by Tiffany Sala
“I don’t know that Lucy likes me enough to be willing to give me things,” I said, and then decided to be a little daring. “Especially if I’m going to be getting in her face a lot more from now on.”
Lucas turned that smile on me. “She’ll have to get used to it, because I’m planning to make everything official.” I clearly didn’t give him enough of a reaction, so he added, “As a girlfriend.”
“Were you planning on asking me first?” I said, to hide just how much more vulnerable the suggestion made me feel. What exactly would being Lucas’s girlfriend change about our situation? Even Lucas wouldn’t know, because Lucas had never been in the business of having girlfriends.
“No,” he told me. “That just gives you too much time to overthink it. Like you’re doing right now.”
I don’t know what my face did at that, but he crawled back over to me and slid under the covers alongside me. I flinched when he slung an arm over my shoulders, curling into a ball before I could stop myself. It was incredibly awkward to be so close to him like that.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to be like that now you’ve gotten what you wanted out of me,” Lucas said.
He surprised a laugh out of me, and the realisation that I needed to be a bit open with him if I wanted to have any hope of this working.
“I almost feel like you’re still a stranger,” I said. “I mean, we’ve been through all this… this deep stuff, but at the same time I don’t know anything about you. We’ve done everything backwards, in a way, and now it makes things so much harder.”
“I can’t do anything about how it started,” Lucas said. “But we can start to do things differently now.”
“That scares me,” I admitted. “I feel like I’m too invested in this already, but I have no idea if you’re so much as capable of feeling the same. If you’re going to just drop and break me and leave me worse off than I was to begin with.”
I could just see his face from the side, but I felt like his expression revealed thoughtfulness, concern… like he was wondering the same things about himself.
If that was true, he didn’t admit it then. And the thought that he might have deliberately made that call, strangely enough, left me trusting him more.
“It’s just a risk you have to take,” he told me. “Like anything else in life, right?”
He did make love to me again a few hours later with the world dark and quiet around us, just a single lamp in his bedroom barely reaching the far walls to throw its shadows. He moved slowly and intently, talking to me in a gentle voice about the design features his family’s house espoused, about the places they had gone to purchase furnishings and other supplies. He called my attention to the high ceilings and the beautifully finished cornices.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he assumed I had some fetish for house construction. But I thought I did know better, and I understood he was just doing what he always did: speaking things into reality. This time, it was something so minor as my dreams, how they would feel once they were actually in my life.
And, well, whatever I thought about that, he certainly knew how to get me to where he wanted to take me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was strange to have Lucas get out of my car and not immediately walk away. He even took my hand once I was done getting all my stuff together, which set my knees knocking in fear.
I knew, as we walked onto the school grounds linked in that way, everyone would know this had happened by the end of the day. And I didn’t know what that would mean for me, or if Lucas would be able to protect me. Maybe he wouldn’t even be interested in protecting me the way I hoped.
The regret started really hitting me as we approached a group I didn’t even know half the members of. How could I expect this to work out? When we got close enough for me to recognise Steven, whose only prior interaction with me was that sleazy hint about sitting on his lap, a weird thought struck me: should I have just gotten in the car with his friends the first time he asked, so I could get to know him properly?
I couldn’t let myself get caught up in ideas like that. If Lucas had wanted a girl who would go along with whatever he wanted it would be someone like Petra coming to join his group of friends right now. And I was pretty sure girls like Petra moved in and out of the group all the time.
“Hey,” said Steven when we reached the shade of the tree they were all standing under. “Hi, Calista.”
“So I’ve got a confession to make,” Lucas said. “Callie and I have been… hanging out, over the past few weeks, on the quiet.”
“Colour me surprised,” said Steven.
There was an awkward silence Lucas cheerfully barrelled over the top of, introducing me around the group. Other than Steven there was Axel and Mic on the guys’ side, and then Ashleigh had Sophia and Carlene with her. All of them but Ashleigh had joined us later in high school. Petra probably wasn’t a regular in the crowd after her ‘time’ with Lucas, which was all the thinking I was going to do about that because I was feeling insecure enough right now.
None of which was helped by the way Ashleigh was staring at me.
I decided, as Lucas’s attention moved to telling Steven about some wild evening he’d had at a party I never even knew had happened, I was going to address this head-on so it wouldn’t nag at me for the whole time I was this close with Lucas. Even if things went bad between us very quickly, I realised I wanted to know what the fuck was her problem.
I nudged Ashleigh to cut her out of her conversation with Sophia and Carlene, not that she seemed particularly invested in it for the moment.
“Right, so are you going to tell me exactly what’s up with you?”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Do I need to? You’re such an absolutely sketchy bitch, Calista. You acted like you wanted my help that one time, and then you totally betrayed me, made me look like I was doing something wrong. I know you look down on all of us, but from where I’m standing, you’re the one who isn’t shit.”
At the start of this whole adventure, I would have just rolled my eyes at that. But now I didn’t know what I thought about anything.
“I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” I told her. “It wasn’t my plan. I just said something stupid I should have kept to myself.”
“Well,” said Ashleigh, “we all do that once in a while.”
I checked around us. None of the others were paying attention to us.
I leaned closer to her. “Did you just call me that day on impulse? Is there something you feel I need to know? Because now is the time to tell me.”
“I just… I heard from Lucas that you’d had an accident,” Ashleigh said, “and I wanted you to know there was support available. In case you needed it.”
“Why would you…” But I was already abandoning the question, because I could see exactly what she was leading towards.
“Maybe I was handled with a bit more discretion because I was a friend,” said Ashleigh. “Nobody knows. But I know how hard it is for you to get out of a situation nobody else knows you’re in.”
And there it was. She’d lied about it before to my face… but could I really blame her?
It had been easier to discount when it was girls like Petra, near-strangers I’d met as a teenager and had little history with. But I’d grown up with Ashleigh on the fringes of my life. I knew her family, the kids she used to be friends with when we were a much smaller group of kids, and I probably wouldn’t forget her the way I would some of these other girls.
If Lucas had secretly romanced Ashleigh in plain sight at some point… well, it could have just been because he didn’t want to deal with the whole having-a-girlfriend situation. But there had clearly been some angle to it that had really wigged Ashleigh out. If she just wanted to make trouble for me, she could have let me find out sooner. Whatever had happened, she only barely dared to reveal it to someone who might have been through the same.
The question was, did she want to protect Lucas, or hers
elf?
If I got her alone somewhere later and told her, straight-up, that Lucas had run his car into me on purpose that time, that he’d destroyed my phone and intimidated me until I was willing to give him some of my time, I was pretty sure I’d learn all she had to tell.
I would also be putting Lucas completely at her mercy by giving her the information she needed to destroy him. Myself, too, if I cared enough about what happened to him—and especially after that night we’d spent together, I did.
If I just wanted to know what had happened, I could ask Lucas. But he might refuse to tell me, or become angry with me for prying into his past… or he might lie. There were a lot of risks.
I had a choice to make here.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to Tamara until lunch time. Carlene was in a lot of my classes, and apparently now that Lucas was making me official, she was going to do everything she could to bring me into the fold. It was overwhelming and a bit annoying to be honest, but I could see she was trying, and I had promised myself I wasn’t going to pre-judge these girls out of eventually liking me.
Tamara had Aileen with her, looking like she would have rather been anywhere but there.
“All right, Calista,” she said, “so what is going on here?”
I’d never felt more awkward in front of anyone in my life, and that included every popular kid who’d given me a hard time over the years.
“I texted you,” I told her. “Lucas and I got together properly, it was very sudden.”
“And now you’re part of his little group,” said Tamara, “is that it?”
Aileen was making faces at me where she thought Tamara couldn’t see.
“I just would have thought we were worth more after all these years than you just dropping me a text while you’re hanging with your new beau’s friends,” Tamara said. “People have been asking me what’s going on all day. Absolutely loving it when it’s clear I don’t have a fucking clue. Do you have any idea what that feels like?”
Yes, I did, but I could never tell her.
All I could do was try to look apologetic for my distraction.
“We’re still friends,” I told her. “I don’t want to stop spending time with you just because I might be spending more time with Lucas from now on.”
“But if I want to spend time with you now am I going to have to also spend time with Ashleigh and Carlene?” Tamara demanded. “Because I do not want anything to do with those bitches.”
“I don’t think Carlene is that bad actually,” I said. “She seems kind of nice.”
Tamara spun and stalked away, Aileen glancing back at me a few times as she followed.
No, there wasn’t a chance in hell Tamara would be able to spend time with Lucas’s crowd. She was shy, but she fired up whenever she felt threatened… and what I knew about Lucas’s friends already was that being bitchy and hostile was part of the fun. They would rag on each other and trade really nasty, really personal jokes… and I was kind of used to that after all my time working at Stacks Brothers, even if I didn’t particularly like it, but I didn’t imagine Tamara ever would.
I asked myself, why should I care? The two of us hadn’t really been spending much time together for months. But I could see now that was my fault in large part, because I had let myself get caught up in this loopy plan for improving my future prospects, which wouldn’t have been so bad… if I hadn’t just happily wasted my time at the expense of our friendship.
Welll, I wasn’t even sure we had a friendship any more.
Lucas went out with Steven that night, which left me pretty relieved. I still hadn’t decided whether I should confront him over Ashleigh’s allegations, and I didn’t think I could spend any time with him doing anything else until we’d sorted that out. Certainly not the sorts of things he was hot for.
At least I hoped my mother would make for some much-needed nonjudgemental company where the situation with Lucas was concerned. I hadn’t seen my parents since before our big hook-up, but I’d kept them updated on my still-alive status via text, so they had to have figured out what was going on.
Mum almost met me at the door, but I was surprised to see she wasn’t smirking like the cat who’d just about scored the perfect son-in-law. I figured there had been some beef with Dad and was going to let them keep the details for my own sanity, but when Dad got home he didn’t seem to be that much different to usual when it came to me and Lucas. He actually asked how things were with the two of us, which was more than Mum managed.
She was the one who had the problem, then?
Well, it seemed like today I was just in for it in terms of confronting people who had issues with my finally managing to get any boyfriend at all.
“Okay, Mum,” I said, with Dad right there, “what’s going on here? You’ve been nudging for me and Lucas to get together officially since the accident, for goodness sake.”
“It’s true,” she admitted. “But I think I’m starting to see things a bit more from your dad’s point of view these days. I thought you and Lucas would be a great couple… but that was before I knew how much you were going to change yourself to fit with him.”
“Change myself,” I repeated. “We’ve only just started dating officially. What do you mean?”
“I think your mother is referring to changes that started weeks before this weekend, Callie,” said Dad.
“You dress completely differently these days,” Mum said. “You’re slathering on all this makeup just to leave the house. The way you walk, talk… you’ve quit your job.”
“I got a new one.”
“And do you even see Tamara any more?” Mum asked, even though she hadn’t given a damn whether Tamara was in my life or not before now.
I did not want to think about bloody Tamara. I tried to focus on the relevant parts of this argument.
“I am doing things differently now,” I conceded. “I’ve changed my life. But I think it’s all for the better.”
“You shouldn’t have to change yourself to make a man like you,” Mum told me. “He should be able to like you for who you really are, if it’s meant to be.”
“But what if—” I bit down on what I’d been about to say. What if who you really are isn’t someone you can be proud of?
I noticed Dad hadn’t had much to say. He was supporting Mum, because that was what he tried to do when it was of no concern to him, and he was probably quite happy to stay on the anti-Lucas train. But he clearly didn’t really understand what she was on about.
I knew what Mum was on about. She was frustrated with me, because she could see me actually doing something to change my life for the better. Dragging myself out of the fairly shitty situation I’d been born into. It was something she’d never been able to do, and the jealousy was killing her.
The two people who had hinted most strongly that maybe there was something special between Lucas and I were now mad because maybe there was. I really didn’t understand this world.
I was already in bed when I got a text from Lucas letting me know he wouldn’t need a ride in to school the next morning and he’d be too busy to hang out after I was done with work too. Maybe Wednesday.
Well, we’d already agreed I was too busy to commit to driving him around after school on a regular basis, and we’d probably see one another during breaks the next day. But if our first day as a public couple was anything to go by, I’d be stuck chatting to Carlene and maybe getting the odd cuddle from Lucas as he talked shit with the guys. I didn’t hate it exactly, but it wasn’t like the times when Lucas had all his attention focused on me. It made me wonder if this was the best I could hope for, now he’d gotten all he could want from me.
Of course that was just insecurity. Lucas had taken responsibility for the situation between the two of us, and that had made a huge difference. Nobody was harassing me about what was going on any more, although some of my classmates would smirk or wink at me in a knowing way that was a bit embarrassing. Tamara was getting the brunt of wha
t I would normally have copped, and that sucked, but I didn’t know what I could do about that.
I did need to decide what I was going to do about Lucas, though. Either I found a way to put my trust in him properly, like he deserved… or I would have to say no to him for the third time. And that would probably be the last time.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“See you tomorrow,” Carlene called as Lucas led me away.
Carlene and the other guys seemed to have really taken to me, and acted as if I’d always been part of their group. Sophia was still just polite, and Ashleigh avoided any situation where we would have to interact, but I knew she was always watching me, waiting to see if I would try to crank her for more information.
To my surprise I hadn’t been thinking about the Ashleigh situation much since Monday. I was mostly bothered by Carlene. If she liked me so much now, if she’d been so desperate for a friend, then why hadn’t she ever struck up a conversation in class? She had been sitting behind me in science class for months.
It was an annoying question mostly because I understood exactly why she’d never talked to me, of course. It was, more or less, the same reason I’d never turned around and talked to her.
Was the real world as stupidly cliquey as high school? I’d asked Amanda that question at work the day before, and she’d given me an infuriating yes and no answer. Maybe it was just going to be whatever I made of it… but when I didn’t know what I wanted to make of it, that wasn’t a comforting thought.
“And then her tits exploded,” said Lucas. “It was incredible!”
I turned to him. “What?”
“I didn’t think you were paying much attention.” His smug smile offered just a hint of perfect teeth.
I realised I was sitting in the driver’s seat of my car, not going anywhere, and I didn’t even remember getting in.
“First of all,” Lucas said, “is there something you need to talk about? And second, is it something that I’m going to regret asking about?”