Even on the Darkest Night by Allie Martin

Author:Allie Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love story, coming of age, YA Romance, Teen Love
Publisher: Quirks & Commas
Published: 2018-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

Friday, April 19 • 11:50 PM

Jordan

Snapping the small square packet, I stare at the steam spiraling up from my coffee cup as Rick rambles in the booth next to me. I rip the top off the sugar, and the sweet smell brings Evan back to the front of my mind.

“Hey, brain-dead.” Rick hits my shoulder, and the sugar spills across the blue and white plastic table cloth at Angela’s Diner. The little overlapping circles like ocean waves with frothy sugar crests. “I asked you a question.”

I shift against the cracking powder blue vinyl seats as we wait in the brightly lit, but almost empty restaurant. “Sorry, man. What did you ask?”

“I asked if Annie texted you. She’s been calling me non-stop, asking if I'm still with you. Told her to call you if she’s so concerned with what you’re doing.” Rick’s voice falls to a hush while he spins a spoon against the table top.

“She is your cousin...” I say and Rick glares.

“I ain’t her keeper, though. Or yours. You know how I feel about that.” Rick slides the little ceramic bowl that holds more sugar packets my way. I don’t respond. He understands what Annie is to me. She’s like a cigarette; I inhale her as deep into my lungs as I can, but the more often I do it, the duller my senses get and the more of her I need. Like a cigarette, I get how she’s bad for me. I’m completely aware she does nothing other than slowly kill me one breath at a time.

“No, she hasn’t called,” I say, sliding out my phone. A green clock on the screen ticks by the seconds, and my gut falls. No text from Annie. Or Evan. I don’t know which bothers me more.

The jangle of the door explodes my thoughts to dust and gives me the answer to my above quandary.

I hope to see her chocolate waves and steel-barred eyes, but it’s not Evan, and my heart plummets. It’s Hector’s scruffy mug and lopsided grin, followed by the rest of my old friends. It’s a strange feeling to miss both girls at once, to think about them simultaneously.

Annie makes me desperate. Desperate to be with her. Desperate to wrap her up, chain her down, because she’ll wander. She’ll always wander.

But Evan is different. I realize I’ve known her only a few hours, but I give my heart freely. I always have. Annie had me in the time it took to make one cup of coffee.

Evan has me in another way. I want to see Evan not because I need to see her. I want to see her again because I don’t feel desperate with her. It’s not panic that consumes me when she’s around. My jumbled thoughts sort themselves into neat little rows when she's beside me.

I tug at the pen around my neck as Hector, Sarah, Nate, and Steve pile into the huge crescent shaped booth tucked in the back of the diner. I touch the tip of my pen to the table cloth and begin to write.

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