Free The Truth about Us by Janet Gurtler

my brother and maybe a little softer than you seem. Wilf likes you. That counts for something.” He bends his head, but the blush is visible on his cheeks. “I don’t know what happened to you or why you’re here. Maybe someday you’ll tell me.” He smiles again, and it’s lopsided, but his whole demeanor shifts. He’s good-looking, but when he smiles…my heartbeat pounds.
    â€œMaybe not,” I say, even though I’m about ready to tell him anything he wants to know.
    â€œIs she sick?” he asks. “Your mom?”
    I lower my gaze. Blink. Blink. Blink. No one asks. No one talks about my mom. “Kind of,” I say softly.
    He watches me, his head tilted, his eyes soft. “That’s rough,” he says.
    I blink some more, resisting the urge to cry all over again. Two words. Nice ones, but I don’t cry in front of people. Well, I usually don’t. I smile to keep myself from blurting out the whole story. He seems like a good listener. But I can’t. We. Don’t. Talk. About. It.
    â€œMy mom works like a dog. My stepdad made sure of that. Such. A. Jerk. ” He shifts from foot to foot and attempts another smile, but it doesn’t last.
    I recognize the anger in his eyes. He sees me recognize it, understand it, and then he looks away. “Anyways, who does that?” He takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out.
    â€œI don’t know,” I say honestly. “I don’t know.” The walls of Stella’s office feel like they’re getting smaller. The air is harder to breathe.
    â€œWe moved to Tadita. To start over.” Flynn flicks his hair back with his hand. “Too much information. Sorry. I don’t usually go on about it.”
    â€œNo,” I say quickly, and without thinking, I reach out and touch his hand. The hand that moved back his hair. I want to touch his hair. I drop my hand to my side before I do anything stupid with it.
    I could tell him the truth. Right here. Somehow, I know I can trust him. How it makes me feel. Terrible. Lonely. But it’s so ingrained in me not to say anything, to pretend everything is fine, that I swallow the words. And say nothing.
    Flynn clears his throat. “Well, I guess we’re here for different reasons.”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œFor sure we’re both sorry asses,” he says and raises both eyebrows, joking around.
    â€œYou have no idea,” I admit, “what a sorry ass I am.”
    His expression changes. Gets serious again. “I worried for you the other night. When Braxton drove you home. Wandering around by yourself like that. Getting in the car. We could have been anybody. Guys who weren’t so nice.”
    â€œSometimes I do stupid things,” I admit. I bend my head, remembering some of my other stupid human tricks. “It’s like I’m testing myself or something,” I say softly.
    I think about the stupid dress I ordered. How much it cost and what the people around here could do with all that money. I think about drinking with Nance and stealing a T-shirt from Abercrombie a while ago, just for the rush, just to see if I’d get caught. I’d almost wanted to. But I didn’t. All the bad decisions. And that’s only covering the last couple of weeks.
    He presses his lips together and takes a step closer to me. “Be careful, Jess. Okay?”
    I can barely breathe. I have an urge to confess that sometimes I don’t even know who I am anymore. That sometimes I’m so caught up in pretending to be someone else that I don’t feel anything at all. And that’s why I test myself. To see if I’m still alive.
    â€œI wish I had a little brother,” I say instead of blurting out the rest.
    â€œI’ll share him,” he says. “As long as you don’t lose him again.”
    I cover my smile with my hand. “Deal,” I say.
    We’re staring at each other again. As if