She's With Me

by Jessica Cunsolo

  I scowl. “I can’t believe they were smart enough to figure that out. Maybe together they have half a working brain.”

  In retrospect, Kaitlyn’s mom is the principal—Kaitlyn would know where the cameras don’t reach. Aiden inspects my car as I pace around him, worrying. I really have enough stuff to think about, and now I have bitchzilla and her psycho boy toy to add to the mix?

  “Amelia?” The hesitation in his voice makes me pause my furious pacing and look over at him expectantly.

  “All four tires were slashed—” He states the obvious.

  “I know, Aiden,” I snap.

  “And the driver’s side of the car was keyed,” he finishes.

  It’s dead silent for a single heartbeat.

  “She keyed my car! She fucking keyed my car. That son of a bitch slashed my tires while Ms. Manicure keyed my fucking car!”

  I don’t know what to do with the anger filling me up. My fists are clenching as if they can’t decide if they want to punch someone or strangle them, maybe both.

  Aiden hesitates. “It gets worse.”

  “How can this get any worse!” I explode. “They fucking vandalized my car!”

  I march around to the driver’s side to see what Aiden was talking about, and halt as I take in the damage to my car.

  In big, crude but legible print, the words Man-Stealing Whore are scratched into the paint on the side of my car.

  Man-stealing whore? How the hell am I a man-stealing whore? Who does she think she is calling me a man-stealing whore? I haven’t done anything! Who have I stolen from her? How can she justify calling me—

  “Amelia?” My internal tirade is cut off by a concerned Aiden.

  Aiden. Of course. This all comes back to him. All my problems since I started this stupid school are because of him. I wasn’t supposed to draw attention to myself. I was supposed to lay low and just finish senior year.

  But no. Aiden had to be an emotionless, authoritative dick and start problems. He’s the one who brought all the attention onto me. He’s the one who couldn’t keep it in his pants and screwed psycho-stalker Barbie. He’s the one Kaitlyn warned me to stay away from or she’d start shit with me. He’s the one thing that Kaitlyn wanted, and because he was so intent on being an asshole to me, she figured that I was who he moved on to.

  I don’t want any of this.

  And now the ruthless, untouchable Queen Bee has it out for me, and she’s paired up with the one sleazebag who already has it out for Aiden, and clearly they have no problem breaking the law in order to hurt me.

  I’m already facing one relentless psycho who disregards laws and is hell-bent on hurting me.

  And. Now. I. Have. Three.

  I can’t do it. I can’t handle this. I want to go home. I want to be Thea Kennedy with happy hazel eyes and curly brown hair, whose biggest worry is which nail polish color she should choose or if she’ll look good in her prom dress. Whose only boy trouble is whether Daniel Russell likes her back or not, or if Eli Woods would ever notice her. I want to live my life without pretending to be someone I’m not, without having to look over my shoulder for people determined to hurt me.

  My head is dizzy with all these revelations. Or maybe it’s the fact that I’m hyperventilating.

  “Amelia! Calm down! Breathe!” Aiden looks panicked, like he doesn’t know how to get me out of this panic attack.

  “It’s okay,” he soothes, his fierce gray eyes boring into mine. “I’ll handle this. You’ll be okay. I’ll take care of everything, I promise.”

  He wraps his powerful arms around me, but in my frantic state I shove him away from me.

  “No, Aiden! You can’t take care of everything!”

  “I will—”

  “No! Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage?!”

  “What ar—”

  “This is all your fault! I was swept into this drama because of you! Kaitlyn hates me because of you. Ryan hates me because of you. I have enough shit to worry about without those two thinking of ways to torture me!”

  His concerned expression reverts back to the expression he shows the rest of the world: impassive, emotionless, unreadable, hardened.

  “I’m tired! I’m tired of all this bullshit! I’m tired of being swept into your drama with your enemies. And I’m especially tired of you pretending to care about me when you really just feel guilty about getting me into all this shit in the first place! You don’t care about me, Aiden! Your conscience is just telling you to fix your screwups.”

  If Aiden is hurt by anything I’m saying, I would never know—his impassive, stoic expression never changes and his hard eyes never give anything away.

  “Don’t think you’re doing me any favors by pretending to care. I’m going to go back into the school to get my phone and call someone who actually cares about me to come pick me up! I won’t inconvenience you anymore by forcing you to pretend to actually care about me.”

  I stubbornly turn around and march back to the school doors without another thought, even though a small part of me is aching, telling me I’m stupid and begging me to turn around and run into the safety of Aiden’s protective arms. It’s telling me that I’m overreacting, that I know that absolutely none of this is Aiden’s fault. I’m sad, hurt, and frustrated, and took it out on the first thing available. I know that it’s not Aiden’s fault I can’t be Thea Kennedy anymore. I know it’s not his fault that Kaitlyn and Ryan vandalized my car. And I definitely know that Aiden wasn’t pretending to care about me: his countless past actions have proven otherwise.

  But a bigger part of me is saying it doesn’t matter, that I’m fed up with drama and pain and emotional roller coasters. It’s saying I’m better off without Aiden, and that maybe Aiden is better off without me. All I’ve ever done is cause pain and suffering to the people I’ve grown close to. It’s saying that I’m so emotionally damaged that I’m better off alone.

  When I reach the school doors, I pull on a handle, but the door doesn’t budge. I try the other door and get the same result.

  No. No. No. No. This isn’t happening. I frantically pull on both handles at the same time.

  Locked.

  “Open the door!” I yell for what feels like the hundredth time, banging on the locked school doors.

  Aiden leans on the wall to my right, his arms folded across his muscled chest, looking immensely bored.

  “I know you’re in there, you stupid janitor!” I bang on the door again, my frustration clearly evident.

  I’m still reeling from fighting with Aiden, my vandalized car, Kaitlyn and Ryan, and everything in general.

  “We’ve been here for twenty minutes.” Aiden sighs indifferently. “He’s clearly jerking off somewhere with his headphones on. No one’s going to open the door.”

  He leans his head back on the wall, his eyes closed and arms still crossed; the complete picture of relaxed disinterest.

  “No one asked you to stay!” I snap at him, turning back to the doors and banging on them again.

  But the bigger part of me is too busy being overcome with anger toward this stupid. Bang. Door. Bang. That won’t. Bang. Open. Bang.

  “URGHHHH!” My primal scream of frustration echoes through the dark parking lot.

  Aiden gets off the wall. “Amelia. It’s late. Let’s just go home and get our stuff in the morning.”

  “All of our shit is in there! My purse. My phone. My house keys. My car keys—not that they’ll do me any good, but still—your car keys. How the hell am I supposed to get home! It’s a twenty-minute drive! That’s like an hour’s walk! And what time is it? Like, ten thirty? Eleven? My mom left on her flight at nine! How am I supposed to get inside my house if my keys are sitting in this godforsaken school and no one is home! I need to call someone and nothing’s open around here where I can use a phone! Are there even pay phones around her
e anymore? I doubt I’d even know how to use one. I don’t even have a quarter or nickel or whatever the hell those ancient things use and oh God! My car! I have to get it out of here before the whole student body sees the message Kaitlyn scratched into it and—”

  “Amelia!” Aiden shakes my shoulders. “Breathe.”

  Doing as I’m told, I take big gulps of air. Aiden rubs his hands soothingly up and down my arms, encouraging me, and my traitorous body instantly relaxes at his touch.

  “I’m fine.” I push his arms off once I recover, immediately missing his reassuring contact.

  “Look,” he starts, putting his therapeutic hands in his pockets. “Clearly, screaming and banging on the door isn’t working. It’s probably a fifteen- to twenty-minute walk to my house from here, closer than yours. I have a spare set of car keys, and we can call Mason or someone to give us a ride back. That way, we can sort out everything with a tow truck to get your car out of here.”

  “But isn’t everything closed—”

  “I have connections.” He cuts me off smoothly. “The driver owes me some favors, too, so it’ll be free of charge.”

  “But where—”

  “He’ll bring it to my mechanic. I have connections there, too, so they’ll get you new tires and see what they can do about the paint job.”

  “But how do you—”

  “You can call Charlotte or Anna and stay at one of their houses tonight. I’m sure they won’t mind. I’ll come back first thing in the morning when they unlock the doors to get our stuff before anyone touches it.”

  Snapping my mouth shut, my mind replays what he said to me before I freaked out and placed all the misfortunes in my life on him. I’ll handle this, you’ll be okay. I’ll take care of everything, I promise.

  It seems like he is. He figured everything out and covered all of the bases without even missing a beat. While I was over here attacking the door and screaming my lungs off, Aiden came up with an actual plan that isn’t just okay, but the best one that you could possibly come up with for a situation like this.

  After I was a bigger bitch than the mayor of Bitchville to him just a few moments ago, I wouldn’t have blamed him for just leaving me here to yell at the door while he did the logical thing and just walked home. Hell, even I would’ve left me here to be a bitch on my own after what I said to him.

  Yet he stayed. He waited with me while I threw a tantrum and he’s still figuring out ways to help me out. He’s pulling his connections and favors to help me. And I totally don’t deserve any of it.

  “Why?” I ask before even realizing that I did.

  He furrows his brows. “I don’t want anyone touching my stuff and I’m sure you don’t eith—”

  “No, not that.” I cut him off. “Why are you still here? Why didn’t you just leave?”

  “I wasn’t going to desert you in the middle of a parking lot at night,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Even after what I said to you?”

  “Despite what you may think, I actually do care about you.”

  My body’s confused. Like it doesn’t know whether to melt at his confession or erupt into butterflies or float away to cloud nine. My brain settles on the most basic and unrefined thing as a reply.

  “Oh.”

  “Come on. The sooner we start walking, the sooner we can get this mess cleaned up.”

  He walks down the front steps and through the parking lot, not bothering to check if I’m following. I stare at his back, frozen to the spot, my brain still trying to connect the dots.

  He stops walking and turns to face me, looking irritated. “Are you coming or are you just going to stand there all night?”

  Snapping out of my reverie and jogging to catch up, I throw one last glare over my shoulder at the school doors. Falling into step with him, the only sound comes from our faint footsteps echoing through the quiet streets.

  “Aiden?” I ask quietly, keeping my eyes trained in front of me as we walk.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about what I said. I didn’t mean it,” I admit, still not looking at him.

  He gently takes my hand, his fingers intertwining with mine. Electrical sparks run up and down my arm from where we touch, my hand secured in his strong and comforting grasp.

  His reply is instantaneous. “I know.”

  The walk to Aiden’s house from the school didn’t take long. The farther away we got from the school, the more I realized that we were walking into a sketchier part of town. It wasn’t so rough that you’d want to pull your children inside and shut the curtains at the first sign of darkness, but it wasn’t as comfortable as my cozy suburban neighborhood.

  Despite walking through an intimidating neighborhood late at night knowing that a madman is hell-bent on killing me and two psychotic teenagers have made it their mission to make my life hell, I’m strangely relaxed. My comfort has everything to do with the powerful and fearless Greek god holding my hand, his presence silently promising my security.

  Still, the annoying, nagging voice inside my head tells me that I shouldn’t be relying on Aiden to feel safe and comfortable. He’s not always going to be around when there’s trouble, and I definitely don’t want him around if Tony crashes back into the scene.

  History has proven once I get too settled something goes horribly wrong, and I’m forced to flee, starting over from a blank page and leaving behind pieces of my heart in each town I’ve moved to. This time, I know that when I’m inevitably forced to go, I’m going to be leaving behind a much bigger piece of my heart, and that scares me almost as much as Tony does. But a much louder voice in my head snaps at that voice to shut the hell up and hoard the warm, comforting feeling I get when I’m around Aiden.

  He leads me toward a gray, two-story house with an attached garage. It’s on the average-to-small side, but it’s a good size considering it’s just Aiden and his brothers. The door is right in the middle of the façade, with large paneled windows between it and the end of the house on both sides. Despite being in a rougher neighborhood, the house is remarkably welcoming.

  Aiden inconspicuously looks around as we walk up to the front, and he releases my hand, leaving it cold and deprived of his comfort. He bends down and removes a brick from the pathway, taking out the key hidden beneath before putting it back.

  We walk the few steps to the sturdy oak door. Aiden unlocks it and swings it open, letting me walk in first. He follows behind me, closes the door, and turns on the lights.

  I’m not sure what I expected to see, but shocked is a bit of an understatement for how I feel.

  Aiden is a high school senior with sole custody of two nine-year-old boys. I guess I kind of expected his house to be a bit of a mess, or chaotic, or dirty, or something other than what I’m seeing right now. It’s clean and organized. The dark hardwood floors and modern furniture make the house look inviting and comfy. I can’t help but feel safe and welcome, and ignore the fact that this might have less to do with the house and more to do with the gorgeous, resourceful guy fidgeting beside me. The usually calm and impassive Aiden seems a little uneasy with having me here, and I remember that he always wanted to tutor me somewhere other than here, even when I asked.

  “Your house is really nice,” I say.

  “You shouldn’t be surprised, everything about me is nice. I’m practically the poster child of niceness,” he states seriously, with a straight face.

  We make eye contact before I burst out laughing, and he chuckles.

  “You have your moments,” I say, and any tension that might’ve been lingering from tonight or from his worries of having me here are gone.

  I suddenly remember the twins and slap my hand over my mouth, trying to stop my giggles from escaping. Aiden raises an eyebrow at me questioningly.

  I remove my hand and whisper, “I’m sorry for being
so loud. It’s, like, super late—aren’t your brothers sleeping?”

  “They’re staying at a friend’s house tonight,” he says dismissively, and leads me deeper into the house.

  We emerge into a lived-in but clean kitchen with a few dishes in the sink, some notes and photos on the fridge, and an open box of Froot Loops on the table.

  “You do eat Froot Loops!” I exclaim and laugh again, remembering our first encounter when I asked him who pissed in his Froot Loops.

  He smirks at me. “Lucky guess.”

  Taking a seat on a stool by the counter, I laugh and watch Aiden open the fridge and pull out a bottle of water. “Do you want anything? Food, a drink?”

  “Water is fine, thanks.”

  He passes a bottle of water to me and closes the fridge. “I’m going to make some calls, make yourself at home.”

  I fidget in my seat, but the urge to snoop is too great, so I hop off the stool to inspect the notes on the fridge. There’s a fourth-grade math test stuck with a magnet to the fridge with the name Jackson written at the top beside a big red A+. Beside that is an identical test with an identical grade, but with the name Jason written at the top instead.

  My heart melts and it takes a lot to resist the urge to awww out loud. Aiden puts his brothers’ tests on the fridge to show how proud he is of them. He’s such a good brother and guardian; it’s obvious how much he loves those boys.

  Just underneath the tests is a grocery list, and I’m not that shocked to see that it’s mostly healthy food; you can’t have a body like Aiden’s and eat total crap. I resist the urge to giggle when I see that the twins added things like Twinkies, Pop-Tarts, and Cheese Puffs to the grocery list in bold lettering.

  There’s also a picture of who I assume are the twins. They look similar to Aiden, except where he is more closed off, stoic, and serious, the twins look more open, happy, and carefree. They have dirty-blond hair that sweeps over their foreheads, shining bright-blue eyes, and mischievous smiles. They’re almost identical, but there are some telling features that would make pretending to be one another hard to an analytical eye.