by Portia Moore
“Is it just us?” she whispers.
I nod, and her lips turn upward but not into an actual smile. She begins to take off her coat, and I clear my throat. I see a flicker of anger in her eyes, but she doesn’t stop. I stop my eyes from roving her body, reminding myself I know what’s under her clothes.
“So you’re just done with me now?” she asks quietly.
“Don’t make it sound like that,” I say in the same volume she uses.
“But that is what you want?” She looks at me with innocent eyes, her expression hurt.
“This isn’t good for either of us. Tell me you’re happy. You’re not happy!” I say in a hushed whisper, my tone sharp. I hope she gets my point.
“You make me happy,” she says, looking me in the eye.
“You were happy the last time I saw you?” I ask her sarcastically.
She squints at me. “You’re drunk?”
I sigh. “I’m not drunk. I just had a few drinks.”
But I think that’s a lie because I’m fighting the urge to kiss her, to feel her, to do things I’d never think about doing in this house. It’s off-limits, and I was supposed to be ending this. She runs her hand through her hair, gives me a seductive smile, and walks toward me. I swallow hard and step back until I bump into the refrigerator.
“I’m sorry,” she says, running her hands up my chest.
“Lisa, not here.” But my words are weak, and my body is even weaker. She looks up at me, and I feel my resolve deteriorating.
“I know you want me,” she purrs. Her hands slide down and go inside my pants.“I can feel how much.”
She kisses me, and she does it with everything in her, all her passion, all her love, all her fear. She emotes, giving herself to me in each kiss, in each touch. She loves purely and selflessly, and she makes me feel how I used to with just a kiss. I get lost in her. When our bodies are connected, I forget how old she is, that she’s my son’s best friend, that I’m married to a wife I love.
Before long, I’m inside her, not thinking of anything but how good she feels, how good this feels. I forget that she’s not supposed to scratch my back. I forget that I’m in my house, in our kitchen, with her pressed up against the wall I painted with my wife last summer. I forget that she’s moaning my name loudly in the house I share with my family. I forget all of that until I hear footsteps.
Before I can quiet her, I see my son, his face white, eyes wide and horrified, and I freeze, unable to move. Lisa notices and looks behind her, and she loses all color when she sees him. He’s frozen, shocked, taking in what he’s seeing. I think it takes him a minute to realize it’s real. Time has slowed down.
“Chris,” she shrieks, and her voice wakes us both.
I let her down, and his expression goes from shocked and horrified to angry and disgusted.
“What the fuck?” he screams.
“I-I—” I try to think of something to say.
Lisa grabs her pants and underwear off the floor, and I pull up my own.
“Son, it’s not—” I can’t even get the lie out of my mouth before he runs out of the house. I buckle my pants and chase him. “Chris!”
I hear Lisa behind me. She’s crying and looks as terrified as I feel.
“Go home. Right now. I’ll call you,” I tell her, but she seems stuck. “Now, Lisa!”
She nods, snapping out of her trance, and she runs out the back door.
“Chris!” I yell.
He’s off the front porch, and I run down the steps but stop when he reaches the bottom of the steps. Tears come from his eyes without stopping, and he’s shaking, his face red.
“Stay the fuck away from me!” he shouts, and the look in his eyes stops me in my tracks.
“Chris, just let me explain. Please,” I beg.
“Don’t fucking talk to me. You stay the hell away from me!” he shouts, catching his breath, and I start to cry too. “All these years, all lies. Your moral code, your rules and lectures. You’re a liar. A fucking hypocrite.”
I can’t say anything. What can I say? I open my mouth to tell him I’m sorry.
“I hate you,” he growls.
“You don’t mean that, son. You’re angry. You’re upset.”
He turns away from me. By the time he looks back, he’s different. In an instant, I see the change in him. He’s gone from broken, hurt, and emotional to cold as ice and vicious. A smug grin replaces his devastation.
“I should thank you, Dad. You’ve just created the biggest problem of your life.” He gives me a satisfied smirk, one that cuts through me, and I’m frozen.
He hops in his truck, and I wake up. I run toward it, but he pulls off and flips me off as he drives down the street. I go back in the house and splash cold water on my face, take a deep breath, and kick the refrigerator so hard all of the magnets fall off and the door pops open.
I try to think of a way to do damage control, but I can’t think of one. My life is over. It’s going to crumble around me. I don’t have a life without my family, and it hits me like a ton of bricks. All this time, I’ve been searching for myself, what makes me happy, wanting to feel alive. Now I realize that I have no reason to be alive without my family. They’re my everything, and it takes me being on the cusp of losing them to realize it. The realization comes far too late.
I don’t feel alive anymore. I’m dead.
MY HANDS TREMBLE each time the phone rings. My heart still feels as if it’s pounding out of my chest. I feel as though I’m on the edge of a panic attack. The anxiety in my body won’t let up and is going to make me explode. I wait and wait for a mob led by Chris and his mom with Deanna and Claire in tow to show up to my house screaming homewrecker, slut, evil selfish bitch. I’ve been pacing and crying since I got home. My best friend is going to hate me, everyone is going to hate me, which shouldn’t matter since I hate myself right now. It’s all my fault. I could tell he had been drinking a lot. If he hadn’t, he never would have had sex with me there. I just wanted to make him feel better. I wanted to feel better, so I broke one of the most important rules.
Never in his house.
I bite my lip as I dial Amanda’s number and wait for her to pick up. It’s been about two hours since Chris walked in on us.
“Hey, Leese,” she says happily, and just a flicker of my anxiety goes away. She hasn’t heard yet.
“Hey. Uh, have you heard from Chris?”
“I talked to him about three or four hours ago. He was helping Shawn with his sister’s party. I was thinking about heading over there if I’m bored. You want to come?”
Her world isn’t falling around her.
“No, I gotta go. Talk to you later,” I say, practically hanging up on her.
I wring my hands and continue to pace. I just wish I knew something. Not knowing is almost worse than knowing what’s going on. I sit, but I can’t keep still. When I hear the knock at the door, I jump to answer it but hesitate once I get there. There’s hard knocking again, and I open the door.
It’s not Will—it’s Chris. I stand there slack-jawed. My blood’s gone cold, and I wait for him to say something. To call me a whore, to ask how I could do such a thing. How could I let it happen, why did it happen and when? But when I allow myself to look at his face, I see he doesn’t look upset at all. He looks indifferent. He is different.
“You going to let me in? I think that’s the least you can do,” he says in a voice that’s colder than his normal tone.
I’m shocked. This isn’t the reaction I’d expected. Chris is supposed to be hurt, mad, disgusted, not this. I step aside, and he walks in, flops on the couch, and stretches out his legs. His eyes fall on me, and I search them for anger and disgust, but I don’t see either. I see something else that I can’t put my finger on.
“Chris, I’m so sorry,” I say, walking up to him.
I wait for him to flinch or lash out, but he doesn’t. He just puts up his hands as if to tell me to stop talking. I’m sure I look shocked.
> “Stop calling me that,” he says sharply.
“What?” I ask, confused.
“That’s not my name.” His eyes are hard, and I start to see the anger he’s hiding.
“A-are you high?” I ask nervously, searching his face.
He laughs in a way that scares me, because if I wasn’t looking right at him, I would swear he isn’t my best friend. It’s as if he’s someone else completely, and it scares me.
“No, I’m not high, but I hate that name, that name he called me,” he says angrily, grabbing a pillow and squeezing it.
“W-what do you want to be called then?” I ask cautiously.
A mischievous grin spreads across his face. He walks toward me, and I feel stuck in place. I’ve never been bothered by Chris’s height, but he’s standing in front of me, our chests almost touching. He looks down at me, and I feel intimidated, and I know he can sense it.
He smirks and licks his lips. “I’m going to keep your secret for you.”
I force myself to breathe.
“I’m not going to tell anyone. After this, it’ll be like it never happened.”
Is he serious? He has to be high on something. I want to believe what he’s saying, but right now I’m more worried about him. Why he is acting like this, like he doesn’t care—frankly, like he doesn’t give a flying fuck?
“Are you okay, Chris?”
His expression hardens. “Don’t fucking call me that!”
I flinch. He grabs my wrist, pulls me to him, and kisses me. I’m so caught off guard I don’t know what to do. Is my best friend kissing me after seeing me having sex with his dad? Is this some twisted revenge? I gather up my strength to push him away, and he only laughs.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demand, my anger outweighing my guilt.
“That’s the last kiss you’ll ever get from a Scott,” he says cockily. “I’ll tell you this: if I ever catch you or even think that you’re doing anything with my dad again, even looking at him in a way that you shouldn’t, I’ll make sure everyone in this town knows what a fucking cunt you are.”
His words are like venom and his eyes like daggers. I’m going to vomit.
“Please,” I respond, my lips quivering.
“There’s nothing more to discuss. You stay the fuck away from my family. If I didn’t think it would kill Gwen, I would broadcast around this whole fucking town what a whore you are.”
I stay completely still, looking at this person who isn’t my best friend. Did I do this? Did I break my friend? I’m shaking.
He only grins and walks to the door and opens it. “See you in school, Leese.” Before he leaves, he leans back in with a smug grin. “Oh, and just so you know, I’m Cal.” He winks before shutting the door.
I run toward it and lock it as my heart pounds in my ears. With that, I burst into tears and slide onto the floor.
I cry over losing the best friend I’ve ever had.
“DO YOU LIKE it?” he asks.
I suppress my smile. He’s beaming, his eyes hopeful, as he waits for me to answer. I look around the big colonial farmhouse he’s just shown me. He’s so excited about it—it’s a property his uncle owned—and I know it makes him feel proud. He’s imagining all the possibilities, and he sees himself here. It isn’t his stepdad’s—just his.
“What do you think?” he says, almost bursting at the seams.
“I love it,” I finally reveal with a large smile.
He picks me up, kisses me, and spins me around. He sees himself here, and I see myself wherever he is.
“This is where our life starts,” he says, holding me close.
We’re definitely in need of a fresh start. It’s been a tough year for us. After Gia kicked me out and told my mom about us, Mom called and spazzed out on Will and me. She said we were despicable and asked how we could do that to Gia. My mother concluded by saying that as long as I continued to see Will, I would never be welcome in her home.
It’s been a year since then, and losing two people after my dad has been hard. It hurts, and every day it bothers me, but I can’t imagine my life without William. I see myself growing old with him. We didn’t do what we did out of lust or some silly infatuation. We’re in love. I love him with every fiber of my being.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he says triumphantly. “There’s one more thing I have to show you.”
I look at him quizzically, but I love surprises. He takes my hand and leads me outside to the shed I saw when we first pulled up. He stands in front of the door and tells me to close my eyes. I giggle. I hear the door open then feel his hands cover my eyes as he ushers me into it.
“Your eyes are still closed?”
I nod. I feel his hands leave my eyes.
“Look up,” he says.
When I do, my jaw drops. The shed is dark, but on the ceiling, Will you marry me? is spelled out in lights. My eyes begin to tear up, and my heart flutters. His voice has always given me comfort, joy, and peace. But today, his voice has been outdone by these tiny glittering lights, and I’ve fallen in love with him all over again.
“I’d never ask you to move in with me again and not be my wife. You’re already my best friend, my confidant, my soul mate. I want to love you forever and never stop. It can be us, forever, against the world,” he whispers.
I nod furiously. “Yes, a thousand times yes.” I thank God that these are happy tears. I’ve cried too many tears of guilt, sorrow, and anger. These wash those away and create a new start. “I want to make a thousand babies with you.”
“Well, we do have a farm.”
I hug him and know that even in my worst mistake, being with Will is the best decision I’ve ever made.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE he broke up with me. He’s acting like such a bastard,” Amanda cries into my shoulder while I stroke her back.
Chris and Amanda are over.
“He kept saying that it made sense to end it now, that he was ditching this pathetic town soon and it’d be better to make a clean break before I got hurt.” She sniffles. “And I’m like, ‘What about prom?’” She cries harder.
“Prom is almost four months away. You’re beautiful, Amanda. You’ll find someone to take you,” I say.
“B-but the craziest thing about it is, do you know what he said when I asked about prom? H-he said, ‘Fuck prom.’ What popular senior says, ‘Fuck prom’? And he’s quit the band, and h-he’s just acting so crazy.” She lets out another wail.
I hold her tight as tears well in my own eyes.
“I could see if he was one of those anti-anything-fun kids, but Chris isn’t like that. He’s captain of the football team, class treasurer, and now he doesn’t even care about prom? I talked to his mom, and she said he’d come around, that she doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s being an asshole to her. What’s wrong with him?” She sobs.
I hand her a Kleenex and feel multiple stabs of guilt. I’m the reason Chris is this way. Will and I, we destroyed him, and now he’s turned into this badass rebel who doesn’t care about anyone and who hurts people and is mean. But he isn’t a liar, because he hasn’t said a word to his mom or anyone about his dad and me. The sad part is I think him keeping it in is turning him into the devil.
I spend the night at Amanda’s since she’s so upset. I stay up all night staring at the ceiling, as I have every night. Granted, Amanda has a much better ceiling. I think about all that’s happened, how badly I’ve screwed things up.
I talked to Will right after Chris left that night and told him what happened. The crazy thing is he seemed relieved that Chris wasn’t going to say anything. Of course he’d be relieved, but he didn’t seem to care much that his son was acting weird and possibly high.
But apparently he wasn’t high on anything but his anger, his disappointment in his father, his disgust with his best friend. Other than talking to Will that night, I’ve kept my part of the deal by staying away from Will. Not that I have any reason not to. I get the distinct fee
ling that if Will never sees me again, it will be too soon for him, and that hurts. I block out the indescribable pain by knowing how much pain the truth could cause so many other people.
I finally lie on my stomach to try to get some sleep, and I scrunch up my nose. The pillow has some strange fragrance, and it turns my stomach. Literally. I jump out of Amanda’s bed and head to her bathroom—thank God she has an ensuite. A couple more seconds and the pizza we ordered would have been all over the floor. I vomit until there’s nothing left in my stomach, then I hear Amanda behind me.
“Oh God, was the pizza bad?” she asks, covering her nose and looking disgusted.
I sigh, catching my breath. She hands me a cup of water, and I rinse my mouth.
“I don’t know,” I say after flushing the toilet.
“I feel fine.” She starts to play with her long blond braid.
“I think I have some weird stomach bug. I got sick after eating donuts at work this morning too.” I wet my face at her sink, and when I turn toward Amanda, she’s looking at me with her eyes bugged out. “What?”
She seems to gasp solely for dramatic effect, but that’s classic Amanda, “A-are—do you think you’re pregnant?”
I laugh. “No.” I head back into her room and get under the covers.
She stands next to me with her arms crossed. “Are you sure? Who throws up donuts except pregnant women?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m on the pill.” Thanks to Evie’s reminders after Brett started to come over, I take them every day.
But Amanda doesn’t look convinced. She walks across the room, pulls a box out of a drawer, and drops it in my lap.
“You keep pregnancy tests in your drawer?” I ask in disbelief.
She nods as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
“Wow,” I say in disbelief.
I pick up the little test. I’ll humor her. After all, with Aidan gone and Chris probably never talking to me again, she’s the only friend I have left. I go in the bathroom, drink a little water, and wait a few minutes while Amanda chatters outside the door about her and Chris’s first time together. That’s still too weird for me to hear about, so I run the water to drown her out.
