Today is as stunning as yesterday: warm and full of sunlight. I sleep until noon.
When I wake up, Texy is in my room, curled up beside my bed.
Mom went to get her. She went to get her. Just for me.
I sit on the floor and cry into Texy’s fur. My face aches, and I’m sure I have some spectacular bruises. Shame coats me on the inside. I can’t escape it.
I was so foolish. So stupid.
Mom has left me a note.
I’m looking at some condos. Let me know if you want me to come back and get you. We should make the decision together.
Maybe tonight you can show me this game you designed. I’d love to see what you created.
Love,
Mom
It brings on a fresh round of tears.
Eventually I need to shower and brush my teeth. The bruising isn’t as bad as I expect. Most of it is along the side of my face. I leave my hair down, and you wouldn’t know a guy backhanded me at all.
I turn away from the mirror before a new round of tears can get moving.
Mom gave all of my computer equipment to the police last night. At the time, I wanted them to have it. Everything felt tainted.
But now I wish I could go online.
And then I realize that again, I’m trying to hide.
I whistle. “Come on, Texy. Let’s go for a walk.”
He might not be home from school yet, but maybe his mom will let me wait inside. Texy and I climb his front porch steps, and I knock softly.
Rev answers the door.
In short sleeves.
With a cast on his arm.
“Emma.” His tone is rich and warm, and I want him to say my name over and over again. He looks as surprised as I feel.
Shock knocks me back a step. Mom didn’t mention this detail after she talked to Rev’s mom. “You—you broke your arm?”
He grimaces. “Wrist, actually.” He peers at me. “Are you okay? Should you be out walking?”
“They did a CT scan. No concussion. Just bruises. I took an Advil.”
“Oh. Good.” He lifts the cast. “It’s a tiny fracture. It’s not too bad.”
“So we’re both just a little broken.”
His arm falls back to his side. “I think we were before.”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
Then we stand there so long that I begin to feel foolish. Texy moves forward and nudges Rev’s hands. He rubs her ears while she wags her tail and looks at me, her tongue hanging out of her mouth. Rev still says nothing.
Maybe I should go.
“Do you want to come in?” he says.
“With the dog?”
“Of course.” He pulls the door wide. Texy trots right in, her nails clicking on the tile entryway.
His foster brother appears at the top of the stairs. “Oh, sweet. A dog.”
Texy woofs at him, but he jogs down the steps to pet her, and she immediately becomes his best friend.
“Come on,” says Rev. He takes my hand.
His fingers are warm and secure on mine as he leads me up the steps.
“Hey, Matt, keep her dog company, will you?”
Texy is currently trying to shove her massive self into Matt’s lap. “Sure,” he says.
I’m surprised when he leads me to his bedroom. He leaves the door open though, and tugs me toward the futon.
“Should we sit back-to-back?” I say. I’m suddenly nervous, jittery about how this is going to go.
“No. Face-to-face.” He sits down cross-legged, much the same way he sat on the bench in front of the church. His cast falls into his lap, a stark white reminder of how much went wrong yesterday.
I sit more gingerly. Most of my muscles hurt. “Rev.” I hesitate. “I wanted to thank you—for—for what you did—”
“You don’t need to thank me.” His voice is hushed. Raw. “I feel guilty that I didn’t text you earlier. If I’d called—” He pauses. “It’s not an excuse, but I had a lot going on.”
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you when you were asking me about Ethan.” I swallow. “It’s not an excuse, but I had a lot going on, too.”
His eyes are clear, unflinchingly holding mine. “I know, Emma.”
Every time he says my name, it makes me shiver. “You’re the only person in my life who isn’t constantly disappointing me. I wasn’t—I didn’t know how to handle that. So … I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He reaches up to brush hair away from my cheek. “I know what it’s like when you don’t think you have anyone you can trust.”
I close my eyes and lean into his touch.
But Rev draws his hand back. “Emma—what you said to me about Ethan yesterday. When you asked if I was jealous—”
“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t. I’m sorry. There was never anything between me and Ethan. It was—it was all manufactured. I was just looking for someone I could lean on.”
“I know.”
“And I know you weren’t jealous. I know you were worried.”
“No—” His face twists. “No, I was worried. Very worried. Especially when I saw how creepy his text messages were.” He pauses. “But before that—maybe I was jealous. A little. And I didn’t realize until yesterday that I kept talking about everything happening for a reason, and I was waiting for some kind of sign, when really what I needed to do was stop worrying about whether I was doing the right thing, and I should just ask you out.”
I stare at him. “Rev …”
“Emma?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to go to Spring Fling?”
I choke on my breath and almost burst out laughing. “You want our first date to be a school dance?”
Pink colors his cheeks. “Well. I was going to ask if you wanted to eat chicken nuggets beside a church, but that seems so last week—”
I giggle. “Yes. To both.”
He strokes my cheek again. I reach up to cover his hand with my own, and I remember the cast.
I pull his hand down and trace my fingers over the backs of his. “I can’t believe you broke your wrist,” I say. “You hit him that hard?”
“I wanted to hit him harder.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Yesterday, I wanted to cut it off. Today it’s better.”
I look up at him. “Can I sign it?”
He smiles. “Sure. I think there are some Sharpies in the desk.”
There are three. Red, blue, and black. I lean down over his arm. “Do you care what I write?”
“Nope. Write, draw, whatever.”
I put the blue pen against the cast. He strokes my hair as I write, and it feels so good that I want to write a novel on his cast.
But then I stop and look up at him. “What does Rev mean? You started to tell me, but then you never finished.”
“Oh.” He blushes again, and looks away.
“Is it from the Bible?” I say. “Like … the Book of Revelation or something?”
“No.” He smiles. “But that’s a good guess.”
His room is so quiet, and the air between us is so peaceful. Any tension that existed is gone. I never want to leave. “Is it short for Reverend? Like a religious person?”
“No.”
“Is it short for—”
His mouth quirks up. “Do you want to keep guessing, or should I tell you?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s silly. I was seven.”
“Tell me.”
“Okay.” He holds out his arm. “You keep writing.”
I do. He talks.
“It was something I heard Dad say. At dinner. He’s a college professor, mostly political science, so he’s always talking about something. When I first came here, I barely spoke at all, but I listened to everything. He repeated a quote. ‘The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.’ ” He pauses. “I had just gotten away from my father. The only verses I knew were from the Bible. I held that quote in my head and said it to myself over and over again.”
I stop writing and stare at him. “Revolution.”
“Yes.” He pauses, then gives me a teasing smile. “But you can call me Rev.”
“I love that.” I continue drawing on the cast, creating large block letters. “Who said it?”
“Che Guevara. He was big on radical change.”
I sit back. “Look. What do you think?”
He looks down. The smile disappears, but the look that replaces it is not unhappy. “You wrote ‘Fearless.’ ”
“Is it okay?”
He raps his fingertips against the cast. “Yes.”
“Are you going to keep wearing short sleeves so people can see it?” My voice is gently teasing, but it’s a genuine question.
He hesitates.
“You don’t have to,” I say.
“No. No, I want to.” He runs an aggravated hand through his hair. “I think—for so long, I was ashamed of the scars. I saw them as a mark of all the ways I failed my father. I didn’t want anyone else to know how terrible I really was.”
I take his good hand in both of mine. “Rev.”
“When I was in the hospital getting the cast, a nurse said to me, ‘You look like you survived someone pretty terrible, son.’ ” He pauses. “And other people have said that to me before. But yesterday—after seeing my father—”
“You saw your father?” I almost fall off the couch.
“Yes—I don’t want to talk about him. He doesn’t deserve any more of my attention. But when that nurse said that, I realized she was right. He gave me these scars. I survived him.”
“You did,” I say.
He stretches out his arms. “The only thing I hate is the verse. People see it, and they start to read it, and then I have to—”
“Here. I’ll fix that.” I uncap the black Sharpie. I put the tip against his arm.
He holds very still. My eyes flick up. “Is this okay?”
His eyes are very close. He nods.
I write. Our breathing is loud in the space between us.
“What are you writing?” he whispers.
“I’m turning his marks into a line of barbed wire. And then above that, I’m writing, ‘The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe—’ ”
He catches my face. Presses his lips to mine. His kiss is slow and patient, just like him. A brush of lips, followed by more.
When he draws back, just a bit, I smile. “I wasn’t done.”
“Sorry.” He offers his arm again.
“Oh, I can finish that later.” I blush and cap the marker. “I meant I wasn’t done kissing you.”
Then I pull him back against me, and meet his lips with mine.
