“WHY YOU SITTIN’ IN THE dark?” Till asked as he crawled through our apartment window. I’d always wondered why he never used the door.
The power to our nightly refuge had long since been shut off. I had told Till no more stealing for me, but when he’d run an old extension cord over to the building next door, I’d made an exception for power. He’d buried it in the dirt so no one could see it, but he’d still had to replace it a few times over the years. He always made sure we had light and a connection for the small space heater I’d bought from a thrift store.
Little by little, Till fixed up that dirty, run-down apartment. His efforts wouldn’t have prevented the city from changing its condemned status, but they made it comfortable for us. He brought bits and pieces of discarded furniture as he found them. It was never anything large. I suspected he couldn’t carry couches on his own, and I was relatively sure he’d never told anyone about our place. I knew I hadn’t.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, quickly turning away to hide my tears.
“Um, I live here,” he answered in the smartass tone I had grown to love.
“No, you don’t.”
“Well, close enough.” He eyed me curiously. “Why are you cryin’?” He crossed his arms over his chest, which seemed to be growing thicker every day.
Not that I really noticed or anything. It wasn’t like I was checking him out or lusting over his body . . . daily. Nope. Not at all. Till was my best friend, the brother I’d never had . . . and the visual of every orgasm I had ever given myself.
“It’s nothing,” I said dismissively.
“Why are you cryin,’ Doodle?” he repeated, clearly not dismissed.
“It’s stupid.” I dried my eyes on the backs of my hands. “I thought you were going out with Helen Chapman tonight?” I questioned, trying to distract him.
“What? Who told you that?”
I swear, sometimes, he didn’t even remember that we went to the same school. Nothing had changed. Till and I were thick as thieves inside that apartment, but it was our little secret from the outside world—or, more accurately, Till’s secret.
“No one had to tell me. The whole school was talking about it.” I stood up off the cushions we had made into a makeshift couch on the floor.
A small smirk grew from the corner of his mouth. “You really shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
I let out a loud laugh. “Funny, that’s not the first time I’ve been told that tonight.”
He quirked an eyebrow and cocked his head, asking for further explanation, but I didn’t give it to him.
“You hungry?” I walked to the small filing cabinet he’d converted into a pantry. It was never loaded, but we usually had at least something in case we got hungry.
On average, we spent about two hours a night in our apartment, but on the weekends, we spent almost all day if we weren’t working. My parents never even bothered to ask where I disappeared to, and eventually, I stopped sneaking out and started walking out the front door instead.
“Stop avoiding my questions.” He grabbed my arm to stop me. “What’s got you hiding out, crying in the dark?”
I let out a sigh, knowing there would be no getting out of this. Whether I told him tonight or not, I was sure he’d hear first thing Monday morning when the high school gossip train pulled into the station.
“Daniel hooked up with Crystal,” I stated emotionlessly, but my chin started to quiver.
“Bennett? No way,” he said in disbelief.
“Totally true.” I tugged my arm out of his grip and retrieved a can of ravioli and a fork. “Crystal confessed.”
He took the can from my hand but kept questioning me. “Wait. Your girl, Crystal?” Then he peeled back the pull-tab and shoveled a spoonful into his mouth.
“Yep. She called to inform me that they were star-crossed lovers. She rambled about some Romeo and Juliet bullshit then told me they had spent a night under the stars in the back of his car losing their virginity to each other.” I summarized her words with my own personal bitchy flare of sarcasm.
Till choked on a laugh, spraying cheap red sauce onto my face. With the night I’d had, I didn’t even have a reaction to having been covered with spit and ravioli. It was merely the brown icing on the shit cake.
Placing the can down, he rushed forward. “Shit. Sorry,” he chuckled. Lifting the bottom of his shirt, he wiped my face clean—including a few hidden tears that had managed to escape my eyes. “Did you tell her that Romeo was no virgin?”
My eyes snapped to his. “He wasn’t?”
“Um . . .” He stalled, nervously rocking to his toes as his eyes flashed around the room.
“Till?”
“It’s cool, Doodle. Bennett’s got one hell of a mouth.”
“What exactly is cool?” I narrowed my eyes, but my cheeks began to heat.