A group of friends tries to piece itself back together after losing its glue.
*****
It's a quiet October morning in Palo Alto, California, when the news break out--June Beaumont was...
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SOFIA
I was freezing cold.
It wasn't a common situation for me to be in, as I never thought I was particularly affected by the weather—physically or emotionally—yet there I was, shivering, teeth chattering, in spite of my warm clothes. It was already February and the low temperatures so far had been . . . well, low. Some nights, the temperatures reached thirty-three degrees.
The pouring rain outside wasn't helping, either. It had been a long time since I last knew what it meant to be dry, and it felt like my motivation to do basically anything was being flushed down the sewers.
The Beaumont house had certainly been warmer than it currently was.
It had taken me a long time to finally convince Meridian to come back and, on the day he finally agreed to cross the road instead of having dinner at my house, his parents still weren't home. This wasn't the first time I was there without them, and it certainly wasn't the first time I was alone there with Meridian, but something felt off.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the one person I spent the most time in the house with had been June. I thought both of us were aware of that and, while I didn't want to make him uncomfortable or use him as her replacement, I also didn't have the courage to talk to him about it.
He was slouching on his bed, flipping through a textbook and his notes, while I lay there with my copy of Fahrenheit 451, head on his stomach, legs folded. It was perfectly simple, perfectly domestic, and it would have been perfect if I wasn't shivering.
"Should I get you a blanket?" he questioned, shifting beneath me. His hand brushed against my fingers and electricity crackled around us, creating an entire force field. "You're freezing."
"I'm fine." That was a lie. "Can I borrow a sweatshirt?"
"Yeah, sure." I still hadn't returned his Stanford sweatshirt, the one I had borrowed on New Year's Eve, but I doubted he expected me to give it back. "They're in the third drawer."
I rolled out of the bed, praying I wouldn't stumble over my own feet, and walked towards the wooden dresser. He still kept a fair share of his clothes in this house—and he owned plenty of clothing items, probably more than he actually wore on a regular basis—and his sweatshirts were neatly folded inside the third drawer.
My eyes instantly darted towards one of the framed pictures he kept on top of the dresser. It had probably been Mrs. Beaumont's choice, as he had never struck me as being particularly interested in interior design.
