Broken Pretty Things by Amber Faye

Chapter 16

Freshman year…

“I can’t go back home.Please, don’t make me.”

Jen Palmer unfolds her arms and her brows knit together when she sees the look of panic on my face. The anger from a second ago is gone. I don’t blame her for being angry. She just caught me in her teenage daughter’s bedroom.

Andie stares at her mother, mouthing ‘Sorry.’ I hate everything about this. They actually get along, and by making her sneak me in, I also made her lie. Andie hates lies. I learned that the hard way, but it took me a while before I stopped completely. Just little lies. Ones she’d immediately find out about. Just because there’s a tiny part of me that kind of likes her more when she’s mad. She talks faster, uses bigger words, stands up straighter. My best friend is a fucking badass when people piss her off.

“What happened, Gun? You missing your mom?” Jen is the only person who calls me that. I wonder if she thinks my friends call me that, too. Jen seems like the kind of parent who wants to be cool, but she doesn’t have to try. She is cool. That’s where Andie got it from. (That, and from me, obviously.)

And I don’t want to talk about my mom. Not to anyone. I just want to be here, in Andie’s room.

“Mom, he just wants to be alone,” Andie says.

Jen’s gaze flicks from me to her and back again. “Alone? You want to come downstairs and help me put away the groceries, then?”

Andie rolls her eyes. “I don’t count.”

Jen bites her lip and smiles. “Well, OK, that’s really cute. Fine. Well, don’t take advantage of me in the future for giving you an inch, kids.” She shakes her head and leaves the room. “Leave the door open,” she calls as she heads downstairs.

“Sorry about my mom,” Andie says, turning back to me. “You know she’s a dork.” She goes back to flicking through the music on her phone. “What did you want to do?”

“I want to watch a movie where everybody dies.”

She laughs. “Later. What about music?”

“Sure. Something really weird,” I say. “Something I’ve never heard before.” I kick my legs off the bed, feeling the lump in my throat grow. “I don’t want it to remind me of anything.” Somehow, she understands me, and puts on German techno. It makes us laugh to try to dance to it. She always understands what I want.

When the song is over, she hops back onto the bed, looking serious. “Cole kissed me,” she says. I stop laughing.

“Gross,” I say, before I can stop myself. “I thought he had standards.” She doesn’t laugh, though, and I feel bad. It was probably not a very funny joke. But for a second, I felt really mad about it. I know they hang out sometimes without me, and I don’t really like that. Now this? They’re going to forget about me.

“Standards?” she repeats, looking distant.

I push the joke, trying to let her know I’m kidding around. “I thought he liked hot girls.” I smile, but she frowns.

“Maybe you should go, you know? Your dad will worry about you.” I watch as she chews the hell out of the inside of her cheek. It’s a bad habit. I usually remind her to stop, but I don’t feel like I should right now. “Ransom probably needs you.”

“I just meant …”

“I know what you meant, Gunnar.”

I don’t like it when she’s mad at me. I like it when we’re all squished up together. I like how she smells like peaches and cinnamon. I like how she isn’t weird and confusing to me like other girls. Like girls I want to do stuff with. Something tells me if I told her that, it wouldn’t make her happy either. Nobody wants to be told that you don’t wanna do stuff with them, I think.

“Do you want to kiss me, too?” I blurt, before the half-formed thought can make sense in my head. Usually I’m pretty good at thinking things the whole way through before I say them, but for some reason she made me panic.

“Gross. No,” she says hotly, turning away. I scoot over on her bed and wrap my arms around her, nuzzling her hair. Sometimes I have to feel her whole body against me to feel OK again. Especially now, with Mom gone, and I feel so alone so much of the time. Sometimes she smells so good it makes my chest hurt.

“Good,” I say. I’ve never thought about kissing Andie before, but now I can’t get it out of my head. Would she like it? Would her mouth taste as good as the rest of her smells? Where would her hands go? Where would my hands go? I’ve kissed girls, and I never thought so hard about it before. “That means we’re better friends than you and Cole.”

I really don’t think that makes sense, but it makes me feel a lot less jealous to say it. I can almost breathe regularly again. She looks at me, her face so close to mine, her eyebrows raised, and then she smiles wide. “Does it?”

“Yeah,” I say, and squeeze her tighter, laying my head on top of hers.

“OK. I like that. We won’t ever. Best friends forever.”

“Yeah. Forever.”