Page 132 of Run Away With Me

‘A really good one,’ she said with a sweet smile. She reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear. ‘I’m doing better.’

‘I’m really glad,’ I murmured.

I thought Brooke might kiss me then, but Lena was still pretending to read her book, so she didn’t.

‘I bought you something,’ I said, and reached behind the couch to grab the brown paper bag.

I let myself study her expression for a second before handing it over.

Lena didn’t let me go out by myself that much, and, besides, her neighborhood wasn’t that well connected by bus routes. She didn’t mind taking me places, though, as long as she didn’t have a piano student coming over.

Going back to Goodwill and thrift stores felt comforting in a way I’d probably have to explain to my own therapist at some point. I’d figured out the magic formula to how things were arranged in thrift stores, and even though I only got a tiny allowance, being a foster kid and all, I liked being able to pick whatever I wanted and know I could probably afford it.

I had foundGracelandwhen we’d driven into Seattle for the day. It was hidden in a stack of eclectic cassettes and had cost me three dollars and fifty cents, and even though I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to see Brooke again, I’d bought it anyway.

‘Oh my God, Jessie.’ She laughed when she pulled it out of the bag. Then her eyes started watering.

‘Don’t cry,’ I said immediately.

‘I’m not crying.’ She pushed the tears away from her eyes before they smudged her mascara. ‘You’re the sweetest person I’ve ever met, I swear.’

After so long thinking Brooke would never evenlookin my direction, her reaction made me want to cry too. Girls like me never got the girl they had a crush on, except I did, and I really didn’t know how to feel except so grateful, and so in love with her.

I let Brooke pull me into an awkward hug – we couldn’t get close enough on the love seat with elbows and knees between us. She reached for my hand as I pulled away and linked our fingers together loosely.

‘I haven’t got the Mustang back yet,’ she said.

I frowned. ‘Where is it?’

‘Still in Atlanta.’

‘Why?’ I said hotly. ‘They can’t just keep it.’

Brooke laughed. ‘I agree. We’ve been trying to get it shipped back, but there’s some bureaucracy holding it up. Tony keeps calling them, so hopefully it won’t be long.’

‘You’ll have to find a Walkman or something. To listen to the tape.’

‘I’m sure Tony has one somewhere. That sounds like the kind of thing he’d hang on to.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

I thought there was something poetic about Brooke searching for a land where she’d find grace. That had mademe even more determined to get the cassette tape for her – I’d wanted to be the one who helped her find it. A few years ago, I’d underlined a passage on grace in one of the books I’d been given at church: it was the divine strength to endure trial and resist temptation.

We’d done a lot of enduring and not a lot of resisting while we’d been together, and despite everything we’d been through, I was sure I’d come closer to finding grace with Brooke than I ever had before.

Promises for the future were hard when everyone was scrutinizing us from every angle, waiting for us to rebel and detonate like fireworks. They treated us gently, carefully, like we were explosive. I knew I’d see Brooke again, though. After everything that had happened, they couldn’t keep us apart.

She kissed me goodbye on Lena’s front porch, wrapped in the thick scent of magnolia blossoms carried to us on humid air. I watched her climb into a taxi to go back to her uncle’s house, the paper bag with the cassette clutched safe in her hand, and Lena found me there much later, still leaning against the railing with the front door wide open.

I stayed on the porch to watch the sun set, the pinks and oranges bleeding into the night sky, until the stars blinked out and I was ready to go back inside.