Stupid battery. Stupid lights.
Stupid, stupid Catherine.
My forehead bounced off the steering wheel when I face planted against it. This was it. Stick a fork in me because I was done. I gave up. The universe had clearly been trying to mess with me for weeks now…maybe even months.
“Fine, I cave. You win.”
I wasn’t even sure who I was talking to. And then I couldn’t even talk because I was crying. Sobbing. The frustration and disappointment of the past few hours mixed with the wretched last semester of high school and all combined I was a messy ball of self-pity.
I normally had a strict policy of not wallowing. I didn’t believe in it. Self-pity wasn’t useful, it accomplished nothing.
I didn’t cry when I didn’t get into Columbia, my first choice of schools. Instead I’d acknowledged my disappointment but then patted myself on the back for doing such a fine job of choosing backup options. Instead I would go to Fordham, another wonderful school in New York where I could pursue pre-law as planned.
See? I handled that disappointment with maturity. I had the same sort of levelheadedness when my boyfriend of two years broke up with me right before prom.
Was it difficult to accept that Ted didn’t actually love me anymore and that all of our plans of heading to New York together had been in vain? Yes. Of course. But I had graciously agreed that we ought to be friends.
I mean, it was the most sensible way to handle the situation. I could have gone ranting and raving about how he’d sworn he loved me and how he was singlehandedly ruining what was supposed to be the happiest time of my life.
But I didn’t.
We even went to prom together, since we both needed dates and as student council president and lead on the dance committee I had been the main organizer. I wasn’t even all that disappointed when I didn’t win prom queen. Everyone agreed Ted and I would have won if we were still a couple, but what could you do? We were friends, and I accepted that.
For the time being.
I mean, I might not be a drama queen, and I never wallowed, but I wasn’t a quitter either. Ask any of the students who’d tried to compete against me for student council president. They would all tell you that Catherine Vaughn does not quit. She’ll fight till the end to get what she wants.
And what I wanted was the perfect last hoorah for my friends. What I wanted was one freakin’ last-a-lifetime memory to not be ruined by circumstances out of my control. What I wanted was to arrange for the most perfect, and most romantic situations so Ted would remember how right we were for one another.
What I wanted was to get my life back on track, and this week was how I planned to do that.
Another sob racked my body as I finally gave in to the surge of emotions that I’d been pushing to the side ever since my last exam ended and with it the last of my distractions. It was a mix of panic and fear and anger and a million other toxic, useless emotions and for the first time in ages I gave into it.
I guess my point was, I didn’t normally wallow, but at this particular moment, I couldn’t fight against my misery any longer, because this was it. This was my last chance to get Ted back before he went off to summer at his grandparents’ lake house in Michigan. This was the last time to have all my friends together in one place. This was my last chance to make the memories I’d always dreamed about.
Who didn’t romanticize senior year, right? I’d been looking forward to it since I was a kid. Senior year was supposed to be the epitome of high school, the year when everything came together.
Instead, it was all falling apart.
Senior Week was my last chance to make the memories of a lifetime. It was my last chance to show Ted that he was going through some sort of pre-graduation crisis but that he was wrong. We hadn’t grown apart when I went to camp last summer and we wouldn’t grow apart in college.
This week needed to be perfect. It had to be perfect. My friends deserved a magical memory, and Ted and I deserved this second chance. We’d both just gotten too caught up in our responsibilities senior year, and I’d admittedly grown a bit too intense with my plans for the future.
But this week was about fun and sun, and yes—the perfect romantic moment.
I wailed into the steering wheel as self-pity washed over me like a tidal wave. I’d come early just to ensure that everything went according to plan and yet again the universe was messing it all up.
How was I supposed to plan the epic week of romance when I was cold and wet and homeless?
I almost didn’t hear the knock on my car window through my sobs. I chalked it up to wind and rain, but then it sounded again. Louder and right next to my ear.
My head shot up and for a minute I thought I was imagining things.
But no. That frown was no mirage. Jax was standing beside my window scowling at me like I was some rodent he’d just found hanging around the breakfast buffet. He didn’t seem to notice the rain that turned his hair into a tousled, matted mess and made his white shirt partially see-through so I could follow the tattoos all the way up to his shoulder and across his chest.
My gaze flew up to meet his through the window and I felt a rush of heat in my cheeks. Good Lord, I hope he hadn’t noticed me checking out his chest. Also…I swiped quickly at my eyes and my nose.
Oh hell. I was a mess.
“Are you going to open up or make me stand out here all night watching you cry?”
I opened the door slightly since the power windows were dead just like everything else. “It’s unlocked.”
He gave a short nod before walking around the front of the car toward the passenger’s side. He let himself in, along with a giant gust of rainy wind, before slamming the door shut behind him.
We sat there staring at each other for what felt like an eternity.
It was probably a few seconds.
“What are you doing here?” I asked as I wiped at my face and sniffled back snot in a pathetic attempt to hide the fact that I was crying.
He crossed his arms and shifted back as though making himself comfortable in my passenger seat. “I came out here to ask you the same thing.” He looked around my car like it might have the answers. “What are you still doing out here in the rain?”
I sniffed. “My car is dead.”
Oh crap. My voice broke at that last word and I heard him mutter a curse under his breath as I burst out in another hiccupy sob. I slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle it but the gesture was too little too late.
“Don’t cry.” His voice was gruff and he was looking at me like I was a lunatic, but I thought I detected a note of pleading in that command. “Seriously,” he said, running a hand through his wet hair. “We’ll find you a place to stay until your car’s fixed. Just…don’t cry.”
I sniffled again, making every effort to stop crying, but I had a bit of a problem. Once I started crying it was hard to stop, one of many reasons I made it a point not to start in the first place. “Where?” I said, gesturing vaguely toward the inn. “There’s no rooms available, and there are no rooms anywhere and—”
“Bloody idiot,” Jax muttered.
I gasped, a little too dramatically I’d be the first to admit. “Hey,” I said, jabbing a finger in his direction. “I am not an idiot. I called ahead, I made arrangements. Yes, perhaps I was a bit distracted when I left my lights on but—”
“I wasn’t talking about you.” Jax had that bored look down pat but now there was a hint of amusement in his eyes that was undeniable.
“Oh.”
“I was talking about Bob.”
Bob. I thought his name with a growl. He was up there on my hate list right alongside this arrogant, unhelpful jerk. “What about Bob?”
“He was pissed at the managers over some scheduling stuff,” Jax said, looking straight ahead. “Plus he’d reached his breaking point with the annoying customers…”
He looked over at me in case I hadn’t fully understood that I was one of the annoying customers in question.
Got it, but thanks for clarifying.
Jax shrugged. “He probably thought it would be funny to go out leaving the managers in a bind.”
I stared at him for a minute. “You mean, you think this Bob guy did this to me on purpose?”
He shrugged again. “Maybe.” He eyed me from head to toe, taking in the long, wet strands of blonde and my sundress that looked far less cute beneath the ugly, oversized Wildwood windbreaker I’d picked up at a corner store. After his perusal he gave a definitive nod. “Yeah, probably.”
“But why?”
Jax’s gaze met mine and I was struck by the clarity of his grey eyes. They were dark but bottomless. It was hard to read what was there but I was fairly sure he could see straight into my soul.
I shivered.
His eyes were further proof that this guy was the devil incarnate, just in case his actions hadn’t already proven it. But now I knew there was one person, at least, who I despised even more than this sarcastic freak in my passenger seat. “What did I ever do to Bob?” I asked. “I’ve never even met the guy, and I was super nice on the phone.”
Jax hitched his brows ever so slightly, but it was enough to piss me off.
I stabbed a finger in his direction as I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t you give me that look. I am charming, dang it. Everyone says so.”
His nostrils flaring slightly was the only give away that he was amused by my anger. For some reason his lack of a response seemed to make my own responses that much more dramatic, like some part of me was trying to accommodate for his apathy or something.
“I was nice to you!” It came out as a shout and even I could hear how ludicrous it sounded to be yelling about how nice I was. I took a deep breath and tried again. “I was perfectly nice to you—you were the one being unhelpful.”
He didn’t respond. Ugh, I hated it when he stared at me like that. Like I was some exhibit at the zoo that he found equally disturbing and fascinating. He watched me like I used to watch the snakes in the terrarium.
“And Bob,” I said his name with all the anger I felt. Freakin’ Bob. “I was so nice to Bob.”
“I’m sure you were,” he said mildly. I couldn’t even tell if he was being sarcastic. If he was, it was too subtle.
I was not in the mood for subtlety. “What do you mean by that?”
He lifted one shoulder as if even committing to a shrug required too much energy for this disaffected hipster. “Just that being nice doesn’t automatically make it any easier to deal with you people.”
I blinked a few times, all the self-pity I’d been wallowing in had well and truly been replaced by anger. “You people? What is that supposed to mean.”
One side of his mouth turned up in a caustic smile. “It means Bob and I spent all last summer watching girls like you parade into town with their daddy’s credit card in hand.”
I jerked back at the bitterness in his voice.
“They strut their stuff around the pool and are nice to the staff,” he said.
I opened my mouth to retort with something angry but an inexplicable urge to laugh just stopped me. “Did you just use air quotes?”
He had and he knew it. As if the way he’d sneered “nice” hadn’t been enough, he’d used air quotes and somehow that struck me as hilariously lame coming from this too-cool-for-school punk guy.
His gaze met mine and I swear he almost smiled. His lips twitched oddly and his nostrils flared once more. He was either trying not to laugh or sneeze, but my bet was on laugh.
“Maybe I did,” he said. “But I think you get my drift.”
I let out a long breath. I wanted to argue but I just didn’t have it in me. I’d seen the Sunshine Inn. Heck, I’d been the one to pick it out and convinced my parents that a suite at such a nice hotel would be the perfect graduation present.
The place wasn’t cheap and I imagined the guests tended to be high-maintenance. I fell back against my seat with a sigh. “Yeah, fine, I get it.” I turned my head so I could face him again. “But that doesn’t mean he had any right to take it out on me.”
Jax met my gaze evenly. “That’s why I called him an idiot.”
My grudging murmur of acknowledgement lingered in the air between us. He was still staring at me, and I was doing the same to him. We were holding eye contact for so long that it went from normal to weird in a heartbeat. I turned to face forward and stare at the rain-splattered windshield.
“So,” he said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him gesture to my dead dashboard. “What’s your plan here? Do you want me to call for a tow truck?”
“I can do it,” I said. “At least my phone still works.”
Silence reigned again. I didn’t know how to politely ask him to leave my car when I still wasn’t sure what he was doing out here in the first place. I also didn’t know how to ask him what he was doing out here in the first place when he was being somewhat helpful.
I mean, offering to call for a tow truck wasn’t exactly heroic, but it was a nice gesture. Then I thought it through and groaned.
“What?”
“I don’t have money for a tow truck.” I tilted my head back and looked at the ceiling. I would not cry again. I would not.
Try telling that to the tears that went rogue and spilled down my cheeks.
“I take it you don’t have daddy’s credit card?”
I turned to glare at him but the effect was ruined by the tears. “No, Mr. Judgy, I don’t have my dad’s credit card.”
His eyebrows twitched up at the nickname but he didn’t say anything.
Between the sudden silence and the fact that my stupid tear ducts were out of control, I found myself babbling away. “My parents paid for the hotel suite for the week but that’s my big graduation gift. I couldn’t exactly ask for a credit card, too. They don’t have a lot to spare. The only money I have is my spending money for the week, which I took out of my savings and—” I cut myself of with an embarrassing hiccup.
Jax cursed again. “Don’t cry. Seriously.”
I swiped at the tears and focused on that funny note in his voice, subtle but there. “What, are you one of those guys who’s afraid of tears?” I’d been kidding but when I glanced over, he was watching me with such blatant horror, it made me laugh out loud. “Oh my God, you are.”
“It’s just…” He gestured to my face like it was the grossest thing he’d ever seen. “It’s freaking me out.”
“Yeah,” I said, giving a water laugh through my tears. “I can see that.”
“We’ll fix this, okay?” he said. “We’ll figure it out.” The subtext was, just stop crying. For the love of God, stop crying.
“Sorry,” I said, sniffling again. “It’s just been a bad day.” That made me laugh again—there was every chance I was becoming hysterical, what with the exhaustion and the tears and the accumulation of the past six months’ worth of crap. “It’s been a bad year.”
He made a noise beside me. Little more than a huff of air but it was enough to make me turn and face him. Was that…was that a laugh?
Sure enough, my very own punk-rock jerk had a very small smile on his lips as he watched me. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”
I swallowed convulsively as our eyes met again and that smile—that teeny tiny twist of his lips—hit me straight in the solar plexus like a punch. He was objectively attractive. I mean, punk rockers weren’t typically my thing but no one in their right mind would say he wasn’t attractive.
But with the hint of a smile softening his features, making his eyes lighten and giving him an air of approachability?
Oh goodness gracious.
The air in the car grew too thick to breathe and I licked my lips as I struggled for a normal inhale and exhale.
Holy cow.
Maybe that’s why this guy showed no emotions. Maybe every time he did, girls went and fell at his feet.
Sure enough, the hint of a smile faded and he was back to being aloof and cold. “Don’t you have an emer
gency credit card or something?” He frowned at me like he was disappointed in me. “You should always have something in case of emergencies when you’re traveling.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I said, my tone sullen and bordering on bratty. But seriously, talk about too little too late. That advice might have been helpful this morning, or really any other time than the present.
He shifted to face me, his gaze roaming over me again but in an objective way like he was just now seeing me for the first time. “Don’t you have a boyfriend or some friends who could come get you?”
I shook my head. “My friends are two hours away and I couldn’t ask them to drive here in the middle of the night and in the pouring rain.”
After a pause, he asked, “And no boyfriend who can come to your rescue?”
I sniffed as I tried to swallow down another wave of self-pity. “First of all, I don’t need a boyfriend to rescue me. I can rescue myself.”
I’d tilted my chin up as I said it and I caught that telltale twitch of Jax’s lips that said I was entertaining to him.
Oh joy.
“And second, he broke up with me two months ago so even if I did want some knight in shining armor to rush to my aid—which I don’t—he would definitely not be on my call list.”
I don’t know why I explained all this to this guy. Maybe because I was stranded. Oh crap. That thought brought with it the panicky sensation that I knew without a doubt would be followed closely with more tears.
I widened my eyes further and focused on his eyes. I probably looked like a crazy person with the bug eyes and the intense stare but it was the only way to keep the tears at bay. Judging by his earlier response, he’d thank me for the effort.
Think, I ordered my brain. Make a plan. That was what I did. I was a planner. A scheduler. A list maker. I could do this.
I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. I was not stranded. I had family and friends who knew where I was. I had a phone. One of them could come get me in the morning, if all else failed.
I still recoiled at the idea. My best friends didn’t even know I was here—I’d figured I’d tell them after I’d gotten settled in and they couldn’t try to talk me out of it.
Senior Week Crush Page 15
