by Gina Ciocca
I put my hand on his chest as he came toward me. “No, you won’t. You’re almost as drunk as he is.” I lowered my voice. “I’ll take him, and I’ll come right back. Promise.”
Ryan nodded, though it didn’t stop him from shooting a dirty look over my shoulder at David. I gave him one of my own as I nodded toward the sliding glass doors, indicating he should follow me outside.
The skies had opened up, driving needlelike raindrops into the ground. I threw my hood over my head and scurried to my car as fast as I could with my woven flats getting more waterlogged by the second. David sprinted beside me and we both slammed the car doors behind us, panting. The quiet that engulfed the interior felt deafening, even surrounded by the pounding of the rain.
I planned to avoid speaking, to avoid even looking at David for the entire ride. I threw my soaked hoodie across my headrest before starting the car and staring out the windshield while he stared out the passenger-side window. Then he ruined my plan, the way he’d been ruining everything lately.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for trying to—”
“Forget it,” I cut off as the car backed down the driveway. I didn’t want to hear him say he’d tried to kiss me, and I didn’t want to think about it. “Just forget it.”
“You hate me, don’t you?”
“No. You’re drunk and you weren’t thinking straight. Now please, let’s stop talking about it.”
David nodded and turned back to the window. And even though I’d told him I didn’t want to talk about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About the Winter Swirl, and how jealous I’d been when he’d gone with Isabel. How I’d figured out too late that he’d wanted to go with me, and how my whole life had taken a nosedive right after. How he’d told me Isabel didn’t matter to him, even though he’d defended her when I suspected her of starting rumors about me. How, even after he knew what a spiteful person she truly was, he still sneaked back to Norwood on weekends to see her.
The next words I said detonated like a bomb before I could stop them: “Why are you still seeing Isabel?”
David’s head whipped toward me. “What?”
“Isabel. Why are you still hanging out with her? If she never mattered to you, and if I was the one you wanted to go to the dance with, and if you never would have bothered with her if you’d known what a bitch she was, then why are you still bothering?”
He stared at me with a confused look on his face. “Who said I’m still seeing Isabel?”
“Why else would you go back to Connecticut? Your mother isn’t there, your grandparents aren’t there. What’s the pull, David? Are you cheating on Violet?”
He let out a bewildered snort. “Let me see if I have this right. I tried to kiss you tonight, and you’re all bent out of shape about Isabel ?”
My voice lowered and I couldn’t look at him. “I know you were with her the night before I left. At Maddie’s.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s not important,” I mumbled.
His jaw dropped and he stared at me with a hardened look in his eyes. “Not that it’s any of your business, Kelse, but I didn’t even know she was going to be at Maddie’s that night. I’ve seen Isabel once since I moved here. I applied to her school, and she offered to give me a tour. I haven’t seen her since, and I’ve never cheated on Violet.” He shook his head, his expression now one of disgust. “And for the record? If I do see Isabel again, it’s because the biggest difference between you and her is that she wants me around and you don’t.”
He delivered his words with the precision of a surgeon, slicing me open with each one. Gone were the drowsy eyes and the sloppy enunciation, like he’d never been drunk at all.
Like he’d never . . . and yet he’d tried . . .
I turned to him as we pulled into the familiar gravel driveway of his grandfather’s house. “Were you really even drunk tonight?”
David snorted again. “Right. I faked drunk because getting you alone is the focus of my entire life. Get over yourself, Kelsey.”
“Excuse me, but I wasn’t the one talking crazy about the prom and trying to kiss you tonight.”
“And if I’d been sober, I would have realized it wasn’t worth it. I don’t even know you anymore.”
“I’m so tired of hearing it!” I exploded. “I’m sick of it, David! So my hair color’s a little different. So I’m not sickly, helpless, or pathetic anymore. Is that what’s bothering you? That I’m not a broke nothing anymore? That I don’t need you to play hero? Quit being such a jealous bastard!”
David’s face fell and his eyes darkened. I knew I’d gone too far. I grabbed his arm as he reached for the door handle.
“Wait, David, I’m sorry,” I said desperately. “I didn’t mean it. I’m trying to tell you I’m still me.”
But my voice trailed off as I said it, because I knew it wasn’t true. The girl who’d left him behind a year ago would rather have died than to say something so hurtful.
He didn’t look at me when he spoke. “I don’t know this you. So if this is who you always were”—he turned ever so slightly, enough to let me see the total reproach in his eyes—“then I’m glad you never loved me. I never would have burdened you with my friendship if I’d known what you were really like.”
He opened the door and took off into the rain. The sound of it roared through the car, almost as loud as my heart drumming in my chest.
With my lips set in an angry line, I cut the ignition and threw my door open. I stomped around my car as quickly as my shoes slurping through the mud would allow, and grabbed his arm again.
“How can you say that?” I shouted. “You were everything to me and you knew it! But you waited until the last second to say it, and then you wasted no time at all running back to that bitch! You only wanted me because you couldn’t have me, and just because I didn’t say I loved you on your terms, now I’m some horrible, unfeeling beast?”
Rivers of raindrops ran down our faces, spraying off our lips as we panted from equal parts chill and rage. David’s voice was low and even when he spoke. “You don’t love me. You never did. I’m just glad I know it now, so I won’t keep making a total ass of myself.”
I clenched my fists at my sides and gritted my teeth. “It’s not true!”
Now he raised his voice too. “When you left Norwood, you wanted to forget it. I never thought you meant all of it, me included. I poured my heart out to you like a total asshole that night, and you ignored every message, every call. You cut me out of your life!”
“I was scared!” My lips trembled and I struggled not to cry.
“Well you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Because now I’m cutting you out of mine.”
Some kind of strangled sound escaped me, and I dived at him, my chest colliding against his rib cage with enough force to knock my breath out of me. I captured his rain-soaked face between my hands.
I didn’t even realize I was going to kiss him until he tried to turn away.
My palm dug into his cheek and I stood on my toes, smashing my lips against his.
He didn’t respond, but he didn’t try to pull back. I wound my arms around him and stood higher on my toes, refusing to let him breathe until he kissed me back.
When he finally did, sparks shot through my entire body. His lips parted, and I tasted the rain, the mint of his ChapStick, that other something so specifically David, all mingling with the faint trace of alcohol on his tongue. One of his hands gripped my waist and the other pressed into the small of my back. I barely felt my feet leave the ground when he placed me on the hood of my car, pressing my body between his torso and the cold, wet metal, his lips never leaving mine.
My legs wrapped around him. My hands slipped beneath his soaked T-shirt, slid up his smooth back. I couldn’t get close enough. It was the first time since that morning in the hall that
I’d let myself feel this craving, this need to have him close to me. For a moment it was like no time had passed at all. The entire year melted away, and we were back in the woods. How I wished I could relive that night, when it was just me and my best friend, finally acknowledging something else between us.
Before we’d broken each other’s hearts.
Twenty-Six
Connecticut
Summer before Junior Year
I ran through the woods until I broke into the clearing of my backyard, my underused muscles begging for mercy.
Even if I went inside and headed right up the stairs, my parents would ask why I’d come back so soon, and I didn’t want anyone seeing the mess the last half hour or so had made of me. I curled up in a ball on the side of the house and hugged my knees, jumping a mile when my cell phone started to ring for the second time. David again. I hit ignore.
My head spun with everything that had happened. He’d kissed me. My best friend had kissed me, and he’d told me he loved me.
He’d waited until we’d hardly ever see each other to go ahead and turn my feelings into a tumbleweed of sticky, tangled confusion. Maybe he only wanted me because he couldn’t have me. Or because if I lived in a different state, I wouldn’t be around to see how he handled—or didn’t handle—girls who swarmed him at every opportunity. He could have his cake and eat it too.
How convenient. How selfish.
Yes, angry was the way to go. I wanted to be angry. Angry was so much better than sad. So I fumed until I felt it was safe to go inside, ignoring two more calls from David in the interim. I went straight into the bathroom and washed up for bed, then threw myself down on my mattress—literally, just my mattress. The bed frame had already been loaded into the U-Haul. I clamped my eyes shut and demanded sleep to take over. The sooner tomorrow came, the better.
Problem was, with my eyes closed, I couldn’t control the images flashing behind my eyelids. As hard as I tried not to think about kissing David, it was the only thing I could think about. It didn’t help that my shirt still smelled like him, and my blankets were a crappy substitute for the warmth of his body. So, naturally, it wasn’t long until I started sobbing again.
Within minutes my bedroom door creaked open.
“Kelsey? Are you okay?” Miranda asked.
“I’m fine. Go away.”
“But you’re crying. Are you sad about moving?”
“No! I can’t wait to go! I can’t wait to leave this shit town and these stupid people. Leave me alone.”
She ignored my order and came closer. “Are you crying because you’re going to miss David?”
I meant to say, “David is an idiot,” but a round of gasping sobs stole my breath, and “He kissed me” came out instead. The mattress dipped as Miranda climbed onto it next to me. “I swear to God, Miranda, if you ever tell anyone about this, I will never forgive you. Promise me you’ll never tell.”
Her huge blue eyes glistened in the dark. “I promise, but why is it bad that he kissed you? I thought you liked him.”
“There’s no point in liking him. We’re leaving tomorrow and I’ll never see him. I’m going to make all new friends and David will move on and I’ll meet someone great and he’ll be the guy of my dreams.”
“Why do you have to go to Newport to find the guy of your dreams if he’s right here?”
Her words were like icicles down my spine.
It was exactly what I hadn’t wanted to think about: that I’d fooled myself into thinking the best things were yet to come, waiting for me to go to them. When in reality there was a very good chance I’d be leaving at least one of them behind.
I sat up, covering my eyes with my hands. “Oh, God,” I moaned. “What did I do?” I threw the covers off me. I couldn’t sleep tonight, not without seeing him again. And no way could I leave without telling him I loved him too. “I have to go. If Mom and Dad ask, I left something at David’s.” I threw on a pair of shorts before running out of the room, then doubled back. “Do not repeat a word of anything I told you.” Miranda pretended to zipper her lip and then flicked her wrist to mimic throwing away a key.
I bolted through the woods, panting and sweating by the time I reached David’s doorstep. Not seeing his car in the driveway did nothing to help the runaway-train pace of my heart.
Mr. Kerrigan opened the door, surprise and concern mingling on his face when he saw me. “Kelsey? Are you all right?”
I nodded, trying to keep the gasping out of my voice. “I’m fine. Is David here?”
“He’s not, but come in. Sit down and let me get you a glass of water.”
I started to protest, but he’d already made a beeline to the kitchen. I must’ve looked worse than I thought. I perched on the edge of the couch, ready to take flight again as soon as he told me where David was.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Mr. Kerrigan said as he handed me a tall glass filled with more ice cubes than liquid. He sat in the armchair across from me and gave me a smile that didn’t match the sadness in his eyes. “I know I wished you luck with your move, but I don’t think I’ve told you how much we’re going to miss you.”
“You’ll still see me.”
At the time I believed it.
“Of course. David’s already been asking if we can head up to my father’s early this year.” The mention of David made me think of his lips against mine, and I was suddenly very aware of the water making its way through my stomach. Mr. Kerrigan looked at his hands. “You know, Kelsey, David is my proudest accomplishment. Knowing that he chooses to spend his time with people like you—good, salt of the earth people with smart heads on their shoulders—it makes me feel like I’ve done something right.” The smile still played on his lips, but an unmistakable mist gathered in his eyes.
I put my glass on the end table next to me and stood up. Mr. Kerrigan did the same, and I wrapped my arms around him in a fierce hug.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He pulled away with a chuckle and held me at arm’s length. “Look at me, getting old and sappy on you when you came here looking for my son.”
I apologized and told him I didn’t want to run off, but it was getting late and I’d need to head home soon.
“Do you know where he went?”
“He said he was going over to Hemlock Lane. A girl named Maggie’s house? Or was it Maddie?”
“Maddie.” The anticipatory butterflies in my chest grew strangely heavy. “I know this is going to sound weird, but can I borrow David’s bike? I sort of need to find him.”
I flew down the hill, pedaling as hard as I could, tempting fate to flip the whole bike over. Shadowed woods and angular houses with small, illuminated square windows blurred alongside me until the road began to widen and the treetops grew sparse and graceful, and I took a left turn onto the cul-de-sac of storybook colonials that composed Maddie’s neighborhood.
I hopped off the bike, trying to get my breathing under control as I propped it against the car-lined curb edging the Clairmonts’ property. My ears were met with the sound of voices coming from the backyard, and the crack of Wiffle balls against plastic bats. I tiptoed slowly through the grass, hesitating at the fence trellis that served as the entrance to Maddie’s yard.
David stood in the middle of the lawn wielding a yellow bat. He picked up a ball from a bucket at his feet, tossed it into the air, and smacked it across the yard, where Eric ran to catch it, one hand in the air. Maddie and Jared Rose lay snuggling on a hammock a few feet away, the same hammock where Maddie and I used to swing lazily and read books and talk about our crushes. Maddie’s older brother sat near a cooler on the patio, handing a beer to someone.
Isabel.
I angled my body behind the trellis posts as feelings warred within me, the desire to run to David and fling my arms around him battling a surging, overwhelming sensation that I didn’t b
elong there. It was enough to keep me from taking one more step.
David had sought these people out after I pushed him away. He felt comfortable turning to them, these same individuals who had slowly but surely edged me out of their lives.
Or maybe I’d edged them out of mine. I couldn’t really tell anymore. Either way, I was literally very much on the outside looking in.
“Nice!” Eric yelled as David sent a Wiffle ball careening into the yard next door, and Maddie whooped from her spot on the hammock. He’d hit it like he had a serious vendetta against it. I was willing to bet no one else knew why. To any other person, it would’ve looked like a typical group of friends hanging out on a summer night.
As if the girl hiding behind the fence had never been part of their lives at all.
David threw the bat down as Eric ran off to retrieve the ball. Almost instantly, Isabel appeared in front of him, clutching her beer bottle against her abdomen and tentatively holding another out to him like a peace offering. I stood stone-still as David looked from the bottle to her, frowning. Isabel said something I couldn’t hear. David said something back, something clipped and short. She set her beer down on the grass and put her hand on his arm, speaking more pressingly this time, more earnestly.
I knew what she was doing. Trying to wind her slimy tentacles around him and pull herself back into his good graces. Again.
David folded his arms across his chest. But he was listening to her. She rose up on her toes with the urgency of her speech. He looked off into the distance. His lips, those beautiful lips that had kissed me only a couple of hours ago, were set tight. When he looked back at her face, something passed over his. His eyes darkened with conflict, like he was on the precipice of forgiving her, once again, or telling her to go to hell.
And maybe it was a trick of the light, but in the next moment I swore I saw the slightest hint of a smile tug at his mouth, and I knew he’d decided. His fingers opened and he reached for the beer. Isabel let her hand linger over his as the bottle transferred from her grip to his. As he took a swig, they turned toward the house. And as they walked away together, Isabel’s arm slid around David’s waist.