Life Lines

20: The Puppy That Never Went Home

Chapter Twenty

That meant a whole something different to me than it did for him. Like Jesse said, he was still completely clueless, even his double showed no sign of what I wanted or even what he claimed to have felt. Why were guys such meat heads?

"See, that just doesn't work for me. I have friends. I have a best friend and he's sitting in there waiting for me. Granted he's a sex crazed teenager but he was still there for me just like he is now. He didn't abandon me when I needed him and certainly not when a new, shiny group of stuck up friends came along."

"That's not fair. You know the only reason I stayed away was because I was commanded to."

"That doesn't mean anything to me. You made it that way. You pushed us all away, pretending like we didn't exist to you anymore. How did you expect it to be? If you were alone you made yourself that way."

"I know that but by Saturday, everything will be fine. I can finally tell you why..."

"I don't care why. It happened, it's done, now you have to deal with the consequences. Did you honestly think we were just going to fall back in where we were? It doesn't happen that way."

"Lots of people spend years apart and when they see each other again..."

"I've seen you. I saw you everyday during the school year and periodically during the summer. It's not like you weren't there."

"I might as well have been invisible. I couldn't talk to you."

"Speaking of that, how are you here, right now, if you couldn't be here just a few days ago?"

"You're turning Elite."

"It's not that simple."

"Yes it is. Look." He pointed at my chest, right where my heart was. "Go ahead."

"I am not looking with you here. That would be weird."

"Why? I've seen you naked before."

"When we were like four! I'm pretty sure the topography has changed since then. A lot."

This time both him and the double were smiling, although the double was more like grinning...

"I'm going back inside now. Go home."

"Wait." He pulled me to a stop again and forced me to turn around and look at him. "At least tell me where you got these."

He held up what looked to be a solid, white stone. Like the ones you'd find at a rocky beach. I had a ton of them from Pebble Beach, California. My mother and I used to go stone hunting when my dad played the tournament there.

I shrugged. "I haven't seen that before in my life."

"It was next to your clutch in the kitchen."

My eyes grew wide. "You stole something from my house? I can't believe you!" Like with the faux rock I tried to snatch that one back too.

"Answer the question."

He held it out of my reach but still for me to see. "I don't know, Cecil. Let me see it."

He slowly lowered his hand when he realized I wouldn't try and snatch it just yet. I uncurled his fingers from around the stone and looked it over. I picked it up out of his hand and it was then that I noticed that it was actually two stones that fit perfectly together, not one.

"Huh. Neat."

"No, Tally. Not neat. These are kissing stones."

"Yeah I don't know what that means."