I peeked over at Weston. He needed me. He was the boy who I’d stolen glances at, waiting for the next time our eyes would meet, as I’d hoped he knew that making his cherry dip cone extra tall somehow translated into a proclamation of love. Now, I was the one person he was desperate to keep, the one he needed in his future. Whether or not we were supposed to love each other that much didn’t matter as long as our love played into the continuous forward movement of the infinite span of time ahead.
“I love you, too,” I said.
A car driving toward us from down the road, not on the interstate below, piqued my attention, and I lifted my head to see a pair of headlights approaching the overpass from the east road.
“What if it’s the sheriff?” I asked.
Weston seemed unfazed. “He’ll tell us to move it along. No big deal.”
As the vehicle came closer, I saw it was a pickup, and it slowed to a stop just before it reached the bridge. I held my hand up to shelter my squinting eyes from the bright lights. All four doors of the crew cab opened, and several dark forms stepped out.
Weston sat up then, too, and hopped down to the dirty cement below. “Shit,” he hissed under his breath.
“You’re missing the party!” Brendan stepped out of the path of the headlights just enough so that he was no longer only a silhouette. He was holding a can of Natural Light in his hand, shifting his weight from one leg to the other just to stand upright.
Brady, Andrew, Micah, and Tyson were standing across from him, all holding beers of their own. Tyson seemed a bit unnerved. Andrew’s eyes were glazed over, and he was clearly focusing just as hard as Brendan to stay upright.
“Looks like y’all are about done for the night,” Weston said. His tone was guarded. He was trying to sound unaffected, but there was a tinge of nervousness in his voice.
“Want a beer?” Brendan asked, tossing a can toward Weston.
He let it fall to the ground near his feet. “Not really.”
“What’s your deal, Gates?” Andrew asked. “You never come out with us anymore. You’ve lost your sense of humor since you’ve been with her.” He pointed at me, his aim a little off.
“Pack it up, Erin. We’re going to find somewhere else not so crowded,” Weston said.
I closed the ice chest and began to fold the blanket.
“You really do think you’re too good to hang out with us, don’t you?” Brendan said. “What a fuckin’ douche bag you’ve turned into, Gates.”
Weston held out his hand and helped me down from the tailgate. Then, he pushed it up, and it latched with a click. “We’re going to head out, boys. Have a good night.” He pulled his keys from his pocket.
Brady took a step forward. “You’ve practically spit on Alder’s grave, the way you’ve been hanging all over this skank since they died.”
Weston protectively angled his body in front of me. “Why does it upset you so much, Brady? You know how I felt about Alder, how I didn’t feel about her.”
“I knew,” Brady said, his words slurred, his glossy eyes tightening. “Because I was your best fucking friend. And I don’t even know you anymore, man.”
“So, what? You want to hit me? Did you bring these guys to help beat the shit out of me? What is that going to solve?” Weston asked.
Tyson shook his head. “I’m not hittin’ Weston, man. This ain’t my fight.”
Brady sneered at him. “Pussy.”
“Fuck you,” Tyson said. “Wes is my friend. I’m not helping you jump him because you—”
“Shut the hell up!” Brady yelled.
Weston narrowed his eyes at Brady. “You were in love with Alder. That’s why you’re so angry.”
Brady chucked his can of beer at Weston, and he covered me with his body. It narrowly missed his shoulder and hit the ground, darkening the dirt on the bridge in a fizzy small black pool.
“You don’t know shit,” Brady said, taking a step. “You never deserved her. Now, she’s dead. And you’re banging this skank whore!” he yelled the last word, pointing at me with four fingers.
“C’mon,” Weston said, gently grabbing my arm. “Let’s go before this gets ugly.”
“Too late,” Brady said with a guffaw. “You brought ugly with you.”
Weston flipped around, but I grabbed his T-shirt. He leaned forward, stretching the white fabric.
“You wanna go?” Brady asked, holding out his hands. “Let’s go.”
“You’re still pretty banged up from the last time I got a hold of you. You sure about this?” Weston asked.
“Weston, please. Let’s just leave,” I said. My hands were trembling.
Even if Tyson weren’t going to help, it would still be four against one.
“Shut up, Skittle tits. I have had it up to here with you,” Brady said, holding his fingers up to his forehead. “You move into Alder’s room and play house with her parents. It’s fucking gross how they’ve just forgotten about their daughter and let you take her place like she never existed. You’ll never be Alder. No matter how much high-dollar soap you use or how many brand-name jeans Julianne buys, you’ll still be the secondhand, socially backward spawn of a crack whore, pretending to be one of us.”
Weston’s hands balled into fists at his sides.
“Please, Weston,” I begged. “Please take me home.”
Weston shook his head as he took a step despite the fact that I was pulling back on his shirt.
“I don’t know how, but I’m going to prove this was a mistake,” Brady said. “Alder’s parents are going to be ashamed, and that gutter slag will go back to where she belongs.”
Weston laughed once without humor. “A mistake? Is that what you’re hoping for? Look at her, Brady. She looks like Julianne!”
“Yes, it’s a fucking mistake!” Brady said, spitting his words. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Weston gently removed my hand from his shirt. “If you want to know about mistakes, Brady, you should ask your parents.”
Before Brady could process the insult, Weston lunged, and they were on the ground. Brendan and Andrew jumped in, too.
“No! Guys!” Tyson yelled, holding out his hand to Micah, forbidding him to join in. “Knock it off!” he said, trying to pull Andrew off the top of the pile.
Brendan scrambled away, lifted his boot, and kicked Weston off of Brady. Weston writhed on the ground for a moment and then tried to pull himself up to his knees.
Brady pulled back his elbow and let his fist fly, knocking Weston square in the jaw. Weston caught himself, his palms flat on the cement.
“Stop!” I screamed.
Brady turned to me, glowering. Keeping his eyes on mine, he kicked Weston in the head, knocking him facedown.
Brendan did the same, landing the toe of his boot into Weston’s ribs, and then Andrew did, too. Each time Weston tried to push himself up, they would kick him again.
“That’s enough!” Tyson yelled, the veins popping out of his neck.
I pushed past them, throwing myself on top of Weston’s body. He was so much bigger than me that I barely covered him. I kept my eyes closed, bracing myself for the next blow.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Tyson yelled again.
I looked up, and he was pointing at Brady, who was poised to attack.
“Get in the truck!” Tyson demanded.
The drunken glaze in their eyes was gone as was the excitement of ganging up on their victim. I held tight to Weston, hearing him holding his breath and then groaning.
He looked up at Brady. “This ain’t over, Beck.”
“You’re damn right it’s not,” he said, following the others as they climbed back into the pickup.
“You all right?” Tyson asked, standing over us.
“I’ll live,” Weston said.
Tyson nodded once and then joined the others just before the pickup flipped around, spraying us with gravel. Weston tried to shield me, but he moved slowly.
As the red glow from t
he brake lights of Brady’s truck faded in the distance, Weston sat up onto his knees and spit. A bit of blood remained on his lips, and he wiped it away with his wrist.
I pulled up the bottom hem of my tank top and wiped the dirt and blood from his face.
“This has got to stop,” I said, my voice breaking.
“Oh, it will,” Weston said, his voice low and menacing.
“No. No more fighting,” I pleaded.
“What if you end up alone with him in Stillwater? You think I’m going to let you go there, knowing he’s out for blood?”
“Do we have to talk about this now?”
“Then, when? He’s always been a dick. This is a whole new level. I never thought he’d have the balls,” Weston said before spitting again.
I helped him to his feet. “Are you short of breath?” I asked.
“No,” he said, stretching his sore muscles.
“Brady kicked you in the head,” I said, worried.
“I felt it,” he grumbled.
“We should take you to Julianne and let her check you out just to be safe.”
Weston began to protest, but I took his keys. He wasn’t fast enough to stop me.
“You don’t have a choice. I’m driving.”
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“Kept them from breaking your ribs?” I asked, helping him to the passenger door.
He slowly climbed up, grunting as he fell into the seat.
“I couldn’t just stand there and watch.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it,” Weston said.
“No, you won’t,” I said before slamming the door. I walked to the other side and grumbled to myself, “I will.”
“ANDREW, BRENDAN, AND BRADY, HUH?” Frankie said. “Asshole casserole.” She shook her head as she stared out the window. “Clearly”—she shook her head again, white-knuckling the counter—“prom wasn’t good enough. We need to punch Brady in the uterus and then fill his vagina with sand.”
I snorted. “That would be slightly impossible, Frankie, since Brady is male.”
“He won’t be after I’m finished with him,” she snarled.
“No uterus. No vagina.”
“Yet. That little douche poodle. I dare him to come to my window. I will never put a curl on his dip cone ever again.”
“Oh. Now, he’s going to regret everything,” I deadpanned.
She turned to me. “What is Weston going to do?”
“Nothing. At least that’s what I told him.”
“You think he’ll listen?”
“He’d better,” I grumbled to myself.
She raised an eyebrow. “Look at you, all grown-up and feisty after graduating high school.”
I sighed. “This can’t end well. They can’t keep throwing punches. Someone is going to get hurt. And…Weston was wheezing a little…after. It scared me.”
“You’re afraid Weston will fight his way into another asthma attack?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got a point,” she said.
I was surprised. Frankie always supported me, but she never agreed with me.
“Tyson is lucky he didn’t join in,” she said. She wagged her finger at me. “I know his mother. She doesn’t allow her kids to behave that way.”
“He stopped them. If he hadn’t…I don’t think Brady would have cared that I was between his foot and Weston.”
Frankie seethed, but when we heard a car pull up and she recognized the woman strolling across the parking lot, her cheeks flushed bright red.
“Frankie,” I warned.
Lynn stepped in front of my window and waited, looking smug.
Frankie stood next to me, glaring at her, while I lifted the window.
“How can I help you?” I asked, trying to sound as if she were any number of customers who had stood at that window before. I knew she was up to something, or she would have just gone through the drive-through.
“How is Weston?” Lynn asked.
I stared at her with a blank expression.
She smirked.
“What do you want, Lynn?” Frankie snapped. “Order or leave.”
“Brady has a bright future ahead of him, Easter. Your future, on the other hand,” she said, her eyes looking up the outer wall of the Dairy Queen and then back at me, “fits perfectly inside that little window.”
Frankie snorted. “Did you come all the way over here from the country club to taunt her? How old are you again?”
“I just wanted to congratulate Easter on graduating. It’s a pity your mother couldn’t make it to the ceremony.”
“Julianne was there,” I said.
“Your real mother,” Lynn said without emotion. “The one who lives in the trash can you were raised in.”
Frankie looked to me. “Is Brady’s family tree a cactus? Because everyone on it is a prick.”
I stifled a laugh, and Lynn narrowed her eyes at Frankie.
“You’re the town joke, Frances. You’re going nowhere. You have the same job you had in high school, and so will your children because you can’t afford to give them a decent education.”
“Maybe,” Frankie said. “But I can and will find a way to get them to college. You raised your son to be a cruel human being. And when most of the people from this town think of him, they won’t think of the Beck name or how successful he might or might not be. They will remember only that he was a vile, snide asshole. Live with that.”
Frankie slammed the window down, and after a few seconds of deciding whether or not she would try to say something through the glass, Lynn spun on her heels and stomped back to her car.
Frankie turned, leaning her backside against the corner of the counter. “God, I hate that bitch.”
I took a deep breath and blew my hair away from my face. “I get the feeling she doesn’t like herself either. Veronica said Lynn brags about the mean things Brady says and does to people. Who purposely instills that kind of anger into their children?”
“Lynn Beck,” Frankie said, looking for something to keep busy.
The rest of our day was hectic but uneventful. The baseball field stayed empty, and it was more than a little bittersweet to know that Weston would never hop in his pickup and drive across the street to stand in front of my window again.
I was just beginning to get used to driving to a beautiful clean home that didn’t smell like weed or stale cigarette smoke, but waking up and having nowhere to go but work was weird.
The first few days of our last summer before life in the real world felt like the weekend, but as the days ran on, they seemed to have too much time in them to think about things like the wonderful but strange turn my life had taken, about why it had all happened, how my luck had changed—and if it would change again.
Too much time meant long days, but before I knew it, Independence Day was upon us. Julianne and I spent a lot of time cooking and decorating the house and sidewalk for the block party Sam and Julianne would put on every year.
Weston spent most of the day helping his mother, too, but as it got closer to dinnertime, everyone was outside, tasting one another’s finger foods while chatting about how often they had to water their lawns.
The summer was particularly scorching, and since the City of Blackwell had mandated a citywide water restriction, the grass was already beginning to turn a golden brown. Living in a Southern state where triple digits weren’t uncommon for that time of year, I remembered hearing about those mandates before. Complaints about the effects of the water shortage on the lawns hadn’t been a topic of conversation at Gina’s, and it seemed odd to me.
“Holy crap, it’s hot,” Weston said, grabbing me as he jogged by.
His hairline was soaked with sweat, his cheeks bright red against his bronzed skin. A pair of aviator sunglasses covered his beautiful green eyes. That was the only thing I didn’t like about summer.
Weston hadn’t looked Caucasian since a week after graduation, and my pale skin wa
s working on its fourth sunburn of the year.
“Don’t forget the sunscreen,” Julianne said as she passed by, handing me a spray bottle of SPF 70.
I frowned. Her olive skin was a glorious shade, too. Sam, however, was rubbing a thick white sunblock onto his nose, and he wore a wide-brimmed Panama-style hat.
This is his fault.
“Erin!” Julianne called. “Erin, come meet Mrs. Schrimshire!”
I made a face, and Weston patted me once on the back.
“I try to like parties. I really do,” I said before leaving Weston.
I went to greet Julianne and a woman who was old enough not to have any business being in the direct sun. I picked up a plastic cup full of ice water on the way.
“You are just adorable!” Mrs. Schrimshire said with a smile that nearly showed all her dentures.
I handed her the cup. “Here,” I said, sounding awkward instead of polite. “It’s hot.”
Mrs. Schrimshire chuckled and grabbed the cup from my hand before taking a shaky sip. “What a good girl you have here.”
“We sure do,” Julianne said, beaming with pride. “Erin, Mrs. Schrimshire has lived in this neighborhood the longest. Her husband was an attorney here in town. The Gates took over his firm.”
“I sure miss your other Erin. How are you holding up, honey?” Mrs. Schrimshire asked, touching Julianne’s arm.
Julianne smiled. “I miss her, too.”
“Must be so odd…to be so happy to have your daughter back and to also miss the one you raised.”
“It is,” Julianne said, handling the uncomfortable conversation like a pro.
“It is so nice to meet you,” I said, trying a polite smile.
Julianne winked at me.
“Ribs are ready!” Sam yelled from our yard.
Half the street migrated toward the smoker, and Julianne gestured for me to follow.
Happenstance: A Novella Series: Part Three Page 9
