Loving Lies

by Linda Kage

  Tess fell back against her pillows, yanked her covers over her head, and let out a small whimper. “I couldn’t.” Especially after learning his parents wouldn’t be counted on to be there for him. She’d made no plans to tell Jonah the truth when she’d driven to the hospital tonight. And now, she really didn’t want to fess up.

  Because she kind of liked being the only person he had, which was bad, but she just couldn’t help herself. Tonight had been so—

  “He’s going to find out eventually. You know that, right?”

  Tess closed her eyes and kept the blankets over her head. “Maybe.” Or maybe, if God wanted her to be blissfully happy, Jonah would never regain his memory, and she could just keep being his girlfriend.

  “It would be best if you got it out of the way and did it now. Band-Aid quick. Just tell him. At this point, he still might forgive you.”

  Or he might throw her out of his hospital room and refuse to ever see her again, in which case, he’d be left with no one to visit him and her heart would shatter into a million pieces, and God…she’d gotten herself into quite a pickle, as her mom used to say.

  “If you’re that hard up for a boyfriend—I mean, a real one—there’s this party on Friday—”

  “No,” Tess said before Bailey could continue. “You know how I get at parties.” She typically turned so nervous she started shooting whatever alcohol was on hand, just to loosen up and avoid any stupid-gene comments spilling from her mouth. But then she ended up getting blitzed to the point that her stupid gene made an appearance anyway.

  “So, you’d rather just fake it with the amnesiac?” Bailey demanded.

  “Yeah.” Tess’s voice was soft as she remembered “faking” it tonight. Except it hadn’t felt that fake at all. “I would,” she murmured, touching her lips and remembering their parting kiss.

  As if she could see Tess’s actions under the blanket, Bailey said, “Is there something you’re not telling me? This just feels so…I don’t know. I’m not trusting this. I don’t trust…him.”

  With a scowl, Tess flipped the blanket off her head, and sat up to aim the irritation at her roommate. “How can you not trust him? He doesn’t even remember who he is.”

  Bailey shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.”

  “But…you didn’t even meet him. You can’t possibly get a feeling if you don’t even know the person you’re…getting feelings about.”

  “Oh, yes, I damn well can. I’m seeing your reaction to him. And you’re not acting like…you. You’re all…” She waved out her hand and made a face. “Well, I have no clue who you’re acting like, but it’s not like my friend Tess at all.”

  Guilt slithered into her conscience. Tess glanced away, wondering if Bailey knew how much she couldn’t stop thinking about Jonah, or if she suspected they’d kissed. She wasn’t completely sure why she hadn’t already spilled all the details about those few kisses she’d shared with him. Probably because Bailey was already overreacting about her merely visiting him. If she knew Tess was growing a crush on her fake boyfriend, she’d completely freak. She’d probably break out another tell-him-the-truth lecture and completely burst the euphoric little bubble Tess had going.

  She decided to cling to her bliss for just a little while longer. Her time with him was too special to go spreading around like some kind of dirty locker room gossip, anyway. Those memories were hers to keep in a private, hallowed place inside herself.

  Across the room, Bailey’s sigh was disappointed, but it told Tess she was giving up on her argument for the rest of the evening. “Fine. I’ll drop it. For tonight. Too tired to think straight anyway.” Seconds later, the lights were extinguished. “Night.”

  Tess blew out a breath and lay down, bringing her blankets up to her chin. “Good night.”

  Staring up at the dark shift of shadows across her ceiling, she wanted to apologize, but she wasn’t sure why. She just knew she was wrong. And Bailey was right. She hated being wrong, especially when Bailey was right. But she couldn’t stop her wrongness in this situation. Thinking of him alone in the world, without her, hurt too much. And after getting to know him a little better tonight, she felt even more invested. She was beginning to get…close.

  Jonah Abbott was like a drug, and she wanted to go back for more. Even now, the itch to crawl out of bed and drive to the hospital consumed her. She wondered how easy it would be to sneak past the nurses and slip into his room. Would she surprise him? Would he be happy to see her? Annoyed or uncomfortable?

  Would he want to kiss her again?

  Touching her lips once more in the dark, Tess smiled goofily. If she had her way, she’d definitely be kissing those lips again.

  “Okay, now I can’t sleep.” Bailey’s voice across the room stopped Tess’s grin short. “I saw the cowboy today.”

  “What?” Tess sat up and fumbled until finding the string for the light over her bed. Giving it a hard tug, she twisted to face Bailey as soon as brightness filled the room. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  Bailey had been obsessed with “the cowboy” since last semester when they’d met the stranger in Paige’s room. He’d stop by to pick up Paige’s roommate for a date, and that had been it for Bailey. She’d wanted him. Bad. They didn’t even know his name.

  Tess was glad her friend had returned her obsession back onto the cowboy. Bailey had recently gone on a couple dates with a guy from back in their hometown, but Tess had never liked him. After the school shooting, he’d grown annoying to Bailey, too, asking too many questions about what had happened, so she’d dropped him.

  “I don’t know.” Squishing up her facial features with disappointment, Bailey shrugged, folded her arms behind her head, and stared moodily up at the ceiling. “I forgot all about it when I saw that look on your face as soon as you came through the doorway.” She glanced over. “What was that about, anyway? You looked way too happy for a miserable hospital visit.”

  Tess waved her hand to brush that topic aside, still not ready to talk about that. “Did you talk to him?” she demanded. “What did he say? What’s his name?”

  “No,” Bailey muttered, her scowl at the ceiling deepening. “I didn’t talk to him. I just saw him across the courtyard when I was walking to class.”

  “Well…did you try to track him down?”

  “Of course.” Only Bailey would say of course to that question. Tess never would’ve had the nerve.

  “And?”

  “And he walked into Ferdinand Hall. I followed, but as soon as I stepped inside, he had completely disappeared.”

  Tess grinned and turned her light off. “So, you’re totally going to stake out Ferdinand Hall now, aren’t you?”

  Bailey’s snort told her she needn’t have even bothered to ask. “Oh, you know it.”

  “Are you sure it was the same cowboy, and not some random dude wearing a cowboy hat?”

  Tess scraped the last of the polish off her thumbnail and went to work on her pointer finger. Students streamed by her, a couple bumping into her with their book bags or arms. She stepped off the sidewalk to let them through, surprised that Ferdinand Hall, which housed the English department, was such a busy place.

  “It was definitely the same guy,” Bailey said from beside her, avidly scanning every face that passed.

  “But how do you know?”

  “I just know. It was him.”

  She didn’t know. Tess could tell by the little wrinkle between her eyes she always got whenever she wasn’t sure about something but totally wanted to be.

  Tess heaved out a dramatic sigh. “Class starts in ten minutes.”

  Bailey sent her a piercing scowl. “If you’re worried about being late, go ahead and go. I’ll get there when I get there.”

  No way was Tess abandoning her. Best friends just didn’t do that. When one went on a super-crazy mission, like stalking a complete stranger outside a college building, the other was obligated to stupidly follow along out of pure lovin
g loyalty.

  And anyway, Tess still didn’t want to travel anywhere on campus by herself. She’d learned last night that when she wasn’t on Granton school grounds, she didn’t freak out. She’d been fine by herself at the hospital, and even when she’d traveled to Bristol and back. But as soon as she’d parked Bailey’s car in the lot outside their dormitory, the creepies had immediately invaded her. She was only cool when her best friend was at her side. So, she was not leaving her best friend’s side as long as she could help it. This campus was haunted with too many memories for that kind of courage. And Tess was in no way courageous.

  “Do you think he’s an English major?” Tess wondered idly as she watched another handful of people pile through the doors of Ferdinand.

  Bailey snorted. “I highly doubt it. True cowboys do not major in English. It’s probably a required credit he had to take.”

  Tess opened her mouth to start a lecture about judging people when a more pressing thought struck her. “Hey, do you think I should major in English?”

  “No,” Bailey said without even thinking it through.

  After deliberating the possibility herself, Tess shrugged and agreed. She might love to read her fiction books, but grammar and writing were so not her thing. “Yeah,” she murmured aloud. “Probably not.” Clearing the polish from her pointer finger, she moved to her middle, only to pause, deciding to leave the flecked pink paint there. In case she needed to flip someone off—which she’d never done before, but hey, you never knew when it might be a good time to start—she at least wanted it to be a colorful bird. “So, what do you think I should major in?”

  “Science.” Bailey answered without missing a beat.

  “Really?” Tess wrinkled her nose. “Science?” She’d never thought of herself as a science nerd before.

  Bailey stood on her tiptoes and craned her neck looking out into the main courtyard. “You’ve always gotten better scores in science than I have. It’s downright freakish how well you memorized the name of every muscle in the body.”

  “Hey, that’s not freakish.” Lifting her chin, Tess gave an offended sniff. “It’s just the sign of a good memory.”

  “And yet you can’t name the capitals of all the states, you constantly mess up your times tables, especially the sevens and eights, and you still can’t recite the Lord’s Prayer.”

  Tess dropped her hands to her hips and scowled back. “Hey, you botch up the Lord’s Prayer just as badly as I do, babe.”

  “But I don’t know the name of every freaking muscle in my body either, now do I?” Looking as if she might start bawling, Bailey shoved her chin-length, multi-colored hair out of her face and took a deep breath. “I don’t think he’s coming here today. We’re wasting our time.”

  Opening her mouth to snip something acerbic back about how well Bailey knew strange electrical terms, Tess took in the distress on her friend’s face and wisely stayed quiet. “We might as well get to class, then,” she answered, adding a commiserating sigh.

  Bailey had been right, though; she’d loved the anatomy and physiology chapter they’d covered in her Life Sciences course they’d taken together last semester. The inner workings of humans intrigued her so much. Learning each part of the body and how it worked had been like piecing together the most complex and interesting puzzle ever.

  “Yeah, we should go,” Bailey mumbled. “I doubt any professor will cancel classes today, not after that nasty bulk email the administration sent out yesterday, scolding them.”

  She looked so depressed, Tess wanted to give her a hug to cheer her up. The world just wasn’t the same when her buddy wasn’t making a sarcastic observation about life. She was tempted to blurt out a really asinine comment just so Bailey could pounce all over it like she usually did.

  But a commotion at the entrance of Ferdinand stole their attention.

  “Hey,” someone called loudly and almost rudely. Both Bailey and Tess turned to watch some lanky dark-haired guy pause in the opened doorway where he was about to exit. He pointed up at a hulking blond boy who was trying to enter. “I know you, don’t I?”

  Obviously not wanting to engage anyone in conversation, the blond lowered his chin as if trying to shield his identity. He mumbled some answer, but Tess couldn’t hear what he said. When he tried to shoulder past the boy leaving the building, the dark-haired guy set a hand on his chest to keep him there.

  “No. I know who you are,” he insisted, his eyes narrowing ominously. “You’re one of those assholes who used to pick on Einstein.”

  Instant apprehension prickled Tess’s scalp. It felt as if every red hair on her head curled in a different direction. She gulped and subconsciously eased closer to Bailey until Bailey grasped her hand and unobtrusively backed them away from the main doors of Ferdinand.

  Everyone else who was gathering to enter or exit the building paused to glance at the blond in question.

  A muscle in his jaw ticked before he gave a quick negative shake of his head. “You got the wrong guy,” he mumbled as he tried to step around the brunette.

  But the boy talking to him wasn’t about to let him pass so easily. “No. I remember you. You were there that night a whole group of you ran Einstein up a tree.”

  Tess gasped and covered her mouth, vaguely remembering that night. She’d been a little under the influence—or as Bailey had called it, totally plastered—and she, Bailey, and Paige had gotten a ride back to Grammar Hall from the designated driver who was now Paige’s boyfriend. When he’d pulled to the curb, they’d found a dozen guys picking on Einstein, and the bullies had cornered him up a tree. Paige had chased them off and accosted the lead bully by twisting his finger and taking him to the ground.

  “Is he the one Paige went ninja on?” Tess murmured quietly to Bailey, squinting as she focused on him now. She remembered so little of that night.

  “No,” Bailey whispered back. “That guy had dark hair.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, how does it feel—” the lanky boy kept pushing at the blond’s chest, taunting him “—being responsible for tormenting a scrawny little sixteen-year-old boy until he tumbled right over the edge of insanity and killed eleven people? You feel like a big, strong, tough guy now?”

  Though the blond was easily twice the size of the brunette, he lifted his hands and backed away from him. “Man, just leave me alone.”

  “I knew two people who died that day.”

  “And I didn’t kill them,” the blond insisted.

  “Yeah, well, you might as well have. Their blood is on your hands.”

  The blond whimpered out a tortured sound. Instead of trying to enter Ferdinand Hall again, he whirled around and took off running, bulldozing right past Bailey and bumping into Tess, shoving her out his way. She stumbled off balance, and Bailey’s grip tightening on her arm was the only thing that kept her from tumbling to the ground.

  Stunned, she gaped after the blond as he raced off. She’d caught a glimpse of a full-colored tattoo of the Roadrunner on his forearm when he’d shoved her. And by the way he was speeding now, she could almost see his legs turning like blurred wheels the way the cartoon character’s did.

  “Coward!” someone shouted after him.

  But he didn’t answer; he just kept running.

  “Well, that was…intense.” Bailey grabbed Tess and hurried them away from the scene.

  “That poor, poor boy,” Tess said, glancing after the fleeing Roadrunner. “They didn’t have to make him feel so bad.”

  Bailey snorted. “Are you freaking kidding me? The jerk had it coming. He and that entire crowd picked on Einstein like—”

  “Can you please not say his name,” Tess hissed, rubbing her arms as her skin prickled with unease. “Gives me the creeps every time I hear it.”

  “What? Einstein?”

  Tess shuddered and sent her friend a glare.

  Bailey rolled her eyes. “You are such a sissy. What do you think’s going to happen? His ghost is going to come haunt you i
f you speak his name aloud?”

  “Maybe,” Tess challenged, only making Bailey laugh. She poked her buddy in the ribs. Hard. “Now, hush.”

  “Ouch.” Bailey stopped laughing and scowled as she rubbed her side. “In any case, I can’t believe you’re feeling sorry for a bully.”

  “I didn’t say I felt sorry for him, exactly. I just don’t think bullying him right back is the answer. I mean, what if he goes off the deep end next and starts another rampage? The way he and his crowd treated…you-know-who was absolutely wrong. But you have to admit, the kid was super weird. I don’t know how many times he insulted me, and I always went out of my way to be nice to him.”

  “Yeah.” Bailey nodded. “He was strange. No doubt about it.”

  “I bet all those bullies feel bad enough as it is. There’s no reason to rub it in or start a whole new cycle of bullies to pick on them. It needs to stop somewhere.”

  Shrugging as if she was going to agree to disagree, Bailey appeared thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I haven’t seen much of anyone from that crowd since it happened. They all just kind of went into hiding. Especially that head bully.”

  Tess wrinkled her nose. “What head bully? I don’t remember a head bully.”

  “Sure. He was the one Paige took to the ground the night you got all drunk with—”

  “Yeah, I remember that part.” Remembering who had gotten her drunk sobered her up immediately. Not only had Dorian Wade been the first person killed by Einstein, but he’d attacked Paige a few nights before his death. If any name was taboo to mention aloud, it was probably his. What was worse, Jonah had to have known Wade since they’d both been on the football team.

  She hoped the two hadn’t been close. How creepy would that be?

  Tess cleared her throat, trying to blot Dorian Wade from her memory. “But I don’t remember what this head bully you’re talking about looked like, so…I have no idea if I’ve seen him around campus or not.”

  “I bet he dropped out of school.” Bailey nodded as if that had to be the only conclusion. “I totally would if I were him. Because seriously, he’s got to be the most despised student on campus these days.”