Free Things Go Flying by Shari Lapena Page A

He’d been fantasizing about her almost non-stop. He sensed—from her worldliness, from her parents’ expensive car—that she was one of those private school girls from uptown, Havergal maybe, or Branksome Hall, and the idea both excited and terrified him. He wasn’t in that league but figured maybe she could tell. Maybe she was attracted to him because he was the kind of boy her father wouldn’t approve of. He thought of how he must have looked to her when she first saw him standing on the street corner in his black suit, pissed off at the world. This was the fond drift of John’s thoughts since meeting Nicole at the funeral. But the difficulty was that he wasn’t a bad boy, a rebel, at all. He was scared, confused, and cautious to a fault, like his dad. But he was also taut with desire and longing.
    Practically every night, he saw his father sprawled in his La-Z-Boy looking as if he’d given up. John couldn’t stand the sight of him looking so defeated. These days, whenever his mother said, you’re just like your father , he wanted to punch a hole in a wall. John had to fight against being nothing. Dylan didn’t have to fight that fight—somehow he’d been born cocky and resilient. The truth was John wished he was more like his little brother, which was humiliating.
    So John decided that if it was a bad boy Nicole wanted, that’s what he’d try to give her.
    He practised a few times in his head before he actually called her. “Hey, babe.” “Nicole,” he imagined saying in a gruff, sexy voice, which he could pull off if he was concentrating. But when he finally got up the nerve to make the call (while he was walking home from school—he had to be moving, and he needed privacy, he couldn’t do this from home) what he said was, “May I please speak to Nicole?” even though it was her voice that answered and it was probably her cell phone number she’d given him and no one else would have answered it anyway. He felt like an ass.
    But she said, “Speaking.”
    â€œIt’s John,” he said, forgetting for the moment how utterly common his name was.
    â€œJohn who?”
    â€œWe met recently, at a funeral . . .” he trailed off, hoping that she remembered. She was all he’d been thinking about, but a girl like her probably had so much going on she wouldn’t have given him a second thought. Why had he even—?
    â€œIt’s been a while, John.” She sounded ticked.
    â€œI got into some trouble,” he said. It was true—there was his car accident, his adventure with Roy, being grounded.
    â€œWhat kind of trouble?” Now she sounded interested, less ticked off.
    â€œI trashed a car, got charged.” He left this out there for her imagination to run with. “You know.”
    â€œCool.”
    â€œYou want to get together?”
    â€œSure.”
    He was thinking coffee, during the day, and wondering how that was going to sound after what he’d just said, when she said, “I know a place.” And the way she said it, so playful and suggestive, was so exciting he could hardly stand it.
    â€œYeah?” And now his voice was gruff and sexy without his even thinking about it, because he was thinking about being with her, and before he knew what hit him, he’d made a date to meet her a couple of nights later at 11 o’clock.
    â€¢ • •
    A FTER THE BANKER left, Audrey lay down on the couch with a cold, wet washcloth that Harold brought her folded neatly on her forehead. Harold sat on the couch with her feet in his lap, idly giving her feet little presses while he stared out the living room window.
    This was how John found them when he got home from school.
    â€œEverything all right?” he asked.
    Audrey lifted one limp hand without opening her eyes and waved him off.
    John went into the kitchen and fixed himself a ham and cheese sandwich,