by Ali Dean
“Okay, so you guys played golf together. Is that when you figured out she had an agenda or whatever?”
“Pretty much. She talked trash about Heidi, tried to come on to me, and, well, she talked about you, too.”
“Me?”
“She never told me that Delilah was the woman her dad was having an affair with, and I don’t know if she’d known it for awhile at that point, or really had discovered it the day before. But, now that I know who it was, and saw the two of them together, I’m pretty sure she was asking about you because Delilah told her we were, um, close. So, yeah, they must have already been buddies at that point, now that I think about it.” He shudders, and I don’t think he’s faking it. Those two together is scary.
“What was she asking?”
“She pretended she only knew about you because of tennis. I mean, a lot of people have heard of you for that. And, she knew I played tennis, so asked if I knew you. At the time, I think she was just prying, and, when she realized how much I cared about you, she was already trying to undermine you with stupid shit.”
“Like what?”
“It doesn’t really matter. I figured out what she was about, or at least, enough to ditch her and tell her to stay away from me.”
“You told a girl to stay away from you?”
He looks up at me under his eyelashes and smiles sheepishly. “No, but I wish I had. I was pretty rude though. Told her I had to go. Said you had texted and needed me.”
“Jesse Kendrick!” I mock scold him. That must be his trick when he wants to get away. I’ll have to remember it.
“She tried calling a few more times, and I never answered. But I did break up with Heidi the next day.”
“Wait, why’d you break up with Heidi? Wouldn’t she have broken up with you?”
“Not after I told her I hadn’t cheated on her. I ended it anyway because I saw that Olivia would make her life hell if she thought Heidi was standing in the way of her getting with me.”
“Wow.”
“Like I said, we weren’t that serious anyway. But Heidi told me what her friend saw the night before, and how she’d heard about us playing golf. I didn’t tell Heidi everything, because, honestly, it was embarrassing that I fell for Olivia’s little game, but I did tell her I’d never been with Olivia and never wanted to be.”
“Is this why things are still tense between our schools?” I’m having trouble keeping up.
“It reignited stuff, but I think the Woodland guys are just bored, and looking for reasons to mess with us. I’m sure Olivia hyped up the rumors, and twisted them to make her look good or something. Maybe she was mad at me, and made me look like an asshole. I don’t really care.”
“What did she whisper to you at the table tonight?”
He looks down again, and I don’t think he’s going to say anything.
“Basically, she propositioned me.”
I lean back on the couch, trying to digest all that Jesse has told me, and figure out what it means to me. If Olivia becomes my stepsister, does that mean we’ll live in the same house? Or will she live with her mother?
“Do you think she’ll keep after you?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” he answers. “I was thinking that, if she’s anything like Delilah, she won’t stop until she has what she wants, and destroys everything her way. But Delilah isn’t her mother.”
“She should be. They seem a lot alike.”
That idea should make me feel something, but it doesn’t. Olivia is only a nuisance to me at the moment, and I hope that’s all she remains. For Jesse as well. But he’s got more backbone than I gave him credit for, and he’ll figure out how to handle her.
“We’re not done talking, Mac. Olivia sidetracked us. But, that’s not why I came to find you.”
“I know.” My mood shifts, and I try to resist. I want to protect myself, but I don’t know if I can anymore. That kiss broke everything down that I’d spent years building up. At least, I know that Jesse won’t play games with me. He’ll tell it to me like it is. I just don’t know if I can give him the same honesty.
Chapter 8
“Are you going to tell me why you disappeared last night?” he asks, and, again, it sounds an awful lot like vulnerability. As if he’s the one who had his feelings hurt.
This isn’t what I expected, and now I don’t know how to play it. I close my eyes, and lean my head back. I can’t tell him how I feel. Not yet. If he knows, and he doesn’t feel it back, it will ruin everything. But, jealousy over seeing him with Bianca minutes after we kissed doesn’t necessarily mean I’m in love with him… does it? Most girls, no matter how deep, or shallow, their feelings run, would react with jealousy, right? He won’t guess the bigger truth if I tell him the smaller one.
“Maybe I overreacted. I saw Bianca sitting on your lap, and thought, well, I don’t know, it was upsetting to see after we just kissed. That was my first kiss, you know.” I try to explain as honestly as possible while playing it off like it’s something I’ll totally get over ASAP and everything can go back to normal.
His eyes flash, and then he’s leaning forward, his face inches from mine. “I know. And you didn’t stay to see me get up just a minute later. I should have pushed her off right away, but, I don’t know, I was still kind of in a trance from the garage, and then I didn’t want to draw attention or anything.”
“You are too nice sometimes. It’s okay to tell a girl not to sit on your lap when you never asked her in the first place.” I am so relieved. I believe him, because that’s Jesse.
“I will. And it’s no excuse, but you are hard to read sometimes. You weren’t when we were touching.” He strokes my cheek. “When we touch, you let me see you. Maybe I need to touch you more.” He’s completely serious, and I nod, agreeing.
He keeps talking, his voice low and earnest. “I wasn’t sure what you would want, like if I’d made a mistake, or what. I wanted to tell everyone to go home, so you and I could be together, but then you just disappeared.”
He’s running a hand down my side, over my hip, along my leg, and I shift underneath him, trying to encourage him. I have no experience with these things, and I’d always feared I wouldn’t know what to do, but I guess it’s innate. My body just moves without me telling it to do a thing.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have this conversation on a couch when no one’s home,” he murmurs. He starts to move away, but I tug his tee shirt and slip a hand underneath it and around to his lower back, pulling him to me.
“What conversation?” I whisper.
“About us?” he asks, but his heart’s not in it.
“I’m ready for my second kiss.” The huskiness in my voice is foreign, as are the words coming out of my mouth. I don’t think either of us knew how much I would melt in his arms. I’m not that tough girl when he’s touching me, and, maybe he’s right, that means I open up for him. Maybe it’s a good thing.
His lips find mine, and once again, it’s like the rest of the world falls away, and we can’t get enough of each other. His entire body rests on mine as he moves me, so I’m lying back on the couch. My legs cradle his hips, and my feet rest on his butt. Jesse kisses along my neck, running his fingers over my chest, and then he lowers his body so there’s nothing between us, and I feel him right where I’m burning the most.
He rocks forward, pulling away and looking me in the eyes, checking to make sure I’m still with him, okay with this development, and all I can do is moan at the delightful friction. He’s breathing heavy, his eyelids at half-mast, and then we hear a scream.
Jesse pushes off from me, onto his feet, and I sit up. Emma is jumping up and down, pumping a fist in the air. “Finally! You two! Ahhhh! How long has this been going on?”
I’m sitting up now, my body still hot, and watching my best friend cheer as if she’s at a football game. She’s always been an enthusiastic fan.
I’m too confused to process that I should be embarrassed. I kind of just wish she’d go away, so J
esse would come back here and put his body on mine.
“Lincoln?” Jesse asks, and it’s then I notice Lincoln, standing a few feet back from Emma. Cue the embarrassment.
“Hey, Jesse.” He’s shuffling his feet, nervous. They must have intended to break the news of their relationship if he’s here, but I suppose they weren’t expecting to walk in on this.
“So, brother, this is my boyfriend, Lincoln, who I think you know already,” Emma says it like it’s no big deal, when I know she’s just grateful to catch Jesse in this position. She has the upper hand, for the moment at least, having walked in on us and revealed that Jesse was hiding something from her as well.
“Boyfriend?” he asks, the mood shifting as he takes a step forward.
“Yeah.” Lincoln straightens, preparing himself.
Jesse looks over to his sister, who gives him pleading eyes.
“Okay, have you met my girlfriend, then, Mackenzie Bell?”
I stop breathing, and then look at Emma. Her mouth is open. Either from shock that he’s laying off Lincoln, for the moment, or at the word girlfriend.
Lincoln says that we met last night, only briefly.
I walk closer to Emma. “I didn’t know I was his girlfriend until just now, either,” I try to explain, not wanting her to be angry with me. “We haven’t been keeping anything from you. It only started last night.”
Emma shakes her head, and throws her arms around me. “Shut up. I am so happy right now, you have no idea.”
When we finally pull away, Emma points at Lincoln. “Did I not tell you?” He nods dutifully, and then Emma swings her finger to point back and forth between us. “You two have been in love with each other since the first day we met twelve years ago. It’s about time you finally do something about it.”
Jesse and I glance at each other, and I’ve never been so nervous in my life. Is she right? Not about me, but about him? Am I just another short-term girlfriend, who happens to be closer to him and has more history with his family, or is this something more serious for him? His lips pull up into a smile, and then he’s full on grinning.
“I didn’t really want to say it for the first time in front of my little sister and her boyfriend, Mac, but I guess things don’t always go how I’ve imagined them.”
I’m holding my breath, thinking I know what he’s going to say, but resisting the bright happy incredible sensation that wants to break out of me.
“I love you Mac, and not just like a friend or a brother or whatever I know you’re saying to yourself. I love you so much that I knew, as soon as I got the balls to tell you that would be it. You’d take it or leave it. And I couldn’t stand it if you told me no. I know you love me, too, but you don’t think you deserve what we have, what we’re going to have. We might be young, but what we have is special and real.”
My heart is expanding and expanding, and I wonder if it could really burst. Right here in the entry foyer of the Kendricks’ home. “You know I love you? How?”
He steps closer to me, and, out of the corner of my eye, I see Emma and Lincoln walking away up the stairs. “I just do. It’s like I can feel it coming off of you, even though you try to hide it. I don’t want you to hide it anymore, Mac. I never did anything about it in the past because you put up a wall, and wanted to keep me away. You seemed to like what we had, and didn’t want it changed, no matter what was between us. I understood that. I respected it, even, but I think us getting together was inevitable, don’t you?”
I’m finally breathing, gulping gasps of air, my heart shattering and rebuilding itself, over and over again, until I think I might have a completely reconstructed beating heart. Beating so loud. Thumping out a rhythm that demands to be heard.
“Yeah. I do now.”
“Good.” He pulls me to him, resting his forehead on mine.
“Do you want to play tennis?” The words slip out, and I know it comes off as random, but Jesse smiles.
“You always do that when you’re emotionally overwhelmed, don’t you?”
“These are good emotions, I promise. Usually, it’s bad ones. But I don’t want to play right now if it’s not with you,” I assure him.
“You were at the courts with Sasha already this morning.”
He’s still holding me, his lips only a few inches from mine.
“Are you keeping tabs on me?”
“Emma told me. I was looking for you, remember?”
His hands trail up and down my lower back, and I lean forward. I want to melt into him again. Let our bodies get tangled up, so that I can’t think about anything else. But I feel like I need to work through all the words he just said, all that it means. And then maybe, I need to say my own words to him. I just don’t know what they are yet.
“Go get your racket,” I tell him, and he slides his hands over my butt, and squeezes, before running up the stairs.
He was right about one thing. I don’t feel like I deserve this. It’s so perfect, too perfect. The two of us together is natural, right, and easy. I never knew it could be like this, and if I had? Why did we wait if we both felt this way? Has he really always loved me like I
love him?
As I jog up the stairs to my guest room, and change into tennis clothes, I sort through my memories over the past twelve years, viewing it through a different lens. My first memory is the day we moved to this neighborhood with husband number two. I was five, and it was a week before kindergarten started. I was sitting outside our house, while my mother directed the movers, when Emma and Jesse came by riding bicycles. I stood up from my spot on the steps to get a better look. My first feeling when I saw them was jealousy. I had a bike, but no one had taken the time to teach me, so I was still riding my tricycle.
They waved and smiled, and the boy put his bike down to run up to me. He introduced himself, smiled wide, and I’m pretty sure that was it for me. They helped me find my bike amongst the boxes, and Jesse walked behind me, holding me steady as I rode down the sidewalk. I fell a lot that day, and they took me back to their house where Paul patched up my knees, and Laura fed me graham crackers and lemonade. I can’t believe I remember all these details. They probably wondered where my mother was, and why she wasn’t looking for me.
It was Jesse who took me back to my house that day, and he was there when I rode on my own without falling for an entire block. He told me he’d be back tomorrow morning, and that he was going to be my friend. “Maybe not your best friend because you’re a girl, and my sister will want to be your best friend, but we’re going to stick together, Mac.”
He was the first person to call me Mac, or maybe that was Emma, I don’t remember that part, but I do remember how he declared our friendship, with determination, like it was destiny. He was adorable.
Emma peeks out her bedroom door when she hears us going down the stairs. She takes in our tennis clothes and grins. “You are so predictable sometimes, Mac.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Have fun, kids.”
Jesse tells her, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And I’m going to talk to Lincoln later, by the way.”
“I figured and I won’t.”
When we get in the car, I turn to Jesse. “I think Emma and Lincoln are really into each other. In love, even though it’s only been a few weeks.”
His eyes light up. “Like us?”
“I think it was at first sight for us, don’t you?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
We’re both smiling stupidly at each other. Maybe there’s nothing else I need to say to him after all. He gets me. Probably even more than I get myself.
Chapter 9
When we head onto the court for the March Matchup finals Sunday evening, I feel like I’m outside my body, looking down. The crowds are bigger than any I’ve played in front of before. People are squeezed into the bleachers, which are even more jam-packed than the final matches at State, because both the guys’ and girls’ teams are represented. The court is illuminated in the dim
ming light, and I imagine that people watching Jesse and me know that we are more than a team.
When we practiced together this week, the coaches hadn’t decided if we should be paired together for the tournament. They thought we might try overpowering each other or something. It wasn’t instant magic, but, after a day or two practicing as a team, we were unstoppable. And it’s been that way since the tournament started on Friday afternoon. We’ve burned through each team like we were fire, but we know that this match is the ultimate challenge.
We’re playing the reigning March Matchup champions, Tori and Nick McGrath. They’re twins, which magnifies the intimidation factor. Aside from this tournament, we only play their high school at State, and Tori McGrath beat me at the semi-finals last year. Barely. Ironically, Jesse beat Nick in the guys’ State semi-final, and went on to win at the finals, though Tori took runner-up. All four of us, as individuals and as doubles partners, want to win, and each team has the potential to do it. The McGraths might be slight favorites, but only because they won last year, and, well, they are twins. But Jesse and I have our own kind of chemistry, and, so far, it seems to work on and off the court.
If we win this match, Hillcrest takes the overall trophy, which we haven’t done in years. If Dunstan wins, they take the trophy for the fourth year in a row. No pressure or anything.
It’s a three set match. The first set is point for point, but we take the win 7-5. Jesse dominates the court more than any doubles partner I’ve had in the past, but he doesn’t take over my space. He trusts me, and I trust him, and I never realized how important that is to doubles tennis.
My mother is sitting in the front row bleachers with Roger and Olivia. Laura and Paul Kendrick are seated beside them, but they aren’t really friends with Delilah Ferris. They are polite enough to her, but they’ve acted more like parents to me than she has. I’ve been focused on the game, and ignoring my mother has been easy, but when we take a break between sets, she’s only a couple feet away.
She says my name, and I pretend not to hear her. I can feel Jesse’s eyes watching me. But Delilah Ferris won’t be ignored. She stands up and comes over to me, puts a hand on my arm in a false display of maternal care. I construe it as a threat. But the fear that usually accompanies her subtle warnings isn’t there.
