“Get. In. The. Car.”
7
Blair
I came to the party tonight because … well, I freaking wanted to.
Over the course of high school, I’ve been invited to fewer parties than I can count on my hand. Honestly, these things usually aren’t an invite-only type of event, but after the way Sawyer and his friends blackballed me from basically every social gathering or normalcy, I never wanted to show my face.
Until now. Laura and Nate convinced me to let my hair down and let loose, especially after the shitty week I had with losing the Spirit Night theme vote. And I figured, if you can’t beat the popular crowd, you could join ’em. And drink free alcohol while you’re at it.
Not that I’m an experienced drinker, or even a casual one. I’ve snuck a Mike’s Hard Lemonade here and there, maybe had a crappy cup of keg beer. But something in me kind of snapped this week, and I wanted to forget about the turmoil on student government, my advanced placement classes, and the pressure of applying to college.
And I was pleasantly surprised to find that, before my ex-best friend’s outburst at me being there, I was having a lot of fun. Nate, Laura, and I had all gotten ready together, the two of us girls doing our hair and Nate sifting through old yearbooks on my bed. We put on our favorite playlist as Laura drove us up to Hailey’s ranch house. I was nervous about the comments or treatment I’d get at the party, but once we settled in, I found that no one really cared about my being there.
In fact, I joined in on some of the group drinking games, and was actually decent at flip cup. Over the course of the last two hours, I started to feel … normal. I was blending in, there was a friendliness being paid toward me. No one picked on me, or made lewd comments.
Honestly, it wasn’t what I expected at all.
But what I never expected to happen was me, in Sawyer’s truck, getting a ride home from the one person who hated me more than anything. It’s strangely quiet in the cab of his Jeep, and my drunk self thought that this is the precise moment to laugh.
I chuckle, which turns into a cackle, which then turns into a snort. After a minute, I’m full on belly laughing next to him.
“What?” he bites out, whipping his gaze to me.
Those emerald eyes burn hot as they rove over me, and I squirm in the passenger seat. Even when he’s angry as all get out, he can still make me have dirty, dirty thoughts. And we’re alone. In the middle of nowhere on some back road in our hometown.
“I mean, I had to get you back for the Spirit Night theme. You know that, right?” As if reasoning with him is going to stop this feud.
“By wrecking my truck? Real fucking mature, Blair.” His voice is ice.
“You stole the one thing you know is really important to me in terms of school. I don’t give a shit about your little pranks, or making it so that no one wants to date me. But you went below the belt hijacking that class cabinet meeting. So I had to hit you back where it hurt.”
Laura and I decided to “decorate” his Jeep as a little revenge prank. Honestly, it was fun, and Sawyer played right into our hands. We knew exactly where he’d be tonight, and that everyone would be too drunk to look into the dark and notice two girls taping tampons all over the senior soccer stud’s prized possession.
Part of me is pissed that the whole party won’t get to see our handiwork in the light of day. Laura and I know that most of our fellow classmates slept off their hangovers at the ranch in their cars, or the bedrooms if they were lucky enough to score one.
But Laura getting too drunk and forfeiting her designated driver duties kind of ruined that plan. Serves her right, as it landed me in the carpool from hell.
“You always knew how to strike harder than I did,” he mutters.
Guilt flashes through me at how I ended our friendship, but I try to remind myself that he stole my final theme. And then there is the pros and cons list.
“I’m not quite sure about that.” I chuckle sardonically as flashes of our hometown whip past the passenger window.
Sawyer is all control and blunt maleness in the driver’s seat, and it almost hurts to look at him. Because my lord, he’s attractive when I’m sober, but he’s extremely attractive when I’m drunk. Dangerously so, because I’m considering leaning over the console to touch the divot where I know his dimple flashes on his cheek when he smiles.
Not that he’s smiling now. His thick brown eyebrows are slanted over those stern green eyes, and the muscles of his bicep pop with barely held restraint under his T-shirt sleeves as he one-hands the wheel. His knuckles are thick and I’m not sure why hands and fingers are suddenly the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, but as he grips the leather, I’m stunned to discover that they are.
“Why’d you do it?”
His voice is barely above a whisper, and it’s the first non-confrontational sentence he’s spoken to me in two years. It’s simply a question, and I can tell from the tone in his voice that he’s not asking why I doused his car in female menstrual products. He’s asking about two years ago, about us coming out of that closet and the entire landscape of our friendship changing.
My gaze swings to him, but he’s facing forward, as if trying to solve a puzzle out of the traffic lines painted onto the pavement.
How am I going to explain to him that I found his list? That I read his private thoughts, where he skewered me and broke down every confidence I ever believed in.
In two years, I’ve never come clean. It strikes me now that Sawyer thought I ended our friendship randomly, out of the blue. It is, now that I think of it, pretty unfair that he has just been left hanging with no excuse or reason from me.
But then I think of his pros and cons, and my heart breaks all over again. And I transform into that warped, damaged person I’ve been all along. No party or faux-acceptance from my peers can make me shiny and new.
“Clearly, if the past two years have taught us anything, it’s that we never had anything in common. We were forced together because of our parents, and I’m glad, for one, that we ended that charade. I mean, look how much you despise me. Isn’t honesty better? I just did us a favor.”
The lies coming out of my mouth deal blow after blow to my already damaged heart. I’m spitting untruths, but I’m doing myself a favor. Haven’t I always known that if I didn’t cut him out before he did the same to me, he would have wounded me beyond repair?
If I had fallen in love with Sawyer, and then he eventually ended whatever was between us, I wouldn’t have recovered. And that was what inevitably would have happened. I just made the move before he could.
“You’re right, I do hate you. Don’t forget that.”
Those words sting like a bitch, like an iron on my skin that leaves a brand.
Sawyer pulls the truck to a stop, and we just stare at each other. A jolt of electricity seems to hit the car, crackling between us until I’m not sure whether it’s hate or intense lust floating through the air. I’m not sure if he’s about to verbally dismantle me again, or kiss the living daylights out of me. And I’m not quite sure which I’d prefer.
I have to be the one to look away first, securing that tiniest bit of power. That’s what this is between us; the ultimate power struggle each time we interact. Who cares less, who cares more, who can wound more severely.
Though it’s difficult, I move my chin until my eyes aren’t gazing into his, but at the road in front of us. The alcohol and tension must be clouding my brain, because the fifteen-minute drive home felt like two seconds.
There are at least two blocks left before my house. He dislikes me so much that he’s going to make me walk home in the pitch dark, but that shouldn’t surprise me.
Neither of us says another word as I wrench open the door and hop out, the night swallowing me as all of the unanswered questions left between us still linger in the cab of his truck.
8
Sawyer
“No, dude, you have to put the chips between the mayo and the cheese, not on the meat.
”
As I take the first bite of my lunch, my friends are busy arguing over the correct layering of a sandwich.
Glavin demonstrates the proper way to put together a turkey sandwich, and by the time he’s done, it looks like the thing should be something Guy Fieri is trying on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.
“I don’t even know why we’re eating lunch here. The whole point of being a senior is so you can go off campus during this period. I really wanted a slice of pizza,” Matthew says begrudgingly, eating his own mediocre ham and cheese.
“We’re here because I need a date to homecoming and want to scope out the prospective fresh meat.” My best friend rubs his hands together.
I roll my eyes. “That’s why I’m sitting in this fucking cafeteria? You asshole. You could have just macked on one at her locker and been done with it.”
He shrugs, his eyes lingering over the long tables full of underclassmen girls. “Yeah, but what would be the fun of that? Here, I can put on a show. Besides, what do you care? Hailey has all but spoken for you.”
Annoyance flits at my temples like a gnat. “I haven’t even asked her, I don’t know why she’s going around spreading that shit.”
Truth is, I have no desire to take a date to homecoming. I’m an eighteen-year-old male, there is no way I’m tying myself to one girl when I can swap grinding partners the entire night. Hailey isn’t my girlfriend, I’m not shelling out for flowers, and I’m not ending the night with some promise of more in our future.
“Who are you taking?” I ask Matt.
He’s busy texting under the table, though no teacher would ever dare take the cell phone from our star quarterback. They probably wouldn’t take mine either, or I’d be able to charm my way out of it. Unfortunately, the jock stereotype and favoritism of the popular crowd is one hundred percent accurate at Chester High School.
“What?” He barely glances up.
“Who are you asking to homecoming? Or are we flying solo together?”
Matt shoots his head up, clearly done with whatever he’s doing on his phone. “I’m going to ask Blair.”
I nearly choke on the sip of Gatorade I just took. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, fuck off about your vendetta. It’s so old. And she got really damn hot. So I’m going for it.”
“The hell you are.” I set my roast beef sandwich down with authority.
“She’s fair game! And she’s currently the hottest chick in the senior class. Since I’m the hottest guy, it only makes sense.”
Glavin chimes in, “Hey, I don’t know about that now …”
“Blair is off-limits. And she’s weird, you don’t even want her. You only think so because it’s … because it’s odd or a challenge or some shit.”
I’m barely keeping my temper in check, especially because Matt challenged me on this at the party the other night. And the two of them could barely stop bugging me when we met up to throw a football around on Sunday afternoon in the park. They wanted to know if I’ve seen her tits, when I was only trying to explain how much I despise her.
What happened after I left the party wasn’t a discussion I wanted to have with my friends, partly because I still don’t even know how I feel about it. I so badly wanted to throttle Blair for what she’d done to my truck, and the next minute, I wanted to pull over on the side of the road and haul her into the back seat. It’s the age-old problem I’ve always had when it comes to her; there are just too many mixed emotions. I don’t know which way is up when it comes to Blair Oden, and it leads me to do irrational things.
Like right now, when I’m about to get into a fight with my best friend. It’s like Matt is doing this on purpose, just to piss me off.
“That’s why I’m doing it, because I love the challenge.” He wags his eyebrows.
“You do realize you spent the last two years treating her like dirt on my behalf?” I try a different tactic.
“Yeah, but girls love that shit sometime. The meaner you are, the more they want you. I hope that’s what this is, kind of. Plus, I could always just tell her you forced me to do that, and grovel appropriately. Chicks love groveling.”
“No.” My voice is steel.
“What?” He smirks.
“No. You can’t ask her.” Jealousy rages like a wildfire inside me.
“And you don’t get a say in who I fuck.” Matt rises from his chair.
The word comes out of his mouth and I’m flying over the table at him. I don’t know how it happens, or when my control literally just snaps, but it does. The lunchroom erupts around us, and Matthew and I topple over the plastic chairs, food items flying onto the floor. Something soaks my T-shirt, but I barely notice. Because I’m too busy trying to clock my best friend in the jaw for saying that he’s trying to fuck the girl I both simultaneously hate and want beneath me, moaning my name.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Glavin is there, trying to pull me off of Matt.
My advantage isn’t going to last long, Matt has at least twenty pounds and two inches on me. I’m a big guy, but I’m lean like a soccer player, and even for a quarterback, Matt is stockier. I sink a punch into his jaw and am subsequently knocked to my back, then he’s coming at me. My hand stings as I grapple his shoulder with it, and we’re scuffling like a bunch of schoolyard morons. He sucker punches me to the eye and guaranteed there will be a big black circle there tomorrow. I land one to his ribs, and my anger suffuses through me like adrenaline, numbing everything else but the fury at the thought of him putting his hands on Blair.
“Break it up!” I hear a deeper, louder voice than Glavin’s shout at us.
Suddenly, Matt is being pulled off me, and when he comes away, there is blood dripping from a cut on his lip. I’m panting as I’m hauled up by a teacher I don’t recognize, and then my junior year Spanish teacher is directing us both toward the principal’s office.
Everyone in the cafeteria is tracking us with their eyes, the whispers coming in our wake. I can’t believe I just got into a fight—I’m usually pretty levelheaded—much less one at school. Much less one with one of my closest friends. But the spark kept fizzling closer and closer on that ignition line inside me as he went on about Blair. Then he had to throw out wanting to get her underneath him, and the dynamite had blown up in my face.
Neither one of us even looks at each other as we sit side by side, waiting for our turns in the principal’s office. We’ll patch this up eventually, but it’s too soon, and I feel scorched when it comes to my friend.
When it comes to Blair, my emotions are completely unpredictable. And I can’t explain why to a bunch of dudes, even if they’re my friends. I’m not even sure they’ll get it.
It’s not just that I was embarrassed, or that I lost my closest pal. Blair’s betrayal hurt so much because one, I had been confused about our relationship for some time before then. And two, the trust that existed between us is irrevocably broken.
Since we hit puberty, my mental state had been torn apart when it came to Blair. On the one hand, she was still my best friend, the girl who was like my sister since we were born. We had all the same inside jokes, could hang out for hours without anything being weird, and she knew all of my fears, secrets, and interests. But on the other hand … she was turning into a woman. Gone was the girl I played in the mud with, or the child I spent all my days with. It’s not like I didn’t know she’s a girl and I’m a boy, but as soon as we hit eighth grade, I started to notice the curves of her growing breasts. I noticed the way her hair smelled like clementines and how my stomach dipped when she smiled.
And then we got to high school, and I couldn’t stop noticing. My brain flitted to the possibility of kissing her almost every other second, but she was supposed to be my sister, right? I had all of these weird, conflicting feelings about a girl I’d spent my entire life knowing, and then I wanted to know her in a completely different way.
So when we went into that closet during seven minutes in heaven, I was going to take my shot. I wasn’t go
ing to beat around the bush or make some grand gesture; I was just going to kiss the hell out of her and see how we both felt about it.
But then Blair pulled that shit, and all the trust we had went out the fucking window.
The trust between us … it had been airtight. Aside from my parents, Blair was the closest thing I had to family. She was the other half of my whole, in every way. We knew how to get each other out of trouble, the things to say to cheer each other up, and everything in between. I never saw it coming, what she did to me. Blindsided is an understatement. Then Blair doubled down and destroyed any hope for a reconciliation.
To this day, I don’t know why she did it. Maybe that’s why I’m so fucking angry.
Clearly, from our conversation when I drove her home the other night, she’s never going to give me an answer. So I’m not sure this rage will ever go away.
9
Blair
My crafting scissors cut into the hundredth piece of lime-green printer paper, and I sigh.
“How many more of these do we have to go?”
Nate looks around us at the floor littered with glue, tape, paper, and a hundred other craft supplies. “Oh, only about two thousand more.”
“Ugh, I really hate this part. I want to make change and organize events, not be a glorified arts and crafts teacher.” I pout.
“Well, this comes with part of the territory. And just think, being a glorified arts and crafts teacher could get you into college, so there is that.” He shrugs.
“I highly doubt the Ivy Leagues are checking into how well I can make a homecoming nomination ballot out of felt and pipe cleaners,” I grumble.
We’re on our free period and up to our elbows in homecoming decor, ticket-making, nominations, and everything else having to do with the most popular school event on the fall calendar. Not only does the game garner hundreds more fans than normal, including alumni, but the dance is the biggest social gathering in the first two marking periods. Everyone tries to secure a date, girls drop hundreds of dollars on hair and makeup, over-sexed teens gather in the school gym to grind on each other until their parents come to pick them up in the carpool lane out front of the school. It’s all fun and games, except for the two of us who have to do all the manual labor and typically get no thanks whatsoever.
Foes & Cons Page 5
