Page 5 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. On one hand, I could probably pass out the second my head hit a pillow. On the other hand, it was barely past eleven o’clock, and my mom might still be awake.
“I don’t want to go home,” I said, “but I’m not sure this road is doing much for my stomach.”
“I know just the place.”
We lapsed into silence as I let him drive me so far outside town that the sky grew black with night save for a few specks of starlight.
“There is nowhere in LA that ever gets this dark.” I leaned forward, pressing my face to the cool glass and trying to see past the road.
“Can’t be worse than New York. Nothing closes down there, especially the lights. It’s great for a two A.M. hot dog run, but . . .”
“You never feel alone,” I finished for him.
“But you always feel alone,” he added.
It was exactly how I felt—swallowed up by the chaos of the city, constantly surrounded by people, bombarded by their energy, and still invisible. “Sometimes I like it,” I told him. “If I want to disappear, all I have to do is walk down the street.”
“It took me a while, but now the noise just blends together and I zone out.” He stopped the truck and climbed out, coming around to open my door. I wasn’t sure why I waited for him to do that, except that girls expected guys in Beauford to open doors. “But you can’t hear the crickets in New York.”
He helped me down and we stood on the edge of the gravel where the prairie grass started and listened to the sharp symphony of cricket songs and rustling leaves. Wes took my hand and pulled me into the field.
“I think this is the start to every horror movie I’ve ever seen,” I warned him.
Wes chuckled at that, but kept going. “You have no idea where we are, do you?”
“The set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”
“Everybody in California have a smart mouth like you?” he asked.
“Nah. Most of them are too busy being tall and beautiful to have much to say.”
“I guess it’s lucky that you’re a triple threat then.”
I didn’t ask him what he meant by that. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, because I liked what it implied and I didn’t know how to feel about that. Wes was my best friend. As in past tense. We’d spent too long not speaking for me to consider us close anymore, so the man dragging me out into a dark field, visible only from the shine of moonlight on his glossy hair, seemed like a foreigner to me. Wes was still in there, but his shell had been replaced by a man. An admittedly hot one that did funny things to my stomach. I couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same about me.
The field stretched far until a small grove of trees broke it up, and just like that, I knew exactly where we were—back in another time and place.
“I can’t believe I didn’t recognize your family’s road,” I said.
“It was dark.” But his words were wounded. A lot had changed between us, even our shared history seemed to have dissolved into a half-remembered past. Wes pointed his phone toward a tree, the glow from the screen just bright enough to reveal an old tree house.
“You could have used that when you were dragging me through the field,” I said as I grabbed for the phone.
“It was a surprise.” Wes caught me around the waist and pulled me closer to him. “And I wanted to see if you’d follow me.”
“Anywhere.” The word was out of my mouth before I’d even processed it.
Wes leaned closer to me, his lips inches from mine. “Is that so, Jacqueline Kelly?”
My breath hitched in my throat, and I wanted him to kiss me. The desire consumed me, drowning out everything around us.
“Sure.” I pulled away from him and ran toward the makeshift rungs still nailed to the tree. “Anytime you’re in Los Angeles.”
I climbed as quickly as the darkness would allow me to, and when I reached the top, I took a tentative step inside. This tree house was well over fifteen years old, a gift to Wes’s older brothers. But I was surprised to see a few toys and books strewn in the corner and a large, well-worn blanket laid out on the floor.
“My nephew uses it,” Wes said as he stepped in behind me.
The fact that kids were still climbing into tree houses in Beauford, Texas brought a smile to my face.
