It was a damn shame that I let it fall to the wayside after I got with Gina. Oh, I would sketch here and there—after all, it’s how I managed to get my ex to go out with me in the first place—but it wasn’t anything serious. I only picked it back up for real again after the crash, when I had to do something to keep me busy, or risk going crazy while I was in prison.
But from the look on Star’s face, she seems to think they are okay, and I’m not about to argue with her.
I shove my hands into my pockets as she flips from picture to picture. “Yeah,” I say, trying to keep the embarrassment out of my voice. She tilts her head back and looks up at me.
“I’m serious,” she says. “These are really good.” She smiles at me, and I kind of nod—because what the fuck am I supposed to say to that? Thanks?—and she turns back to the sketchbook. She runs her finger down the page with my drawing of my beach hideaway, and lets out a sigh. “My dad used to draw,” she murmurs, her voice so low I barely hear her.
She’s never mentioned her dad, except for the fact that he died. Not once in the weeks we’ve been working together has she supplied any other little detail about him. And because I’ve never developed an adult brain-to-mouth filter that actually works when it’s supposed to, I blurt that out before realizing what I’ve done and then try to kill myself with my brain.
Luckily, Star doesn’t seem to notice the fact that I’m an idiot. “Yeah. He died when I was really little.” She flips another page. It’s a drawing of a lizard this time, one I did when I finally managed to get my hands on some colored pencils in the joint. Greens and reds and yellows. I went nuts. “But the stuff he drew . . . it was awesome, but it wasn’t like this. This is real. It looks like it could walk off the page. You’re kind of talented, Ash,” she says, turning her head to look at me slyly. “I hope you realize that.”
Now I’m blushing like a twelve year old. Fan-fucking-tastic. “What did your dad draw?” I blurt out, trying desperately to cover my embarrassment.
Star’s face . . . God. It just splits into this huge smile, like just thinking about it makes her so freaking happy. “Cartoons. He used to draw me cartoons. Pages and pages of them. There was this one, this little duck. It was so cute. He used to do this crazy duck-voice that didn’t fit at all—he made it sound so angry.” She laughs, and all I want to do in that moment is draw her, all her long lines and gorgeous curves. My fingers start to itch with want. “It was so much fun,” she says, but then her face changes, turns sad, and after a moment I realize why. She misses him. She misses him real bad.
“I mean—” she looks down at the sketchbook, runs her fingertips down the edge of the page “—I loved my mother. She was sick and hurting and wasn’t able to take care of me, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love her. But my dad… All the memories I have of him are good ones. It’s . . . it’s different, somehow.”
“Do you still have any of the drawings?” I ask. But I already know the answer before she shakes her head and flips the sketchbook closed. She hands it back to me.
“If any of them even still exist, they’re in there,” she nods toward the house. “Somewhere. I was hoping I’d be able to find one or two of them, but honestly…” She sighs. “Honestly, I had no idea that the house had gotten this bad. Even if they’re still in there somewhere, I doubt we’ll be able to find them. Not when I need to get this done on deadline. We don’t have time to sort through every single piece of paper.”
“Yeah,” I say, because what the hell else is there to say? She’s right. It’s pretty much impossible. But still, I’m going to try to keep an eye out, anyway. She deserves to have something of her dad. And if I can, I’m going to find it for her.
We sit in silence, until finally the minutes stretch into miles and it turns awkward enough that I can’t take it anymore. “Okay,” I say, and force out a laugh as I reach up and rub at the back of my neck. “This has gotten pretty fucking grim.”
Star chuckles uncomfortably and pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them in a hug. “Yeah,” she says. “Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay,” I say, but even now, the silence starts to drag on and on. All I can think about is the fact that Star’s leaving, and that, no matter what I do, she’s probably going to end up having to leave Avenue without a single good memory of her family to take with her. And it sucks. Honestly, I don’t think she’s going to have a single happy memory of Avenue as a whole. Not after everyone has been treating her like crap, and I know a lot of that is because of me.
That’s when it hits me, and a grin starts spreading across my face. I don’t even try to smother it.
“Hey,” I say, and Star tilts her head back again to look at me, and every single damn time that happens, I get a punch in the gut. She’s so damn beautiful. In another life, maybe things could have been different. If her mom hadn’t messed up, if I hadn’t been such a fuck-up, maybe we could have been something. Something good.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda, I think. I can’t change the past. But I sure as hell am going to make the best of the present. I raise an eyebrow at her and set my sketchbook down on the porch. “Want some help pissing off the good people of Avenue?” I ask.
A smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “What do you have in mind?” she asks, and I know I’m grinning like an idiot when I reach out my hand to her.
“Give me some of those markers,” I say. “And you’ll find out.”
Twenty minutes later, Star has the lizard from my sketchbook living on her shoulder, and her smile keeps shining long after the ink has dried.
Chapter 10
Ash
There are six sofas in the living room. Six. Seriously.
Why the fuck are there six sofas in the living room? Who the hell could ever need that many sofas? And how the hell did Star’s mom even manage to get them in here by herself? Because she must have done it somehow. Unless she had a load of friends that disappeared into the woodwork the day she died, she did this all on her own. And I just can’t wrap my head around it.
My extreme fucking bafflement must show on my face, because Star just kind of shrugs at me and goes, “Yeah . . . I have no idea.”
We found the first one by mistake when we were trying to carve a path through the piles of stuff. Then we found the second one. That’s when we started to wonder what we were up against, and started climbing on the piles and digging through shit to figure out what was underneath. The answer? Six goddamn sofas. I’m dumbfounded.
But now that I know they’re there, I can’t help but eye one of them, trying to figure out how comfortable it is by sight alone. They’re all piled high with stuff, but they seem to be okay, and even if they’re not, they’re still starting to look pretty tempting, especially since I’ve been sleeping in the backseat of my car for the past month. It’s not the end of the world—don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have the car than have nothing—but for the past week I’ve been sharing it with Bruiser. And while having my dog back is amazing, and the big lug is awesome in many different ways, he isn’t exactly what you would call small. He takes up almost as much space in the car as I do.
Also, he fucking snores.