Page 6 of Forever Mine
Following Elijah’s example, Ryder takes out his phone, opens his camera roll, and offers it to her. Liz quickly snatches it from his grasp and swipes through photo after photo. Varied reactions steamroll across her face, changing from anger to intrigue to amusement.
“That looks just like mine,” she remarks.
“What does?” Ryder asks.
She flips the screen around to show him the image. “The car. Mine is red.”
Ryder pulls back, astonished. “The red Hellcat parked outside is yours?”
I didn’t see it. Then again, my attention was elsewhere.
A small grin curves her lips. “Yeah.”
“I’ll be damned,” he mumbles.
I keep my hand solid on Jay’s leg to make sure he stays put. “I’m Julien.”
She swipes from one picture to the next on Ryder’s phone, then stops on one.
“Is this us?”
She shows me the photo, and hope kindles when she recognizes it’s me and not Jay. Even though we’re identical twins, Liz could always tell us apart. I remember the first day we met when we were six years old. Jay and I found her inside her fort in the woods behind her house. We played in the creek catching crawfish. She said it was easy to tell us apart because we had a different number of freckles across the bridges of our noses.
“How can you tell that’s me?”
“The hair.” She keeps swiping. “And this is you?” she asks Jay.
“Yes.”
Leaving her guarded stance, she sits cross-legged on the floor next to Ryder.
“At the student union earlier, you said that you’ve known me since you were nine.”
“We met in third grade. You’ve known Jay and Jules since you were six. We lived on the same street, Fallen Brook Drive. We all grew up together. We were best friends.”
She doesn’t stop Ryder when he reaches out and pushes a lock of her hair behind her ear. Jay goes perfectly still, rigid as stone.
I lean into him and whisper, “Don’t.”
Of course, he doesn’t heed my warning.
“You weremygirlfriend,” Jay blurts and offers his phone to her.
I don’t know how long we sit there as she goes back and forth, shuffling through the images on our phones.
She double taps on a photo of Elijah and me to enlarge it. “You guys make a cute couple.”
“Thanks,” Elijah replies, and she smiles at him.
It’s the first time she’s looked at ease since we arrived.
The longer we sit there, the more antsy Jay becomes. “Liz. Please, sweetheart. I’m dying here. I need to hold you. Can I please hold you?”
Her head snaps up, and she scowls. “Why?”
“What the hell do you mean why?”
“Jay, chill,” I tell him.
