Slow Twitch

I liked the way she looked. I liked her confidence and the fact that she was sweet and smart and honest. If Saxon had met her a year before, before I had known Bre

“I can see Bre

“What’s that?” I shook the thoughts about her smile out of my head.

“Well, a lot of guys are just losers. And then there’s you and your brother. You’re kind of overwhelming, you know? Really good-looking, kind of bad-ass, kind of sweet, just really attractive. And there’re two of you. I just can see how she might have got caught up in…you two.” She tucked her hair behind her ear self-consciously.

I opened my mouth to say the next thing that I was going to say, which, honestly, probably would have been pseudo-flirting, when Saxon came back in. Luckily, he was too focused on his iPod to notice that Cadence and I backed up quickly and looked sheepish. Not that there was anything to look sheepish about.

“This is Folly. I think it’s their best, but you’ll have to listen and see what you think.” He put one earbud in Cadence’s ear and offered the other one to me.

I had to move around the table so that I was sitting close to her. She smelled good. Her skin was dark, ta

Cadence glanced over at me a few times and gave me that tiny smile, like she was hiding the second part of it so she could share it later. I liked her smile. I liked the look on her face. She would have been really easy to fall in love with.

If she wasn’t with Saxon. If I wasn’t with Bre

Just thinking it to myself, it sounded a little man-whorish. But the point wasn’t really that I wanted Cadence. It was that I had been kind of wrapped up in Bre

It was hard for me to put Bre

By the end of the song, I felt at peace, but also shaken up. Knowing things, or realizing them, didn’t necessarily make them easier to deal with. Not for me. I could understand being attracted to someone else, and wanting the freedom to be with other people.

But I loved Bre

We played a few more hands of Palace, but Cadence had a curfew and Saxon seemed pretty serious about sticking to it. By the time he got back home, I had dragged the old musty cot out and was almost asleep.

He fell onto the mattress with a noisy squeak of the springs. “You asleep, Jake?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry about this whole thing,” he said awkwardly.

I was glad that it was dark and we couldn’t see each other. “Why would you be sorry? Bre

“Because I shouldn’t have butted in with her when I did. I just didn’t know what the hell I was doing.” The silence stretched out for a long minute. “Jake?”

“I hear you,” I said into the dark.

“Now that Cadence and I are together, I just…uh, I realize what I was doing.” I’d never heard Saxon stammer for words unless he was hard-core hammered. I knew he was stone sober. “And it’s, well, it’s fucked up. I was fucked up. I’m glad you knocked my tooth out. I deserved it. I deserved more.”

It was getting unusually sappy between us. Plus that, I hated being the recipient of any of Saxon’s pity, so I smashed back at him with the biggest, nastiest weapon in my arsenal. “If I wasn’t with Bren, I’d steal Cadence out from under you in a fucking hot second.”

I heard Saxon pull in a sharp breath. “Dude, I’m going to kick your fucking ass.”

“Do it.” I lay still on my uncomfortable-as-all-hell cot.

It was tense and quiet for a minute. Then Saxon laughed. I couldn’t help it; I laughed too. Because it was so ridiculous and stupid, it was fu

“Go to sleep, you fucking asshole,” Saxon said good-naturedly. “And tomorrow, go see Bre

Which was probably not the best last thought before I tried to relax and fall asleep, but there were definitely worse endings to a day like the one I had. Bre

The next morning Saxon was still asleep when I got up. I went out to the kitchen and Aunt Helene was already awake with waffles and bacon for me. She clucked around and made a big deal out of making sure I ate what I was supposed to. She also had the picture album for me.

“You know, Jake,” she said when she handed it to me, “you’re very young. Just enjoy who you are and what you have now. There will be so much coming to you. Don’t be so worried all the time.” She patted my arm.

I got up and hugged her. “Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. And I hoped she understood all I meant when I said it; thanks for food, thanks for memories, thanks for giving a shit.

I got in my truck and roared away, driving a little too fast. The air was still cool since it was a while before sunup. Bre

I parked down the street, the opposite side that her mother used to drive to work. I went to her window, open like it always was since she liked to sleep in the fresh air, and sat under it for a while, not sure what I wanted to say when I saw her. There was probably no worse idea. By the time five minutes had gone by, I was so chicken-shit I could hardly think about going in.

So I turned my brain off, stopped thinking, and just went ahead and did what I needed to do.

I hoisted myself up on the sill and dropped in quietly, expecting to wake her up. But there was no one in her bed. I felt a minute of panic and was ready to leave when I heard someone else climb through the window. A hundred thoughts went through my head at once, but I wasn’t quick enough to actually act on any of them. So I was standing like a dummy in the middle of her room when I realized Bre

She put her hand over her mouth when she saw me and we stood looking at each other across her room for a shocked minute.

“Bre

She flew across the room and threw herself into my arms. Somewhere in the back of my head I realized that she must have been out ru

But that wasn’t what I loved about Bren.

I loved that she was herself, fiercely, and she didn’t pout or mope. She was honest and open and smart. She was mine in a way, but she was mostly just her own. And that was what I loved most about her.

She hugged me so tight, I was having a hard time breathing. “I love you. So much! I haven’t stopped thinking about you. And I’m sorry. The essay…it’s just random thoughts, you know? I should have thought about you, how you’d feel. I really like what I wrote, and I hope you realize that it wasn’t about how I don’t love you. It’s about how love can be so complicated and huge and beautiful, and how there’s enough of it for everyone we ever meet.”