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And he grinned. “Sweet.”
From there, he carried on, spending the rest of the evening cleaning my apartment from top to bottom, throwing out expired food, washing my laundry, folding it, putting it away, and taking out the trash. He watered my plant that thankfully wasn’t looking too shabby yet, probably because I had the nearly-impossible-to-kill kind. He even packed Kinsey’s things back into her bags and piled them neatly in a chair in the front room.
I cried as I watched that part.
On my bed, he found my Sol de Janeiro, Number 62 in the sheets as he straightened the covers, and he had to spritz it into the air, asking, “Is this what you smell like?”
“Usually, yes,” I answered as my eyes filled with tears all over again. “It’s my favorite scent.”
“Sorry,” he said when he saw my face. “I didn’t mean to?—”
He started to set it on my dresser, but I waved my hand, saying, “No. It’s not that. I was just remembering that last night. I sprayed Kinsey down right before we left for Oaklynn’s party, trying to mask the scent of marijuana on her. It was probably still on her when she died.”
Sitting on the end of the bed, I hugged myself and shook my head. “I can’t believe she’s gone. Nothing’s going to be the same without her when I wake up.”
IfI woke up.
Foster sat quietly next to me. “After Hayes died,” he said. “It was so hard for me to understand how each new day just kept coming. The sun would rise in the morning and set every night as if it was all business as usual. As if I hadn’t just lost one of the most important people in my life. I just—I didn’t get it.”
“You were forced to keep going without him,” I realized, glancing over sadly.
He lifted one shoulder. “You kind of have to. It feels all wrong, and yet there you go, waking up with the sun each day and growing another number older each year. But I think…”
Glancing down at his hands, he paused, so I leaned over to bump my shoulder into his. “You think what?”
When he looked up at me, he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered timidly. “I just think maybe, hopefully, he’d be happy to see what I became.”
“He is,” I assured. “Every night that he visits me, he brags so much about how good at football you are and how good you are with people, how well you help with your family, how loyal and dependable and caring you are. He loves seeing what you’ve done with your life.”
Foster nodded slowly and then sent me a soft smile. “I bet your sister would like seeing you move on too.”
“Oh, I know she would,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “She’s made a list already of things she wants me to try as soon as I wake up.”
“Really? What’s on it?”
“Well, there’s you, for one.”
“Me?” He pressed a hand to his chest and then grinned. “She wants you to tryme?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Stop looking so shocked. Of course, she does. Then she wants me to skydive and climb a mountain and visit all these places. Mostly it’s extreme sports stuff that I have no interest in whatsoever.”
“Your sister sounds like quite the adventurer.”
“Oh, she was. She was something else.” Spotting the bottle of cinnamon schnapps that we’d drunk together the night she died, I sighed. “I wish I could drink that in honor of her. Right now.”
Foster glanced over, and when I motioned to the bottle, he studied it a moment before pulling his phone from his pocket and sending off a text.
Tipping my head in confusion, I asked, “What’re you doing?”
“Texting my mom,” he answered, slipping the phone away again. “Just to let her know I’m not going to come home tonight.”
“What? Why not?” I stood when he did, and I followed him in confusion as he crossed the room to my dresser. “Where’re you going?”
“Nowhere,” he answered as he lifted the bottle. “I’m going to stay here and drinkforyou—in honor of Kinsey—since you can’t.”
26
FOSTER
