February Lover by Rebecca Royce Page A

loaded up the car. He had a few more things to put in it. Technically it was his father’s old car, but the old man wasn’t going to use it anymore. He might as well take it.
    His mother wanted him to have it.
    Some of the things from his old room he actually wanted. Who knew when he might actually like to have all those old Bruce Springsteen albums on vinyl? They’d been vintage even when he was young. Maybe he could sell them on eBay.
    He’d called Stacey to tell her he’d be coming over to say good-bye. She’d been quiet but pleasant about it. Aidan sighed. His one regret was leaving her. If he knew exactly where he was going, he would ask her to go with him.
    Her studio was established here. But maybe she would get he didn’t want to live in New Orleans, and he’d make a convincing-enough case to entice her into coming. Aidan needed a city first. A job. An apartment.
    Three interviews lined up: one in Houston, one in San Francisco, and one in Baltimore. Maybe one of them would be the right move, maybe not. He’d have to listen to his gut.
    Of course right then, all his intuition told him was he was going to be a miserable son-of-a-bitch without Stacey’s laughter to greet him every morning and her warm, welcoming body to send away the day.
    A car drove down the street. From the way it hugged the centerline, he knew Stacey had arrived. He sighed. The girl could not ever drive. She pulled to the side and.
    “Hey.” He raised his hand in greeting. “I told you I’d stop by your place.”
    “I know.” She waved back while she sprinted toward him. He expected her to pull him into one of her requisite hugs but instead she stayed a distance away.
    “Are you okay?” He tugged her to him instead.
    “No.” She patted him on the chest and tried to disengage their bodies.
    He wouldn’t—couldn’t—let her go yet. This wasn’t at all how he had envisioned the day going.
    “What’s wrong? Look, I know this is hard. I’m not going to be out of touch for fifteen years. We’ll figure out how to see each other.” Because he had to smell her hair and see the blue-and-white pajama pants she seemed to wear every other night.
    “I know. And eventually it’ll fizzle between us. That’s not what I want. You became my February lover. A chance for us to finish what we never could before.” She opened and closed her mouth like she wanted to say something else, and then didn’t. “This has to be good-bye. I can’t stand another episode of you coming my door to say good-bye. So let’s do it here.” She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ve got to go. Drive safe. Wherever you land, I hope it’s someplace cool. When I run into your mom, I’m sure she’ll tell me where it is.”
    Stacey turned on her heel and bounded toward the vehicle.
    What? His heart raced and an ache formed at the back of his head, an ache traveling all the way to his eyes. “Wait a second.”
    This was not the ending he wanted. If she had let him explain, he could have told her he craved them being together.
    She was his girl.
    He rushed toward the car, but she’d already put it in drive. Tears streamed down her face, visible through the front windshield. “Stacey!”
    She drove away, coming to a stop for a change. With her turn signal on—possibly the first time he’d ever seen her use it—she properly left his home and turned onto St. Charles Avenue.
    He saw what was about to happen in slow motion like he had the day the school had been blown up with the children in it. A green sedan sped through a red light and plowed right into the left side of Stacey’s car.
    Screeching tires and shattering glass overtook every other sound in the universe. Aidan stood frozen. His ears began to ring.
    He called out and her name and rushed into the street before the other vehicles had even come to a stop. Eerie silence met his scream, like the birds didn’t even dare chirp.
    She had to be okay. The other driver was out on the pavement,