Hidden Feelings and Hesitations

[8] Haylie

A phone call woke me up way too early on the first day of Christmas break. I hadn't been able to fall asleep until nearly four in the morning and it was just past seven now. While I'd never needed much sleep, getting only three hours of it was bound to leave me with a headache.

My sluggish brain took several seconds to find my phone and read the name on the screen. Even then, I was sure I hadn't seen it right.

"Hello?" I asked as soon as I'd answered the call. My voice was gravelly, making it obvious I'd just woken up.

"Hey," Quinn's cheerful response sounded through my phone. She'd clearly been up for a while.

Several long, awkward beats passed. "Did you have something you wanted to talk about?" I blinked hard, trying to get my eyes to focus.

"Well, listen, I know we haven't exactly been on speaking terms since you left. It's just really been bothering me, so I thought I would try to do something to fix it."

A month without hearing her voice had been hard, but not even getting a text was worse. She'd been my best friend for three years. Walking away from that was difficult, but I wasn't going to be the one to reach out first when she was the one who started the fight. She'd apparently thought the same thing until now. "So you just want to talk about this?" I was starting to wake up a little more, starting to become more aware of real life, instead of the one I'd been visiting in my dreams.

"Yeah, that's kind of what I thought we could do." I heard the doorbell ring through the first floor of our house and groaned, knowing I'd have to be the one to go downstairs to answer it. Gavin—if he was even up—wasn't allowed to answer the door without one of us giving him permission and Maya would be in bed until noon. My parents were at work, since it was a weekday, so that left me.

"Hang on, someone's here. I need to see who it is." I threw back the covers and instantly shivered as the warmth left my body. Sleeping in shorts and a T-shirt in an upstairs room of an old farmhouse suddenly turned into a bad idea. I cranked up my space heater as I passed it and pulled on a hoodie before I thumped down the skinny wooden stairs.

She stayed quiet on the other end for a few seconds, but hung up when I was rounding the corner to the living room. I frowned at my phone, wondering why the hell she'd even called if she wasn't serious about repairing the tattered relationship between us. As soon as I opened the door, I understood why she'd hung up. She was standing on the porch.

"Quinn? What are you doing here?" There was a duffle bag at her feet and her phone was loosely clutched in her hand. Her wild, curly hair was a new color, but I couldn't quite tell if it was red or pink. I suddenly became very, very aware of how different it had been to live in Omaha.

"What, no hug? Not a hi or hello or won't you please come in?" she teased.

"Sorry, I just... Why are you here?"

"I told you. I wanted to fix this." She reached down to pick up her bag and a sparkle caught my eye. There was a glittering stud on the right side of her nose. When had she gotten that?

I stepped back to let her inside, my exhaustion making it difficult to process the girl walking past me. "How'd you get here? It's an eighteen-hour drive."

"Yeah, I know. I spent all of yesterday on the highway. Do you have anything for breakfast? I'm starving." She dropped her bag near the side of the couch and looked around for the kitchen. "I spent the night in a tiny hotel and they didn't serve anything to eat."

"Uh, yeah, I can make you some eggs. Do your parents know you're here?" I led her through the arch separating the living room from the kitchen and got a pan out of the cabinet.