Finally looking at him full on, I scowl. “I think it’ll be a good thing to be farther away from him.” We both laugh, but when I realize that we are, I shift my gaze to the marina, and bite my lip to hinder it.
He asks, “Well, what about you? You’ve never mentioned if you have someone special in your life.” I should’ve just stayed on the subject of Duquesne and Calder.
“I don’t.” I take a bite of my pizza, but don’t taste it. I just mechanically chew, praying he shuts the hell up.
“You never had anyone in your life that you didn’t tell me about?”
Lowering my pizza, I turn to him and disbelievingly scoff, “Really, Dad?”
“What? You never have any girlfriends that I know about.” He shrugs and props his left hand on his thigh. “Well, that you’ve told me about.”
I irritably sigh, nearly shredding my napkin, wiping my hands. “There’s nothing to tell you.”
“I doubt that.”
Turning my head away, I roll my eyes. Where in the hell did I go wrong to fall into this shithole interrogation?
Impulsively, I turn back to him. “What about you? How come you never have someone to introduce to Hadley and me? Don’t you ever date? You’ve been single for 27 years!”
Appearing surprised I asked, he uneasily shifts away, clearing his throat. “I date.”
“Then why have we never heard about them?”
Avoiding my intrusive glare, my dad anxiously threads one hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, and with the other, he rubs his shoulder, looking the most uncomfortable I’ve ever seen him. He quietly admits, “Because nothing’s ever panned out, I guess.”
“In 27 years?”
He shrugs, dropping his hands to grip the tailgate tightly. “Yeah. Maybe that’s why your mother left me. Maybe I am just that unlovable.”
I’m truly speechless. I did not expect that.
As I’m left gaping at my father, a black Subaru Impreza WRX STI pulls in beside us. Dash and I went car shopping two weeks ago. After looking at his list of potential cars, I anticipated a long and drawn-out experience, but once he got behind the wheel of this car, it was the first and last car he test drove. The high-boost 305-hp turbocharged/intercooled Boxter engine is what sold me, but apparently, he liked the wing spoiler, “wide and low” body, and the gas mileage. How unexciting.
His grin and sucker practically exit the car before he does. He pulls on the stick, yanking the red candy out of his mouth. “Hey, Jericho. Mr. Beckett.”
“Dashiell.” Dad glances at me, looking slightly aggravated, yet somewhat relieved that we’re not going to continue our riveting conversation. I’m sure he wanted to continue dissecting my life, but didn’t seem to like my prying into his personal life. Now he knows how it feels. I don’t stop my smile, which provokes a frown from him.
I see Dash’s arrival as a reprieve, and I relax, grabbing another slice of pizza and nodding at the box as he walks over. Tossing his sucker onto the cardboard lid, he grabs a piece and leans against the tailgate in between my dad and me.
I ask, “You done counting pasties?”
He shakes his head with a slanted grin. “You just wish you lived my rock star life.”
“Only if I can take your place gluing them onto your mom.”
My dad actually laughs, which surprises me, and I can’t help showing it. Then, he says, “Tell me something, Dashiell. Did Jared ever have any girlfriends in school?”
Dash’s mouth sags open, but it’s only a momentary lapse. “A few. A couple space cadets, and one psycho who only spoke Spanish when she was upset. She wasn’t even Hispanic.”
Dad asks, “Is that right?”
I clarify, “That was Anya and she was speaking Russian.”
Dash probes, “Was her family Russian?”
“Hell if I know.” I take a drink of my root beer, wishing it were a real beer. Many real beers.
My dad states, “I never knew about any of his girlfriends. I thought you’d tell me a huge roster.”
“Oh, well, that’s his list of official girlfriends. He flirted a lot with most of the school’s female population.”
“That’s a lie.”
Dash laughs. “You’re right.” He says to my dad, “Let’s just say that Jared came off as cool and a lady’s man, but he was far from either.”
“Shut up, Calder. I flirted some.”
“Not that I ever saw. I did see you hanging around one girl a lot. What was it, junior or senior year? I can’t remember. I was never close enough to see who she was, and you’d never talk about her.”
“Like I’m not now.” Ever.
“I think I’m hitting a nerve.” His eyes light up, sparking my dad’s interest with it.
“You wish,” I lie, wanting to close the subject. I pose to him, “What about you, Calder? I saw you flirting with quite the crowd. You even had some regulars that hung onto you in between classes or at lunch.”
“Regulars? You make me sound like an old waitress or a hooker.”
“Yep.” I shove his shoulder. “You were way too friendly with those eighth graders.”
Unfazed by my teasing, he replies, “I can’t help it I’m a people person.” True. Dash knows everyone and is always highly regarded when I hear him mentioned, until his choice in a best friend comes into question. He looks at me pensively. “You’re …complicated.”
“I’ll vouch for that one,” my Dad offers. I frown at both of them.
Abruptly, I laugh. “Remember the girl with a limp you dated for a while?”
“Her name was Carolyn and we only were together two months.”
“What happened?” my dad asks between bites.
Dash’s smile hits the skids. “She left me for her cousin’s boyfriend.”
I facetiously smirk. “Did he have a limp, too?”
“No. She limped because she had an ingrown toenail that was removed wrong or something.”
I recoil, letting my pizza hang limply. “That’s fricking disgusting.”
“I never saw her feet!”
“I doubt you saw anything else, either. Not that she was makeout material. She talked like an auctioneer, making you sound like you had shit in your mouth.” I laugh, but hear my dad’s chagrin swirling in his sigh.
“Yeah. My mom met her when we saw Carolyn at a store. She said she’d kick my ass if I knocked her up because she could never keep up with our kid.”
“Truest words ever said. Especially since your mom wore the eight-inch heels back then.”
Dash rolls his eyes and says, “I’m pretty sure you had more girlfriends, but you hid them.”
I try smiling, but fail. “Nope.” There was only one I wanted. My gaze slides to the patch of grass across the parking lot, frantically trying to forget.
Dad and Dash both give me a strange look. I don’t see it, but I feel it in the silence that follows, which is unsettling. Without looking at them, I edgily ask, “What?”
“I think you’re not telling us something,” my dad accuses.
Tired of this shit, I push off the tailgate. Dad asks, “Where are you going?”
I say over my shoulder, “I don’t think I need a permission slip signed anymore.” I hear whispering and then quick footsteps behind me.
“Wait, Jericho.” Dash catches up with me. “Why do you shut down like that? It’s just your dad and me.”
“And you just answered your own question.”
“I know you have issues with your dad, but don’t you trust me, at least?”
I honestly don’t know how to answer that, so I just keep walking.
“Jared, there’s something going on with you. You and Rio never fight like you did the other night. Why does Liberty bother you so much? You’d find she’s really funny and nice if you took the time to get to know her.”
“Like you do?” I glare at him. The wind blows through his blond hair, making it chaotically ruffled, which he hates.
“More than you do,” he challen
gingly retorts as we cross the street. I shake my head, walking onto the Spa Creek Drawbridge, sliding past people waiting for the race to start. He asks, “Are you afraid he won’t want to be friends with us anymore?”
“Just put a sock in it, Dash.”
He punches my arm. “There you go again. Shoving everyone away.”
I shoot him a dirty look. Anyone besides Rio and Dash touching me like that would’ve been on their ass right now. “Watch it or I’ll be shoving you off this bridge.”
Amongst the crowd, we find an open spot on the other end of the drawbridge, next to an old man. It could go either way. Old people are unpredictable. Some try to talk to me, while others leave me alone. There’s a fifty-fifty chance that I’m going to be bothered. I hope this one doesn’t even realize I’m here.
Leaning over the pinkish top rail, I prop my foot on the bottom one, and look out to the plethora of boats ready to start. On the other side of me, Dash talks to people around us, which is a given when we go anywhere. I yank on the bill of my cap and hope he doesn’t try to pull me into his banal chatter.
Is there something to what Dash and Rio have said? I’ve always been closed off to people, for the most part. Dash and Rio do know more about me than anyone else does, so I don’t get why Dash is bitching about me “shoving everyone away.” That’s bullshit. They both just want something to complain about or someone to blame. I’m always around to hear about their problems, but they want me to solve them. Fuck, I can’t even solve my own damn problems. Why do they want to know so much about mine? There’s nothing they can do about them. Anyway, they’re water…under the bridge.
“No way! Look at you!” I hear him laughingly say to someone. I roll my eyes at the water below. How can he be so into people in general? Even strangers love him. He’s revoltingly bubbly. We’re nothing alike. How in the fuck have I stayed friends with him for 22 years?
Suddenly, Dash smacks my arm. “Hey, I want you to meet someone.”
Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.
I grit my teeth. I just want to stand here and watch the boats. He knows I hate these tedious kinds of introductions. I’m not good at feigning interest, even with people I do know. I don’t need to meet one of Dash’s million followers; someone that I’ll never see again. What’s the point?
Silently promising to shove Calder off the bridge later, I stiffly turn from the railing and force some semblance of a smile. However, the smile slips when I see purple-striped hair, those unreal, dark blue eyes, and a bright smile.
Dash nods sideways at me. “Kat, this is my best friend Jared Beckett.” Her smile widens as my impatience grows. She has the gall to smile after what she pulled on me this morning?
Licking my lips, I glower at her before I spread the adoration to Calder, guaranteeing he will meet his demise shortly. Ignoring my ire with his own grin, he says, “Jericho, this is Kat Merrick.”
The bridge may as well have crashed into the harbor beneath us, taking my stomach first. I wouldn’t have noticed.
As my jaw hangs open at Dash, Kat complacently says, “We know each other.”
I really wish I had brought my sunglasses because there’s no way I can hide my shock in any way.
Kat Merrick.
Not Brandcroft.
Katriona Merrick.
She looks unbelievably different, but my instincts were right.
It is her.
She’s the one that got away in high school.
She’s the one who repeatedly rejected me.
She’s the one I still dream about.
She’s…
Fuck me. Fuck me.
Fuck. Me.
CHAPTER 5
KAT
“Nice to meet you.”
“What’s your last name?”
Could he have twisted the knife into my heart any further by uttering those cutting words to me?
Having Jared walk back into my life is either a blessing or a curse. In school, he was hot, but now, he’s undeniably, smoking hot. Though he looks broader and there is an indescribable wariness about him, his hair is still a warm caramel and his eyes are the same, cool mix of green and hazel. They’re spellbinding.
Yet, looking into Jared Beckett’s blank stare when I saw him at my mom’s for the first time, genuinely not recognizing me, I took off before I broke down in front of him. It was my nightmare come true. I always thought if I ran into him again after all these years, he’d remember me and, and if we were both single, possibly picking up where we left off…whatever it was that we left.
I just can’t forget that he did forget me.
This is definitely a curse.
Love is something I’ve never been good at or have possessed much luck. I’ve had two boyfriends and a handful of crushes from afar. Well, almost all of them were from a distance. Years ago, I thought Jared and I were friends. I had wanted more, but he didn’t. He only liked teasing me with the possibility before yanking it out of my reach.
I should go back to the beginning.
My name is Katriona Elyse Merrick. Kat.
Or as Jared Beckett used to call me, Kit Kat.
Jared and I went to high school together. During my sophomore year, which was his junior year, we took driver’s education class together that was offered after school three times a week for a semester. The class was split up and we would rotate practicing things like parking, driving around cones, and backing into a parking space in the school’s parking lot, while others would spend an hour in a classroom, and one student would drive on the road with another instructor.
When we were practicing in the lot, we each were paired with a partner, while the instructor looked on and graded us. They wanted us to practice driving with someone who could possibly distract us, but in a safer setting instead of throwing us out onto the street with distractions. I was paired with Jared often.
The first two weeks was classroom instruction, to become familiarized with the laws of the road, and the basics of operating a motor vehicle. Jared and I each sat in the second chair, a row apart. Helena Keiser sat between us, since we were seated alphabetically. One day during the second week, Helena caught Jared smiling at me as I casually caught his eye. She thought it was some kind of significant moment, I guess, because she remarked that we would look “cute together” and that Jared should ask me out on a date. I was so horrified that she would put him in that awkward situation of being caught unawares like that. I wasn’t anyone in my school. I didn’t play any sports. I wasn’t a cheerleader, in any high-profile clubs, or the band. I wasn’t popular or even known for being one of the extremely smart kids. I wasn’t a burnout, a dropout, or put out. I did my work, was a good student and had a handful of friends, but there wasn’t anything that singled me out. I wasn’t unlike other students, yet that’s it. I was just…there.
In contrast, Jared was a varsity football player—wide receiver, to be exact. I knew that because after Helena’s comment, I looked him up in my previous yearbooks and school newsletters. I even stopped by the team picture, hanging outside the gym doors, which listed their names and positions. Since I wasn’t into football or into who’s who in school, I had known nothing about him prior to having class with him.
After I knew who he was, that’s when I started hearing his name more, or rather, I knew who they were talking about when I heard his name. The more I heard his name, the more awkward I felt that Helena suggested he ask me out. Jared Beckett was popular, but not massively so, casually finding out from friends of friends’ intel on him that he mostly kept to himself. Nevertheless, he would never be seen with me. Why would he when he could have anyone he wanted? I didn’t think I was horribly ugly, but I wasn’t gorgeous like the cheerleaders or the popular girls. My hair was dull and shoulder-length. I didn’t wear much makeup. I wore glasses, a retainer, and I was a bony thing with hardly any boobs. Those didn’t make a full appearance until my senior year.
After Helena’s bold proposition, things immediately became different,
but in an appealing way. Jared and I were paired together in a car for parking lot work. At first, he teased me about how far I’d have to pull up the seat compared to him, how serious I looked when I concentrated on not running over cones, and how I forgot where the turn signal was. Jared had also started calling me Kit Kat. I’d roll my eyes at him, but his smile riveted me and his laugh was infectious. It was impossible not to laugh with him.
We’d started talking more, too. We talked about our favorite TV shows, hobbies, and what we wanted to do with our lives. Then, just as quick as the initial teasing started, it took an unforeseen turn. The following Monday, Jared found reasons to touch me. Whether it was to get a closer look at my earrings or my rings, to playfully rubbing my shoulder and neck, he was definitely not paying attention to how I was driving, which made me not pay attention to how I was driving.
Oddly, it became nearly a given that we’d be partners for lot work. He’d take me by the arm, leading me to a car before I had the chance to pick someone else. Each time in the car with him, he became braver. Once, I wore ripped jeans, and as I looked to the left, Jared touched the fringes on my knee, slowly grazing his fingers over my skin. Shocked, I quickly looked back to his soft smile and persistent gaze as his fingers continued to trace my knee. I had never experienced goosebumps so fast in my life. Turning to look over my shoulder as I backed into a space, the car became almost intimate. His head leaned toward me more, closer each time I had to look behind me. My nerves were buzzing and I had a hard time concentrating. When he closely whispered, “I really like your perfume,” I gasped a thank you to the back window before the car shook to a hard stop, nearly running us over the curb.
When it was Jared’s turn to drive, I teasingly squeezed his arm and tried to tickle his neck as repayment. Even so, nothing seemed to bother him. He was a good driver, but he apparently didn’t have to focus as much as I did. He had more fun with it, especially when the instructor wasn’t watching; though, all three of the instructors had told him to slow down on more than one occasion. Because of that, I came up with a nickname of my own for him, referring to his driving style that made him laugh. Jared was unflappable, that is, until the moment I patted his leg, returning the favor. He practically jumped out of the driver’s seat. The dazed look on his face was funny, but he didn’t laugh with me.
The Keys to Jericho Page 7
