I should’ve felt all sorts of weirdness, but I was at the point where I’d sit on the roof and not give a flying fuck what anyone had to say. Keeping my finger between the pages, I closed the book and waited.
“Um . . .” He paused, staring right at me.
He had no idea what to say. I could see the floundering on his face, but he shook it clear and a small smile showed. His dimple winked at me. He raked a hand through his hair, leaving it as rumpled as it was yesterday. I knew why those two girls had squealed. He was all sorts of dreaminess.
I waited for the spark to flicker in me. I should blush? Giggle? Sigh?
No. Nothing.
I felt nothing, and then I remembered how it felt to lay in his bed, and I knew that wasn’t true. I felt some peace around him for some reason.
He scooted farther inside, glancing back at the door before leaning against his closet. “The whole my-bed thing . . .” He motioned to where I was sitting. “Did you want the bed again tonight?”
I looked down. I didn’t want to see his eyes when I asked this question. “Are my parents coming back?”
There was silence, and it stretched past the point of not having an answer. He had one. He just didn’t want to say it.
I shook my head, letting the book fall to the bed. Wrapping my arms around myself, I turned away. “Never mind.”
He cleared his throat. “For the record, I’m not supposed to know about your folks.”
I looked back. “But you do?”
The hesitancy and fear I’d seen on his face melted away to reveal the sorrow, and he nodded. “Yeah. I eavesdropped on the call. They’re at a hotel. I guess your grandparents are coming tomorrow.”
“Oh. Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “You don’t have to thank me for anything, but I do have to know about the bed. I was trying to tell my mom maybe it was me—like, you could sleep when you were around me because of my teenage pheromones or something.”
I cracked a grin. “That’s a new theory.”
“Hey, not all of us are child Einsteins like your brother.”
“Touché, and neither am I. I’m the only normal one in my family.”
But I wasn’t normal anymore.
“Yeah.”
Maybe he thought the same thing because another silence descended over us. It felt like a sullen quiet too, as if maybe we’d both realized the true travesty of this situation. My remark-able quality had gone from being the slacker to the surviving twin.
“Well, fuck.” I breathed.
He’d been picking at his jeans but looked up. “What?”
“Nothing. Yes, I’d like to sleep in your bed, if that’s okay with you.”
“It’s fine with me.” He grinned. “It was kinda nice, waking up to find a hot chick in bed with me. My friends will get a kick out of that—”
“You aren’t going to tell them!”
His eyes widened. “No. I know, I wouldn’t, I mean—I’m not that kind of guy, but my sister has a crush on one of my friends. She already told him. I overheard that phone call too.”
“What are you? A male Veronica Mars?”
He scoffed, but that dimple was flirting with me.
“I get bored easily,” he said. “I shoot hoops to keep busy. You know, like restless leg syndrome? I have that, but it’s my entire body and brain. It doesn’t turn off sometimes.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, Mom said I couldn’t play today. She was worried some of my friends would show up, and she didn’t want anything to get out.” He snorted, rolling his eyes. “I’ll get blamed for it, but it’s always Peach who tells. She never gets in trouble.”
Robbie was beloved. Willow was perfect. And I guess I was the one who got in trouble, like him.
“It’s the same for me,” I offered faintly.
I got blamed for the laxatives. I was the one they thought had an eating disorder. They ignored the bowl of Cheetos in front of me during the “intervention” talk.
“Mackenzie, your father and I want you to know that we love you a great deal. Looks do not define our self-worth . . .”
There’d been other times, like when Willow wanted me to ask for a treadmill. They didn’t see her on it during the day, only me. She ran in the park during the day and then used the treadmill at night. I did the normal thirty minutes Coach Ellerson required from us during the off-season for soccer. I should’ve done more, but Cheetos and being lazy were a lot more fun.
“So . . .” Ryan pulled me from my thoughts.
I almost sagged with relief. No more memories.
He tugged at one of his sleeves. “Do you, uh, want me to stay with you? Or, I mean, do you want to sleep alone?” He rushed out, “I can do either, that’s cool. You just let me know.”
“What?” Someone knocked on the door. One quick, hard tap.
He groaned. “My mom said it’s fine, but she’s going to put the nanny cam on us. So, you know, no messing around.” His head shot up. “Not that that’s what I have in mind. I mean, you’re hot, but you’re grieving. You lost your sister, so . . . you know . . .” He flinched, cursing under his breath. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that last part. I—sorry. I’m shutting up before I say any more shit.”
“What?” I asked, hoping the upward curl of my lips resembled a grin, or better yet, something cool and maybe even seductive. “You mean you’ve never been asked to pretend you’re a grief counselor?”
He barked out a laugh. Then his eyes darkened. “I lost a friend almost two years ago, so I kinda know what you’re going through. Kinda. Not really. I mean, he wasn’t my brother or my twin or anything, so it isn’t the same. But . . .” He stopped himself, closing his eyes for a moment.
Loss was loss, as far as I was concerned. Yeah, there could be different degrees of it, but it was the same emotion. The only thing that differentiated was whether it came suddenly or slowly. But I kept that to myself because honestly, who the hell wanted to talk about that?
I pointed to his television and video console. “You have Warcraft?”
“Yeah.” He brightened up. “You play?”
“Got a sudden urge to learn.”
“All right.” He grabbed a controller from his desk, found the other next to the bed, then climbed up next to me. Leaning back against the wall, his leg next to mine, he taught me how to play. His arm and hand brushed against mine randomly, and every time they did, I felt a small but warm tingle.
We played Warcraft most of the night. Robbie played with us too, until I convinced him to go to bed. Ryan and I only turned out the light when his mom stuck her head around the door.
“It’s after two,” she told us. “Time to sleep.” She gave me a soft smile. “I hope you can sleep okay, Mackenzie.”
Me too.
She gave Ryan a pointed look, jerking her eyes to a stuffed rhino on his desk. A red light blinked in its nose.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, yeah, Mom.”
“Good night, both of you.”
The next morning, I ventured to the kitchen for the first time and found it filled with an uncomfortable tension. They could have been sitting in silence before I showed up, but I doubted it. I didn’t need Robbie to decipher who’d been the subject of conversation two seconds before my arrival. It was one of those scenes where you walk in and know they were talking about you.