“No, I don’t want.”

He scooted a little closer to me.

I pursed my lips in disapproval. “Not so close, Carter.”

“Well, we gotta whisper,” he replied, stopping when he was a foot away from me. “I can’t whisper from that side of the mattress, Leah.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever you say.”

He grinned in satisfaction. “So, tell me how awesome I am.”

“That’s what you wanted to talk about?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. I could go for an ego boost after our little spat and you wounding me with rejection.”

I let out a dry laugh. “Is that what I did?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, well, you are awesome.”

“A little more than that.”

“You’re the epitome of awesome.”

“And my good looks?”

“Your good looks make you even more awesome.”

He scooted a little closer again. Dropping his voice even lower, he said, “You know, you’re pretty awesome with your good looks too. Imagine what our babies will look like with our gene pool.”

My eyes widened. “What the fuck?”

“Yeah, I know, right?”

“Are you seriously talking babies with me?”

“I’m a fast guy.”

“No kidding.”

He scanned my face for a moment, his humour already starting to fade away. “In all seriousness, you do look amazing. I tried to look you up on Facebook about a thousand times just to see what you look like, but I couldn’t find you.”

“I don’t go online.” Unless it’s to stalk you, which has only become a recent hobby. “My world is private.”

“And nobody’s pestered you at all about… us?”

I gave him a strange look. “What do you mean?”

“They’ve torn apart my life to a tee, if you haven’t noticed. There’s not a lot they got, but I was expecting someone to come knocking on your door to harass you about our relationship.”

I shook my head. Nobody had done that. “No, nothing like that happened. You friend-zoned me, remember? We didn’t do things in public that had people thinking we were anything more. Plus, I wasn’t a popular girl. I was practically invisible, and we didn’t hang out in school much. Not many would have known to point somebody in my direction, and Rome’s parents kept their mouths shut, so...”

“When did you move out?”

“When the cameras started showing up at their door. I used to have to slip out early just to avoid them, and then Marlena told me it was probably best to move in with Mel because there would be a lot of chaos and I didn’t need that thrown in my face when I was trying to…” I paused abruptly.

He gazed at my mouth. “To what?”

“To move on from you.”

He nodded slowly. “Right.”

Silence.

Those were dark times. I didn’t even like to reflect on them.

With a sad sigh, he moved on immediately from that. “So, tell me about your school then. Did you graduate?”

Good. A light and easy topic.

“Of course I did,” I answered.

“Shit, time flew, huh?

I shuddered. “Ugh, maybe to you. I still cringe from all those nights in front of a text book.”

“Have you had your graduation ceremony yet?”

“No.”

“When is it?”

I chewed on my lip as I studied him. “Why?”

He shrugged. “I want to know.”

“June 12th.”

He nodded. “Okay. Anyone gonna show up?”

“Like?”

“I don’t know, your Aunt and Uncle?”

“No way. I haven’t spoken to them at all since we left, and that’s the way I like it. I’m not even curious to know how they are, either. People like that don’t change.”

He considered that. “Yeah.”

“How about you? Have you spoken to your dad at all?”

Something passed in his face I couldn’t read. He let out a long breath and shook his head. “No, he, uh… he died.”

I froze. “What?”

He shrugged, pensively. “Yeah, heart attack.”

“When?”

“A little over two years ago.”

I was speechless for a moment. I wasn’t sure what to say.  I stared closely at his face, but he appeared passive. “I didn’t know,” I whispered to him in my surprise. “If I had…”

“I wrote about it,” he then said, not meeting my eye. “You didn’t read it, so…there you go. Now you know.”

He’d written to me about it? Shit, I felt like a dog now. No, worse than that, because at least dogs were loyal and caring. Whereas I was just looking after my own heart, choosing not to read his letters out of some selfish obligation to move on. Meanwhile, he’d probably sought support, and I hadn’t been there.

I hadn’t been there for Carter at all when he probably needed me.

I thought of Ron. He had been a drunk since the moment I saw him, and he growled an awful lot at Carter, but there was… something about Ron that made me feel depressed. He had always appeared like a cold, lost man, drowning his sorrows away, as if trying to find the answers at the bottom of a bottle.

“Hey,” Carter then said, brushing his thumb against my cheek, drawing me out of my thoughts. “Don’t feel bad, Angel. You didn’t know. If I was desperate enough to tell you, I’d have come to your door knocking. I didn’t even come down. The family had him cremated. I was meant to collect the ashes, but… I mean, what am I going to do with an urn full of my dad? At least with his mom, there was a place for him in her house.”

I frowned. “He was a shit dad. You had every right not to go.”

“He was never that way,” he muttered. “He used to be great before Mom died. I antagonized him out of anger, and I did it to deflect my own feelings.”

Shit, he’d never opened up to me like this before. I was completely speechless.

“Death does things to people. It changes them, and I shouldn’t have blamed him for changing. I was just too stubborn, too hurt. It’s why I put an armour on all the time, keeping people like you and the Myers at a distance. Anyway,” he went on, shaking his head as if abolishing whatever thoughts he had in there. “All that happened in the past. No point dwelling.”