by Sara Hubbard
My whole body says no, but my head nods yes—just once. She bounces out of her seat, doing a little dance, and Laura and I laugh at her until she finally sits down. We chat for a bit until Rich comes for her, and then we walk with them to the front doors. Most of the crowd is gone now except for some stragglers like us.
Michael appears around the corner as we’re about ready to walk outside. I catch his eye, and he beams at me before jogging forward to catch up. His short hair sticks up in ways I’ve never seen before, and it’s cute enough to distract me from his face—for a total of two seconds.
And then I notice Annie staring at his junk.
Well, okay then.
“You came,” he says. He slows to stop in front of me. He runs a hand through his wet hair then puts his hat on nice and low. His black eye was almost gone, but now it’s starting to come back after those hits earlier. A cut slices through one of his rosy cheeks, and I frown at it, feeling my stomach wrench again.
I reach up to touch it and flinch as if I can feel his pain.
“It’s fine,” he says, but he doesn’t pull away. His skin is warm and surprisingly soft. He winces when I get near the cut, and I drop my hand, worried I’ve hurt him.
“What was the fight about?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Looked kind of personal.”
With an easy smile, he glances at Annie and then back to me. Quietly, he says, “Later?”
“Oh, I can wait outside,” Annie says, not missing a beat.
“No, it’s fine,” I say. I don’t want her to feel left out or excluded. Later is fine. “Sure,” I tell Michael.
“What are you doing now?” he asks.
“There’s a party at Johnnie’s.”
He nods but says nothing. I hoped he’d end up there, but it doesn’t look that way from the unimpressed look on his face. “Is that a good idea?” he asks. I assume he’s referring to my probation.
“Probably not.”
“I guess I should tag along then. Keep an eye on you.”
I laugh at him. “I’m a big girl.”
“Uh huh. I was going anyway.”
“Liar.”
We stare at each other like we’re in a face-off, only both of us are smiling.
“I’m going to wait outside,” Annie says.
“No! I’m sorry. I’m coming.” I reach out for her arm to pull her back.
“I’ll meet you there?” Michael says as more of a question.
“Yes, you will,” Annie says, almost purring at him.
I bite my lip to stop from laughing.
* * *
It’s isn’t a surprise to find the party in one of the houses on Michael’s street. We were going to walk, but since Michael’s going that way anyway, he offers to drive us. To be nice, I offer Annie the front seat. She’s only too eager to take it, though the whole way to the party he keeps glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
Michael tells Annie about winning the car, but only after she asks. He seems really proud of his winnings. As I would be if I was that lucky. At Johnnie’s house, he drops us off by the curb out front. Michael lives about six houses down.
We thank him for the drive, but he rolls down the passenger window and calls me back.
“I’ll meet you inside,” Annie says over her shoulder as she struts to the door. I never realized how short her skirt was when we were at the rink. I shiver thinking about her sitting on those cold benches at the rink with barely anything to cover the back of her thighs.
“What’s up?” I ask as I stand by the car with my hands on the sill of the passenger window.
“Don’t take a drink from anyone, all right?”
I laugh at him. It warms me to find him acting protective, but I’m a big girl, and I learned that lesson a long time ago. I actually had a friend roofied in high school. Thankfully, I got her home before a guy could do anything to hurt her permanently.
“Okay, Dad,” I say.
“I’m serious.”
“I’ll be fine. See you in a few.”
He nods. I feel his eyes on me as I walk away. When I look over my shoulder, he’s still watching me with an expression I can’t decipher. He puts the car in drive and rolls forward to turn into his driveway. As I watch him get out of his car, I wish he’d hurry. There’s no one here I’d rather hang around with than him. Annie’s nice, sure, but I don’t know her all that well. And I have a feeling when she finds someone, it might be the last I see of her. I never met her before Laura introduced us, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen her around. She likes to party, and I never went to a single party in freshman year where I didn’t see her drunk and hanging off a guy.
To each her own. If I hadn’t been with Brad, I’d have been doing the same thing. Because I was doing just that before I met him. I could have let her come alone, but everyone needs a wingman. Everyone.
I find her out back. It’s chilly, but there’s a fire pit that’s lit and blazing. A half dozen chairs sit around it, each occupied. Annie’s in her own chair, though she’s leaned to the right, talking with a guy named Brent. I don’t know much about him, but the few times I had the pleasure of talking to him, he came across as obnoxious.
“Hey, Emily,” a guy says, sidling up to me. He offers me a drink.
“Can’t…I’m driving.” I tell the lie because it’s a quick way to get him not to bug me about it.
He wraps an arm around my neck, and his beer breath washes over me like a fine mist. I hold my breath and look down and away from him. His name is Jack. I took French with him last year. He borrowed my notes once. I’m pretty sure it was an excuse to talk to me, though, because he still wanted them after I told him I’d be lucky to get a C in the course.
“I hear you and Brad are toast,” he says, a bit of a slur to his words.
“You heard right.”
“He’s a special kind of loser to cheat on you.”
“Thanks, Jack,” I say, “I appreciate that. Flattery works. Whoever tells you it doesn’t, is lying.” I smile up at him.
“Say…you want to go up to my room…and talk?”
Sigh. Here I was thinking he might be a nice guy. “Nah, I’m good.”
I get bumped to the side as someone collides with his shoulder. “Hey!” Jack says.
Trent Morrow levels Jack with a glare. His eyes flicker to me and back to Jack.
I slide out from under Jack’s arm, and I’m about to tell Trent to watch where he’s going, but it doesn’t take a genius to realize he did it on purpose.
“Sorry,” Trent says. He holds up his hands. “My bad.” His face is ice, like he’s looking for a fight.
Jack shrugs it off. They’re about the same height, but Trent probably has fifty pounds on Jack. Where Jack has a pretty face, there’s not a lot of meat on him. Or muscle. Trent is stacked. Not quite as solid or as big as Michael, but he’s close.
“No big deal,” Jack says.
“Hey Emily, you seen Michael yet?” Trent asks me in a very pointed way. As if he’s staking his friend’s claim. Not going to lie. It pisses me off.
Jack’s glassy eyes widen. “Michael? Cross?”
“That’s right,” Trent says.
“Uh…I just remembered I…left the oven on.” He gives me an exaggerated wave. “Later, Em.”
I fold my arms over my chest and glare at Trent. “What was that about?”
He shrugs. “Nothing.”
“Did Michael call you?”
“Call me? Nope.”
“Text you?”
He grins. “Just looking out for a friend.”
“I’m pretty sure he was harmless.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
I roll my eyes at him. Why would Trent care about who I was talking to unless Michael called him and asked him to look out for me? Then again, he’s on Michael’s team, and everyone still thinks we’re together. But it’s not like Jack was groping me or hurting me. We were just talking. It irritates me to thi
nk Michael, or any other guy, thinks they have a say in who I hang out with.
“Emily!” Annie calls out.
I shrug off the experience and make my way over to Annie. I’ll talk to Michael about it later.
“Here, have my seat!” Annie climbs out and slides onto Brent’s lap. He puts an arm over her lap and cups her ass. She doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
I take a seat. Parties are fun. But I’ll admit I’ve never gone to one and stayed sober. For one, pretty much everyone here is drinking and some are sloppy. Others are loud and some are obnoxious. A few of them are funny, like the two guys by the oak tree dancing salsa—badly. Not sure what that’s about. Annie is drinking, but she’s still sober. She tries to involve me in conversation, but Brent starts kissing her neck, and then they start a make-out session that causes more than a few throats to clear.
“Get a room,” some guys yell at them, laughing. She doesn’t come up for air.
“I’m going to go for a walk,” I say to Annie’s back. “You good?”
She keeps kissing him, her tongue popping out, only to dive back in to his mouth. She moans something and waves me away. As far as wingman’s go, she kind of sucks. I guess I’m on my own. I would never leave a friend, but since she’s sober and in control, what’s a girl to do?
I’m thirsty, but I don’t trust any of the drinks. I find a glass in the kitchen and pour myself some water. I only get a few swigs down before I realize I have to pee. Some girl I don’t know points me in the right direction. On the second floor, I wait in line behind a couple of girls who smell like hair spray and mint gum. The music booms, making the walls vibrate. The chatter downstairs competes with the noise. I have to pee so bad, and I wish whoever’s in that bathroom would hurry up. Then maybe I’ll text Michael and leave. I’m not sure parties are my scene anymore. And the longer I stay, the longer I risk running in to people I’d rather not.
I spoke too soon. Chloe walks out of the bathroom, primping her hair and wiping at the corners of her red-lipstick-colored lips. She smiles wickedly when she sees me. I give her a death glare and hope to God it’s strong enough to convince her to keep on walking.
It doesn’t.
“Hi, Emily,” she says.
The girls in front of me file into the bathroom together, leaving me and Chloe alone. This could be dangerous. “Keep walking,” I tell her.
“I know you hate me,” she says, “but it’s me who should be hating you.”
“Wow, this should be good.”
“Like I told Michael, that wasn’t me with Brad.”
“You’re a liar,” I snap at her. My hands shake, and I want to hurt her. But I can’t do a damn thing. “Just leave me alone.”
“It wasn’t me,” she says. “But I know it was you who ruined my relationship. So if anyone gets to be pissed off, it’s me, not you.”
“Save your lies for someone who believes them. I saw you. Unless you have an identical twin, it was you.”
She smooths her hair and pushes the long black locks that have fallen in front of her shoulder to her back. She stands here, indignant, with her arms folded across her middle.
“I told Michael you wanted him, and now you have him. Lucky you.”
“How the hell did someone like Michael ever fall for a girl like you, anyhow?”
She’s a foot taller than me, and she bends at the waist so her face is close to mine. “He still loves me. He’s in-fucking-fatuated with me. The only reason we’re not together is because I won’t forgive him for accusing me of cheating.”
I roll my eyes. “Bullshit.” I want to push her down the stairs and claim it was an accident. I picture it in my mind, her mouth wide open, her hair fanned out as she flies through the air and lands face first. I take a breath to calm myself.
“Don’t believe me,” she says. “Want to see the texts?”
This stops me because she’s offering evidence. Why would she do that if she couldn’t back it up? No. I won’t listen to her lies. That’s all they are. She’s trying to get to me. She knows I won’t look at them because I want to get her out of my face sooner rather than later. “I swear to God,” I begin, “don’t push me.”
“Or what? You touch me, and you go to jail. Go ahead,” she says, “I dare you.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You think he’d come running back to you. Ridiculous. What the hell do you want from me?”
“Stay away from Michael,” she says.
“No,” I say with conviction.
“You’ll regret this,” she says flipping her hair. “I swear to God you will.”
I turn away from her and hurry down the stairs. I won’t let her provoke me. I’m not that person, no matter how much I hate her. My pace quickens with each step until I break into a jog at the front door. Then I start running, needing to get as much space between us as I possibly can, because I worry she’ll push me past my limit.
She said he was infatuated with her.
She volunteered to show me texts.
Am I wrong about Michael? Is this happening all over again, just when I decide it’s okay to give in and let myself be with him? Or am I a fool?
Chapter 18
She’s convincing, I’ll give her that. She almost made me question what I saw with my own eyes. As I run down the street, blowing off steam through every orifice in my body, the night plays over and over in my mind. Was I wrong? Was it her? My heart shattered when I watched Brad penetrate her. Like a snapshot, the image is cemented so fully into my brain that I might never forget it. Yes, it was definitely her. But that doesn’t matter the most right now. Her claim about him still texting her is. I trusted Brad but was blind to who he was. How can I possibly trust myself with a man again? Even if that man is Michael?
My feet throb in my pretty black heels, and I slow my pace to kick up a foot and grab the shoe. Then I grab the other. With my shoes dangling from my hands, I return to the pace I was at before. If I keep it up, I’ll be back in my dorm in seven or eight minutes.
Damn her. Damn her to hell. How could she stand there and accuse me of ruining her and Michael’s relationship and pretend she had nothing to do with wrecking mine? Her nerve is astounding. Not a twitch of the eye or a quirk in her lips. No looking off to the side. Nothing. Just a cold hard stare. No wonder Michael stayed with her so long. She could have told him the sky was falling, and he would have believed it. I might, too. That’s what makes her so heinous. She doesn’t feel a lick of remorse or she wouldn’t be such a damn good liar.
A car zooms by and splashes water from the gutter onto me, dampening my jeans and jacket. Mother fucker. Now it’s cold and I’m wet. Another car approaches, and I move over to the far edge of the sidewalk. The car slows to pass. Finally, someone who considers others. When it continues alongside of me, keeping my pace, my survival instincts fire, giving me a herculean boost of adrenaline. I jog harder until I glance to my left and see Michael’s SUV.
My bare feet slap on the sidewalk until I come to a stop. The window makes a mechanical noise as it lowers. Gripping the wheel, he taps his thumbs and watches me with an amused expression on his face. I put my hands on my hips and take a deep breath to stop myself from panting. My feet are so damn cold right now I swear I’m going to get frostbite. When I turn to approach his car, I cut my foot on something sharp and wince from the sting. The cold seems less brutal in comparison. My feet are going to make me cry in the morning. I hobble to the window. It sits so high I don’t really need to bend over to rest my forearms on its base.
“Hey,” I say, still breathing heavy.
“Hey.” He sucks his lips in and stares at me quizzically. “Whatcha doing?”
“Going for a run.”
“In your bare feet? In November?”
“Uh huh…it’s actually supposed to be good for you.”
“Bullshit. Why are you running away?”
“Ummm.” I look around the quiet street at the older houses, most three stories tall with wrap-arou
nd decks. Then I look to the sky. The moon is almost completely blocked by passing dark clouds. The air is moist, like rain may come any minute. “I’m not really running away. I wanted to leave, and it’s nice out, so I thought I’d walk, and the walk turned into a run.” For effect, I add, “It’s really nice out.”
“How about you leave the running for daylight?”
It’s not a hard sell. And we both know that’s not what I’m really doing. My feet hurt, I think my left one has a cut, and I’m out of shape and out of breath. “Okay.”
He reaches across the passenger seat and opens the door for me. Without a fight, I climb in and enjoy the heat blowing in my face. He puts on the heated seats and I adjust myself so my ass cheeks get full exposure.
“How was the party?” he asks.
I roll my head on the headrest so I face him. “Obviously, it sucked.”
He grins. “You want to go home or come over to my place for a bit?”
I stare at him for several seconds, my mind working overtime. “I don’t want to go home.”
He nods and slides the shift into drive. After turning in a driveway, he heads back down the street past the raging party. The music bleeds through the house and into the car. I’m surprised neighbors haven’t complained yet. Some people litter the yard, but the only one who catches my attention is Chloe standing between a few of her friends. She follows the car with her eyes, scowling after us. I just can’t decide if the look was meant for me or for him.
Michael pretends not to notice. His eyes stay on the road. I don’t mention it until after he pulls into the driveway and shuts off the engine.
“I hate her,” I say at last.
He looks at me, confused.
“Chloe. You didn’t just see her giving us the stink eye?”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, she was.”
He shakes his head, staring at me. “She doesn’t matter anymore.” He sounds so emotionless when he says it. I can’t believe him. He was with her for over six months, and their breakup is so new I can probably still smell her on him. He beat up my ex over it, too. Mind you, he fights pretty frequently but still. I just don’t believe it. I’m not sure you ever really get over someone you love. It’s like each love chips a little piece of you away, and when they leave, they take it with them. You can fight to get it back, but you never really do. In its place, there is just emptiness. Like a chronic ache no medicine can cure.
