9. CODY

CODY

“ T hat’s life, Rae!” I said to her when she said that she was scared if that was her only reason for running away. “Being scared is a part of life,” I lowered my voice.

My head was pounding, and the cut on my cheek stung so badly it kept making my eyes water. Dad had never gotten that mad. It wasn’t exactly unwarranted. I had shown up back home in a huff, pissed off at myself, pissed off at Lorraine. I was confused, sad, heartbroken.

In a matter of a week, a girl upended my entire world, and while I saw an opportunity to feel something off the field, Dad wasn’t as enthusiastic about my new fixation .

That’s what he had called her, a fucking fixation. Like she wasn’t the brightest star in the entire sky, as if I wasn’t meant to spin around in her gravity for the rest of my life. In that moment, all the frustration with Lorraine melted away, and it bubbled up in anger toward my Dad for talking about her like that.

Next thing I knew, we were throwing punches, Riona was screaming for Dad to stop and my oldest brother, Robert, was trying to rip us apart. Dad told me to get gone, go I did.

All the way here.

“I don’t want to be scared!” She argued, pulling me from my own head back into her room. I shouldn’t even be here. In her room like this. Idiot .

“Too bad!” I said, throwing my arms up. “Too fucking bad!” I repeated, watching her flinch as I swore. “I love you, and I know you think that’s stupid, but I’ve been telling you since the day we met, and I’ll be telling you that until the day we die.”

“You’ve known me—”

I cut her off, “a week, yeah, I know. You keep using that as an excuse. You aren’t a game to me. This isn’t a bet I made with Landry,” I said and her eyebrows raised. “Yeah, I hear them whisper too, but you know what? I don’t listen to them. Everything they say is to make themselves feel better and it has nothing to do with what happens with us.”

The devastatingly sad look in her glassy blue eyes burrowed down into my chest.

“They called me Loner Lorraine ,” she said quietly, and I knew where this was going. “Just like you call Carlos, kooky.”

“I never called you that, not once,” I argued.

“But you’re friends with the people that do, who see me in that light. You want this epic love story so badly you aren’t stopping to look at the facts!” Lorraine shook her head, “people like us aren’t meant to be together.”

“That’s bullshit,” I said with a shrug, “I told you on the ride how I felt about being popular, that it’s just a show for everyone else. But with you, I’m just me. I don’t have to be funny or loud. You just… it sounds stupid when I say it out loud but you make me wanna sit in the quiet with you.”

She huffed, but I watched the corners of her mouth upturn into a small smile. “I know you’re scared,” I said to her. “I’m scared too, but you were scared of the Ferris wheel, and you still got on it for me?”

Lorraine peered up at me through thick lashes and inhaled slowly. I watched her chest rise and fall softly as she reasoned with her inner thoughts. I held mine, terrified that she would still send me away even after all this. I’d have to go sleep on one of Landry’s pool chairs in the backyard because going home wasn’t an option at the moment.

“Because you asked me to, because you—” she stopped, clearly frustrated with me.

“I held your hand, I asked?” I laughed. “I’m asking you right now to do the same thing,” I said. “Hold my hand, don’t shut me out.”

The storm in her eyes raged as she tried to work through everything. Still very conflicted about everything that I had said to her, I just had to wait and hope that she believed me—or at least that I could get to a place where she could start to believe me.

“Are you hungry?” She asked me suddenly, after all that silence, that’s what she asked me, and I started to laugh.

“I'm starving,” I admitted, my breath hitching when she extended her hand to me, fingers softly wiggling. I took it without question, my knuckles sore from the fight, but I didn’t care because the moment our palms connected, her warm touch soothed every ache.

Their house was twice the size of mine, and it was a wonder she didn’t get lost as we wandered down the hall and toward the stairs.

“Your parents won’t be mad,” I asked her as we headed toward the main floor.

She shook her head, “they’re gone for the week.”

“You’re alone in this house for a week?” I said, my tone shocked because she looked at me in confusion over her shoulder. “How often do they leave you alone like that?” I asked her.

“All the time, there are housekeepers around…” she tugged me into the kitchen and pointed to one of the stools at the massive island. The kitchen alone was bigger than the main floor of my house, with dark wood cabinets and fancy countertops that didn’t look plastic. She dug in the drawers and pulled out some forks before going into the fridge.

She balanced a small, half-eaten cake in one hand and two sodas in the other. I reached forward and helped her despite the groan of my sore ribcage. It was vanilla with pink frosting. It looked like she had been picking at it all night, and the scribbled white font on the top was half gone, but I could tell that it was her birthday cake.

“When was your birthday?” I asked her with a pit in my stomach.

“It’s tomorrow,” she said with a shrug like it wasn’t a big deal.

“Rae.” I stopped her from moving away from the island with my hand on her wrist, “it’s your birthday tomorrow?”

“Yeah, just like it was last year and the year before.”

“Were you going to celebrate alone?” I asked her and pinned my shoulders back, looking around at her big empty house, suddenly mad at everyone in her life.

“It’s just a birthday, Ryan,” She said to me and handed me a fork.

“It’s your birthday,” I argued against her blatant lack of concern. If she wasn’t going to be angry, I would be angry for her. “You should never be alone on your birthday.”

“I’m an only child,” Lorraine said, taking a bite of cake.

“That makes it worse! I have six siblings, and my Mom remembers every single one of our birthdays. If anything, she should be forgetting one or two a year,” I laughed. “They only have you to celebrate, and they’re not even home.”

“It’s fine, I’m used to it. They left me presents, and I baked myself a cake.” She smiled down at it.

“You baked that yourself?” I said in shock as the vanilla sponge cake melted in my mouth. She smiled at me, “It’s really good but that's also really sad.”

“Thank you,” she said, unscrewing the soda cap from the corner of her shirt and handing it to me before doing her own. “You know my parents may leave me alone, but at least they don’t hit me.”

I laughed hard, mostly because I didn’t know how else to interpret her statement. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I shook my head. “I kind of earned it this time.”

“Ryan, you’re a child; you don’t earn beatings,” She said quietly, “You might be the most insufferable person in this town, but he’s still your dad.”

“I’ll be out of there soon enough,” he said.

“If you finish your papers,” she reminded me.

“My tutor quit,” I looked at her with a smile.

“Tried to,” she laughed, and the sound created a burst of fireworks across my chest.

“Please don’t, I need your help,” I said.

“No, you don’t. Half of those assignments you’ve done on your own. You’re just trying to impress me.” Lorraine sipped on her soda. “The other half you don’t want to do because you’re scared .”

“Hey now,” I took another bite of cake.

“It’s true. It just wasn’t clear before. You don’t want to do any of the papers that involve any sort of childhood memory or family members. You avoid them.” She said it as if it was a matter of fact.

And maybe it was.

“I didn’t come over here for a therapy session, Starlight.” I hummed as a joke, but the darker reasonings of my impromptu visit tonight. I hated that she saw through my defenses and always found me hiding in some dark corner of my mind.

“Right, you just came for the cake.” She held up a spoonful. “You can sleep in the guest room tonight,” she offered. “But you have to take those boots off. If you get mud anywhere else, my Mom will kill me.”

I looked down at my boots, hand-me-downs from my brother Robert. They fit funny around my ankles, but they did the job. My mind completely glazed over the fact that she said I could stay here.

“Did you say I could stay?” I looked back up at her, and she nodded.

“Where else are you going to go?” Her little laugh was a breath of fresh air.

“I would have gone to sleep at Landry’s,” I said honestly, and she scrunched her nose up at me. “But I’d rather stay here.”

Lorraine stared at me for a long moment, the silence stretching out tight until finally, she smiled at me, and it broke with a snap. God, I loved her. It was stupid and it hurt, but it was the truth, even if she wasn’t ready for it.

“Alright, I’ll find you some clean clothes.” She said with a tiny sigh. “Stay put.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I nodded and went back to eating cake.

The rest of the night was spent sitting on the floor of the guest room with me while she showed me all her constellation books. She had drawn everything by hand and left cute little descriptions in the margins of each star she liked.

It was like holding a piece of her in my hands, and I treasured it.

I was still stuck on the idea that her birthday was tomorrow, and she hadn’t said anything. In fact, if I hadn’t gotten in the fight with my Dad, she would have been left to sit alone in this massive cold house.

Tomorrow, I’d wake up and make everything perfect for her.

She looked over at me with a soft smile to make sure I was still paying attention to her rambling about the stars, making my heart race. I owe her the perfect day.