my bed staring up at the ceiling when lights flash through my window. I blink, thinking the intrusion was just something my eyes did to try to trick me, or because it’s late and I’ve been staring at the ceiling for hours like it can give me the answers to all my problems.

The lights flash again. Two in quick succession. My stomach lurches. I pull myself up on my forearms and peek out the window directly to my left. There it is. The familiar silver Honda Civic that I haven’t seen since I tried getting the hell away from Spring Hill.

I peel the covers off me and plant my feet on the floor, still staring out the window. He’s parked just far enough away from the house so that the lights only shine in my window, and so he can’t be seen from the other parts of the house, even though it doesn’t matter, my parents are already sleeping. Gone are the days where they would stay up after we had gone to bed. They’re too tired now. Too lost.

I stand and lean toward the window, taking the screen out like I used to. I set it carefully aside, not wanting to clue my parents in on what I’m about to do. If I thought the tongue lashing I got earlier was bad when they realized I hadn’t gone to see Ms. Lyons and skipped out on school for the rest of the day after I slapped my brother’s best friend in front of the whole school, they certainly wouldn’t care for the way I want to cap off the whole day.

Once the screen is off, I sit on the window ledge and jump, allowing myself to fall the few feet to the ground. The grass is crisp, a little wet from the dew as I walk across the yard toward the side of the road. There aren’t any houses directly nearby, no one to notice what I’m doing outside, crossing the lawn at midnight.

I tug on the car door and it opens easily before sliding into the passenger seat. The car light illuminates the entire interior of the car, so for a few moments, I just get in and stare ahead until the light goes off.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

We’re silent for a few beats longer. I don’t always know why this happens. We only do this for one thing. Well, it didn’t always start out this way, but it quickly turned into it.

“I didn’t think you’d ever show back up.”

“Me either,” he says. I feel him move to face me. He sighs. “You’re not wearing pants.”

“I figured why bother? Aren’t you just going to take them off?” He’s silent. He never likes me to talk about it so in his face like this. “I have underwear on.”

“What are we going to do with you, Briar?”

My stomach twists, and I finally look up into Lex’s deep brown eyes. He was so quiet at school today. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever talk to me again. I take him in, his large shoulders, his expansive chest. He’s too big for this car. Twisted in his seat like he is now, he’s taking up the entire space between the seat and the steering wheel. It’s good that he’s this big. It means he does his job on the football field well. No one gets past Lex to sack Reid. It’s been like that for forever. In football and in real life.

I’m not going to answer his other question, so instead, I ask one of my own. “Did you miss me?”

His eyes darken. “Not in the way you think.”

A stab of guilt hits me. I know exactly in the way he thinks. We’ve lost ourselves in each other too many times to count. It’s exactly what he wants. Maybe he thinks I’ve developed some sort of crush on him, but I haven’t. I love the way it is between us now. A means to forget for however long it takes to make the memories subside. “Well, I missed you.” I reach my hand out to traverse the distance between us. I slide my palm over his knee and start to move the fabric of his athletic shorts back when his hand lands on top of mine.

“I don’t think you missed me. If you did, you would’ve come back sooner. Hell, you wouldn’t have left.”

“Is that why you haven’t come until now? You’re trying to punish me?”

Lex lets my hand go. “You do enough of that to yourself.”

I blink at him, take a deep breath, and ask, “Do you like my hair?”

He shakes his head. Not about my hair, but about everything in general, like he can’t find words to express enough how much he dislikes everything now.

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