“Um… sure. What?”
“Can you please, pretty please, come to the concert with me? I don’t want to be alone with those two.” He nods his head at the front door.
“You won’t be alone, though,” I say. “Isn’t Tristan going?”
“He is,” he says with a teasing grin. “But it’d be weird with the two of us.”
I roll my eyes, pretending to be annoyed, but the lightness in his voice is working its way into my heart. “I think you stole that line from me, but it really makes no sense when you say it.”
His grins broadens and again, I wonder just how much of it—of him—is real. “I know, but it worked for you, so I figured it could work for me.”
“Quinton, I really don’t—” I start, but he places his other hand over my lips, silencing me.
“Please, Nova… I don’t want to be alone.” His skin is meltingly warm, and there’s pleading in his tone that stifles the conflict inside me. I’m terrified to death of going and disrupting my order so much, but the way he says he doesn’t want to be alone, with such anguish, temporarily kills the anxiety inside me.
“Okay, I’ll go,” I say, mentally counting the times Landon and I went to concerts—eight—tracking the past, while I move toward the future. I’m actually doing this? Oh my God. What’s going to happen? Am I going to lose control? Going to fall apart?
He smiles, drawing both his hands away, and taking a step back, putting a little space between us. “Now do you want to tell me why you have a handprint on your cheek?”
Sealing my lips together, I shake my head, knowing I can’t say I fell because he noticed it was a handprint. “No,” I say, rubbing my finger along the smudge of charcoal on his cheek, something I used to do with Landon all the time.
“Okay.” He flexes his fingers at his sides as I pull my hand away. “Would you at least let me put some ice on it?”
I nod, and he offers me his hand. I take it, knowing I’m choosing to put myself out on a tightrope, and all I can do is cross my fingers that I’ll make it across and that there’s something to make it across to.
Chapter 11
Quinton
I’m a terrible fucking person. I’ve known it for a year and three months now. The once-good guy who wanted to be an artist and start a family died in the accident and was never revived. Now there’s just loser, stoner, drifter Quinton.
I used to be the kind of guy who loved to help everyone, even when it meant helping Lexi mourn over her dead dog. I was the kind of guy in high school who was friends with pretty much everyone. I volunteered to tutor the kids who had a harder time in school, and every year I’d help out at the homeless shelter during Christmas and Thanksgiving, just like my mom did, although I never did get to see her in action. I just heard stories, on the rare occasions my dad would talk about her, and saw a few pictures. I guess I stupidly believed that being good like her would bring me closer to her, but the only time I really got closer to her was when I was lying on the ground after the accident with my chest bleeding out as my heart willingly stopped beating. I’d made peace with dying, and now I made peace with the dark road I’m stumbling down.
But there are always a few rare instances when the good and the bad coexist, and sometimes I can’t figure out if I’m making a good decision or a bad one. Like when I asked Nova to be my friend. I haven’t had any real friends for a very long time and for a lot of good reasons. But even though I’m fucked up, for some goddamn reason I still think I can help her not look so sad. And after the moment passes, and I realize that I can barely keep myself together let alone help someone else deal with their own problems, it’s too late and I’m already in a sporting goods store shopping with her. Dylan and Delilah went out back with one of the cashiers to make a deal and left me and Nova to get everything on the list. We’re wandering around, looking for tents and coolers and “hot dog pokey stick thingys,” as Nova put it.
“Hot dog pokey stick thingys?” I question with a cock of my eyebrow as I steer the cart around the corner while reading what’s on the list.
“Yeah, you know.” She makes this weird stabbing movement with her hand like she’s trying to reenact the shower scene in Psycho. “Those metal pole things that you use to roast hot dogs over fires.”
I restrain a smile. She’s being too fucking cute for her own good. “I think they’re just called hot dog forks.”
“Really.” Her expression twists with disappointment as she clutches her phone in her hand. She’s been holding on to the thing since we left the house, like she’s worried if she puts it away she’ll lose it or something. “That totally lacks creativity.”
I toss a sleeping bag into the cart. “Yeah, I like your name for them better.”
“Me too,” she says, detouring down one of the aisles. She pauses to lean over my shoulder and read the list. Her hair tickles my cheek, and the contact nearly drives my body mad. “Jeez, outdoor concerts must be a big deal or something… there’s so much stuff we have to get.”
“You’ve never been to one?” I stop the cart when she halts in front of the flashlight section, examining it with her hands on her hips.
She shakes her head, leaning away from me. “Nope, you guys get to pop that cherry.” Her face instantly turns red as soon as she says it.
Millions of comments run around my head, but I decide to let her off the hook. “Well, the list says we’ll need sleeping bags, tents, lanterns, foam padding, and a lunch box.”