Higher Ground Read Free Page B

and he laughed. “ You were kicked out of Academy?” After my nod, he continued. “I can’t wait to hear this. Let’s grab some coffee.”
    “It’s a hundred degrees in the shade, and you want to get coffee?”
    “It feels like a hundred, but we’re really skating in the mid–nineties. Unless… you can’t. Maybe there’s a boyfriend.”
    “No,” I said. “Not anymore. He’s part of the reason I was kicked out of Academy.”
    The smile on Oliver’s face widened. “This gets better and better. How about that coffee? I’ll throw in beignets at Café Du Monde.”
    “I don’t know… I didn’t tell anyone I’d be going downtown.”
    “Call.”
    It wasn’t that easy. Odds were Miss Verity was entertaining a client. Mom and Dad had taken Van for an appointment, and Ronnie had spent the night away from home.
    “Forget it,” I said. “No one’s expecting me back soon, anyway.”
    I tossed my book into my bag, stood, and brushed the dust and leaves from my backside. He followed my example, and we ended up face to neck with only a few inches separating us. I hadn’t realized he was so much taller than me until that moment. A deep whiff of cologne, smoke, and boy made my nipples harden a second time under his gaze.
    “After you,” he said, waving an arm toward the exit.
    I tried to let him lead, but he aligned his steps with mine. We didn’t say much during the walk over to St. Charles, and the short wait for the streetcar was uncomfortable until he finally leaned in close. “Are you always so talkative?”
    His open interest was intimidating. After having a boyfriend for so long, I’d almost forgotten there were other boys out there—good-looking boys with soft spots on their cheeks that had never been touched by a razor, and boys with big blue eyes as bright as the sky above us who wanted to listen and talk.
    “I spend my time with dead people, remember? They don’t talk much.”
    He laughed and let his fingers settle on the back of my arm. The car stopped in front of us, and he pulled lightly to guide me on before him. I chose a seat halfway back and slid in close to the window.
    “Do you do this every day?” he asked. “Hang out in the cemetery and read Poe?”
    “Not every day.”
    On the weekends, my parents hovered. Since the beginning of summer, they’d been trying to spend more time with us as a family. Our fall from grace at my dad’s alma mater had been epic. It was their way of trying to make up for what had happened to my brother, but it was too little, too late. The therapy they were shoving down Van’s throat wasn’t helping any. With most of their focus on him, I had a lot of free time on my hands. It was much different from the summer before, when my parents had been busy ignoring us and I’d had a boyfriend to spend long afternoons with on the hammock in the backyard.
    I let Oliver lead the way at our stop and followed him onto the street. He took the cap off his camera lens as we walked. “What were you doing there, anyway?” I asked. “At the cemetery, I mean.”
    “I followed the jazz band.”
    “I thought you were a tourist.”
    “Huh. I thought you were pretty.”
    I stared at my shoes, aware he was studying my face. “What’s with the camera?”
    “I take pictures.” To prove his point, he stopped in his tracks to catch a few shots of a scruffy guy playing guitar in a courtyard.
    “You walk around Uptown taking pictures every day?”
    “No. I live my life and capture the parts I want to remember.”
    He was so relaxed. One hand rested on the camera as we walked, and while I stayed quiet, the words rolled off his tongue. A painting in the window of a shop on Decatur spurred talk of his father, a steamboat captain on the Mississippi, and of his mother, who had stayed home until he was twelve and then took a job as the general manager of a hotel on Canal.
    As usual, the café was crowded, but we were lucky enough to catch a table being ditched by a group of