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Pulling away from the cemetery, I can feel how much Quinn is still with me, and I let go of some of the weight I’ve been suffocating beneath all night. And the farther I drive, the lighter I feel. Like maybe I really can start again, start over. Like maybe I can blow through the blockages and find that better version of myself and hold onto her for dear life.
I like that. It feels real. It feels possible now, too, driving away from the city that hasn’t felt like home for far too long.
All I have to do is get to Addy in one piece.
Eighteen hours of driving ahead of me with too many things on my mind and a lump in my throat I can’t seem to get rid of, but I’m doing it. Despite my guilt, and despite all of my fears, I’m doing it.
No matter all the wild scenarios my mind conjures up—suddenly jerking the wheel and flying off a cliff, being targeted by some psychopath on the road and getting kidnapped and murdered, being obliterated by a semi-truck, getting swept up in a tornado, potentially making all the wrong life decisions from here on out and regretting them for the rest of my life—I know I will make it there in one piece.
Maybe. Probably.
It sounds bizarre, I know it does, but I’m not joking. I wish I were. My mind can be a terrible place when it wants to be.
But I focus on the fact that once I get there, I get to see Addy, my best friend in this whole goddamn entire universe, and spend all summer with her—and then the next four years, and maybe a lifetime after that. It’s enough to ease some of my internal chaos as I merge onto the next freeway, flipping off the past in my rearview mirror.
______
I’m here.No trauma, no carnage. I made it in one piece. And despite the fact that I’m running on zero sleep for the past thirty-seven hours, I do an exhausted little happy dance in my seat, and then I jump out of my car when I see Addy running down her driveway.
She crashes into me, throwing her arms around me. Her arms form a protective barrier from the world, and I already feel a lifetime away from everything I left behind.
Cicadas are buzzing, humming in the humid summer heat, and I release a relieved breath. I’ve missed this sound, this heat, this house,my best friend.
Ever since her parents uprooted them from California in the ninth grade and replanted them out here, in Oklahoma, I’ve spent a few weeks of the summer with them, every summer. All thanks to the kind hearts of Cal and Stacy, Addy’s parents, for flying me out here, and no thanks at all to my own parents who fought me tooth and nail to be able to come. I think the only reason I won in the end was because they wanted to spend a good part of their summers without me more than they wanted to hate me, which was more than fine by me.
Truth be told, I love Addy’s parents like they’re my own. More than I can remember ever loving my own. And they’ve certainly parented me more from four states away than mine ever have.
But I’m not weighing myself down with those thoughts anymore.
I squeeze the crap out of Addy, and I swear to God, her hugs feel like slipping into the coziest bed after a long and exhausting two days.A long and exhausting five years.
“You’re here! And I get you all summer this time!” she squeals.
I breathe a laugh into her embrace. “And the next four years at NYU?” I elbow her in the ribs, and she keeps an arm around me, leading me up her driveway while squealing all over again.
“I know! I’m just so excited! I can’t freaking wait for college, too. But then we’ll be bogged down by all this schoolwork and responsibility, you know? But right now? This is our summer of freedom!” she says excitedly, and I can’t help but crack a smile.
“How much trouble are we getting into this summer?” I nudge her with my shoulder.
“Not much.” She snorts, and we both fall into a bout of laughter, hers louder and more heartfelt than mine, but she shushes us as she opens her front door. “Mom and Dad are asleep. They really wanted to wait up for you, but it was getting late, and Dad has an early morning.”
“Oh, that’s okay.” I wave her off. I would’ve loved to have seen them, but I get it. Besides, I feel like I’m about to fall over from exhaustion anyway. And I’ll have all summer with them.
Addy leads me upstairs, and we drop my bags into the guest room next to hers, heading straight into her room. We talk and laugh and cry the night away, catching up on the last year of our lives into the early hours of the morning like we don’t talk every day, and make a whole bunch of plans for the future.
When I finally fall asleep, sprawled across the guest bed, I’m out like a light.
Chapter Two
Declan
I wake in pure darkness, completely disoriented. It’s pitch black, but the shower is running, the patter of water making its way down the hallway, and though it’s clearly not morning yet, I feel like I’ve slept for two days straight. I sit up in the dark, my heart pounding. The kind of pounding that pulsates through your entire body and echoes like a sound drum, telling you with every beat that you slept way too long.
What time is it?
I pick up my phone and glance down at the lit-up screen. It’s just after eleven p.m.That can’t be right, I shake my head. Or… it is right, and holy shit, but I did actually sleep an entire day away.
Why didn’t Addy wake me?