“I don’t snuggle with just anyone, Gaige.”
“Good to know.”
“So, yes, now we’re best friends.”
“Besties share secrets.”
“Secrets? I don’t think so.” She pushes herself off the couch, grabs the blanket we’ve been snuggled under, and switches off the television. The only light filtering into the room comes from the bathroom light reflecting into the hallway. She shoves her hand out to me. I take it without thought and she pulls me up. “Come on. Bed.”
I follow behind her, still holding her hand as she leads us to her bedroom. “You share one of yours and I’ll share one of mine,” I offer.
She glances back at me, and even in the dark I can see the quick panic that dissolves into nothing. “I can do that, but you go first.”
We enter her bedroom and she flips on the light. My eyes instantly go to the notes I left now tucked firmly into her mirror corners. It’s cute, reminding me of high school when the girls used to all decorate their mirrors with notes and photographs. Still uncertain about how normal this feels, I watch her for any cues. She simply crawls into bed, tucking herself under the blankets just as she’s done every night.
This time, instead of leaving my shirt on, I strip it off, doing everything in my power not to look at her. I don’t want to see her reaction to what she sees. I don’t want to see the concerns or questions in her eyes. Instead, I watch the floor as I make my way to her bed and crawl in on “my” side. I hear her expel a heavy breath as my head hits the pillow.
“Gaige…”
“I got them from falling through a broken window.”
“Oh,” she says so softly I almost don’t hear her. “Is that your secret?”
“No, but the fact that I fell through the window of a house I was breaking into and planning on robbing is.”
She’s quiet. For the first time in my life, I hate the quiet. In my head, I beg her to talk, to tell me what she’s thinking—hell, judge me if she must. Anything. The silence is hurting my ears.
“Did you get caught?”
“I did.”
“Did it hurt?”
“The window? Yeah, it hurt like hell.”
I feel her shake her head against the pillow. “No, getting caught, finding out you weren’t as skilled as you thought you were.”
I do this weird cough/laugh as I choke on my surprise. “That’s the strangest thing anyone’s ever asked me.” I roll over to finally face her. She’s watching me closely, and I see nothing but curiosity in her eyes. “Yes,” I tell her. “It hurt. Back then, it’s all I had going for me. To know I failed at that sucked, but what hurt the most was discovering I had fallen that low.”
“What happened after you fell?”
“I was picked up by a man who helped shape my future, the man whose house I broke into.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “Seriously?”
“Irony, huh?”
“I’d say. It sounds like something from a movie.”
“It does. Just skip the scenes where he offers to let me live with him free of rent and tries to adopt me, and instead gives me a job, docking my pay every week to repair the window and pay for the hospital bills. He was a brilliant, kind man. I couldn’t have picked a better house to bust into.” I give a short, humorless laugh. “Wow, never thought I’d say that.”
“You were incredibly lucky.”
I nod. “I know.”
“Do you still work for him?”
“Kind of. I still work at the shop, yes, but the previous owner died a few years ago. My best friend owns the shop now. We met there when we were sixteen and working together as little errand boys.”
