Free How to Love by Katie Cotugno Page A

willing the car to go faster. “It must be bad.”
    “I said I don’t
know
, Reena,” he told me, and I was quiet after that.
    We parked in the cavernous garage at the hospital and got lost on the way to the ER, the two of us wandering the corridors like some panicky, overgrown Hansel and Gretel. “This way,” Sawyer said finally, and I followed him dumbly down a freezing, fluorescent hallway, then through a set of doors and into chaos.
    There was a crowd in the waiting room, small but restless: Allie’s parents and Sawyer’s, Lydia with her wild hair secured in a complicated knot. Lauren Werner was there, crying noisily. And there were my father and Soledad, watchful and waiting, somehow already gutted like carcasses or husks. Soledad looked heartbroken. My father looked old.
    They got to their feet as I ran across the wide expanse of linoleum, and I saw my father’s eyes narrow in confusion: On the phone we had never actually established where I was or who I was with, and now here was Sawyer close behind me, throwing off fear and heat.
    Allie’s boyfriend
, I thought, for the hundredth time in the last fifteen minutes.
I was with Allie’s boyfriend.
    He didn’t have time to ask, though, because Allie’s mom had spotted me and was rushing forward, grabbing me so tightly it was painful. I felt my ribs scrape together inside my chest. “She’s dead,” Mrs. Ballard wailed. It was a sound I’d never heard before and, if it pleases God, asound I would like never to hear again. “Reena, baby. Our girl is gone.”
    I thought, very clearly:
This isn’t happening.
    I thought, very clearly:
This is our fault.
    I stood there with Allie’s mom for a while, let her sob into the limp fabric of my shirt. I didn’t cry. I didn’t do much of anything, to be honest; I felt frozen, bizarrely quiet, like something had been hermetically sealed inside me. I heard the whine of an ambulance in the distance, the whoosh of a door whispering shut. Finally Mr. Ballard pried her gently out of my arms.
    “We didn’t make up yet,” I told him.
    “Reena.” That was Soledad, coming closer, but I stepped away, out of her reach.
    “I’m serious,” I said, and my voice was louder this time. I was having a hard time getting what was going on. “We weren’t—we were …”
    I trailed off as Soledad wrapped her arms around me, stood there loose-limbed and bewildered while she whispered Spanish prayers into my ear. “I’m not
kidding
,” I told her, voice cracking. I felt my ribs start to collapse. I looked up one last time before I stopped remembering anything, just in time to see the sharp, jagged pleat of Sawyer’s backbone as I watched him slip out the sliding doors.

13
After
    Aaron and I have a date planned for Friday night, so I meet him down at the marina at the end of his shift. I stroll along the wide, weathered dock and find him chatting with Lorraine, a big-haired retiree from New Jersey whose taste in clothing definitely skews toward the noisy: At the moment, she’s wearing cheetah-print leggings. She and her husband, Hank, have been docking their boat, the
Hanky Panky
, at the marina for fifteen years, but every time I see her she makes a big show of telling me how Aaron’s her favorite mechanic.
    “Ree-na,” she calls cheerfully when she sees me, waving her straw hat in greeting. Lorraine treats everybody like a long-lost friend. “I was at your place the other night! Theshort ribs were di-vine. I told Hank he was going to have to roll me home.”
    We chat for a bit about the restaurant, how crowded the Intracoastal’s been. Eventually Hank turns up, ruddy and heavyset, and they send us “young people” on our way. Aaron slides his hand into the back pocket of my jeans as we head for the car. “I’ve got a pair of pants just like hers,” he tells me quietly, and I throw my head back and laugh.
    Aaron is appalled that I’ve lived fifteen minutes from the ocean my entire life and have somehow never eaten