Page 12 of Tell Me Softly

Chapter Seven

Kami

I knew Thiago was right, at least in part, but I couldn’t help wanting to change his mind. Why? Because I cared about him…I cared about both of them, and I wanted so bad to have that unique friendship back that we had shared.

“Come on, Kami,” Taylor said, waving me over toward his car.

I didn’t comment on anything his brother had said.

Especially about Taylor supposedly hating me.

It had to be true, right? How could he not?

I got in the car, and as soon as I breathed in, I knew the brothers must share it.

There was a sweet masculine scent in it mixed with the aroma of tobacco.

It was strange, the two of them smoking.

For Thiago, it made sense; he looked natural with a cigarette, like a bad boy from the movies. But Taylor…

I had my hands in my lap, and with my finger, I traced the outline of my scar, which took me back to the time when we’d called ourselves the Three Musketeers and were up for any kind of adventure imaginable.

I remember Thiago first came up with the idea. “We’ve got to do it!” he said, and he was so convinced that nothing Taylor or I could say would change his mind. “I saw it in a movie; it’s a way of showing who your real best friends are. And you’re our best friend, right, Kam?”

I had nodded, terrified.

“Then that’s that,” he said, picking up the wire he’d bent into a triangle at one end and sticking it into the fire we’d built beside the lake.

“It’s going to hurt, though,” I said.

“Relax, Kam,” Taylor said. “If you don’t want to do it, it’s fine.”

“Shut up, Taylor! If she doesn’t do it, it means she’s not our best friend.”

“I am!” I shouted, indignant.

“Then show it,” Thiago said, pulling the makeshift brand out of the fire and asking for my hand. “If you do this, I promise nothing will ever come between us.”

And for some reason, I’d believed him.

Eight years later, that mark my thumb was caressing was just a thin outline on my tanned skin. A friendship tattoo , we’d called it. We’d all have it on our skin for the rest of our lives.

“Don’t worry about Thiago. He’ll come around; he just needs time. Being back home after so long hasn’t been easy for anyone.”

“You don’t have to make excuses for him, Tay.

” I observed him from the passenger seat as he drove.

Like Thiago, he had presence, a spark, and no one could resist his charm.

His big hands deftly turned the steering wheel; his hair was a little longer than his brother’s and better cared for, and the brown bangs across his forehead brought out the blue of his eyes.

He was handsome, and I was happy to have him talking to me again.

“Hey, stop staring at me!” he said, smiling.

I shrugged.

“I can’t. You’re handsome,” I said.

“You’re the good-looking one,” he replied automatically. “When you were little and all bony, I never thought you’d have those kinds of curves…”

I punched him on the shoulder.

“If you’re talking about my boobs, it’s just an expensive bra,” I said. My bust had always been a sore spot for me.

“You might think that. But I can promise you other people don’t. And you might as well drop the false modesty; it doesn’t suit you.”

“Whatever you say.” I looked out the windshield at the landscape in front of us, smiling, calm, just as he was.

When we turned into our development, I asked him not to drop me off right in front of my house.

“What, you don’t want to be seen with me?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

Did that bother him, or did he understand? Unsure, I continued, “More like I don’t feel like answering my mother’s stupid questions. Plus, I’d like to talk to you for a bit. There’s so much I don’t know. How was life in DC?”

Stopping on a corner and cutting the motor, Taylor said, “DC…Life there is crazy. I missed Carsville, the calm here.”

“But it’s so boring!”

“Hey! How dare you insult my memories of my beloved hometown? What would we have done when we were kids without its strawberry pies and bingo games and bonfires at the fair…”

“Don’t forget International Food Day,” I added with a smile.

“That must be new!” he exclaimed, laughing. “International Food Day in a town where 99 percent of the inhabitants were born in the state?!”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I guess they wanted to be more cosmopolitan.”

Taylor shook his head. “People here are crazy, and it seems like half of them are still living in the twentieth century, but still, it’s nice to be home.”

I nodded. Suddenly there were so many things I wanted to tell him.

“You should head inside,” he said, cutting me off. But his attitude was friendly, nothing like his brother’s.

“You’re right,” I said, wishing I could stay with him longer, wishing I could ask him questions until the sun came up. “Thanks for bringing me home.”

Taylor smiled and waited for me to make it inside. I wondered why he didn’t just pull into his driveway. Instead, as I turned back from my porch, he put the car in gear and turned around. Was he going back to the party?

I walked silently upstairs. Everyone was asleep, and before I went to my room, I peeked in on my brother, who was curled up under his blue comforter with its animal-print pattern.

His nightlight, a little plastic dragon, was lit, and he was sleeping peacefully.

My own room was next to his, down the hall from my parents’, thank God.

When I walked in, I closed the door and leaned against it.

I took a deep breath and started giggling.

I’d made peace with Taylor. My old friend didn’t hate me anymore—at least not so much that he wouldn’t talk to me.

And yet something else stood out more to me, something that probably shouldn’t have: Thiago.

Each second spent with him. Every word he said.

Maybe he was mean to me, maybe we were at each other’s throats, but then, I was used to that, in a way.

We’d always been like that. Apart from a few moments that I held in my heart like treasure.

There was the time not long after he kissed me at Mr. Robin’s place, when we hadn’t seen each other for two days because we’d gotten sick from eating too much candy.

My parents finally let me out to play. Taylor still had a stomachache, so Thiago was the only one to come out.

I still remember how nervous I was to be alone with him after the kiss.

“Come here, I want to show you something,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me after him.

I didn’t even hesitate. We walked past our houses on the lawn and into the woods behind them where we liked to climb the trees or play hide-and-go-seek.

As Thiago walked on, the forest turned dense.

I was worried we’d get lost, but then he stopped in front of a giant tree covered in branches so thick, they wouldn’t bend if you sat on them.

Thiago showed me a part of the trunk where he had carved my name, his own, and his brother’s in sloppy letters.

“I found it a month ago,” he said. “Now look up.”

When I did, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a wooden platform, nothing fancy, but it would do. We’d been talking about making one of these for so long.

“A tree house!” I shouted, jumping up and down.

Thiago’s smile was glowing.

“It’s still not finished, but I was thinking we could all work on it together. It’ll be fun, and once it’s done, you can keep all your toys and stuff out here.”

Your toys , he said. That didn’t escape me. Thiago liked to say he was too old to play with toys, but I knew he still enjoyed it. He looked even happier about the tree house than I was.

“You want to climb up there?” he asked. He looked nervous.

I think this was the first time we’d ever talked without some kind of argument.

Maybe that’s what Thiago needed to control his temper––a little kiss now and again.

So I decided to give him another one, this time on the cheek.

Surprised, proud, he said, “Come on, princess,” without a trace of sarcasm.

“Allow me to show you around your castle.”

Once we were up there, I saw the wood wasn’t in the best shape. There were gaps, and some of the boards were crooked. But I didn’t care; for me it was the finest fortress in the world.

We played a while, climbed the larger branches, and eventually stopped and rested, our feet dangling in the air as we watched the squirrels jump across the treetops.

“You know something, Kam?” he said after we ate an apple he’d brought along. “We fight a lot, and I like to pick on you, but you’re actually the coolest girl I know.”

“I thought you said I was a stuck-up little crybaby,” I said, kicking my feet back and forth.

“I mean…you’re a little bit of a crybaby.

” I scowled at him. “But you’re not fussy like most girls, and you’re not scared to do stuff,” he added.

“None of the chicks in my class would have been brave enough to come up here. And you surprised me when we broke into Mr. Robin’s house; you kept such a cool head.

I honestly thought you’d burst out crying. ”

“Does this mean you’ll stop messing with me, then?” I asked.

“I will if you do one thing for me.” There it was again, that sly grin.

“If it’s another kiss you’re thinking about, Thiago Di Bianco, you can forget it.”

He grunted, leaned back, and looked up.

“So I did all this for nothing.”

I smiled, but he couldn’t see.

***

The next morning, I got dressed in shorts and a T-shirt and went downstairs for breakfast. Dad was busy on the phone with someone, and my brother was chasing flakes of cereal around the bowl with his spoon.

Mom was nowhere to be seen, and I can’t say I minded.

I wasn’t in the mood to get grilled about where I’d been, who I was with, whether I made a good impression, what time I got home…

I sometimes felt like she was reliving her teenage years through me.