Page 26 of The Last Love Story

“I still have the link,” Nef adds, smiling as she turns back to the paper. “Maybe I should read it again.”

“Please no,” I say, my cheeks burning.

Nef giggles, and makes fun of how red my cheeks are, and we slip into companionable silence as we work. It’s funny how my fingers remember how to write, even if it feels like my heart forgot.

Eventually, Nef shakes her hand. “Ow, ow, ow,” she laugh-cries. “I’m dying,” she whimpers, and I roll my eyes as I press my fingers into the tendons near her knuckles. “You are not. Your hand is cramping up.”

I rub her hand, and she sighs. I let it go, and she moves her fingers.

“Regretting popping onto my roof?” I joke, and Nef shakes her head.

“No.” Her voice sounds stronger than I’ve ever heard it. When she looks up at me, her eyes are bright. “My brother is alive. I wouldn’t have known that if I’d played it safe like I usually do.”

Tears line her bottom lashes, but she blinks them away before they can spill over. “No. Popping up on your roof tonight was the best decision I ever made. And...”

I look at her expectantly.

“It reminded me that my best friend is an author with a massive crush on—”

“Shh!” I interrupt, even as a memory pops into my mind, and I press my lips together. “Besides,” I add with fake nonchalance, “I don’t have to live in fantasies anymore, considering that four hours ago, someone pushed me up against a wall and kissed the shit out of me.”

Nef lets out a squeak, dropping the pen cup. “Ripley Hart, tell me everything,” she orders.

And I do.

Chapter 6

Nef and I stay with Lyceum to finish another batch of pamphlets. We then sign up to take a route with Lena to drop them off—the dangerous part of the job. Uri and I both tell Nef that she doesn’t have to go, but she’s set on it.

So we stuff some satchels full of pamphlets and make our way to the weed-covered parking lot.

The only people out past curfew are the delivery drivers and law enforcement. We can’t pretend to be Hammers, but we’re dropping things off, so we just lean into that, hoods pulled low, packages in front of our bodies. And no one stops us. Since the trains don’t run into the city center, we grabbed some solar-powered electric bikes from the parking lot outside the emergency exit—hidden behind pieces of molding cardboard by the last Lyceum shift—and take off toward Beverly Hills.

Rodeo Drive used to be the crème de la crème of fancyshit. I’ve seen the pictures, and I’ve seen footage of the re-creation they built in Washington, D.C. Rodeo Two, it’s called. They built it after one of the bigger earthquakes, when the rich left this one to crumble.

Rodeo One is now stacked with housing, families packed close together in buildings that alternate between fire-charred and earthquake-scarred.

My tires roll to a stop in the middle of the weed-covered asphalt. The buildings that used to be pure white are streaked with ash and graffiti. All the glass windows are long gone, replaced by sheet metal or plywood thrown up by cheap landlords. Music blares from an open window, bass vibrating the street beneath us.

Even though curfew is fully in effect, a few people wander the streets: a man with a gray beard braided and tucked into his stained T-shirt; a woman with a baby wrapped to her chest. But neither of them stop to ask us any questions. They don’t even look at us.

Lena snaps her fingers at me, then jabs a finger across the street. Nef and I work together. A couple of the front doors require a code to get inside, but most of them creak open without any resistance. The stores inside have long since been converted into housing, drywall thrown up haphazardly, leaving a barely straight hallway down the middle. Nef and I inch along, hearing everything through the thin walls—babies crying, arguments raging, screens blaring—as we quickly slip the pamphlets under apartmentdoors. For the first few, I half wonder if anyone will notice the sound, the paper appearing in their doorway. But if anyone notices, they don’t open the door.

Once our satchels are much lighter, we meet Lena back at the bikes and silently race off, hitting two other neighborhoods before returning the bikes.

Nef says goodbye—Uri offers to walk her home, but I don’t feel the need for an escort. I take my time, slipping the oxygen mask from my nose to cautiously breathe a few lungfuls of the night air. It’s just me and the crickets as I consider the fact that I am officially part of Lyceum. I’ve created and distributed anti-Graves material. I’m a rebel. I even have a pamphlet on me, in my own handwriting. If the administration finds out, they will make me pay.

I wait for the panic to set in as I turn onto my street, but it doesn’t. I broke the law. In a big way. And I brought Nef into it! What would my parents think? What am I doing?

That should suffice to brew up a good ol’ anxiety attack, and I actually stop walking, going still as though to give my body a moment to deliver.

But it doesn’t come.

I heard my best friend’s real laugh for the first time tonight, a sound I haven’t heard since we were kids on the playground, making up stories and talking about cute boys. Tonight had been like that again, except we aren’t playing pretend anymore. We talked about what we’d do, at eighteen, at nineteen, and it didn’t involve dying or killing. We talkedabout our hopes. I told her about a boy I had kissed, even though it was fake. And it felt good to talk about it—and hear someone else’s take on it. Even if that meant listening to Nef discuss Hux’s tongue in great detail and ask if that was just for show too.

I’m blushing, thinking about Hux’s tongue, when it—and the rest of Hux—swings into my vision. He’s a familiar figure, a shadow against the easing night sky, on the roof again. As I stare, he drops into the yard below in that move that’s almost a dance.

Then Hux is on another roof, dropping into a different yard.