“Maybe… yes, maybe I am. And if you ever loved me or think you still do, then you’ll stop messing with him. Plus, he’s liable to hurt you.”
He braces his jaw with his hand and winces. “He got one over on me.”
I nod. “Yeah, he did. And I know he’s not happy about me talking to you tonight, but I needed to.”
“Yeah, thank you. I guess you didn’t have to, but it was cool.”
“But I can’t do it again. If you need to talk, talk to your friends or Mrs. Heidelmann.”
“Mrs. who?”
“The guidance counselor,” I tell him, standing up and rubbing at my arms to warm them up. “I think you should maybe have one of your friends drive you home, someone that maybe you could talk to.”
“Yeah, right,” he says, standing up. “They don’t do feelings.”
“Apparently not. They jumped ship pretty quick in there, so maybe you need new friends.”
He laughs, drags his hand through his hair and then says, “Sure… we’ll see.”
I allow him one quick, final hug, warning him I’ll call the cops if he doesn’t go right back inside the gym and start sobering up, and he at least follows my advice on that.
“You let him down softly,” Nick says as I approach the entrance. “A little anticlimactic.”
I allow myself a quick laugh. “I’ll take anticlimactic because he finally gets it, but if he doesn’t, then the next time I’m going to punch him myself, even if I have to break my hand doing it.”
James gives Nick a look, and they’re either impressed or amused or both.
“Let’s hope you won’t have to,” Nick says, taking my arm and leading me back in.
While everyone had gathered for the fight between Tyler and Austin, they’re all doing their own thing now, dancing and laughing and having fun.
McKenzie jumps up from the table she and Nina are sitting at. “That was brave,” she says, decidedly looking like she’s not having fun. “And you made it back in alive.”
Austin is already sitting with Callista Hargrove, one of the girls he came to the dance with, and it looks like they’re having a pretty deep conversation.
“Maybe… but it had the desired effect,” I say, motioning toward Austin and Callista.
“But also really stupid,” Nina chimes in. “You went after the wrong boy.”
McKenzie scowls at Nina. “But looks like Austin finally came to an understanding with you, right?”
“Yes,” I say, hoping that it holds. I know I shouldn’t have had to give anything at all to Austin, not my time or attention. He’d been the aggressor, the one who wouldn’t take no for an answer. But maybe he’ll truly take everything to heart and be a better man, be a better boyfriend to the next girl he dates.
“So, you should at least call Tyler now,” McKenzie says.
“In the process…” I’ve got my phone out and am dialing.
He doesn’t answer, which isn’t surprising, but it does make me worry.
“I’m so sorry about what happened tonight,” I begin at the beep. “Tyler, I know how it looked, but I just had to get through to him. I wanted to go with you, but… well… anyway, it’s over for real now, and I wish you’d just call me, okay?”
Nina’s arms are crossed against her chest. “You sounded hysterical.”
“She did not.”
“I felt hysterical, but I’m not sure I could really tell him what I need to in a voicemail.”
“I’m sure it will be fine.” McKenzie wraps an arm around my shoulder.
“Or you’ve just blown any chance with him because of Austin.”
God, I hope Nina’s wrong, and I want to prove how wrong she is, waiting for my phone to light up with a call back from Tyler or a quick text to let me know everything is good.
But there’s nothing.
“Let’s just try to have fun,” I say.
Fun isn’t what I really want, and I doubt I’ll actually have any. What I want is the chance to see Tyler and talk to him about what happened tonight. And yet if I don’t give him the room he might need, then I could end up becoming the female version of Austin, and I won’t let that happen.
“Then let’s dance,” McKenzie says, dragging me toward the center of the gym.
I smile and I make myself laugh and try to be strong, try to be the girl who is so put together and who doesn’t let an ex or a boy she really likes running off without her bug her. No, I have to be better than that. I have to save lives someday and have the good sense and focus to make all of that happen. But in the pit of my stomach, I’m afraid. I don’t want to have to fake happy for my entire life, and I don’t want to have just ruined my chances with Tyler.
TYLER
“She fucking chose him!” I yell out loud, pounding the steering wheel of my Jeep. I’m angry and hurt and confused.
Laney had acted the same way when she’d comforted Heath instead of me. I’d seen the shadow of her tonight in Claire’s eyes, a girl disgusted by what… violence? And yet she’d chosen to go to the guy who’d started it all. Maybe, deep down, all Claire wanted was an unmarred male specimen like Austin regardless of his defective brain cells. And if that’s true, I’d totally misread her. If that’s true, it’s a huge disappointment that will be painful to overcome.
I try to get all of my anger out before heading home, having to take a few detours, including some time at the north shore of the lake where I just sit and think and steel myself. When I make it home and walk inside, Mom and Dad are on the couch watching a movie. I’ve done my best to make it look like everything is okay and try to speed past them, but Mom is just too good at reading me.
“What happened?” She literally jumps up from the couch and follows me toward the kitchen.
“I’m fine,” I say, tossing my keys on the kitchen counter and refusing to look at her.
“No you’re not. Your hair’s a mess, and your voice sounds like a growling bear.” Her hand is on my shoulder. “Talk to me, Tyler.”
I whip around, not wanting to feel angry again but not able to help it. “Can you please just let me grow up and stop trying to fix everything?”
She steps back, surprise in her eyes. “I’m just here to talk. That’s all.”
“That’s not all. You treat me like a kid.”
“What’s all this?” Dad has joined us, and he looks as pissed as I feel and ready to put me in my place if I do anything to upset Mom.
“He just had a rough night,” Mom says.
“Well, that doesn’t—”
“She chose another guy.” I don’t want to have to say it out loud, but it just comes out like verbal diarrhea.
Dad freezes and looks down at the floor.
Mom shakes her head, looks about ready to cry before saying, “I sure do like Claire, but there’ll be other girls.”
Then Dad is looking at me again. “I told you not to get invested, not until you can handle it better.”
“Just forget it.” I don’t want to talk to them, don’t want to hear about how I fucked up or how the perfect girl will be waiting just around the next corner. I turn and head to my room.
“Tyler!” Mom calls out, but Dad must hold her back because she doesn’t follow.
In the safety of my room, my door locked, I think about maybe texting Laney. It’s stupid, but maybe it would allow me to feel more for her and less for Claire. But that just seems pathetic and as bad as what Claire did tonight. I’d come so fucking close to telling her my story and really letting her in, but now I feel like I’ve just hit a dead end with her.
What I need tonight is a friend, someone who knows everything there is to know about me, so I turn on the laptop and check in to see if Sam’s around. Considering it’s a Saturday night, he’s probably out at some party trying to pick up on girls, but when he answers I can see the wall of his apartment in the background.
“Hey man, what’s up?” he asks before sucking some ramen through his lips.
“You’re home,”
I say, feeling myself relax at the sight of him. “Shouldn’t you be out chasing the girls of Seattle down?”
He shrugs. “I was out earlier, but decided to hang it up early. Just didn’t feel like even trying.”
“You want to talk about it?” I push my own anger and pain back because I think maybe he needs a friend just as much as I do.
“Nah. I kind of like a girl but not sure she feels the same, so I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself. Relationships.” He puts his palms out, face up, and makes a confused face. “Am I right?”
“You’re right, and I’m sorry, man.” In one way, it bolsters me to know a guy like Sam, a nice looking guy without any deep, dark secrets that I know of, has relationship issues too. In another way, it bums me out. He’s my friend after all.
“No worries. Let’s just avoid my love life for tonight. How about you? You kind of look like shit.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Hey, just being real. What are you doing chatting with me when you should be making things happen with Claire?”
I pause, not wanting to sound like a failure by telling Sam that the girl I’d been talking up to him, telling him that I had real feelings for, had just gone after her ex tonight instead of me.
“Dude?” Sam sets his ramen aside. “I can see something is up. Just tell me.”
I take a deep breath, then consider it might feel better to get it out. “Her ex showed up tonight at this school dance thing.”
“Ah, that’s why you’re so dressed up. Nice bowtie by the way.” He laughs, and I loosen the damn thing, never wanting to wear one again.
“He showed up drunk, tried to grab her, so I punched him.”
“Again?” Sam laughs for all of a split second before he gets all concerned. “You’ve got to lay off the violence, no matter how egged on you feel. It’s not good.”
“Like I had a choice. I was defending her.”
“Listen to me,” he says with the stern authority I sometimes get from my dad. “You got a black eye and a bloody nose the last time. And before that… well, I don’t need to remind you what happened to the other guy and where you ended up, now do I?”
I’m flushed with a sense of shame at that. Sam had stood by me after I’d gone after Heath, and he, as well as my parents, paid a personal price for it. If I didn’t owe it to myself, I owed it to them to not let my fists take over when things weren’t going my way.
“You’re right… I’m sorry. It just hurts. How could she choose him?”
How in the world could she fucking choose Austin?
He takes another moment, pulls his cap off and scratches at his head. When he puts the cap back on, he says, “Are you sure she chose him? From what you’ve told me about her, she doesn’t seem the type to jump ship, especially for an ex who sounds like a pretty major asshole.”
I let out a cutting laugh. “Maybe she’s just hit her breaking point with me. She probably figures we’ll never have sex, or figures she’d better stick with a known quantity.” I’m fuming now just thinking about it and wondering what she’s doing with him right this very minute.
“Again, doesn’t sound like the Claire you’ve been bragging to me about. You really sure?”
I had been. The way she’d gone to him was all I needed to see to get me out of that gym fast, Nick yelling to hold up or at least to drive safe, and Mr. Turner saying he was going to be letting me and Austin off with just warnings. Not sure I would have cared about getting expelled just then, but I’m grateful for the small favor now.
“I don’t know.” I let some of the tension out of my body and sigh. “That’s what it looked like.”
“It might have been a different scene if you’d hung around. Just saying. And besides, don’t you still have some feelings for Laney? You can’t really be all that pissed off at Claire if she’s a little conflicted too.”
“You just had to bring that up, didn’t you?” He’s right. Damn, he’s right.
“That’s what friends are for. But seriously, don’t you think it’s possible Claire might actually have wanted to talk to you if you didn’t, uh, I’m guessing storm out of wherever the hell this dance was?”
“Maybe. I guess.” I drag my hand through my hair and across my tired eyes. “But the guy keeps coming back for her, so maybe she’s giving him something he wants, some kind of signal. Maybe she’s not done with him.”
“Sounds like a little victim blaming, dude. Why don’t you call her and ask how she’s doing?”
I grab my phone, just to consider it, and then I see a missed call and a voicemail from her. “She left me a message.”
“Okay, well, that’s good. She’s probably missing you, probably trying to figure out what the fuck happened to you.”
“Or she’s telling me it’s over,” I say with a laugh that is more nervous than amused.
“Well, you could check it while I finish up my microwave ramen… not like I’ve got anything better going on.”
Sam sucking down ramen on a Saturday night when he should be out doing something fun reignites my sense that he’s the one in need of a friend.
“What’s wrong with you? There’s something… I can tell.”
He shakes his head. “Check that message… dooooo itttttt.”
“I’ll check it later.”
“You’re being chicken shit. Are you seriously worried she’s dumping you?”
“Maybe. Look, I just want to put it out of my mind for a while… I just need an hour or two to prepare myself.”
He scrutinizes me with his eyes. “So, me telling you my problems will help you, huh?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Seriously, I wouldn’t know what to do with more bad news coming out of Claire right now, so just lay whatever’s bugging you on me, okay?”
I’m not sure I’ve sold him. He’s as resistant to speaking as I am to checking my voicemail, but eventually he relents and says, “Okay, yeah. I need to get something off my chest.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CLAIRE
“It’s been two weeks,” I say to McKenzie, though I’m staring out my window instead of looking at her.
Two weeks since the harvest dance.
Two weeks where Tyler has said barely a word to me.
At least I have my visit to Margaret to look forward to today, though the fact that Tyler won’t be driving me like he did last time adds a sour note to that.
“I didn’t peg him for being such an asshole,” McKenzie says. She’s been sprawled out on my bed for the past half an hour and filling some relationship quiz out in an actual magazine from the grocery store checkout line.
I turn away from the window and walk toward my bed. “I don’t think he is. I mean, he’s been nice to me, but he doesn’t want to talk about what happened at the dance. So, we’re just officially stalled out.”
McKenzie whips around and puts her phone down. “For once I agree with Nina—you should have gone after Tyler and not wasted your time with Austin. He’s such a wreck.”
“But he hasn’t bothered me since,” I say defensively. “If I’d have gone after Tyler, I might not have ever settled things with Austin.”
“I suppose, but maybe it’s for the best? You didn’t want a relationship senior year, so now you can focus on school.”
“Except that I can’t.” I grab a pillow and plop down at the head of the bed, holding the pillow to my chest. “Now all I think about is Tyler. I got an eighty-eight on my English essay… an eighty-eight!”
“Oh my god, not that! That’s still a high B, you realize.”
“You should know me well enough by now that I find B’s unacceptable.”
“I hope you don’t raise your kids like that. It could lead to some really low self-esteem.”
“This isn’t a joke, McKenzie.”
She sighs. “I know. I just hate seeing you sad. Maybe we just need to match you with a guy who isn’t so complicated.”
“Seriously the worst idea you’ve even had.�
� I wouldn’t mind just crawling under the covers and spending the day in a fetal position, but I’m not going to miss a chance to see Margaret because of some boy drama, no matter how important that boy happens to be.
“I’ll keep thinking of a better one then.”
“Well, in the meantime, I’ve gotta go to Spokane. I just have to hope Mom wasn’t counting on Tyler driving me.”
“I’ll drive you,” she offers without any reserve in her voice.
“You don’t have to.”
“You don’t want me to?”
“I do, but you’re sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure! When do we need to leave?”
“We could leave now if you wanted. It wouldn’t hurt to be early.”
She jumps off the bed and takes my hand. “Let’s do this.”
Mom seems a little concerned at first that we’ll be in McKenzie’s small car on the drive over, but I remind her how new the car is and that it probably has more airbags than Mom’s Volvo.
“I suppose so,” she says. “And I do have quite a few errands to get done today.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say, then give her a kiss on the cheek and head out.
McKenzie has only come along with me to the nursing home a few times since we’ve been friends. She’s always a good sport about it, but I don’t think she really enjoys it. The minutes tick along slowly for her while they speed by for me, but that’s mostly to do with Margaret.
“It makes me kind of depressed after,” she said after the last time she’d come along, bribed into going because Mom was taking us to the mall in downtown Spokane after. And I get that, can understand a nursing home isn’t the most exciting place to be, but I get more depressed in thinking people stay away because of that, that they don’t see their loved ones often enough because they don’t like the feeling they get when they see them.
But I’m thankful McKenzie is pushing past that today, and Mom would definitely be proud of her driving abilities, getting us to the nursing home safely and making good time doing it. And even though we’re early, Margaret is already up and waiting for us. Her nursing assistant moves around like a well-oiled machine, smiling and humming while doing multiple tasks at once.
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