by Allen, Jacob
“They act out. They try and show off.”
Nick shrugged as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. I knew he wasn’t trying to be arrogant, but a part of me definitely read his attitude in that moment as intellectual arrogance, as if only fools wouldn’t see what he saw. I’m probably just being too harsh. But I can’t help it.
“I don’t think Adam would be that way,” I said. “Not that I’m trying to defend him. He’s just always been a little…”
“A little loud?” Nick said with a smirk.
“Perhaps.”
“I mean, you just saw the party we came from.”
I shrugged a single shoulder, taking a big bite of his ice cream.
“Maybe Adam just needs to learn how to handle adversity with girls,” I said. “Seemed like when we crumbled, we crumbled hard, and he hasn’t done anything since.”
“Who would he learn it from?”
What?
“His mom is sweet and nice but Adam has always resented her from some reason. His stepdad is an arrogant prick, and Adam hates him even more than anyone else in the school does. He doesn’t have a lot of people he can look up to.”
What… really? Here I thought his mother was always doting and kind to him…
Adam, what more don’t I know about you?
I silently ate my ice cream, not sure I wanted to say anything more about Adam and his family. I feared doing so would show perhaps too keen an interest in the man whose life mission had apparently been to make my senior year the worst of my life, and I didn’t feel like making my homecoming date believe I suffered from Stockholm Syndrome.
Still, that was his friend. Which made me wonder…
“So why are you friends with him?” I asked. “For as much as a dick as he is?”
“Well, put that way…” Nick said with a chuckle before taking a bite of his ice cream. “I know it’s strange to hear, but at his core, he’s a great dude. It’s different with guys and girls. My older brother once said that guys bond by mocking each other, and girls tease by complimenting each other. I dunno if that’s true, but Adam and I go way back. I… I’m not really sure why, to be honest. I just know he and I could have a fight like he and Ryan did tonight and I’d know at his core, he was still a good guy.”
“Even with me going to homecoming with you?”
“Well,” Nick said with a shrug and another bite of his ice cream. “I’m not worried about that. If it’s really an issue, he’ll bring it up. Probably by calling me a motherfucking cunt-sucking, shit-eating asshole or something like that, but he’s not shy.”
I’d agreed with most of what Nick said, but in a strange way, I wasn’t actually sure I agreed with his point about Adam being shy. Adam definitely was not quiet. But there was something in his behavior from the past few weeks, and really the past couple of years, that had me wondering if he was afraid to reveal something about him. Shy, come to think of it, probably wasn’t the right word, but he wasn’t forthcoming on… something.
“In any case, though, I think he’s going to have a lot more swear words if he finds out what I’m about to ask you.”
“Which is?” I said, suddenly feeling nervous—but not the excited kind of nervous.
“That I want to see if you want to take this beyond just homecoming,” he said casually. “You know, see if we can work as a dating couple.”
I immediately knew the answer was no. I suspected that Nick knew the answer was no too—he was either the coolest, smoothest high school student in the world, or he was trying to force the issue as much as I was. Given how I’d seen Nick before, I didn’t think it was the first one.
But it wasn’t in my heart to be like Adam. Even if I knew the answer was no, I wasn’t going to smack him around and embarrass him with an ugly or blunt no. Maybe now I was the shy one. Better than being the asshole one.
“Wow, Nick,” I said. “I, uhh… that’s very sweet of you. Why don’t we see how homecoming goes? Take it one day at a time.”
One day at a time so I don’t let my mind wander ahead to the day when this is finally over.
“I suppose I’ll work with that,” Nick said with a smirk. “You’re still going to be my homecoming date, right?”
“Duh,” I said, playfully rolling my eyes. “Who do you think I am, Adam?”
“Hey now,” Nick said. “He’s a dick, but he’s not someone who goes back on his word.”
My immediate reaction was to find that statement crazy. Of course Adam had gone back on his word at some point.
But when I gave it more than a momentary thought, I realized that that may not have been so wrong. Certainly, nothing came to mind from the past three years. In a weird way, Adam was still the same guy—he’d just decided that he hated me instead of loved me. Didn’t mean his ethics and values had changed.
“You ready to get out of here?”
“Yeah, I think I’m just going to head home.”
“You sure?”
I was very sure. Despite the moment of pride I’d gotten in putting Adam in his place by showing up for Nick and not him, despite the enjoyment I got from seeing him suffer a little, it actually left me pretty tired. The ice cream was also going to give me a sugar coma, and I didn’t want my evening to be spent leaning on Nick and making him think I felt about him in a way I didn’t.
“Yeah, thanks though,” I said.
“Can I walk you to your car, at least?”
“Sure, why not,” I said.
Just don’t let him kiss you. He’s going to try to. Not until homecoming, at least.
He tried to take my hand as he walked me over, but I kept them in my pockets. I still talked to him about the upcoming week of school, telling him that I had no lingering effects from my ankle and was headed toward ending the season on a high note, but I definitely didn’t flirt with him. When we got to the car, I said that I’d had fun tonight and thanked him for coming to get ice cream with me, but I tried to keep my tone as friendly but flat as possible.
“I’ll see you Monday, then?” he said.
“You know it.”
Then the moment came. His eyes started to close. He leaned forward, putting his arm around my neck.
And…
I quickly turned my cheek.
I wasn’t ready to do this. I wasn’t ready to make out with a member of the Broad Street Boys. And as… well, as fucked up as this sounded, the only way such a kiss could have excited me right then was if it was Adam Collins.
And as nice and handsome a guy as Nick Locke was, he was no Adam Collins.
He tried to make it smooth by then pulling me in for a tight hug, but it did nothing for me. Nice guy. Not an arousing guy.
“See you in two days,” he said, letting his hand slide down my shoulder and down my arm before heading out. I nodded, and he finally turned his back to me.
Whatever hope I’d had for Nick turning out to be something real—maybe it would happen when I finally got alone with him, away from the influence and potential gaze of Adam—had vanished. I hoped that I got to keep him as a friend for as long as he and I went to the same school and maybe even beyond.
But at some point, the truth would have to come out.
Hopefully, it didn’t come out in an awkward, messy situation.
12
Adam
I didn’t sleep at all that night.
How the fuck could I with what I had seen?
Fuck Ryan, him and his little nihilistic attitude. Thinking he could just call me out for shit he knew nothing about.
Fuck Kevin, the little lapdog that he was. How easy it was to control him; it made him boring to deal with.
And most of all, fuck Nick and Emily for betraying me and hooking up with each other. Fuck, I bet that they banged all through the night. In fact, Nick probably fucked her in his car right on my driveway, as if to throw it further in my face. Knowing how much of a bitch Emily was, that probably was the case.
Shut the fuck up, think normall
y, dipshit. Would she really do that? She’s a virgin. You think she’s losing her virginity to Nick?
I knew what I saw. I knew that I had seen Nick walk out with his hand on the small of Emily’s back. That was not the prelude to a casual friendship; that was the prelude to some sloppy make out sessions, some pumping of the fingers in or on the other person’s sex, and some hardcore fucking against the wall or a car window. That was a vision I could not get out of my head, even as the clock ticked closer and closer to sunrise.
Nick was never going to be a Broad Street Boy again. And Emily was going to get it from me even harder in the weeks to come. I made it my goal to fucking make her transfer from Providence Prep before the end of the semester. Only I had a right to Emily, and I deliberately chose not to; for Nick to violate that…
It was too fucking much!
She could’ve been yours.
But then she would’ve broken your heart even more. So maybe it’s for the best that this didn’t work out. Still—fuck this!
My brother, hearing me move about the house at three in the morning, came out of his room to try and say something to me, but I gave him a stern middle finger, almost shoving it up under his chin. He got the picture. Not even he was that stupid.
When the sky went from a dark night sky to a dark blue, signaling the imminent arrival of sunrise, I knew I’d lost my battle against the darkness. Night would go to sleep the victor, and I would eventually go to sleep conquered by my own mind. Emily and Nick were the viruses, but I was the sick patient who couldn’t push them away before they revealed their true natures.
I went up to the porch, the spot where I usually overlooked my high school minions, and waited for the sun to rise. Only then did it hit me just how much of a waste this party had been. The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than a fucking half hour, and I had pulled in everyone and everything. To say this party would set my family back tens of thousands of dollars was an understatement.
And then I remembered my stepfather was a billionaire and, more importantly, a piece of shit, and I no longer cared. The only thing I cared about was getting either Emily or Nick, ideally Emily, out of Providence Prep.
The sun turned a pink hue, the distant lights brightening the clouds. I looked at it in amusement. I had made it my goal to make it to sunrise for this party. I figured I’d slam a few chicks whenever I got tired to keep me awake, and only when the sun rose would I finally dismiss everyone.
Well, I’d made it to sunrise.
But boy, what had it fucking cost me?
* * *
“Adam Collins! Hey, wake up! Boy, wake up!”
I slowly came to in the chair in which I’d observed the sunrise in. I’d fallen asleep in this chair without even realizing it. Which probably meant…
“Boy, you have got a lot of explaining to do.”
I opened my eyes to see my stepfather, all eighty-something years old of him, standing before me, his arms crossed. He was not amused.
I looked down at my skin, red and burned to a crisp. That didn’t even account for my face, which I obviously could not see. I, also, was not amused.
“What do you want?” I said, my voice scratchy and groggy.
“What do I want?” he said, incredulous in his typical haughty, arrogant way. “I want you to explain why this looks less like a house worthy of hosting Nashville’s finest and more like a Vanderbilt fraternity zoo!”
I groaned as I tried to sit up, but then cringed horribly from all of the sunburn on my legs and arms. At least since I was wearing a shirt, I’d avoided it on my shoulders and chest, but my face was going to be the laughing stock of everyone when fall break ended.
And for that fucking matter, shouldn’t my stepfather have been somewhere in Europe right now? We had off until Thursday, and he wasn’t going to come back until Wednesday. Shouldn’t he have been in Paris or Budapest, pretending to love my mom and bullshitting her with all the money in Tennessee?
But in a way, I guess I was kind of glad he was getting to see this shithole as it was. It represented him well and what he actually was—looked good from afar, but a complete shithead up close. I wanted him to smell every empty beer can, to smell the sex on the couches, to wonder what the poles in the backyard were for.
I wanted him to see all of it and to deal with it.
“Seems pretty fucking obvious, doesn’t it?” I said, enjoying the fact that his eyes went wide as soon as I said “fuck.” It was fun poking and prodding at hyper-sensitive people. “I had a party here last night.”
“So,” he said. “You thought your mother and I were going to be gone and that you could throw a big party while we were gone. How nice. How very thoughtful. Whose money, Adam, do you think it is that pays for this house?”
“Do I look like I give a fuck?”
My stepfather lurched back. At this point, all bets were off. I wasn’t going to hit the old man—that would have been too unfair of a fight—but everything else was on the table. I was too tired, too beaten down, and too sunburned to really give a flying fuck what sort of trouble I got in. He wasn’t going to do anything. He was too much of a coward.
Like me, when the chance came to really push someone, he didn’t do it. Like me. With Emily. And Nick.
God, fuck them both.
“You had better watch your language, boy, before—”
“Before what?”
His face literally went red. I couldn’t help but laugh. I knew by now, I was likely grounded until I went to college, but what did that really mean? In this huge ass mansion, and with my car, I could easily evade him. He had nothing on me. Nothing.
Even if he pulled the one card I didn’t want and threatened to withhold money from my college career, I no longer feared that. The limit of his powers came at the point at which he feared his public reputation being ruined. All I had to do was tell people that the rich billionaire, former administrator at Vanderbilt, was too cheap to pay for his son’s tuition. I’d wished I’d thought it sooner, but I guess it took burning everything I felt and cared about to the ground for me to realize I could still stand on my feet.
“Janice!” he roared, shouting my mother’s name. “Get Ryan up here on the porch, now!”
I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, you really think he’s going to crack?” I said. “Give it a fucking rest, old man.”
“Are you trying to ensure that you’re a prisoner of your room for the rest of your time here?” he said. “Because I will make sure that you never leave this house except for school if you don’t stop.”
“Oh, sure, go right on ahead,” I said. “I’m sure that your geezer, arthritic bones will be able to keep up and have me quivering in my boots.
I didn’t know how else my stepfather could go further in expressing his displeasure. I almost wanted to see it, though, because I was on the verge of laughing—at least on the inside. It hurt too much to actually laugh out loud, but that didn’t mean I was taking some sort of sick, twisted humor in this.
Ryan walked up a few seconds later, taking a look at me.
“I didn’t know your spirit animal was a lobster,” he cracked.
“I didn’t know your spirit animal was a pussy who went to bed early.”
“Boys, enough!” my stepfather said. “I don’t know where the two of you got he idea that you could destroy this house and its sanctity while it’s gone, but clearly, your mother and I have erred in explaining things to you. Why, I know teenage boys are bound to—”
“Would you stop fucking calling us boys?” I said. “I don’t know if you know this, Mr. Collins.”
I loved calling him Mr. Collins. It gave me a chance to just drip my voice with sarcasm and mock him even further.
“But I’ve experienced my actual father, an actual good man, dying. I’ve had to fend for my little brother here because you go off and cheat on Mom all the time. You—”
My stepfather came over to smack me, but I moved to the side with ease. He wasn’t e
xactly crippled and slow, but he had no chance against a teenage boy.
“Don’t you dare ever say that again.”
“What, the truth?” I growled.
Ryan looked at me with some confusion. He doesn’t know? OK, fine.
“I have never met a bigger hypocrite in my goddamn life,” I said, my voice low and angry. “You tell us to tuck in our shirts at school, but then you go and tuck your dick into other women behind Mom’s back. You tell us to be good to the house when you leave, but you never keep in touch with us and leave us behind like you don’t give a fuck. You tell me that women can never be trusted, but then you go and give Mom every goddamn reason to never trust you. And still, she loves you, even though you don’t love her.”
“Stop it with this preposterous nonsense!” my stepfather roared. “I have had enough of your lies and your deceitful statements.”
I didn’t look at my stepfather as I spoke. I instead looked at Ryan. If this was why he found my hatred of my stepfather so amusing—me knowing the truth and him not—it was time to change that. No more hiding behind the veil of ignorance.
“You will watch your tongue, young man, or I will make sure that you are reduced to some fast food cashier bum, working at a community college—”
“No you won’t,” I said laughing. “I can call bullshit just like the last of them. You know why, Mr. Collins? Because I’ve seen the truth. I know what the truth is, and you are so far removed from it it’s not even funny.”
My stepfather sighed, went over to the balcony, leaned over, shook his head a couple of times, and whirled back to me.
“You have two choices,” he said. “Sit down, shut up, and listen to your elders. Or leave and face the consequences.”
“Haha!” I laughed, immediately killing any sense of gravity his words might have had.
I stood up, gave two middle fingers, and bounded down the stairs, ignoring the old man yelling for me to come back. I grabbed the keys to my Corvette as my mother saw me, but I ignored her too. I turned on the car quickly and peeled out of the driveway as quickly as I could.
