Free Unbreakable Love by Angela Carling Page B

to the door. He still felt weak, but the food and rest gave him some temporary strength.
    “Please thank your Mom for me,” he said as they stood in the doorway, “and thank you for coming to see me.”
    Jennie smiled, but her smile couldn’t disguise her concern for him.
    “I’ll come tomorrow after work for a little while,” she said.
    Jennie put her hand on the door to leave but hesitated before turning again to face him. “You should ask someone to the dance. We could double,” she invited gently, trying not to push him too hard.
    Nate knew there was no one else he would want to take to the dance, but luckily he’d learned to think before he spoke. “Let me think about that,” he responded. When he saw the disappointment on Jennie’s face he backpedaled a little. “It could definitely be fun.” He continued to try to fix it. “We’ve never done that before.” Jennie grinned, letting him know he was off the hook for now.
    “See you tomorrow,” she said, finally walking through the door and out to the parking lot.
    After she was gone, the apartment felt emptier somehow, as if she filled an ever-present void that Nate hadn’t noticed before she’d come. All at once, Nate felt miserable again. He shuffled back to the couch and took his all too familiar spot. Sebastian hadn’t moved from his perch, but decided to take the opportunity to stretch and then resettle in the exact same position.
    To his surprise, Nate was worn out just from Jennie’s visit. As he’d learned in the last few days, rest was a healing balm and he gave himself to it. The last thing he heard before slipping into another dream was the whirring of the refrigerator running and Sebastian’s soft rhythmic purr lulling him to sleep.

Chapter 16
    Jennie came to visit him every day after that. Sometimes her visits only lasted a few minutes, sometimes she stayed for hours. Time passed painfully slow for Nate, but day by day, he began to heal. Finally, after two and a half weeks, all of the sores scabbed over and Nate’s doctor gave him the green light to return to school.
    His first day back was the Friday before the Thanksgiving holiday and three weeks before the winter formal. Jennie continued to push Nate to ask someone to the dance. In the final days of his sickness, Nate and Jennie spent hours talking about who Nate should ask.
    “How about Zoey?” Nate would suggest.
    “She’s a ditz,” Jennie would criticize.
    “Then what about the tennis player, Stacy?” He would try again.
    “She thinks the world revolves around her,” Jennie would protest.
    “Then who do you suggest?” Nate would ask pointedly.
    “I don’t know,” Jennie would confess. Immediately after, Nate would try another name and Jennie would find some reason that she wasn’t good enough. After awhile Nate would ask playfully, “Is there no one good enough for your best friend?” and then the truth would hit Jennie; she didn’t feel like anyone was good enough for Nate. Of course, she never admitted it to him; instead, she would carefully redirect the conversation to some other meaningless topic and Nate would let her, knowing he was putting off the inevitable.
    Now as Nate walked the campus he knew the days were slipping by, and if he was going to ask anyone to the dance, it had to be soon. During all his discussions with Jennie there was one name he’d purposely neglected to mention, Aria Tomassi. Nate knew it was unlikely that she would already have a date. She was one of those girls who was known for her brains and not her looks. She was quiet, smart and essentially invisible at Palm Springs High, but Nate liked her. She had a great sense of humor and could actually speak in complete sentences, unlike some of the other girls. If she said yes, she would be the perfect date for the night.
    By the time lunch rolled around, Nate was ready. Instead of going out for pizza with Jennie, Marissa, and Braiden, he went to the library on a hunch that he might