by Teresa Hill
Arrogance is one thing. I know he’s that. But I see hints of something else. He definitely has a temper — I’ve seen it a couple of times after the football team has lost. I don’t know enough about the game to say if he’s playing badly and disappointing people or if it’s that he’s the quarterback and team captain, so people blame him for a lot of the team’s problems.
His temper scares me a little.
I look over at Peter, who looks a little sad, a little stressed out, and I don’t know what to say. I’m still trying to figure it out when my gram brings out the cake, two lit candles on it, and holds it in front of me and Peter. It says Congratulations to both of us. We smile at each other for a moment and then blow out the candles together.
Today should be a great day, but I feel more uncertain about everything than I ever have.
* * *
10
Peter
Senior year is flying by. Before I know it, it’s the beginning of November. I play my last football game ever, and I’m glad. It’s been a frustrating season. Everybody thought we had the potential to be really good, but we never got it together as a team the way we should have. Things never clicked.
I know I’m biased and no one person makes or breaks a team, but Tripp doesn’t have what it takes to lead. He gets frustrated too easily and wants to blame everybody else for his mistakes.
Nobody plays their best for a quarterback like that.
Plus, it seems like he’s a lot more worried about impressing scouts from Ohio State than our high school team winning games. To make things even worse, his older brother is having a terrific season. Ohio State is currently ranked No. 3 in the nation, and there’s talk about Tripp’s brother winning the Heisman, which goes to the best college player in the country.
Looks like it’s eating Tripp up, to have to hear about how great his brother’s doing this year and how badly our team is. When we lose in the first round of the play-offs, it’s no surprise.
We still celebrate the end of the season with a party and a bonfire at the river that night, after the game.
It’s a tradition at our high school to head for a little sand beach on a quiet river at the back of a farm with an absentee owner no one’s ever even seen. This party place belongs solely to the senior class and is used rarely and judiciously, so the cops don’t show up, and we don’t lose the spot.
It’s not the kind of thing I normally go to. The party’s too big, with a little too much of the pretty, popular crowd. Too many stupid, sloppy drunks for my taste. It’s not really Dana’s thing, either, but I heard she’s going, and I know Tripp will be there, along with most of the football team.
I wanted to believe her when she said nothing is really going on between them, that she just keeps running into him. But in the past few weeks, it’s started to sound like more than that. Tripp’s dad had a big cookout, mostly for people he does business with, and she was there because her father — who still hates my guts — built something for his father. A friend of a friend was there, too, and told me all about them hanging out together, laughing, talking.
Then somebody had a Halloween party. I wasn’t there, but I heard Dana and Tripp flirted with each other in the friggin’ hot tub. That just about killed me. I want to scream just thinking about her in a bikini and him touching her in any way.
Fuck.
On the football team’s bus ride home from our last game, someone said a few of the girls got drunk, and it ended up being a topless hot tub party.
No fucking way she’d do that.
But I can’t forget it, and I can’t ignore it, either.
So, I go to the football party, where I really don’t want to be, to watch her, making sure he doesn’t do or say anything to her that I hate so much I have to stop it. Or maybe to torture myself by seeing her with this guy I hate.
Yeah, I hate every guy she’s ever done anything with, because they got to kiss her, dance with her, do things I don’t want to think about. With her. Thankfully, there haven’t been many guys. She just turned sixteen last January, and her parents didn’t let her date before then.
Since then, she’s never seemed serious about any guy. A date to the homecoming dance. To prom. The movies. Pizza. Things like that, every now and then. I don’t think she’s ever gone out with the same guy twice.
It’s still hard as hell.
But Tripp? I really hate him, the self-important little shit.
I get why he wants her. Who wouldn’t? But what could she possibly see in him?
One thing I do know is that right this minute, I’m glad I came to the party, because that’s Tripp’s third drink since I got here. He’s not falling-down drunk yet, but no way in hell is he driving her home.
I try to wipe the snarl off my face as I walk toward her. I need to get to her before Tripp comes back from the make-shift bar, because if I get too close to him, there’s no telling what I might do.
She sees me coming, and I watch the way her whole body language changes in a way I really don’t understand, except to say she looks uncomfortable. The more time she spends with Tripp, the worse things get between us. It makes me crazy. And tonight, she looks like she has to brace herself or something before I get close to her, and that makes my whole body vibrate with fury and frustration.
How did everything get so fucking hard for us?
I keep a whole foot and a half between me and her, because I don’t want to see her draw herself away from me again. I remind myself I can’t ask her about the hot tub thing. Not without exploding, which would only make her mad, and then she wouldn’t talk to me at all.
So I make myself stick to what I absolutely have to say. “Tripp bring you here?”
“No, but he wants to drive me home.” Her stubborn chin tilts up and a challenge in her eyes dares me to say anything is wrong with that.
I could make her a list, a long damned list of what’s wrong with that.
Would she listen? I don’t know.
Who is this girl, so blind over this asshole? She’s way too smart for this, and that pisses me off even more. Everything these days pisses me off. I’ve already gotten into it with Andie tonight. She was here for a few minutes and left with the cousin she came here with.
So, I’ve already argued with one girl tonight. I really don’t need to make it two. I need to calm down and think.
But then I look at Dana …
This close, I have to work hard not to get distracted by how amazing she looks. Her jeans make her legs look a mile long. Her white, sleeveless shirt has all these tiny buttons down the center. It’s so thin that when she stands in the bright firelight, I can see through it to her baby-pink bra. I want to unbutton every tiny button of that shirt, as slowly as I can manage, and touch every bit of skin I uncover. I want my hands, my mouth, my tongue on all that beautiful skin of hers.
Her breasts … I’ve imagined them so many times. In my head, I’ve touched them in every possible way. If she let me see them, let me touch them, I’d treat them like the works of art I know they are. I’d spend so much time with my hands and my mouth on them, I bet I could make her come just like that. From nothing more than what I did to her gorgeous breasts. How I’ve managed to keep my hands off her all this time, I’ll never understand.
I shake my head to scrub the image, the idea, from my brain. I have to remember why I came over here to talk to her.
Tripp. Drunk. Dana getting home.
“That’s his third drink, and I saw him mix it. It’s practically pure vodka. No way you’re getting into a car with him tonight.”
“You’re counting his drinks?”
“Hell, yes, I’m counting. You should be, too, if he’s giving you a ride.”
She looks furious, but I can tell she knows I’m right. She cannot let him take her home.
“I’m going. If you’re ready, I’ll take you,” I offer. I hope I can do that without asking about the hot tub, without touching her in any way.
“What about yo
u?” She glances down at the beer bottle in my hand. “I haven’t seen you without one of those since you got here.”
“It’s my second,” I say.
“Sure it is.” Her glare is back.
“You think I’d lie to you about something like this? When I’m offering to drive you home?”
“I’m saying I have eyes. I know what I’ve seen tonight.”
I throw my head back and groan. It’s impossible to understand how she could think I’d be casual about drinking.
“Dana, think about it. Have you ever seen me drunk?”
“Well … no.” She looks like it puzzles her, like it’s something she’s never considered.
“And you never will,” I say.
Not that it hasn’t happened a few times. But those were enough for me to know I don’t want to repeat the experience.
Dana still looks like she doesn’t understand.
How can that possibly be?
“Both my parents are alcoholics,” I finally say. She knows that, although I guess I’ve never said it so explicitly. And I hate this. I hate bringing them up with anybody, never mind her. But she still looks like she has no idea what I’m trying to tell her. “I grew up with that. I know what it’s like.”
“And you’re nothing like them,” she says.
God, I hope not. I hope I never am.
She looks like she thinks I’m crazy for letting this even cross my mind — if I’m reading her right, and I’m never sure I am these days. She’s also waiting for me to explain about my drinking tonight.
“I never have more than two beers. That’s my limit.”
I’ll never get drunk on two beers, and I’m not ever going to turn into an alcoholic, because I couldn’t live with myself if I did.
Maybe I should not drink at all, but guys would give me so much shit about that, and I don’t want to hear it. With two parents who’ve spent time in prison, I already get my share of shit from other people. So I do my two-beers thing. I don’t have to not drink at all, and I don’t have to tell anybody why I do what I do. I look like any other guy in this way, relaxing and having a few beers. It seems to work out fine, except for right now.
“You’ve had a beer in your hand the whole time I’ve been here,” Dana says, like she still doesn’t believe me.
Jesus, she can be so stubborn. I’m going to have to explain the whole damned thing to make her really understand, and I’m mad enough to do it. How could she think I’d offer her a ride home when I was drunk? I’d never take a chance like that with her.
“I hang onto the second one. I carry it around the rest of the night, because I don’t want explain to everybody that my parents are drunks, and I don’t want to end up like them.”
“Peter?” She looks stunned.
“It’s genetic. Alcoholism. I have to think that genetically, I’m screwed.” I shove my hands deep into my jeans and shrug. “I decided a couple of years ago that it’s better for me to be cautious with alcohol, and ... Come on. Look around us.”
Someone’s already over at the edge of the bushes puking. We’ve already had an almost-fight. Some girl’s in the shadows off to the left with a guy I swear she hates, and they’re making out, something I doubt she’d ever do sober.
I don’t find anything attractive about drinking, especially drinking too much.
“I don’t need this, Dana. I’m not missing anything by not getting shit-faced tonight.”
And then she looks sorry for me, and I can’t handle that from her. I’m sorry I ever opened up to her this way. I turn away, because I can’t look at her, and say, “So, are you coming with me?”
“I told Becca I’d go home with her.”
“Okay.” It takes everything I’ve got to say just that one word and try not to sound pissed as hell, which I am.
Not at her.
At the situation.
I’m the one who put this distance between us. I wish so much that things could be different. But they can’t. It’s still so hard, and I worry that I don’t know as much about her life as I used to, that I can’t watch out for her the way I used to. Like now, when she’s with this asshole, Tripp.
I look up, and he’s glaring at us from across the crowd on the beach and slowly making his way over here. He knows I know he’s full of shit, and it looks like he’s daring me to say something — anything — about it.
I have to, I realize. This has gone on long enough. Andie’s changed her story so much that I don’t know what really happened that night with Tripp. When I mention wanting to warn Dana about him, Andie says it’s nobody’s business except hers and Tripp’s, but I think she’s still scared. I’d hate for Tripp to hurt her because of anything I did. I already feel guilty enough, doing anything with Andie while the only girl I really want is standing right in front of me.
Dana with Tripp makes me crazy, I know. Am I blowing it all out of proportion? Am I paranoid, being so worried about her with him? Am I looking for any excuse to get Dana away from him? Maybe. Maybe not. I can’t say anymore.
I don’t want to make things any worse between her and me, but I sure as hell don’t want her hurt, especially if I could have stopped it by speaking up first. It all rolls around in my head all the time now, and the whole hot tub thing? I see red every time I think about it.
Dana turns and sees Tripp coming toward us. She turns back to me and says, “Please, don’t get into a fight with him tonight.”
I shake my head, wondering what else I can say that she might listen to. “He’s really pissed about losing the game. About some things that were said afterward in the locker room. Not by me. He’s always thought he’s so much better than he is, and this was supposed to be his big year. He didn’t impress anybody, although he’ll never admit it. Nothing’s ever his fault. He blames everybody else for every problem he has.”
“Okay, that’s the way you see him—”
“That’s the way he is.”
“He’s never been mean to me,” she says.
I find that very hard to believe, knowing him the way I do, and I’m furious now. How could she not see through him? Of course, he’s got most adults snowed. He’s got that polish and confidence that comes from money, and I’m sure if we ever got into any serious trouble, most every adult who knew us would say I was at fault and he was the victim.
But Dana, too?
“You think I’m lying to you about him?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing!” She sounds as pissed off as I am. “What are you doing, Peter?”
“Trying to keep you from getting hurt!”
“Really?” Tears pool in her big brown eyes, and her expression goes tight. She bites her bottom lip, and looks away. “You think he’s going to hurt me?”
“Yeah, I do.” Why the fuck would that make her cry? Except maybe because I’m practically screaming at her now.
I back up and try to breathe, to calm down. My chest and shoulders are heaving as I haul air in and out.
Right then, I make up my mind. I’m done. I’ll talk to Andie tonight. I’ll tell her that either she tells Dana what happened with Tripp or I will. I can’t stand Dana being with him any longer.
“Let me take you home,” I say to Dana one more time, hating to leave her here. “Please.”
For a moment, she looks like she might. I think I’ve gotten to her. But then Tripp laughs at something. She looks over at him, and he gives her a big smile, while I glare at him behind her back.
I could beat the shit out of him right now. I don’t care what kind of trouble it would cause. And I swear, he knows that’s exactly what I want to do. I’ve probably made things even worse. He knows that by messing with her, he can get to me, and he's the kind of asshat who enjoys doing something like that. He thinks he’s untouchable, that he can get away with anything. I bet he always has.
I turn back to see Dana watching me watch him, and she does not look happy. I know I’ve lost her. She’s not going to listen to me. She’s going to
stay here with him.
Last time, I promise myself. Last time she goes anywhere near him.
Tripp’s coming closer, and Dana shoots me a pleading look. Finally, I say, “Promise not to get in a car with him tonight.”
“I promise,” she says.
So, I turn and walk away, maybe twenty feet into the darkness and pull out my phone. As I’m calling Andie, Tripp comes up to Dana, puts his arm around her and leans down to kiss the side of her face.
I make myself look away as Andie’s phone goes to voice mail. Where the hell is she? She’s been everywhere I’ve been for more than two months now, and tonight, when I actually want to talk to her, I can’t find her.
I groan, stuck in this place where there’s no way to win, and it just feels like shit.
“Andie,” I say to her phone’s voice mail. “It’s me. I have to talk to you about Tripp. It’s important. I don’t care what time it is. Call me back when you get this.”
When I look back at Dana and Tripp, he’s got his mouth on her neck, maybe her ear. I see red. It takes me back to being that completely out-of-control, mad-at-the-world kid I was at fourteen or fifteen, and I know I have to get out of here now, without seeing one more second of Tripp’s mouth on her.
Last fucking time, I promise myself again.
I’ll go find Andie. How hard can it be? We live in a small town, and I know who her best friends are. I’ll warn Andie what I’m about to do — and I won’t let her talk me out of it this time, like she has before. Then I’ll come back here, if it’s not too late, or I’ll be at Dana’s house first thing in the morning to tell her.
I’m going to end this thing between her and Tripp.
Finally.