Read Online Follow Her Home by Steph Cha - Free Book Online Page B

was a navy-clad forearm in my field of vision and pressure on my shoulder and at the side of my neck. I felt the warmth of a live human body all along my back. It was the negative of an embrace, the same gesture in a world of black teeth and white eyes.
    His mouth at my ear let out hot breath and as he whispered I saw like a bat the quivering damp of his inner cheeks, red and uneven. “I can kill you, you know. You and your pathetic scrap of a family.”
    My hands, at my sides, sprung open and stiff, and I had to fumble to recover my key. I nodded slowly and my voicebox managed to puff up under the hold of his arm, “I know.”
    He laughed. It was an airy laugh that was almost nervous, like that of a child who had lost his temper on the playground and wanted back in the games. His hold relaxed and he withdrew his arm, the fabric of his jacket rustling as it slid over my shoulder. He patted me on the back, jocularity in his very fingertips.
    â€œWe will see each other again.” He emphasized the second word, certainty buoyant in his voice.
    He was still behind me and I said without turning, “Yes.”
    I stood for a long moment, waiting, then opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. I jammed my foot on the clutch and started the engine with teleport speed. I backed out and sped out of the lot.
    I listened to the hum of my engine as I switched gears, and I left him to figure out whether to follow me, satisfied that no amount of scrambling would allow him to tail me directly. The wait for the garage door to sense my presence and crawl open was strange and strained, but he was too far away to share my darting eye contact. He didn’t move, even as I drove away and he became a vague, suited Waldo in the rearview mirror. When he was out of sight, I noticed I was breathing normally, and that this was a change.
    It was eight twenty now. Diego lived on Kings Road and First Street, a five-minute drive from my apartment. I rolled down the windows and tried to relax, breathing with the sound of the passing air as the Volvo knifed through it.
    *   *   *
    I still depended on Diego, but when I was eighteen, I could forget how to breathe without him. My first weeks home that summer were lonely and difficult, and not only because of Iris. After months of virtual cohabitation with Diego—and, in turn, Luke—I was getting my first taste of a long-distance relationship.
    When Iris told me she was pregnant, she asked me not to tell anybody. I told her I wouldn’t breathe a word to our mom, but I asked for permission to talk to Diego. I told her he had a cousin who’d had a baby in high school and that he might have some good insight. She was reluctant, but she said she couldn’t stop me.
    It was true that he had that cousin, but I needed Diego’s ear more than his experience. We talked every day, and Diego listened to me gripe over the phone. He said that Iris would come around, that she would open up if I gave her time. But my newly secretive sister was driving me mad.
    I avoided trapping her in a lie. I didn’t ask, What does Paul think? or How have things been with him? If there was any consideration in this open strategy, it was incidental. I was protecting myself. Hearing a new-spun lie out of Iris’s mouth would have hurt me, mind, heart, and stomach.
    â€œI heard you broke up with Paul,” I said.
    We were getting ready for bed, and she caught my eye in the mirror, with her toothbrush in her mouth. She finished brushing, took her time rinsing, splashed water onto her face, and dried off on a towel.
    â€œWhere did you hear that?” Her tone was sharper than I’d heard it in a while. She had her hands pressed down on the bathroom counter in the posture of a push-up. Her head was down and sought neither my eyes behind her nor their reflection in the glass.
    â€œDoesn’t matter.”
    â€œOf course it matters. I didn’t tell