How to Love by Katie Cotugno

Author:Katie Cotugno
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

28

Before

One damp afternoon at the end of February, I swung by the restaurant during my free period, hurrying—I wasn’t working, but I’d left my calc book in the office the night before and wanted to see if I could grab it before I had to get back to school for a newspaper meeting.

“Goddamnit,” was the first thing I heard. The restaurant was deserted—the lull between lunch and dinner—and Roger’s voice was booming from the office. “Where in the hell have you been?”

“Look, it’s not gonna happen again.” That was Sawyer. Sawyer was here. I froze. Where had he been? He’d been gone? I hadn’t seen him in weeks, since the night I’d stayed over, but I figured he’d been avoiding me.

“You bet your ass it won’t. We’re not doing this. I’m not going to have police officers calling my house. I’m not having you disappearing for weeks at a time. If you want to live in that squalor and throw away your education and ruin your life, that’s your business, but I won’t have any part of it.”

Police? What the hell had he done? I thought of the not-aspirin in his sneaker the night I’d slept over. I thought of his broken hand from last year. I stood there like I’d been hit by lightning, fingertips scrabbling the edge of a tablecloth, feeling absolutely one hundred percent rooted to the floor.

“Get out of my sight, Sawyer. I don’t even want to look at you.”

I could hear my heart beating, fast and skittish. I crept a little closer to hear. “For God’s sake, Dad—” Sawyer started, but Roger cut him off, closed for business.

“I mean it. And don’t you dare swear at me.”

“Fine.” I heard Sawyer get up, and I made for the front door as fast as humanly possible. I tried to keep it as quiet as I could, but the strap of my bag caught on the back of a chair and I had to pause to untangle it. My hands shook as I worked it free.

“Oh,” Sawyer said, when he rounded the corner and saw me. He looked pissed. “Hey.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I replied immediately, then backtracked. “I mean. Hi. I, um, left my book.”

“In the office,” he told me with the vaguest hint of a smile—blink and gone. He hadn’t shaved. “On the desk. I figured that was yours.”

“Yeah. Well.” I started to move past him, but he caught me by the wrist.

“Where’re you going?”

“To get my book,” I said, glancing fast, down at our hands, up at his face, back down again. It came out bitchier than I meant.

“Aha.” He squeezed once, let go of my arm. “Sounds like a plan.”

“Yeah. So. I’m going to go and . . . do that.”

Sawyer nodded. “Okay.”

I made my way into the office, mumbled a greeting at Roger, grabbed the damn textbook, and fled back outside. Sawyer’s Jeep was parked at the curb, and he was leaning against the driver’s side, arms and ankles crossed. “Need a ride?” he asked.

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