Page 24 of A Little Bit Reckless
I froze too, staring in the direction of the balcony. It was Bow out there.
She was dancing.
Her small feet glided along the thin banister of the balcony. It was one of those wooden ones connected to the house, and she was out there in her jacket and bare feet, her heels kicked off to the floor of the balcony.
I couldn’t breathe, noticing a drink in her hand. Bowdidn’tdrink, and she was dancing on that banister with her eyes closed. There also wasn’t any music, like she was moving to her own internal beat.
Wells was already moving. He did so slowly, carefully, and I did the same after closing the door from the prying eyes I knew were behind us.
What is she doing?
Wells and I moved as one toward her, and that wasn’t the first time we operated together. I didn’t want to think about that,our historyright now because, currently, our best friend’s little sister was out on a balcony. She was out theredancingbarely even a day after I rejected her.
I swallowed. “Bow?”
I made it to her first, Wells in the back of my mind. I couldn’t focus on him right now, and that went double when Bow whipped around so fast that she nearly stumbled.
I rushed toward her. I did so to catch her, but I barely made two steps before her hand shot up.
“No,” she said, her mouth turned down, sad. She shook her head. “No, Bru.”
No.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know whatto doand could only watch when Bow took the beer she had to her lips. She was too young to drink, and, though that had never stopped any of my friends in the past, Bow Reed was a rule follower. She was a good girl who never got into rowdy shit.
Her cheeks shot up in color, the red reaching to her hairline. She had her hair up in one of her tight buns but some of her curls had escaped. They swept across her eyes but also across her flushed lips. Her throat moved. “I don’t want you here.”
She didn’t… want me.
My chest did something I didn’t expect. It caved, hollowed out, and I’d felt something similar before. It was the way I felt after I expressed my feelings to someone else. That someone else was somewhere in the room but Bow had obviously not seen him yet. Her focus was on me, but only briefly before she stole another swig of her beer.
I couldn’t look for Wells. I was too focused on Bow. I could imagine he was doing the same thing as me right now. I couldn’t move in that moment, scared to. My mouth parted. “Bow?—”
“And nobody wants me,” she said, a crowd forming on the street below her, though she didn’t appear to notice. I could see them in the distance behind her. They were calling out, and some had their cellphones out.
Bow wiped under her eyes. There was a shine to them, tears. She sniffed. “No one likes me, and I guess I don’t blame them. I suck.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and though it did sting, her telling me not to come closer, I would if it kept her safe. I put my hands up. “I’ll stay put. I just need you to come down.”
“No, Bruno,” she said, wincing. Her voice actually screeched and that reminded me of what Wells called her. I always thought that was so cruel. Her voice was high, but it wasn’t squeaky. “You shouldn’t want to be around me either. I don’t deserve it.”
Deserve it?
Her lips quivered. “No one likes me, and I don’t blame them. It still hurts, though.” She rubbed her chest like there was pain there, an ache. “No one wanted to be around me tonight when I came to this party. No one likes me.”
She kept saying that, but that wasn’t true. She had my sister, Sloane, and the rest of our friend group. Shehad me, but, before I could emphasize that, Wells stepped forward.
He lifted a hand. “Bow.”
Right away, she pivoted in Wells’s direction, and she went so fast, too fast. She even backed up on that thin ledge and absolute terror twisted Wells’s expression.
I never saw Wells scared. The guys in our friend group were pumped to shit with so much testosterone and rarely shed emotion. They didn’t give it freely, but, in that moment, Wells didn’t hold back how he felt seeing Bow get closer to that ledge. I saw it all over his face.
The expression had to match mine, the horror, the fear. Bow obviously hadn’t known Wells came with me. More of that sadness touched her pretty face upon seeing Wells there. The sadness nearly turned to anguish. She winced. “Archer?”
Archer?
I watched Wells’s expression change yet again. Something flashed across his face, but then he went stoic. His features went incredibly hard, and I had seen that before. He used that shit with me all the time. He liked to pretend he didn’t feel anything. But he did. I’d seen it. I’d felt it.
