Between the Boys (The Basin Lake Series Book 1)

by Stephanie Vercier

  “Almost five years,” I say.

  She does a double take. “Five years? Holy shit, girl. Don’t you feel like you wasted your youth on a boy who could never love you the way you wanted him to?”

  It’s tricky the way she says that because it makes me think of Evan, not Mike. Technically I was with Mike so I wouldn’t waste my youth on Evan. It’s enough to give anyone a migraine.

  “No,” I say. “High school romances don’t usually make it the long haul, right?”

  “Depends,” she says, “but it’s all about the fun you have in between. I’m guessing you and Mike never sealed the deal?”

  I shake my head.

  She nods with what looks like sympathy. “Now show me one of Garrett.”

  She hands the phone back, and I swipe through our prom pics, choosing a close up of us in our crowns.

  “This is us,” I say, waiting for her to approve, to comment on his gorgeous brown eyes, chiseled features and all-American guy look.

  “King and queen! Pure royalty… but nope,” she says, making a bit of a face. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s absolutely gorgeous—I definitely wouldn’t throw him out of my bed—but you guys don’t look right together, and your chances for physical contact are nil unless you like road trips or have some frequent flyer miles.”

  “Hmm…” I take my phone back, not wanting to admit she might be right.

  “Sorry,” she says, “but I see you with someone more like—”

  “Evan?”

  She laughs. “Well, not Evan, because I’m so going after that boy, but perhaps Evan’s older brother, that is if there’s an older brother in existence?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well, then, you’ve at least got to find yourself a guy who will punch out another guy for being a creeper.”

  “I already have Garrett,” I say.

  She offers me a look like I’m just deluding myself, and I don’t get how she can see that all from one picture. “If Evan is really one of your best friends, then you’ve got to embrace what he did for you. I’m sure he just wants to protect you.”

  “Look, I’m not saying Evan’s an ass.” I’m afraid that I’m painting him all wrong. “I’m just saying he went a little overboard.”

  “So go and talk to him about it. I’m sure he’s calmed down, so just let him know you’re grateful he was there for you but to hold the punch back next time.” Natalie interrupts herself with a giggle before adding, “And then send him my way because I still think a good punch for the right reason is kind of hot.” She lifts her eyebrows and flashes a smile.

  Her smile flusters me. She’s just told me that I don’t belong with Garrett and that Evan is pretty much a hero and that I should be with a guy just like him, not him though because she’d still like a crack at him herself. I can’t help but to feel like she’s making my concerns about Evan sound trivial, but she doesn’t know Evan like I do, and I’d like to help him avoid getting into any trouble at all costs. The last thing he needs is for the bearded guy to come after him and press charges or try to sue him.

  “Well, I need to protect Evan too,” I finally say, even if it’s from himself. “But I’ll talk to him, like you said.”

  Her eyes get a bit of a shadow to them, like I’ve turned her fun and games into a real chore. “It would be a start,” she says like she wants to avoid any further disagreement. “And I could join if you wanted the backup.”

  “No, that’s okay.” I’m not sure how Evan would take Natalie teaming up with me to help settle things between us, and besides, I’m a little worried she might use it as a way to get closer to him, to build him up while he sees me as the girl who is tearing him down.

  “You sure? I could help you cook him an apology dinner.”

  “I’m sure, but thanks,” I say.

  Our conversation pretty much dies down after that, and we settle back into our studying. When she gets up and goes to the bathroom, I text Evan:

  Me: I’d love to talk about what happened today. I’m not mad. Can I make you dinner tonight?

  He doesn’t reply right away, but I understand. He’s probably not happy about being asked to leave after feeling as though he was defending me from a homophobic asshole. I head to my afternoon classes, checking my phone in between. By the time I’m back at the library and meeting up with Natalie again, I’m a little worried. I call, but it goes right to voicemail.

  “He shuttin’ you out?” Natalie looks up from her laptop after I make the call, no doubt deducing he hasn’t been responding to me.

  “He’s not answering,” I say, staring at my phone. “I guess he hasn’t cooled down after all.”

  “Does he normally act like that? Ignore you, I mean.”

  I think back to the four days he put the deep freeze on Garrett and I after seeing us together at Pamela’s. If he’s planning to do the same thing now, it’s going to be pretty awkward considering we live together.

  “Sometimes,” I finally say.

  She flashes me a sympathetic look before saying, “Well, it’s looking stormy out, so if you want a ride back to your apartment, I’m about ready to pack up unless you wanted to grab a quick bite first?”

  “No, I should probably still try to make that dinner,” I say, “but I’ll take the ride.”

  We end up running to Natalie’s car, a cute little red VW Golf, as the skies have opened and a torrential summer rain is pouring down on us. I ask Natalie to drop me off at the grocery store that’s a few blocks from the apartment because, even though Evan still hasn’t answered me, I’m determined to make a truce dinner for him, even if he has to eat it as leftovers.

  Natalie insists on waiting for me, and I wonder if she’ll ask to help bring the groceries in next just to see Evan and perhaps get him to invite her inside. But after she drops me home, she just smiles and says she’ll see me tomorrow.

  His car is in his parking spot, so he’s home. And as I make my way up the stairs, I’m figuratively crossing my fingers he’s not as mad at me as I fear. Hopefully the spaghetti, garlic bread and salad I’m planning to make will be a small gesture toward easing our disagreement. I remain hopeful until the moment I open the door and smell the telltale scent of weed and find Evan sitting on the couch with two of the guys he met at orientation, sharing a joint and drinking. Beer bottles litter the coffee table as they sit watching what looks like some kind of international soccer match.

  Great. Just great.

  EVAN

  I don’t know why Paige coming home is a surprise, but it is. Somehow I’d imagined her being so pissed off at me that she’d couch surf at Natalie’s for a week or fly back home. The way she’d looked at me earlier, like I was a monster—I just figured she’d want to be as far from me as possible.

  “You’re soaking wet,” I say to her, busting out laughing, surely a side effect of the pot I’ve been smoking because it isn’t that funny.

  “Yeah, well it’s raining,” she says, annoyed. Then she moves into the kitchen and hoists a grocery bag up onto the counter.

  Jason turns and says, “Hey,” to Paige, and her lips move, but I don’t hear what is probably a “hey” back.

  Standing at the kitchen counter, she looks angry now, and maybe I don’t blame her, having to come home to me and my buddies smoking. But if she’s still pissed about this afternoon, then that’s her problem.

  “Did I tell you what happened today?” I ask Marvin and Jason, about to rehash it for Paige’s benefit.

  “You broke a guy’s nose,” Jason says, stifling laughter. “Dude, you’ve told us like a hundred times.”

  “No, but wait, Jason, I haven’t told you what her reaction was to it.” I turn my beer bottle toward Paige as she empties the grocery bag and fumes.

  “What’s your problem now, Evan?” She abandons the groceries and storms into the living room, sitting in the chair right opposite us on the couch. She looks seriously pissed.

  “You told me to get out,” I say, not exactly happy either
. I’m also hurt. “That guy was the one being the dick, and you told me to calm down and leave.”

  “What are you, like five years old?” Marvin pops off before he hits the joint.

  “Fuck you, Marvin,” I say and take an angry swig of my beer.

  “I texted and called you earlier,” Paige says, pushing right along. “I picked up stuff to make dinner for you… to apologize. Maybe we both were a little in the wrong.”

  Jason is nodding and smiling at Paige, like he’s mesmerized. “He’s just kind of wasted,” he says to her… about me.

  Actually, I’m starting to feel stone cold sober. I pull my phone out. “Well, look at that. One fucking text and a missed call from Paige Kessel.” Shit, it’s actually more than I’d hoped for.

  “I can’t talk to you like this,” Paige says, “not when you’re stoned and drinking.”

  “I’m barely even buzzed.” I reach out to her. “Come and apologize to me right here.” I pat the empty part of the cushion next to me, and I know I’m just pissing her off more, but the mixture of alcohol and marijuana makes me both angry and very needy. I want her as close to me as she was the other night.

  She shakes her head. “You need food, Evan.” She jumps up out of her chair and starts clearing away beer bottles.

  “Hey, those are half full,” I argue once she’s reached the kitchen and is dumping beer down the sink.

  Then Jason shrugs, and he and Marvin get up, clear some more bottles and head into the kitchen with Paige. Feeling like I’m being abandoned, I hop up too.

  “He was just really upset,” Marvin says to Paige in a very loud whisper that I have no problem hearing. “He’s a cool guy, and I shouldn’t have brought the weed, but I figured it would make him feel better.”

  “I don’t think it’s working,” Paige responds.

  Jason and Marvin huddle around her like she’s their super hot den mother, and I’m hit with a pulse of jealousy. It’s not that I think Paige would hook up with either of them, but it just makes me hyperaware that she’s the kind of girl guys like, the kind of girl a guy is willing to defend. And isn’t that what I’d done today? Hadn’t I defended her honor when that creep was bothering her?

  “I’ll make you guys dinner, okay?” She says it to my buddies, but she glances toward me as well.

  “You need help?” Marvin asks, and I glare at him.

  He and Jason might have the munchies, but it’s going to have to wait. Marvin seems to get the message, nudging Jason and squeezing past me until it’s just Paige and I in the kitchen.

  “You think I’m an ass,” I say, leaning against the counter.

  She throws some noodles into a pot of water. “No, but I think it’s better we discuss what happened today when you haven’t been drinking and smoking pot.”

  Man, she exasperates me. “I feel like I can’t win with you, Paige.”

  “What are you talking about?” She’s cutting up onions now and doesn’t return my gaze.

  “Sometimes I just feel like I’m not good enough for you, like I always make mistakes,” I say, feeling as though I’ve been disappointing Paige more than I’ve been pleasing her.

  She throws the onions into a hot skillet. “And I’ve made you feel that way?”

  “Well, you hated Lexi,” I shoot back. “You told me I was dumb to date her, pretty much every single day.”

  “That’s because Lexi is a bitch.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say. “You don’t know the stuff I know about her.”

  “Do I want to?” She’s rolling her eyes dismissively at me.

  “If I told you, you’d probably look down on me some more… be even more disappointed in me than when I got kicked off the football team.”

  “Evan, just go watch the game, okay? You’re saying things you don’t mean.”

  “I do mean them.” Or at least I think I do.

  “Are you sure about that? Because the other night you got kind of drunk, and—”

  “And you and I slept in the same bed.” There it is. I’m sure she doesn’t want to have to recall that night, but I’m going to make her.

  She stirs the onions silently, but I’ve caught her off guard—I can see it in the worried expression in her eyes.

  “You regretted it—I know damn well you did,” I hiss. “You don’t think I’m good enough for you. So, we just ignore it, right?” Just then, Marvin and Jason start hollering about a game score. I couldn’t care less and keep my eyes glued on Paige.

  “You didn’t say a word about it either,” she says, sounding mad, which means she at least feels something about it.

  “Yeah, because I knew what you’d say, and I didn’t want to hear it—I didn’t want to hear you tell me you just felt sorry for me and that it was a mistake.” I take a breath. I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest for days.

  “It was!” She slams a spoon down against the counter, surprising me. “It was wrong, Evan. How could we do that to Garrett? It would break his heart.”

  “Yeah? So let his heart break. Fuck Garrett.” I’m fuming now.

  “Fuck him? Just like that, your best friend. Is that really how you want to play this?”

  “Yeah, Paige, it really is.” I’m not backing down, not when it comes to my former best friend who isn’t as innocent as Paige thinks. “Garrett always gets what he wants, always has and always will. He’s Mr. all-American, and I’m sure he’s going to be getting plenty of pussy come September.”

  The slap she whips across my face shocks me, so much so that I don’t even feel the sting of it.

  She looks horrified, and maybe she is.

  “You’ve got fire in you, Paige,” I say. “I guess the truth hurts.”

  I slip out of the apartment, needing to cool down, needing to get a grip on what I’m feeling and what just happened in there. It’s raining, and I nearly skid down the wooden stairs, but I don’t care. I just need to walk and maybe completely sober up and make sense of whatever it is I’m doing here with Paige.

  Turning through the breezeway, I head toward the woods behind our building, wanting to get lost in them for a while. I’m on the grassy yard behind our unit when Paige calls out my name, catching up and grabbing hold of my arm. I try to shake her off, but her grip is firm, and I relent.

  “Can you just leave me alone?”

  “I won’t do that.” She wraps her arms around me as rain pours down over both of us and forces me to look into her eyes. “Are you afraid that’s what I’d do… leave you? You’re my best friend, Evan, and I’m sorry you think that I’ve been judging you all this time, but if I have, it’s because I know you can do better. I believe in you.”

  “You didn’t believe in me today.” Whether I’m right or not, that’s what it felt like.

  “You shouldn’t have hit that guy,” she says, and I start to pull away, impossible with her hold on me. “But you did it for the right reasons, and I really am grateful to you for that. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it, and… and…” She sighs. “Evan, I shouldn’t have hit you back in the apartment. I’m so sorry.”

  For whatever reason, that makes me smile. “You didn’t hit me, Paige. It was a slap—I barely felt it.”

  “Just as bad.” She sounds mortified. “I don’t know what I was thinking, but I really am sorry.”

  I’m grateful now that she came after me because who knows how long it would have been before we could have had a talk like this if I’d disappeared into the woods.

  “I forgive you,” I say, wrapping my arms around her. “Do you forgive me?”

  “Of course I do,” she says.

  “Good, but this hurts,” I whisper into her ear. “It hurts so much to have you this close and still be… unattainable.”

  PAIGE

  I could tell Evan right now that he’s even more unattainable, that I’ve gone to bed many a night and wished there was a simple solution to this thing we have, something I can only describe as one of us being stuck under the ice of
a frozen pond, floating by, unable to break through while the other sits helplessly above. Unsure that would make any sense to Evan, I just bury my face into his chest so he can’t see my crying. I feel like a failure, as a friend and a girlfriend and as a human being. Life in Basin Lake had been so simple. I’d dated Mike, and there had been no drama, no pressure, no fear of losing a boy I didn’t love. But now I was terrified of losing Evan or Garrett or both of them. They’d been there for me when I didn’t have a dad, not one but two male influences in my life when I’d needed them most. Imagining a life without either of them is like imagining the night without stars.

  “We have a lot to talk about.” I’ve composed myself enough to look up at him, and I think I see forgiveness in his eyes, but uneasiness and worry too.

  “Yeah,” he says, “I think we do.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PAIGE

  August

  It’s a month into summer semester, and the talk Evan and I were meant to have?—didn’t happen.

  We never seem to get to that point of getting all of our feelings out to one another, which is beginning to unravel me. When he’d sobered up the day after our fight, he told me there were things he didn’t think he had the right to share about Lexi, even though they might make me understand his relationship with her better. He backtracked on his anger with Garrett as well, saying he was just frustrated about little things that he didn’t think needed to be discussed. I knew he was full of shit, but I didn’t want to call him on it and end up in yet another disagreement.

  And what I couldn’t get off my chest just lingered, weighing more heavily upon me. I still felt really bad for slapping him, even though he kept telling me it barely even stung. I told him that I needed him to know I appreciated him defending me in the coffee shop but that I just wasn’t sure I approved of his methods. He said he got that too and was hoping we could just move on, which we seemed to, even if I was worried we were also moving further apart… again.

  School got busier and I got a different job. I never felt right about Evan being banned from coming into Creek’s Coffee, so I just moved a few blocks down to Appalachian Roasters, which had a cozier interior and managers that didn’t have robotic permanent smiles like Dean. Evan was busy too and often made himself scarce, hanging out more with Jason and Marvin, playing Frisbee with them and joining a soccer group. While I missed his company, it allowed me to talk to Garrett and not feel like I was constantly hiding feelings of guilt or having to lie about my living situation because, by now, Evan and I are just two ships passing in the night.