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fourteen

The rest of the night passed with Tiffany not looking at either of us and practically sitting in Sebastian’s lap, while Ainsley and I mostly stuck to talking to each other instead of them.

I found it hard to look at Sebastian again, not because of what he’d said to me earlier, but because I hated to see the way he looked now—the smile on his face covering up his pain, his hands wrapped around Tiffany’s waist like they belonged there, and the empty look in his eyes.

I felt like I’d opened the door to something I didn’t want to know about, but now I could never go back to seeing everything through the rose-colored glasses I had been before.

It was that reason that made me pause when I went to close my curtains before bed that night and saw Sebastian outside.

He was sitting on the curb with his back to me, but even like that, I recognized him in an instant.

I hesitated, twisting the curtains softly in my hands.

I knew I should close them and turn away, pretending I didn’t see him.

The version of me from two weeks ago, from before I’d let Sebastian kiss me and started to see him not just as my brother’s friend but as a real person, would have done that without hesitation.

I wouldn’t have thought twice about it or wondered if he was okay out there.

I would have assumed he was okay, because Sebastian was always okay. Or so I thought.

I tugged the curtains shut but didn’t climb into bed.

Instead, I crept across the room and opened my door and used the limited light that spilled out from my room to look around.

My parents’ bedroom door was shut and there wasn’t any light shining from under the door, just like it had been for the last two hours.

They always went to bed early, probably from exhausting themselves from arguing all day.

I didn’t see any light from Dean’s room either, but I thought I heard some music playing softly.

If he was awake, he would hear me leave.

He didn’t have a window facing the front, but the bathroom did and it would be nothing for him to walk over the bathroom to look out instead.

And if he saw me with his best friend outside at midnight, I could only imagine the conclusions he would jump to—and I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t kill us first and ask questions later.

But I didn’t want to leave Sebastian out there, either.

Maybe I could just text Sebastian to check in instead.

Except, what would that text look like? Hey, I saw you sitting outside my house and I didn’t want to walk out with you, so I figured I’d text you to see if you’re fine.

It was too impersonal and he probably wouldn’t answer anyway.

If I was going to do that, I might as well just go to bed and forget that I ever saw him. But I didn’t want to forget.

I slipped out of my room and walked over to the bathroom.

When I flipped the switch, yellow light shone.

I glanced out the window to see if Sebastian had noticed the change, but he was still sitting with his back to the house, so it must not have been enough to warrant any interest. I spun back to the mirror and looked at my reflection, deciding if I looked presentable enough to go outside.

By now, I’d scrubbed off everything on my face, leaving only the hint of the paw print and the ten that had been there.

I’d rubbed off the number before I came inside earlier, not wanting anyone to question why I had Sebastian’s number on my face, even though the reason was completely innocent, but I’d left the paw print on to show Mom.

She thought a key part of being the perfect family was all of us showing school spirit.

It was the reason Dean and I were both on sports teams, although Mom thought it should go further than that.

She’d always been extremely disappointed that I wasn’t interested in football or hockey, so I thought showing off that I’d gone to the soccer game would get her off my back for a little while.

I closed the bathroom door without turning off the light, hoping that if Dean did hear me, he would assume I was in there.

I reached the landing of the stairs before I realized that I should probably have some excuse for why I was out there.

I didn’t want Sebastian to think that I was stalking him or that I was so obsessed with him that I followed him outside.

I went back to my room and looked around for an excuse.

Homework? Maybe a little weird for me to be working on this late at night.

A jar that I couldn’t open? Same issue, plus there was no reason I would go to him instead of someone who lived in my house, especially this late.

Then my eyes landed on the black sweater draped across my chair, the one Ainsley had grabbed for me and I hadn’t gotten the chance to give back at the end of the night.

Honestly, I’d mostly been worried that Tiffany would bite my head off if I tried, because it would have brought attention to me wearing his sweater all night.

I grabbed the sweater and started downstairs, taking deep breaths as I went.

With every step I took, I became a little more unsure of what I was doing.

But I wasn’t going out because I was into him.

I was going out because he was my neighbor, and he was my friend’s brother, and heck, he was my friend.

And I wanted to make sure my friends were okay.

It wasn’t weird. It was so far from weird.

At least, that was what I was telling myself as I stepped out into the cool air.

He was sitting on the curb between our two driveways, so it didn’t take me long to reach, although I was surprised that he didn’t react at all to the sound of me closing the door or stepping up behind him.

But he must have heard me, because he didn’t seem surprised at all when I sat down next to him and said, “Hey.”

He grunted in reply, which I took as my sign to keep going. I held out the loosely folded sweater toward him.

“I have your sweater. Sorry I didn’t give it to you earlier, but Tiffany seemed upset about it, so I didn’t want to rub it in even more at the end of the night.

” I cleared my throat. Maybe it would have been better not to mention the Tiffany thing, since he’d reacted strangely when I mentioned her yesterday by the soccer field.

I wasn’t very good at navigating these types of conversations.

It was part of the reason I was so shy—I always felt like I was saying the wrong thing.

As much as my parents liked to think that putting me in public speaking class was going to fix that, I knew the issue was bigger than being forced to do speeches in front of hundreds of people.

“Thanks,” Sebastian mumbled, but he didn’t take it. His hand was already busy holding a cigarette.

“You smoke?” I asked. I’d never seen him with a cigarette before and he hadn’t tasted like them when we’d kissed last week. Maybe it was a super recent habit? I’d heard that a lot of people started smoking when they went through stressful situations, so I guess it wouldn’t be that surprising.

“No,” Sebastian muttered. I might have called it out as a lie, since nobody just sat around holding lit cigarettes if they didn’t smoke, until I realized I hadn’t seen him take a single drag from it. He was just watching the smoke trail into the dark sky. “My dad did.”

Like every time somebody mentioned their dad, I was hit with the strange reminder that he no longer lived here. Sometimes, it felt like he was just hidden away in their house, living a normal life in there but without me being able to see him.

Now that Sebastian mentioned it, I remembered how I used to always see Mr. Novak come out to this very spot every night to smoke after dinner.

Mom used to complain about it, because she thought it made the whole neighborhood smell.

She thought cigarettes were dirty, gross, and not something you should enjoy outside of particular parties, especially not routinely like he did.

“So why do you have it?” I asked. I took it from his hands, holding it between my fingers the way that I always saw people do in movies.

I’d never really had the urge to smoke, and looking at it now, I couldn’t see why I would ever want to.

Even just being in the same vicinity of a lit cigarette was making me feel like I needed to cough.

“Sometimes I just like to sit out here and light it.” He sighed. “I guess ever since he left, I feel like I have to be him. And I know it sounds stupid but…”

I couldn’t look at him because I knew that if I did, all I would think about was the way he had leaned into me earlier.

None of us are okay . I hadn’t seen it until now, the way that they were all fighting to just keep it together every day.

They put on such a brave face at school that it just never even occurred to me what was going on in each of their minds.

“It doesn’t sound stupid.”

“Yeah, well…” He took the cigarette back from me but still didn’t take a drag. He rested his hands on the tops of his knees and stared across the way at the house across the street.

“You know, sometimes I think about just sitting out here all night,” I told him.

I knew that nothing I said would ever compare to what he was going through right now, but I hoped sharing might make him feel better.

Maybe help him see that it was okay for him to talk to me about this.

“Every time I get home from school and know that my parents will be inside, screaming at each other, I wonder if I should just stay away. They never stop fighting. It’s constant.

And yeah, I guess they’re not huge arguments, but they fight over every small thing. ”

“Death by a thousand cuts,” Sebastian murmured.