I pull on a pair of jeans and a tee, then gather my hair into some semblance of a ponytail. My eyes are puffy and red, but my makeup, along with my toothbrush, are in the bathroom down the hall, so this is as good as it’s going to get.
Cabot is sitting on the sofa in our tiny den. I don’t normally notice how small our home is, or how worn and dated the furniture, because I know we’re lucky to have this much. But Cabot, here, makes all of it seem that much smaller, older, and dingier. I can only imagine how my world translates into his terms: his father’s boathouse is quadruple this size; his car is worth more than everything we have inside.
Gia and Alé are peppering him with questions.
“Does your car go very fast?” Alé asks.
“It can, but I don’t drive it that way,” Cabot tells him.
“Are you Mariely’s new boyfriend?” asks Gia, always the one to cut to the heart of the matter.
He sees me then, those crazy blue eyes latching fast to mine. “I want to be.”
I walk to the door. “Let’s go outside.”
Cabot stands to follow me. “It was nice to meet you, Ms. Hinojosa,” he says to Lita. She smiles at him politely, but not enthusiastically.
Outside I walk a ways from our place so my brother and sister, and especially Lita, can’t hear us. “Why are you here, Cabot? How are you here?”
“I went to the Drafthouse first, but they said you weren’t there.”
I snort. “Because I got fired.”
“What? Why?”
“More like, who? I dumped an order on Audrey, didn’t she tell you? I assumed that’s why you’re here, she went to you to gloat about getting me fired. Who told you where I lived?”
“I didn’t realize your address was a state secret.”
“Willa, wasn’t it?” If I didn’t love her so much she would be dead to me for this.
“You wouldn’t answer your phone, so I asked Willa to tell me.”
I glance over my shoulder. “So, this is where I live.” There’re ten rusting, broken-down trailers in this park, cars up on blocks in front of almost each of them. Kids’ toys and random appliances are scattered around. “Pretty shitty, isn’t it?”
“It is what it is, Mariely. You’re seventeen. You don’t really have much say in the matter, do you?” I know he’s right, but I can’t help feeling embarrassed anyway.
I take a big breath, trying to get rid of the tightness in my chest. “Have you ever wondered why we’d never spoken more than five words to each other before you came up to me at the coffee shop? I mean, we go to the same school, we see each other every day, so why did we never have anything to say to each other before then?”
“I don’t know, because you’re in theater and I’m in visuals arts? Does it matter? There’s lots of people at school that I don’t talk to much.”
“You and Audrey are not in the same tracks, though, and y’all managed to get together. You found each other.”
“That was different—our moms knew each other.”
“Exactly, y’all come from the same place, the same life. Like me and Jacen. Because like gravitates to like.”
“That’s not—” he tries to argue, but I cut him off.
“No, Cabot, listen. After what happened with Jacen, all I wanted was for everyone to stop talking about me, feeling sorry for me, laughing at me. I was obviously willing to do anything, like jump into a fake romance with you. Willa warned me so many times that this could get confusing, but I thought I could handle it because we said this was supposed to be all fun, no strings, remember? Then you let me sing show tunes to you, and we kissed, and you took me to see your grandfather’s sculptures…now there’s so many strings and before I get any more knotted up…” I pause, take a breath, afraid to ask the question I’m going to ask, need to ask. “Cabot, do you like me because I’m different or because I’m not Audrey?”
…
Cabot couldn’t believe this was happening. Three days ago he’d never been happier, and now the reason for that happiness wanted to walk away.
Audrey. All of this was her fault. He had two options now: break up with Mariely, and take Audrey to the dance so she wouldn’t post those papers; or don’t break up with her, and put her through another devastating humiliation, which after this conversation, he was kidding himself if he thought they would survive. Either way Audrey would win and he would lose Mariely.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “You’re right, I didn’t realize how different you and I are. And you know, coming here, I can see that now. Maybe it’s…uh…too much to make this work.”
“Are you saying you’ve changed your mind about being with me?” Her lip quivered, and he saw the hurt reflected in her beautiful brown eyes. He had to look away or he wouldn’t be able to do this. He focused on the gravel at the toe of his shoe.
“I’m saying this is more than I signed up for. I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” she said, barely a whisper.
He needed to get out of here, now, before he did something stupid like kiss her until she let go of every last doubt she had about him. And he was so close to doing it. He wanted so badly to hold her face in his hands, to taste her mouth, to kiss her, kiss her, and kiss her again so that she knew undeniably he wanted her exactly as she was: vivacious, strong, a little bit crazy, and a whole lot of sexy. Perfect.
But kissing her wouldn’t save her from Audrey.
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ll see you at school.” He walked back to his car and got in. His hand shook as he turned the key, slid the gearshift into first, and drove away.
For so long he’d thought that nothing could ever feel worse than when he found out what a lousy man his father was. And then Audrey had taken away his painting, the painting that had let him dare to believe that maybe, just maybe, there was something great inside him after all. But then Mariely had been there, and getting to know her, having the chance to be with her, made it okay, because even in the short time they’d spent together she’d made him certain he could be great at something: loving her.
Now he’d lost that, too.
Cabot pulled over into a gas station. He took out his phone and found the number. He stared at it for a full minute, maybe two, arguing with himself not to do it, knowing the whole time he had no choice.
Finally, he punched the call button with his thumb. “Hey, it’s me,” he said. “You win.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“I need a rebound from my rebound.”
I’m in Willa’s car, sniffling into a handful of fast-food napkins she had in the glove compartment. Sniffling is an improvement over the ugly crying I was doing when she first picked me up. I called her right after Cabot left. I couldn’t even form words. Twenty-six minutes later Willa showed up at my house, all indignant and furious on my behalf.
“I can’t believe he broke up with you. More than that, I can’t believe I gave him your address so he could come over and break up with you.”
“Go ahead and say it, Willa.”
“Say what?”
“I told you so.”
“Come on, I’m not going to say that. I hate that this is happening.”
“But it’s true. You were right. You said I should be careful, that I was too raw after Jacen, and things could get confusing. I should have listened.”
“So, what are you going to do now?”
I shrug. “What is there to do? Get up tomorrow and go to school, and try to put this whole stupid fauxmance thing behind me.”
“And what happens when you see Cabot?”
Good question. I’m tired of crying. I’ve cried more in the last month than I’ve cried at any other time in my life, except when my mother left. And I’m tired of being the one who feels bad, who gets left, who’s wondering why it all happened. Let Cabot be the one to feel bad about this. Let him be the one who has to wonder what he missed out on.
“No, Willa, it’s not when I see Cabot, it’s when he sees me.”
…
By Thursday, Cabot was wrecked. He’d stopped sleeping; he wasn’t eating. Every morning this week he’d made a plan to cut school, get in his car, and drive until it was time to come home. Instead every morning this week he’d gotten in his car and thirty minutes later he’d pulled into a spot in the NextGen parking lot. He couldn’t help himself; he had to see her.
How had this happened? Less than three weeks ago, passing Mariely Hinojosa between classes had been a nonevent. Now he was running up and down back stairwells and loitering in the shadows just to catch a glimpse of her. All he wanted was to have her look at him, that’s all. To have her see him and make a connection, however temporary. But she wouldn’t, and all this had gotten him was a dozen or so tardy slips and a couple rounds of detention. To her, it seemed, he had become a ghost.
He knew this was crazy—at any moment he half expected to be handed a restraining order—and it didn’t help that for somebody who apparently didn’t want to be seen by him, she seemed to be going out of her way to look amazing. Every day this week she could have easily stepped out of a pinup poster, circa 1955. Pencil skirts and heels, long black lashes, and red lips. How had he ever passed her in a hallway and not noticed? Mariely Hinojosa was a girl who deserved to be noticed, and now that he had, he could do nothing about it.
This was unbearable. If it wouldn’t please his father to no end, he would transfer back to his old school. Instead, here he was, fifteen minutes late to class again, leaning against the wall outside the closed doors of the Black Box listening to her rehearse.
“What are you doing, Cabot?”
Crap. He’d been so lost in his own head that he hadn’t heard Willa walk up. “Nothing, I just…” He tried to come up with a halfway plausible, non-stalker excuse, but he’d never been a good liar. “How is she, Willa?”
Willa folded her arms over her chest. “You’ve seen her—she’s doing great. Mariely is a survivor. It’s going to take more than you douching up her life to bring her down.”
He took the jab; he deserved it. What really stung was that Mariely’s va-voom appearance was not deceiving. So much for her being all knotted up over him. “Good. No, that’s great. I’m glad she’s fine, more than fine, I guess. I wanted to make sure, that’s all.” He pushed away from the wall and adjusted his backpack. “Do me a favor—don’t tell her you saw me here?” He headed toward the building’s front doors.
“Wait.” Willa looked over her shoulder at the closed doors of the theater, like she was making sure she wouldn’t be caught here with him, before she hurried over to where he stood. She chewed at her lip as if debating with herself whether to say anything else.
“Willa?” he prodded.
“Everything I just said is a lie,” she blurted out. “Mariely’s not doing great. She’s miserable.”
He sucked in a breath. “She is?”
“Well, what did you expect? You broke up with her. I’m the first to admit I thought this”—she looked around to check they were alone and lowered her voice—“‘thing’ between you two was ludicrous, but when you came to my house the other day…you kind of made me believe that you really cared about her.”
“I do.”
“Well, she cares about you, too, dummy. So why did you do it?”
Cabot sighed. “Because it’s what was best for Mariely.”
“How is you getting back together with Audrey what’s best for Mariely? Or you?”
He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “It’s complicated, and I don’t know how to fix it. Besides, she won’t even look at me. I’ve been going out of my way all week just to walk past her, and when I do, she acts like I don’t exist. At this point I’d take a dirty look, anything. ”
“Because she’s an extremely talented actress, but trust me, she is very aware of you. Come on, you’ve seen how she’s dressed this week.”
“Yeah, she looks amazing.”
“Well, that’s for you, dumbass. Geesh, it’s textbook Girls 101—make you realize what you’re missing out on. Why would she be doing that if she didn’t care what you thought anymore? She didn’t do this after Jacen broke up with her, did she? No.”
A sliver of hope broke through the gloom for the first time since he’d driven away from Mariely’s home four days ago. Cabot smiled. “Thanks, Willa. You know, Mariely is lucky to have you for a best friend.”
Willa nodded. “I tell her so all the time.”
“Hey, tell Damien I’ll still give him my half of the money for the limo. I guess I screwed up your dance double date, didn’t I?”
“Eh, it’ll be fine. Mariely can be my third wheel anytime.”
“She’s still going to the dance?” He couldn’t help the surprise in his voice.
Willa folded her hands over her chest again, perturbed. “It is the twenty-first century, Cabot. Girls are capable of attending a dance without a date.”
“I know that. I guess I assumed that now we’re over, she wouldn’t go, since the whole point was to make people forget about her breakup with Jacen.”
“Oh, she’s going. Insisting, really. I think she thinks it will be cathartic to go by herself, to prove to everyone—and by everyone I mean you—that she never needed a guy in the first place. Though looking the way she has this week and knowing what she’s planning for the dance…she may go alone, but don’t count on her staying that way.”
“Way to rub it in,” Cabot said drily.
Willa tossed the last salvo over her shoulder as she turned to leave. “Just a little incentive for you to get your shit together and make this right.”
Yes, but how? That’s all he thought about, how to make it right with Mariely and keep Audrey’s threat at bay. Cabot pushed through the double glass doors and made his way to the visual arts building.
“Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Wheeler,” said Mr. Derrick, his advanced techniques teacher, when he walked into the studio. “Please see me after class.”
Another detention, but it had been worth it. He took an artist’s apron off one of the wall hooks near the door and replaced it with his backpack. The large, airy room was quiet except for Mr. Derrick’s voice as he circled the room and offered critiques to the other nine students working intently on their canvases. At Cabot’s easel station, the new guy—Willa’s soon-to-be stepbrother—Finn sat on the stool studying the canvas Cabot had been working on.
“Hey, sorry”—he stood—“didn’t mean to get in your way. I’m Finn McCain.” He held out his hand to Cabot.
“Cabot Wheeler.”
“I know. Mariely is at my house a lot. Kind of hard not to have heard your name once or twice, or a thousand times.”
“Mr. McCain is auditing our class this afternoon,” Mr. Derrick explained from across the room.
“I haven’t selected a creative track yet so they’re having me audit a bunch of classes,” Finn told Cabot. “I like your painting. Photorealism, right? I saw a Richard Estes exhibition in London a couple years ago. Pretty phenomenal.”
“He’s one of my influences,” Cabot said, squeezing oils onto his palette. “London, huh? I figured you came from Los Angeles, you know, with your mom’s job and all.”
“We did, but I’ve been on sets with her all over the world.” Finn pointed to the photo clipped to the edge of the canvas. “Did you take the photograph, too? I thought I heard Mariely say you were into photography.”
“You hear a lot at your house.”
“Dude, you have no idea. Willa’s room is three feet across the hall, and Mariely talks about you all. The. Time.”
“Still?” Cabot asked, his voice more eager than he’d have liked to let on. If Mariely was still talking about him, even if it was just to call him every name in the book, at least he knew what Willa had told him was the truth: that she wasn’t as over him as she’d been pretending.
“She’s pissed but not enough to stop talking about you,” Finn said.
Cabot had to bite his tongue, nearly hard enough to taste blood, to keep from asking Finn for details, but acting like a twelve-year-old girl at a slumber party was not how he wanted to come off to someone he’d just met. Instead he selected a brush and loaded it with paint. “So, what’s that like, new town, new stepfamily?”
“Technically, we’re not step-anything. Our parents aren’t married yet. But, yeah, it’s weird as hell.”
They made small talk for the rest of class, and after the bell, they headed to the parking lot. Cabot watched for Mariely out of his peripheral, even though he knew she had a late rehearsal today. He thought about hanging around, maybe trying to talk to her when she left, but no. He couldn’t risk Audrey seeing them together.
“Look, there’s something I want you to know,” Finn said to him while they walked across the yard. “And you may hate me or hit me afterward, which sucks, ’cause I think you’re a cool guy, but here goes: I’m the reason you and Audrey broke up.”
Cabot didn’t understand at first what Finn was talking about. But when Finn guiltily broke his gaze, he knew.
“You’re the guy Audrey hooked up with?”
Finn nodded. “Yeah. And this is not an excuse, but we’d both had too much to drink and Willa and I were… Well, that’s complicated. Anyway, I was not in my best form, and I didn’t know she had a boyfriend. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming with that information.”
Cabot digested Finn’s words. He should have guessed: wealthy, famous, at least tangentially—Finn was exactly Audrey’s type. He waited for the jealousy, or hurt, or rage, to surface, but nothing. Three weeks ago maybe he might have been pissed at a minimum, but where Audrey was concerned, he just couldn’t summon the energy now.
“Why are you telling me this? I probably would never have found out.”
“Look, Mariely’s a cool girl, and she’s been pretty nice to me since I got here. I know something went down between you two the other day and all of the sudden Audrey’s all over you again. I wanted you to have all the facts, because that girl is bad news.”
Crazy, Stupid, Fauxmance (Creative HeARTS) Page 14