“You could never be pathetic,” I say. Not the girl I’ve come to love from the letters. The girl who defended her best friend, even though taking that stand cost her other friendships. The girl who tells me exactly what she thinks of me, even when the truth hurts. The girl who dreams of being more—the girl who dreams of Florida.
Her lower lip trembles. “If you think that, then you don’t know me very well.”
I know her better than she realizes. I know the letters she writes to me late at night are more emotional than the ones written during the day, as if a lack of sleep inhibits reasoning. I ditch the blankets and pillow on the arm of the couch and plop myself onto the cushions. “Come here.”
Her gaze switches from the space on the couch to me. “I don’t understand.”
I snatch the extrahuge pillow and drop it on my lap. “Sleep here.”
Lila stretches the hem of her tank top over her hips as she moves toward me. When she sits, it’s with her thigh melting against mine. Her heat radiates past my jeans to my skin. Every single cell within my body sizzles to life. Play this right, Lincoln. She deserves a man, not a boy.
Without saying a word, Lila rests her head on the pillow and extends her legs on the couch. I drape the blanket over her body, and I love how she flips to her side, knees curled up in the fetal position.
Her eyelids flutter as she talks. “I’m sorry I slammed the door in your face.”
A lock of her hair strays onto her cheek. I shouldn’t, but I do it anyhow. With the same care I use when handling my nephew, I sweep the silky strands behind her ear. I’d give my left arm to comb my fingers through her hair until she falls asleep. “I deserved it.”
Her chest expands and she yawns. “Why didn’t you graduate?”
“Because I was stupid.” A nauseating pit forms in my gut. Stupid—it’s what Lila must assume about me. A moron who can’t put two words together to form a sentence, a moron who can’t add, a moron who didn’t graduate. But that’s not what happened. I didn’t graduate because I stopped caring.
Lila closes her eyes and lazily mumbles, “You’re not stupid. I’ve read all your letters—several times. You’re a good writer. And you got a twenty-nine on your ACT. That’s hardly stupid.” She pauses. “Not unless that was a lie too.”
“It wasn’t,” I say. “I only lied about graduating.”
“What about getting in to the University of Florida?” she asks. “You told me you were accepted through early admission.”
“I was,” I answer. “But admittance was contingent on graduating.” I struggle to find the right words. How do I prove to her that I’m not lying? “I’ll send you my official ACT scores. I’ll send you my acceptance letter. Whatever you need in order to believe me.”
“I believe you.” She’s motionless long enough that I wonder if she’s drifted to sleep. Then she pats my knee and whispers, “Tell me what happened.”
Lila removes her hand, but my skin still burns from her touch. She believes me. Maybe, someday, she’ll trust me. I prop my elbow on the arm of the couch and lean my head against my fist. I should keep my other arm resting on the back of the couch. Instead, I cave to temptation and snake it around her body. She nuzzles closer to me in response. For a girl who is just my friend—just a pen pal—this feels incredibly right.
“Lincoln?” she urges.
“We should wait until morning,” I say.
“It is morning. And I’m impatient.”
I chuckle. She is. Lila informed me of her unhappiness anytime a letter from me ran a day later than she thought it should have. I take a deep breath and jump.
“I began skipping in the fall and then skipped more days than I should have. By the time I realized I hadn’t earned enough classroom hours to graduate, I was already screwed.”
Her eyes flicker open. “Did you skip because you missed Josh?”
Hearing his name on her lips causes my chest to jerk. The familiar, unwanted pain spreads from my heart to my brain. She’ll never know him. Never meet him. “Yeah, Josh. And everything else.”
I told her in several letters that I had skipped. That when I woke in the morning and felt the emptiness of Josh’s death, the burden of feeding a baby, the anger of listening to my parents argue, I’d feel like I’d explode if I didn’t break free. So I’d drive to the state park and climb until my fingers bled.
Her head rocks in my lap. “I should have seen it coming.”
“Seen what coming?”
“That when you can’t handle things, you run.” She wrote the same criticism in her letters to me when I told her I had skipped school.
“I don’t,” I say.
Her only response is the rush of air blowing out of her mouth.
“I don’t,” I repeat with the stubbornness of a dog gripping a chewed-up slipper in its jaws.
Lila fiddles with the frayed corner of the blanket. “Today was your graduation day and you drove here to see me.”
“So?”
She shrugs. “Only stating the evidence.”
“I came here for you.” The tension in my muscles begs me to shift, but if I do, I’ll give Lila an excuse to move. “You were upset with me.”
A nagging pang of guilt causes my spine to straighten. What I said, it’s not a lie. I came here for Lila. But then I remember my mom and dad fighting, the way Meg panicked when I asked her to hold the baby, and the nausea when I considered telling my parents about my failure.