Let Her Go (Already Broken Sequel) {J.B.}

chapter seventeen!

     The drive to meet Justin feels long, and silent. I can't hear the traffic like I usually can, my tires on the road or my car pushing through the wind. I turn on the radio to fill the quiet, and it helps. I try to think of the last time I saw him, or the last time we spoke to one another besides on the phone just now. The time I spent with him and his family in Canada is such a blur; I can only recall bits and pieces that don't seem to make up a full memory. That trip was suffocating, parts of it don't even feel real. It's like one of those memories you think you may have experienced as a kid, except it's too obscure to know if it was real life or a dream you had.

     The air in my car is dense, so I crack a window and peek my fingers through the opening. I remember when I first moved to California and I was so infatuated with how warm it always seemed to be, even at night and even in the winter. It'd be sixty degrees in January. I'd phone Pattie about it all the time - Pattie, you wouldn't believe how warm and sunny it is here. And there's palm trees! Like you see in movies. Palm trees and people wearing bathing suits in public. Something like 'sixty degrees in January' is unheard of in Stratford. Now though, anything under seventy degrees is too cold. My fingers only last a few minutes before I have to roll my window up - the cold air pinches my skin. I guess things change.

     By the time I pull into the school parking lot, it's a little past midnight. Lights are off, gates are locked, and the lot is completely purged of cars. I grab a sweatshirt from my trunk, throw it over my head and walk through a gate held closed by a busted padlock.

     Campuses are creepy after dark. For no particular reason I guess, but being at school when you're not supposed to is always unsettling. Like when you were in elementary school and your school would put on 'Back to school night' - and you would see your school friends at night and play on the playground in the dark and part of it felt freeing and kind of exciting but it was also definitely disconcerting. Just that feeling of being somewhere you're not supposed to be, or at least not when you're supposed to be.

     Justin is where he said he'd be, in front of the library steps. I can see the outline of his figure; his black outfit blends in with the sky, but it's the lit end of his cigarette that catches my eye. I watch him for a moment. Quite honestly, I didn't think I'd see him again for a long, long time.

     "You still smoke?" I say; my voice breaks the silence of 12:26am. He jumps a little, and I can hear his breath catch in his throat.

     "God, you scared me," he speaks lowly. He reaches for the strings of his hoodie, a modern 'she gripped her pearls.'

     "Sorry," I mumble. He takes another puff, and I wince at the smell. "Your mom knows you smoke?" I raise my eyebrows, and he furrows his at me.

     He gives me a glare, but tosses the cigarette on the ground anyway. I crush it beneath my own shoe and he makes some mindless remark about how he'd "just lit that one."

     "Good to see you," he breathes, though his tone is bleak and cold. He looks me up and down, and his eyes narrow as if he's trying to put a finger on something that's changed about me.

     I shift in my stance. "It is?"

     He nods slowly, his eyes still wandering about my presence. "Ah, your hair. It's different?"

     I twist my lip into a half-smile and nod. "Blonde."

     He continues to nod, continues to stare through me.

     Again, I smile: my instinct within my uncomfortability. "Um, how are you?"

     His lips turn up into an ironic smile, and his head drops in amusement. "Did you ever think we'd be here? 12am, in LA, asking each other how we're doing to avoid talking about what we're here to talk about?" He speaks with conviction, though his eyes are sincere. It's hard to tell if he's still angry at me or actually glad we're here, at 12am, in LA, asking each other how we're doing. Of all the circumstances and places and reasons I'd have thought would bring us together, this is not one I would have thought of. Los Angeles, and my school especially, were two places I never thought Justin would be intertwined with.