by Piper Lennox
He hooks his thumbs in the bottom of the wheel a moment, then grips it again to steer around the truck.
“I was an asshole; I know I was. And I hate that. And a bully, if you want the truth.”
I guess this shouldn’t shock me. Anyone who would habitually break girls’ hearts isn’t likely to take much issue with breaking other boys’ spirits.
It’s just hard to picture, because Theo has such a kindhearted presence about him now. If I didn’t know better—if I hadn’t seen the old Theo for myself, seven years ago—I would’ve classified him as the kind of popular kid who ran out of yearbook space for all his charity work.
“What kind of bully?” I ask. As I learned very well growing up, there are multiple subsets: verbal, physical, jealous, insecure, bullied-turned-bully, attention-seeking, and probably dozens more.
“I don’t know. Not actively picking on anyone in particular. Just, you know, being a dick to those kids that didn’t deserve it, and being friends with the assholes who did.”
We hit a pothole, hard. It rocks me down to the bone, but Theo seems unaffected. He’s somewhere else, right now. Deep in his past.
“Actually, what I did was worse, because I knew those kids. Every musical, when I’d play piano, we’d hang out and have fun together. Then the show would end, and I’d spend the next three months ignoring them. Or giving them hell again.”
It’s too dark to see the shame on his face. But I can hear it, louder than the rush of trucks on either side of us.
“Took me a few years to realize those guys were my friends. They welcomed me back every single time, picking up right where we’d left off during the last musical. Ignoring everything I did in the in-between.”
“And I’m guessing your friends—the popular crowd, I mean—weren’t really your friends?”
“Exactly. And I was a huge fucking idiot to not see that sooner.” He pauses, swigging from the Coke I bought at a gas station. “I was sixteen before it all clicked. Overheard all these people talking shit about me at a party.”
That old corkscrew of horror runs through my stomach. “Yeah…I know how that feels.” Even with all the distance between who I used to be and who I am now, I remember that high school agony all too well: the stone that drops in your gut when you hear people whispering about you, or the electric hum of silence when you enter a room.
“Yeah?”
I feel him glance at me, but I don’t look back. “Yeah,” I answer, swallowing the dryness of the heater from my throat. I reach for the Coke can; he passes it to me, and I drain about half before it helps. “Kids talked shit about me all the time. It hurts.”
“Especially when they’re supposed to be your friends.”
Especially, I think, when they tell you’re beautiful. Especially when they say you’re not like anyone they’ve ever met...and you believe them, heart and soul.
Now would be as good a time as any to tell Theo the truth about who I am. It’s a car confessional, sins and heartaches on full display, and we’d have at least fifteen minutes stuck in this small space to work out any issues that might come up.
But when I try to line up the words in my head, crafting an explanation that makes any kind of sense without making me sound awful...I can’t. Not unless I lie.
And I know that’s one thing I’m absolutely done with.
His phone’s GPS blasts a new direction through the speakers, startling me out of my thoughts. I realize he’s been talking this whole time, while I was lost in my stupid moral dilemma. “Sorry, what’d you say?”
“Oh. Nothing important.”
“No, I want to know. I just zoned out for a second.”
“Venting,” he shrugs, a pensive look crossing his face as he takes our final exit. “Those kids saying shit behind my back? It happened at one of my parties, which made the whole thing worse.”
“What’d they say?”
“Nothing I shouldn’t have already known.” Theo’s bitter laugh seems to drip down the sides of the Jeep, sealing us in like cement. “How none of them really liked me; they just liked my money. The parties.”
The dryness in my throat rushes back. Too bad the Coke’s empty. “You said you were sixteen?” I cough.
“Yeah. It was summer.” He thinks. “The very first day, actually.”
I swallow the razorblades now in my windpipe. “The solstice.”
“It’s not my party. It’s theirs.”
I knew I didn’t imagine the hurt on his face. I knew at least some of our connection, that magic that happens when two outsiders meet, was real.
I want to ask him more. Maybe I just hope, with enough digging, I’ll find some perfect explanation for why he did what he did to me.
But I don’t, because I know no reason exists. The only explanation is what he himself has admitted: he used to be an asshole, and a bully. He isn’t anymore.
My shoulder aches as I lean against the door and sigh to myself, leaving a streak of steam on the window. I drag my finger through it and write my initials, then swipe the glass clean.
It’s not the resolution I’d like. But it’ll have to be enough if I’m going to keep him.
And that’s when I realize...I want to. Explanations be damned, past heartaches buried and betrayals forgotten: I want Theo Durham, just as much as I did the first time.
No, I think, as he pauses at an intersection and, without warning, pulls me in for a pulse-stuttering kiss.
Far, far more.
24
“I knew you’d forget.”
“Very briefly,” I assure Clara, who hugs me tightly and then, when Ruby offers a handshake, yanks her into an even tighter hug, saying how great it is to meet her.
“You’ve...heard about me?” Ruby stammers, looking uncomfortable but not unhappy. Gradually, she returns Clara’s hug.
“Well, not a lot,” Clara admits, rolling her eyes when she hitches her thumb at Wes and me. “Grapevine. And you know how men are; they ditch all the details. Which is probably why Theo got you two lost on the way here, when I specifically told him—”
“Maybe if you hadn’t said ‘not the weird fork in the road’ with such insistence,” I tell her, “I wouldn’t have remembered it so prominently.” Together, Ruby and I sit on the front mat of the cabin’s porch and remove our soaked shoes and socks, feet numb after the Jeep got stuck in a snowdrift and we had to push it back to solid turf.
Clara punches my arm with a laugh and passes our luggage to Wes, who takes it inside and calls out that we’re stuck in the smallest room, due to our lateness. I shout back that we’re fine wherever. The smaller our quarters, the more excuses I’ll have to get close to her.
Not that I think I’ll need any. She’s relaxed a lot since we left her place. Now, cheeks red from the cold and a bright smile on her face, she marvels at the cabin’s interior while Clara introduces us to everyone.
In total, there’s eleven of us spending the weekend together, almost all of them beauty bloggers. The sunken living room, graced with wood furniture, high ceilings, and an enormous wall of windows overlooking the mountainside, fills with loud chatter about social media within seconds.
“Are you guy influencers, too?” a girl named Isabella asks, when Ruby and I cautiously extract ourselves from the chaos and find a bar cart loaded with premium vodka and tequila.
Ruby shakes her head. “I clean houses. All this stuff is, like, a foreign language to me.”
Isabella laughs sympathetically, apologizing that the weekend will probably be filled with even more of that. Her eyes flit to me. “What do you do, Theo?”
Aaand there it is: yet another reason my social batteries short out faster than the average. Why does getting to know new people always start with career questions?
I open my mouth to sputter some half-assed answer—what’s the least pathetic way to say, “I live off my father’s income?”—when Ruby puts her hand on my arm and says, “He plays piano, actually.”
I’d gawk at her,
if Isabella didn’t suddenly gasp and shake the hell out of my other arm hard enough to slosh my rum and Coke. “Oh, my God, really? Because there’s a piano in the other room—we were all just talking about making Wes sing something for us. He didn’t say his cousin was a musician, too.” She says this last part extra loud, over her shoulder to the group, so Wes will hear.
He does. And, judging from the long sigh he gives the ceiling, he isn’t happy about it. “I’m not singing.”
Isabella waves him off, like his willingness isn’t important to the actual event. To me, she adds, “We’ll roll the piano out, Wes has his guitar upstairs—”
“I haven’t played for an audience in a while,” I interject. Too late. She practically skips away to tell everyone the good news.
I spin to Ruby with a plastic smile. “Hey, thanks.”
“Sorry,” she laughs, adding more vodka to her orange juice. “How was I supposed to know they’d force you into a concert?” With a quick glance at the group behind me, she tucks herself into the corner and swigs straight from the bottle. I laugh and do the same when she passes it to me. It’s going to be a long night.
“Wes Durham,” she whispers, nodding. “I remember him.” Fumbling for a bit, she explains, “From his sitcom, I mean.”
“Please don’t tell me you had some childhood crush on him.”
Ruby cracks up at my disgust, even though I’d actually understand: any party of mine Wes attended, girls would fall over themselves with nostalgia and the idea of dating a TV star. Word spread pretty damn fast that talking about Cut to the Chases was a surefire way to get Wes ignoring you.
“Relax,” she says. “I actually hated that show. Way too cheesy. But don’t tell him I said that.”
“He’d be thrilled. He hates it more than anyone.” I take her hand and pull her to an empty leather loveseat near the group, so we look a little less antisocial. “Though I think he tolerates it slightly better now that he’s with Clara, because she loves it. So if you hide that hatred from anyone, let it be her. If she hears you call it cheesy—”
From across the square of couches and chairs, Wes calls, “What’s cheesy?”
“Cut to the Chases,” I tell him. He gives a thumbs-up in agreement before Clara, overhearing, swats him.
“See?” I tell Ruby. She smiles into her drink.
The group starts talking about the show, which prompts Wes to flash me the finger. I flash it back with a grin.
Clara, her sister Georgia, and Isabella cook dinner for the group, while someone else starts a holiday movie marathon on the television mounted over the fireplace. Ruby and I stay under our blanket on the loveseat, making polite conversation with anyone who sits nearby, but it’s mostly just us talking under the buzz of activity and Christmas soundtracks.
“This is fun,” she whispers, kissing my neck. “Thank you for inviting me.”
“Thank you for coming with. It’s a lot better with someone I know.” I nod at the swarm of bodies playing Flip Cup on a huge barnwood dining table. “Other than Wes and the twins, I only know Max, that guy in the yellow sweater.”
I pause. “He and I used to be friends. He lived next door to us in Jersey—his dad actually got mine into the real estate game. Max followed in his footsteps at first, but now he’s an influencer for some big watch brand.” I nod at the girl whose ass he’s groping, when he thinks no one can see. “His girlfriend is a beauty blogger. That’s how Clara knows him.”
“This is...very different from the groups I usually hang around,” she exhales. “Everyone I know waits tables, cleans houses, fixes cars, landscapes—and when we’re not working, it’s the last thing we want to talk about.” She points to three recording phones, set up around the table. One even has a ring light and tripod. “I feel like these guys are never not thinking about work.”
“Some of them,” I agree, then twist and point to Clara, who’s feeding Wes some pasta for his feedback across the kitchen island. They smile and kiss, not a camera in sight. Georgia, meanwhile, takes a selfie with her boyfriend, but pockets the phone right away instead of posting, then goes back to cooking. “But some aren’t like that. They know where to find the balance.”
I can’t help but think of my mom. If she were thirty years younger, she’d fit right into that first group: cameras always ready and rolling, everything angled and styled just so.
Actually, she’d be even worse than these guys, because at least they’re here to have fun. To them, good content is a byproduct. To her, it’d be the only purpose of the entire trip.
I feel my mood nosediving, and the buzz from the alcohol waning fast. Ruby gets up and, seeming to read my mind, pours me a refill.
“Soup’s on,” Wes shouts, shooing the Solo cups and phones away from the table so he can lay out place settings. I help Clara and Isabella carry the food and serving spoons.
Everyone else clatters around in search of their drinks, snapping a few pictures of the food, before Georgia announces all attempts to use one’s phone during dinner will result in its relocation to the rain gutter.
The group laughs, but obeys. Georgia’s expression says she’ll toss those phones herself, barefoot in the snow, if she has to.
Clara is sitting next to Ruby, asking questions about how we met. I pray to God she won’t start in on that “boyfriend-girlfriend” stuff. Thankfully, she doesn’t.
It feels dumb to worry—Clara has more self-awareness and respect than that—but I don’t want anything ruining this weekend.
Of course, with Max right on the other side of me, maybe I bet on the wrong fucking horse.
“What do you mean you’re not an influencer, Theo?” he laughs, when he overhears me tell another blogger, yet again, that I’m not in the industry. “Everyday Durham was, like, the mommy blog, back in the day.”
I glare at him, which he completely misses, since he’s scrolling his phone under the table.
Too late. The damage has been done.
“Wait, wait, wait,” a girl says, slapping the table with her open palms. “Your mom is Liz Durham? That whole lawsuit thing, that was you?”
“Lawsuit?” Ruby asks softly.
I shake my head at her. “It wasn’t a lawsuit,” I tell her, then say it louder to the group, which is approaching a goddamn riot over this pathetic gossip. “Just the threat of one. And it’s long over with, so we can drop the whole thing now and eat our food.”
“Check it out.” Max slides his phone like an air hockey puck across the table. The girl scoops it up, flanked by two others, who look back and forth between the screen and me.
I get up and take it. “Where the hell did you get this?” It’s a photo of me, passed out on my potty training toilet as a toddler. Admittedly adorable, but not the kind of shit you’d share with strangers. “Every photo was taken down years ago.”
“Nothing on the internet really dies, buddy.” Max gives me a cocky smile I’m about two seconds from punching inside-out. He grabs his phone back, but it’s instantly snatched away by Georgia.
“That’s it,” she snaps. “It’s going in the fucking gutter.”
Laughter ripples across the table while Max curses and stomps after her, all the way outside.
“She’s not really gonna do it,” someone says, halfway a question. Wes, Clara, and Rylan, Georgia’s boyfriend, promise her that oh, yes: she will.
We quiet, the sounds of Max’s complaints softened through the walls.
Suddenly, we hear a soft, but distinct, thump.
“There.” Georgia dusts her hands off in the entryway, wiping her snowy bare feet on the mat. “Justice served.” As she passes me to return to her seat, she whispers, “I deleted the photo, too.”
I thank her. But sweet as the gesture is, I know the photo is still out there somewhere. Max was right. Nothing online is ever really gone.
“Shit,” someone laughs, peering out the front door, “he’s actually climbing up there.”
Wes sighs and throws his napkin onto his p
late. “He’s going to break his neck, fucking idiot.” He glances at Max’s girlfriend. “No offense, Brooke.”
“Yes, offense. ” Georgia points her fork at the girl. “I told you, you can do ten thousand times better.”
I take mild consolation knowing I’m not the only person at this table who doesn’t like Max, but the tension lingers long after he returns, bitching at Georgia that she owes him a new phone. She ignores him, but shoots some pointed “told you so” looks at his girlfriend.
“Just a joke,” he says, elbowing me too hard. I was reaching for seconds of pasta, but now get up and take my empty plate to the sink. My appetite is gone.
While Georgia and Max bicker, the rest of the table trying to ignore it with polite conversation, I start rinsing dishes and loading them in the washer.
“Antisocial Theo Time,” Wes chuckles quietly, stepping up beside me to help.
“No, too early for that. Just absolutely done sitting there with Max’s stupid ass. Why the hell is he here?”
“Brooke insisted.” He scours a burnt pan before passing it my way. “And you know Clara. Too sweet to tell her no. If it makes you feel any better, he’s only staying until tomorrow night.”
“Not sure I can resist beating the shit out of him that long.”
And then, like a sign from the universe that Max sorely needs the shit beaten out of him, I hear him spout another gem.
“...just kidding with him, damn. And it seems pretty hypocritical of a guy who did porn to get all uppity over some ancient blog post. Just saying.”
The room gets dead silent.
Slowly, Wes turns off the water, takes the knife I was washing, and slides it far, far away on the counter.
I know he did it to be funny, trying to lighten the mood a little. But maybe he was right to do it.
Because the second my muscles remember how to work, I’m across the cabin so fucking fast, Max doesn’t have time to blink.
With that ugly yellow sweater gripped in both fists, I slam his back against the nearest wall. Girls gasp. A few guys attempt to pry me away.