by Lexi Ryan
Mia sighs. “She really does.”
“I think people who look at each other like you two do should have a reason, yeah.” Bailey grins. “Come on, tell me what it is.”
I shake my head. “He’s not interested.”
“It’s cute that you think that,” Mia says. “But you definitely shake him up.”
“Chris might have the hots for me, but he doesn’t want me.” Not the real me, at least, and damn, that sucks, because just looking at him makes me ache all over. “I’m not his type.”
“And how do you know what his type is?”
I instantly think of Olivia and her dark hair and soulful eyes. Somehow, everything about her screams sweet and innocent—and that was before I found out the girl was majoring in early childhood education. Of course, once Chris mentioned her cheating on him, it was hard for me to hold on to the idea of her as this sweet thing who could do no wrong. If it weren’t for that piece of information, I could absolutely see Chris with a girl like her. I don’t know why she messed around with Keegan, but I do know the one time she tagged along with Sebastian and hung out at Arrow’s with the rest of us, she looked devastated every time she looked in Chris’s direction. I’m surprised no one else sees it. Then again, maybe it’s so clear to me because I know exactly what it’s like to want Chris and know he’s dismissed you.
Bailey mistakes my silence for discomfort and holds up her hands. “I’m not pushing. Just curious.”
“I heard Keegan asked you out again,” Mia says. “Are you interested?”
“No.” I laugh. “But, God, he’s kind of adorable, isn’t he?”
Bailey snorts. “Keegan? Adorable? He’s kind of a manwhore.”
Mia shrugs. “Adorable manwhores are a thing.” She turns to me. “But I’m glad you’re not interested. I think he has a thing for Sebastian’s sister, and I was worried he was just trying to use you to distract himself.”
“Olivia?” Bailey says. “Seriously? She doesn’t seem like his type.”
“The manwhore and the sweet virgin,” Mia says. “It happens.”
“In romance novels,” Bailey says.
I bite my lip, but my laughter comes out in a snort. I’m pretty sure Olivia isn’t a virgin, but I can’t mention that without explaining what little I know about the Chris-Keegan-Olivia love triangle, so I don’t say anything at all.
“Who is Easy Gee-Gee?” Mia asks, frowning at her phone. “And for that matter, who is Jewel Feldman?”
I freeze, my glass halfway to my lips, my skin going cold. “What?” My voice is small, but I swallow my fear and lift my eyes to meet Mia’s. “What are you looking at?” It takes everything in me to ask the question. All I want to do is stand up and run out of here. I feel like someone stole my clothes, but instead of Bailey and Mia looking over and seeing me naked, they’re about to see my past.
“This morning I posted a picture on Facebook from the pool party at Arrow’s last weekend.” Mia’s nose wrinkles as she makes a face at her phone. “This Jewel girl just commented.” She taps on the screen. “Oh, it looks like she’s Facebook friends with Chris.”
Bailey grabs the phone from Mia’s grasp. “What kind of bitch makes a comment like this on someone else’s picture?”
No, no, no. “What does it say?”
She hands me her phone, and my insides busily twist themselves into a complex origami pattern. The picture is from Arrow’s backyard, and Mia caught the moment when I was talking to Keegan, and both Chris and Sebastian were standing by our lounge chairs. Mia captioned the picture: Friends. New and Old, and she tagged the guys, but couldn’t tag me since I don’t have an account anymore.
Jewel’s comment threatens to tug me down into darkness I don’t want to see again, and I take a deep breath and push against that old self-loathing as I read the words the girls at Champagne Towers liked to whisper.
Easy Gee-Gee, being easy.
A nasty insult from someone whose opinion shouldn’t even matter to me, but she might as well have come to Blackhawk Valley and knocked me on my ass. The nastiness is worse here somehow. In Champagne it hurts and it sucks, but I’ve been wrapped in this cocoon of friendship since I arrived in Blackhawk Valley. I’m not Gee-Gee here because no one treats me like I am. It’s the difference between facing someone as they throw a punch and being kicked in the back while enjoying the sunset.
“Is she talking about you?” Bailey asks.
I lift my chin. Chris was tagged in this post. Did he see the comment? If he did, would it make him remember? Does he even know who Easy Gee-Gee is?
“Grace?” Mia says, worry softening her voice.
“When I was a kid, I went by Gee-Gee. It was a n-n-n-nickname.” I shake my head but my vision turns blurry with tears. Even away from Champagne, I can’t escape that ugliness. Hot tears roll down my cheeks, and I wipe them away with the heels of my hands. “So stupid.”
Bailey’s eyes blaze with anger. “And, let me guess, Easy Gee-Gee is what this bitch called you?”
“Not just her. A lot of people.” It felt like half the high school called me that, though in truth, I doubt that many people even knew who I was. I was only at Champagne Towers for a couple of months. “I had a reputation.”
Bailey snags Mia’s phone back and taps on the screen. “I deleted it,” she says. She continues to mess with the phone, then scowls and mutters, “Bitch.” When she hands the phone back to Mia, she lifts her eyes to mine, and there’s a Hallmark greeting card of emotion written on her face. “I blocked her so she can’t post on Mia’s stuff anymore. I’ll block her from my page, too.”
Mia frowns. “But this girl saw the post because she knows Chris. How does she know you? I thought you were from Maine?”
“I grew up in Champagne, but Chris and I went to high school together briefly. I had a crush on him.” I’m surprised to hear myself say it out loud, but there it is.
“Oooh!” Bailey presses her hand against her chest. “I knew there was something between you two.”
“You have a history,” Mia says.
“No history.” I draw a heart in the condensation on my glass and then wipe it away. “Back then, I overheard him tell someone I wasn’t his type.” That’s a) an understatement along the lines of “the Titanic might have been somewhat sinkable,” and b) only a small part of the story. Nevertheless, I’m still surprised to hear myself share even that.
Willow, who knows everything else about that night in the basement, doesn’t even know what Chris said while I waited for my dad to get there.
“That was a long time ago, though,” Mia says. “I don’t think you should assume he feels the same now.”
I can’t explain how Chris’s casual rejection of me is something I’ve carried around with me for years, something that shaped my definition of myself all through high school.
“He doesn’t look at you like he’s not your type,” Bailey says. “He looks at you like he wants to devour you whole.”
I shake my head. Chris might be attracted to me, but it’s not as intense as Bailey makes it out to be. She’s imagining things—seeing the drama she wants to see. I graze my fingers over the carpet again and again, focusing on the colors of the individual strands. “The thing is, Chris doesn’t remember me. He’s forgotten all about Easy Gee-Gee. My hair was different, and no one but my mom called me Grace.” I swallow hard. “He doesn’t remember me because I wasn’t that important to his life, but if he saw that post, he will.” I hate myself for hoping he didn’t see it.
“You don’t want him to remember,” Bailey says.
Without looking up, I know they’re both watching me. Bailey always seemed to understand me. I feel like she can see right through me, and because this whole new awesome world of mine might just fall apart at any minute, I want to talk. I want these girls who were so inexplicably kind to me from the first to understand who I am before someone else can poison their idea of me.
“No,” I admit. “I don’t want him to remember.
I don’t want him to remember Easy Gee-Gee or Juh-Juh-Gee-Gee.” I lift my eyes to Bailey’s and force a smile as I shift my gaze to Mia’s. “Juh-Juh-Gee-Gee,” I repeat. “Clever nickname for a girl who stutters, isn’t it?”
“Shit,” Bailey breathes.
“That’s horrible,” Mia says. She clicks off the music, and I let the silence stretch between us again and again, and it softens my bristly edges.
“I lost my virginity when I was thirteen.” If the girls have any reaction to this, I don’t see it. I keep my eyes on the carpet, examining the strands like we’d examine the clover in the fields growing up. Except there’s no four-leaf clover hiding in this rug. No luck to be found. “I had a stutter and everyone made fun of me for it, including this high school kid who lived next door. His name was Isaac. He was four years older than me, a football player, and so damn cute.” I take a breath. “When I got boobs, he was the first one to make me realize I could use my body to distract him from the stutter. I preferred it that way. If he was touching me, he couldn’t make me feel stupid for not being able to control my speech.”
“Grace,” Mia whispers, but Bailey stays silent.
I feel the story jumbling inside my mouth, and I cut my eyes away and count out the syllables. When they still don’t want to come out, I count carpet strands. I hit twenty before I take a breath and start again. “It didn’t take long to realize it wasn’t just him. All the boys at school who teased me, the ones who called me Juh-Juh-Gee-Gee, I could make them stop. If they were thinking about sex, about what they wanted from me, they would be sweet to me.”
“Oh my God,” Mia says. “You were just a kid.”
“I made a choice. I wanted them to focus on my body instead of the words coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t control my stutter, despite my mother’s attempts to pray it away.” Bitterness hardens those words. I needed speech therapy, not prayer, but my mother’s idea of faith precludes medical interventions. Give it to God has always been her reason and excuse not to help herself.
“But you could control the boys,” Bailey says, and when I risk a look at her, I can see she understands me better than even Willow ever did. Maybe it’s her experience as a stripper that allows her to understand me on a level none of my other female friends have. After all, in one way or another, both Bailey and I have used our bodies and our sexuality to get what we needed from men. For her it was money, and for me it was a different kind of attention.
I nod. “I was in eighth grade. I stopped talking in school except when it was absolutely necessary, and I used my body to make friends. At least, I told myself they were friends. I made out with so many boys—during school, after school, under bleachers, behind garages. Sometimes we did more than make out. I loved the attention. I loved that everyone had forgotten that horrible nickname—Juh-Juh-Gee-Gee. It wasn’t until the next year when I started high school that I realized they’d given me a new nickname. One they only spoke when I couldn’t hear. Juh-Juh-Gee-Gee had become Easy Gee-Gee. They’d never stopped making fun of me. I wasn’t in control at all. Just an idiot girl.”
Mia’s quiet, but her lips are twisted and her brow is furrowed. I can tell this whole story surprises her. I rarely stutter anymore, and Easy Gee-Gee is a reputation I discarded like an old pair of jeans when I left Texas. I went through high school liking sex and boys, but I learned to be discriminating about whom I shared that with.
“I got a reputation in Champagne,” I continue. “I earned that reputation. And it got ugly. When it got out of hand, Dad took me out of there. We moved to Maine, where I introduced myself to everyone as Grace and learned to control my stutter. High school went from a nightmare to bearable up there, and we stayed until I graduated.”
They’re both quiet for a few breaths, and when I can’t stand it anymore, I look up to see Bailey staring at me. “They called a high school freshman Easy Gee-Gee? That’s fucking cruel.”
“I earned it.” I drop my gaze to my hands.
“Fuck that. You were a child.”
“I wasn’t a child last summer.” I lift my chin. Determined to look them in the eye while I confess this. “We went back after I graduated from high school. Dad was retiring, and that’s where he wanted to buy his retirement home. I think he thought it’d be fine. I’d be going to college in the fall, and even though I’d had more boyfriends than he approved of, nothing had gotten as horrible as it had been in Champagne.” In fact, my life in Maine had been so close to normal that I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be the butt of the joke. “Most of the summer was okay. People’s memories are longer than Dad anticipated, but I managed okay until the end.”
“What happened last summer?” Mia asks.
“Right before I left for college, I went to a party and drank too much, and good old Easy Gee-Gee came back in full force.”
Bailey shakes her head. “Grace, don’t do that to yourself. Don’t talk about yourself like that.”
“It’s the only time I’ve ever blacked out from alcohol.” My spine stiffens. “But I set out to get drunk and get laid, and that’s exactly what happened. Or so they told me. I went to the party, and the next morning everyone was whispering about me. I remember enough to know I slept with Isaac.”
“The boy from next door,” Mia says.
I blow out a stream of air. “Yeah. And maybe that would have been fine, but Jewel was my friend, and I knew she had a thing for him. I screwed it up.”
“Shit.” Bailey shakes her head. “And she blames you.”
“Can you blame her?”
She lifts her palms. “Of course I can. If you were drunk enough that you can’t remember, this guy had no business fucking you.”
“She’s right,” Mia says.
“You guys, if Chris saw her comment, if he sees that name, I’m sure he’ll remember.”
Mia draws in a sharp breath. “Back in high school, Chris wasn’t one of the guys who . . .”
I shake my head. “No. He was one of the good ones.”
“Well, that explains it,” Bailey says.
“Explains what?”
“You started high school with a bunch of assholes who took advantage of you and called you terrible things behind your back, but Chris never did either.” She cocks her head to the side, and a long lock of blond hair falls from her sloppy bun and over her shoulder. “And that explains why your heart is in your eyes when you look at him.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chris
“Where are we going?” Grace asks.
She looks so damn cute today. She’s wearing this white dress with black polka dots and a pair of red Converse Chuck Taylors. The dress is strapless, exposing the top of her ivy tattoo. I’ve never been much of a tattoo guy, but Grace’s ink is beautiful, thoughtful, and seeing a small piece of the ivy when I know there’s more makes me want to unzip her dress and peel it off her so I can start at the tiny leaves on her right shoulder blade and follow it down. The way it trails around her side is emblazoned on my brain, but it disappeared into her high-waist bikini bottoms and I’m dying to see the rest. I want to trace it with my fingers. Taste it with my tongue.
“Chris,” she says. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Fuck. Because I’m the worst.
I force a smile and swallow hard. I thought I could keep my fantasies about Grace in check, but it’s getting harder every day. “I hope you don’t mind doing something a little different. You’re okay with being outside, right?”
“If I wasn’t, I would have mentioned it when you suggested I put on sunblock.” She grins at me, reminding me of the way she stood in front of me in the living room, rubbing lotion into her creamy skin. “If we’re going to build a Habitat for Humanity house or something, I wish you would have told me so I could have dressed more appropriately.”
I suddenly envision Grace on a ladder and I’m holding it beneath her, getting to peek up that dress. It’s a pretty juvenile fantasy, but it’s not a bad one. “We’re not
building a house,” I tell her, clearing my throat. “I think you’re going to like this.”
The truth is, I have no idea what she’ll think of my plans for our day. Her dad asked me to keep an eye on her and keep her out of trouble, and since I couldn’t handle another day of Keegan eye-fucking her at Arrow’s pool, I decided we should try something else.
And, yeah, maybe I want her all to myself for a day. I want her attention to be on me and her words to be for me. There are always too many people around, at Arrow’s, at the apartment, at Tracy’s. I want her for myself this afternoon.
We drive in silence. She fiddles with the radio, and I grip the wheel to keep myself from reaching across the console and sliding my fingers over the smooth ivory skin of her thigh below the hem of her dress. She’s such a contradiction to me. Sometimes it seems like all she does is spout sarcasm, and other times it’s like I can hardly get her to speak two words to me. Maybe she’s no contradiction. Maybe I’m the problem.
Last night after Bailey dropped her off, I couldn’t get a word out of her. I tried hanging out with her in the living room, but she kept her head buried in her laptop, her fingers busily tapping on the keys. I felt like a jerk for wanting her attention when she was trying to work, so I went to bed, but I lay there awake until I heard water running in the bathroom and the soft click of the bedroom door. When she came into the room, she slid under the cover, and I actually envied the fucking sheets for getting to touch her bare legs. She tossed and turned for a while, sighing occasionally. I wanted to tell her I was still awake, but I thought she might be embarrassed to discover just how well I’ve come to know her insomniac sleep patterns in the last couple of weeks.
When I pull up to the gate at the state park just outside of Blackhawk Valley, Grace gives me the side-eye. “Camping?”
I hand my season pass to the attendant. “I thought we’d start with a picnic, but if you do well, maybe we can graduate to camping next time.”
“I’d like that.” She turns to look out her window, and I can’t see her face. “I love camping.”
