I pace a few times up and down the deck. My eyes catch sight of the silver toilet flusher in the planter. I fight the urge to snatch it out of there and fling it into the Gulf. I stop, turn my frustration back to her. “I have a feeling she’d feel differently if she knew I almost had sex with her daughter multiple times this week after I promised I’d take care of you.”
Mo watches like I’ve lost my mind. I think maybe he’s right.
“Caleb.” Her voice goes into a high register. “I take care of myself. I do what I want. I make my own decisions.”
She pauses—I watch her take a deep breath, her chest rise and fall.
I shake my head and speak before she can get another word in. “Yeah, right. No one tells Catie Dixon what to do. That’s why you’re going to UT to get an MBA that you don’t even want.” Being a dick is not what I was going for, but it’s where I landed.
Her mouth hangs open in shock. Her chin is stuck out; those lips are pressed tightly together. The very same lips I’ve kissed raw over the last few days. Narrowed blue eyes skewer me. I can feel them digging in.
She pushes up out of the chair and steps backward toward the door.
Dammit. “Catie.” I am trying to get my thoughts together, but it’s no good. I’m confused and angry at myself, and God, she’s too good for me.
She’s shaking her head. “I’m applying to Northwestern.”
“I don’t believe you. Are you even gonna tell your parents about it?”
Her face is red with anger. I feel whatever we are slipping out of my grasp. Maybe I never even had a real hold on it.
“Listen,” I say. “I get why you’re pushing me to do this. But I’m going back to Florida on Sunday.” I run my hand through my hair, my frustration just about at the boiling point. “Our parents are opening another branch of the store in Orlando right by school so I can help out in the off-season. It’s gonna happen. It’s win-win.” My voice cracks when the words come out.
Her face falls. “When’d they decide that?” I see a moment’s hesitation, but she quickly pulls it back in. “Tell them no,” she says firmly. “You can still come to school here. Caleb, you have to follow your heart.”
“Really?” I force myself to calm my voice. “How?” I turn away and stare at the water. It’s high tide. All riled up, just like me.
“You stand up for yourself!” she practically shouts. “You stop acting like a chickenshit!”
I stare at her.
“Caleb?” her voice is suddenly strong and deep, and half of me wants to cross this deck and show her how much I care about her, and the other half can only hear the Catie that I shut out for years, telling me the truth about myself. It’s the first half who wins, but it’s that second half that I let do the talking.
I can’t tie her down like I’m tied down. I won’t do it. She has to go and do this Northwestern thing. I’ve got to push her like she’s pushing me, even if it means I lose her.
“Catie. You know somethin’?” I stuff my hands in my pockets. “This week, today, has been fun, and I meant what I said. I like you. But I don’t know…”
She shakes her head. “Wait. Caleb.”
“No,” I say. I do my best to picture her, up on that campus I saw on the website, right on the shores of Lake Michigan, writing and reporting and learning and pursuing what she’s always wanted—who wants to be a broadcast journalist at ten? She did. It might be a long shot, but if anyone can make this happen, it’s her. That makes me happy. What I have to do next will not make me happy, and it might make her hate me, but I don’t want to be a factor in her not following her dreams.
I turn around and face her. It’s the least I can do. “I care about you, Catie, but this is already getting complicated. You’re right. I’m a chicken. And you aren’t. So maybe we should just call it.”
“You care about me?” She’s got that look on her face, the one that says don’t-mess-with-me. But there’s something more, something different. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize a broken heart. “No. You don’t care about me at all.”
I instantly want to take it all back, but I can’t. She needs to go to Chicago. I need to go back to Florida. That’s the only answer, no matter how bad it hurts. I don’t know if what I just said to her will piss her off enough to put her all into going to Northwestern. I know she doesn’t need my help making decisions, but I figure at the very least it’ll cut me out of the equation. If something holds her back, it won’t be me.
Not that it doesn’t hurt. It hurts like hell.
“Cate.”
Already there are tears pooling in her eyes. “Call me Catie.”
She walks into the house, slamming the door behind her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Catie
I forbid myself to cry. I’m too mad, and sad, and wonder why I ever let myself believe him.
For two days he makes me think he likes me. Not just likes me, but like he really might be falling for me. He said I was the only thing he knew he wanted. Then I call him a chickenshit, and he “calls” it. Just like that, we’re over.
I want to go home. I never want to come here again.
I flop down on my bed, wishing I had left with Sunny and Ainsley. Wishing I had kept right on despising him and not letting him get to me like he did.
And he did get to me. Again.
At least I didn’t sleep with him. Letting that thought run through my head makes me sad, though, because I don’t just sleep with people for fun. I was going to do it because I thought whatever we had was real. He told me it was real.
Liar.
I hear scratching at my door. Mo.
I open it, half expecting to see Caleb there, and glad that he’s not. It’s just the dog.
“Where is he?” I whisper to him as I pet his neck and glance down the hall. No sign. “You really need to pick better friends, Mo boy.” I grimace, and he licks my face.
I walk back into the room, where I eye the hockey jersey on the floor. I’m replaying parts of what just happened on the deck, not 100 percent sure, except for the end part. He broke up with me. After one date.
It was a wonderful date.
So what the hell?
“Doesn’t matter,” I say to Mo. “But you should go back to Caleb now. You and me, we’re through.”
He answers me with a whine that lets me know how he feels about that. “I love you, too,” I say, and I give up. The tears fall. I hear something in the hallway and just as quickly wipe them away. “Go,” I push sweet Mo gently away in the direction of the door.
An hour later, there’s a tap on my door.
“Hey.” It’s Caleb, holding a cupcake.
I don’t care.
“Can I say something?”
I put down my laptop and stand, hands on my hips. He thinks I’m pushy. Well, he’s right about that. “No.”
I tilt my head and try to invoke some sort of superpower that would enable me to ignore the extreme handsomeness of his dumb face. I try to forget the fact that I’ve been kissing that face for the last two days. What I don’t forget is that he clearly ended it.
“You’re a liar. And you can’t fix that with a cupcake.”
He opens his mouth to speak.
I wave a hand, indicating that he should stay silent. “Don’t you dare deny it. You said that you wanted to be friends again. Then you said you wanted me. Then you called it. You are a liar.”
I feel tears building in my eyes, but I keep my head up.
He takes a few steps into my room. “Catie?”
“I didn’t say you could come in.”
He puts the cupcake down on my dresser. “I’m sorry.”
I see his eyes glance at my laptop on the bed, still open to the application. A small smile flashes across his face.
“What? I told you I was going to apply.”
“Good.”
I shake my head, swallow back my tears. “You know, we’re not trapped. Me, or you.” As the words come out of m
y mouth, I realize that maybe I need to hear them more than he does. I think of my grandfather, in his wheelchair. He needs me, but for what?
To take him for ice cream once a week? Or to know that I’m not wasting my life doing something I don’t love?
Caleb says nothing.
“Have you ever read that Robert Frost poem about choosing a path?”
“Nope.”
“No? Not surprising. Well, Google it. But the point is, Caleb, you get to choose.”
“I told you,” he says in a sharp voice. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Of course you do,” I say, the lightbulb that just flickered on in my head surging now. “If you really want it bad enough, you do. You always have a choice.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’m a chickenshit.”
“I guess that’s a choice, too.”
I grab my laptop and sit against my pillows, and he stands there, hovering in the door, Mo pacing between us. I can’t look up at him again. It hurts too much. “Good night, Caleb.”
“Cate?”
He did not just call me that.
“Catie?” He sounds exasperated, and that’s too damn bad.
I stare at the screen, though I can’t focus. “Early day tomorrow. My mother has her suspicions about us, silly woman, so they’ll probably be here at the crack of dawn.”
He still doesn’t move.
“Good night, Caleb,” I say again, changing the intonation of my voice to make it clear I’m done with him. He doesn’t say a word, just whistles for Mo and closes the door behind them with a dull, excruciating, heartbreaking click.
I sit, feeling numb, for a long time, but then I play back the words I just said to him. I Google the Robert Frost poem. “The Road Not Taken.” Gramps used to read me it to me. I called Caleb a chickenshit, but what about me?
Am I one, too?
I refresh the Northwestern application. If I get in early decision, it means I’ll have to commit to them, and I haven’t even visited the campus. It’s such a long shot, but if I get in and if I can get scholarships, I think Mom and Dad will understand, given time. They’d have to. Leaving Gramps will be harder, but I’ll cross that bridge when and if I get to it.
All I know, sitting on that bed with my once-again Caleb-broken heart, is that there are two paths in front of me, and I get to choose which one I go down.
“Caaatherine…”
Ugh. My mother.
I lie still with my eyes closed. I have no idea what time it is, but I know it’s way too early. Mom, however, doesn’t care.
I feel her weight on the edge of my mattress. “Hey, honey. It’s good to see you!”
I twist my head and squint one eye open. “Hi,” I mumble and turn my back to her.
“It’s so good to be here, all of us, just like the old days.”
I hear the door squeak open a little. “Did you find her?”
Oh no. It’s Caleb’s mother.
“She’s just being a lazy teenager,” Mom says.
“My girl?” Caleb’s mom says. “Never! Hey, you’re not hiding my son in here are you?”
This fully wakes me. “Uh. No.” I lift my head and somehow conjure up a smile. “Hey, Aunt Jenny.” I push the hair out of my eyes and try to smile. I swear I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck. I barely slept last night, trying to figure out what to do with my life and how to let go of Caleb.
He broke my heart for years, over and over. Last night was the last time. It’s not happening again, no matter how much I’m craving him right now.
“He must have gone for a run,” his mother says and stands in front of me, same eyes, same smile as her son. “You, my dear, look fantastic! Seventeen agrees with you.”
“She looks good,” my mother says, analytically. “Tired, though.”
I sniff. “Must have been all the partying.” They both laugh at my joke, Mom a little less so.
Sometime around two last night, I thought I heard the bedroom door squeak open, but it was just Mo, who jumped on the end of my bed and slept for a while. I wondered briefly if Caleb was with him and let my stupid self feel hopeful that maybe he was coming to get me. To do what, though? He brought me a cupcake, and I sent him away. I don’t know. Maybe to tell me he was all wrong, and that he is not actually a chickenshit, and he does want to go to school in Texas, and he would like to keep kissing me, forever.
He didn’t do that. He didn’t do anything at all. Now our parents are here, and we’ll have to pretend that the last few days didn’t even happen. My stomach twists and untwists like I’m on the roller coaster from yesterday.
Was that really just yesterday?
“Well, I’m already cooking up some brunch,” Aunt Jenny says. “Pancakes, my sweet?” she asks, then bends down and kisses my cheek and ruffles my hair. “Love you, punkin.”
“You, too,” I murmur.
When she leaves I scratch my head and try to fully open my eyes, searching the room for my mother. She’s at the dresser, tidying up, as she does.
“What’s this?” she asks, her tone less cheerful than it was.
My eyes focus. She’s holding the yellow rose that Caleb gave me. I’d put it in a glass.
“Just a rose.” I lay back down, hoping she doesn’t dig deeper. I’m not a good liar.
“These are cute,” she says.
I twist my body around again. She’s looking in the little plastic bag from the tourist shop on Galveston. The two little turtles.
“Did you buy those yesterday?”
I swallow. She’s got this bloodhound vibe going on, and it’s making me feel twitchy. “Yes, Mom.”
“Did you mean to wrap this up?” she says.
“Mom, it’s a cupcake. It’s not gonna go bad overnight.”
She’s quiet, and I am tempted to scream at her to leave. She can be like this, a dog with a bone. “And this?”
I open my eyes, and Caleb’s oversized hockey jersey is hanging from her finger.
I moan. “I found it in a drawer. And I borrowed it.” All true.
I peek at my phone, where a group text waits for me. Sunny told Ainsley, which is fine.
We’re gonna need the tea on this date
I respond quickly.
The tea was cold so I dumped it out
Mom is still poking around, which knowing her, means that she’s probably threading together some conspiracy theory—except in this case I’m afraid her theory might be true.
“I’m gonna go help Aunt Jen with breakfast,” she finally says. “Get dressed and come say hello to Gramps, okay?”
I shoot up in bed. “Gramps is here?”
“He insisted,” Mom says, looking worried.
I push back the blankets and run into the bathroom. Gramps hasn’t been to the beach house in a long while, and I’m happy he made the trip. He’s good at fixing things. Not that I can tell him what happened with Caleb, but just seeing him and hugging him makes things better.
Mom laughs, and maybe she believes my true but misleading excuses about the evidence she found in my room just now. “Slow down,” she says. “He’s not going anywhere.”
I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror as I brush my teeth. Gramps isn’t going anywhere right now, but he isn’t going to be here forever. I think of the pretty campus of Northwestern and taste a little acid in my mouth. I spit and rinse and wish I didn’t have so many questions.
At first, I was only going to apply to convince Caleb to apply to the program that Professor Jackson runs. Instead, that lightbulb came on, and I realized that I need to stop thinking about what I need to do for everyone else—Mom and Dad, the business, even Gramps. I get one life—just one, and even if I live to be a hundred, it’s not that long, is it?
If I start out my life by not following my heart, where will that lead me? I want to be a journalist. For real. That’s the path I choose.
Mo runs into the room, which means that Caleb has returned and he’s somewhere in the house. I have no idea what I’
ll say to him when I see him, or how I will act. Maybe just accept the cupcake apology he gave me last night. I’m tired of being frenemies with Caleb. Things got heated here, and I let myself get in too deep, but that was my own decision, and my own fault. I can go home on Sunday and carry on with my life. I’ve survived without him these last eight or so years. I’ll be fine again without him in my orbit.
It may just take a little time.
When I head out to the living room, I see my dad and Caleb’s dad, greet them quickly, and catch a glimpse through the blinds of Gramps sitting out on the deck. When I open the front door, he sees me and hits me with his smile.
Sitting across from his wheelchair on the picnic table is Caleb. While I was sleeping, he apparently went out and got a haircut, and my body immediately reacts to his clean-cut self. I’m hot all over and want nothing more than to kiss him, but we don’t do that anymore. We will never do that again. Instead, I run to Gramps and throw my arms around his neck. He chuckles and pats my arm with a shaky hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” I sit on the bench beside him and take his hand.
“I c-an’t surprise my girl?” he asks. It takes him time to say it, but I don’t care. For a person with zero patience, I would wait an eternity to hear what Gramps has to say.
“Of course you can! I’m so happy you came!”
“G-ood. Ca-leb was just telling me about all the fun you’ve been having.”
That shuts me up.
“Oh?” I bend down and pretend to brush something off of Gramps’s wheelchair until the major blush that is spreading up my neck goes away. “Yeah, it’s been all right. Typical beach house stuff.”
Gramps’s head jerks as he turns to Caleb. “Sounds like a good time to me.”
I take advantage of Gramps’s averted eyes and glare at Caleb. What the hell has he been telling my grandfather?
“Yeah, nothing special,” I say and change the subject as Aunt Jenny comes out to the deck.
“Wow, it’s already so hot,” she says, putting a hand up to her eyes to look out to the water. “And the food is ready.” She smiles. “Jack, you hungry?” she asks Gramps, who nods and grins. “How about you, mister?” She runs a hand lovingly over Caleb’s newly short hair. “By the way,” she says to him. “I ordered some sheets for your dorm room. We’re so behind on all that stuff. You’re moving in in a week!”
Stuck With You (First Kiss Hypothesis) Page 18