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Jonah stares ahead, focusing on the long driveway ahead of us. Hestays quiet as he takes us out of Rowville and onto the highway, and when I look over at him, his brow is bunched beneath his ball cap.
I can’t help feeling a certain way, like I’ve upset him somehow. I sink lower into my seat. “Did I offend you?”
He glances at me, then back on the road. “What? How?”
“The money thing?”
“No,” he says, elongating the single word as he reaches over, touches my arm in a soothing way. “Not at all.”
“You’ve gone awfully quiet, which is incredibly rare for you.”
I expect him to laugh, or grin at the least, but he only shakes his head. “Sorry, I was just thinking. My mom—she’s an on-call nurse, and my dad’s in family law. He takes care of people’s dying wishes. They’re both over-the-top caring and empathetic, you know? They’d be pissed if they found out I hadn’t offered you a ride earlier.” Funny. Most parents would be terrified to have me around their sons. I open my mouth to say just that, but Jonah speaks first. “I assumed you asked Jace?”
“Yeah…”
“And he said no?”
“Yep.”
He peers over at me, a sad smile gracing his lips. “Listen, Jace… the guy prefers to be alone, that’s all. Don’t take it personally, okay?”
I sit taller. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you and Jace close?” Jace had mentioned his relationship with Jonah before, but I feel like anything from Jace’s perspective might be a little skewed. “I mean, as close as anyone can be with Jace.”
He ponders a beat before saying, “We used to be, though it wasn’t really by choice. Our moms grew up together and were best friends, along with Lana. The three of them were as close as girls could be without being sisters. Then they all had kids at the same time. Reyna, then Jace, then me. We used to all work at the rink.”
I consume his words the way I used to inhale drugs into my lungs. Rapidly and continuously until the effects built a home in my bloodstream. “I assume Reyna is Lana’s daughter?”
He nods. “She just left for college in Arizona.” Then he chuckles to himself before saying, almost announcing, “And then, out of nowhere, you show up.” He pats my head, teasing. “You’re kind of our new Reyna.”
I don’t know what that means or how to feel about it, especially if it somehow correlates to whatever is happening between Jace and me. I push the thought aside. For now. “So you three were close?”
“When we were little, yes, but then…” he trails off.
“Then what?”
His shoulders lift with his shrug. “Then everything changed.” He points to the stereo. “You mind if I turn this up?”
16
Harlow
I didn’t have a lot of friends back home. Sure, I had a friend group, but really, they were acquaintances. Basically, we partied together. Sharing a bottle of cheap liquor and drunk musings was as close as we got.
I only had one person I would consider anything more than that, and he wasn’t even my friend. He was my brother’s. Levi and Harley had been glued to the hip since they fought over a girl in kindergarten, and so he was a staple in my home and in my life. When my parents told me we were moving, he was the only person I thought to tell.
That night, we met at the high school, right by the plaque just outside the gym that the school installed in my brother’s memory. Together, we did what I usually saved for my acquaintances.
We drank until we could no longer feel.
“So that’s it,” he said.
“That’s it,” I returned.
In that moment, I knew what we were both thinking. Life was a shit show of a joke, and it hadn’t turned out the way either of us expected. He was starting the next phase of his life without his best friend, and Iwas off to the middle of nowhere without the one person who’d connected us.