by Blair Holden
I stuck to the rules of my game.
But guess what? When it comes to the one girl I actually want? I don’t even know how to make the first play.
Ever since I’ve gotten back, I’ve been trying to do my best to gently ease myself into Tessa’s life. Before I left, I’d been nothing but a constant thorn in her side, annoying her just as a desperate means to get some attention. My pranks, all the teasing, all the wars we constantly fought were just a stupid way to get her to notice me and make her forget the still-nonsensical crush she had on my stepbrother, Jason. But things didn’t really work out the way I wanted them to and I guess I really shouldn’t blame her for not seeing through all the hell I unleashed on her. That’s too much pressure to put on a girl, especially one that’s in love with someone else. But now that I’m back, after nearly four years with the intention of trying to win her back, trying to make her smile a little more, trying to make her life a little happier, I’ve been trying to do the opposite of what I’d done before. I’m not using the game per se to win her over because every coherent strategy and plan that I try to use flies out the window where Tessie’s concerned.
I sound a little lovesick and a little foolish. Childhood love is unrealistic, that’s what I get told from the few people who know how I feel but it is what it is. I’d taken one look at the little girl in the playground and had found some sort of a comfort in her beautiful green eyes. I don’t know what it takes to make a kid that young fall in love but I did and maybe for the wrong reasons. She’d been friendly, she’d had hair like sunshine, a smile that’d light you up from the inside out and she radiated happiness. Even as a child, I lacked that natural exuberance and lightness that came with being a kid and not having any problems. Losing my mom as young as I did, having a father who worked most nights and being left on my own till my grandparents could look after me would do that to a person.
Tessie made me think I could be as happy as other kids my age and I realize now that I shouldn’t have made her responsible for my happiness or the baggage that came with suddenly losing your mother. Nobody could make me feel something that I didn’t want to, not even the little girl who became the closest thing I had to solace. But pushing her in a ditch the first time I saw her wasn’t probably the best way to get her to be my friend. Because that’s all I wanted in the beginning, for her to like me, to be her friend, to be the person she smiled at and shared her KitKats with but from the very first day, she was drawn toward Jay and I was drawn toward her. That’s just how things were.
But he’s always been blind toward her feelings and to make it all that much shittier, he’s dating her ex-best friend. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to watch him hurt Tessie like that.
But if I want her to let me in enough to help her then I need her to understand that things are different now. But my attempts at starting any kind of a relationship with her have been huge disasters so now you understand why I’d rather jump off a plane without a parachute than try to figure out women.
***
We’re currently sitting at a table in the cafeteria, a table that’s not near the trashcans for once. It makes my blood boil to realize just how badly Tessie and her friends are treated at the school, and all the cruelty’s the result of someone that Tessa considered a best friend. I won’t get into my own sordid history with Nicole Bishop but knowing what I do about her, I’m not surprised that she turned on someone who trusted her.
Though since joining the high school, I’ve made a considerable effort to put an end to their mistreatment. I do realize that it comes with a price and that the girl I’m trying to woo would rather have the ground swallow her whole than live with the kind of attention we’re getting right now. She hates the fact that people are staring, at her, at me, at us, and I feel the guilt picking at me. I don’t want to make her uncomfortable or make high school more of a hellhole for her than it already is but in order to get people to treat her the right way, I have to push her out of her comfort zone, just a little.
So at lunch, I do a little more of the pushing Tessie out of her comfort zone thing and ask her and her two friends about their plans for the weekend. I’m not surprised when Tessa tells me that their wild, wild weekend involves mostly a trip to the mall. I’m not blind, I see the way people look at the three of them, the way Nicole controls how they’re treated. I’d use my fists and roar in anger if I could because the last person who deserves this kind of a treatment is Tessie. But that’s not how you approach someone like Nicole because I’m dealing with years’ worth of damage and people treating these girls like pariahs.
One step at a time it is then.
I call out to Jared, one of the jocks who’s been after me all week to let him throw a party since I’m back now but I wasn’t interested, at least until now.
“Hey, man you still up for the party on Saturday?”
He’s sitting at the same table as Nicole and Jay and by the looks on the couple from hell’s faces I can tell they’re not happy that I’m disrupting their little table hierarchy. But the buzz has already started as people prepare themselves for what’s already looking like the party of the year.
I turn to Tessa and the girls. “That guy’s been after me all week to throw a welcome home party. I didn’t want one since you know he’s a tool but you’re welcome.”
I look at the three of them, expect a stronger reaction than the silence I’m greeted by, especially from Tessie. You would expect her to be thrilled or honestly, ready to chop my head off slowly and painfully with a butter knife but she sits there like nothing’s the matter. But she finally begins to catch on when her friend Megan shows the kind of enthusiasm you’d expect from a six-year-old who gets a pony for their birthday. She makes a high-pitched noise and claps her hands, forcing Tessa to finally ask, “What?” with an adorably confused look on her face.
“We now have plans for the weekend,” I explain and she glares at me; yeah, I’m doing a great job of wooing her. Her face contorts into the least-threatening scowl I’ve seen in my life.
“Who says I’ll go?”
“It would be the polite thing to do, besides it’ll be fun.” I shrug.
It probably won’t be anything spectacular than cheap alcohol and pizza but it’ll be a chance for people to see that she’s no longer willing to be a doormat.
“No, no and no! I will not, I cannot, and frankly I should not for the sake of my own well-being go to this party.”
“What’s with her?” I turn to Megan but that doesn’t turn out any better because the redhead seems to be at a loss for words whenever I directly address her.
“I-She . . . her . . . I mean that . . .”
But Beth, ballbuster that she is, finally pieces it all together for me as she takes out her earphones. “What she’s trying to so eloquently say is that we’ve been banned from parties. If Nicole sees us at one we’re done for and while I don’t give a damn about her, these two are too scared to actually face her.”
My first reaction is that I’m happy Tessa’s got someone like Beth by her side; she’s tough and the little time I’ve spent around her tells me that she won’t take shit from anyone and she’s protective of her friends. I’ve got to give her props but even as the thought crosses my mind, I feel anger coursing through me, the kind of anger and fury that sent me to military school in the first place.
“How long has she been doing this?” I know the answer but I would still like to know just how much damage I’ve got to undo and just how long my brother’s been sitting there silently while his girlfriend bullies the person who thinks the world of him.
“It doesn’t matter,” she tells me and even as I pin her down with my eyes, she squirms in her seat as though she’d be more than willing to up and leave if she could. I know we’ve got eyes on us, people aren’t even pretending to not watch and it’s the attention that Tessa hates but I need answers and I need them now. I do, at the same time, understand why I’d be the last person she’d share memories of h
er tormentor with because, rewind three years and I was the tormentor. Maybe I didn’t take things as far as Nicole but maybe to Tessa, she and I are the same thing. If I wasn’t dying of guilt and remorse before, I am now.
“How long?” I ask again and she slumps in her seat, her shoulders sagging in defeat. It seems as though a thousand different thoughts run through her mind and it breaks my heart to see the pain that’s etched across her face.
“Like I said it doesn’t matter, I’m handling it.”
“Oh you are? Because from what I’ve been seeing for a whole week your idea of handling is letting her stomp all over you with her giant-ass feet.”
Finally, finally she laughs and I feel like patting myself on the back.
“She does have huge feet, doesn’t she?”
Her attempt at avoiding the subject is so weak that I can’t help but groan and laugh at the same time.
“I saw her toes once up close and they’re so freakishly long,” Megan chimes in and I’m as surprised as she is by her ability to articulate a fully formed sentence.
Turning to Tessa, I remind her, “This doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten what this conversation is about.” But something about the look on Tessa’s face stops me from further questioning her on the subject, maybe it’s enough for today which is why instead of digging deeper, I smile and tell the three girls, “I’m taking you three to that party and I’m going to teach you to have fun.”
***
The thing with reinventing yourself in someone else’s life is that you’ve got to take the initiative. If I’d sat and waited for Tessa to accept the new and improved Cole and let me into her life, we’d both be waiting until we were about sixty. So desperate measures are definitely in order. I’ve been driving her home for a week and every day I feel like, grudgingly as it might be, she gives in a little.
While Tessa does seem wary and it looks like she expects me to pull one stunt or the other at any given moment, that’s expected because of my reputation. I’m trying my best to get her to trust me though and if that means imposing myself in her everyday life to a point that’s kind of ridiculous then I’m more than okay with it.
Today as I drop her off, I don’t just make the short drive back to my house and instead bite the bullet.
“So I was thinking, since we’re spending all this time together . . .”
“Involuntarily.”
“Right.” So far so good Stone, she still hates your guts.
“I know I’m still not your favorite person and odds are that I never will be but what about a peace offering? How about I make you lunch and we talk?”
I’m making this up as I go along but food is always a good way to go right? And it turns out that I do something right because she says it’s okay for me to come in and she follows me inside her house. I think I scared her with the word ‘talk’ because I can almost feel the nerves radiating off of her. “So what is it that you want to talk about?”
I smile to myself but it’s devoid of all humor. She can only see the back of my head so she can’t tell just how much I’m beating myself up right now. This is all my doing, this girl for whom I have every possible complicated feeling in the world is always on her guard around me.
“Relax shortcake. I’m not suddenly going to declare my undying love and devotion toward you. If we’re going to be friends, I thought it’d be nice if we spent a little more time together, actually talking and not arguing.”
“I didn’t think you were capable of that kind of emotional maturity.”
“Usually I’m not but hey, I’m willing to give it a good old college try if you are.”
“And why would I want to do that? Try with you I mean.”
“When life gives you lemons and all that jazz, shortcake. The thing is, you’re stuck here with me for at least a year. You could either choose to ignore me or we could try and build something great. I vote for the latter.”
And on that note, I use the spare house key her parents gave me and unlock the door. And the move has the kind of reaction I’d expected.
“Why do you have a key?” She squeaks and I can practically see our ship sink. She hates the idea, it’s probably not going to lead to love from here on out.
“Your mom gave me one the other day. She told me to make myself feel right at home.”
“Excuse me?” Her voice remains shrill.
“Well she said you have a tendency to forget your keys and since both your dad and her might not be home to let you in, I was entrusted with the responsibility. I take it you’re not so happy about that?”
And with that, I let the two of us in.
***
So one of the things I’d wanted to achieve with this homecoming was to make sure Tessa’s life was a lot happier than what it used to be. I’m not sure if her falling for me would ever be a reality but something I do want to do for sure is to slowly start distancing Tessa from anything that’ll give her a reason to be unhappy.
“Hey, Tessie?”
I ask her this as I’m sprawled across her bed, my large frame overtaking the entire thing. Remember how I spoke about imposing myself onto her, well there’s no such thing as doing too much of it because the more I seem to push her, the more she seems to give in.
She’s huddled in a corner of her room, sulking as she pretends to do her homework but I’m well aware of her watching me so I flex my muscles just for fun.
“Yes?” She answers as though she can’t stand me.
“Would you mind if I asked you something?”
Even as the words leave my mouth, in my head a montage of a car collision plays out. I’d been meaning to ask her a question for so long and maybe I should’ve waited for the right moment but the more time I spend with her and the more I notice it, the more my worry grows.
“You’ve never really cared about what I thought before. Why are you asking now?”
I still think about it, whether I really want to do this. I’m not following a script and I don’t know what to say but I’ve opened this can of worms and now I need to go through with it.
“Look, this might totally not be my place. Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m way out of line asking you this but . . . is there a reason why you barely touch your meals?”
She becomes absolutely still and I kick myself mentally, over and over again. I shouldn’t have approached the subject like this. Maybe I should have waited for a better time, when she accepted me. I don’t mean a thing to her now and she doesn’t owe me any explanations. I almost want to take it back but it’s too late.
Her response is to throw a badly aimed cushion at me, which I catch easily.
“W-what do you mean?”
I hate the tremor in her voice, like she’s afraid of her secret being exposed. But I want her to know that if she’s in pain, if she’s hurting then it’s okay for her to share that with the people who’re supposed to love her.
“Look, just tell me if I’m imagining things.” My own voice catches but I continue.
“But, even at school you pick at your food. Whenever I eat with your family, you take a bite or two and then leave thinking that your parents don’t notice. We’ve been back from school for two hours and you didn’t even eat half of what I made. Please tell me that I’m wrong, that I’m seeing something that’s not there. I . . . I know it’s not my place to bring this up but Tessa, I’m just worried.”
“Maybe it’s because you repulse me and I can’t stomach food when you’re around.”
I don’t think she realizes that the only thing that could hurt me is if I was never part of her life at all. As long as I’m here and as long as she’ll let me, I’ll do what I can to be there for her.
“I’m not joking, Tessa. If there really is a problem then I want you to be able to talk about it, to someone you trust if not me. I don’t know what to do here, maybe I’m just making a huge idiot of myself but I want you know that I care and that if you ever need someone to talk to . . .”
She t
akes some time to formulate her reply and I can’t help but smile at the childish, “Mind your own business.”
“You are my business, Tessie.”
If I look at it from her perspective, I know it looks completely insane that someone who’d been so committed to pulling pranks on her all through our early years would do a complete three-sixty and try and be a better person. If I were more patient, I would give her time to adjust to the idea but I’ve been preparing for this for the past three years. I’ve already wasted so much time, I don’t think I have more to waste. So I’m pleasantly surprised, well more like shocked to hear what she says next.
“How about we come to a mutual agreement to talk about this on a day when I’m ready and you’ve literally not come at me with it out of nowhere?”
“Oh, okay. Will you be willing to do that then? Talk?”
“I might as well since you’ve somehow made it you job to worm yourself into every possible area of my life.”
She couples this with a grunt and I take that as an opportunity to lighten up the moment.
“You might want to tone down the grunts, Venus, or your brother might think we’re playing the kinky kind of tennis.”
I’m happy to play the part of the pervert if it keeps her from freaking out.
***
Here’s the thing about Jay, everyone looks at him and thinks he’s such a great guy. God knows I’ve been compared to him enough times to know that I’m the black sheep of the family, and if he could, my father would definitely trade me in for another one of him. However, I like to think that people will soon see him for what he is, weak and manipulative.
Those are pretty harsh words to describe someone you’re related to by marriage, someone you’d once considered a best friend but truth be told, after the way he’s treated Tessa and how he’s allowed Nicole to treat Tessa, I’m done with this guy. He’s a user, someone who’s more than okay with stringing a girl along as long as it boosts his ego. The more I think about how he’s mistreated Tessa and taken advantage of her feelings toward him, the more capable I am of manslaughter. Which is why when I see him talking to her in the hallway at school, I have to resist the urge to pummel him into the ground. Instead I walk casually toward them, and in a not-so-subtle manner warn him to back off. I sling my arm across Tessa’s shoulders and pull her into my chest.
