by Dean, Ali
“The crash she had yesterday doesn’t prompt looking into who is behind the threats?”
“There’s no indication the skateboarding fall was connected to the threatening messages, from what Miss Slattery told us. She didn’t believe her board was tampered with or anything of that nature. Of course I’ll ask her more about that when I get in touch with her.”
“And if there is another harmful act outside of the messages?”
“We can’t take action without one. These social media platforms have privacy rights for their users, and free speech is something our government takes very seriously.”
I want to roll my eyes, but I’m lucky he’s given me this much information and is still answering my questions. After all, I’m not the victim here. I don’t even know who I am to Jordan anymore.
My body falls back on the bed as soon as the call ends. The pain radiating from my chest is too much. It really hits me then. I’m cut off from Jordan. I should be at her side as she hears updates on this investigation, but I’ve got no way to contact her. She’s cut me out, and I don’t know when I’ll see her again. Will I ever see her again?
My body shakes a little as it comes at me at once. All my instincts want to obsess over her well-being, to be there for her in every way I can. But the last thing Jordan needs is another stalker. And that’s what I’ll become if I don’t accept this.
Chapter Four
Jordan
“We miss you!” Lucy shouts through the screen.
“I can’t believe you just left us!” Ellie pouts. “I mean I can, I get it, but girl, it’s not the same celebrating the end of our first semester without you.”
Zora pokes her head in the frame. Her hot pink hair has been replaced by a bright blue shade. “If the cops are still checking out your phone, they might bring me in for questioning. I definitely sent you a few harassing text messages.”
“I doubt they’re still checking it. But I did tell them to hold it until I get back.”
“They wouldn’t send it to you?” Lucy asks. “That’s lame.”
“I can go pick it up and mail it to you,” Ellie offers.
“No, I don’t want it anyway. I could use the break.”
“So they basically did nothing? That’s bullshit.”
“I mean, Instagram’s a private company. Unless I was actually harmed, the cops can’t go in there and get info about individual accounts.”
Zora grumbles something.
“Besides, they’re right. I can report it to Instagram and have the accounts removed or blocked. Or I can just block the messages myself. It’s the same outcome as if I got a restraining order.”
“But you don’t even know who it is,” Zora reminds us. “How are you supposed to sleep at night if you don’t know who it is?”
Lucy pats Zora’s arm. “The cops don’t care about if she can sleep at night, at least if she’s not actually hurt.” She turns to me. “But you were hurt. What if it was Razzle who tampered with your board?”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t the board. It was me.”
“Yeah, and you lost focus because of the messages,” Zora snaps.
I shrug. “Skateboarding’s dangerous. Besides, this whole cyberbullying, internet trolling thing is a pretty new crime. Usually it’s schools dealing with this kind of stuff. There are cases with kids killing themselves that don’t even warrant criminal charges, so I’m not really on anyone’s priority list.”
“I want to get that phone and do my own investigation,” Zora announces. “Find out who these people are and hunt them down.”
“Relax, I’m deleting all my social media stuff anyway. It’s done.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I rub my chest.
It’s been five days since I left Beck’s apartment. Four days since I left California and sent him a text message.
“Have you told Griff?” Lucy asks softly.
“About quitting social media? I didn’t have it in me to call him about it. I mean, I could have used my mom’s or dad’s phones like I’m doing now, but I sent him an email instead. Told him I want to be done with all of it, not just social media. The competitions, the brand repping.”
“What’d he say?” Ellie asks.
“Same thing Beck said when, well, you know.” It’s hard to actually say aloud that I broke up with him. “That I was making a rash decision. That I had a head injury and needed time to recover. Griff said he understood and would give me time.”
There’s a pause. That’s not exactly what Beck said. But then again, Beck’s about to start filming on a show that doesn’t allow him in relationships, while Griff’s about to officially launch Brazen.
“So, have you talked to him?” Lucy asks.
I don’t have to ask who she’s talking about.
“No. Aside from that email exchange with Griff, this call with you guys is my first contact with anyone from Summerside.”
I know I should call Naomi and Summer, but I don’t have their numbers, and I’m not about to get on social media to reach out to them. I guess I could ask Griffin on email but… it’s hard to know how to talk to them about Beck now. He must have told them by now, and I don’t know if they’ll be mad at me or ask questions, or what.
Ellie changes the subject and I’m grateful. “So, what have you been up to at home since you can’t skate?”
“My parents have been hovering. Phoebe and Wyatt are off now too, so I hung with them yesterday. Other than that, I’ve actually been sleeping a lot.”
“You okay?” Lucy asks.
No, I’m never okay when I can’t skate, and I’m mopey and moodier than ever.
“It’s just from the concussion. The doctor said this is normal.” I can’t remember if the doctor said it was normal to sleep so much. But Google says so. “My mom thinks I’m depressed or some shit, but I’m fine.” I notice Lucy exchanging looks with Zora and Ellie, so I reassure them, “I have to see a doctor here tomorrow and check in every week until I get cleared to skate.”
My finger runs along the chain of my necklace, fiddling with the heart and skateboard pendants.
“You should call him, Jordan,” Lucy urges in her gentlest voice.
“I’m sure he wants to know how you’re doing,” Ellie adds.
“He does. He texted me. You know, since you contacted him from my phone right before you hopped out of my car at the airport?” Zora says pointedly.
“What did you say?”
“That you’re an idiot and you’ll come to your senses eventually.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.” She doesn’t crack a smile and I narrow my eyes.
“I’d smack you if you were in front of me for real.”
“Just call him.”
Ellie raises her hand. “I agree with this advice. And I rarely agree with Zora’s advice, so that’s saying something.”
Lucy opens her mouth, to put in her vote too I assume, but I pretend to call out to my mom. “Oh, what’s that? It’s dinner time? Okay, I’m coming!”
Glancing back at the screen I can see I haven’t fooled anyone. “Man, you’re really bad at that,” Zora says, like she’s truly offended.
“Remember, she never had to lie to her parents or anyone about sneaking out or going to parties. This is new to her,” Lucy defends me.
“It’s something we can work on. The lying thing,” Ellie clarifies. “Takes practice. You know, like kissing.”
“Not so subtle,” Zora murmurs.
“I’m just reminding her about her first kiss with Beck in that storage closet, in case she’s already forgotten just how far she’s come.”
“I think I hear my mom calling again.”
Lucy leans forward until her face fills the screen. “What I think Ellie’s trying to say, is that relationships take practice too, and there are ups and downs, but don’t give up on something so good.”
I hear Ellie in the background. “No, I was really just talking about Beck’s kis
sing. She stopped telling us anything after that but I’m sure his other skills are great too.”
Zora must have grabbed the phone because she’s suddenly in the screen, adding, “Skills in the bedroom. Or in your case, in the van.”
“Or storage closet!” Lucy calls.
“I’m hanging up now. Love you! Bye.”
I do end the call then before they can say anything else. They might have made me laugh, just a little. I might even be smiling. But my heart hurts, and all I want to do is crawl under the covers and curl up in a ball. I miss him, so damn bad. But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m here, he’s there, and that’s not going to change. Even when I’m back on campus, we can’t be together, not really. I’m sure by now Beck’s realized how crazy it was for us to try to stay together in secret for another year. I did us both a favor by ending it now, before any more damage was done.
Chapter Five
Beck
“You look like shit. You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Griff hands me a beer before sitting on the couch across from me.
It’s three days before Christmas. One week since Jordan left. Three weeks until filming starts. I’m aware of the days changing, time moving forward, but I feel frozen. Stuck somewhere between finding Jordan in the ER and getting her text message she was flying home.
“Not now, Griff. Isn’t Moses dropping by any minute?” We’re at my mom’s house. Earlier, we saw Moses pulling in to Airwalk as we were headed out.
Griff leans forward. “She emailed me, you know. Said she doesn’t have a phone, it’s still with the cops. Why’d she leave it there anyway if they aren’t doing anything?”
“My guess is she needed a break from that thing after the messages she got.”
A break from me too.
“That’s what her email said. She wants out of social media, Brazen, competitions, all of it. Didn’t sound like a break she was proposing either.”
I take a long pull of my beer, trying to fight the persistent aching in my chest. It hasn’t gone away.
“Beckett!” The shrill voice of my sister comes from the second floor, and then the sound of feet pattering down the stairs. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying and I’m instantly out of my chair.
“What is it, Rugrat?”
“Jordan broke up with you? What the hell, Beck?” She shoves my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jordan broke up with you?” Griff echoes.
Hearing those words is like a knife twisting in my gut.
“It’s more like a break, for now, while all this blows over,” I reason, knowing that’s more like wishful thinking.
Summer’s right behind Naomi and instead of shoving me she puts her arms out for a hug. I don’t know that I want a hug. That means this is all true. I thought I’d accepted it already, but as Summer squeezes me tight, a new wave of loss hits.
Pulling away before I break down in front of everyone, I ask the girls how they found out.
“We text with Lucy, Ellie and Zora sometimes. They finally got her on FaceTime and were worried about her. We’re worried too. Anyway, they said she seems depressed and it’s probably because she broke up with you. So then we got her mom’s number from Zora and called her and got the whole story.”
“The whole story? There’s not much of a story.” She ended things because the crap that came with being my girlfriend wasn’t worth it to her. Long distance wasn’t worth it.
The doorbell rings, and I move before anyone else can, needing to escape this room and everyone’s pity.
“Hey Moses, what’s up?”
“Thanks for having me. Man, you look like hell, you okay?”
I try to laugh, but it’s not very convincing. “Come on in. Want a beer?”
“Sure.”
I go straight for the kitchen while Moses greets the others. When I return with his beer a moment later, Moses still hasn’t sat down. “Is this a bad time? I can head out.”
“No, it’s fine, man. We just found out Beck and his girlfriend broke up.”
I freeze, glaring at Griff and daring him to look my way, which he doesn’t. Apparently my relationship with Jordan isn’t a secret anymore, now that it’s over. And who is he to decide that?
“Shit, I’m sorry, man,” Moses says. “Was it because of Shred Live?”
“I guess we’re talking about this,” I say as I make my way back to my chair. “I thought you coming over would save me from it, Moses.”
“You know I won’t tell anybody,” Moses promises, taking the other armchair.
Naomi takes the sofa by Griff, while Summer plops herself on the floor. “I went on her Instagram account this morning,” Summer admits. She glances at Moses. “I have access because I was helping her with it.”
Griff leans forward. “Summer, I told you not to read her messages. You read them, didn’t you?”
“Well, you guys were acting all shady, and then you said she flew home without her phone so we couldn’t call her. What did you expect us to do?”
Moses leans toward me and murmurs, “We’re talking about Jordan Slattery, right?”
I shoot him a suspicious look.
“I assumed you were together the night I met her.” He shrugs. “Saw the video of that crash, man. How is she?”
All I can do is shake my head, because I don’t really know.
Summer picks at the rug. “It makes sense. Why she went for the half pipe that day. She said she’d just read all those messages and her head was messed up.”
Moses doesn’t ask what the messages said, but he can make his guesses. If he’s online at all he’s seen the buzz speculating about which guy Jordan’s with.
“Yeah, but I still don’t understand why she had to break up with you, Beck!” Naomi nearly growls. “Things were so good between you guys. And she sounded all torn up and down about it. Why would she do that? Nothing about how you guys feel about each other has changed.”
“Because he’s leaving for filming for three months,” Summer reminds her. “Because the Shred Live contract says they have to stay a secret for a year.”
“Did you tell her you were gonna pull out of Shred Live?” Griffin asks.
“Yeah, she didn’t want me to,” I answer. Rehashing it with everyone isn’t exactly fun, but it’s weirdly therapeutic watching them process it.
Naomi’s eyes widen. “She didn’t want you to?”
I shake my head, confirming it. Emotion rises in my chest. “Said something about not being cut out for this, any of it, and not wanting me to have to make sacrifices because she can’t handle it.”
“She said that in the email to me too,” Griff says. “That she’s not cut out to be a pro skateboarder.”
Naomi looks confused and maybe a little dumbstruck. Summer is frowning and staring at the ground. My heart breaks a little for them too, because they look up to Jordan. From their perspective, it’s like she’s giving up, letting them down. Jordan might think she’s doing the noble thing here, making the mature decision that will leave me better off, but it sure doesn’t feel that way to the rest of us. Hell, it reminds me of how I was trying so hard to stay away from her and deny my feelings for her, thinking I was being the good guy.
Moses breaks the depressing silence. “She’s eighteen, right? Girl has been through a lot since she started college out here and met all of you. I read the Skate Wave article, I’ve heard the talk. No one knew who she was, and now she’s the talk of the skateboarding world. At first it was about her skateboarding, and looked like she was handling that attention just fine. But it shifted to her personal life real quick, and damn, girls got heated and mean.” Moses points a finger between Griff and me. “You two might not see it clearly because you’ve been in it awhile. But that kind of attention, good or bad, it’s a lot to take for anyone.”
Naomi grumbles, “It just seemed like she went from being totally okay with all of it, to ending all of it.” She snaps her fingers. “Just like that.”
Summer turns to look at her friend. “Remember though, she didn’t want to even rep Brazen or compete a few months ago?”
“But she’s so good at it!” Naomi practically wails. I feel like I’m supposed to be comforting Naomi, who’s taking this break-up nearly as hard as I am.
“I bet that crash scared her,” Moses says quietly.
“Not the crash, the messages,” I clarify. “One girl said she hopes Jordan breaks her legs. Another was following her, took a picture of her outside our place and said to stay away.”
Moses lets out a low whistle. “You go to the cops?”
Going through all this again, it’s bringing me out of the frozen state I’d been in, where I felt like I was slowly drowning. Now my blood is boiling, and I want to punch something. There’s nothing I can do about any of this. I’d get on a plane right now and fly to her if she’d let me hold her, but the last thing I want to do is bring more stress to her doorstep. She made it clear I’m not the source of comfort she wants, didn’t she? Sure, part of me thinks the head injury fueled her to break up with me, but if I don’t respect her decision, that makes me an asshole. No better than my own ex-girlfriend who wouldn’t let me go.
My phone rings from the coffee table and I start to reach for it. Naomi scoots forward before I can and reads the screen. “It’s a Connecticut number! I bet it’s her! Answer it, Beck!”
I don’t need to be told twice. Jumping up, I grab my cell from the table and start jogging up the stairs, not wanting four sets of ears listening. My old bedroom is a guest room now, and I head for it, shutting the door behind me as I answer.
“Hello?”
“Beck? It’s Jordan.”
My entire body sags, and before I know it, I’m sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. “Hey. How are you?” God, I have so much I want to say to her, but I try to play it cool.
“I’m… still recovering I guess.”
