The Last Hour (Thompson Sisters), Sheehan-Miles, Charles [reading an ebook .txt] 📗

She smiled, her eyes catching mine from behind hair that curtained across her face. It was so sexy I almost gasped. “That’s what I like about it.”

At the end of that weekend, we exchanged contact information, and she’d returned to Texas. I stayed in New York for a few more weeks, mostly watching out for Dylan and Alex, who were a mess, as usual. I wanted to knock Dylan upside the head. He’s a great guy, and my best friend. But he’s stubborn as hell, and has a martyr streak a mile wide. Major drama queen, and Alex is pretty much the same. Between the two of them, I was going out of my mind.

So my outlet was chatting with Carrie over Facebook or on the phone. And that we did, a lot. It started out short and simple ... a comment here, a text message there. But on the third night after she left town, we chatted for almost two hours on Facebook, and the night after that, I called her, and we talked long into the night. By the end of the week, our calls were turning into goodnight calls, where I’d lay in bed chatting with Carrie until both of us were ready to sleep. In the mornings I’d send her text messages, and usually a couple hours later when she woke up, she’d text me right back.

I don’t know if it was because the interaction was online and on the phone, but I found myself opening up more, and quicker, with Carrie than anyone I’d ever known. We talked about our families, our lives, our ambitions. We talked about the people we’d dated, our hang-ups and insecurities. I told her things I’d never told anyone before. And as crazy as it sounds, I knew I was falling for her, over the phone of all things, weeks before we saw each other again.

As I finished my story, Sarah said, “So … you just look like a soldier. Inside, you’re as big of a geek as my sister.”

I laughed. “Pretty much.”

She gave me a serious look. “You guys have had a tough year.”

“That’s an understatement,” I replied, my voice low. She had no idea. Whatever the news had reported, the reality was a thousand times worse. The news might have reported on the trial, but they hadn’t reported the betrayals, the loss of faith, the closing of ranks of people I’d loved. The news hadn’t touched on the doubts I’d lived with, the questioning, the moments when I wished I’d just taken that report and tossed it in the burn pit instead of turning it over.

Sarah looked over at Carrie. Carrie was just finishing the paperwork. She had a serious, exhausted expression on her face.

“Carrie’s always been the one who watched out for us.”

“Yeah,” I said. “She’s good at that.”

Sarah bit her lip. “Someone’s going to need to watch out for her now.”

I sighed. I felt a lump forming in my throat. It was supposed to be me watching out for her, and for now at least, I couldn’t.

Life is cheap (Ray)

Sarah and I had to squeeze in between the people on the crowded elevator to get in behind Jessica and Carrie. There’s something just freakishly unnerving about touching people when they don’t know you’re there. It made me want to puke. If I even could puke in this state. And watching Carrie, holding Jessica’s hand with that deadly serious expression on her face … I’d have done anything to be able to touch her. To make her understand I was still here. To tell her everything was going to be okay.

Somehow, though, I didn’t think that was true.

Just as the elevator doors closed, I saw the strangest thing. A little boy, halfway down the hall to the emergency room. He was young, maybe eight or ten, and wore a Spider-Man t-shirt and a cap turned halfway to his shoulder. He was looking around, lost, confused, and then a nurse walked right through him. I almost jumped out of the elevator, but the doors closed and he was gone.

It was frightening.

Sarah, on the other hand, was beyond ridiculous. Riding on the elevator in front of her was a buff looking EMT in his early twenties. About six feet compared to her five-foot two, he nearly hid her from me with his bulked up shoulders and neck that looked like a tree trunk. This guy seriously worked out. He looked like he hadn’t shaved, and he’d been up a long time. His eyes were drooping, dark circles underneath them, and he leaned against the side of the elevator as if he would just go to sleep.

“Hey, Ray, check this out,” Sarah said. Then my mouth dropped open because she reached her arms around him, putting her tiny hands on his ample pecs.

“Sarah, knock it off,” I said.

She took that as a challenge, pressing herself up against him. Even though I’m a hell of a lot older than she is, and I’m married to her sister, I’d be inhuman to not admit that she’s one very sexy girl, more so in that red dress than in her usual pseudo punk outfit. She grinned at me, stood on her tiptoes, then opened her mouth and slid her tongue up the side of his neck.

“Oh, for God’s sake! Sarah!”

The guy twitched, his eyes opening up. There’s no way he felt anything. But he seemed to react anyway.

She dissolved into snickering and backed away from him. “Have a sense of humor.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me, and said, “There are definite advantages to this nearly dead thing.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when the elevator doors slid open and we stepped out behind Carrie and Jessica.

“Sarah, you can’t do that stuff. Just because we’re ... whatever we are … I mean…”

She turned toward me, so suddenly I stopped in my tracks.

“Don’t you tell me what I can or can’t do. For all you know we’re