This Time Tomorrow

This Time Tomorrow: Prologue

The last time Odynn Palladino said “trust me” with that look on his face, I ended up with a concussion and a broken wrist.  

Granted, everything had gone fine until Odynn had shouted that he wasn’t ready to catch me.  Needless to say I’d translated that totally differently in my head and had leapt from my perch at the tip of the slanted roof of a two storey house.  A house that had neither been my own nor his.  Truth be told I couldn’t recall whose house it had been or why we’d been messing around on the roof in the first place.  It had happened over four years ago.

All I remembered with vivid clarity was the look of horror on Odynn’s face when I became air borne, the feeling of my stomach churning with nausea, and the certain understanding that something was about to go very wrong.  Then there was nothing but white hot pain lancing through my head and my right arm.

To his credit, he’d tried to snag me at the last second from where he was perched at the base of the roof; had almost dislocated his shoulder in his attempt and nearly tumbled over the edge after me.  

Too bad it had all been for naught.  

I’d face planted beautifully, my forehead making impact a fraction of a second before my wrist.  It wasn’t until later I’d learned that I was extremely lucky to have received only minor injuries.  

Apparently Odynn had broken the momentum of my fall by grabbing the sleeve of my jersey.  It had ripped at the seam instantly, but the disruption was enough to slow me down the tiniest bit and veer me toward the sandpit in the backyard.  

One foot to the right and I would have been a vegetable, incapable of doing anything but dribbling for the rest of my life.  It was a sad fact that pavement wasn’t quite as forgiving as sand.

“Ha!  She’s hesitating.”

Murphy’s voice pulled me from my thoughts and I blinked myself back to the present.  He was standing directly across from me, leaning casually against the guard rail of the bridge we were on.  A bridge that was some 220 feet in the air.

Wind ripped at the navy blue parka he was wearing, and blew his shock of black hair around his face.  The languid grin curving his mouth had most of the female population in our class swooning, not that he knew what kind of effect he had on girls.  

No, Murphy was what you’d call oblivious to how good looking he was.  Blessed with eyes the lightest shade of brown I’d ever seen on a human being and midnight black hair that framed a near symmetrical face, he was easily the most attractive boy at West End High School.

Every girl’s fantasy - well, every girl who’d never gotten the chance to know him.  Which made me part of the minority, considering we ran in the same circles.  After spending the last three years associating with him, I could say with much confidence that I would never, ever, look at Murphy with lust in my eyes.  Sisterly affection was as far as I was willing to go.

“At least she’s hesitating this time,” Davis said beside me.

I glanced over at him with an arched eyebrow.

“Don’t I always hesitate?” I asked, though I shouldn’t have.

Davis had a tendency to answer any and all questions thrown his way, whether they be rhetorical or not.  And for lack of a better way to put it - blunt honesty, thy name be Davis Azure.

He snorted and shifted his weight, nudging me in the process.  At six foot two, he was taller than both me and Murphy, and had an impressive physique to go with that height.

But while Murphy was every girl’s Prince Charming, Davis’s appearance was more rugged.  Being half Tahitian was responsible for his caramel coloured skin and dark eyes, and his dark brown hair was long enough to curl around his ears.  He was West End’s star quarterback, and if he played his cards right, he’d be up for a full scholarship to the college of his choice.