If I Forget You by Michelle D. Argyle Read Free Book Online Page B

since there were so many people and events to remember afterward, but Tam loved them. Anything Tam loved, Avery loved.
    Her mom must have seen the battle reflected in Avery’s face. She set down her brush and stood. “All right, you can go to your party, but please help me with dinner. How late does the party start? Maybe you’ll have time to eat and socialize for a bit before you go.”
    In other words, do everything I want you to do, anyway. Avery could see the desperation in her eyes, the fact that she didn’t want to be stuck with Victor’s family all by herself. This was a hard time for both of them. Unfortunately, Avery wanted to deal with her loneliness and grief in different ways than her mother did.
    In the end, Avery decided to help her, of course. She drove to the store in the pounding rain to pick up groceries for dinner. When she got home, her mom pointed out a few things Avery had missed on the list and Avery had to go back to the store to pick them up. This was a regular occurrence when it came to Avery doing the shopping. By that time, Tam was calling Avery every thirty minutes from her home phone. Apparently, she had left her cell phone in the broken-down Gold Bug.
    “You’re supposed to be over at my place getting ready right now,” Tam complained as Avery pushed her shopping cart down the drink aisle looking for club soda. “I’ve got your outfit all ready to go, and I need those earrings you said you’d bring. Why did your mom spring this on you last-second?”
    “I don’t know. She probably told me ages ago and I forgot.” Avery rummaged around in her bag and pulled out a Post-it. “Yep, she wrote it down for me two days ago. ‘Remember the dinner party with the Royals Tuesday night at 7:00.’I wasn’t paying attention.”
    “Of course,” Tam said, laughing. “Typical Ave.”
    “Oh, shut up.” Avery crumpled the Post-it and put it back in her purse just as her phone beeped through Tam’s babbling. She pulled it away to see a reminder about the dinner. Her mother must have put it into her phone weeks ago. Go figure. How could Avery manage to overlook such an event when it was recorded in two places? She felt like banging her head against the shelves of Coke she was walking past.
    “Well, can you get here soon, please?”
    Avery let out a heavy sigh as she found the club soda and put it in the cart. She still needed to find two other things, and she cursed herself for overlooking stuff the first time she was here. The clock was ticking and her mom needed her home fast. At last year’s dinner, they’d had dessert and coffee and looked at old pictures of her dad. They had all reminisced for hours. Avery hadn’t seen her mom smile like that in a long time.
    “You know, Tam,” Avery said, her voice deflating, “I don’t think I can come to the party tonight. This is just … it’s too important to Mom. I need to be there for her, and for Dad. This is as much for him as it is for us.”
    Silence.
    “I understand,” Tam said tenderly after the long silence. She knew how much Avery struggled with her father’s death. “I’ll miss you, though. Like, a lot.”
    “I know, I’m sorry. You’ll have to tell me everything tomorrow. Promise?”
    “Promise.”
    “Let’s have a sleepover tomorrow night,” Avery said in a lame effort to placate Tam as she turned a corner into the bakery. “My place or yours? I’ll bring mint brownies.”
    “Oh, good idea. Um, mine.”
    Avery grabbed a box of brownie mix and threw it into the cart. “Have fun tonight.” Heavy sigh. “Without me.”
    “I’ll try.”
    That night, Avery answered the door when the bell rang. She blinked twice as she looked at Victor and then at Ryan standing next to his mother. There he was, with his increasingly adorable crooked nose and looking a tad shorter than she’d imagined he would be — closer to her own five-foot four inches. That was when she realized why he had looked so confused in the car when