Dissolve Read Online Free PDF Page B

feel the bike slow down. I look up and see my apartment building.
    “Is this it?” Kai turns and asks, his helmet dripping with rain. His shirt sticks to his shoulders, and his hands, even in their motorcycle gloves, are soaked.
    “Yeah,” I nod. I get off and unclasp the helmet, handing it and the jacket back to him. I open my mouth to say thank you, but he holds up his hand.
    “Don’t bother thanking me. I know you hate me.”
    “I can’t -” I stop. “I can’t hate a guy who’s given me a ride home. And helped my friend.”
    He props his visor open and smiles, and something about it makes my breathing stutter. It’s that same gentle smile he gave me the night he helped me with Trist. It’s so different from the smiles I’ve seen him flash at people all week. This one feels somehow more honest.
    “That’s good to hear, lioness. We’ll just have to do it more often, huh?”
    “Don’t push your luck.”
    He laughs. “I never do. Now go on, get inside.”
    I hug my bag to my chest and jog to the safety of the overhang. I stop on the steps, looking back one last time. Kai gives a facetious little salute off his forehead, and then drives away into the silver rain.
     
     
     
     

     

     
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

     
     
     
     
     

FOUR
     
    Graveyards aren’t really my thing.
    Then again, graveyards aren’t anyone’s thing. Anyone alive, anyway. I’m sure the dead like them. Personally, I want to be burned and my ashes spread somewhere beautiful, like the south of France. But I’m getting ahead of myself, here.
    No one’s died, but Mrs. Tully, my Film Studies teacher and a massive jolly matron of a woman, has decided the best way to celebrate our studies on early film starlets is to visit Katherine Hepburn’s grave. She adores juxtapositions, and for the entire ride there (I’m the only student without a car or friend in the class with a car, so I ride with her), she regales me of the beautiful irony of death when compared to a starlet like Katherine.
    “It doesn’t matter how skinny, or how beautiful, or how rich you,” She turns a little too hard, her huge bosom straining against the seatbelt. “Death takes us all in the end. Isn’t it poetic?”
    No, I think. It’s just death - sad and lonely and final. But I don’t say that.
    “Yeah,” I smile, and look back out the window at the passing graves. She parks, and we get out. Everyone else is already at Katherine’s grave, waiting for us. The grass is withered and brown, the trees bare and tragic-looking. A murder of crows sit on a naked maple tree, cawing out a dirge for the dead. Mrs. Tully has us take notes on her lecture as she goes on and on about Katherine’s dynamic life. I look up her picture on my phone; she’s the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen, even prettier than the redhead goddess Kai made out with at the club. Mrs. Tully informs us she wore pants before it was cool, advocated for women’s rights, and took her career into her own hands as soon as she could. She’s officially a badass in my book.
    After the lecture’s over, Mrs. Tully dismisses us for lunch. I take my tuna sandwich and head for a tall hill a ways away. From up here, I can see the whole graveyard - every stone slab, every granite archangel hovering. Bouquets of flowers dot the lawn, left for loved mothers and brothers and husbands. There aren’t many people visiting on a Friday morning. The only person is a lone figure standing before a grave, a wine bottle in one hand. His jacket is black leather, his hair dark. I squint. There’s no way that’s who I think it is.
    He doesn’t see me, but he turns, and I can clearly see his broad shoulders, his lean waist, and that familiar two-tone gaze, one green, one brown.
    It’s Kai.
    Who is he visiting?
    I watch him pour out some of the wine on a grave, and shake his head as if he’s laughing. He drinks some wine, swigging it, and pours out a little more.
    “Evelyn!”