We screeched and squealed and laughed until our stomachs hurt as he tickled both of us relentlessly. Soon we were all a heap on the asphalt of the parking lot, laughing and kicking at each other and wearing ourselves out.
Just like old times.
It almost surprised me how good it felt. I hadn’t felt that light since before the lake party. It felt more than good. It felt necessary. I needed these guys, no matter who else was in my life.
Finally, Zack pulled himself out of the pile of legs and arms. “You ready to head out, Red?” he asked, tousling Bethany’s hair.
She nodded, pulling herself up, too. “Yeah. My mom’s going to wonder what happened to me.”
Zack stood and then reached down with one hand. “What about you?” he asked.
I paused for just a second and then grabbed his hand and pulled myself to standing, next to him. I reached down and picked up my backpack. “I’m good,” I said. “I’m parked over there.” I pointed at my car a few spaces down.
“Cool,” he said.
We smiled at one another. All forgiven. No big apologies needed. We were best friends. There was nothing we couldn’t get past.
Zack and Bethany got into his car, and I headed for mine. Just as I was opening the passenger door to put my backpack in, Zack’s car sidled up to me, and Bethany poked her head out of the window.
“You going home?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t add that Cole had some family function to go to tonight and that was the only reason I wasn’t going to be with him. “Catching up on homework tonight.”
“Wanna come over to Zack’s? We still need to talk about the trip,” she said. “I mean, I told you about the RV, and there aren’t a whole lot of other changes, but… hey, we’re making cookies.”
“Sounds great. I’ll be there.”
She smiled. “Cool. See ya!”
She pulled her head back in, and they roared out of the lot. I slid my backpack onto the floorboard and shut the door. There was a squeal at the entrance of the school as Zack peeled out, which was a practically a requirement at our school—everybody did it.
I glanced up just in time to see him take off.
Just after his car pulled out, though, another pulled out behind him, slowly, calmly.
And if I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn it was Cole’s car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Everything was right again.
I drove home and rushed inside, heading straight upstairs to drop off my backpack. I changed into a pair of pajama pants and tossed my hair up into a messy ponytail, peeking out the window at Zack’s driveway. His car was already there, which meant they were waiting for me.
The house was silent—Dad wouldn’t bring Celia home from Yearbook Club until after six. I scrawled a quick note on the back of an envelope on the kitchen table, telling them I was next door, then stepped outside and shuffled through the grass in my socks, the cold quickly seeping into my toes.
When I walked in, Zack’s mom was in the study, pulling dried flowers out from between the pages of a phone book and pasting them onto little note cards. Mrs. Clavinger was really crafty that way, always making things out of raffia and hand-embossing envelopes and stuff. She had her own scrapbooking business and would have meetings once a month. Zack always called them her “hen gatherings,” and he always found somewhere else to be when the ladies were over.
“Hey, Mrs. C!” I called, shutting the door behind me.
She looked up, a piece of hair falling out of the bandanna over her forehead. “Alex!” she gushed. “What a—they’re in the kitchen—wonderful surprise—they’re making cookies.”
“Great,” I said, and headed for the kitchen.
Bethany was holding a metal bowl to her stomach and smacking Zack with a wooden spoon as he tried to stick his fingers into the dough.
“Hey,” I said, sidling up to them. I waited for Bethany to swing at Zack again and swiped a fingerful of cookie dough while she was occupied.
“Hey!” she cried, and smacked my arm with the spoon, too, leaving a smear of dough. While she was concentrating on me, Zack stuck his hand in the bowl from the other side, coming out with a fistful of dough. “You guys!” she squealed, but she was laughing too hard now to keep either one of us out, and we ended up taking the bowl to the table and all sitting around it, eating it with our fingers.
It was just like we’d done a million times before, eating junk and talking about everyday stuff like our classes and which teachers we thought were secretly hooking up on the side and how Mia Libby’s boobs had suddenly gotten way huger this year after she’d “gone to Europe for two weeks.”
We talked about the Colorado trip, still arguing about the merits of summer over winter travel. Bethany showed us photos of our RV. She pulled up the Stanley Hotel on her laptop, and we read about all the hauntings that supposedly happened there. We decided that for sure we’d go to the natural history museum in Denver. Things were really coming together. All we needed to do was pick a date.
Nobody brought up the night of the lake party. Nobody brought up Cole.
This was what best friendship was about: forgiveness and unconditional love. And cookie dough.
Zack was just about to get up to get us some sodas, when his dad poked his head through the door that led into the garage.
“Hey, it’s the three-headed monster,” he said.
“Hi, Mr. C!” Bethany and I said together, our mouths full of cookie dough.
He nodded at us, then turned his attention to Zack. “Hey, buddy. Can you help me carry your mother’s birdbath to the backyard? Thing weighs a ton.”
Zack stood up and flexed his muscles, pro wrestler–style. He let out a long grunt. “Need a real man to do the job, eh?” he joked.
“Something like that,” his dad said, chuckling and shaking his head. “Girls, I don’t know how you put up with that one.”
“Neither do we,” Bethany said. “Mostly we just ignore him.”
“Good plan,” Mr. C said, then ducked back into the garage with Zack.
Bethany and I were alone. Zack’s mom was still busy in the den, and Zack and his dad were fumbling around in the garage. It was just the two of us, and I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Everything felt so right, except for one thing: There was something huge I hadn’t told my best friend yet. As sure as I was just a few hours before that I shouldn’t tell her, now I was just as sure that she had to know, because it would hurt her too much not to.
“Beth,” I said. “I need to tell you something. But you have to swear you won’t tell Zack.”
Bethany swiped a fingerful of cookie dough and stuck it in her mouth. “Okay,” she said, chewing.
I swallowed and rubbed my palms down the legs of my pajama pants, taking a deep breath. Suddenly I wasn’t sure how to even say it, so I just took a deep breath and let it out. “I did it with Cole.”
Bethany stopped chewing. She peered into the bowl like maybe what I’d just said had come out of there instead. A beat went by, and I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me, or maybe I hadn’t actually said it out loud like I thought I had. But then she started chewing again and swallowed, turning her head slowly toward me. Her eyes were huge behind her glasses. “You did?” she asked.
I nodded. “That’s why I didn’t make it over Saturday night. He took me to meet his parents. They were horrible. His dad was really mean, and his mom was like this zombie. We went up to his room and…” I shrugged, my hands lying limp in my lap.
“Whoa,” Bethany said. “I can’t believe you did… you haven’t been going out that long.”
“Well, it’s not like Cole and I just met yesterday, either,” I said sharply.
“Don’t get mad,” she said defensively. “It’s just… are you sure you’re doing the right thing?” She pushed up her glasses, leaving a greasy cookie dough smudge on the bridge of her nose.
Now it was my turn to be defensive. “We used protectio
n, if that’s what you’re asking.”
She shook her head. “I mean, yeah, that’s good, but… Well, it’s just that he was so nice at Shubb’s, and then at the lake party he was so…” Her voice trailed off.
This was not how this was supposed to go. Bethany was supposed to be excited for me and ask me for details. “He was having a bad night at the lake party, Beth,” I said. “If you got to know the real Cole, you’d love him, too.”
She got up. She didn’t say anything as she walked to the sink and rinsed her fingers off. Then she went to the fridge and pulled out two sodas.
“Beth,” I said, “I want you to be happy for me.”
Her shoulders drooped, and she hesitated in the open refrigerator for just the tiniest second. When she turned toward me, she had a wobbly smile on her face, almost embarrassed. She sat down, pushing one of the sodas across the table at me.
“I am happy for you,” she said. “But it’s just… I don’t want you to get hurt. Cole doesn’t seem… all that nice.”
“You don’t know him,” I said in a low voice. “Not like I do.” I popped open my can of soda and gazed out the sliding glass door into the backyard, where Zack and his dad were standing next to the birdbath, hands on hips, chatting. It seemed so unfair that I had finally found someone who loved me, had finally fallen in love with someone enough to go all the way, and I had to defend him to my best friends like this.
“I know,” she said. “But…” She leaned forward and peered into the cookie dough bowl again. “Remember when I told you that he and Zack got into that fight in the locker room a few weeks ago? Do you know why they were fighting?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“They got into a fight because Cole kept talking about how he wanted to get you into bed. He was being pretty gross about it, so Zack stepped in.”
“Gross how?”
She shrugged. She leaned back and used her thumbnail to flick some cookie dough from the front of her jeans. Zack and his dad retreated from the backyard, coming back toward the house. “Just talking about your body, I guess. In a lot of detail.”
I flushed. Cole was talking about me in the locker room. So much so that my “big brother” Zack had to step in. In front of everybody. How embarrassing. I stuck a dollop of cookie dough in my mouth, but suddenly it didn’t taste good anymore.
We could hear Zack and his dad in the garage and could hear the big door rumbling to a close.
“Alex,” Bethany said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I know you love him, but he’s just… he’s not… just be careful, okay?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Something about the way she was talking to me felt so condescending. Like she was trying to be my mother.
Okay, so he was talking about me in the locker room. It was embarrassing, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe he wasn’t trying to be “gross.” Maybe he was just expressing desire. Cole wouldn’t embarrass me on purpose.
Bethany just didn’t know Cole like I did. Neither of them did. And if they never got to like Cole? Well, they’d have the choice to support me or not. That was up to them. I wasn’t the only best friend in this scenario.
“I am being careful,” I said around the dough in my mouth. “I promise.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I didn’t see Cole at all the next day.
Well, actually, I saw him a lot. But he never seemed to see me. He didn’t come to my locker after second period like he usually did. And he walked through the halls looking the same as he’d looked at the lake party, the intensity giving his face an almost shiny sheen. The couple times I saw him through the crowd, he was hand-slapping and belly-laughing so hard it was as if he were putting on a show. As if he wanted everyone to see what a great time he was having.
Honestly, it was weird. At first I tried not to think too much about it. He’d had some family junk to take care of the day before. Knowing how he felt about his dad and Brenda, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that he was upset and just wanted to be left alone.
But it was one thing to be forgiving for the first couple hours of the day. By lunch, I was starting to really feel stung. I was supposed to be his respite from the bad stuff. I was supposed to be his other half of “alone.” I thought we’d opened up to each other about our family issues now.
Those times we’d spent wrapped around each other, talking about our parents, talking about loneliness and about desire for something different, something better. He’d said, I’ve never told anyone but you this stuff, Alex. Those times we promised each other we’d be there. We understood. Only now I wasn’t needed. It just didn’t make sense.
By the time sixth period ended and it was time to go to the tutor lab, I actually had butterflies in my stomach. I had stopped convincing myself that his distance from me was about his family problem. Something was wrong between us. I could feel it. I just didn’t know what it was. I racked my brain over and over, trying to pinpoint something I’d said or done to make him mad. Sometimes Cole got moody for no reason, but usually that was aimed at Brenda. He always got grouchy when she’d call him. He’d yell at her without even saying hello, then hang up and turn off his phone. But he’d never gone a whole day without speaking to me.
He was late. Really late. I’d gotten out my homework but was feeling so lost and upset my eyes felt full and I couldn’t concentrate on it. Finally, just before the bell rang, he burst through the door.
I froze. Watched him as he glided across the room and sat in his usual seat.
“You’re late,” I said, swallowing to keep the tears from spilling over. I was trying to sound indignant, but my voice had a plaintive ring to it that made me sound desperate and frightened and whiny. I wanted to sound pissed.
He looked up at me sharply. “So?”
That was it? So?
“So,” I said. “Where’ve you been today? You haven’t even said hi to me. What was your family thing yesterday? Why didn’t you call?”
“Wow,” he said, leaning forward, an arrogant half-grin on his face. I was starting to really dislike the air in the room. Something about him felt more than moody. More than mad. “You’ve got a lot of questions.”
Silence stretched between us. My eyes were practically stinging now, and it was all I could do to keep them dry. All I knew was I needed to get out of there immediately, before I cried or… before I figured out exactly why I felt so uncomfortable all of a sudden. I stood up, shoveling books and papers into my backpack as fast as I could.
“I think we’ll just skip this today, okay?” I said, again mentally kicking myself for the wobble in my voice. I started to zip my backpack.
He reached up and grabbed my wrist. Hard. “I don’t think so.”
I was shocked at how tightly he was holding my wrist. I remembered the night of the lake party, when he grabbed my knee so hard it left faint little finger-shaped welts. I stared at him incredulously. I’d assumed those welts had been an accident. I’d figured it was just the heat of the moment and hadn’t even thought about it again after we’d made up. But here he was grabbing my wrist, hard enough to leave welts again. And the way his lips pressed together in a thin pink line told me this was no accident. He was squeezing my wrist on purpose.
I tried to pull free of his grasp. “Let go of me, Cole. I’m leaving.” He squeezed tighter, his fingers digging into my skin, and twisted just enough to make my wrist throb. “Ow,” I hissed, bending at the knees and yanking backward. “That hurts. Let go. I’m serious, Cole.”
He stood up, coming around the table and getting so close to me, our noses were practically touching. I could smell the gum on his breath. He stared at me, and whatever thoughts were in his head made his eyes grow darker. The smile had gone and been replaced by a snarl. I didn’t think it was possible, but he gripped me even more fiercely. I felt something inside my wrist thump and strain. I sucked in air through my teeth, my knees buckling even further. There was nothing I could do about the tears now,
and I blinked them away angrily.
It seemed like forever that he just glared at me like that. Then he got even closer and whispered, “What? Does Zack’s touch feel so much softer?”
Surprise rocked me. I forgot about my arm for half a second, and looked up to him in confusion. Zack’s touch? What did that even mean? “What’re you… ouch! Cole, stop it! That hurts!”
But he squeezed with such force he was shaking now. My fingers were turning purple, the circulation cut off so I couldn’t bend them. “I saw you,” he said, his face going red, his voice turning into this gruff bark that made goose bumps pop up on my arms. I reached down with my other hand and pulled at his fingers. They didn’t budge—he was too strong. “I saw you groping each other in the parking lot yesterday. Looked like a real lovefest out there. Very cozy.”
“Groping each other? We weren’t… oh my God… are you spying on me now?” I thought of Georgia saying Cole was creepy, the way he was always hanging around, watching me. And I thought of the car that had slowly followed Zack’s car out of the parking lot yesterday.
He yanked on my wrist, and the breath was sucked right out of me. “Don’t lie to me, Alex!” he snarled in my face. “I saw you out there! And I saw you leave his house and walk back to yours last night, too.”
At the word “too,” he released my wrist by shoving it into my stomach and giving it a mighty push. The relief in my wrist was short-lived, as I stumbled from the force of his shove and fell backward, toppling over my chair and smacking my hip hard against the floor. I was so stunned, I couldn’t move. My wrist and hip ached.
He stood over me, breathing hard through flared nostrils like an animal. I scrambled up to my knees, which wasn’t easy one-handed, with a hip that didn’t want to move. I couldn’t say anything. And the tears were suddenly gone, too.
“It’s not bad enough that I have to deal with Brenda’s shit, is it, Alex? It’s not enough that I have to stay home to take care of that bullshit. But you take the first opportunity you get when I’m not around and you cheat on me with that idiot next door.”
Bitter End Page 14