Page 98 of Shine Bright

“Hi.” The short word almost sticks in my throat, and my hand clenches the doorknob so tightly that my knuckles turn white.

He shifts uneasily from one foot to the other, and I suddenly feel a little queasy. “I . . . was here last night. I wanted to talk to you, and you didn’t open the door.”

“I wasn’t here,” I say quickly, because for some reason I don’t want him to think I ignored him. Not when he came to me twice in one evening. I’m afraid to think about that too closely, but I hope it means something good.

“Where were you?” he asks, which is a normal question considering what happened yesterday, when I just took off. Still, I freeze, and my heart suddenly beats too fast. I can’t tell him the truth, it’s impossible.

“I was . . . walking around,” I lie, and that’s a really terrible start to whatever this is going to be, but there’s no other way. I certainly can’t tell him I was at Phoenix’s place. “To clear my head.”

Jase nods as if he understands, and I wonder how often he’s just walked around in recent years to avoid thinking, or thinking too much. Very often, I’m afraid.

“Can I come in?” he asks, sounding about as insecure as I feel.

I hesitate for a moment. Jase has never been in my room. Not once. Letting him in now feels strange, like I’m letting him into my head somehow. But I guess it’s time to change that, so I step aside and make space for him to pass.

I see his chest rise as he takes a deep breath. His shoulders tense, he’s clearly nervous. It breaks my heart a little. It shouldn’t be like this. Then I close the door, and neither of us knows what to do.

“Sit down,” I finally say, pointing to my desk chair as I sit on my bed.

Jase looks around, trying to hide his curiosity, but I can see it in his eyes. “I think you’d get along well with Zoe. Your rooms are almost identical.”

“All the rooms here are pretty similar,” I reply, forcing a smile.

“Sure.” He rolls his eyes, but the corners of his mouth twitch, giving him away. “That’s not what I mean. More like the fairy lights and how everything is so bright and tidy.”

“Maybe she’ll show me her room sometime,” I say, because I can’t think of anything else. This is small talk, but somehow it’s not, because he’s talking about Zoe, and she’s more important to him than anyone else. We both know why he’s here, but neither of us dares to address the unspoken issue.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says, slightly lost in thought. Then he seems to shake himself awake. “Listen, Lia, about yesterday . . .” He falls silent, and my first instinct is to apologize and tell him I shouldn’t have lost it like that. I have to bite my tongue to stop myself. I’m tired of apologizing for what I think and feel.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out. I blink in confusion.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, but I still don’t understand.

“Jase, what are you apologizing for?”

“Because I never thought about how all this was for you. Honestly, I didn’t give it a second thought, and that was mean of me. I was just so angry about Sam, and then so jealous because Mom and Dad let you do everything. You were allowed to do anything you wanted, they gave you money for school and everything, and—”

“Yes, and that really wasn’t fair,” I say, interrupting him. All at once I find it very easy to talk to him. “It wasn’t fair that they cut your allowance and not mine. And it wasn’t fair of me to give you the money to blackmail you into talking to them.”

Jase grimaces painfully, and my guilty conscience stabs me in the heart because it’s my fault that he feels this way.

“Yeah, that was pretty bad.”

“I thought it would help make things better.” That doesn’t justify anything, but it’s the truth.

“How was that supposed to make anything better?”

“I thought if you guys started talking again and could get along, then . . . then Mom and Dad would remember what it’s like to be a family. It was naive of me, I know.”

“I think they forgot what it’s like to be a family on the day Sam died,” he says tonelessly, but his hands clench into fists. I know his suppressed pain far too well from knowing my own to overlook it.

“Yeah, I think so too,” I say quietly. For a moment there’s silence. Not an uncomfortable silence, just a thoughtful one.

“Did you really take care of everything?” Jase finally asks.

I shrug. “There was no one else to do it. Mom wasn’t . . . present. Not really, anyway. Dad was always working and didn’t focus on anything else. For him, only his stupid practice mattered, even more than it did before. But Mom just wasn’t there anymore. And you—”