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Sitting beside me on the couch, Avery cringed as she glanced at the wall clock. “They’ve been gone an awful long time.”
I nodded slowly. “Yep.”
Calla had returned from visiting family that morning. Upon hearing the news, she’d texted and made her way over from the dorms not too long after the boys left. She sat in the recliner, brows knitted. “Why are you guys worried about how long it’s taking?”
“Well, there’s a good chance they might kill each other. Cam is not happy about me and Jase being together—”
“Wait. What?” She sat forward, eyes popping wide. “You and Jase are together? When in the holy hell did this happen?”
I picked up the glass of sweet tea. “Uh, it happened last week.”
“But I saw you on Wednesday! Did you not think about telling me?”
Cheeks burning, I glanced at Avery. She focused on the wall. Totally unhelpful. “It just didn’t come up and it had just happened, so I was still feeling the, uh, freshness.”
“Freshness?” Avery murmured.
“Wow.” Calla curled her legs up. “Way to go, Teresa. He’s a hottie-mc-hotters.”
I laughed. “Yes, he is.”
“I love your brother with all my heart,” Avery said, twisting the ends of her hair around her slender fingers. Her cheeks flushed, blending the freckles. “But Jase is . . . he’s something else. I mean, I’ve always been a little intimidated by him.”
“Really?”
She let go of her hair. “Yep. He just always looks so intense, like . . .”
“Like one night with him would change your life?” Calla suggested with a grin. “I’m pretty sure I’ve said the same thing about him.”
I wouldn’t know since I hadn’t made it that far with him, but what I had experienced with him really backed what Calla was saying. I turned my gaze to the tea, oddly proud that I could sit there and call him mine, which was weird. I never felt that way before about someone.
In the silence that followed, I knew what everyone was thinking about. Debbie. Even though we all could talk about other things and laugh, what had happened lingered at the edge of every thought.
“I don’t know why she did it,” I said, only realizing I said it out loud when both girls looked at me. “I don’t understand.”
“Sometimes you never understand,” Calla said, stretching out her legs. A pinched, sad look crossed her face. “More often than not, it’s not just one thing that sends a person over the edge. It’s several things.”
Avery nodded as she fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist. “It’s true. A lot of stuff builds up and while it might be one thing that topples the person over, it’s really a lot of things, big and small.”
“I get that, but Debbie was a happy girl. Except for breaking up with Erik, she was okay.”
“But how happy could she be if she stayed with him so long?” Avery asked. “And I don’t mean she was bad for being with him, but that’s how many years of being treated like that?”
She had a good point.
“We don’t know what other issues she might have had.” Calla paused, casting her attention to her hands she folded in her lap. “My mom killed herself.”
I pressed the heel of my hand to my chest as I exchanged a look with Avery. “What?”
Calla ducked her chin as she nibbled on her lower lip. “Well, not like Debbie. She didn’t do it just one night. She did it over the course of several years.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that, Cal.” Setting the tea aside, I picked up a pillow and pressed it against my tummy. “How?”
“She drank and drugged herself to death. It wasn’t an accident,” she said, looking up. “My mom didn’t want to live. She just chose the passive way out. Anyway, no one really knew she was like that. She had everyone fooled. I’m not saying Debbie wanted out for a long time, but you just don’t know.”
