Days Like This Read Online Free

much. She surprised me. By day
she was a do-gooder, a nursing student holding people’s hands while they died,
solid and driven. By night she was someone who lived every second of life.
    “We have to
go,” I said, helping Molly off her stool.
    “See you
tomorrow,” James said, nodding toward me. I’d been helping James at a
residential construction site. Tomorrow, it would be done. Building houses was
a science and an art and a miracle at once. Construction was a lot like
architecture, and even though I hadn’t designed that house, I still had pride
in it. Nothing was there a few months ago, and now there was a house. There
would be a family. And it was all because of us.
    “Sure thing.”
    “You bring the
coffee in the morning, Mikey!” James yelled after us.

    WE WERE OUTSIDE Molly’s apartment
about six minutes later. That was the nice thing about a small town—it didn’t
take long to get places. She smiled at me, blonde hair falling in her face, and
I couldn’t help but smile back. Molly found me four months ago at Clyde’s. I
was there with two friends, Eric and Lila, who were in for Christmas break,
when Molly walked right up to us and asked me to dance.
    “There’s not a
dance floor,” I’d said.
    “We’ll make
our own.”
    Eric had practically
pushed me out of the booth into Molly. I didn’t think I was ready, but they
disagreed. They both went to high school with Cassie and me, and when she left
I guess I won the straw that said they would be my friends and not hers.
Strange how that had happened.
    “Have fun,”
Eric had said.
    “Move on,”
Lila’d added.
    Molly had been
a casual thing at first. She made me smile, made me forget, and that was
something I needed after Cass. I’d found my own way in the months after she
left me—architecture school, construction, friends, a plan—and then Molly. Cass
leaving may have been a good thing, because before that day, I was content to
follow her. Now, I made my own path. Somehow Molly fit into that, at least currently.
If I was accepted into college then I didn’t know, but Molly didn’t seem to
mind the unknown. She had her own dreams.
    I wondered if
Cass had found hers. That was part of why she left, at least the only part she
admitted to, and I hope they were worth ending us. I hoped too that it wasn’t,
and she missed me every day and regretted it. It felt wrong to want both things
for her, but I did.
    “You ready?”
Molly asked.
    I didn’t
answer. I jumped out of the car, went around to her side, as a gentleman
should, and guided her out of the seat. My mouth found hers and we walked
backwards, lips not parting, until we made it to her door.

    THE WHOLE BLOCK was dark and
quiet around me, save the sound of my engine and the hum of the streetlights. I
parked outside my house and it was already after midnight. Four hours of sleep
was better than zero. I slammed the door shut and walked toward the back of the
house to my apartment above the garage.
    Cass and I
used to sneak up there when we younger, back when we were “Cass and Graham,”
before I graduated and moved into it to wait for her to graduate. Before she
left me with the memories of waking up without her. We’d sneak up there in the
night and talk about nothing, about everything, and make out until my lips
hurt. It was our place. It was where I figured out what every inch of her felt
like, and where to touch her in a way that made her sigh, and how to make her
body tremble with pleasure, and have her cry out my name in that way that made
us both come undone.
    That felt like
forever ago.
    I shook away
the thoughts, and paused to unlock the door. That’s when I smelled something
burning in the air, like in the summer when every house on the block grilled
out. No one grilled at midnight. This was something else. I turned around,
scanning the woods for anything off. If there was a fire in the woods it would
be at our houses in minutes.
    Then I saw the
smoke. And it wasn’t coming