The Fable of Us (21 page)

“Come on, I want to see what you’ve been up to since graduating high school.”

“Since
narrowly
graduating high school.” He sighed as I continued down the sidewalk. After another moment, he followed me.

“Is that a yes?”

“I like how you ask that like there’s a hint of me still having a choice.” He gave me a look before ringing an arm around the back of my neck and pulling me along. “You were always good at that.”

I flashed my hands up at my sides. “It’s the Abbott in me.”

I smiled at him as we continued down the sidewalk. It might not have hit him the way it was hitting me, but Boone and I had walked these streets what felt like hundreds of times just the way we were now: side by side, his arm hanging around some part of me, both of us so in our own world that the one we were actually inhabiting faded away. Without knowing I’d been missing it for all of these years, my heart seemed to sigh with contentment.

As we got closer to the Chrysler, Boone pulled the keys out of his back pocket and swung them around on his index finger. “I gotta say, I was kind of expecting a repeat of the last time I ‘borrowed’ your dad’s car during winter formal.”

“Are you talking about me getting grounded for the rest of my natural life? Or my dad calling the cops and them finding us at Peach Point, steaming up the windows?”

Boone’s eyes changed when he stared at the car, his smile going higher. “I’m talking about the sheriff rapping on the back window when my head was buried under eighteen layers of taffeta.”

I felt my face go flat as heat shot up my neck. I’d remembered that night . . . without remembering the night detail-by-detail. Now that I was remembering it that way, I felt like I was reliving it by the way certain parts of my body were contracting.

“Memories,” I said, my voice high. And why couldn’t I make eye contact with him like he could with me?

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . you know, bring up the past again,” he said as he unlocked the door for me. His fingers brushed the metal of the door handle and lingered there.

“It’s okay. It’s not like that memory is one of the many we can file in the Forget and Move On box.”

When Boone tipped his head at me, almost smirking over the fact I wouldn’t label the first time he’d given me head as something I wanted to forget, I couldn’t contain the flustered expression I’d been holding back. Reaching for the handle he was still holding, I threw the door open and leapt inside the car.

Only to be reminded why one shouldn’t throw their bare skin onto a leather seat that had been baking in the sun for the past hour without doing a few taps to get used to it first.

“Hot?” Boone winced as I rolled onto my side.

“Scalding.” I rolled onto my other side, keeping the rolling motion going.

“Air conditioning coming up.” After slamming my door, Boone jogged around the front of the car, threw himself inside, and had the engine on and the air running before I could complete another roll back and forth.

“How far is your center?” I could have sighed with relief when the cool air rushed across my face.

“How far is what
used
to be my center? Not far. Or kinda far.” Boone threw his arm over the back of the seat, angling his head back too, before backing out of the parking spot. “Depends on your definition of far.”

“Is that your subtle way of saying it’s a matter of perspective?” I quirked an eyebrow in his direction as he gassed down the street.

“That’s my not-so-subtle way of saying everything’s a matter of perspective.”

Boone waved at the classic Mercedes that had just passed us after the driver waved out the window first. As we passed, the driver gave us a strange look. Probably because he was used to seeing my dad behind the wheel, not some young guy with hair tucked back into a ponytail.

“When you went to lift a car from my dad this morning, why this one?” I asked a few minutes later, after we’d made it from the wealthy part of town into one that was distinctively middle-class. I liked this part of Charleston better. More public parks, way more kids, and more dogs being walked on leashes. Not the kind that could be stuffed in a ridiculous-looking baby stroller.

Boone’s fists slid up and down the steering wheel, like he was thinking. “I’ve driven this one before, so I felt reasonably certain I wouldn’t destroy it like your father believes I’ve destroyed the other things in his life.”

I smashed my lips together and nodded. “That makes sense.” I smiled as we passed a city park stuffed as full with children bouncing around the toys as there were trees. “I was just thinking it might have been for another reason . . .”

At the same time, Boone’s and my gazes shifted to the backseat for a moment.

He nodded once. “And because of the memories. The good ones.” He’d left his arm draped over my seat back, and when his hand draped over the cusp of my shoulder, I flinched.

“Sorry.” His hand moved back to the seat.

“No, that’s not why I jumped,” I said quickly. “It felt good.” Clearly I was saying things
too
quickly now, as was confirmed by Boone’s expression changing into something I couldn’t quite translate. But no matter what, it didn’t mean anything good when he was looking like that, inside this car, talking about
those
memories. “I mean, I was surprised it felt good.”

Boone’s brows knitted tighter together.

I groaned silently and slumped into the seat. “Never mind. I can’t put together an intelligent thought to save my soul today.”

After another minute of shifting around in my seat, the growing silence shifting from uncomfortable to unbearable, I noticed the corners of Boone’s mouth twitching before a smile moved into place.

“Good to know my touch still feels so good it makes you jump.”

When his eyes slid in my direction, right before he winked, my mouth dropped open. “Good is a generous way of putting it.”

His eyes rolled, calling my bluff. “You might be paying me ten grand to pose as your date for the week, but that was for free.” Another wink matched with a roguish smile. “You’re welcome.”

I wanted to swat his chest, but I knew better than to touch him. Not with the way I was feeling—like everything he did pulled me closer instead of repelling me as it should have. “A little more driving, a little less gloating please.”

“Just so you know, my hand’s here for your feel-good pleasure.” Boone kept a straight face and lifted his hand that was still just behind my shoulder.

I ground my teeth together. “The only way that hand could give me any more feel-good pleasure is for it to never touch me again.” When Boone glanced over to check my expression, I hoped he found one as convincing as I’d intended.

After one final glance at me, Boone chuckled. “God, Clara, it’s no wonder your parents figured the two of us out. You aren’t just a bad liar, not even an exceptionally bad one.” Boone shook his head. “You are certifiably incapable of lying.”

His laugh continued to fill the cab, and though I knew he was only teasing, I felt my feathers ruffle. “I seem to remember getting a few lies by you when we were kids.”

I wanted the words back. I wanted them stuffed deep back inside me, never to be uttered again. From the look of Boone, he wouldn’t have minded that either.

All lightness left his expression, his laughter coming to a halt. “Withholding the truth is different than telling a lie, Clara.”

“Not much,” I whispered, staring out my window and trying to see what was happening right then instead of what had transpired in the past.

After that, we were quiet. Too much past had been brought up. The present couldn’t hold any more without bringing everything to a screeching halt.

Only a few minutes after that, Boone pulled into an empty gravel parking lot and parked beneath a patch of shade thrown by one of the big trees lining the property.

“We’re here,” he announced, staring and clutching at the steering wheel like he wasn’t ready for whatever was coming next.

In front of us was nothing but what looked to be a mass of undeveloped land, but behind us, just past the parking lot, I saw a large building surrounded by what looked to be several overgrown sports fields. My gaze ran the length of the steeple. “Is that an old church?”

“Yeah, it had been vacant for close to a decade though, and with all of the empty land around it and its proximity to the neighborhood, its past use was easy to overlook.” Boone’s fists continued to slide up and down the steering wheel, his gaze unwavering.

I took a look around. Though its location was just on the edge of the city, there were still plenty of houses well within view, and plenty more well within walking distance. This was a part of town I’d rarely visited—only when I’d been with Boone.

“Can I see it?” I asked softly.

Boone’s knuckles were so white, the bones looked about to break through his skin. “Of course.” He cleared his throat. “That’s why we came here, right?”

“If it’s too hard, I understand.”

Boone looked at me from the corners of his eyes. “I’ve been through harder.”

I swallowed and nodded. I knew he had.

After a few more seconds, he let out an exhale that sounded as if he’d been holding his breath the entire drive here, then he threw open his door. He didn’t say anything else, but he waited for me at the bumper of the Chrysler. I found him leaning into the trunk, his arms crossed loosely and his expression almost peaceful as he inspected the property in front of us. Whatever tension he’d felt inside the car was erased now that he’d given himself permission to look at the center.

“The Charleston Center for Kids,” I read the sign out front, which looked as though it had been freshly painted not long ago.

“Yeah, the legal people told me I should go with the word children instead because it was more ‘dignified’ sounding, but I told them I didn’t want kids to come here thinking they had to be dignified. The whole point was for them to be able to act like kids for however long they were here . . . not behave like
children
.”

I smiled as I read the sign again. Boone had put more thought into the name of this place than I guessed he’d spent during an entire year’s worth of high school geometry.

“It’s amazing, Boone.” My gaze swept up and down the fields—for soccer, football, and baseball—and ended on the converted church. It also had what looked like a fresh coat of paint, and the windows gleamed from having been recently cleaned. “When you said you’d owned a kids’ center, I envisioned something a quarter this scale.”

Boone nudged me before starting toward the building. “You wouldn’t be the first person in my life to underestimate me.”

I followed him, liking the way the gravel crunched beneath my sandals. It sounded like a musical instrument, something living and something that was happy to be alive. I hadn’t stepped foot outside of the parking lot, and already I was in love with the place.

Boone paused at the edge of the parking lot to pluck a few weeds popping through the gravel. “It’s amazing how something so small can take over an entire area in no time at all if you don’t take care of it.” He plucked a couple other weeds before continuing toward the building.

The wooden steps didn’t even creak as we climbed to the entrance of the center where, by the looks of it, at least a hundred kids had dipped their hands in paint before pressing them onto the walls. Little hands, big hands, a couple hands missing a finger, in every hue and shade that ran the length of the rainbow. It was an inviting place, somewhere I imagined a kid would grin as they entered, unlike the handful of centers and shelters I’d visited in other parts of Charleston. Where somber and melancholy had seemed to be the themes at those centers, warmth and joy had clearly been the themes here.

When I read the yellow notice stapled to the large front door—essentially announcing the center was closed and now owned by the bank—my smile dimmed. One of the few businesses in this part of town, in this entire city, that had made and could have continued to make a significant impact in the lives of so many had been forced to close its doors because it could no longer afford to pay the monthly expenses.

Where were the wealthy families who wrote checks at fundraisers and auctions like dropping a hundred grand for a non-profit that donated wool sweaters to homeless dogs in India was no bigger thing than walking into a gas station and buying a Coke? Where were the wealthy people who reached the end of the year and realized they needed to give such-and-such dollar amount away to charity for tax benefits? Where were they?

I didn’t need to ask Boone how much it had cost him to run this place to know it hadn’t taken much. Or not much in the scale of the kind of wealth I knew flowed through this city. I wanted to rip that notice off the door and burn it . . . though I knew doing so wouldn’t make a difference. The center was closed. Boone had lost it.

“This is really amazing.” My voice came out as a whisper because I was too choked up to say anything louder.

“Yeah, you said that back in the parking lot.” Boone riffled for something in his back pocket, giving me a peculiar look like he was worried I had a fever. “All you’ve seen is the parking lot and the outside of the building.”

“And it’s all been amazing,” I replied as he stuck a key into the lock. “Didn’t they make you turn over all of your keys?”

Boone wiggled the key a couple of times before turning it and shoving open the door. He smiled. “Sure, they did. And I gave them all to them.” He slid the key out and held it in the air. “Except for this one.”

“Such a rebel.” I passed through the door and waited for him to close it once we were inside. “Who would have guessed you would have owned and run a place like this?”

“No one.” Once he’d closed the door, he left it unlocked. “Not even I would have up until a few years ago.”

“Let me guess—it came to you in a dream?”

He shook his head as he flicked a light switch up and down a few times. The lights stayed off. There was enough light coming through the various windows spread around the old building for us to see clearly, but I didn’t have to check his face to know he was disappointed that where lights had once burned brightly, they now didn’t burn at all.