The crazy scenarios that had kept me up all weekend had been for nothing. Nobody looked my way when I stepped into the crowded hallway, clutching my coffee cup to my chest. There wasn't any whispering or fingers pointing accusingly in my direction while everyone threw their heads back and laughed. Which should have been a good thing, but as I closed in on Bryan and Brianna in front of my locker, Nicola caught my eyes for just a fraction of a second and I knew my relief was going to be short lived. I slammed into Brianna's shoulder as my eyes had been so focused on the Queen Bee that I hadn't been paying attention to my surroundings. Bri didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she didn't care. She looped her arm through mine and squeezed my nonexistent bicep comfortingly.
"How are you doing?" Bryan asked from his perch against my locker, left side of his mouth curved into a half smile, but his eyes were trained on me with worry. "Despite the fact you sleep in my bed most nights, you've been avoiding me."
"I'm fine." I assured my friends. "It was a one time thing. I was just overwhelmed. Between Jay ditching me and all the anxiety I already felt, it just all hit me really hard. But I promise, guys, I'm good now."
Thankfully a familiar laugh sounded through the hall and all three of us looked. Liam was leaning against a Senior's locker, a girl I could vaguely remember hanging off his arm for a couple weeks last year. She was nodding, and though I couldn't see her face, the expression Liam wore spoke for it. She had accepted his apology.
"I sort of hate that I was right about him." Bryan mumbled to nobody in particular. "He's actually not a bad guy, not anymore, that is."
As if my best friend's words had summoned him, Liam halted to such a sudden stop in the empty space that distanced Bryan from his sister and me that the tile squeaked beneath his shoes. "Hey, Reese. Your waves are back. And those big ass glasses."
I hadn't known what to expect after my breakdown in the parking lot Saturday night, but somehow him pretending it hadn't happened at all seemed to be the best outcome.
"I'm glad you like the look, Scott." I pushed my glasses, currently askew on the bridge of my nose, "I was trying for the whole hot professor look."
A grin lit his face as he started to back away, heading for the next hall over so he'd make it to class just before the influx of our peers. "Well, you definitely achieved it, Taylor. I'd love to get reprimanded if it meant getting sent to you."
He then winked and dipped around the curve of the hallway and out of my line of sight. I felt Brianna's nails start to dig into my shoulder blade.
"What the hell was that?" She said through teeth, shooting her twin a look. "Please tell me I wasn't the only one who witnessed it?"
"What?" I asked, looking between them confused. It wasn't either of them that answered, but Shay, who must have snuck up behind us at some point.
"That was totally flirting, Reese. You were flirting with Liam." Shay stated, coming into view. She snuck Bryan a small smile that held thousands of words, but she didn't say anything directly to him. He nodded, a genuine smile touching at his full lips. I suddenly felt as if we were eavesdropping on a private moment.
"I wasn't flirting with Liam. I'm with Jay and—" my words slowly but surely fell dry on my tongue as I thought back to the too friendly interaction. "Oh God, I was just flirting with Liam Scott."
Shay, looking away from my best friend and at me, rubbed my shoulder and whispered, "It's okay, Reese. We've all fallen victim to Liam's flirting before. Our lips are sealed, just don't let it happen again unless you want to talk to Jay about it, okay?"
**
The twins had insisted I go back home Sunday after church, if not for me, then for my mother. I had reluctantly agreed, but actually felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders when I walked out of my room late Monday night to find Mom looking through a photo album. She lifted her head when she heard my footsteps, her dark bangs fanning her forehead and falling into her eyes. She frowned, probably curious as to why I was in jeans and a hoodie at midnight.
"Where are you going?" she asked. "It's after twelve, Reese."
I opened my mouth to give her some lengthy response but the loud rumble of Liam's truck spoke for me. My mom lifted a blind and peered outside, cocking her head to the side.
"Is that Liam Scott?"
I smiled sheepishly, "Yeah."
"Is that who you've been sneaking out with late at night when you're actually here?" she pried her eyes from the monstrosity of a truck and looked at me. "And here I thought you were running off with the boyfriend you never talk to me about."
My cheeks flushed at the comment. I hadn't even mentioned Jay to her and she'd somehow heard it through the grape vine that I had a boyfriend from someone that wasn't me. "I'm sorry, Mom. I've just been really busy lately."
"With Liam Scott." It wasn't a question but a statement I didn't know how to answer so I just shifted back and forth on my feet. She stood slowly and made her way over to me. For a second I thought she was going to scold me and send me back to my room, but she pulled me into a hug, running her fingers through my hair with one hand and rubbing my back with the other. "You two be careful, okay?"
I pulled away with a nod, but she touched a hand to my cheek and kissed my nose gently-something she hadn't done since I was eight- and headed down the hall and to her bedroom.
It wasn't until I was approaching Liam outside his truck that I realized that my mother wasn't wearing her scrubs. It was the first time I'd seen her out of them in months and something about it just felt off.
"Hey." Liam pushed off his truck and shoved his phone into his pocket.
I ran a hand across my forehead, "What happened this morning in the hallway, that can't happen again, Liam."
"I'm always making comments like that." He muttered, then the realization dawned on him, "Oh, you mean the fact that you were flirting back."
"Yeah." I diverted my eyes to the giant tires behind his leg. "The last time I checked I had a boyfriend, Liam, one that cares about me. I don't want to go and mess that up."
Liam looked as if he wanted to snap, anger flickering in his blue eyes, but eventually just let out a quiet, "Cares about you enough to leave you sitting alone at Homecoming. Okay."
"I didn't think much of it. I expected it." I knew my words shocked him because his lips parted, eyes narrowing, "He's just really spacey. Forgets things a lot."
"He's not spacey. He's self-absorbed. He wouldn't know selflessness if it hit him in the face." Liam rolled his eyes. "Come on. I didn't drive here to talk about Jay's dumb ass. We can do that at school."
I'd grown so used to Liam helping me into the truck that it didn't bother me anymore. As soon as I had gotten my seat belt secured, he was down the street. Even with my mind wandering, I knew the route we were taking and where we were headed before we even reached the first stop light.
"Why are we going to the hospital?" I asked, shooting him a curious look. "Don't try and tell me we're not. My mom works there, I've taken this route so many times I could drive it with my eyes closed."
"The other night, at Homecoming, in the lot when you broke down in my arms, I wanted to cry too." Liam's confession sat in the air between us for a few minutes before he continued. "Not because I felt sorry for you, but because I understood everything you were feeling. Every little thing reminds me of my parents and some days I don't have the energy to keep up my appearances at school so I just hole myself up in my room and pretend everything is okay."
I crossed my arms over my lap, eyes trained out the window at the multicolored leaves indicating Fall was upon us fell into heaps beside the branches they'd just fallen from. "If this is supposed to be comforting, you should just stop talking."
"I don't know how you do it, Reese." Liam went on, blatantly ignoring me. "Walk the halls every day so confident, so. . . fake. You smile and make everyone happy while you're dying inside."
"Making others happy is my way of coping, Liam. It's what Raya would have wanted, it's what makes my heart full for a few hours a day. It's what distracts me." I responded with a soft edge to my voice, clipping the words together. "Just like how football is your escape, seeing people smile and making them happy is mine."
Liam turned into the parking lot and took the first empty spot we saw, as closest to the exit as possible. He leaned back in his seat as he turned the key in the ignition, leaving the keys dangling as he ran a hand through his hair, breathing out shakily.
"The one year anniversary of their death is Friday night." Liam squeezed his eyes shut, "The night of the accident we were heading back from the game. I'd just gotten my license and my parents wanted me to drive so they could control my little brothers and sister. It had just started raining and even with the wipers I could hardly see. Then my baby sister, she was only three, started crying for our mother who was sitting in the passenger's seat beside me. My mom kept asking her what was wrong and my youngest brother, he was six, happened to be kicking at her carseat, bugging her. The two kids then started yelling at one another. My brother, Lane, the one who was a couple years younger than us, he tried to reach back and tear them apart. Dad was in the seat behind me, muttering incoherently for a while before he started yelling at all three of my siblings."
I could hear the agony starting to ease its way into Liam's voice, but he kept his jaw tight and his eyes trained ahead, unwavering.
"I don't know if it was me being overwhelmed or it was truly the storm, but when I tried to step on the breaks they wouldn't work. I jerked the wheel so I didn't veer into the next lane over and into oncoming traffic, but when I did that it sent the car off the road and into the surrounding woods. The car hit a small boulder but that was all it took for the car to flip. When I came to again, a branch from the tree above me had went right through my mother beside me. She was clutching my arm, begging me to get out and check on my siblings. But my ears were ringing, my head was pounding, and all I could smell was blood, Reese."
I reached out and touched my cold fingertips to the top of his hand; he was unphased by the action and went on, reliving the memory.
"Once I was able to get my shit together I unbuckled my seatbelt and looked behind me but I threw up the second I did. Dad was over Lane, but they'd both been killed sometime during the car flipping. All I could see was blood. It was everywhere. When I looked to the third row, to my youngest siblings, my brother was gone too. His head halfway out the broken window, clutching his stupid little Spiderman action figure against his chest. But Annie, my sister, I could still see her chest heaving up and down. So I forced myself to the back and pulled her from under my brother's stiff legs and clutched her against my chest. But when the paramedics got there, she wasn't responsive. It was as if her body was but her brain wasn't. My mom died at the hospital."
I remembered the night. My mom had come home a bloody, sobbing mess. She had known Liam's parents pretty well, they'd all gone to high school together. She didn't speak to me for days, didn't go to work, didn't even argue with Dad. She just sat at the edge of the couch and watched the news with a blank expression, not budging for anything but going to the bathroom.
"Annie, she's still here." Liam nodded out the window toward the hospital. "But she's gone. She has been since the accident. There's been no indication of her waking up, and they've said if she did she'd be a vegetable. I just. . . I couldn't let them pull the plug on her. Now when she's all I have left, not when the entire accident was my fault."
I unbuckled my seatbelt and reached out to touch a hand to Liam's bicep. "It wasn't your fault, Liam. It was an accident."
"It was my fault, dammit!" He snapped, turning to face me. His cheeks were damp from the fresh tears that continued to roll down them. "If they hadn't come to my game, if I had just let one of my parents drive, they would still be here!"
I dropped my gaze to my intertwined fingers before he could see the tears stinging my eyes. "Winter Formal Freshman year I was asked by some Junior. I was so excited to be included, to be accepted, that I had gone without considering why he'd asked me. Well, turns out all he wanted out of me was sex and when I refused to give it to him he tried to rape me in his car. I was able to get out, to get away. Raya, my older sister, was so worried that she was at the school in the blink of an eye, touching every part of my body to make sure I was okay. She held me for a while so I could cry, then we were back in her car and in a rush to get back home."
The blue-gray eyes that had hardened into stone moments before, ignited with fury, softened as he realized what the outcome of my story would be.
"I used to always be such a little nag about it, telling everyone to put their seatbelts on, especially Raya. She had a horrible habit of not doing it. But I was so upset, so tired, I just wanted to get home. A drunk driver of one of those huge semi trucks ran a red light at our intersection and hit us. Raya, not wearing her seatbelt because she'd been so caught up in trying to rush me back home, went through the windshield and died as soon as she hit the asphalt. I just sat in the car, not moving, not running outside to check if she was okay, not even crying. I just sat there, Liam."
He shook his head. "I'm so sorry, Reese."
"What happened to your family wasn't your fault, Liam. My sister. . . that was my fault. All of it. My dad, that's why he and my mother fight. Because he blames me for her death, can't stand to look at me, and my mother refuses to do such a thing."
He buried his face in his hands before he slammed a fist against the steering wheel, a new rush of tears pooling in his eyes. "It isn't fair. It's not fucking fair."
"It's not." I agreed. "But it happened, Liam. And no matter how much we sit and dwell, question the what-ifs, it won't bring them back. Trust me, I've tried for the last three years. All it did was cause me more pain."
When he turned back to me, his eyes looked like ocean water in the midst of a hurricane, and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to drown in them.
"It's easier, you know." I said instead, pulling my legs up on to the seat and hugging them against my chest. "To pretend. To walk around acting fake, as you said. Because when nobody else talks about it, for a while I forget. For a while, I feel like it never happened. Then I let myself feel and it hits me like a freight train."
"What if I'm tired of pretending, Reese?" Liam's voice was so strained, so weak, that I felt my own heart sink hearing it. I looked over at him, my bottom lip trembling seeing someone that had always been so strong, so composed, hanging by a thread.
"You don't get to be tired of pretending, not if you don't want to feel it." I answered quietly. "Because once you let your guard down, it hits you all at once and consumes you."