Come to Me Quietly

She still lived with her parents in the same neighborhood where I’d grown up, just two streets over from my old house where my parents and younger brother still lived. She hung out here a lot at the apartment that I’d shared with my older brother, Christopher, since I’d graduated from high school two years ago. Christopher and I both went to ASU, and our apartment was near the campus. I was going to school to be a nurse, but God, sometimes I wished I could do something with my art. I knew it was absurd, that there was little chance that anything would come of it. That didn’t mean I didn’t want it.

She was grinning when she came back less than two minutes later.

“Feel better?”

“Oh yeah.” Climbing back onto the bed, she crawled forward to steal a peek.

I hid the pad against my chest.

“Let me see.” She reached out and tried to grab it.

I shook my head and held it closer. “You know the rules.”

“I know, I know.” She sat back. No one ever got to see. No one except for me.

From the floor, Megan’s phone rang in her purse. She leaned over to dig it out. When she rose back up, excitement had transformed her expression. “It’s him,” she mouthed to me as she accepted the call and brought it to her ear. “Hello?”

Turning back to my sketch, I tried not to smile while I listened to her talk to Sam. She’d been chasing that guy for the last month, ever since she’d hung out with him at a party our friend Calista had thrown in May to celebrate the end of last semester. One kiss and she was hooked. I wasn’t so sure he felt the same.

“Yeah… we can come… okay, see you there.”

She dropped her phone to the bed and squealed.

Oh God. Megan didn’t squeal. She was in trouble.

“Sounds like you have a date tonight,” I muttered, my attention trained on the motion of my hand.

“Not me, we,” she countered. “Sam is having a party tonight, and he wants us to come. I can’t believe he actually called,” she said, obviously talking to herself. “Two weeks and no word from him. I was beginning to think he was going to ditch me.”

Beginning to?

So maybe I was a little protective of my best friend.

I hopped off the bed and went to my closet, dug through until I found the little black skirt I’d tucked in the back. I yanked it from the hanger and tossed it to her. “Here… wear this. It’ll look a lot better on you than it does on me. You know it was those legs that tripped Sam up in the first place. I think the guy literally stumbled.” I pointed at her. “And you better make him work for it.”

“Oh, he’s definitely going to have to work for it. You know me better than that.” Megan held up the skirt to inspect it. “This is really cute.” She looked up with a grin. “Maybe you should wear it. You know Gabe’s gonna be there.” The last she said in that singsong voice that she only used because she knew it annoyed the hell out of me.

“Pssh,” I huffed under my breath, and she laughed because she of all people knew Gabe wasn’t really that much of a draw. Gabe was my kind-of boyfriend. By kind of, I meant he was a guy who wouldn’t leave me alone or take no for an answer. But he was unbearably cute and sweet in a boy-next-door kind of way and I didn’t really know how to cut him loose without hurting his feelings.

And he was safe.

She lowered the skirt to her lap. “You should really quit stringing that guy along. It’s kind of sad.” Her tease turned serious, her blue eyes sober as she looked up at me from the bed.

I tossed a pair of shorts to change into on my bed. “I’m not stringing him along, Megan. He’s the one who’s strung himself to me.”

“Whatever, Aly. You just keep telling yourself that. You always do.”

I could see the concern pass over her eyes, could almost hear the argument pass through her lips, the lecture.

“Just don’t, okay?” I said.

She blinked a couple of times, as if doing that would clear whatever picture she saw in her mind. “I just don’t get you sometimes, Aly.”

The party was mellow, just a few people hanging out on a Thursday at the house Sam shared with a couple of other guys. Most of us were out back, sitting around the pool drinking beer. The yard lights were off, the area cast in a muted glow from the lights shining through the bank of windows inside Sam’s house. Megan was curled up with him on a lounger at the far end of the pool, their voices hushed and relaxed. Behind me flames rose and crackled from an in-ground fire pit, and a few people sat around in the chairs that circled it.

Leaning back on my hands, I dipped my feet into the pool. Water rippled out over the surface, the ridges illuminated above the shadows as they lapped across the pool. Even at eleven o’clock at night, it was still hot. Summer in Phoenix was my favorite. It always had been. Heat saturated everything, radiated from the concrete and pavement, pressed down from the sky. Bugs trilled and birds rustled through the trees. I loved that I could be in the middle of the sprawling city and still feel like I was out in the wilderness. Peaceful. There was no other way to describe it.