Without Paige

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Eight

By eight o'clock, Miles and I were the only ones left on the blanket. A week ago I wouldn't have batted an eye at the thought of sitting there alone with him and watching the others run amok on the sand, but something had changed. Something that made my pulse beat quicker and my brain all too focussed on the fact that his head was still resting on my knee.

Not ten feet away from us, Trevor was running up and down the line where the water met the beach, kicking up a storm of droplets and wet sand behind him while Katy tried to catch up. He was holding her phone in his hand, chanting a tease about Jarrod's name flashing across the screen.

Liam and Keith were playing catch with a ball they'd found drifting in the water a few minutes earlier, probably left behind by a kid who'd either forgotten about it or lost it. Naomi was standing off to the edge of the sand, laughing at Katy while she pouted over Trevor stealing her phone. The sun was just disappearing behind the treeline, casting orange and pinkish hues into the sky over our heads. Soon it would get cold and we'd all feel the chill, but I knew I wouldn't care. Right then, I had very few cares at all.

Except that Miles' head was still on my knee.

I tried not to notice how long his eyelashes were or the way his hair curled at the ends in little swirls. I felt more relaxed around him, that much I was sure of. I didn't have the added weight of secrets hovering over my shoulders when it was just him and I.

"When Jarrod came over last week," Miles started. "You said you and Paige were never close, right?"

I paused, turning to watch Trevor hold Katy's phone high above his head. He was just tall enough that she couldn't reach, her fingers latching onto his elbow and trying to pull it down. "No, not really. We're too different, I guess."

"How so?"

Miles' voice was quiet, as though he was either being careful so the other's wouldn't hear or was trying not to scare me into silence. I bit the inside of my cheek. "She just... She does things her own way, I guess. Never really cared about what other people thought, and if she wanted to do something, she would do it. It didn't matter what other people would say or how they would react. She was always the star of her own little show."

He was quiet for a minute, "I remember hearing stories about her. Guys in my grade going to the same parties she was. I never met her, but I think Trevor did a few times."

I looked over at Trevor then, just as he handed Katy's phone back to her and grinned. As far as appearances went, he looked like the kind of person Paige would hand around. It didn't surprise me that their paths had crossed, but it did worry me. If Trevor knew she was my sister, I wondered how he would think about me. I wondered if his opinions would change.

"I don't know what I would do if Katy ever left like that," Miles continued. His fingers danced around one another on his stomach, catching on the edges of his nails. "I'm sorry that your sister did."

I met his gaze and smiled sadly. It was then that I realized, most people referred to me as Paige's sister, but Miles didn't see me as that. He'd called her mine, probably only because he'd never met her, but that didn't matter. Part of me wondered if, if he had met her before she left, he still would have phrased it like that. Knowing Miles, he would have. It was such a small thing, so insignificant to him and everyone else, but I felt my heart swell around the words.

Naomi screamed, and Miles and I both turned to watch her kick her feet out, held above the ground by Trevor's grip on her waist. He dropped her knee deep in the water and she ran back onto the sand, grumbling about the cold. Whatever Katy said after made Naomi burst out laughing, and Trevor fixed her with a glare that could have melted ice.

"I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't met you guys," I said, shaking my head. It was the truth, and I didn't even want to consider where I would be if I hadn't gone into Gabriel's Groceries that day for orange juice. I'd have never met Katy, never been introduced to the other's, maybe never have stepped out from the walls I'd spent six months building around myself. "I'm glad I did."

Miles sat up, turning so he faced me and pressing his lips together, "I am, too."

Keith missed a catch thrown by Liam, the ball sputtering to the ground a few feet from where Miles and I were sitting. I reached over and hit it; it rolled across the sand back towards Keith's feet.

Miles sighed, "Alright, I'm going to give you a five second warning before I take a page out of Trev's book and drop you in the lake."

"What?" I said, laughing.

He grinned, "Just keeping it lively. Those five seconds started two seconds ago, by the way."

I stood, kicking up sand behind me as I ran from the blanket. I stopped just next to Katy, gripping her shoulders and holding her in front of me. Naomi came up to stand beside us, arms crossed in front of her. Katy blinked, looking from me to her brother and frowning, "Miles don't threaten our friends."

Miles rubbed the sand off his hands, cracking his neck and standing next to Trevor. He hit his shoulder with his own and pursed his lips, "I think they look like they need a cool down."

Trevor smiled and nodded, "Oh, definitely."

The two of them started towards us, and Naomi, Katy and I were nothing but a barrel of laughs against them. When it became clear we couldn't push them back, we dragged them into the water after us. By the time we waded back out of the water, all five of us soaked to the point of chattering teeth, the sun was gone.

We waded back onto the beach, and Miles ran back across the street to their apartment to get us towels. Water dripped off of his hair from when I'd pulled his head under the waves.

When he came back, he handed one to each of us and we dried off our hair and skin the best we could. But despite the cold and the darkness that had seemed to surround us in seconds, I wanted to stay like that forever. With the five of us there soaked to the bone, and Keith and Liam still playing catch a few feet away, I couldn't think of a single moment in my lifetime where I'd ever smiled as hard as I was right then.