by Kieran Scott
“Ally! Wait up!”
I whirled around, took one look at my father in his brown apron and T-shirt, his breath making fog clouds in the frigid air, his eyes concerned, and I burst into tears.
“What is it?” he asked, hugging me to him. “What just happened?”
For the splittest of seconds I considered not telling him. He loved Jake. And he was Jake’s boss. I didn’t want to take their good relationship away from them. But then, screw that. He was my dad first.
“Chloe’s pregnant,” I sputtered into his chest. “And Jake might be the father.”
“What?” my father croaked, stepping back so I could look at him. “I’ll kill him. I’ll kill the little—”
“We were broken up when it happened, Dad,” I said, sniffling. Always protecting Jake. Even when my heart was breaking. “You don’t have to kill anyone.”
My father shifted and brought his fist to his mouth for a second. It looked like it was taking all his self-control to keep from running back inside and flinging himself at Jake, Ultimate Fighter style.
“Are you okay?” he asked finally.
“No,” I replied, a fresh wave of tears choking me.
My dad looked at the light traffic on Orchard Avenue. The sky was pitch-black in the way only a winter sky could be, and only a few crazy people had braved the cold. He hooked his arm around my neck. “Come on.”
“Where’re we going?” I asked.
“To my place.”
My dad lived in an apartment across the street from Jump, right above the town apothecary where the rich moms bought all their magic youth-making potions.
“But aren’t you working?” I asked as we crossed the street.
“I don’t think I should be anywhere near Jake Graydon right now, and you are in desperate need of a warm blanket and a junk fest.” He hugged me a bit closer to his side and I tilted my head against his shoulder. One thing I had always loved about my dad? He always knew exactly what I needed.
I wished, not for the first time, that we were both going home to my mom, instead of home to his place. That we could all curl up on the couch together, eat crap, and watch bad movies like we used to. That we could be a family again. But I had to take what I could get.
And now, at least, everyone knew. Mom, Dad, friends. At least that awfulness was over. I just wished I knew where I stood with Jake. I glanced over my shoulder at the window-walls of Jump, Java, and Wail! but I couldn’t see him at the counter or anywhere, and for this one weird, out-of-body moment, I felt like he was just gone. Like I was never going to see him again.
ally
Monday afternoon I was the first person dressed and on the court for basketball practice. I stood at the free throw line with the ball rack next to me, shooting one after the other after the other. Every time, the ball slammed against the backboard and ricocheted off in another direction. And every time, I saw someone else’s face.
Jake.
Chloe.
Will.
Hammond.
Lincoln.
Apparently I was pissed at the world.
But mostly, I was pissed at Jake. And myself. And I was tired. Tired of feeling like second-runner-up to Chloe. Tired of trying to convince myself it was okay. And after that conversation I’d had with Jake, after finding out that he basically didn’t care about a way out, didn’t care about getting us back to being us, I was starting to think that breaking up with him was the only option. It was the only way to save my self-esteem.
I took a shot, and the ball sailed clear over the net, the backboard, everything.
“Ugh!”
I let another ball fly. It hit the backboard hard and boomeranged right toward my face. Luckily I got my arms up in time. Shannen came jogging over, plucking up a few of my errant basketballs. Her dark hair was slicked into a ponytail, her bangs held back by a two-strand headband, and she wore a white Orchard Hill basketball T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose her cut shoulders. She unloaded the balls onto the rack and smirked.
“If you need someone to rearrange your face, your boyfriend’s father’s a plastic surgeon. I’m sure he’ll give you a reduced rate,” she said wryly.
I grabbed a ball and set up for the shot. “Yeah, well, I’m not sure how much longer he’s going to be my boyfriend.” Somehow, saying it out loud made me feel both nauseous and free at the same time. I let the ball fly over her head. She reached up and blocked it down into her other hand.
“What?”
I tipped my head back and trudged over to the bleachers. The rest of the team was trickling out from the locker room and starting to warm up. I dropped down onto the bottom bench and Shannen perched next to me, draping her arms over the basketball in her lap, her wrists crossed over each other.
“If I tell you this, you cannot tell anyone,” I said. “Swear on your mother’s life.”
“I swear,” Shannen said, wide-eyed. “I mean, I know I don’t have the best track record with secrets, but I’m working on it with my therapist,” she added with a smirk.
I took in a sharp breath. She was referencing the very public way in which she’d spilled my father’s big secret last spring. But that was different and we’d both been trying to put it behind us ever since. Besides, there was no video of this particular secret in action.
God, I hoped there wasn’t.
“Look, I get it if you don’t want to tell me,” Shannen said, starting to get up. “But if you want someone to talk to—”
“Wait.”
I did want someone to talk to. Someone with a new perspective. Annie and I had spent half the weekend talking it over and over and over, and her solution was to tweet about the whole mess with thinly veiled pseudonyms (her suggestions: Carly, Bill, and Jack) and see how Chloe reacted. Not exactly subtle. My mother was an option, of course, but I just couldn’t break it to her that this whole thing had gotten even more nasty and sordid than it already was. Shannen and Chloe had been friends forever. Maybe she’d have something useful to say.
Shannen sat her butt down again and waited. I took a deep breath and held it.
“Chloe and Will Halloran had a thing this summer. Like, a serious thing,” I whispered, turning my face toward hers so far I touched my chin to my shoulder.
“Oh my God.” Shannen looked out across the gym, where sneakers squeaked and balls pounded the boards. “Huh. He’s hot.”
“Okay, kind of missing the point here,” I said.
Shannen’s head snapped around. “Wait. You don’t think he’s the father?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I told her, pulling my knees up under my chin. I fiddled with the laces on one of my sneakers. “She told Jake that she never had sex with Will, and he believes her, but …”
“Ally. You have to do something,” Shannen said loudly.
“Shhhh!”
I looked up at the court, but no one was paying any attention to us. Most of our teammates were either gossiping or drilling layups. Coach walked in from the lobby and flipped through her clipboard, her silver whistle dangling low around her neck. Practice was about to start.
“It’s not up to me,” I whispered, my pulse racing. “Jake doesn’t want to hear it and I don’t know…. I have to believe that if Chloe thought Will might be the father, she would have said something. She couldn’t do this to Jake.”
“You think Chloe’s going to admit to her parents that their pristine little girl isn’t only a nonvirgin, but she’s also had sex with more than one guy?” Shannen whispered incredulously. “Are you kidding me? She’d kill herself first. Someone has to talk to her.”
“Well, I can’t do it,” I said. “Jake would freak.”
“Then I’ll do it,” Shannen said, getting up.
I jumped from my seat. “No! You just promised me you wouldn’t say anything.”
Shannen’s jaw set. “Well then, I’ll do something.”
There was another objection on the tip of my tongue, but I hesitated. “Like wha
t?”
Slowly, wickedly, Shannen’s lips twisted into a smirk. She began dribbling the ball at a very even, deliberate rhythm. Her eyes went a bit blank, distant, like she was already imagining the possibilities. Finally she focused on me and smiled.
“Oh, you know me,” she said. “I always think of something.”
Coach blew the whistle to call us to attention, and Shannen turned her back to me. I reached out a hand to stop her but quickly snatched it back.
I’d already awakened Shannen’s inner beast, and it wasn’t like I could change that. Now Shannen was going to do what Shannen was going to do. This whole mess was out of my control. And I was kind of curious to see what might happen next.
jake
Ally was amazing on the basketball court. She was so focused. And she was so … graceful. That’s the only word I can think of for it. Even when she was slamming into defenders, sweating everywhere, and shouting at her teammates, she was just graceful. It was like she was born to be out there.
I sat near the top of the bleachers with Connor, Josh, and the Idiot Twins at her Wednesday night game, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Even though the Idiot Twins were wearing huge, curly maroon wigs and had their faces painted and kept trying to start the wave, all I could see was Ally.
I had texted her that I was coming tonight. She hadn’t replied. She hadn’t talked to me since the fight we’d had on Sunday. Shannen had told me to give her space, but I couldn’t do it anymore. We’d had enough space. That was the problem. She’d even said it herself. I just hadn’t heard her.
Over the past few days I’d realized what she’d meant that night at Chloe’s party. How she felt like she hadn’t really seen me in a while. Over the summer, when I was with her, some part of my body was always touching some part of hers. Either I was holding her hand on the street or had my leg hooked over hers on the couch or had her head resting on my shoulder. We were always talking about all kinds of stuff—our crazy families, how school could be totally lame and kind of fun at the same time, how weird it was that in a year we would be living somewhere else. Everything. And we laughed. A lot. We were always laughing about something.
I couldn’t remember what that felt like anymore. And I think I’d realized that too late.
As I watched her score a three, and the Idiot Twins went berserk, I suddenly felt heart-numbingly sad. Because she was going to break up with me. I could feel it. I knew that when I found her tonight, she was going to say something to end it. Unless I said something to stop her first.
As the final buzzer sounded, I stood up, determined. I’d already lost everything else. I couldn’t lose Ally, too.
Ally and the rest of the team slapped hands with the other players. Then everyone gathered around the coach. I made my way along the wall under the backboard and toward the exit that went right to the girls’ locker room. I was standing there when the team started to go through, my heart pounding a mile a minute. Shannen shot me a weird look but kept moving. Then Ally was there. Right in front of me. I couldn’t breathe.
“Nice game,” I said.
She tucked a stray hair behind her ear and looked away. “Thanks.”
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Can this wait? Until I’ve, like, showered?” she asked quietly. My heart sunk. She was definitely, definitely going to break up with me.
“No. It can’t,” I said.
She crossed her arms over her chest. Behind her the gym was emptying out. Her coach gave me this scolding look as she went by, but at least she went by.
“Jake—”
“I have something I have to say,” I told her. I wiped my sweaty hands on my jeans.
“Okay, fine,” she said, lifting her chin. “What?”
I licked my lips. My pulse pounded in my ears. My mind was a total blank. The guys were hovering by the door to the lobby, waiting for me. My collar itched. The lights in the gym had never been so bright.
“What is it, Jake?”
Then I did the only thing I could think to do. I grabbed her by the waistband of her maroon-and-gold shorts, pulled her to me, and kissed her like I’d never kissed anyone before. I held her sweaty ponytail against the back of her neck and just kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. When she finally pulled back, I didn’t let her pull too far. I held on to her as hard as I could.
“I know I suck,” I whispered, looking her in the eye, feeling desperate. “I know I don’t deserve you. Just don’t leave me. Please? I’ll be better, okay? Just don’t leave me.”
Part of me couldn’t believe I’d just said anything that pathetic. Now she knew how much she mattered. And I looked like some kind of whipped asshole with no life.
But honestly? I didn’t care. I was just kind of glad no one else had heard me.
There was a long, long, long pause. Then Ally buried her face in my sweater and put her arms around me.
“I won’t,” she said. The fist around my heart finally released. “I won’t.”
jake
“Dudes. This is not a good idea.”
I stood in the middle of Dr. Nathanson’s study, watching my friends be their usual jackass selves. It was the holiday Sunday night dinner, and Ally’s mom was hosting. For whatever reason, the Idiot Twins had decided it would be cool to build one of those wineglass pyramid things on top of the glass coffee table so they could make a champagne waterfall. Of course, we had no wineglasses or champagne, since our parents were right down the hall, so they’d spent the last half hour smuggling glasses in from wherever they were kept, two at a time, under their dinner jackets. Ally had no idea what was going on, because she’d disappeared a while ago too—probably helping her mom with something. But I knew she was going to freak when she got back, so I figured it was my duty to stop them. I’d spent the last three weeks being the perfect boyfriend, but if I stood by and watched my friends destroy thousands of dollars of crystal and furniture, I’d be toast.
“Dude. Stop being such a buzz kill,” Todd said. He misplaced a glass and it tumbled sideways. I made a grab for it, but it fell right back into his hands.
“Oh. Oops,” he said. Then he and his brother doubled over laughing.
“If you guys break anything, you’re so dead,” I said through my teeth.
“What? Mini-Nate is right there. If she had a problem, she’d say something.”
Trevor used the stem end of a glass to point at Quinn. She was standing by the fireplace, which was decorated with about two tons of evergreen branches, flirting with Hammond. The girl looked completely gone over the deep end as she blinked away at the assface I used to call my best friend. I don’t think she knew there was anyone else in the room. Chloe and Faith stood a few feet away, shooting them obnoxious looks, which I didn’t get. Chloe didn’t like Hammond anymore, right? So what was the big deal if he went after some sophomore?
Girls. Sometimes they made zero sense.
“What are you guys doing?!”
I froze. Ally had just walked up behind me. The Idiot Twins froze too. I turned around, grabbed Ally’s hand, and pulled her toward the door at the other end of the room. She was wearing a dark red strapless dress and strappy shoes with a red flower on them and had never looked hotter.
“You saw nothing,” I said. “Come with me.”
“But they—I—” She pointed back over her shoulder as I dragged her into the next room, which was a smallish, leather-covered TV room—and closed the door behind us.
“If you didn’t know about it, there was nothing you could do to stop it,” I told her, raising my palms. “I use that excuse every time my brother tries to jump his skateboard off some planter in the backyard. Works every time.”
“Good plan.” Ally smiled as I slipped my arms around her waist. “I’m not supposed to be in here, you know. This is, like, Gray’s man-cave or something,” she said, though she made no move to go.
“We were never here,” I promised.
Then I kissed her, holding her as
close to me as I possibly could without tearing both our clothes off. She clung to my neck and kissed me back, her lips pressed hard against mine. Over the past couple of weeks I had totally noticed a change in the way Ally kissed me. When we first made up, she wasn’t that into it, but now she was back to her old self. I guess calling every day, leaving her random presents in her locker, and taking her out on weekends was working. The lucky thing was, Chloe hadn’t been around much this month. She’d stopped calling me and she was never around at lunch. I had no idea who she was hanging out with or where, but except for one doctor’s appointment, I hadn’t seen her. Which was good for me and Ally.
But Chloe was still texting me stuff that was going on with the baby, like that she’d felt it kick, and that she’d set up an appointment for her next sonogram. Ever since the first time I’d seen the baby move, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, or the fact that I was never going to get to know it. I mean him. Or her. Whenever I thought about that, I felt this kind of weird, awful tug in the center of my chest. Like I didn’t want to miss anything, but I knew I was going to miss everything. So I wanted to be as much a part of its life as I could, even if the baby wasn’t born yet. And I also wanted Chloe to know she wasn’t alone. Now it was like we’d found the perfect balance. Ally didn’t have to have Chloe shoved in her face anymore, but I knew what was up with my spawn.
Spawn. Funny word. Todd had used it one day to describe the baby and it had been stuck in my head ever since.
“What’s that?” Ally asked, pulling back suddenly.
I blinked, confused and already missing her lips. “What?”
She pointed at my jacket and I realized. “Oh, right. I almost forgot. Merry Christmas.”
I tugged out the long, skinny box and handed it to her.
“Jake! I haven’t even wrapped yours yet,” she said, smiling.
“I know. It’s kind of early. But I thought maybe you could use it tonight,” I said. I plopped down on the leather couch and it hissed, the cushion deflating under my butt. “Open it.”