by Jo Raven
“I don’t have a crush,” I say primly, glancing at Tom Horton who’s been hitting on me all year. He’s grinning at me.
Make him go away.
“The hottie. You know the one? Tattoos, big shoulders, pretty eyes, a limp?”
“No idea who that might be.” I close my locker with unnecessary force.
“Come on, Gigi. Jarett Lowe. We don’t keep secrets from each other, remember? Not that this is a secret. The whole school, heck, the whole town knows.”
“Knows what? We’re neighbors, that’s all.”
She shakes her head at me and gives a heavy sigh as she shrugs on her backpack. “Yeah, right.”
“Seriously. We live on the same street.”
“I know that, dummy. You’ve told me before, like ten thousand times. What I don’t get is why you deny you have a crush on Jarett.”
“That’s because I don’t.”
She has to jog to keep up with me as we walk out of the school, and it reminds me of me and Jarett, and how I always hurry to catch up with his much longer strides.
Or how he slows down for me.
Lately, everything reminds me of Jarett. It’s annoying. I don’t have a crush, and that’s that. Plenty of boys around, thank you very much, and I don’t need any of them.
Jarett is... different. I can’t put my finger on it, but he’s not the same as the other boys. He’s not one for talking much, but everything he’s said is branded in my mind. I look forward to seeing him every day after school, and I miss him when he’s not there.
His presence is special. Beautifully warm. Brightly dark. Painfully wonderful.
No, Jarett is not a crush. He’s either nothing, or he’s everything.
And I’ve never been so scared in my life.
***
“Why are you here?”
I scowl at Merc who’s taking off his earphones and leaning back on the sofa, his short blond hair adorably ruffled. “You should be happy I’m here, you little shit. You’re sick. I’m your sister, and I worry about you.”
“I’m not sick anymore,” he protests—and then spoils it when he gives a lung-rattling cough, remnant of the flu that brought him down two weeks ago.
“Right.”
“Honestly, dude, I’m okay. No reason for you to hover when you wanna be someplace else.”
I hide my flinch. “And how to you know I wanna be someplace else, huh?”
“No brainer, sis. You’re always with Jarett, you know the one, the tall one with the tats, the one who lives down the street—”
“I’m not always with him! That’s a lie. Besides, he’s a neighbor, I can’t really avoid him, can I?”
“—or looking for him, or at him, or toward his house, sighing and shit, hearts flashing in your eyes—”
“Merc, stop this right now, okay?”
“—like you can’t spend a second away from him and the—”
“Merc, shut up!”
He chuckles and grabs a chocolate from the bowl on the low table. “Not my fault you don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Really. Maybe you’d rather talk about your nightmares? We can talk. About the dreams and the memories, the ones you never talk about.”
He pales so fast he scares me. “Shut up. Not talking about that. Hell, no.”
I hate that I put that haunted look in his eyes. But he has to face what is still hounding him, doesn’t he? “You should, though. To Mom. To me. To someone who knows—”
“They aren’t memories, Gigi. Just dreams. Give it a rest.”
“So I should spill my guts to you about Rett, but you won’t even tell me what’s been waking you up in a cold sweat every night?”
“Rett, huh?” He winks, and even though he’s still pale, I could almost believe he’s fine.
Almost. I mean, he’s my brother, I know him too well to be fooled by the front he puts on.
But I let it go, for now. “You don’t need me to tell you about Jarett.”
“Because you’ve been talking my ear off about him for weeks?”
“Because you know very well who he is. You’ve seen him at school, in the bus home, walking down the street, mowing the lawn at the Lowes’ house.”
He shrugs, pops the chocolate in his mouth. His color is better now, and to my regret I decide not to push him about the nightmares. He hates talking about them, and although during his sickness they got really bad, he seems to be sleeping better now.
“Anyway.” I shrug as well, mimicking his nonchalant gesture. “I haven’t seen him all week, so.”
“And why’s that?”
“Nothing. I was just busy, you know. Doing stuff.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been hanging around the house, driving Mom up the wall and getting on my last nerve.”
I stick my tongue out at him, because when I’m with Merc, I’m three years old. “You love it when I’m around.”
He sighs, mouth quirking in a smile. “Don’t let it go to your head, brat. Just because you’re my sister...”
I sink down beside him on the sofa and grab the TV control. “Yeah, yeah, I know.” I elbow him. “Love you, too.”
Boys and their complete and utter inability to express their feelings. Jesus.
Whereas I... I have no feelings.
Rather, what I decided that day in the diner with Jarett, is that I can’t have feelings for him. It’s confusing me, this back and forth. I said I’d teach him how to be friends, but the way my body reacts to his proximity, the way my heart pounds tells me I want more, and it’s obvious he doesn’t.
We could be friends. Perhaps. As soon as I get my wayward thoughts and fantasies under control. As soon as I don’t want to jump his bones every time I see him.
I wonder if I’ll ever manage that.
It doesn’t seem possible.
But I’m too young to lose my heart to someone who won’t cherish it, right? Too young to have found the love of my life.
This has to be a crush, and it will pass, given time.
***
During the day, I go about pretending I don’t care if I never see Jarett again. I busy myself with homework and play Final Fantasy with Merc, help my mom bake cakes and text with Sydney.
I’m sort of avoiding meeting her face to face too, truth be told, as she has a knack for getting me to admit things I don’t want to admit to anyone, even to myself.
But during the night, it’s different. When the darkness falls, I lie in my bed and wish, and want.
I want Jarett with every fiber of my being. I want to touch him, and hold him, and kiss him, and understand him. I want him to tell me about himself, to open up, to show me the affection I feel for him. For him to be my mirror in this twisted tangle of emotions I have for him.
I want him to want me like I want him. To care for me, like I’m starting to care for him.
Which is stupid. He never came after me. I’m the one always going after him, seeking him out, following him around, talking to fill in his silences. Struggling to understand his shifting moods when he rarely if ever explains them.
But he did explain, my traitorous mind says in the silence of the night. He said he was feeling off because his adopted mom was acting weird, and something about the death anniversary of someone he used to know.
Information I had to drag out of him kicking and screaming, where I had to fill in the blanks, where he kept saying he was fine, and that it was nothing, and like, missing a week of school was a non-issue.
This is the guy I’m so hung on. A guy who spends more time smoking behind the school than inside the classroom. Who rarely answers my questions, or asks about me. In fact, he never asks, does he? How I am. What I need.
He has his moments, though, moments when I think he can feel, too, he can be worried—about me.
And he’s so cute.
Okay, that’s a lie. He’s a panty-melting god, and even though I try, I can’t help wondering how it would be with him. If he were here with me, would he roll me
under him, cage me with his body? Would he kiss me hard, or softly?
Would he press himself between my legs, so that I could feel every inch of his long, muscular body on mine? Would he let me trace the hard lines of his chest, the ink on his arms?
Oh boy... I’ve got it bad, and it has to stop.
I just don’t know how.
Chapter Seven
Jarett
Gigi has vanished.
Not from the town, or the world, but from my life. She doesn’t look for me during school break. She doesn’t follow me after we get off the bus. She doesn’t hang out at the Lowes’ garden as I mow the lawn and doesn’t check me out as I rake the leaves.
She’s not around.
Her absence is a hole in my goddamn chest. And I do my fucking best not to think about it, to ignore it, to ignore everything—the darkness waiting for me at night when I sit at the window smoking, knowing I can’t sleep anyway, the worry over the Lowes who took me in without knowing what they were doing and who keep fighting.
Is it over me? Did they realize what a fuck-up I am?
Today Mr. Lowe spent like an hour yelling at his wife over something she said, no idea what, and that’s not like him.
Today Mrs. Lowe forgot my name, when she came up to my room. She started to ask me how my day was, and then just stopped and stared at me like she didn’t know me. It freaked me out, but I guess she was so stressed over her husband’s behavior, she lost it.
Right? I mean, what else can it be?
And all the while, Sebastian doesn’t seem to notice a thing, anything outside of himself. He’s locked up in his room when he’s at home, smoking weed and playing videogames, but mostly he’s out and about, coming back in the early hours reeking of booze and chemicals.
Sometimes I wish I could be him. Not to care. Not to bother. Not to lie awake at night or wake up from nightmares.
Or maybe to care and yet to allow myself to get lost in a chemical haze, forgetting about the goddamn world around me, about the past and the future and everything in between. About who I was, who I am, and what the hell that matters.
Why should I care anyway? The Lowes are foster parents, just like others I’ve had before. They get money to host me, and they don’t have to give a damn about me.
I don’t have to give a damn about them, either. So what if they’re acting out of character? Maybe it’s because they regretted taking me in. Maybe they have financial troubles. Who knows?
Shit happens. And it’s not my shit. I don’t have to know why. They don’t owe me anything.
Nobody owes me anything, and I’m fucking done.
Without Gigi, I’m done, and the thought is scaring the shit out of me, because since when do I depend for my sanity on a girl? On anyone, for that matter? Let alone a girl who has decided I’m not worth her time anymore.
Fuck.
***
“What do you want?” Sebastian snaps at me the moment I set foot inside the garage. We haven’t worked on a car in weeks, and I’d been hoping for some peace and quiet.
I may not want to admit it, but Mr. Lowe had a calming effect on me, before he flipped his shit and started yelling at everyone at the drop of a pin.
Last thing I expected was to find Sebastian here, lounging against the car Mr. Lowe has been working on. He has a cigarette in his hands, and he looks annoyed.
No, he looks fucking pissed.
So I stop myself from turning around and leaving. Instead I step deliberately further inside and lean my hip against the car, just to piss him off more. “Same as you.”
The fucker hates that his parents took me in, probably thinks I’ve stolen his only-child privileges and spoiled his trust-fund.
Fuck him.
“You wanna smash the car and set the garage on fire?” He sucks on his cigarette, eyeing me through the smoke. “No? Yeah, I didn’t fucking think so.”
“You’re so full of shit.”
“Am I?” He cocks his head to the side. “You’re trying so fucking hard to be good. To be a good boy, a good son, and for what? You think they take notice? That it makes a difference? Newsflash, fuckface: You’re not their kid and never will be.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” But my throat is strangely dry, and the itch to push him, prick him until he’s furious and then brawl with him and hopefully punch him? Yeah. It’s fading fast in a dark wave of depression. “I’m not trying anything.”
“Sure you are. You want to fit in. In this neighborhood, in this house. But can’t, Fen. You’re rotten inside.”
“Shut up.” I swallow so hard my throat clicks.
“You think I don’t know? You used to steal, and destroy property, and we’re supposed to just, what, overlook it? Forget it? You don’t belong here, got it?”
How does he know to hit where it hurts the most when I don’t even know it myself half the time? Don’t know it, or don’t wanna know it. It hurts so fucking bad because he’s right.
Turning around, I head right back out, not angry or sad, but cold, an icy realization seeping into my chest, into my bones.
I’m a bad person. Bad sort. Bad luck.
And a bad son to whoever decides to give me a chance. I already proved it to my real parents, and then to Connor.
If the Lowes haven’t yet realized what a mistake they’ve made, it’s only a matter of time.
***
The days drag. The nights are rocks around my neck, pulling me down, keeping me underwater. I’m drowning, watching from a distance as the Lowes quarrel and drift apart, as the faint hope I’d been harboring—the hope I didn’t know I had, one more thing that’d escaped me—starts to fade.
How didn’t I realize until Sebastian threw it in my face that I’d been hoping for just that—to fit in, to become the Lowes’ son? All the times Mrs. Lowe asked me to call her mom, and I refused. All the fight I put in it, all the times I refused to look at the possibility of staying here, with them, and now it’s eating at me, not letting me rest.
The possibility of staying here, where Gigi is.
Goddammit.
In the morning, I stand outside the school gate, wondering what the hell I’m doing, in this city, in this school, in this life. I’m already late for class, and I haven’t opened a book in days.
It feels like I’ve stood there for days, not sure if I wanna go in or run away, maybe this time for good—leave this neighborhood, this family, this city behind and kill this fucking flicker of hope that’s been torturing me—when I see her.
Meeting her again is like watching a sunrise. A fucking sunrise, after days in the dark. A pale gray light seeping through the blackness, turning golden as it spreads, golden and bright and blinding until you can’t breathe from the goddamn beauty of it.
And as I’m struggling to draw air, she glances at me, jerks back and turns around to go, taking all the light with her.
I’m going after her before I know what I’m doing. “Gigi! Wait.”
She doesn’t stop, though she’s shaking her head, her ponytail swinging against her back.
Reaching out, I catch it, and I catch her, too, releasing her the moment she comes to a halt. I look down at my hand. My body doesn’t obey me when it comes to her, much like my mind. I clench it at my side, to keep from touching her again.
“Please, wait,” I whisper. I never thought I’d beg her to talk to me, to wait for me.
Little did I know.
“Jarett...” She sighs, her pretty eyes lifting to my face and then flicking away. “Why aren’t you in class?”
“Why aren’t you?” I counter, and grind my molars because dammit, I don’t wanna fight today, not with her, but the tension inside me is hard to control. “Fuck.”
She shakes her head. “I’m just... I can’t focus. Too much on my mind.”
“Mine, too,” I admit, and it feels good to finally talk to someone, to let it out, even if it’s vague words. “Is it your brother?”
“Merc? No, he’s fine.
Mostly. Anyway, no, I just...” She wrings her hands together.
I reach for them, untwist them, then let them go again, because the feel of her skin on mine burns, and sends bolts of desire straight through me. “Just what?”
“I... I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Do what?” A shaking is starting in my body, in my bones, a spin in the pit of my stomach. The dreaded anniversary has passed, and I’m still alive, but with my foster family falling apart, she’s the only person I can bear having around.
The only person I need.
Breathe, Jarett.
“Do what?” I repeat, more softly. “You said we’re friends. You said you’d teach me how.”
Please, teach me. Please, don’t fucking walk away, too. Don’t disappear from my life like everyone else has before.
Uncertainty flickers in her gaze. It should piss me off—that I’m baring myself to her like I’ve never done with anyone and she still hesitates—but I’m fucking desperate. Something bad’s about to go down, I feel it in the marrow of my bones, and I don’t wanna have to face it alone.
Not this time. Not again.
And not after I’ve been near her, bathed in that warm glow that makes me forget the bad things, that says the future won’t be as bleak as the past.
But I’m already bracing for her rejection, for her to turn around and go. So when she finally speaks, it takes me a moment to process her words.
“Coffee and pancakes?” She’s smiling at me, her smile quiet and small but real, brightening her face.
“Yeah.” My voice is rough, so I try again. “Yeah, sounds good.”
Being with her, even for an hour, even for one morning, sounds fucking awesome.
***
The diner is familiar ground. We’ve come here a couple of times since she first brought me, and it relaxes me enough to sit down and breathe in the scent of coffee and bacon and sugar. It reminds me of that day she dragged me here, determined to make me feel better, and that memory all on its own serves to slow down my racing heart.
She’s not indifferent. She gives a shit about me. Right? She’s not following just anyone and everyone around, talking to them and hauling them off to diners for coffee and pancakes. Only me.
So where did she vanish to this past week?