Page 34 of My Unfinished Heart

Jayne sits down. Then the game changes.

Not the baseball game.

Jayne’s game.

She glances up at me with flirtatious eyes as a slow smile amplifies the radiance of her face.

A few innings and a few beers later, I’m in Jayne’s apartment north of campus. We’re on her couch. My fingers are underneath the spaghetti straps of her skintight dress, and I’m just about to push them down when she separates her mouth from mine and says, “How long are you gonna let it ring?”

Both of our phones are on the coffee table, and one is vibrating away—has been for several minutes, but I haven’t been paying attention to it. “It’s not your phone?” I ask before seeking out her mouth again. I’m a little crazed for it. It’s been a while for me, and I think about Tristan way too much, so this is good. It’s healthy. I need it. Jayne was one of those ungettable virgins in high school, but that doesn’t appear to be the case anymore. The kisses are satisfying and deep, and I’m almost positive they’ll lead to more.

She laughs and pushes at my chest. “Just answer it and get it over with. I don’t think they’re giving up. I’ll wait for you in there.” She points to an open door, which I assume is the bedroom. My erection gives a thud in her direction.

She scampers off—all bare feet and blonde hair—and I pick up the phone, ready to tell whoever it is to fuck off. “Hello?”

“Archer Brennan?”

“Who’s this?”

“My name’s Matt O’Connor. My client, Westley Miles, wanted me to reach out to you to let you know he was taken into police custody earlier tonight.”

“What?”

“Are you Archer?”

Fucking West.

Asshole.

I sigh heavily as my hard on dies an almost instant death. “Yeah. That’s me. Is he okay? Where is he?”

The fact that I’m leaving Jayne’s house to go to a police station should say a little something about me.

Gorgeous Willing Blonde versus Angry Ex Friend.

Loyalty is such a pain in the ass.

I find West in a waiting area, one wrist handcuffed to a bench, sitting between a dude with sores on his face who looks totally strung out and a kid in a camouflage coat. In July.

West raises his free hand when he sees me. I reach out and take it. Our grip is tight. “You okay?” I ask.

He nods.

“What happened?”

He doesn’t answer, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes to shut out the flickering fluorescent lights. I look down at his tattooed hands, now folded together between his thighs, relaxed. He could be waiting for a bus. His jeans are dirty, and his hair is down, but other than that, I don’t see any indication of what landed him here.

An officer comes over and takes the tweaker off the bench, leaving me a place to sit. West doesn’t stop me when I drop into the spot next to him.

My mind is a hurricane. The storm started in the car. In it is everything West and I have ever gone through together. All the good times and the not-so-great ones.

We’ve always been opposites. I was a rich kid from West Austin, and he was a poor kid who lived in an old house with his single mom in Barton Hills. His mother spent most of her early mothering years working at least two jobs as a nurse to give him the best possible start in life. His dad may as well have never existed. I guess in that way we’re alike.

His mom, with the help of her parents, sent him to prep school in New Hampshire, which is where I came into his life.

Since then, we’ve moved through each other's lives with a randomness that feels fated. Two fish in a fishbowl—our world encasing us together in glass—sometimes far apart, but always swimming through the same water, unable to break free of each other.

It started when we arrived the same year at Cardigan Mountain School in New Hampshire as fifth graders. We were roommates. Chosen for each other.