Boys Like You

“I brought his guitar, you know. Thought maybe music would help him fight this infection. Maybe music would bring him back, but…” He sucked in a breath and paused.

Slowly I looked up. “But?”

A sad smile touched his mouth. “I suck, remember? I only know a couple of chords, and G and C don’t really cut it.”

His smile widened and then he laughed. He laughed so hard that his body shook and his fingers dug into my shoulders painfully. I wasn’t sure if he was going crazy or if he was just so tired he didn’t know what he was doing.

He stopped abruptly and squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry, for the way I was after the accident. It was wrong to put all the blame on you and I…I have no excuse other than I was in a goddamn black hole and I needed someone to hit. It was you.” He cleared his throat. “There was only you.”

“It’s okay,” I said quietly.

And it was.

“Would you play for him? I mean, I think it might help. Maybe spark something inside him.”

I couldn’t answer. There was no way I was getting any words out. But I nodded. I nodded like a goddamn bobble head and followed Mike Lewis back down the hall.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Monroe

I was dreaming about Malcolm. It was summer. Hot and humid with air so thick you could practically see it.

It was the kind of day when the pavement burned right through your sandals. The kind of day you’d spend hours running through the sprinklers at the water park. It was the kind of day when everything is slow and lethargic.

It was the kind of day when bad things happened.

I’d had this dream before, and it always ended the same. I lost Malcolm, there in the shadows, the deep ones that the sun didn’t seem able to find.

I lost him, and usually I heard him crying for me. For Mom. For Dad.

The sound drove me insane, but this time…this time there was no crying. For a while, there was nothing—I knew he was gone but there was just nothing.

Then I heard his laughter riding the air like bubbles falling over a waterfall. They were light, dancing in the air. Clear, round sparkles that filled my chest until I couldn’t breathe.

“Malcolm,” I whispered, afraid that the sound would go away. God, I didn’t ever want it to go away.

But it did.

His giggles faded until I couldn’t hear them anymore, and no matter how much I tried to find them…to find that slice of time where he existed, I lost him.

I lost him in the sunlight and the water and the endless heat.

***

I woke abruptly and lay in my bed for a good ten minutes, just remembering how he sounded. How he smelled. How he felt.

My skin was drenched in sweat, and I was still in the clothes I’d worn the day before. My hair looked like it hadn’t been combed for days, and I groaned. Ugh. I needed a shower.

Sunlight poured into my room, and the clock on the dresser across from me told me that it was nearly noon. I grabbed my cell but there were no messages from Nathan. I guess that was a good thing. In this case, no news was good news.

The hot water felt like heaven, but the restlessness in me had me showering as if I was running a race, and less than ten minutes later, I was trudging down the stairs, wet hair leaving streaks down my green sundress as I took them two at a time.

Eager to get back to the hospital and Nathan, I rounded the bottom step but froze when I heard voices from Gram’s kitchen.

For a second, I wanted to run back upstairs and turn back the clock, because I knew that, for me, summer was almost over.

And that meant no more Nathan.