Just a Little (5-8) by Tracie Puckett Read Free Book Online Page A

as he watched me from his chair. “Please.”
    “You said you’d tell me everything.”
    “I will,” he said, and I reluctantly slid back into my seat. “Can you please take your coat off, Jules? You’re making me nervous. I want to know that you’re going to stay, hear me out to the very end.”
    I took a deep breath and nodded. I unzipped my zipper and pulled the coat off. After hanging it on the back of my chair, I turned back and pushed my hair over my shoulders. I rested both arms on the table and watched him intently, but he was no longer meeting my gaze. He wasn’t looking at me the way he’d looked at me before.
    “Julie,” he said, his voice growing thicker, “what are you wearing?”
    I looked down at my shirt and immediately noticed Derek’s old house key resting gently on my chest.
    “Oh,” I said, quickly tucking it inside my shirt. “Sorry, I—”
    “Where’s the necklace I gave you?”
    “I’m wearing it,” I reached back in my shirt and pulled both keys out. “See? I haven’t taken it off; not once, I swear.”
    But he wasn’t relieved. His face flushed red as he breathed deeper.
    “I threw that in the garbage.”
    “And I got it back out,” I said. “It wasn’t yours to throw away.”
    “And it’s not yours.”
    “No,” I said, “it’s Derek’s.”
    “I carried that bag of trash outside and dumped it in a garbage can, Julie,” he said. “Which means you waited until I left, went outside, and ransacked the trash bags.”
    I closed my eyes and dropped my head. “It wasn’t yours to throw away,” I said again, this time in a whisper.
    “You have to take that off,” he reached over. “Give it to me.”
    “What?”
    “Take it off.”
    “You don’t get to make that decision, Luke.”
    “Julie,” he dropped his hand, “please, take it off.”
    “No,” I said, still holding the necklace, “I’m not giving it to you, Luke. Derek was my friend, and this key… it’s the only thing that gives me hope that he’ll come back.”
    “He’s not coming back.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “I do!” he slammed his fist against the table. “Derek—is—gone. And I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that before it sinks in. What’s it going to take, Julie? You haven’t heard from him in months. You walk by his empty house every day. If he cared about you, he wouldn’t have left.”
    “He needed to find himself,” I said. “And when he does, he’ll come back. He said he hoped our paths would cross again. If he hadn’t planned to come back, he wouldn’t have—”
    “Stop!”
    It was only then that we both realized that everyone in the café, customers and workers alike, were watching us with surprised expressions.
    Luke gave an apologetic nod around the room, and everyone turned back to what they were doing.
    I swallowed hard and watched as Luke closed his eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, finally looking up at me. “Julie, when I said there were a lot of things I hadn’t told you…” He dropped his head again. “There are things you need to know,” he bit his lip. “Things I’ve done. You have to forgive me… I…” He swallowed hard yet again and met my gaze. “Derek had to go, Jules. He was a threat to himself and a danger to you. He’s not coming back; he’s gone.”
    “Luke,” I said, suddenly feeling like the room had grown about a hundred degrees warmer, “what did you do?”
    “I had to, Jules. I had to do something . He had to go…”

CHAPTER SIX
     
    Friday, March 01
    I still couldn’t believe it; Luke was the reason Derek had left.
    Like an idiot, I believed that Derek had truly left to find himself, to make a difference in his life. Maybe he had, but he hadn’t done so by choice.
    Luke had forced him out.
    I circled the block for the eighth time. I was too angry to go home, too hurt to talk to Luke, and too stubborn to admit that he was probably looking out for my best interest.
    I suddenly found myself