A light knock sounded on my door. “Cassie, are you still awake?”
Culter’s hands squeezed on my legs.
Across the room, my knob turned.
“Dad! I’m changing! Don’t come in!”
The knob stopped turning. “Oh, sorry, honey. Have you seen Culter?” he asked, his voice muffled right outside my door.
Culter’s hand came up and gently pulled my hand from his lips. Arching up, he whispered right into my ear. “Say I went out.”
“He already left, Dad!” I yelled.
“His truck is here,” my dad said back.
“Spencer picked him up!”
“Oh. That’s different.” He paused, and then said, “Do you know where Josh’s backpack is? I think it has his tablet in it, and we need it for the drive.”
“Um, in his room?” I grimaced.
“No, I think it might still be in Culter’s truck. Damn, I’ll try to call him.”
“Fuck,” Culter whispered, quickly he moved his hip up, his hand digging into his back pocket. “Fuck. I can’t get it.”
I climbed off him, letting him get at his back pocket. He grabbed out his phone, flicking the silence switch on. Half a second later his phone lit up with ‘Frank’ written across his screen. We both watched until the screen went dark, and then looked over to the door.
“He’s not answering. Do you know if he took his keys with him?”
Culter shook his head.
“He left them,” I said.
“No, I brought the keys with me,” Culter whispered, too late.
I covered my lips and shut my eyes tight.
“Cassie, I’m sorry to ask this, but would you go get them for me? I know Culter doesn’t want me in his room.”
I paused. “Oh, okay, Dad. One second.”
Turning to Culter, I held my hands out.
He leaned in. “Let’s just tell him,” he whispered into my ear.
Leaning back, I shook my head, furiously.
Looking to the ceiling, then back to my gaze, he pointed to my closet and nodded. As quietly as possible, we both stood. Culter walked and I tiptoed over to my closet.
As I shut him inside, he whispered, “My keys are in my top drawer.”
“Everything okay?”
I spun. “Fine! I’m all dressed now.” Turning to head to my door, I spotted Culter’s red shirt lying across my bedspread out of the corner of my eye. “Crap,” I whispered, running over, I stuffed it under my blanket.
The door opened, and my dad stood revealed in the doorway. He glanced at me, his brow furrowing. “I thought you were changing?”
“Oh.” I looked away, trying to think of something I could give him. “This is . . . kind of embarrassing, Dad. Um, I used to take naps in my underwear, but I’ve stopped since there are three guys living here. So, I just thought maybe it might help me sleep, since everyone was out.”
He nodded, looking away quickly. “Oh, I’m sorry for interrupting your nap, honey.”
I crossed over to him, giving what I hoped was a nonchalant shrug. “It’s fine. Culter told me where his keys were in case I needed his truck.”
“He left his truck for you to use?” he said this like he was saying: ‘Someone came by and gave you a million dollars?’ and as if it was that unlikely. He confirmed this by adding, “He won’t even let me re-park it.”
“He said that I could use it if there was an emergency . . . but I got the feeling he meant zombie apocalypse,” I said.
“That sounds like him. I’ve just never seen him leave his truck before when he goes out with his friends. You know, Joshie’s waiting in the car, we should get going.”
I left my door open, thinking it would be pretty suspicious if I did what I wanted to and closed it. Crossing down the hall, I entered Culter’s room. Being enveloped in his clean, fresh scent did nothing for my nerves as I rushed over to his dresser.
Grabbing his keys out, I closed the drawer and speed-walked back out to my dad. Thank all that was holy that he was still in the hall and hadn’t gone into my room.
I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until we were at the front door, and then I breathed it out quietly.
“Wait here, honey. I’ll bring the keys back.” He patted me on the shoulder as he passed out into the cold.
Closing the door behind him, I waited, my heart racing, standing over the rectangle heater, which blew up at my bare leg.
The door opened and my dad peeked back in. “Got it!” He threw me Culter’s keys.
Catching them, I tried to smile at him. “Love you, Dad. Safe drive!”
“Thanks, honey. We’ll probably be back late in the afternoon.”
I nodded. “Tell Jen I’m sorry I’m not there, yeah?”
He shook his head. “It’s no problem, sweetheart. Lock this.” He jiggled the knob, before closing the door behind him.
Slowly, I padded over to the door and locked it. Pressing my ear to the door, I listened to his engine start, then the sound of him pulling out of the driveway, and finally, the sound of them driving away.
Then I breathed a big sigh of relief.
Arms wrapped around me from behind, and I jumped.
“Culter,” I whispered as I turned in his arms to face him. “Holy fuck. That was so close.” I laughed, half-hysterical.
He pressed into me. “We should just tell them, Cassie.”
“Um, no,” my voice came out high pitched.
“We’re both eighteen, it’s not like they could stop us.”
I pulled back. “Culter, no.” In my gaze I tried to communicate what a terrible, awful idea that would be.
He inhaled deeply and leaned in. “Cassie . . . it will be a much bigger deal if they discover it on their own. If we just tell them this is how it is and we don’t give a fuck what they think, they’ll either have to accept it or . . .”
“Or what, Culter?”
“Or we’ll go live at my dad’s.” He shrugged.
I just stared at him for a couple of seconds. “That’s insane.”
He shook his head. “Makes sense to me.”
Seriously? Seriously. What planet was this boy from? Because it was not the world that all the rest of us lived in, also known as reality.
I grabbed his arms. “Culter, we have to stop this.” My traitorous voice broke when I said it.
“We can’t stop this, Cassie.” He shook his head. “The only thing we can do at this point is pretend it’s not happening, and I don’t want to do that.”
I looked away because his words made a horrible and beautiful sense to me. At this point, all we could do was hold on and hope that everything would be okay. But that was crazy. After hating this boy for half my life, I’d only spent three weeks feeling that something for him. At this point, I should be able to sever that something off. I should be able to just decide that the last three weeks didn’t happen. But he was right, I’d only be pretending and hoping that one day I’d mean it.
Looking up into his bright blue gaze, I whispered, “I need it to be a secret, Culter.”
“Okay. For now.” Leaning in, he kissed me.
I grabbed onto his arms, held on, and hoped like hell that everything would be okay.
Chapter Twenty-five
The second time someone asked me to Winter Ball was at break Monday morning. Tyler, Culter and I all leaned against our lockers, the school paper before each of us.
I hadn’t seen our comic put together until this moment, but I had to say, I liked this one even better than the first. Poor Gunther held his bouquet for Betsy, when he saw his brother standing in front of his cheerleader cow, pointing up to a skywriting plane, with ‘Go to Winter Ball with me,’ written across the sky behind it. Gunther tossed his flowers while calling someone on his cell phone with his wallet out.
The next frame cuts to Betsy talking to her friend, her friend is saying, ‘I’m so scared of spiders, what are you afraid of, Betsy?’ Betsy replies, ‘Birds.’ The next scene has Gunther atte
mpting to push closed a locker, a huge grin on his face. Betsy arrives at that locker with Gunther hiding in the background. She opens her locker, causing hundreds of birds to fly out, one holding a sign that reads ‘Go to Winter Ball with me, Betsy.’ Betsy runs off screaming, while Gunther holds up a bird poop covered book that fell from Betsy’s locker, crestfallen.
The last frame shows Betsy holding the bouquet, reading the card, ‘Go to Winter Ball with me, Betsy,’ while she thinks, ‘What beautiful flowers, I wish I knew who they were from.’
I laughed as I looked back to the picture of the birds all flying out at poor Betsy.
“What’s so funny?” Beefy asked as he squeezed in between me and Tyler, pushing me pretty much into Culter on my other side.
Culter put his hand on my shoulder, stabilizing me as I kept laughing.
“I’m actually laughing at my and Tyler’s joke, which is kind of lame of me, I know.” I righted myself to leaning back against my locker. As I knocked my head against Jake’s big muscular shoulder, I noticed that he smelled like cologne, but unlike Spencer, he didn’t apply it lightly. Leaning away a little, but smiling up, I said, “How was your weekend, Jake?”
“Pretty good. I have something for you.” Beefy grinned and passed me a folded piece of paper.
“Oh, okay.” Folding my newspaper and sticking it under my arm, I took the note and opened it up. On it was a short handwritten message: Cassie, will you go to Winter Ball with me? Check yes or no. Underneath were two check boxes.
I turned to see him giving me a big hopeful grin. My insides melted a little for the big guy. I almost wanted to say yes, but I had a feeling that he wasn’t asking me to go just as friends, or because he heard I smoked weed, or anything like that.
“Oh, Jake, you’re breaking my heart because I already told Tyler I’d take him. He twisted my arm into it because he wants to go hit on senior ladies.”
Seeing a disappointed look settle on my big, blond, beefy almost-friend’s face made me so sad, I threw my arms around him and gave him a big squeeze.
He squeezed me back, knocking the air straight out of my lungs. “It’s okay, Cassie.”
“Will you still dance with me, at least once? Because Tyler is so going to ditch me,” I said.
Pulling away, he nodded, slowly. “I’ll save you a dance. Unless . . .” he turned to Tyler, who was still leaning against the lockers on his other side, “What if we find you another date, Baby Fuller?”
Tyler shrugged, not taking his gaze from his paper. “Can’t, sorry. We already planned our matching outfits.”
I bit my lip hard, fighting a smile at Tyler’s lie. Now Tyler and I would have to buy matching outfits, whatever that meant.
I poked Beefy. “Promise me a dance or break my heart, Jake.”
He nodded. “Two dances.” He winked, and I was relieved to see his usual happy expression resurface on his face.
Standing on my tiptoes, I kissed him on the cheek. “Your date will just have to forgive me for stealing you for a couple songs.” I patted him on the shoulder.
“Hey Cassie, let’s get to class,” Culter said from right behind me.
Waving at the group, I turned to Culter and the rather unhappy look on his face.
Well, fuck.
Opening up my locker quickly, I pulled my stuff out and turned back to unhappy Culter. “I’m ready.” I gave him an overly bright smile, which got nothing in return. And he said I’m cranky, goodness.
When we were only a few feet down the hall, someone called, “Hey, Cassie and Culter, wait up.”
Turning, I found Misty rushing to catch up to us, a bright smile on her lip-gloss covered, petal pink lips. “Hi guys,” she said.
Culter only grunted, the dork. As I had to supply the greeting for both of us, I tried to make it friendly, “Hey, Misty.”
“So . . . Cassie, you’re going with Tyler to Winter Ball? I just overheard.”
“Yeah, that con artist tricked me into it,” I said.
“That’s great,” she said it grinning wide, but I didn’t believe it for a minute.
I regarded her. If I could pick a girl for Tyler, it probably wouldn’t be Misty, but who was I to choose? Also, I was getting the distinct feeling that Misty was genuinely disappointed that Tyler wasn’t going to be available for Winter Ball.
Taking a deep breath, I decided to just go for it. “Actually, can I tell you the truth?”
She swallowed and blinked a couple times, before giving another not-so-genuine smile. “Of course.”
“I think he likes a senior, and he thought she might not ask him. So, he tricked a friend to bring him who would forgive him for ditching her,” I pointed to myself, “because he wants to go hang out with that girl. But I might be wrong. He didn’t say any of that to me; I’m just totally going off girl instincts here.”
Culter opened the door to Math for us, but Misty stopped and turned to me. “Wow,” she said, nodding. “Do you know who he likes?”
I shrugged. “No idea. And, no offense Misty, even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“That’s fair, of course.” She nodded.
“You guys going to Math?” Culter asked, still holding the door for us.
“Oh!” Misty looked over at him, like she just realized he was there. “Sorry, Culter, yeah.” She walked through, looking like a real smile now fought to cross her pink lips.
Good deed done for the day, I followed her in. As I sat down, Culter snatched my notebook off of my desk.
He ignored the glare I shot at him, turned a couple pages in the book and scribbled something before passing the notebook over to me. As the rest of the class took their seats around us, I opened the book partway and bent forward to block all others’ view.
Across the top of a blank page, Culter had scrawled, ‘Do you think I enjoy watching one of my best friends asking you out? That type of thing wouldn’t be happening if . . .’
I stared at the three dots at the end, pretty sure I knew the words it stood for, and those words were: if everyone knew you were mine. Taking a measured breath, I grabbed a pen and scratched out the note before closing the notebook.
As nonchalantly as I could manage, I looked over to him.
Leaning back in his chair, he regarded me with his brows raised. His expression clearly said he was right.
Ever so slightly, I shook my head, mouthing the word, “No.”
He turned away, looking to the front, even though our math teacher, Ms. Reedy, still moved around, writing a long equation on the board.
I kept my gaze on him for a few more seconds, before turning forward. My hands covered my mouth as I watched Ms. Reedy squeak the blue numbers and letters across the dry-erase board. Smelling the sickly-sweet aroma of the public restroom soap, I pulled my hands away, but returned them to covering my mouth.
Crap, that boy better not tell anyone. Somewhere on Planet Culter, he thought he could announce that he was dating his stepsister and everyone would be like, “Oh, great for you two, here’s a cookie”. Or, maybe Culter just didn’t give a fuck. Horribly, the second one was more likely.
I didn’t take any notes through Math, nor did I in Chemistry or History. Each period, I sat with my attention forward and my hands gripping my mouth. Culter didn’t shoot me any smirks or smiles either, just leaned back, arms crossed across his chest.
By lunch, my stomach had tied into a mess of knots. I kept picturing sitting next to Culter at lunch, and having him just stand up and yell, “Yo, Cassie and I are together, deal with it!”
What tied me up the most about the imagined scene was that part of me liked the idea. That boy was driving me crazier than bat-shit crazy and part of me wanted to raise my hands up and yell, “Faster!”
Spencer, who shared our history class, walked out with an arm over both my and Culter’s shoulders.
“What do you think of Emma, Cassie?” he asked, smiling over at me.
“Not really my type,” I said.
“
Really?”
“Nope. Actually, I have no clue who Emma is.”
“Cheerleader, hot, black hair, huge . . . brains,” he gave an exaggerated wink as if it wasn’t obvious what his pause meant. “You think she’s hot, right Culter?”
“Not my type either, man,” he said. I couldn’t see him past Spencer, and that was intentional on my part.
“Who are you going to ask, do you know yet?” Spencer asked with his attention on Culter.
I stopped. “Hey guys, I’m going to head over to the restroom, I’ll meet you in the cafeteria.”
Spencer released both of us. “All right, see you in a minute.”
Culter’s gaze met mine, and he nodded slightly before they both turned away.
The image of Culter making an announcement to the student body played through my mind again. And I realized: no way in hell could I let myself go into that lunch room.
As the guys walked further down the hall, I turned the corner, heading for the front office. As I went to stand in front of the desk, Ms. Vale didn’t notice me as her attention was held solely by what looked like a ten pound burrito sitting before her. Her fork cut through its girth and my empty stomach woke to the smell of salsa, beans and beef.
I cleared my throat and Ms. Vale looked up, startled. “Oh, hello Cassandra, how are you doing?” She smiled pleasantly, though I got the distinct feeling that she and her burrito wanted to be alone.
“Can I go home?”
“Are you sick?” she asked, leaning away.
“No, but I don’t really sleep anymore. I’m so tired today that I can’t really think straight. I think maybe I could sleep. I’m about a week ahead in my homework, because of the fact that I don’t sleep.”
She reached forward. “Yes, of course, honey. I think that’s pretty normal,” she whispered the last part.
“Usually, I can make it fine. I’m just really feeling it today.” As I said the words, I realized how true they were. My brain wasn’t feeling right today, and the longest sleep I’d had in a while was the four-hour nap I took after my dad left to get Jen for the second time on Saturday.
Making Bad Choices Page 22
