We are getting off on the wrong foot here and I don’t want that. I need her to tell me everything. I think I deserve that. “We both owe each other the truth,” I say calmly, taking a seat on the chair Parker was just sitting in. “I’ll answer your questions too if you want.”
Skylar looks thoughtful for a moment. She glances over at Spencer as if to ask him what he thinks. When he motions for her to go ahead and tell me, she turns back to me and in a small voice says, “I wasn’t with him, with him. We were friends for a long time before we even kissed, ok? Our date that night really was our first date.”
“That’s a lie again. You were exclusively his. At least that’s the word going around.” I try to keep my composure, but I can see myself faltering. I don’t want to cry. I can’t believe that even after confronting her head on with this question, she’s still downplaying what he is to her!
Skylar’s eyebrows rise. She’s surprised that I know so much. “Maybe I was… after a while. I don’t see why it matters, though.”
“It matters because you didn’t tell me,” I say in an unsteady voice. Great, here comes the tears. “You were in a relationship with him and you lead me to believe that he hurt you that night. But according to Evan, there’s no way in hell he would have ever done that because he was yours and you were his. So, tell me Skylar, did he rape you?”
She rolls her eyes. “What do you think?”
“Well, did he hurt you then? Because I saw you, and somebody hurt you.”
“Somebody did hurt me, but it wasn’t him. He saved me.”
He saved her.
I can’t even wrap my thoughts around this information after thinking only horrible things about him over the last year and a half. It makes no sense.
“So he’s your hero,” I spit with distaste. “Wow. Great way to treat your hero there, Skylar. Calling him a rapist and then dropping him for someone else.”
“Fuck you. You don’t know anything about it.”
“Because you won’t tell me!” I yell.
“I can’t. I can’t tell Spencer, and I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone. I wish you guys would just get that!”
“We just want to understand,” Spencer says, rubbing her shoulder gently. It annoys me. She doesn’t deserve the comfort.
“Understand that we are back together,” she replies, shrugging his hand off. “That’s all you need to know.”
“Does he love you?” I ask. I don’t want to know. I’m an idiot for even asking, but I ask it anyway.
“Yes,” she replies without hesitation. I inhale a sharp breath.
“Do you love him back?” I manage next.
“Why does it even matter? You and I are over now.”
“Do you love him back? It’s a simple question, and it does matter! It means our entire relationship was a lie and built on a fucking rebound!” I yell. I’m having a hard time keeping my emotions in check. I don’t want to hear her answer, but I know I have to.
“I love him back,” she whispers so softly that I’m not even sure I hear her right away. But as soon as she looks up and into my eyes I know the truth.
My entire demeanor deteriorates and I crumble right there in front of her. I put my face into my hands and sob. Everything I’ve learned tonight about her past, about Parker having been with her far before I had, makes me realize that I’ve wasted a whole eighteen months of my life giving myself to a person who didn’t even deserve it. I wasn’t her first love, I wasn’t her first anything. I was something to fill up an empty place he left in her heart!
“A Misfit and a liar,” I say finally through the sobs. “I don’t even know you. I don’t think I ever did.”
“Maybe you didn’t.”
“Did you know?” I demand from Spencer. I can tell my face is a red and blotchy mess but I don’t care. I need him to see me when I say this. “Of course you knew. She’s your girl, right? I never really was, was I?”
“You’re my girl too. You know that,” Spencer says softly, getting up from the couch and starting toward me but I motion for him to stay away. I don’t want his sympathy.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” I continue. “Right from the start you were against my feelings toward Evan. You never once supported me through any of this confusion. My legitimate confusion! For the first time ever I was attracted to a boy and you knew that was a big and strange thing for me. But all you did was tell me that what I was feeling with him wasn’t real. Anything to protect poor, helpless Skylar, right? I needed someone to understand me, and it should have been you. You let me down! You made me feel like my feelings toward him were wrong! But the minute Skylar goes running off with a guy, a complete delinquent, by the way, you’re ready to accept him and be his friend. You’re a fucking hypocrite!”
He doesn’t know what to say. He steps back and returns to spot on the couch. His mouth agape and his eyes pained. He looks defeated and for a moment I feel bad. “I never said he was my friend and I’ve always supported you,” he replies quietly.
“You’ve always supported your babygirl, but not me. And tonight I finally found out why. Misfits… the both of you. I’m the odd one out on that I guess.”
“You don’t get it,” he says. “I’m stuck between you and Sky, just trying to make the best of it. I don’t want either of your guys in my life, to be perfectly honest with you, but it is what it is. Skylar says Parker is a good guy, you say you don’t want to let Evan go. And that’s where we stand.”
“That’s where we stand,” I repeat, gritting my teeth. I look out the window at the high school in the distance. I wish none of this were happening. I wish that Skylar had never kissed me that night. I wish that I had never kissed her again a week later; I wish that we had never fallen in love with each other. I wish we had just stayed best friends who love each other like sisters. Now I don’t even have a sister. I don’t even have a friend. I have nothing. The quote by the late Alfred Tennyson, ‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, is complete bullshit. I wish I’d never fallen in love with her.
“I’m going to go,” I say finally, pulling myself out of my thoughts and getting up from the chair. “Thanks for being honest with me,” I tell her and I mean it. As much as I hated her answers, it feels good to finally not be in the dark about any of it.
Skylar nods. She looks tired and completely over all of this bickering back and forth between the two of us and to be honest, so am I. I just want to walk out of here as calmly as I walked in and never come back. I slip my sneakers on and reach for the knob of the door.
“For what it’s worth,” Skylar calls out, “I am sorry.”
I turn to face her and give her a slight nod. “I’m sorry, too,” I say sadly, feeling the tears emerge again. I turn around and hurry out the door.
Evan
“What do you want, Evan?” Kelsie says with a sigh the instant she opens her front door Sunday evening and sees me standing on her porch. She’s still angry and I can tell she’s considering closing the door on me, but my bruised face and swollen nose seems to be throwing her off of her game. She wants to ask what happened.
“Where’s Derrick?” I ask, deciding to open this up with a bit of small talk. I know she won’t be the one to start and I want my best friend back. I feel lost without her, but since she’s still mad at me about deciding to see Bree behind Skylar’s back, a certain amount of smooth talking will be necessary to get her to open up.
She shrugs. “He’s gone to a basketball game with his brothers. What happened to your face?”
I knew she would ask. It’s all a part of my master plan.
“Small disagreement with someone,” I reply. Keep her guessing, that’s the key to getting her to continue talking with me.
“Fine, don’t tell me. What do you want?” she asks again, this time with less patience in her tone.
“Want to go for a walk with me?” I look into her eyes and smile with as much charisma as I can possibly muster.
Sh
e hesitates, but I know that she can’t ignore the smile. She loves my smile, it’s like her kryptonite. She shrugs casually, attempting to appear bored with my request. “I guess. Let me get my shoes.”
She turns back into the house, grabs the ugly, clunky, black shoes she’s always wearing, and then calls out to her younger brother, “Tell mom I’m walking with Evan. I’ll be back in an hour!”
“Yeah, yeah,” her brother returns from upstairs as Kelsie slips the ugly things onto her feet.
We start down the street shortly afterward, not really walking anywhere in particular. I don’t care where we go; I just need to talk to her, and I need for her to listen. “I wanted to tell you that you were right,” I say after a few minutes of walking in silence.
“About what?” she asks coolly. She has no intention of making this easy for me at all.
“I really am no better than Tris.”
She gives me a solid nod but doesn’t say anything back. I know she wants to know more, but she’s still mad and doesn’t want to ask me to elaborate. She’s so damn stubborn.
I sigh. “I feel guilty.”
She stops walking and turns to face me. “Why are you telling me this? Do you want me to say I told you so? Because, I told you so.”
“That’s not why I’m telling you,” I say. It’s not easy for me to admit to her when she’s right and the fact that she’s making that process even more difficult makes me very frustrated. “Jeez Kels, I miss you, ok?”
She doesn’t say anything for a moment as she thinks over my confession. I know she’s still angry, but I can see that she does, in fact, want to bury the hatchet. I know my best friend. “I miss you too,” she says finally.
Good.
“Can we please get back to being friends then?” I ask. “Derrick’s just plain horrible with advice.”
Kelsie chuckles. “He is pretty horrible,” she agrees, taking my hand into hers and smiling up at me.
We’re good. This is her telling me we’re good. I’m glad.
“I’m crazy about her,” I say after a few more minutes, “I’m falling in love with her.” I want to make Kelsie understand that this isn’t just about sex for me. This girl has captivated me.
“I see,” she says with a raised brow. “And where does Skylar fit into all of this?”
“Skylar’s with someone else now,” I reply apprehensively, clearly uncertain about what exactly is going on with Skylar and Parker. Is she with him now in order to get back at Bree? Is she trying to make her jealous? Because if that’s the case, I think it might be working.
“Why do you say it like that? Who is it?” she asks, pulling her hand away and looking up into my eyes. She stops our stroll abruptly and waits for my answer.
“Doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“No, I suppose not. I’m just curious.” She faces forward and starts to walk again. I follow along next to her.
“Let’s just say I have a history with him and it’s not a good one,” I say.
“With him?”
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you didn’t know about Skylar’s past before Bree.”
“Rumors, yeah. But the only person I’ve ever actually seen her with is Bree,” she says.
“Well turns out she’s into guys too. One particular guy actually.”
“Who you have a history with…”
“Yep.”
“Don’t tell me that it’s Tristan,” She says with a huge grin.
“Pretty fucking close, but no, not him.”
“Parker?” She asks, uncertainly.
“You got it,” I reply dryly.
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope.”
“I thought Skylar and Bree were still together.”
“Skylar found out about us a week ago apparently,” I say. “But she only confronted us about it last night.”
“How did that go?”
I shrug, “She ran off to be with Parker.”
Kelsie doesn’t look convinced. “She gets with him the instant she finds out about the two of you? I find that a little hard to believe.”
“He’s the one who told her about us,” I say defensively, attempting to prove my case. “Apparently they have a history.” I’m careful not to elaborate on who actually told me that little piece of information, though. I can’t break my promise to Derrick.
“He told her? Was their history…like, physical?”
I cringe. “I don’t know Kelsie! Jeez…I guess so.” That is seriously not an image I want to think about, especially after having walked in on the both of them half naked last night. Not to mention that damn video. I’ve seen enough of Parker’s body to last me a lifetime of nightmares as far as I’m concerned.
“Before Adrienne and Tris, or after?”
She just had to ask. It’s such a touchy subject for me and she says it like it’s the most casual thing in the world. I groan. “I don’t know for sure, Kels. It seems like Skylar knows about it though, so my guess is after.”
“Why? Did she say something to you about it?”
I squeeze my eyes shut trying to stay calm through her series of ridiculous questions. I mean, seriously, who asks this many questions about people they don’t even know?
I don’t want to tell her about my confrontation with Parker because I can’t have her knowing I was at the mansion last night. There are too many possible questions she could ask me and too many opportunities for me to slip up. “Something like that,” I eventually decide to reply, hoping she’ll digress.
“So then if Skylar is living happily ever after with Parker now, why do you feel so guilty?”
I think about that for a moment because she’s right. Technically, Skylar’s said her piece and seems to have moved on. I shouldn’t be feeling guilty anymore, and yet I do. “I guess it’s because Bree’s so sad,” I say finally. “Skylar’s out of her life now and it’s… hurting her.” Do I want to go more into it than that? Should I tell her that I suspect Bree isn’t over Skylar?
Kelsie nods but doesn’t speak right away. I can tell she’s thinking over her words carefully. She doesn’t want us to start fighting again and I’m grateful for that. “Maybe she’s finally realizing what the price of choosing you really is. It seems like at first she thought she could have the both of you and now she sees that she can’t, so she’s dealing with the loss.”
“Maybe,” I mumble, not really liking her reply but respecting it. Kelsie doesn’t believe in sugar coating something, she says it like she sees it.
I look to the ground and she squeezes my hand to get me to look up at her. “You’re a good person,” she says once she has my eye.
“I’m not so sure about that anymore,” I confess, honestly feeling like I’ve lost a part of myself since the day I decided to be a bastard and steal someone’s girlfriend away. And now karma’s paying me back full force because Bree still has feelings for Skylar and I put myself right in the middle of it.
I look ahead of us once again and realize that we’ve reached the basketball park. It’s dark and quiet; no one is playing at this time of night. But off in the distance I see a small group of people gathered on the bleachers.
Kelsie stops in her tracks. “Maybe we should turn around,” she suggests cautiously, eyeing the circle of four before us.
I don’t take my eyes off of the small group, trying to figure out who they are. Three guys and one girl, I realize. And then I freeze in my tracks the minute it occurs to me who two of the four people are.
“It’s Tris.” I say, “and Parker.”
Kelsie shifts her weight from one foot to the other, unsure of what I’m planning on doing with that information. “Let’s just turn around.”
I shake Kelsie’s hand from mine and clench my fists tightly as I inhale deeply. I should turn around. I don’t want another knee to the nose from that asshole. And four on two is pretty shitty odds anyway. Derrick is not anywhere near; it would be a bad idea to get mouthy tonight. “Yeah, I think that
’s a pretty good idea,” I say finally.
She lets out a sigh of relief. “Good,” she says, starting in the other direction.
And then I see her.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say, feeling a sudden rush of anger and adrenalin coursing through me. No way this is happening!
She has her arms wrapped around the neck of the guy I don’t recognize, provocatively pushing her body up against him. He kisses her with a roughness that makes me want to punch the little shit right in the face! Who the fuck does this guy think he is?
“I’ll fucking kill them!” I growl, storming toward the four of them with so much anger boiling up inside of me that I can’t be sure that I won’t actually kill them once I reach them.
“Evan!” Kelsie hisses after me in a panic. “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s Ellie!” I somehow manage to reply through my rage.
Kelsie’s eyes grow wide, “Fuck,” she says before hurrying after me. She knows very well that if Ellie’s with them there’s no way I’ll be turning around and pretending I didn’t see them.
“Tris!” I call out angrily. I make it very clear in my tone that I know my sister is with him, that it’s probably a drug-related meeting, and that I’m now going to kill him.
He turns around and, the minute he sees it’s me, smiles tauntingly. He leans into Parker and says something to him. Parker turns around, his permanently obnoxious smirk growing twice the size.
Ellie scrambles off of the bleachers, giving the other guy one last kiss before taking off in the opposite direction. I shake my head. What a fucking idiot.
“Well, if it isn’t Evan Daniels,” Parker says once I approach them closer. “You’d think after the ass kicking I gave you last night you’d want to wait a bit before round two.”
I see Kelsie's face distort into a frown. Well, there goes my plan to keep her guessing. Now she knows.
“You’re dealing drugs to my sister,” I accuse them, ignoring Parker’s attempt to unravel me.
Tris shrugs, “That’s between us and your sister.”
“She’s fourteen, you piece of shit!” I growl.
Keep From Falling (Markson Grove Series Book 1) Page 27