“So we slept together?” she asked, loudly. He looked around, trying to pretend like there weren’t thirty pairs of eyes on him.
“Come outside,” he whispered, taking her hand. She yanked it away and stormed out the back door. She flew past the patio, past the pool, and into the garage.
“Speak,” she said, arms crossed.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d get upset,” he said, holding his hands up.
“You’re damn right, I’m upset. You sleep around with every girl in school,” she said, “but you have to pick me to start shit about? Why?”
For a moment, he just hung his head.
“I guess Brett didn’t take you dumping him so well,” he said. “So he told some guys on the team that he broke it off because you were hooking up with other guys. He made it seem like you were some sort of tramp. So I just started telling people it was me. They weren’t going to believe that a sophomore dumped him, so I thought it might sound better if it was one person you were hooking up with. It made sense that it was me. People know we’re together all the time. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”
She didn’t know what to think. She looked at him, then down at the ground, then up at the ceiling. She wanted to go inside and punch Brett in his stupid face. She wanted to take him by the ear, and make him tell the truth to everyone inside. But a stronger part of her wanted to wrap her arms around Knox’s neck. So that’s what she did. He held her tight. The more she thought about it, the less it bothered her that people might think that she and Knox had been. . . together.
“Knox?” she asked, her face still buried in his neck.
“Yeah?”
Her heart jumped all around her chest. She wanted so badly to ask him what this was. What they were. Why he cared about her so much. But she couldn’t. What if it was nothing? What if they really were just friends?
“Feel like giving them a little show?” she asked. He raised an eyebrow at her.
“How so?”
“Well, if Brett’s gonna make shit up about me, we might as well play him on it.”
A devious smile spread across Knox’s face that heated up Bria’s insides like a freaking microwave. They walked back inside, his arm draped around her shoulder.
“Damn, that was hot,” he said, just loud enough to catch everyone’s attention in the room. Bria felt all eyes on her, but she didn’t care. She winked at him, and he pulled her in closer, laying a long kiss on her cheek. She actually heard someone in the back of the room audibly gasp.
And from the corner of her eye she saw Brett, his arm around Christa, but his eyes on Bria, burning a hole right through her. She smiled, and reached around and grabbed a handful of Knox’s butt.
“Hey, now!” he said, jumping forward just a bit. She laughed. He pulled her in again, leaving one more kiss on her cheek, this time, a little bit closer to her mouth. She felt her legs tingle.
“You better be careful,” he whispered into her ear, and she felt one million goosebumps rise up all over her skin. He winked at her and walked toward the bar, just grazing her butt with his hand as he walked by.
“What was that?” Mari said, after the show was over. “I thought you said it wasn’t real.”
“It wasn’t,” Bria said, taking a swig of the beer Mari was handing her. “But Brett doesn’t need to know that.” Mari gave her a look.
“You may have thought that was all for show,” she said, looking over at Knox, “but I don’t know that Knox did.”
Bria’s eyes trailed over to Knox, and to her surprise, he was staring at her while he sipped his drink.
The next morning, Bria laced up her shoes and hopped down the porch steps, heading out for Knox’s. Their houses were just over four miles apart, so she often ran to his house and hitched a ride back. She figured he’d still be sleeping off the night before, seeing as he had a red cup in his hand the whole night.
When she finally got to his house, her jaw dropped at the sight of countless red cups, piles of food, and trash that littered the Knoxvilles’ backyard. She didn’t understand how people could just trash someone else’s home, but she guessed they were drunk enough to truly not give a shit.
She sighed, finished stretching, and got to work, scooping up every ounce of trash, occasionally gagging as she dropped it in the can. After almost an hour, a sleepy, hungover Knox appeared at the back door. He wore long black basketball shorts, and a sweat jacket with no shirt. Her knees went a little weak, and she quickly looked away.
“B, what are you doing?” he said, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“I’m almost done cleaning up,” she said, matter-of-factly. “We have a busy day today.”
“I can’t believe you cleaned this all up,” he said. “We do? What are we doing?”
“We’re celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?”
“Your graduation!” she said. He chuckled.
“Is that not what we did last night? And what I’m paying for today?”
“No, that was just the pregame,” she said. “Today is the real celebration.”
He gave her a perplexed look. She smiled back. “Go get dressed.”
After a few minutes of Knox dilly-dallying inside, he finally reappeared at the back door, this time wearing a red t-shirt under the jacket. They got into his car, and she began directing him.
“First stop, Tom and Ray’s,” she said. They had had about a million breakfasts here before school, and today would be no different.
Bria snagged a hashbrown off of Knox’s plate while he guzzled down his orange juice. The waitress came over and slapped their check down on the table. Knox reached for it, but Bria snatched it away.
“Ah, ah, ah,” she said, wagging her finger, “this is your day.” She slipped a few bills from her bag under the receipt and popped up. “Okay, next stop.”
“Where to, captain?” he asked with a look of excitement, clearly tickled by her master plan. Bria beamed, pulling out of her bag two tickets to that day’s Nationals game against the Phillies. Knox’s eyes widened.
“No!” he said.
“Yep,” she said. “To Nats Park!”
After the game, as they made their way back to town, he smiled at her as they stopped at a red light.
“This has been. . .awesome, baby cakes,” he said. She smiled at him. She loved seeing him so happy.
“It ain’t over yet,” Bria said. “Jimmie Cone!”
After they grabbed their cones from the window, instead of taking their normal seats at one of the wooden picnic tables, Bria led him back to the car.
“And for the last stop,” she said, “the swings.”
By the time they pulled up to the park, their cones were completely gone. When he parked, she jumped out of the car, racing him to the swings so that she could get the one with the longer chains that swung further out. But he didn’t try to keep up, happily giving up the better one.
“B, seriously, this is . . .today was really great.”
“I’m so glad you had fun,” she said, pumping her feet in and out, in and out. But after a few seconds, he grabbed the chains, bringing her swing to a stop. She looked at him.
“I mean it. No one’s ever done anything like that for me before. I’m not even sure if my parents know I graduated,” he said with a half-smile. “But I guess a 2.75 GPA isn’t anything to celebrate.”
Bria’s heart sank. She knew his parents would be at graduation, but hadn’t planned anything else after the fact. They couldn’t wait for Knox to be done with school, to relieve them of anything else that may have been tying them down. And she hated the way he talked about himself. She hated that he saw himself as a joke, as a failure. She reached out and covered his hand with hers.
“Benjamin Andrew Knoxville,” she said, looking straight into his eyes, forcing him to look back at her. “You listen to me. Twenty years from now, no one will give a shit what your GPA was, not even you. No one is going to care that you couldn’
t play football anymore. The important thing is that you change people’s lives, Knox. You make them better. You make my life better, every time I see you. And the truth is, I’m so sad that I won’t see you around every day, because you’re the best part of high school. And I just. . . I want you to know I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of everything you’ve done, and how much you’ve conquered, and just, how you treat people. I don’t care if you go to Harvard, or community college, or no college at all. None of that makes you who are. None of that matters.” She paused for a moment, feeling herself starting to choke up. And if she didn’t know any better, she’d say he was fighting back tears of his own. “Now, for my last gift. . .”
“What? Jesus, B, you’ve done enough,” he interjected. But she reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She took a deep breath before she handed it over to him.
She had been stressing over this letter for weeks. She knew she needed to get it out, write it down, see the words, have him see the words. But she wasn’t exactly sure what words she wanted him to see. He reached out and took it with a perplexed look, and unfolded it.
To My Knox on Your Graduation Day
I can’t believe this is it. I can’t believe the day has come for you to leave me!
Just kidding. We both know I’d never let you go far.
But in all seriousness, I need to say something. I need you to know that you have changed my life. And I am so beyond grateful that I have you. I’ll miss not seeing you every single day. But please know that no matter where the next few years of life take us, you’ll always have me. I’m so proud of you.
Love, Your Babycakes
As Knox’s eyes made their way to the bottom of the page, he cleared his throat a few times and straightened up. Bria didn’t know what she wanted his reaction to be. She had worded the letter so carefully, so as not to include “friend” or “friendship,” and to innocently insert the word “love” at the end. God, she had agonized over that for days.
She was sort of hoping he might, maybe, read between the lines. See what she was getting at. See that she had written so much more than what was actually in the letter.
He looked down at their hands, now, hers still on top of his. Then he covered her hand with his other hand, and they sat for a moment. Finally, he looked up at her.
“I’ll miss you too, B,” he said. “You’re the best part of all my days.” Then he unclasped their hands, hooking his arm around her neck and pulling her in for a long hug.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he whispered, “but I hope I never screw it up.”
ELEVEN
Now
“What the fuck, Drew?” Bria enunciated, throwing her purse down on the table as he slammed the apartment door behind them. “Why would you say that? And in front of them?”
“Because it’s true.”
“It is not true! You know it’s not!”
“No, actually, I don’t. I’m not there. You could be living with him during the week for all I know.”
“Oh my God. You are so overdramatic. And maybe if you’d make the fucking trip to Dalesville every once in a while, you’d know where I was. But God forbid you drive out to the boondocks.”
“When the hell am I supposed to do that? I’m a little busy paying the bills for our apartment here, remember?” he asked. Wow. She knew he would eventually throw that in her face. Since she moved back in with her parents, she wasn’t really shelling out much to help with expenses at their apartment.
“Okay, fine, Drew. You know what? You tell me what to do. Should I just leave? Come back here? Let them lose the house? Make my dad take a second job? You tell me the solution. I’m waiting.”
“That’s not. . .ugh,” he said, walking over to the window, clutching his head with both hands.
“It’s not what?”
“That’s not what this is about. Obviously I don’t want you to abandon your fucking family. It would just be nice if you weren’t also rekindling some sort of old flame or whatever it is while you were doing it.”
“Oh my God! Drew! I’m not going to keep repeating myself. There is nothing between Knox and me. There never was, either,” she said. It wasn’t a lie. They were never a couple. “He was just one of my best friends. And we drifted apart over the years. And that’s it. Jesus.”
“Okay,” he said, in a hushed, defeated tone, his back to her. “I guess I just feel like we are taking the backseat to everything else in your life right now. And I know that sounds selfish and childish, but, I’m sorry.”
She felt her furrowed brow smooth out, and her shoulders sink. She walked over to him, pushing her arms through his and resting her head between his shoulder blades.
“Drew Baker, I love you. You are the man I’m going to marry. This is just a little bump in the road,” she said. She heard herself saying the words, but it felt almost as if she was reading them from a script. “And I’m sorry my family comes with some baggage, but I have to be there for them.”
“I understand,” he said, turning around to face her. “When I found out he was there in the woods, I don’t know, I guess just felt replaced. Like he got to be there for you instead of me.”
She sighed. Well, that’s because he was.
“It was nothing, Drew. Just right place at the right time.”
TWELVE
Then, Junior Year
“Uno!” Katie called, slapping her cards down on the coffee table as she did a little dance around the living room.
“Dammit!” Sam shouted, throwing her cards dramatically into the air.
“How does she keep doing that?” Knox said, exasperated, throwing himself back onto the couch. Louise chuckled.
“I’m going to make more popcorn. Who wants more?”
“I’ll have some!” Katie said.
“Me too,” said Joe. Bria smiled as she watched her sisters laughing and playing, Knox at the center of it all. Here they were on a Friday night. He could have been out at a party, but he wasn’t. He was here, with Bria and her family, playing Uno. And he seemed to genuinely enjoy it.
“So, Mrs. K,” Knox said, snatching up a handful of popcorn, “my parents are letting me and some of my friends take the lake house next weekend. They are supposed to get a big snow up there, and Teddy wants to go snowboarding. We’d love to have Bria, if you and Mr. K are okay with that?”
Bria swallowed audibly. He had mentioned the trip to her earlier that day, but she wasn’t sure what her parents would say. Generally, they let her do just about anything, but she had never stayed overnight with boys before. She turned to her parents expectantly. Louise looked at Joe.
“Will your parents be there?” Louise asked Knox. Bria rolled her eyes. Her mother always forgot that Knox was a few years older. He was in college, for heaven’s sake.
“Ah, no, they’ll be skipping this trip. I guess they figure I’m finally responsible enough,” he said, with his killer smile. Louise looked to Joe again, who shrugged his shoulders and cocked his head.
“Well, I think that would be okay, as long as you take care of my girl,” her mother said.
“Oh, you know I wouldn’t let anything happen to her,” he said, winking at Louise. Bria felt her cheeks flush.
The next week at school actually went faster than Bria had expected; usually when she was anxiously awaiting something, time seemed to slow down ever so inconveniently. But to her pleasant surprise, she had made it through the week quickly and painlessly, and it was time to pack for the weekend. Knox would be picking her up right after school.
“What will you do there?” Sam asked, sitting crossed-legged on Bria’s bed, watching her throw clothes into a big duffle bag.
“I’m not sure, just hang out, I guess,” she said.
“But, where will you sleep?” Katie asked, twirling her ponytail.
“I dunno,” Bria said. “The house has lots of bedrooms.”
“Bria!” she heard her mother call. “Ben is here!”
For some reason, when it was really time to go, she felt her heart beating harder in her chest. And when her sisters ran downstairs to greet Knox, she opened her nightstand drawer and lifted up her old journal. She used the little key she kept inside of the bottom drawer to release the lock on the edge of the book, and flipped to the middle where she found just what she was looking for: a single condom that a drunken Mari had given her at a party one night. Bria had laughed it off like it was a joke at the time, but it didn’t stop her from keeping it.
She wasn’t sure why she was bringing it. But she stuffed it into the bottom of her duffle bag and walked downstairs.
“Hey, baby cakes,” Knox said, reaching for her bag, “you ready?”
“Yeah!” she said, leaning into the kiss that was waiting for her from her mother.
“Okay guys, be safe!” her dad said, kissing her forehead and shaking Knox’s hand.
“Have a good time, and let us know the minute you get there, okay?” her mom said.
As they got in the car, she was surprised to see that it was just the two of them.
“Just us?”
“Yeah, Teddy and the rest are meeting us up there,” he said, throwing her bag into the trunk.
The drive was fun and relaxing. They listened to music, chowed down on chips and soda, and talked about the first day they met.
“Oh my gosh, I was such a dork,” she said, instinctively touching her forehead, as if the knot from the football was still there.
“Stop it,” he said with a chuckle, “you were a supermodel.” She rolled her eyes, but she could feel her cheeks flush again.
After about two-and-a-half hours, they pulled up to a bridge, and passed a big wooden sign that read “Meade Lake.”
“Finally here,” he said, turning down a street and down a long, gravel driveway. Everything was covered in a thick layer of snow that didn’t look like it would be going anywhere soon.
The house was huge; it was meant to look like a log cabin, but it was anything but cabin-like in size. Large windows poked out from all sides, and tall evergreens formed a shield around it, making the home look like it had been tucked in with a green blanket.
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