“Okay,” Julie says. “Dinner’s in an hour. I made your favorite. Beef stew,” she tells his back, as he climbs the stairs.
He doesn’t answer, and, a few seconds later, his door clicks closed.
I climb the stairs behind him and hesitate at my door, trying to figure out what just happened. The way he looked at me, I thought maybe … But then his mood shifted, and now I’m not sure what to do.
I find myself at his door. I lift my hand to knock, but instead, lay my palm flat and listen, my heart rate approaching the speed of sound. I start to knock again, but back away from the door.
Not yet. Now’s not the right time.
I slip through my door and flop onto my bed, staring at the ceiling. When I hear Trent head to the bathroom and turn on the shower a minute later, I listen and go back over what I want to say. I finally have it perfect, but what if he doesn’t want to hear it?
When Julie calls up the stairs that dinner’s ready, I’m still lying on my bed. Trent has been rustling around his room, and I’ve been following his movements as he unpacks, hoping for what feels like a good time to go in. I never got up the nerve.
He startles me when we both open our doors at the same time.
“After you,” he says with a nod at the stairs.
“Yeah, okay … sorry.” Just shoot me.
I feel him behind me as we move silently down the stairs, and I’d swear his gaze has weight. It presses heavy into my back. We settle into our spots as Julie shuttles bowls of stew from the stove to the table.
“Smells great, Mom,” Trent says.
Julie lowers herself into her seat, and I realize from the quiver of her lower lip that she’s near tears. “It’s just so wonderful to have everyone home. I wish this wasn’t such a rushed trip. The holidays are meant for family.” She scowls. “Why would they schedule a tournament between Christmas and New Year?”
Trent shrugs. “It’s the same every year.”
“Well, it’s not right.”
Dad gestures to the living room, where the sounds of a football game waft from the TV. “There are bowl games from the middle of December to the first week in January. None of those athletes get to go home for the holidays.”
Julie turns her scowl on him. “That doesn’t make it right.”
“So, Lexie,” Dad says, obviously trying to change the subject, “tell Trent about all your Roman escapades.”
“Oh, well … I’m doing tours for kids at the Vatican Museums …” I look at Trent, whose eyes are on me, “but you knew that already.”
“I think it’s wonderful that this priest—”
“Deacon, Julie,” I interrupt. “Alessandro is a transitional deacon. He won’t become a priest until April.”
“Oh, of course. Anyway, I think it’s wonderful he’s taken Lexie under his wing,” she continues. She looks at me. “He’s shown you a good deal of the city, hasn’t he?”
I nod. “Yeah. He’s been really great.”
“You’ll have to show Trent all your pictures later,” Dad says through a bite of stew.
I glance at Trent, who’s looking at me out from under his long, dark lashes with slightly narrowed eyes, as if he’s angry … or maybe in pain. “Yeah … I will.”
“How did the brackets work out for the tournament?” Dad asks Trent, his curiosity obviously overriding his fear of Julie’s wrath.
Trent’s jaw tightens, and his gaze shifts to a potato that he’s pushing through his stew with the back of his spoon. “We’re in the top half with Eastern Michigan, Penn, and Oregon, so it’s going to be tough.” His gaze flicks to mine, and there’s something a little desperate in it. He obviously doesn’t want to talk about wrestling. In another world, he would have told me what was wrong without my even having to ask, but in this new, awkward world, I’m not asking, and he’s not telling.
Dad starts in on different wrestlers and their stats, and Trent focuses all his attention on smashing the carrots and potatoes in his bowl into mush.
After dinner, I help Dad clean up the kitchen, and when I go back upstairs, Trent’s door is closed. I almost go back into my room, but a shot of courage carries me to his door. I knock.
No answer.
He’s probably listening to his iPod. Or maybe he heard me. Maybe he just doesn’t want to talk to me.
What if he just doesn’t want to talk to me?
I breathe deep and lift my hand, hesitating for just a second before knocking harder.
“Yeah,” he calls.
I crack open the door and poke my head through. Trent’s guitar leans on the stand in the corner, which surprises me. He usually takes it to school, but it definitely wasn’t on his bike when he got home a little while ago. He’s propped against his pillows, texting someone.
Sam? Are they sexting? My pounding heart stalls for a second before regaining its erratic rhythm.
“Warcraft?” I ask when he looks up at me.
He pulls his earbuds out, draping the cord over his neck, and I hear some pounding rhythm wafting out of them—something sharp and angry. He hesitates for a long heartbeat, as if this is something he has to think about it. “Yeah, Warcraft would be good,” he finally says with a nod.
I slip through the door and close it behind me. If I’m going to say what I want to, I definitely don’t want Dad or Julie overhearing. I chew my cheek as I pick up a remote and settle onto the foot of his bed.
He queues up the game, and when he joins me on the bed, he spares me a glance. “How were your flights?”
“Good. Everything was good.”
“Good,” he says stiffly, navigating Jethro over the lip of the cave entrance to the forbidden grotto, engaging the orcs guarding it, who explode in a shower of purple guts.
I bring Galidrod online, and he joins Jethro. We shoot orcs for a while in silence. I take the chance to study Trent’s face, hoping for a better feel for what’s going on with him, but he’s giving nothing away. He’s never been a mystery to me before. I’ve never had trouble reading him, but everything changed that night. Somehow, getting closer than humanly possible drove us father apart than we’ve ever been.
His eyes flick to me as Jethro finishes off the last orc. “You’re chewing your cheek. What’s up?”
Damn. He knows me too well. “I was really hoping we’d get a chance to talk before you leave.” Shit. My voice is shaking.
He looks at me and gives a small nod, his gaze so intense that it unnerves me. “What do you want to talk about?”
Just say it. I’m in love with you. “What’s the deal with wrestling?” This is so not the direction I wanted to go, but it’s the only thing I can force out of my mouth.
He pauses the game, puts down his remote, and rubs his palms on his jeans. “What about it?”
“You wanted to quit, and now all of a sudden you’re, what? The Rock or something? What’s with that?”
His gaze burns all the way through my retinas as his fingers curl into fists on his knees. “I am trying to forget what we did, Lexie,” he says through a tight jaw. “Wrestling gives me …” He trails off and shakes his head, his face pinching. Is that expression regret? Chagrin? Disgust? What? “It gives me a way to do that,” he finally finishes.
“Oh.” Now it’s more than just my voice shaking. It feels like the temperature in here just dropped ten degrees, and I’m shaking all over.
He’s trying to forget. He wants to forget.
The doorbell rings downstairs, and I hear Julie yell, “Coming!” as Trent finally drops his intense gaze. “Listen, Lexie. I know this is what you—”
But that’s as far as he gets before Julie is calling up the stairs, “Lexie! Sam’s here!”
My stomach lurches. Sam? She wasn’t supposed to be home until tomorrow.
“What were you going to say?” I ask, needing him to finish. I need to know exactly where I stand with him.
“Oh! But I’m sure you want to say hi to Lexie too,” I hear Julie say in the weighty silence between
my question and Trent’s answer. Sam mutters some response, and Julie sounds annoyed as she calls up the stairs. “Trent! Come on down!”
His gaze flicks to the door, and he stands, tugging his earbud cord from around his neck and tossing his iPod to the bed. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
But it does matter. God, it matters.
I follow him down the stairs, and just as I reach the bottom, Sam throws herself into Trent’s arms and gives him a wet smack on the lips. “I missed you, gorgeous.” She’s totally beaming. I’ve never seen her like this before.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hi, Lexie!” Sam squeals when she lets Trent go, but she won’t take her hands off him to move to where I am. “You look amazing, gurl! Please tell me that glow is because you’re in love with some fabulous Italian!”
I shrug. “Sorry, no. No fabulous Italians,” I say, and Trent’s gaze lifts from the floor to me for just a second. “I thought you were coming home tomorrow.”
“We had a paper due for my communications final, which was all I had today, so I handed it in early and came home to surprise a certain someone,” she says, grinning like a love-struck fool and squeezing the arm that’s around Trent’s waist tighter. “Right now, I have plans for your stepbrother, but we’ll have to catch up soon. Maybe after Trent leaves for the tournament?”
“Yeah, okay. That sounds good.” I hear my voice say it, but it’s like my body’s just going through the motions on autopilot because all I can think is, Please don’t sleep with her! My mind screams it over and over. But I can’t say it.
“ ’Kay. I’ll give you a call.” She lets go of Trent just long enough to give my shoulders a quick squeeze. “Don’t wait up for us,” she whispers in my ear, and my throat tightens.
“All right. Bye.”
Sam grabs his hand, and they slip out the door. Trent’s eyes lift to mine just as she pulls him through, and there’s a question there that I just can’t read.
Then they’re gone, the door thudding shut behind them.
And that’s it. There goes any chance I had to say what I wanted to say. All I can do is stand here, staring at the closed door as all my insides explode in a shower of purple guts.
Chapter Fifteen
SAM PULLS UP to the curb in her mother’s green Volvo a little after 3:00 A.M. I know this because I’m wide-awake, sitting on the edge of my bed with my arms crossed on the windowsill and my chin propped on my forearms. I was hoping they’d be back early, like by midnight. But, three? Three is a full hour after the bars close. They had to fill that hour doing something. My insides twist at the picture that forms in my mind—Trent, naked; Sam naked. I squeeze my eyes shut and force the image out of my head.
I told myself at eleven that if Trent wasn’t home by midnight, I’d go to bed and forget about the whole plan. Then I told myself at midnight that I’d give him another hour. My stomach started to knot around one fifteen, and it’s been getting progressively worse to the point where I’m fairly certain anything left in it after the dinner I picked through will projectile onto the glass in front of me if I try to move. So I don’t.
I wipe the cloud of breathy fog off the window with the side of my hand as Trent swings the car door open. In the yellow glow of the dome light, I see Sam lean toward him expectantly. She looks a little rumpled, and, at the realization, my stomach lurches again. I swallow back the acid rising in my throat and look away as Trent leans in to kiss her. When I chance a glance back outside a second later, he’s already halfway up the walk.
I stand and turn when I hear him shuffle through the front door. Sam pulls away as Trent climbs the stairs. A moment later, I’m standing with my palm pressed against my door without knowing how I got here as Trent moves past it. I reach for the door handle—and freeze.
What am I going to say? Hey Trent, how was your date? Yeah, my neck’s a little stiff because I’m been sitting at my window watching the street all night waiting for you to come home because, guess what? I love you. Yep, you heard me right. I. Love. You. So, what do you have to say to that?
I lower my hand and back toward my bed, sitting hard when the edge takes my knees out from under me. I sit and listen to Trent brush his teeth and move up the hall to his room. I listen as he strips off his clothes and climbs into bed. I listen as everything goes silent except for my ragged breathing and pounding heart.
This is so not how things were supposed to go.
Between still adjusting to the nine-hour time change and my up-all-night stalkery, it’s noon before my eyes finally open. I rub them hard and sit on the edge of the bed, hanging my head under the weight of a new day. I’m wearing Trent’s T-shirt … but not the gray Loyola Wrestling one I took to Rome. I threw that in his dirty clothes last night while he was gone and grabbed the one he was wearing before he showered—the Army green one. I lift it to my face, breathing in his spicy scent, and feel my insides liquefy at the memory of my face buried in his neck, breathing in that same scent as he loved me. Every muscle in my belly contracts hard as I relive the sensation of him on top of me, inside me, and my heart implodes.
I flop back onto the bed with an elbow over my eyes and groan. I remember watching an old movie that went something like this. I think it was called Fatal Attraction.
I hear Trent in his room, knocking around near his closet on the other side of my wall, and the knot in my stomach is instantly back … if it ever actually went away. He’s only here for four days, I remind myself. He has the Midlands Championship next weekend, and the team is flying out the day after Christmas to prepare. So I only have to make it four days without letting on that I pretty much want to die.
I pull off his shirt and grab my bathrobe, clicking my door open and peeking out before taking the plunge into the hall. The hall is empty, but as I tiptoe quickly past Trent’s room toward the bathroom, I hear his voice drift through his door.
“… just painfully awkward, you know?”
My feet stall on the carpet, and I nearly fall on my face.
“No,” Trent says after a short pause. “We had the conversation back in August, and she knows this isn’t going anywhere, but it’s obvious even though she hasn’t come out and said it that she’s looking for more than I can give her.”
Another pause.
“She knows I’m into someone else, I don’t return her texts, I’m not even that nice to her … I just don’t know how much more obvious I can be.”
I start up the hall again, my stomach in my throat, and escape into the bathroom, but not before I hear Trent say, “I just thank God I’m only home for a few days. Everything about being here totally blows.”
I spend the rest of the day in bed, which I only get away with by telling Julie I threw up in the shower. It’s not a lie. She thinks I must have caught a flu bug on the plane from Rome, and I don’t dispute that. The flu ruse buys me a full day where I’m not allowed to have contact with anyone, especially Trent, who has a chance to win his weight class at the tournament in a few days. But by Christmas Eve, Julie starts threatening to take me to Urgent Care if I’m not better by that night. So, guess what? I get better!
I’m still weak, of course, so she doesn’t make me come down early on Christmas morning, but I am expected to make an appearance when Aunt Liz, Uncle Terry, and the triplets arrive at two, which I do. We take turns opening presents, showing off what we got, and thanking everyone, then we move to the table for Christmas dinner.
The triplets are Mike, Marcus, and Mindy, and they’re fertility babies. Aunt Liz is older than Julie, but it took years of trying à-la-natural and a few rounds of fertility treatments before she and Uncle Terry conceived, so the triplets are five years younger than me. Thankfully, Julie decides, 1) that the boys should sit together and puts Trent between Mike and Marcus, and 2) that I should be between her and Dad in case I’m still contagious, so I get out of having to socialize, or even look at Trent, who’s busy fielding questions about college and wrestling from the boys. After dinner
, I help Julie and Aunt Liz with the dishes to avoid the living room, where Trent and the boys are watching football while Dad and Uncle Terry talk politics. When we’re done, I beg off pumpkin pie by telling Julie I’m wiped out. She gives me her blessing to go back to bed.
As I climb the stairs, I look over my shoulder in time to see Marcus launch himself at Trent. “Wrestle me!” he yells, and they both thud to the floor as Marcus knocks Trent off his chair. I watch for a minute as they roll around on the floor, laughing, and Trent lets Marcus get the upper hand. I can’t help smiling as I start toward my room again. I click my door closed and flop back onto my bed.
This is it, the last time I’ll see him for months. If there’s anything I need to say, I need to say it now. I lie here waging my internal war, rehashing all the reasons why Trent and I can never be together. It’s better if I just let him go, right?
Right?
Damn.
A light mist has started by eight, when Aunt Liz and the fam pull out of our driveway in their white Caravan. I wait to hear Trent on the stairs, determined that I’m not going to chicken out this time. I’m going to tell him. But the longer I wait, the more nervous I get.
Where the hell is he?
My question is answered when I hear his bike roar to life outside. I lurch for the window in time to see him rocket out of the driveway like he’s been shot out of a cannon. He fishtails a little on the wet pavement as he guns the engine and disappears from sight, still accelerating.
“Merry Christmas,” I whisper into the silence he leaves behind.
Around ten, when Julie knocks on my door to check on me and say they’re going to bed, I’m on Facebook. It’s rude not to respond to everyone’s Merry Christmas posts, is what I told myself when I logged on an hour ago, but what I’ve really been doing is stalking Sam’s and Trent’s feeds for details about their relationship. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.
Trent’s wall is mostly other people tagging him in photos from school or wrestling. He hasn’t added anything other than a comment on said pictures for months. But Sam’s is a different story.
A Little Too Far Page 15