“You stink,” Maybelle muttered. “Did you come straight from the gym?”
Before I could answer, she was on her feet, headed for the closet. Again, giving me a fantastic view of her in those shorts.
“I—I was—Yes, I was at the gym.” Desperately trying to refocus I asked, “What’s got you in a sour mood?”
She turned to hit me with a look. “I’m not in a sour mood.”
Smirking, I gestured to the general area above her head. “Yeah, tell that to the dark cloud you got hovering over you.”
She rolled her eyes, but they didn’t return to me. Theyfell heavily on the journal resting on her mattress.
Peeling my eyes from her beautiful legs to the book, she watched like it might grow fangs and eat her, I stood to grab it. She turned away then and her rummaging in the closet had me halting where I stood.
“What’re you doing?”
She didn’t look back at me as she continued to sift through hangers and clothes. “Looking for a different shirt.”
“What? Why?” I barked, sounding a lot more frantic than I meant to.
She looked at me over one shoulder before returning to the closet. “Because I want to wear something less—irritating.”
“Rude.”
“What was tha—” she started to ask but was cut short with the surprise of me pulling at her by the back of my shirt.
“Trey,” she growled.
“Mayhem,” I mockingly growled back.
Puffing out a breath of surrender, she stopped rebelling and joined me on her bed.
The twin bed was propped in the far, right, back corner of the room. Allowing me to rest on the pillows and rear wall while she sat perpendicular to me. Her legs draped over mine, with her back against the side wall.
“What are you doing here, Turner? Didn’t I just see you this morning?”
I grabbed my book from the comforter. “Yeah, but I missed you.”
As she squirmed for a comfortable position, I opened the book to an entry she wrote about her and Liam learning to drive. She’d gotten the hang of it fairly easily and passed her test on the first try. Liam, on the other hand, ran over every single cone and had to retake the test three times before he finally passed.
God, I missed that guy.
“What are you reading?”
I couldn’t see her face over the pages as I flipped to a passage closer to the beginning of the book. “I read the entry about you and Liam getting your licenses.”
Snorting, Maybelle moved her legs from off me and settled next to me. Resting her back along the wall, giving her a better view of the scrawled-on pages. “That was a funny one... You’ve read the whole thing, right?”
I looked away from the book to Maybelle. She wasn’t looking at me, but her hands were fidgeting together on her lap as she stared forward.
I nodded.
“Can you tell me what I was like before the accident?”
I’ll admit, I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting her to ask that. So, I said the first thing that came to my mind, “Quiet—I think you preferred books over people. But while I and many others had mistaken it for shyness, I think it was heaviness.”
I didn’t think that exactly made sense, but Maybelle nodded again, seeming to understand.
I knew where this was going, and it hollowed my gut out as those perfect blue-green eyes found mine. “So, you know what happened to her—I mean—me and Liam?”
