I nod, then fall silent again. It feels weird being here, in this cavernous house, with Eli acting like he’s only semiaware of my presence. He flips through channels aimlessly, pausing on each show for only a second or two before switching to the next one.
“Should I leave?” I ask bluntly. He seems miles away. Why did he even ask me to come over if he’s not in the mood for company?
He looks at me, surprised. “What? No. Of course not.” Sighing, he sets the remote on the arm of the couch and takes my hand. “Sorry. I’m just . . . We never should have gone to that stupid party.”
“What do you—”
His phone vibrates in his pocket, interrupting me. Mumbling another apology, he digs it out and looks at the screen. “Matt,” he tells me, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “Wondering where we ran off to.” He thumbs in a quick response and then places his phone next to the remote.
I try again. “What do you mean, we shouldn’t have gone?”
He stares ahead at the TV, which is showing one of those house reno shows. “I don’t really fit in with them anymore. That whole crowd. They try to act like nothing’s changed, but I can tell some people feel sorry for me. Ever since I got hurt, they look at me like I’m . . . I don’t know, tragic or something because I’m not that big-deal hockey guy anymore.”
Just from watching people’s reactions to him tonight, and seeing his hot ex in the flesh, I’d already gathered that he was once a member of the popular crowd in high school. “Who was it the guys were talking about at the fire pit? Connor something? Who’s that?”
“Colton Latimer,” he corrects me. “He’s the one who checked me into the boards last fall.”
My breath catches when I realize what he means. “He’s the one who caused your injury?”
“Yep.” He laughs, but there’s no joy to it. Just raw bitterness. “And as we found out tonight, he also got onto the college team I always dreamed about playing for. So, you know, there’s that too.”
I stare at him, horrified, remembering what Alyssa said when I mentioned Eli’s suspended hockey career: That must have sucked for him . . . having to change the course of his whole life like that. Until right this second, I’ve never really seen the impact it made on him. He’s never talked about it, or indicated that it bothered him, though I’ve always known it must have.
“God, Eli,” I say, squeezing his hand. “That really sucks. I’m sorry.”
He shrugs and turns my hand over, running his thumb along my wrist. “I hate the saying ‘It is what it is,’ but in this case it really is what it is. Dwelling on it isn’t going to make my knee heal any faster.”
“Did he at least apologize for hurting you?”
“Sort of. He showed up at the hospital the day after my surgery and dropped off a card for me. Didn’t even step into my room. To be fair, though, we barely knew each other. Since we went to different high schools, the only time I saw him was on the ice.”
“Still. A card?”
“A get-well card,” he confirms. “I guess the Sorry I smashed your knee and ruined your future plans cards hadn’t been invented yet.”
I shake my head. It baffles me, how some people can shatter lives and then just walk away like it’s nothing.
Figuring it’s time to get off the subject of Colton, I ask, “Will you go back to playing when you’re healed?”
He’s silent for a moment, gazing ahead at nothing like he’s lost in his head. “I don’t know,” he says, surprising me. “I mean, I loved the three years I played for the Warriors in high school. Being a part of the team. That rush you get when you first skate out onto the ice and hear the crowd. When I found out I was done for the season after only three games, it almost killed me. I thought nothing would ever come close to that rush again.” He glances at me and smiles a little. “Then one day last April, Aunt Rita handed me a tray of seedlings and told me to plant them in front of her shop. I didn’t know the first thing about flowers, and it hurt like a bitch to kneel on the ground for so long, but I sucked it up and did it. And when the marigolds actually took root and started growing, I felt this weird sense of accomplishment. There was something so satisfying about watching them thrive. It was like a different kind of rush.” He huffs out a laugh. “I know that sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t,” I tell him. His words make me wonder if it’s possible for me too, to trade one rush for another. I don’t think flowers would cure me of my shoplifting problem, but maybe there’s something else out there. Something I just haven’t found yet.
Eli slides his hand out of mine and rests it on my waist, pulling me closer. I wrap my arms around his neck and lean in to kiss him, the party and Ruby and the stolen penguin in my purse all fading away as his lips move against mine. But after only a minute or so, he stops and pulls me in for a hug, like that’s all he has the energy to do. I hug him back, letting him know I understand.
“Do you mind if we stretch out?” he asks into my hair. “My knee is really aching tonight.”
Instead of responding, I pile the throw cushions against the arm of the couch and then gently push him on top of them. Once he’s settled, he reaches for me and I nestle in between him and the back of the couch, carefully avoiding his sore knee.
“Sorry about tonight,” he says, brushing his cheek against the top of my head. “We should’ve just come here and cuddled instead.”
I smile into his chest. His body is somehow both firm and soft at the same time, and my head fits in the slope between his shoulder and neck like it belongs there. “You don’t need to apologize. It was . . . interesting.”
His laugh rumbles against my ear. “That’s one word for it.”
An image of him talking to his ex-girlfriend flashes through my mind in vivid detail. I shut my eyes, not wanting to see him when I ask my next question. “Did the reason you invited me to that party have anything to do with your ex?”
He tenses beneath me. “My—what? You mean Ruby? How do you know about her?”
“Facebook.”
“Oh.” His chest falls as he slowly releases a breath. “You saw us talking tonight.”
I don’t answer. It wasn’t a question. Obviously, I’d seen them, or I wouldn’t have asked.
“No,” he says after a pause. “The reason I invited you had nothing to do with her. I haven’t even spoken to her for longer than two minutes since, I don’t know, February? That was when she dumped me.”
I lift my head to look at him, but he’s staring up at the ceiling with the same vacant expression that was on his face when I saw them talking earlier. “She dumped you? Why?”
“I was kind of an asshole to her after I blew out my knee. I was an asshole to everyone, actually. I guess I can’t really blame most of my friends for keeping their distance. I was in excruciating pain all the time and I couldn’t play hockey anymore—couldn’t even leave the damn house sometimes—and I felt so fucking sorry for myself that I took it out on whoever happened to be near me.”
He sighs and tilts his head to the side, and I can almost see that version of him, the one whose anger and pain made him lash out until everyone around him felt it too. Sometimes the only way to cope with the unfairness of life is to spread it around.
“Anyway,” he continues, facing the ceiling again, “I understand now why Ruby broke up with me, but at the time it really sucked. We were together for two and a half years. Since the end of ninth grade. One day she came over and told me that she was sick of seeing me in pain every day. ‘It’s too depressing,’ she said. That’s a direct quote, by the way.”
“Ouch,” I mumble, letting my head drop to his chest again.
“Yeah. So that was that. She stopped texting and coming over, avoided me at school. After I got my shit together I called her to apologize, but not because I was trying to get back with her. About a week after she dumped me, she started dating one of my so-called friends. Another guy on the team.”
I wince. “Yikes.”
“R
ight?” He smooths a strand of my hair between his fingers. “So yeah, I can safely say I didn’t take you to that party to make her jealous or whatever. I don’t want to be with her anymore. I want to be with someone else.” He turns toward me, causing my head to slide off him and onto the pillows. “Someone who’s short and wears glasses,” he goes on, lowering his face to my neck. “Someone who runs over ugly vases with her car and hides my Twizzlers in her purse.”
My breath hitches when he finds the sensitive spot near my collarbone. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
“Nope.”
He rolls over onto his back again, taking me with him, and the conversation stops there.
Chapter Eighteen
“HAVE YOU STARTED YOUR THEFT EDUCATION class yet?”
I pick a piece of onion off my pizza and meet my dad’s eyes across the living room. “Not yet.”
“Morgan.” He sighs and lowers the volume on the TV, which is showing the evening news. “The court gave you a deadline of August twelfth, remember? And it’s already the end of July.”
“It’s a four-hour online course, Dad. I think I can get it done in the next two weeks.”
“Well, don’t put it off too long,” he says, scooping up another slice from the open box on the coffee table. Sausage and mushroom from Nazario’s, as usual. “It’s part of your diversion requirement, and the court needs to see proof that you completed it.”
“I know.” I guess I have been putting off doing it, mostly because I assume the entire course will just be a four-hour lecture on how shoplifting is wrong and hurts society, which I already know. I’m not sure how watching videos and doing quizzes is supposed to deter me from stealing, but since the alternative is court and possible prosecution, theft education class it is.
Dad finishes his pizza and reaches for the remote. “Ready to watch?”
I swallow the food in my mouth and frown. “Sorry, but I have plans to hang out with Alyssa tonight.”
He frowns back at me for a moment, his finger poised on the remote, before breaking into a too-wide smile. “Oh. Well, that’s nice.”
I nod, trying to ignore a stab of guilt. My friends haven’t been around all week—Dawson and Alyssa had work, Sophie’s on vacation with her family, Zach’s been doing whatever it is he does when Sophie’s not around, and Eli left on Sunday for a spontaneous five-day camping trip with his father—so I’ve spent the past few nights marathoning Breaking Bad with Dad. Not that I mind spending time with him, but I’m excited about getting out tonight with my best friend, who I feel like I haven’t seen in weeks. Her mother’s been keeping her pretty busy at the store lately.
“Maybe tomorrow, okay?” I say without thinking. Tomorrow’s Friday, the day Eli comes back. Or so he said before he left. He hasn’t been able to text me all week, seeing as he’s out in the wilderness. I can’t imagine camping with my dad, unless it was in a well-equipped cabin with a Pizza Hut nearby.
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Dad says, firing up Netflix. “There are plenty of other shows I’ve been meaning to binge-watch.”
I leave him to it and take the leftover pizza out to the kitchen. Fergus is sitting by his dish, staring into it like he’s trying to make Fancy Feast magically appear. I open a can for him before heading to hang out with Alyssa.
When I pick her up at Karalis Custom Jewelry, Alyssa collapses into the passenger seat and sighs wearily, like my father does after a bad day at work.
“My mother,” she says, eyes shut tight. “Is driving me. Crazy.”
I pat her shoulder and pull away from the curb, merging with the late-evening traffic.
“She got it into her head that she needs to advertise on social media.” She opens her eyes and leans over to turn up the stereo. Beyoncé almost drowns out her next words. “You know, to drum up business, which hasn’t been the greatest. But she barely knows how to do more than email, so guess who had to teach her how to make a business page on Facebook today? Yeah. Me. That was fun. By the time we got it set up, I felt like going to the bar next door and ordering a beer.”
“You don’t drink,” I remind her with a smile.
“Well, maybe I should start, because she also wants to ‘learn how to Twitter.’” She makes quotation marks around the words with her fingers. “That’s how she said it. So I have to give her a tutorial tomorrow. If I make it through that, I think I’ll definitely deserve one of those big slushy cocktails, at least.”
I laugh. “Hey, maybe I’ll join you. My dad’s been kind of clingy lately too. He was disappointed when I told him I couldn’t hang out with him again tonight.”
“Clingy? Your dad? But he’s usually so chill. I’m totally jealous of all the freedom he gives you and how much he trusts your judgment.”
My hands tighten on the wheel, and for a moment, I consider telling her everything. The shoplifting. Theft education class. How I ruined Dad’s trust in me so completely that I’m afraid I’ll never gain it back. But the words stay lodged in my throat. She’d never understand, and there’s no way she could keep it from the rest of our friends, even if I begged. Unlike me, she’s a horrible liar.
After driving around and singing along with the stereo for an hour, we stop off for some frozen yogurt. We get our usuals—chocolate topped with mini M&M’s and Nutella sauce for me, strawberry and vanilla topped with gummy worms for her—and sit at a table by the window.
“So,” she says, chopping the head off a gummy worm with the edge of her spoon, “Dawson asked me out the other day.”
I almost choke on an M&M. “What?”
“He asked me if I wanted to go to the Lighthouse on Friday night. Just the two of us.”
Wow. The Lighthouse is a very trendy, very pricey restaurant on the south end of town. None of us have ever been there, because none of us can afford it. Dawson can’t afford it, not on minimum-wage pay. He must’ve really wanted to impress her and make their potential first date extra special.
“And you said no,” I guess. I don’t even have to ask. Alyssa rarely changes her mind once it’s set. She’s the most stubborn person I know.
“Of course I said no. You know I don’t like him that way, and I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.” She bites her lip. “Do I give him the wrong idea? Oh, crap, do I flirt with him without realizing it?”
I shrug. She treats Dawson the same way she treats Sophie and me, with innocent, maternal-like affection. But to a guy who’s been in love with her for months, a simple smile or hug might carry a much different meaning. “I think you’re pretty clear about where you stand.”
“I try to be.” She sighs and takes a large bite of strawberry. “He probably hates me now. He hasn’t texted me since I turned him down.”
That explains his recent absence from the group chat we have going on Messenger, and why, when I drove him home from work yesterday, he talked about everything but Alyssa. I feel a twinge of sadness. Hopefully their friendship can survive this.
“He doesn’t hate you, Lyss.”
She ignores me and pushes away her fro-yo cup. “What is wrong with me? Am I defective? It seems like everyone wants to be in a relationship but me. It’s just . . . I have so much going on with my mother and the store and senior year coming up, dating is the last thing on my mind. And what’s the point of relationships at our age, anyway? They’re only going to end.”
I think of last Friday night, Eli and I stretched out on his living room couch, his warm hands on the back of my shorts, pressing me tight against him. There are definitely some benefits to dating.
“Oh God,” Alyssa says, snapping me back to the present. “You’re thinking about Eli, aren’t you? I can tell, because your freckles look like they’re all melding together. When are we going to meet him?”
“Soon.” My friends have been so busy lately, it’s hard to pin them all down at once. “He gets back from camping tomorrow. I’ll ask him. Maybe Saturday night?”
She nods and slides her yogurt cup back i
n front of her, then spoons a half-melted bite into her mouth. “Soph is back tomorrow too, and Zach is always free. Dawson might even put aside his hatred for me long enough to join us, if it means getting to know your new boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. Considering how much I’ve missed him this week, I guess the term fits.
Chapter Nineteen
ELI IS TOO TIRED TO GO OUT ON FRIDAY NIGHT, SO I don’t see him until Saturday morning. When I pull into Rita’s Reruns, I spot him by the drop-off bins, knee-deep in donations. Rita must have left last week’s offerings for him to sort through.
He looks up at the sound of my car and smiles. My heart does this weird fluttering thing, and I have to stop myself from jumping out of the car while it’s still running. I park and get out slowly, then walk over to him at normal speed. As I get closer, I see that he’s even more tanned than before, and his jaw is shadowed with light brown stubble. My mouth goes dry.
“Hey.” He steps over a torn plastic bag filled with old shoes and hugs me, lifting me up off the ground.
“Hi,” I reply, and wrap my arms around his neck, holding on. When he pulls back to kiss me, his cheek scrapes against mine, making me yelp.
“Sorry.” He gives me a quick peck and sets me down on the pavement. “Didn’t get a chance to shave yet.”
“I like it,” I say truthfully. Facial hair looks incredibly sexy on him. “So you had a good trip?” He texted me for a few minutes last night, talking about foreign-to-me things like fishing, sleeping in tents, and cooking over fires, but he fell asleep before he could go into much detail.
“Yeah.” He shoves aside a beat-up cardboard box with his foot. The contents make a clinking sound. “On the way back, we picked up Mere at camp and stopped at Vickers Beach for the day. It was great.”
“Oh, I love Vickers Beach. I haven’t been there since I was little.”
He scratches his jaw, smiling. “You should go before the summer’s over. You and your dad or whoever. Stay in one of those little cottages near the beach.”
The Girl You Thought I Was Page 13
