Winter Longing by Tricia Mills

crashed into a mountain? Because he was alive and Spencer wasn’t?
    I glanced at him, saw the confusion in his dark eyes. I dropped my gaze to the empty table in front of me. “No.”
    “Don’t worry about what happened,” he said. “I won’t say anything.”
    I let his words sink in for a few seconds, surprised he’d picked up on my concern that people might get the wrong idea about us. A concern I hadn’t realized until now. How would it look if people knew I’d let him be the one to hold me while I cried out my grief? I still couldn’t believe it’d happened.
    “Thank you.” I hoped he understood the significance of my words. The whispers in the hallway were bad enough. Not to mention the fact he was sitting at my table with me, alone. I didn’t dare look around the room to see if everyone was watching, gossiping.
    We sat in silence while he ate. I stared out the window. Despite the current strain between Lindsay and me, I found myself wishing she would come in and save me from this awkwardness. I searched frantically for something to say, then remembered I still owed Jesse an apology.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “About what? Saturday?”
    I looked at him. “Well, yes.”
    “You don’t have to apologize.”
    I lowered my eyes to my hands in my lap picking at my cuticles. “I also meant about the day of the cookout, when I ran into you.”
    He waved away my words. “No big deal. I just wasn’t having the best day. But it’s nothing now.”
    I suspected he meant in light of Spencer’s death, but I wasn’t ready to start talking about that. First, I had to try to make it through one day without falling to pieces.
    “Did you get in trouble?”
    He shook his head. “Would have been my fault anyway.” He glanced across the room, toward Patrice. With a snort, he returned his attention to his plate and shoved a french fry in his mouth.
    I eyed the door and wondered where Lindsay was. Was she mad enough to avoid me? Maybe I deserved to be avoided.
    “Listen, since we’re doing apologies, I’m sorry about the other day at the river.” Jesse’s last words were rushed. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I . . .” He fumbled for words for a couple of seconds. “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t . . .”
    “Done something stupid?”
    He caught my gaze. “Yeah. People sometimes don’t think clearly when they’ve lost someone close to them.”
    Jesse sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Was he talking about Patrice? Or did he mean his mother? Everyone knew Mr. Kerr had divorced Jesse’s biological mom, but no one knew why. I’d never really given it any thought before. His stepmother was great; but all of a sudden, I wondered if having a stepmom take his mother’s place was harder for him than it had always seemed.
    I stared at him for a moment, still confused about why he was making the effort to talk. “I’m not going to hurt myself.”
    “Good.” He held out a cup of strawberry ice cream, suddenly seeming unsure. “Want some ice cream? I’m full.”
    I doubted that, considering his size, but I took the ice cream anyway.
    Though it was simple, something about our exchange lightened my mood. I stopped trying to figure out why he was being nice and just began to accept his efforts. My life was so surreal lately; why would this be any different? A week ago, I wouldn’t have been able to imagine him acting this way. But then, I’d also never imagined there’d be a reason for him to.
    Though Jesse had finished his lunch, he showed no signs of leaving. As I ate the last bites of ice cream, I tried to remember why I’d been so rude to him in the first place. It wasn’t because he lived one rung up the school social ladder from me. I liked my niche, my friends. I wasn’t jealous.
    And as much as I wished I could blame and punish someone for Spencer’s death, it wasn’t Jesse’s fault.
    Unbidden, an image came to me of Jesse giving Spencer a high five after scoring during volleyball