Where I Can't Follow by Ashley Blooms

Author:Ashley Blooms
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Back home, I sat down on the porch swing and let my weight carry me backward. The sound of the chains creaking melded with the crickets whirring in the grass and the frogs bellowing somewhere damp until it felt like the whole world was singing, or maybe screaming. Summer was waiting somewhere in all that noise. Maybe the noise is what brought it. Maybe I was sitting in the middle of some great conjuring, all things small and scaled and slick crying out to break the hold of winter, and my only hope of ever feeling warm again was depending on something I could crush in the palm of my hand.

I watched my little door hover at the foot of the steps, casting its ghostly glow over the tips of the dead flowers. I wished I could cry. It would have felt nice right then to let go of something, even if it was just tears. But nothing came.

I tossed Mom’s journal onto a rocking chair a few feet away and imagined her sitting there with a cigarette between her teeth, grinning at me. Carver walked onto the porch, went inside the house, and came back with two bottles—a beer for him, a pop for me—all without looking at me. We hadn’t talked the whole drive home. I just knew he was angry for what happened with Julie, how I’d said no and left him standing there alone with nothing to give his only sister. He would blame me, and he might be right. My fog assured me that I was right. It was inevitable that he and Julie would band together the way they always did and I would be left outside of them, alone.

Carver sat down on the swing beside me. He said Granny was sleeping with her hand tucked under her chin and we both smiled. We clinked our bottles together and drank without looking at each other.

After a while Carver said, “I sure could use a hug.”

I huffed out a breath and lifted the arm nearest him. Carver shifted his weight, tipping the swing from side to side as he set his beer down, then wrapped one arm around my waist. He tucked his head against my neck and kissed the lobe of my ear, the tender skin beneath it, and then my neck. I shivered against him and I knew he was smiling.

“You reckon I could build a house here?” He tapped the edge of my collarbone. His finger was cold from holding the beer and I suppressed another shiver.

“I don’t think it’s zoned residential,” I said.

“I know a guy down at city hall who could smooth things over.”

I smiled, but my stomach felt nervous. So did my hands, my arms, all my joints. I said, “I didn’t think you’d want to live near me after what I did.”

“What do you mean?”

“Telling Julie no,” I said. “Not giving Rachel what she needed.”

“Oh. I thought you did the right thing. Well, at least you did what I would do, and I’m usually right about most things.

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