Free Ache for You (Trapped in Three Hill Book 1) by Nancy Beaudet

uncorking a champagne bottle. Everything about you just flooded right out. Your lies. Your truth.
                  I already knew everything about you, but I wanted to know more somehow. I wanted to meld your heart with my own.
                  You made me whole.
                  Driving does not chill me out. I hate everything on the radio. Every song and melody only reminds me of you.
                  How predictable.
                  I jam my finger into mute.
                  Silence is not solitude.
                  I was never alone with you. You remember that feeling don’t you, Flo? See I know you do. You have to remember it because going through this alone simply isn’t possible. I know you miss me too.
                  I can still feel you.

   How Could You? - Flo
     
                  Of course, I miss you, too, Mal, I mean God! How stupid are you? Are you just fucking figuring this out?
                  I followed you. Of course, I followed you. I will always follow you. That’s like my only job now. It is the only thing that I still know how to do without coming across like a total asshole.
                  I totally look like an insane person right now.
                  I’m still soaked. I ran away from this school. A good-old college dropout who couldn’t even take three weeks of being bossed around and corrected in class. I don’t like to listen.
                  You knew that, and yet you were the only one who looked disappointed when I showed up to tell you that I quit. I quit college, and I quit my classes. My heart wasn’t in it.
                  You said that you understood that but still, you were against it.
                  “I want you to have a future kid,” you said, and I screamed something rude at you for calling me kid . “If the teacher is saying that you’re doing something wrong, fix it.”
                  Mal’s wise words of wisdom: fix it. Just like that.
                  As if I had any control of the situation. The prick teaching English told me to write, so I did. I wrote an essay that ended up being a column because my voice just flows like that. I can’t help it.
                  Couldn’t help it. Not can’t. Once again not to point out the obvious, but I’m dead.
                  I can’t write anymore because it’s hard to turn on a laptop when you’re dead. I don’t know what happened to my laptop.
                  I don’t want to think about any evidence of my heart and soul being neglected and or tossed into the trash.
                  Writing was my thing, is my thing. Fuck I can’t get this past tense thing right. I’m still here aren’t I? Still feeling and screaming and following you like a lost, love sick puppy.
                  Your classmates are staring. I guess the hot moody guy is a real sight to see. I can’t stop looking, any other face is a mystery to me.
                  Mal looks terrifying. Strolling beneath beautiful trees, one foot in front of the other. His hands and arms are swinging. He walks like a machine.
                  I walk like a baby deer ready to be hunted and eaten alive. I keep ducking away from stray eyes that look right through me. My clothes are still dripping water, and I’m freezing. I walk close behind Mal, trying to absorb his body heat. It isn’t working.
                  “Hey, Mal,” a beautiful girl speaks up suddenly. Her bright eyes say everything, she’s a busybody, blond haired, blue eyed and tiny. I envy the fact that she’s wearing leggings where she can be seen by anybody. I can’t even wear those things in front of my parents without cringing. Skin tight and revealing isn’t my thing.
                  She’s