I’ll fully admit that my hostility toward new nannies started after she left me. I resented them for taking her place and hated my parents for letting her go, for not fighting for her. They had the means to keep her in the country, or to at least try and they did nothing. Nothing except try to replace her.
My parents never figured that one out, deciding that it was a plea for independence rather than the expression of heartache that it was.
For a couple of people who make their living making connections, they’d missed a lot of huge ones with me.
I tried to stuff down the idea that Rudy could have understood my intentions, but I couldn’t ignore the hunger, especially not after spending two days perched on the glacial chip on Julianne’s shoulder.
Joan’s infrequent apologetic looks didn’t exactly do much to soften the blow since she was too darn scared to say anything to Julianne in my defense.
I was just beginning to make peace with the idea that Julianne and her group might be finished with me when my phone rang on Saturday. It was Macy.
“Hello?”
“Hi, yeah, so here’s the thing. Julianne wants an apology for your public disrespect, and she wants it done publicly. At the food court in the mall in a half an hour. If you decide not to show, we’ll have to assume that you’re declaring war. Julianne doesn’t appreciate being humiliated by someone she considers to be one of her closest friends.”
My head hurt. So did my heart. “I humiliated her?”
Guilt twisted in my gut.
Guilt that didn’t belong there.
A part of me knew that Macy might have been over-exaggerating, but there was also a part of me that was certain Julianne was too proud to admit to humiliation, unless she actually felt it.
Girls like her had deep rooted issues, sort of like the ones that existed in me because of my parents. It didn’t excuse the way they acted.
Of course not.
But Jesus, I was exhausted and…
“She considers me one of her closest friends?” It sounded stupid and lame, probably because it was.
“Yes and duh, why do you think we all do everything together, dummy? Come on. Unruffle her feathers so everything can go back to normal. I swear she hasn’t eaten a bite since Wednesday, she’s so torn up about all this.”
I wanted to ask why she didn’t call me herself if she felt that way, but I didn’t want to make it worse. Humans aren’t exactly made to live a solitary life and being by my lonesome was so close to killing me.
“I’ll be there,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t tell me, that you’re sorry. It’s Julianne who deserves the apology,” Macy said. Then she hung up.
I swore under my breath.
“Trouble?” Mom asked, raising a brow. I hadn’t realized she was standing right behind me.
“Just friend drama,” I said, the guilt weighing heavier on my heart as the words crossed my lips.
She nodded sympathetically. “Friendships can be tough. Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “No. I gotta go. I need to go meet them at the mall. I’ll see you later.”
“The mall,” she sighed, raising her hands as if in hopeless prayer.
I rolled my eyes. “I swear I won’t spend a bunch of money on things I don’t want then return everything. I know it makes Dad crazy. I’m just going to go have a conversation.”
She smiled at me, but it felt forced. “Okay,” she said and sighed, opening her mouth like she was going to say something, before deciding against it and pressing her lips together.
“Love you,” I said before she changed her mind again.
“Love you too,” she told my back as I left. She sounded so tentative I almost turned back around—but there wasn’t a time limit on my relationship with her, I felt. Not like there was with Julianne.
I didn’t stop to question why Julianne had given me a time limit ultimatum.
I didn’t even think about whether a public apology was the right price to pay for my seat at the table.
As far as I was concerned, I’d inadvertently hurt her feelings and it was up to me to make amends if I wanted life to go back to any kind of normal.
This was my last fucking year of high school and whether I particularly liked my friends or not, I didn’t need it to be my worst.
So yeah, I was going to go to the fucking food court and I was going to issue Julianne the apology she wanted in the most sincere way I could manage.
When I found the girls at the center table in the middle of the food court, Julianne’s eyes were red like she had been crying, though her makeup was flawless.
She looked away from me as I approached. She was hugging herself with one arm draped artfully over her middle.
Macy shot me a chastising look as I sat down. Joan…well, Joan just looked embarrassed.
“Julianne? I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that I’d humiliated you,” I said.
She gasped and whirled on me, her eyes wide and wet. “What? How could you not? Jumping around like an ape in that—that—monkey’s lair!”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, then closed it in confusion. I squinted at her as if that would make her accusation make sense. “What?”
“We saw you,” Macy said blandly. “We were here that day, you know. Dancing like a jacked-up stripper, shaking your ass for Rudy Seymore.”
I shook my head, looking from one to the other of them as though that’d help to make things clearer.
“Okay, you’ve completely baffled me. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Julianne slammed her palms hard on the table, drawing looks from everybody in the food court.
“The arcade, Kennedy! The arcade! We went past there yesterday on our way to Starbucks to buy coffee like civilized adults and what do we see? You! Jumping around on that stupid children’s dance game. And, you know, like that wasn’t bad enough, you were doing it for Rudy. We all saw the disgusting smirk on his face as he watched you!”
“Okay, hold on.” Anger was burning its way through my guilt and I had to take a couple of deep breaths. The last thing I wanted to do was get in a shouting match with her in the middle of the food court. “I didn’t even know he was there,” I said finally. “I was just blowing off steam. My parents came home and have made it their mission to drive me crazy.”
Julianne scoffed and shook her head. “Unbelievable. No, really, I don’t believe you. We don’t believe you! Everybody knows that Rudy works at the arcade, Kennedy. Everybody!!!!”
“I didn’t,” Joan said quietly.
“What?” Julianne snapped.
Joan shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t keep tabs on what the Seymores do outside of school.”
“Well you should,” Julianne said, her voice reaching a pitch best heard by dogs. “How else are you going to avoid being the next Kitty May?”
I rolled my eyes and scooted my chair back. “Oh my god. Really? Julianne, stop it. Okay? Shut up about Kitty May already.”
I didn’t know what got into me. My mouth went dry as soon as the words crossed my lips.
Every table around was dead silent, waiting for Julianne to tear me apart.
My heart thudded so hard it churned my stomach and I kept my eyes fixed on a spot on the floor.
“Kennedy,” Joan chided, honestly shocked.
“Right? What the hell, Kennedy? You want to just sit there and let the Seymore brothers get away with making a second girl disappear? What on earth is the matter with you?”
Macy’s words and tone were filled with shock, but she mostly looked bored. That was the thing about Macy. Mostly, she was just saying whatever it was she thought Julianne wanted to hear. Whether or not she still had her own opinion left, I wasn’t sure.
“Kennedy has a crush on Rudy,” Julianne accused in a mocking little girl tone. “She won’t be happy until he succeeds in kidnapping and killing half the girls in Starline.”
I gave her a look full of ev
ery ounce of done-with-your-shit that had built up in me over the last couple weeks.
“I don’t have a crush on him, so give it up. What I do have are two working ears and a hyperactive sense of punctuality. If you’re going to tell secrets and talk shit, maybe don’t do it at the same place you’re supposed to be meeting people.”
She blinked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you not following? Wait, sorry. That’s my fault. Maybe I should take Thomas’ advice and—say something interesting.”
Her eyes flew wide as saucers as her face paled a shade. She glanced around at the crowded tables, noticing as I did that everybody was still listening very hard to our conversation. She cleared her throat and sipped on her milkshake, then cleared her throat again.
“Ah,” she said quietly. “You know, Rudy only started working there a couple weeks ago. I am willing to accept that you didn’t know he was working there. Honestly it’s my fault, I should do more to keep y’all in the loop.”
“Oh no, Julianne, it’s not your fault,” Joan said quickly. “We should pay more attention, right girls?”
“Sure,” Macy said, examining her fingernails. “But if Julianne already keeps tabs, there’s no point in all of us doing the same when she could just share the info. But it’s good, right? No harm, no foul.” She met Julianne’s gaze evenly across the table.
“No harm,” Julianne agreed. “But now that you know, Kennedy, you won’t be going back there, right? I mean, it’s really not ladylike.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said, making sure to sound chagrined.
“Good. Well, that’s settled then. Come shopping with us, Kennedy, and tell us what your parents are doing to drive you crazy.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
I wasn’t quite sure how I’d won that one, but I was sure that I had won.
The need to vent about my parents and their insanity had been killing my mood, and honestly, even with all the drama, I needed my friends even if they weren’t real friends.
I needed…
I needed someone to listen to me even if they couldn’t really understand, even if deep down, I kinda hated the people I would be venting to.
I felt eyes on me as I trailed behind the other three on our way out of the food court.
I turned and found Rudy glowering at us, sipping on his drink. He was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with “StarKade” in neon colors. He met my eyes and for the barest instant I thought his expression softened the way it had when he rescued me from the locker.
I faced front before any of the girls could notice me looking at him.
The butterflies in my stomach were trying really hard to convince me that I’d lied when I told Julianne that I didn’t have a crush on him.
I tried my best to convince my butterflies that they were the product of anxiety, nothing more. They didn’t believe me.
I pushed the problem out of my mind as we hit the main floor of the mall and spread out shoulder to shoulder.
“So how long were they gone this time?” Julianne asked with a sympathetic smile.
I breathed easy for the first time in days and smiled. At least some things were back to normal, butterflies be damned.
Chapter Fifteen
By Monday I’d mostly convinced myself that I was imagining things when I saw anything other than animosity in Rudy’s eyes. After all, we were on opposite sides of this ongoing battle.
I had also mostly convinced myself that I’d overreacted to the way Julianne had been acting. She had to have a real reason for messing with the Seymores. She was too smart to just run around picking fights with guys twice her size without cause.
I needed to believe that.
I needed it to be okay to keep my friends because there was that hurt, that ache that nestled itself in my chest, burning painful embers across my heart.
Alone, I couldn’t forget it.
Couldn’t forget that I had two very much alive parents, but I was still a parentless child – nothing more than an experiment to the people who should love me beyond words.
I knew that not having Julianne and Macy and Joan around would only allow the truth of my loneliness, my sadness, to eat me alive. And I couldn’t have that.
Mom would see it, dad would want to talk about it, and they would both flick their stupid recorders on and try to up their profits from the misfortune of a child who only served to add oomph to their speeches.
So, with my doubts and hurts and suspicions securely buried under the blanket of relief that went along with reconciliation and emotional support, I walked into school arm-in-arm with Julianne and Joan. I even wore the matching shirt that we’d all picked out the day before.
Julianne saw matching as a form of visible solidarity, telling the world that we were together and were not to be fucked with.
“There, you see?” Julianne said triumphantly. She nodded to the students around us, who were parting for us without hesitation. “A united front commands respect. Like a police line.”
“Or both parents lecturing at the same time,” Macy said with a twinkle in her eye, nodding at me.
I laughed. It felt good.
Julianne chuckled. “You have to admit, though—having two parents breathing down your neck is better than having no parents at all.”
“I mean, yes, it would be,” I admitted, looking at her sideways.
Her comment seemed like a non sequitur. She caught my eye and made a slight gesture, nodding back over her shoulder.
Stupidly, I risked a quick glance backward, then faced forward instantly, utterly appalled. Rudy and Bradley were headed to the same class we were headed to. They were walking no more than three steps behind us, if that.
All the good feelings that had come from having my friends around me again disappeared in a heartbeat, replaced with a sick twist in my gut.
“At least if your parents are lecturing you it means they care whether or not you grow up to be a Neolithic cave troll,” she said, batting her eyes innocently.
“I’m pretty sure no one wants their kid to grow up to be a Neolithic cave troll,” I said, embarrassed.
She laughed loudly. “Tell that to the Seymores birth-givers.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
They hadn’t even done anything yet today and Julianne was already laying into them hard.
I could almost forgive them for trapping me in the locker—especially since the two older ones hadn’t had anything to do with that.
“Why are we talking about them again?” Joan asked. I could have kissed her, and I don’t even swing that way.
“Because it’s good to stay alert at all times when there are predators around,” Macy said sagely. “Imperative, even.”
“Putting that word-of-the-day calendar to good use, I see,” Julianne teased.
Macy shrugged. “When your dad’s a hopeless nerd, you learn to love some strange things,” she said breezily.
The Seymores didn’t sit behind us that period. Instead, they took the back corner, as far away from us as possible.
Rudy didn’t even look at us.
Bradley gave us one long, cool glare then proceeded to ignore us.
Julianne grinned at us. “See? Winning,” she said, not quite quietly enough to avoid being overheard.
“Yay, winning.” I couldn’t keep the uneasiness out of my voice.
Winning was fine and dandy, but if they were switching things up, I had to believe that it was to plot a counter-strike.
As class droned on, my anxiety about the Seymores’ plans faded. To my surprise, I found myself missing Rudy’s feet on the back bar of my chair. There’s a sort of intimacy in quiet animosity, I think.
I did my best to ignore the irrational feeling. I had enough animosity in my life as it was, I didn’t have to go looking for it.
But when I glanced over at Rudy, it wasn’t animosity I saw on his face. He just looked… tired. Beaten.
I started thinking about how badly I
’d needed validation that my parents were awful (or at least imperfect and maddening) and wondered how I’d feel if someone else had been saying those things about my parents instead of me. I didn’t think it would bother me much, but I couldn’t be sure—everybody until now had always told me how lucky I was to have them for parents.
After all, they literally wrote the book on child-rearing. And zero-scaping, and battling stress in the workplace, and managing large employee groups, and…well, my parents had a lot of specialty niches and wrote a lot of books about them.
The bell rang, interrupting my thoughts, and I reached under my chair for my bag. It wasn’t there. I looked under Joan’s chair, but it wasn’t there either.
“Kennedy, did you move my bag?” Macy asked.
“I was just going to ask you the same thing, Macy,” Julianne said, her brows furrowing.
I shook my head. “Mine’s gone too.”
“So is mine,” said Joan, sounding panicked. “I had a whole freaking essay in there!”
I looked up just in time to see Bradley and Rudy run out the door, their arms loaded up with our bags. I was going to let them get away with it—I figured they deserved the win—but Macy spotted them too.
“Hey! Hey, get back here with our things!”
Macy started running after them while she was still talking, but she was in heels and a tight skirt, which meant her running wasn’t exactly running, but more like a snail shuffle.
Realizing her feet were getting her less than nowhere, she looked at me helplessly.
Joan grabbed my arm so hard her nails dug into my skin like sharpened daggers. “You’re the only one of us on the track team,” she said. “You need to go after them!”
I thought about not doing that; thought about working up some excuse as to why my legs weren’t to be trusted.
The truth of the matter was, I needed my bag just as much as they needed theirs. I had a chemistry project in there that I wasn’t exactly keen on having to redo.
I shot an irritated look at Julianne before I took off running. This was all her fault, not that I was going to say that out loud. If only she had kept her big mouth shut, the Seymores wouldn’t have had anything to retaliate against.
Them Seymore Boys: An Enemies to Lovers Bully Romance (The Seymore Brothers Book 1) Page 9