Free Secondary Colors by Aubrey Brenner Page A

isn’t it?” Holt replies, a self-satisfied mien on his face. “Here I come along ruining your night. How terribly inconsiderate of me.”
    I wait for him to pass, but he doesn’t move from the top step.
    “You’ll want to be getting inside, then,” I suggest.
    “I’m perfectly happy right here.”
    After an eye-avoiding moment of Holt silently judging us, Aidan leans in to kiss me on the top of my head.
    “I’ll see you soon.” He brushes past Holt. He has to twist his shoulder to keep from colliding with him. He laughs insolently until he sees my anger and attempts to hold back his elation.
    “You know, you really can be a—”
    “A charming, witty, devastatingly handsome devil?”
    “An asshole.”
    “Ah, yeah. That, too.”
    I slide the key into the lock and revolve until the grinding click of release. I push on the door, but it doesn’t give. It’s been a humid night, the threat of rain thickening the air, causing the wood to swell. With a decent ram of my shoulder, it yields. I step inside and shut it in his face, stomping down the hall toward my room. It opens and closes behind me. He didn’t get the hint that the conversation is over.
    “I guess this means we aren’t cuddling, then?”
    I slam my bedroom door and slump against it, listening to his laughter die off with each stair he ascends over my head.

 
     

     
    paint sheer enough for light to pass through but not reveal all form, line, and color
     
     
    Jarred from a nightmare, I shoot up when claps of thunder and lightning interrupt the silenced dark of my room. Traces of my dream loiter, sadness, bewilderment, and loneliness. My mom’s bed seems awfully inviting. Fat chance. She’ll think I can’t take care of myself and try to convince me to stay in Aurora.
    There’s one other option, the last option I want to depend on right now. Holt. As this ludicrous consideration takes a pit stop in my head, a window-rattler makes my mind up for me.
    I jump out of bed and sneak out of my room to the second floor, avoiding the creaky areas of the worn wood floors. At the end of the hall, I hesitate and pace the width of the corridor at his door. What if he’s asleep? What if he’s still angry with me?
    My knuckles scarcely scrape the hard wood surface, drowned out by the storm battering the house. I lose my nerve and one-eighty it. His voice pierces through the door, “It’s open,” summoning me inside.
    Facing it again, my fingers grasp the knob and rotate it slowly, praying my mom doesn’t stir. I doubt she’d appreciate me slinking up here.
    I crack it open and slip inside.
    Ascending to the top step, I scan the open attic with tall vaulted ceilings. Meredith converted it after my father left, to keep herself busy, decorating the sprawling loft with the comforts of home. Nothing frilly or overtly feminine. There’s a living room in the center, with a cushiony couch and chairs. She constructed a kitchenette and a sectioned off full bathroom. She got this crazy idea she would open a B&B. That absurd dream didn’t stick longer than the completion of the space, like most of her ambitious delusions. I used it as my studio for years. Then, when it was time to consider colleges, she used it as a sweetener to keep me here. Of course that didn’t happen.
    I almost forget why I came up until Holt addresses me from the opposite end of the room, “What are you doing here?” spotting him lazing on his bed with an open book over his chest, his incredible autumn eyes behind thick-framed glasses.
    Suddenly, the sky falls, beating rain down onto the roof unrelentingly, the room erupting with a blinding explosion of light, followed rapidly by the deafening roar of thunder overhead.
    I stare with pleading eyes, trembling like a child afraid of the monster lurking under their bed.
    “I-I had a nightmare,” I stutter.
    It’s obvious he’s still upset by our fight earlier, but the lines of his face soften with sympathy.
    “Come lay with me,” he