Free Forever by Karen Kingsbury

whispered, “what’s all this?”
    “What?” Her mother looked over her shoulder.
    “Oh, nothing.” Bailey smiled. “Just talking to myself.”
    Her dad caught her eye in the rearview mirror. “Who’re you texting?”
    “Tim Reed.” She made a funny face. “He wishes he was going to dinner with us.
    That’s all.”
    Her mom turned her attention to her father. “Did you bring the salad?”
    “Of course.” Her dad reached over and patted her mom on the knee. “Don’t be nervous. Dayne’s a regular guy, Jenny. You said so yourself.”
    “I know.” She smoothed a wrinkle in the sleeve of her blouse. “It’s one thing to have a few words with him once in a while when he comes looking for Katy. But dinner? Just shake me if I don’t act like myself.”
    “He’s moving here, right?” Ricky hadn’t said much since they left home, but now he sat a little straighter. He was eight, and his blond hair was bleached almost white from a summer of swimming and boating on the lake.
    “He is, buddy.” Their dad gave him a quick smile.
    Ricky tossed his hands in the air. “So what’s the big deal?”
    Bailey stared at her brother. He clearly didn’t understand. “That’s okay. You can play with Cole, Mrs. Blake’s little boy.”
    55
    “I will. I met him before.” Ricky settled back in his seat. “He says his papa has a fishpond.”
    “There you go.” Bailey’s phone beeped again. She opened it and saw another message from Tim. Did you leave me?
    She tapped out her response. Predictive text was so much faster than the ABC
    method. No… but we’re almost there… ttyl. She hit Send and closed her phone once more. Not that she’d really talk to him later, but she might text him. Lately they’d been talking through text almost every day-this after six months of hardly hearing from him.
    Bailey was sixteen, about to start her junior year at Clear Creek High School, but if she lived a hundred years she didn’t think she’d figure out Tim Reed. He was a year older than she, and since January he’d been in a serious relationship with a girl from his church. Now, though, he was single and acting like he had feelings for her. Which wasn’t possible. Not when everyone in CKT knew he still had feelings for his old girlfriend.
    Bailey sighed and stared out the window. Besides, even if Tim was over the girl from church, the timing was all wrong. Bailey was seeing Tanner Williams, the quarterback at Clear Creek, the guy she’d known since fourth grade.
    Things had changed around Christmastime. He’d called her one night and bared his heart the way he’d never done before.
    She could still hear his voice. “I can’t do this anymore, Bailey.”
    “What?” She was washing her face, and she had him on speakerphone.
    “I can’t … I can’t be your friend. It’s too hard.”
    Bailey had rubbed the cleanser into her cheeks and stared at the phone. “Tanner, what in the world do you mean?” He groaned. “Take me off speakerphone. Please.”
    “Fine.” She clicked a button and held the phone to her ear, leaving just enough room so that the white cream on her cheeks didn’t touch the receiver. “Why can’t you be my friend?”
    56
    What he said next nearly knocked her off her feet. “Because I’m in love with you.” He made an exasperated sound. “Am I that hard to read?”
    “Urn … let’s just say you’d be good at poker.” She’d tried to laugh, but her heart was beating too hard. She reached for the washcloth that hung over her shower door, but as she did, she knocked over her facial toner. “Yikes.” She grabbed a towel, sopped up the toner, and in the process dropped the phone into the sink. “Ugh!” She kept her voice too low for him to hear. “I’m a wreck.” She stood the bottle right side up again. Then she grabbed the phone from the sink.
    “Tanner? You there?”
    “You’re not making this easy for me.”
    Suddenly she realized exactly what he was saying. “You’re