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No, don’t sue me. I had no money.
Declan ran a hand through his wet hair, glancing back at me. “I don’t want to get to know you. I’m sorry, but I don’t.” Hell, he probably just wanted to get through this whole college thing and leave all these bullies behind, along with the memories he had. I couldn’t blame him for it, but I didn’t like how he took it all out on me.
“Why?” I asked. “Am I that bad? Do I smell? I know I have a resting bitch face, but—” What Declan said next stopped me cold.
“You remind me of her.” Five words. Five words were all it took from Declan to shut me up.
I reminded him of Sabrina? Well, fuck. No wonder he didn’t want anything to do with me. Sabrina was his dead girlfriend, whom he clearly cared about still. If I reminded him of her, it made sense he’d want to distance himself from me.
What was there to say?
For the first time in a long time, a boy had made me speechless.
Chapter Ten – Declan
I didn’t want to say it, but she forced it out of me, just like Sabrina would’ve done.
Sabrina was…she was everything to me, and then some. When I lost her, I lost the one thing I had in life that I enjoyed. She was it for me, even if she wandered sometimes. I didn’t mind, because I was always there, waiting for her. I would’ve waited an eternity for her, but it wasn’t enough.
It was never enough, and she blamed me for it. In that note, which no one even let me see…
I had no idea why my dad treated me like I was fragile. I wasn’t. Just because I wanted to shut down didn’t mean I was going to. I just needed time. It hadn’t been a year yet. How was I supposed to get over it that fast? How could everyone else move on with their lives, like it never happened?
Oh, wait. They didn’t move on. They just took it all out on me, like it was my fault Sabrina had hung herself. While it was true we weren’t exactly together when she did it, I still loved her. I was going to take her back. I mean, I knew she had wandering eyes, but it wasn’t until the week before when I’d found out she had other wandering parts, too. More than looking, more than kissing.
I wasn’t the one who killed her, she did that to herself, but I still wished I would’ve known what the note said. Why she blamed her actions on me. I never yelled at her, never got upset with her. I told her to figure it out, and when she did, I’d be there—because I was always confident that she’d end up with me.
I’d grown up with her, being Sawyer’s friend. I was always at his house, always did the things kids shouldn’t do but boys always did with him and Travis, and Sabrina was always in the background. Sabrina and Sawyer were the youngest of the Salvatore children; Mrs. Salvatore had Sabrina when no one thought she could get pregnant anymore. They were it, but it wasn’t until the summer when Sabrina turned fifteen that I really started to notice her.
And then we got to know each other very well. She was my first, my only. She was everything to me.
Now she was dead. Now Sabrina was gone, leaving me alone, permanently.
At least that’s what I thought. When my father had told me that Hillcrest was accepting a single female student as a trial run—someone whom he was sponsoring at Hillcrest, meaning he was paying most of their tuition—I had no idea what he meant at the time. Sure, I’d told him, I’ll room with her. Sure, I’d said, I’ll watch out for her and come to you if there are any problems.
Of course at the time I didn’t know who the girl was, or what she looked like. When I first saw her, I instantly knew.
Hillcrest had been debating on letting girls in for a while now. All-male colleges weren’t common anymore in the United States. Even though Hillcrest was private, it was still part of a dying breed. Finally the bigwigs realized girls could come from wealth, too.
But I knew it wasn’t a coincidence that the trial run was this year. I knew my father had pushed for a single girl first, just to test the waters. And after I saw her, I knew precisely why she’d been chosen. Sure, her grades were good, but that wasn’t all of it.
Minus the pink in the hair and the punk clothes, minus the skateboard, Ash was just like Sabrina. Even her eyes were similar, both a steel grey color, though Sabrina’s were more of a blue-grey, while Ash’s were like thunder clouds.
I never asked my father about it, mostly because I already knew the answer. This whole thing was a way to get me out of my funk, back to being happy. He’d done this, chosen her, as a sort of blind date type of thing. Crossing way too many lines by doing so, in my opinion.
You can’t just replace the dead as if they were never gone. No one could replace Sabrina, not even a pretty girl who looked a bit like her.
Pretty. That was probably an understatement, but it was the most I let myself admit. Sitting there, eating pizza with her, I could smell her. One of her soaps must be fruity, because she smelled like strawberries.
It was a good smell, and I hated that I noticed it. I shouldn’t have.
Another thing I shouldn’t have done? Told Ash that she reminded me of Sabrina.
The way Ash stared at me right now, how she gently parted her lips, her question caught on her tongue, made something inside of me twist, so I gave her my back again. I should really leave this room, go somewhere else and clear my head, but I had nowhere to go. This was it. She was it, and it sucked. I hated all of this.
“Why do I remind you of her?” she asked quietly, and I flinched at the sound of her voice. So light, so gentle. Ash could flip a switch just like Sabrina could. Sane and insane, kind and mean; two heads on the same coin.
“Can we not talk about it?”
