Page 96 of The Choices I've Made
“I know you were there, but still…it shouldn’t affect me like this anymore. It was a long time ago. Must be the house.”
She helped me up—or at least she tried. I weighed about a hundred pounds more than her. There was no way she could lift me, but I appreciated the thought.
“It was a long time ago, but it doesn’t mean it can’t still hurt.”
I gave a curt nod as I let the air settle in my lungs. There was a war still going on in my head as I tried to fight out the memories I’d just relived.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought of everything that had happened here a thousand times since that day.
I had.
It was just that being back here, in this place, made them a thousand times worse. I felt the pain like it was only yesterday rather than twelve years ago.
But, like I’d said, it was a long time ago, and I needed to move on.
My eyes settled on Molly. “Weren’t we cooking?” I asked.
She seemed a little rattled by my abrupt change in attitude but rolled with it, turning back toward the stove. “We were,” she replied. “Let’s make spaghetti.”
“Sounds great.”
“Dear God, this is amazing. I forgot how good your cooking is,” I said, shoving another heaping forkful of spaghetti in my mouth.
“It’d be better with a side of homemade garlic bread.”
I looked up at her, mid bite, watching her carefully gather up the perfect bite, twisting the pasta over a spoon.
“You can’t just talk about garlic bread like that in front of me. That’s just plain wrong. Evil temptress,” I growled, giving her a wicked grin.
A fork clattered to the plate as her eyes dodged mine. “Sorry!” she nearly squealed, seeing the pasta sauce flying everywhere. My words had obviously gotten to her, a fact that had me nearly puffing my chest in pride.
Looking down I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of the two of us covered in the red sauce we’d just spent the last hour painstakingly making.
“It’s not a problem, really,” I said, grabbing a napkin to wipe us both down.
Her body froze as I attended to her shirt. It took me a minute to realize why.
“You’ve been stroking that same spot on my chest for about sixty seconds,” she said
I looked up at her to see a mixture of amusement and shock painted across her beautiful face.
“Attention to detail,” I said. “I’ve got to make sure it doesn’t stain. That’s what friends do, right?” I backed away, giving her a lazy grin.
She rolled her eyes, throwing her napkin at my head. I caught it midair and used it to clean up my own shirt. Unfortunately, the sauce was persistent and wasn’t budging.
“We might have to soak these,” I said. “Pretty sure, based on the unchanged status of the downstairs, that I probably have some shirts stashed away in my room. That is, unless they were eaten by moths.”
Her gaze turned serious. “Are you okay to go up there?” she asked.
I could read between the lines of what she was asking. My parents’ room was right next to mine. She knew it would be difficult. Probably the hardest room of the whole house.
“Better now than never,” I said.
She cocked her head to the side, giving me a hard stare that I instantly recognized. It was her don’t-mess-with-me-Jake face, and I got it whenever I was being less than honest with her…or using humor to mask my pain, which was often in my case.
“Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my hands in defeat. “No, I’m not going to be okay. But that’s what I have you for, right? Friendship and all that shit?”
“You really hate that word, don’t you?” she asked as I followed her up the stairs.
