When Gracie is humiliated after following her best friend's brother to college and finds he's moved on without her, she grows closer to his rival--the captain of his basketball team--the infamous Kalen Rush, and suddenly Gracie wonders just what len...
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Gracie stared up into the sky as her eyes glazed over, unblinking.
She shivered in my arms, but I doubted she even noticed it.
"Hey, we can take it from here. She's our sister."
Her best friend—sister—whatever she wanted to call herself, was trying to coax Gracie into her arms but she stood still as a statue, unmoving.
She was so still, so stoic.
Her brown curls tumbled chaotically in the breeze, melting into the background of the navy night sky as the stars burned white in the blur of her afterlight.
"I don't think so. I'll help you get her to her dorm."
"Hey, this is a family matter, dude. Just go."
Hart stepped up to her side, his chest pressing into her arm.
She flinched at the contact.
Wrapping my arms tighter around her shoulders and tucking her into my side, he shrunk back from the glare I pointed at him.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"This is stupid, Colby. Just—just let him help, okay? I have to call mom and figure out what we have to do tomorrow, when the funeral will be, stuff like that. Can you keep your temper in check for five minutes while I do that?"
Hart flicked his eyes up to the sky that Gracie hadn't stopped staring at since she heard the news and crossed his arms over his burly chest.
"Fine."
Glancing at the whites of Gracie's eyes as she looked out aimlessly at the stars and the moon shrouded by a few stray clouds, my mind suddenly rocketed me back to a cluttered hospital room full of visitors and flowers and family hoping for a different outcome than the one that we got.
It was easy to forget the texture of your dying mother's hand caressing your face in what you didn't know was goodbye when it was something you were actively trying to forget.
My dad had started out with a speech about moving on and living my life without wallowing in sadness before he told me she was gone.
He'd patted my head while I cried like an inconvenient obstacle on his way to going back to normalcy.
Gracie looked about as lost as I felt in that moment, until—
Until she blinked.
She blinked, and the fog cleared.
She blinked again, and tilted her head back forward, and scrunched up her nose and eyebrows in that adorable way that she did when she was confused about something.
I remembered her doing it earlier that night in the cafe when I'd told her that, if my father had his way, I wouldn't be pursuing a professional career in basketball.
