Before & After You Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Michelle Chamberland

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Michelle Chamberland

  Cover images licensed by Canva.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without express written permission by the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9798620789238

  For my husband,

  who picked up all of my broken pieces,

  held them in the palm of his hands,

  and showed me the way the light shined on them

  and made them beautiful.

  ♥

  One Before

  Two Before

  Three Before

  Four Before

  Five Before

  Six Before

  Seven After

  Eight Before

  Nine Before

  Ten Before

  Eleven Before

  Twelve After

  Thirteen Before

  Fourteen Before

  Fifteen Before

  Sixteen Before

  Seventeen After

  Eighteen Before

  Nineteen Before

  Twenty Before

  Twenty-one Before

  Twenty-two After

  Twenty-three Before

  Twenty-four Before

  Twenty-five Before

  Twenty-six After

  Twenty-seven After

  Twenty-eight Before

  Twenty-nine Before

  Thirty Before

  Thirty-one Before

  Thirty-two Before

  Thirty-three Before

  Thirty-four Before

  Thirty-five Before

  Thirty-six After

  Thirty-seven After

  Thirty-eight After

  Thirty-nine Before

  Forty Before

  Forty-one Before

  Forty-two Before

  Forty-three Before

  Forty-four After

  Forty-five After

  Forty-six After

  Forty-seven After

  Forty-eight Before

  Forty-nine Before

  Fifty Before

  Fifty-one Before

  Fifty-two Before

  Fifty-three After

  Fifty-four After

  Fifty-five After

  Fifty-six Before

  Fifty-seven Before

  Fifty-eight Before

  Fifty-nine Before

  Sixty Before

  Sixty-one After

  Sixty-two After

  Sixty-three After

  Sixty-four Before

  Sixty-five After

  Sixty-six Before

  Sixty-seven Before

  Sixty-eight After

  Sixty-nine After

  Seventy Before

  Seventy-one Before

  Seventy-two After

  Seventy-three After

  Seventy-four After

  Seventy-five After

  Seventy-six After

  Seventy-seven After

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  One Before

  I KNEW IT from the very first moment I saw him. He walked into the classroom, and I swear he wore a golden halo around his head. It could have been the absolutely ridiculous, yet somehow completely charming bleached-blond mop of hair he wore and the sun illuminating it from behind him, but I’m going with halo.

  Because he was perfect.

  I twisted around, fully turned in my seat at the front of the classroom as I watched his every move. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. His fingers as they tightened around the straps of his backpack, the muscles in his arms tensing from the grip. The way his jawline moved as he licked his lips. The way he ran his fingers through his hair, as if it were purely out of habit and he had no idea that it made his hair settle across his forehead in just the right way.

  When his green eyes finally stopped on mine, my stomach swarmed with butterflies. I felt time slow down. I felt the world around me shift and fade out. My heart beat faster, my lungs closed in on me, my mouth dried up like the desert—all of it—because those moments they talk about, where your eyes meet across a room and you just know that that very moment has changed everything you ever knew? Those moments are real. I felt it in those few short seconds he was looking at me. I felt it in the way I could already feel my walls begin to crumble with just that one encounter.

  That alone should have had me running for my life in the opposite direction, but by the time he had smiled at me and ducked his head as he lowered into his seat, I had already dreamt up a hundred different lifetimes with him. It didn’t matter who he was. It didn’t matter that I’d never seen him before, that I didn’t know his name, where he came from, how old he was, that I really didn’t know anything about him at all. It didn’t matter that I was all wrong for him, that I was broken.

  I wanted him.

  I wanted his love; I wanted it desperately.

  Two Before

  WE WERE WORLDS apart. Lightyears, universes. He was so far out of my reach, there was no way he could ever actually be mine. He was the sun and I was the moon. He was the light, and I was the dark. I knew this, but I didn’t care.

  He had that crazy, bleached-blond hair, expensive clothes and clean, white Converses, and that smile. That smile that turned up slightly more on the right side than on the left. I’d noticed because he threw at least a half a dozen of them my way that morning. And I’d even smiled back a few times—okay, every time. And this was something I was immediately suspicious of. Nobody made me smile like that, like I could feel its warmth from the inside out.

  Besides, who smiled that much? And was happy about it? Because he did seem happy. Happy, happy, happy. It radiated off of him like sunshine. I’d even caught him smiling at himself a few times. At something he was reading, and again at some joke he must have been telling himself inside his head. Who did that? It wasn’t normal.

  And then I found myself smiling again at how weird he was. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I forced myself to stay still and stare straight ahead for the rest of the class period. I couldn’t keep looking back there at him; I was being so obvious. But it was torture, pure torture, not to turn around and steal another look at him. It’s like when you walk into a room and someone screams, “Don’t look!”—and it feels literally, physically impossible not to look. That’s how it felt keeping still even though I could feel his eyes burning holes into the back of my head.

  It excited me, and at the same time, it terrified me.

  So much, that when the bell rang, I jumped from my seat and booked it out the door without a backward glance. I’d suck up the courage to talk to him another day, because one more look at him and I’d beg him to let me have his babies someday, or something equally embarrassing. I needed to get it together first.

  “Jess!” Sara yelled for me across the grassy quad between school buildings. Sara was one of my best friends, my only girl friend, and while we didn’t know too much about each other beyond the surface of our friendship, choosing not to dig too deep and ask about all the dirty and dark we immediately recognized in each other, we were still super close. As close as two people like us could be. And we had fun together; we knew when to
shut up and make life disappear for each other in the moments that we could.

  I ran over to her and straight into her arms, squeezing her tight. “Sara. Sara, I’m in love.”

  She laughed; it wasn’t the first time I’d said this, or the hundredth. But usually, I was only talking about some dark and brooding, hot and barely famous new band member I’d discovered. Rarely did I swoon over some guy I’d actually come across in real life. But this was different.

  “No, I mean it this time.” I pulled away, looking her in the eyes. “I’m dead serious. The hottest guy is in my class, and I mean, the hottest guy I have ever seen in my life is in my first period, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to marry him one day.”

  She smiled and looped her arm through mine as we walked to second period. It was the only class we had together that semester, which totally sucked. “Hottest guy you’ve ever seen in all your sixteen years, huh?”

  “Yeesss,” I whined. “He’s beautiful. Too beautiful. And he smiles way too much, but God, Sare, I couldn’t stop staring at him.”

  She snorted, flipping her wavy blond hair over her shoulder. “So, you’re playing hard to get?”

  “From now on I am.”

  She laughed again. “Good luck with that.”

  “Shut up.” I shoved her halfheartedly.

  We walked into photography and found two seats next to each other.

  “So, what does he look like?” she asked.

  I thought it over for a minute, images of this morning tumbling through my mind: the clear green of his eyes, rimmed by a deep, forest green; the perfect, pouty shape of his lips. “Nope. No way. I’m not even going to try. I won’t do him justice. You’ll just have to see him for yourself.”

  “Oh, it’s like that?!” She poked me.

  “Yes. Yes, it is very much like that. So you understand what I’m saying now.”

  She smirked. “Yeah, I think I do.”

  Three Before

  THE BELL RANG for first period the next morning, and he was nowhere to be seen. I tried not to feel as disappointed as I did, but I’d taken the few extra minutes of effort to get ready, and he wasn’t even here. I had on a clean black shirt, mascara. I’d fingered through my short, usually unruly, black hair. I’d even put a bobby pin in it, sweeping a small piece to the side. And he. Wasn’t. Even. Here.

  Was he not in this class anymore? Did he get switched? Did I imagine the whole thing? Was he even real? Definitely not. That would make so much more sense. Things that beautiful didn’t happen to me.

  I kicked his empty desk with my ratty black Converse and cursed Satan himself as I made my way over to my desk. But then I saw it. Him. That halo. He was pulling at the locked classroom door. Not a single thought processed through my brain as I walked over to it and opened it for him. And then that smile, that perfectly lopsided smile, and those eyes.

  Real. Definitely real.

  “Both of you to the front office! You know the rules!” our teacher yelled from the front of the classroom, causing me to jump back from the door.

  I turned. “What?”

  “Tardy passes, now!” he yelled again, fully bugged eyes.

  “I wasn’t even late,” I replied like an idiot. Thanks, brain.

  “Now!” he reiterated, completely irritated.

  I swiped my backpack off my desk and muttered a, “Jesus,” under my breath as I headed outside, golden halo following closely behind.

  We walked silently side by side for at least a full minute, or for what felt like forever. An eternity. I kept my eyes trained on the ground in front of me, severely aware of his presence beside me.

  Speak, mouth! But I had nothing. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I picked at the black nail polish on my fingers instead.

  “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to get you in trouble,” his deep and gravelly voice slid into my consciousness, burning itself there.

  I looked up at him. “It’s okay.” I shrugged.

  More than okay. Totally worth it.

  He smirked; I smiled.

  It was ridiculous, the warmth swirling itself around inside my body.

  “I’m Greyson, by the way.” He’d stopped on the sidewalk, sliding his hands into his pockets.

  I stared up at him a second too long before finally replying, “Jessica, but my friends call me Jess.”

  “Jess.” He nodded, a slow smile forming on his lips, and then he turned away, back towards the office, and continued walking.

  Fast; my heart was beating way too fast.

  Greyson. Even his name was perfect. And the way he said my name, the way his tongue slid over the single-syllabled word: Jess.

  Jess, Jess, Jess.

  I’d burn that one to memory, too.

  We reached the front office, grabbed our tardy passes, and made it back to class entirely too fast for my liking.

  “Good luck,” he said, holding the door open for me. And then? He winked at me. Winked at me. Fast and subtle, and completely pulling it off.

  And in that very moment I remember thinking, God, I know you don’t like me all that much, but maybe I could have this one thing? Please? Just this one thing. I swear it won’t make me too happy.

  But that was a lie, because I wanted Greyson more than I had wanted anything in my entire life.

  Four Before

  “WE’RE GOING TO be partnering up for this assignment,” our first period teacher announced a few days later.

  Everyone immediately began turning in their seats, subtly and not so subtly pairing up into twos. I felt that pull, the one that constantly drew my eyes to him. He was doodling something in his notebook, lost to the world. I watched him, also subtly or not so subtly, also lost to the world. He bit and released his bottom lip over and over again, deep in concentration. I imagined what it would feel like for him to bite my lip like that, or for me to bite his, or to simply feel his lips on mine.

  “Mr. Hayes,” our teacher called.

  Greyson looked up at him. “Yes, sir?”

  Ah, Greyson Hayes. A second perfect name for a perfect face.

  “You and Ms. Martinez will be working together, and since you’re the only two students not paying any attention in class this morning, it seems you’ll make the perfect pair.”

  Ms. Martinez, that was me, but all I really heard was perfect pair, perfect pair, perfect pair. Yes. Yes, we absolutely would make a perfect pair.

  Greyson looked at me, raising an eyebrow in question. I nodded, letting him know that, yep, that’s me. I’m your partner. The corner of his mouth tugged up in a small smile, and he nodded back, quickly looking back down and losing himself in his notebook again.

  “Go ahead and get together and begin talking about what direction you think you’ll be heading in for this assignment,” our teacher said to the class. “And remember, poetry is open to interpretation, so there are no wrong answers, but I also want to hear conviction in your presentations. Not only should you believe what you’re telling me, but you should also be able to convince me of it too. Got it?”

  A wave of nods and yeses chorused around the room. I grabbed my backpack and stood up, making my way over to Greyson. I plopped down into the seat next to him, but he was so lost in that notebook of his that he didn’t even notice me. At least I didn’t think he did.

  I leaned forward, resting my elbow on the desktop and my head in my hand, watching him sketch away. Was he an artist, too? When I looked closer, I saw that he wasn’t drawing, but writing. Words all over the page, on the lines, in the margins.

  “What’s that for?” I asked.

  “Just a song that keeps playing in my head, wanted to get the words down before I forgot them,” he answered without looking up, still writing. So, he was writing a song? His own song, or someone else’s? Was he in a band? Did he sing? Could I survive it if I ever heard him sing? There were a million questions on the tip of my tongue, but I kept them all to myself.

  Pairs were murmuring all round us, but the only
sounds that really registered were the inhale and exhale of his steady breaths and the familiar scratch of pencil on paper. I closed my eyes, listening, soothed by it.

  After a long while, it stopped. I opened my eyes, and he was staring at me.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  “No. Well, yeah, a little,” I admitted.

  He smiled. “So, I guess we should pick a poem.”

  I turned to the board, to the long list of names and titles written across it. “Poe,” I answered right away. I liked Poe, was drawn to the darkness of his words.

  “Okay, cool.” He turned towards me. “You want to meet after school one day this week to get started?”

  I was melting away in his stare. “Yeah, sure. What day?”

  “Friday good?”

  “Works for me.” I bit the tip of my thumb, suddenly nervous under his gaze.

  “Friday it is.”

  His eyes.

  His eyes, his eyes, his eyes.

  “Friday it is,” I agreed.

  And his smile, his fingers tugging at the bottom of it.

  I was such a goner.

  Five Before

  THAT FRIDAY, AFTER school had cleared out for the day and I had successfully managed to dodge my friends, I found myself laying in the middle of the quad, sprawled out across the grass, thinking that maybe the warmth of the sun would somehow seep its way into my bones and worm its way into my soul.

  I couldn’t explain it—I didn’t understand it—but I felt numb, hopeless. It was like this shadow that followed me around sometimes, clouding the world in a haze I didn’t care to see through. It sheltered me from the outside, protected me. But sometimes it felt like I was drowning.

  I opened my eyes and saw Greyson walking across the quad, watched his sure and confident steps. He was heading right towards me, smiling. I wished I felt the kind of happiness that radiated off of him. I couldn’t even find it in me to smile back. I was still reeling. Still lost in the darkness I couldn’t seem to claw my way out of.

  “You ready?” Greyson asked.

  “Ready?” Ready for what?

  “It’s Friday.”

  Friday?