Riot

by Jamie Shaw

  When Joel emerges from his bedroom, I don’t bother answering her. He freezes in the hall, shirtless and barefoot with his mohawk soft and messy like he just woke up. His skin has lost some color, and his eyes are hangover-red. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “He says he’s not coming,” Adam tells Shawn from behind Joel, but Joel never breaks eye contact with me.

  “Why the fuck are you here?” he asks, his voice holding not one ounce of the boy who told me he loved me less than a week ago.

  “To make sure you come home,” I answer sadly, but Joel just laughs and rakes both hands over his scalp.

  “So let me get this straight,” he says, “you tell me to go home, but when I go home, I’m not allowed to fucking stay there? Where the fuck am I supposed to go, Dee?”

  “This is her?” his mom growls from the couch. She finally manages to get the leg rest down, and she sits forward, pointing an unsteady finger at me. “You’ve got some nerve coming to my house.”

  “I’m not leaving without Joel,” I state calmly, realizing I mean it. He doesn’t belong here, with this selfish woman who stole his childhood. He belongs with his friends, with people who love him.

  His mom’s finger jams farther forward. “You’ll do what I tell you, you stupid little bitch!”

  “Mom!” Joel barks, silencing us. Claws scratch into the carpet as the cat glued to my legs darts down the hallway and into Joel’s room.

  Joel’s mom glares at him and then me. “You break my son’s heart and think you can just come in my house and take him away from me?”

  I want to tell her that someone should have done that a long fucking time ago, when he was young enough for it to matter, but that’s between Joel and his mom, and it isn’t my place to say. I fist my hands at my sides and bite the inside of my cheek until I’m sure the words aren’t going to burst free the second I open my mouth. Then, with pleading eyes, I look at Joel and say, “Joel, please.”

  He’s staring at me like he’s debating coming with me when his mom says, “She ain’t even that fuckin’ pretty.”

  “Mom,” Joel warns, but Darlene isn’t done.

  She locks eyes with me and snarls, “I used to be prettier ’n you.”

  “And look at you now,” I counter, and a molten red flush erupts across her cheeks. She begins trying to stand, and if she were sober, I don’t doubt she’d be in the midst of yanking my hair out. Instead, the couch cushion gives under her palm and she struggles to find her footing.

  “YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME?” she hollers while teetering dangerously to the side. “YOU AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A DUMB FUCKIN—”

  “SIT THE FUCK DOWN!” Joel bellows, and his mom literally falls back into her seat. She gapes at him for a second before resuming that ugly mask of anger again. Shawn and Mike, who were moving closer to the couch to intervene on my behalf, just stand there frozen in time like they’re not sure what to do with themselves. Adam puts his hand on Joel’s shoulder, but Joel barely seems to notice.

  “You’re going to take that slut’s side over mine?” Joel’s mom asks him.

  “She’s not a slut,” he snaps back.

  “She doesn’t care about you!”

  Joel laughs, quietly at first and then louder. “There’s some money in my room,” he says. “Keep it. Pretend I’m still here for a while. We both know that’s the only fucking reason you’ve ever wanted me around.”

  “How dare you talk to me like that in my own goddamn house!” his mom shouts.

  “I PAID FOR THIS FUCKING HOUSE,” he thunders, “so yeah, I’m going to do whatever the fuck I damn well please!”

  Joel and his mom stare each other down, and then she starts to cry and he rolls his eyes.

  “I’m out of here,” he says, snatching a set of keys off the counter and practically steamrolling me out the door. The rest of the guys follow. I hear Joel’s mom yelling behind them, apologizing and begging him to stay, but he ignores her. With his hand on my back, he ushers me down the porch stairs, and then he pulls away like I’m carrying something contagious. He walks to his car, opens the door—

  He hesitates.

  When he turns around, the world stops turning and I’m caught in one of those moments—the kind that have the power to change everything or nothing. A crossroad. A turn in the tide. A moment you can never come back from. “Why did you come here?”

  I give him the simplest answer there is, the one that says just enough and not too much. “Because I wanted to make sure you went home with Adam.”

  “Why?”

  If there’s a right answer, I know the one I’m about to give isn’t it, and yet I give it anyway, because it feels like the safest. “You would’ve done the same for me. I owed you.”

  “You owed me?”

  When my response is to say nothing, his gaze lowers to the ground beneath his bare feet and he turns away from me. He climbs into his car, waits for Mike to climb into the passenger seat, and then they’re gone.

  On shaking legs—still rushing with adrenaline from my near fight with Joel’s mom, and weakened from watching him drive away—I manage to get myself into Adam’s backseat, and he takes his sweet time lighting a cigarette before starting his black Camaro and heading toward home.

  “Well,” he says with the cigarette between his lips, “that went well.”

  “I told you we shouldn’t have brought her,” Shawn says, frowning at me in the rearview mirror. “No offense, Dee.”

  “She,” Adam says, pointing a thumb in my direction, “is the only reason he’s coming home.”

  I flip my shades back down and pretend to stare at the trees to avoid meeting their eyes. “No. He’s coming back for you guys.”

  I’m the reason he left.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  WHEN ROWAN ENTERS our apartment a few minutes after I get home, I’m sitting on our couch with my head in my hands. I look up at her through tear-filled eyes, and she frowns at me.

  I didn’t break down during the ride home from Joel’s mom’s house. I didn’t break down when I saw his beat-up car sitting empty in Adam’s parking lot. I didn’t break down during the drive back to my own place. And even at home, in the privacy of my own living room, I haven’t broken down.

  I don’t deserve to cry. Even though I do it—almost every day—I don’t have any right to.

  “They told me what happened,” Rowan says, taking a seat on the coffee table across from me. “Dee, this has got to stop.”

  My expression hardens, and I blink away unshed tears before they have a chance to fall. “What are you talking about?”

  “Joel looks miserable. He is miserable. And you’re sitting here crying . . .” She puts her hand on my knee, her voice soft but insistent. “You need to tell him how you feel.”

  “And how do I feel, Rowan?”

  “You love him.”

  A tear escapes the corner of my eye, and I shake my head.

  “Really?” she challenges. “Then why are you crying?”

  Another tear, and another. I’m crying because he drove off with no shirt and no shoes, because he never should have been there in the first place, because when he asked me why I came to get him, I should have told him how horrible this week has been without him, how I miss his smile, his laugh, the way he used to kiss me goodnight. How I still sleep in his T-shirt because I miss his arms around me, how I can’t even bring myself to wash it.

  “Just drop it, Rowan.”

  “No,” she argues. “This is ridiculous. I’m your best friend, and I know you’ve never been in love before but—”

  “Stop,” I warn, feeling all the hurt inside me burn into anger, which feels more familiar, more safe. I cling to it.

  Rowan sighs. “He loves you back, Dee. No one’s breaking your heart here but you.”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” I snap. I get up and walk down the hallway toward my room, but she follows me.

  “Oh really? Why
did you go to his mom’s tonight? And don’t give me the same bullshit reason you gave Joel.”

  I close the door between us, but Rowan throws it open.

  “Why the fuck do you care?” I shout at her. “Your life is perfect! You have a perfect guy and a perfect family and everything’s so goddamn fucking easy!”

  “Oh, excuse me while I cry you a river, Dee,” she snaps back. “Joel is a GREAT fucking guy. And he ADORES you. So let’s all cry about it! Because that makes ANY sense.”

  I head into my bathroom, but Rowan jams her foot against the door before I can close it. I turn around and glare at her, my cheeks hot with tears.

  “I’m trying to help you,” she says, everything about her stony and uncompromising.

  “You can help me by minding your own fucking business.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. Leave. Me. The fuck. Alone!”

  She bites the inside of her cheek to keep from lashing out at me, and I already know I shouldn’t have said what I said. But I don’t take it back, not any of it, and she finally says, “Fine. You want me to leave? I’m leaving. Call me when you’re ready to stop lying.”

  “Lying to who?” I yell at the back of her head when she gets to the front door.

  “Yourself!” she shouts back, and then the door slams behind her.

  That night, when I cry in the shower, it’s not just because I miss Joel. It’s because I miss my best friend. Because I miss my old self. Because I miss a time that never really existed—a time when I was happy.

  I change into pajamas and wrap my hair in a towel, not bothering to dry it before I crawl into bed with Joel’s T-shirt, breathing in his scent and wishing he were here with me to hold me close and tell me I’m not broken.

  The closest I ever got to happiness was when I was on the receiving end of his smiles, his kisses, his secrets. When we held hands and made each other laugh. When he loved me.

  Tears soak into my pillow when I remember him standing barefoot in his mom’s gravel driveway asking me why I came to get him. Rowan asked me the same question. I didn’t give Rowan an answer, and I gave Joel a lie.

  Because I wanted to make sure you went home with Adam, I said.

  But what I should have said was, Because I love you.

  A heavy sob breaks free from some locked-away place inside me, and I hug Joel’s T-shirt tighter, letting myself say the words, even if they’re only in my head while I sob into my pillow.

  I tell him I love him on Easter at the pool. I tell him I love him while we’re cooking dinner with my dad. I tell him I love him when he crawls in my bedroom window.

  I say it while he cries in my arms on his birthday. I say it while I lie on his chest on the bus.

  I cry myself to sleep, knowing it’s too late but saying it over and over and over again.

  I love you, I love you, I love you.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I WAIT SEVEN days to text Rowan. Seven days to sort through my feelings and figure out what I’m going to say. On Saturday morning, we meet at IHOP. I’m sitting in a booth when she slides into the seat across from me. Her long blonde hair is up in a messy bun, her blue eyes shining with worry she’s doing her best to hide.

  “I missed you,” I say, and she abruptly stands back up and slides in beside me, capturing me in a bone-crushing hug.

  “I missed you too,” she says against my hair. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch.”

  I shake my head against her cheek, holding her just as tightly as she’s holding me. “No, you were right.”

  She loosens her hold around my neck, like she’s just realized she’s hugging a stranger, and when she pulls away, she looks at me like one.

  I take a deep breath, intending to tell her that I’ve realized I love Joel, but the words get caught in my throat.

  “Right about what?” she asks.

  “About . . .” I rub the spot between my eyes. “God, this was so much easier when I practiced it in my head.”

  Rowan studies me for a moment before realization lights her eyes and the corners of her mouth begin to tip up. I’m dreading her giddy reaction when I’m saved by the server who pops by to take our orders. Rowan slides back into her own seat, never taking her eyes off me or losing her full-faced smile. I order for both of us, hand back the menus, wait for the server to walk out of earshot, and scold my best friend. “Stop smiling at me like that.”

  “I can’t help it,” she says, her smile growing even bigger. “Just say it.”

  “You already know.”

  “Pretend I don’t.”

  God, she’s so excited, I really want to smack her. “Why are you doing this?” I groan, but her smile is indestructible.

  “Because I love you.” She says it easily, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. And maybe it should be.

  “I love you too,” I say, and she props her hand on her fist, still wearing that goofy grin.

  “And who else?”

  I inhale and exhale a deep breath. “And Joel.”

  “All together now.”

  “God I hate you.”

  She starts laughing, and I close my eyes and just say it.

  “I love Joel.”

  When I peel my eyelids open, she looks like she wants to launch herself across the table to wrap me in another hug.

  “Happy?” I ask, and her eyes start to well. The backs of mine begin to sting, and I say, “What the hell are you crying for?”

  “You,” she says, running a knuckle over the corner of her eye.

  “Stop,” I complain, turning my gaze to the ceiling. I blink rapidly to hold the tears at bay. “Seriously, is it so much to ask for just one day without ruining my mascara? Why the hell are we crying?”

  “Because we’re girls,” she laughs. “This is what we do when we fall in love.”

  “We get stupid?” She laughs even harder, and I find myself laughing too. “God, this is a mess.”

  “When are you going to tell him?” she asks, and I finally turn my chin back down, losing myself in another kind of feeling.

  The shadow of our server falls over the table, and she pours us both a cup of coffee. “Your pancakes will be right out,” she says with a smile.

  “Thanks.” I force a smile back at her, and when I look back to Rowan, hers has fallen away.

  “You are going to tell him, right?”

  Scratching my pointer finger over a scuff on the table, I say, “Do you think I should?”

  “Is that even a question?”

  I let out a slow breath. “How’s he doing?”

  When I turn my attention back to her, she’s frowning. “I haven’t seen him much. He promised not to go back to his mom’s, but he hasn’t been sticking around the apartment. I think he might be sleeping in his car.”

  “Or in other girls’ beds,” I counter, and when she doesn’t deny it, I sigh. “Maybe it’s better he not know.”

  “How is it better?”

  “What happens if I tell him?” I stop scratching the table to tuck my hair behind my ear. “I know he told me he loved me, but I doubt he really thought it out. What happens after you tell someone you love them?” She waits for me to continue, but I just shake my head. “Joel and I don’t know how to be in a relationship, Ro. We’re not that kind of people.”

  “You’ve had boyfriends,” she argues.

  “Yeah, and look at what I did to them.” Guys have told me they’ve loved me before, but I never believed them. They’ve given me flowers and gifts and declarations I didn’t want, and all it did was make me run away even faster. I’ve made grown men cry, and all it ever did was make me lift an eyebrow and wonder why I dated them in the first place.

  “But you love Joel.”

  “And look at what I’ve already put him through.”

  Rowan frowns at me for a moment before reaching across the table and taking my hands in hers. “Listen to me, okay?” I nod, and she s
ays, “I know this is all really new, and I know it’s scary, but you’re going to keep loving Joel whether you tell him or not, and if you don’t tell him and see where it goes, it’s going to be a mistake that haunts you for the rest of your life.”

  Our hands separate when the server drops our pancakes off. This time, Rowan thanks her since I’m still lost in the darkness of her words. “What if we end up breaking each others’ hearts?” I ask once we’re alone again.

  “You’re already doing that,” she answers, her voice matching her solemn expression. “What do you have to lose?”

  THAT EVENING, AFTER I finish zipping up a pair of sparkly stiletto ankle boots, I consider all the answers to Rowan’s question: my pride, my heart, my independence. But when I gave her those answers at breakfast, she asked me one more simple question: Are they more important than Joel?

  I stand up, command my knees to stop shaking, and take one final look in my bedroom mirror. My purple wrap dress squeezes me in all the right places, flaunting my curves and complementing my dark chocolate curls. My makeup is flawless, my body is killer, and I feel like a fucking wreck.

  Rowan told me that Joel is definitely going to be at Mayhem tonight. One of his favorite bands is playing, and all of the guys are going to go see them. The plan is just to go, be as hot as humanly possible, and say the words I should have said a long time ago.

  “I love you,” I practice in the mirror, rolling my eyes at myself. I take a deep breath and stare at it again. “I love you. I love you, Joel.”

  When someone knocks on my door, I nearly jump out of my skin.

  After collecting myself, I let out a little chuckle and swing open the door to find Leti dressed in a dark purple button-down and dark-wash jeans. I smile when I realize we matched without even planning to. When he’s not wearing ridiculous T-shirts and bleach-stained jeans, the boy definitely knows how to dress.

  “Happy to see me?” he asks.

  “Took you long enough.”

  “You do realize you’re the one with the car, right?”

  Ignoring him, I do a twirl and say, “How do I look?”

  “Like a hot little succubus,” he says with a grin. “What’s the occasion?”