I glanced over at him. “So now what?”
“My parents aren’t home, and there’s ice cream,” Brock suggested, but he didn’t wait for me to answer, pulling me along behind him.
Brock’s house was massive. I’d only ever met his parents a few times, not that they said much to me. Unlike my parents, they wouldn’t be getting any parenting awards. He pulled me into the kitchen, flipping on the lights. “Get the bowls.”
I moved through his kitchen like I knew it because I did. We hung at his house a lot because we had the place to ourselves.
Brock made the biggest sundaes, and I never ate all of it, but he always finished mine.
We settled on the sofa, flipped on the television and watched Jurassic Park. I fell asleep, but woke, when I heard the door slam shut.
“Goddamn it,” his dad roared.
“It’ll be alright,” his mom said.
There was a sound right before his mom cried out. I tensed because he’d just hit her. Brock took my hand. “We got to go,” he whispered, pulling me from the sofa to the French doors that led out back. We slipped outside and ran, not stopping until we were at our fort.
“I’m sorry,” Brock said.
“For what?”
“Them.”
“He hit her,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Does he hit you, too?”
He looked away from me, but I knew he did. I suspected that was what had brought Brock into my life that first day. “Brock.” I tugged on his arm; he reluctantly turned his gaze back on me. “If you could go anywhere, where would you go?”
“The Caribbean. Working salvage, diving wrecks,” he said.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, and a cottage on the beach. What about you?”
“Wyoming or Colorado. Some place with wide-open spaces. A cabin, maybe a horse or two.”
“That sounds nice too.”
“Maybe we do both,” I suggested.
His hand tightened on mine. “Yeah, we can do that.”
I was doing homework when I heard pebbles hitting my window. My heart sank because that was our signal. Pulling my boots on and grabbing the kit stored under my bed, I hurried from my room, down the stairs and out of the house through the woods to our fort. He turned to me. Tears rolled down my cheeks. His father hit him. Not anywhere visible, but there was pain in his eyes. I wanted to hit his father.
I ran right to him and threw my arms around his neck. He didn’t hesitate to pull me close. “I hate him,” I said. “I fucking hate him.”
“Me too.”
I stepped back. “Where?”
He lifted his shirt, and there was a big nasty bruise forming and several scratches that were bleeding. Tears burned my eyes. “Sit.”
He grinned, but he sat. I spent the next half an hour cleaning his wounds.
“Whenever you’re ready to run away, just say the word,” I said.
He grabbed my hand, my gaze lifted to his. “Are you serious?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
I shrugged, but he wouldn’t take that. “Answer me, Cedar.”
I stood, putting some distance between us. “Because from the minute I stepped into that fort, I became bound to you and you to me. And I want the cabin and the cottage.”
He said nothing, but closed the distance between us, pulled me to him and held me there for a long time. After that night, Brock pulled away from me. It wasn’t lost on me that it was the day after my fifteenth birthday. Four years to the day…I met him on my eleventh birthday, and I lost him on my fifteenth.
2005
Sitting at lunch, my pizza went untouched. I’d had a thought in class, an idea for a shoe. Chewing on the tip of my pencil, the image formed in my head before I started sketching. My black rim glasses slid down my nose, but I was too engrossed in the design. I wanted to design clothes. Much of what I wore, I had designed and made.
Mom called me eclectic…quirky. They were compliments in my opinion. Practically born with mismatched socks, she always teased. I was a little left of center, moved to my own beat. I learned it from my mom, Mother Nature incarnate. She owned a small florist, loved gardening. She rarely wore shoes, preferred flowing skirts and tank tops. She too moved to her own beat. That wasn’t always popular, standing out, particularly in high school, where everyone was so determined to blend in. It wasn’t without its problems. I’d gone home many times with tears rolling down my cheeks. Sometimes, I even pondered losing the colorful clothing, taming my wild dark brown curls, conforming. Those thoughts never lasted long because Mom was my biggest cheerleader. She encouraged me to just be me, whoever that was. Find where I belonged and stay true to it, and anyone who had a problem with it weren’t people I wanted in my life anyway.
I glanced up when Brock walked into the cafeteria. It was like I had a sixth sense when it came to him. He looked good. His brown hair…calling it brown didn’t do it justice. It was like milk chocolate laced with caramel. Like when we were younger, it was always just a bit long, curling around his ears and at his neck. He had developed a way of walking, a confident kind of swagger that came from someone being completely comfortable in his own skin. He had a smile that was rare these days, but, when bestowed, could stop hearts, and eyes that shifted between gray and green, depending on his moods.
He’d been my best friend, and now he was my crush. I think every girl in high school had that one crush, their very own version of Jake Ryan from Sixteen Candles, but unlike a John Hughes’ movie, most of the time, he really didn’t know you existed. I’d stopped existing for Brock at fifteen. He wasn’t cruel; he didn’t bully me. He just avoided me.
I’d tried. For a year, I tried to get my friend back, but when Brock made up his mind, there
