Page 52 of The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown #1)

PARK HOURS: SUMMER SEASON

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E SRA

“Your brother wants to talk to you.” Dad thrust his phone at me, and I accepted it before I had the chance to process his words.

Sinan’s face lit up the screen .

“Huh? No, Dad. Dad!” I turned in my chair and tried to hand the phone back, but Dad was already walking out the door, waving a hand over his shoulder at me.

I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment, phone still angled away from me.

I didn’t even get a say in which phone calls I accepted.

Apparently, declining every single one of Sanny’s FaceTimes over the last couple of days hadn’t made it clear that I had nothing to say to him.

So now he had to go through our parents.

Cheap trick. I turned back to the dining table, where I’d set out my reading materials and balanced the phone against my half-empty glass of water.

“Hey Ez,” he said, trying to paint his voice with faux friendliness.

“Hey,” I replied because the door to the living room stood ajar, and I was sure Mom would lecture me if I didn’t have at least half a conversation with my brother. Never mind that we could have a whole conversation in sign language. I’d have to actually talk to Sanny to appease our nosy parents.

“So… what’s up?” Sanny ran a hand through his already messy hair.

“Why did you want to talk to me?” I asked, fighting the urge to cross my arms. The right one was still in a sturdy sling.

“Just checking in, you know?”

I rolled my eyes at him. This couldn’t be more awkward. He had never checked in like this before. I wasn’t sure if the in-person overprotectiveness hadn’t worn off yet, or if this would end up being a thinly veiled attempt from our parents to get some answers from me .

I hadn’t exactly been talkative the last few days…

To get them off my back, I blamed my mood on the pain I was in.

In reality, their every comment grated down my spine.

Mom didn’t even have to mention Yale or my future or that place , as she referred to Bravetown, for my jaw to clench up.

Yesterday, she’d been going on and on about the dresses she’d found for me at a small boutique by an up-and-coming designer that none of her friends had discovered yet, and how I’d be ahead of every trend.

I’d stormed to my room and put on a T-shirt that said “great tits” across the chest with an image of two great tits, the birds, underneath.

It had been one of the first items of clothing I’d bought myself.

Now I felt ridiculous for letting my mother clothe me for over twenty years.

“Ask her,” Zuri hissed from off-screen.

Great. Because we needed even more witnesses to this train wreck of a phone call.

Sinan huffed and squared his shoulders. “Are you coming back?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I feel like it’s kinda my fault that you left.”

I bit my lip and glanced over at the living-room door. Was it just me or had the TV been louder a few moments ago? Not that it mattered. Sanny was part of the reason I’d left, but he wasn’t the whole reason. “I was always going to leave.”

“Yeah, no…” He fell quiet and switched to signing. “Idon’t think that’s true. I think you liked it here.”

“Do you think you know my life better than I do?” I signed back.

“No, that’s not what I meant,” he signed and groaned. “I just thought you liked this place and everyone here. I thought you’d want to stick around. That’s all.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.

“I’m looking through the Yale grad school course catalog, so you can answer your own question.” This time, I replied out loud, because I wanted Mom to hear, and I demonstratively held up the brochure I’d been reading.

“Shit, okay.” He sighed and glanced up to something– or someone– on the other side of the phone. Was that Zuri? Or was Noah there, too?

Before I could give in to my stupid heart, which still fluttered at the thought of him, and ask about Noah, I bit my tongue hard enough for it to sting.

“What’s on your list?” Sinan asked after an awkward moment of silence.

“What list?”

“You know, the list to go with the catalog. The courses. I don’t know. I’m just… I don’t want to go back to only speaking to you every other month. Just keep me in the loop. I can tell you about everything that’s been going on here if you want me to. People are worried about you.”

“I don’t want you to,” I muttered and slid the course catalog aside.

I had stacked it on top of a brand-new pink legal pad to carry it to the dining table, but I hadn’t even written down a heading for the list I should have been making.

My gaze circled the table. I hadn’t even brought a pen with me.

“And the shoulder? Are you back in PT? I know you’ve dislocated it before, but—”

“Sanny,” I cut him off, “I’m actually okay not talking to you for two months at a time until you figure out that I don’t need you to take care of me.” I ended the call and let the phone clatter to the table face down. I didn’t even want to know if he called back.

I drummed my fingers against the empty notepad and glanced at the open catalog next to it. I wouldn’t even know what to put on the list. I’d somehow made it halfway through and didn’t remember a single course description.

Well …

I tore the first page off the legal pad, making sure to leave a messy edge behind.

If my parents asked, that page contained the list of courses I was genuinely interested in– and it wouldn’t even be a lie.

They just wouldn’t expect that list to equal zero.

I folded the piece of paper into a small square and pocketed it before I wandered back to my room.

I slipped off the arm sling I’d been wearing for the last five days and flung it in the box with all my braces and bandages, just to crawl into bed and indulge in my new favorite kind of masochism:

I opened Noah’s social media profile.

Seeing his face was enough to reopen the stitches of my barely healing heartbreak.

I was giving myself emotional open-heart-surgery– but I hadn’t actually gone to med school, hadn’t studied under a world-class cardiothoracic surgeon, so I was just poking and prodding my poor heart, hoping it would stop beating faster at the sight of him.

Because how could both be true? How could he be the reason for the pressure on my chest that stole the air from my lungs, and yet I still loved him?

The only relief I got was that he hadn’t posted in over a week.

Since before Sinan’s birthday party when everything had gone to shit.

I’d checked Lucas’s and Heather’s profiles, and they’d both been uploading videos, so it wasn’t like Renee had put a halt to it after my accident.

Noah was the only one who had gone silent online.

I wouldn’t be able to stomach the day I’d open his profile and spot a new video thumbnail.

I wasn’t ready for him to move on.