We Don't Talk Anymore (The Don't Duet Book 1)

by Julie Johnson

I’d hit him again, if he weren’t still holding my hands.

  “Right, I forgot! Silly me!” I try to laugh, but my voice cracks pathetically. “The rules don’t apply when you’re the one getting some.”

  He expels a frustrated sigh. “I’m not fighting with you about this, Jo.”

  “Well you sure as hell had a lot of opinions a few minutes ago!” I shake my head. “You know what? I don’t even care what you have to say. Spare me your sexist, double-standard bullshit.”

  His furious gaze snaps to mine. “Then spare me the doe-eyed innocent act. You know as well as I do that these guys are just looking for a warm body. Forgive me if I don’t want my best friend winding up one more meaningless notch in their belts.”

  “Ryan isn’t like that!”

  “Ryan Snyder is exactly like that. These guys… they’re my teammates, and they’re decent enough to spend an afternoon at the batting cages with. Beyond that, they’re not winning any prizes for chivalry. They’ll fuck anything with a pulse. For all I know, they made a bet out of it — first to nail Valentine gets bragging rights.”

  Ouch.

  My stomach drops to my feet. I reel back, desperate for some space, only to realize I’m still a captive. His hold on me is stronger than iron — and I’m not just talking about his hands on my wrists.

  “So that’s all this was?” I ask flatly.

  “All what was?”

  “One friend looking out for another.” I stare at him, too worked up to hold back.

  His gaze flickers back and forth across my face, reading me like a book. “What else would it be, Jo?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And I don’t know why you can’t just admit it!”

  “Admit what?”

  “That it bothered you!” I snap. “Seeing me with Ryan.”

  His eyes flare. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You were jealous.” I poke him in the chest with the tip of my finger. “Admit it! You couldn’t stand seeing me with someone else. Because deep down, in some twisted way… you think I belong to you.”

  There’s a long beat of utter silence. So long, I start to count the waves as they crash, a relentless metronome. I reach a dozen before I begin to feel the tingling of regret creeping up my spine. A dozen more before Archer takes a deep, shuddering breath.

  “You’re drunk, Jo. You don’t know what you’re saying, and you’re going to regret it in the morning.”

  My heart fails inside my chest when he says that. Suddenly, I want to be anywhere but here. Anywhere but with him. I want to crawl into bed, cry my eyes out, and forget this entire night ever happened. Or, at the very least, escape my own mind for a few blissful hours of unconscious sleep.

  Defeat and despair intertwine inside me in a tight knot, filling up my lungs, blocking off my airway, pressing at the back of my eyes. I don’t want to cry. If I start, I may never stop.

  Forcing my mouth open, I speak very carefully — each word like a bullet in the air. “Let me go, Archer.”

  “Jo—”

  “Now. I mean it.”

  He does.

  In the sudden absence of his steadying hold, the sky spins precipitously around me. I lurch sideways and nearly fall over, only managing to catch myself at the very last moment. So much for my insistence re: sobriety.

  When stability returns, Archer is watching me from a careful distance with his arms crossed over his chest. I can’t stand to see the I-told-you-so look on his face, so I stare down at my feet instead.

  “I really hate you right now,” I tell him, voice hollow.

  “I really don’t give a shit.” He pauses. Extends his hand out to me. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

  I ignore his hand — and his eyes — as I beeline for the driveway.

  Chapter Six

  ARCHER

  I drive us home in strained silence.

  It’s nearly three. The streets are empty of traffic, but I stick to the back roads in case a cop is cruising to meet his monthly ticket quota. The last thing I can afford is to be pulled over — not with Jo in the car, not with potential scholarships on the line. Not in general.

  Since I got my license last year, I have braked fully at every stop sign. I don’t run reds. Hell, I don’t run yellows. The guys on the team give me shit for it — “Reyes, my grandma drives faster than you!” — but they wouldn’t understand. If a cop pulls them over, they get off with a verbal warning. A free pass. A sedate “Say hi to the folks for me, son.”

  Me?

  I get the quizzical “How did you afford this nice truck?” look. I get my plates run. And, as soon they see the name REYES pop up in their system, I get the book thrown at me.

  Big thanks to my brother Jax for making our family notorious in this town.

  The windows are cranked down, letting in a stream of warm, early-summer air. Jo’s got her head hanging out like a dog. I can’t decide if it’s because she’s drunk or because she can’t stand to look at me. Maybe a little of both.

  My grip tightens on the wheel and I grimace as pain shoots through the knuckles of my right hand. Using my pitching arm to smash in Snyder’s face wasn’t the smartest choice. But honestly, the way things have been going lately, losing my shot at a scholarship due to an idiotic, self-inflicted injury would just be icing on the fucking cake that is my life.

  I resist the urge to press more firmly on the gas pedal. Some days, when I’m out for a drive alone, I’d like nothing more than to steer this truck right off the road, onto the sand, into the ocean. Let sea water fill up the cab slowly, let my limbs start to float. Wait until only an inch of air remains at the ceiling. Gasp at it like a goldfish yanked from his pond. Wonder whether the water is dragging me under or offering me deliverance I’m too blind to accept.

  Jo would freak if she ever heard me say something like that out loud. Hell, she’d probably have me signed up for bi-weekly therapy sessions within the hour, so I could sit in a beige-on-beige “safe space” and discuss my feelings with a neutral third party observer. I might even attend, just to appease her. But it wouldn’t change anything. No therapist in the world can fix all the shit that’s gone wrong in my life these past few weeks.

  Neither can Jo. That’s why I haven’t told her about any of it. If I did, it would only put her square in the middle of a situation highly prone to going sideways. Because she’d do exactly what she always does — make my problems her problems. Attempt to fix it. And get herself hurt in the process.

  I can’t let that happen. I’d rather have her hate me than see her damaged by the fallout from my family implosion. After all she’s done for me, after all we’ve been through… she deserves a life untouched by emotional shrapnel. Even if that life doesn’t include me anymore.

  At the next intersection, I glance over at her. She’s still ignoring me, hiding behind the curtain of her hair. Loosed from its braid, it blows around her face, rippling like sand dunes on a windy day.

  God, she’s beautiful.

  God, she must hate me.

  I should be happy my plans to push her away are working so effectively. But I’m not happy. Just the opposite. The prospect of losing the best thing in my life has opened up a bottomless pit inside my gut. Each moment we’re at odds gnaws a little more into my stomach lining. And there’s nothing I can do to make it better.

  Creating some distance between us is the smartest option. The only option. But now that the ball is rolling, I can’t help second-guessing myself. I can’t help wishing that any moment now, she’ll look over at me and murmur, “It’s okay, Arch, I forgive you.”

  I sigh.

  Josephine Valentine is not, by nature, a forgiving person. She’s known to hold grudges. She gets angry at authors for killing her favorite characters, then refuses to read another word they write. (George R.R. Martin has undoubtedly received hate-mail from her.)

  She still talks trash about the guy who cut her off in
line for the gondola when we went snowboarding last season. Same for the girl in the Bentley who stole our parking spot on the first day of school.

  She boycotts a certain coffee shop downtown because a barista there once made a racist crack about the soy milk request for my latte.

  Yo soy Archer. Haha!

  Jo almost threw the aforementioned latte right in the hipster’s face. I had to drag her out the door, kicking and screaming like a feral cat the whole way. To this day, whenever we walk by that place, she blatantly glares through the display window, making it clear all is not forgiven.

  But…

  She’s always forgiven me.

  We’ve had fights before, of course. I’ve pissed her off plenty over the years. You can’t be best friends since birth without a few epic blowouts.

  Age eight: broke the arm off her favorite American Girl Doll in an ill-advised round of tug-of-war. Cue all of my allowance, up in smoke.

  Age ten: went fishing with my older brother and failed to invite her. Cue meltdown of unmatched proportions.

  Age twelve: refused to partner with her in the local talent show for a mediocre rendition of “Defying Gravity” from the musical Wicked. Cue first — but not last — “I hate you, Archer Reyes!”

  She’s pissed me off plenty, too, don’t get me wrong. There was the time, at thirteen, when she hijacked her father’s boat and crashed it into a sandbar, nearly getting us both killed — not to mention grounded for an entire summer. At fifteen, when she barged into my bedroom without knocking and caught me red-handed — literally — watching porn. At sixteen, when she showed me one of her baffling sewing patterns and proceeded to call me a “low-brow jock with no appreciation for design.” And just a few months ago, when she insisted I only entertain baseball scholarship offers from schools within a two hour drive of Brown — which just so happens to be where she was accepted early-decision, and plans to attend this fall.

  But this fight feels different.

  It is different.

  Deep down, even if I want her to forgive me, I know she shouldn’t. It’s safer for her to be out of my life — at least, for the foreseeable future. Safer if she hates me so much, she can’t stand to be in the same place at the same time.

  Despite all previous efforts to push her away — dodging her in the halls, sitting at the jock table at lunch, jamming my schedule full of baseball practices and hours at the batting cages and yes, even my teammates’ lame parties on the weekends — she hasn’t gotten the hint. Hasn’t backed off in the slightest. The busier I get, the more determined she becomes to make time together: arranging Sunday afternoon sails, showing up at my door, ambushing me as soon as she hears my truck rolling down the driveway.

  Turns out, cutting Jo out of my life is harder than cutting off a limb. She won’t let go. Not without extreme measures.

  For instance, blatantly screwing another girl.

  If I could physically avoid her, I wouldn’t have to take things so far. Given that we live on the same property, that’s basically impossible. Jo has a way of making a even a three-acre estate feel intimate. She spends more time in my tiny bedroom than she does her own waterfront suite.

  We pull up to the wrought iron gates that mark the start of the private drive. I punch in a code on the small electronic keypad and they swing inward with a metallic clang. Pulling the truck off asphalt and onto imported pea-stone, I creep up the driveway slowly, so as not to wake anyone.

  After a moment, Cormorant House comes into view. It’s impressive, even after all this time — a sprawling, twelve-bedroom stone mansion perched on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic, complete with a full guest cottage, in-ground swimming pool, boathouse, private dock, and separate staff quarters. Built in an opulent châteauesque style, it’s been a Valentine property since Jo’s ancestors struck industrial gold in the Gilded Age, building the country’s first ever railroad— though, her father only inherited it twenty or so years ago.

  For almost as long as her parents have occupied it, mine have maintained it. Though everyone has always been careful not to use the word “servant,” instead throwing around euphemisms — “housekeeper” for my mother, “handyman” for my father — I’ve known since I was no more than three that the Reyes clan could never afford to live in this house, this zip code, this very town on our own.

  We exist here at the behest of Jo’s father. Were he to simply snap his fingers… we’d be out on our asses, exiled from the the only home I’ve ever known before the ink on my parents’ severance check was dry.

  Rounding the circular driveway, I slow to a stop at the front walk and turn off the engine. Jo makes no move to get out. For a moment, we sit in total silence. I have to curl my hands around the steering wheel to keep from reaching for her, from crushing her against my chest in a hug — the kind we used to give each other without a second thought, back when things were so much simpler.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” she whispers finally. Her voice is soft; I strain to catch all her words. “That’s never happened before.”

  My jaw tightens, holding in the desire to apologize. If she forgives me, this whole night — everything I did with Sienna — was for nothing.

  I can feel her looking at me. Waiting for me to say something. To make this better between us, like I always do when we disagree. But I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead, my lips pressed firmly shut.

  “I don’t know what your problem is, Archer, but I hope you get over it. Soon. I didn’t even recognize you, tonight. You were so angry. So out of control. It was like…” She pauses. “Like staring at your brother.”

  Jesus.

  I suck in a sharp breath. I can’t help it. Her words are a calculated blow, directly to my soul. And she knows it. She knows better than anyone how hard I’ve tried to distance myself from the reputation Jaxon created for our family. She knows how much I’ve struggled to detangle my identity from his.

  Jo isn’t done speaking. “You need to get over this knight-in-shining-armor act. We aren’t kids anymore, Archer. I don’t need you to protect me from the bullies. I don’t need you to watch my back.”

  Bullshit, I think but don’t say. She may not want to hear it, but she does need a shield to keep her safe; a sword to slay her demons.

  The kids who go to our academy are assholes. Always have been, always will be. I’ve spent my life putting myself in the path between her and them. She’s not even aware I’m doing it, most of the time.

  Case in point, tonight. Ryan Snyder. I shouldn’t have hit him. I realize that. I realized it the moment my fist flew out, the moment he went sailing through the air like a sock puppet. The moment Jo’s eyes sprung open and she started looking at me like a stranger.

  And yet, if I could go back, I’d probably do it again.

  Snyder may look like a Ken doll, but he’s no dickless innocent. Beneath that floppy hair and sensitive facade lies a true player. He’s hooked up with half the girls at Exeter Academy — plus just about every other private school in New England. The guy has so many notches in his bedpost, it starting to look like an authentic Native American woodcarving. Over my dead body will he add Jo to that piece of work.

  Her voice gets even smaller. Still tipsy, she’s struggling to articulate her thoughts. The ones that manage to escape are laced with undeniable pain. “You know, hard as it might be for you to believe, I’m not totally repulsive. I—I—”

  I’m horrified by the devastating crack in her voice; even more so when I look over and see tears welling in her big blue eyes.

  Christ.

  I clutch the steering wheel tighter, a useless lifeline against the avalanche occurring beneath my ribcage. My chest feels like it’s caving in on itself. I wish the ground would swallow me up, suck me down to Hell. It would be a reprieve from this torture.

  Still…

  I say nothing.

  I offer no comfort.

  I hate myself.

  “I just can’t… You need to realize…” She shak
es her head vigorously, as if to clear it. “Not every human male on this planet sees me as a platonic little sister!” she says finally, fumbling for the door handle as the first wave of tears spills down her cheeks. “You’re just going to have to get used to it!”

  With that, she slams the door and sprints up to the house, her strides weaving like a rum-soaked pirate. I wait to start the engine until she’s securely inside, door locked behind her, porch light extinguished. Leaving me alone in the dark night.

  “Fuck!” I yell, slamming my fist against the steering wheel so hard, I’m surprised it doesn’t crack. “God fucking dammit!”

  It takes all my strength not to peel out down the driveway. To keep my tires at a gradual crawl. Messing up the pea-stone won’t make me feel better. It will, however, make more work for my father in the morning.

  Dramatic exits aren’t as satisfying when you think about the groundskeeper responsible for cleanup duty.

  Leaving the circular driveway behind, I branch off onto the smaller route that leads past the swimming pool and tennis court, around the guest house, all the way to the wooded edge of the property. It is here, far inland, away from the coveted water views and prime real estate, hidden by a thick grove of maple trees like a blemish behind an artfully placed hat, that we make our home.

  Gull Cottage — so named by the fading, hand-carved sign hanging above the front door — is a small, single-story dwelling with a simple farmer’s porch. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, no frills. Built in the mid-1960s, it lacks the historical flare of the main house, as well as the creature comforts.

  But it’s home.

  I park my truck next to my father’s in the small clearing on the side of the cottage. My shiny, souped-up, black Ford F-150 — a blatant bribe from the scouts at Vanderbilt last spring, after they came to see me pitch — looks even more ridiculous sitting beside the beat-up pickup Pa’s been using to get around the grounds for as long as I can remember. I eye it pitifully as I walk past — chipped paint, nonexistent suspension, evidence of a hard-day’s labor still sitting in the leaf-strewn bed.