Just You

by Rebecca Phillips

  Just You

  By Rebecca Phillips

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  Just You

  By Rebecca Phillips

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2012 Rebecca Phillips

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, are coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover Image: Copyright 2010 feferoni

  Used under license from depositphotos.com

  Cover Design by Jason Phillips and Shannon Steele

  Chapter 1

  When Ashley called me that Sunday evening three weeks after school started to give me the news, I probably should have been angry, or at least surprised. But all I felt, really, was tired.

  “Oh,” I said flatly.

  “Oh?” Her screech reminded me of the sound our neighbor’s old Corvette made every morning at 5 a.m., when he hit the gas a little too hard in his rush to make it to work on time. “I tell you your boyfriend was seen with his tongue down Kara Neilson’s throat and all you can say is ‘Oh’?”

  “What would you like me to say, Ash?”

  “Taylor,” she said in the tone she used whenever I was being unreasonable. Which, according to her, was way too often these days. “This isn’t just another silly rumor, if that’s what you’re thinking. I have it on good authority. Heather does not lie. She and Lindsay both saw them kissing on the library steps this afternoon. In front of the whole street. I mean, he obviously wanted you to find out.”

  I wasn’t sure what she expected from me. Ashley was my oldest friend—we went way back to preschool—and she knew what made me tick, knew my various idiosyncrasies and accepted them as such. But my indifference to this monumental piece of information obviously had her stumped.

  “Kara has always been after him,” I reminded her.

  “Well, yeah,” Ashley said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was, I guess. Everyone knew Kara liked Brian. Especially Brian. “And now she finally caught him, and you don’t even seem to care. How can you, of all people, be so calm about your boyfriend cheating on you?”

  “I do care,” I said. And I did, a little. It bothered me that Kara Neilson would be bold enough to break the Universal Girl Rule—stay away from other girls’ boyfriends. It also bothered me that Brian finally fell for it. But it didn’t surprise me. Just like I hadn’t been surprised when I got my first period, or my first zit, or my first broken heart. All inevitable events in life, sure things, and sure things didn’t exactly count as surprises. And Brian cheating on me had been a sure thing.

  “It seems like, I don’t know…you expected it or something,” Ashley said. She’d always been good at seeing through my bullshit.

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Oh, Taylor,” she said, as if my cynicism made her sad. “What are you gonna do?”

  “What can I do?”

  “Break up with him, of course.”

  A patch of clouds passed over the sun, cloaking my room in shadows. I reached over to flick on my lamp and then squinted as my room and all my familiar possessions came sharply into focus. In the corner, next to my bookshelf, stood the ratty old corduroy chair I’d acquired a few years ago when my mother bought all new living room furniture. The chair, as usual, was bogged down with dirty clothes, CDs, and school books. Currently, it also served as a resting place for something else—the stuffed swan Brian had given me for our two-month “anniversary” last month. My eyes zeroed in on it.

  Years ago, when I was seven or eight, I’d been fascinated with swans. My father would take me to Crawford Park so I could see the mute swan that lived in one of the ponds there. I’d lean over the railing and watch it swim, back and forth and back again, for as long as Dad would let me. I even had a name for it: Millie. Brian knew all this, which was why he’d forsaken the traditional teddy bears and puppies in exchange for a keepsake that would actually mean something to me.

  Now, as I looked at that stuffed swan, its fluffy white body half-covered by a pair of dirty jeans and an old math test, I recalled something I had read way back in my swan-obsession phase. And the irony of it almost made me laugh out loud.

  Swans, I had learned, mated for life.

  “Well,” I said, shifting my attention back to Ashley, “he’s already broken up with me, wouldn’t you say?”

  Ashley was quiet for a moment, contemplating this. I could almost see her twirling a lock of her shoulder-length brown hair around her finger, like she did when she was thinking hard. “I’m sorry, Taylor.” Her tone oozed warmth and support, like a verbal hug. A hug I didn’t even need. “Men are scum.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.”

  Men are scum. This, I already knew. And much like the mating habits of swans, it was something I had learned at a very young age. The only difference was, everything I knew about swans had come from books and all those hours studying them at the park with my dad. But everything I knew about men and boys had come directly from my mother.

  ****

  After successfully avoiding him for most of the week at school, Brian managed to corner me on Thursday afternoon as I scurried toward the less-traveled exit I’d been using all week.

  “We need to talk,” he said, appearing at the bottom of the stairs like an apparition.

  “No, we don’t.” I descended the stairs and tried to brush past him, but he clutched my forearm, stopping me.

  “Yes,” he said, “we do.”

  I shook free from his grasp. “No. We really don’t.”

  “Come on, Taylor. Let me explain. Please.”

  I stopped at the door and then slowly swiveled, leveling my eyes with his. He returned my gaze for a few seconds before lowering his head in shame. The last time I’d seen him look like that, we were ten and he’d just gotten in trouble with Mrs. Kramer, our fifth grade teacher, for throwing Silly Putty in my hair. It was a joke, of course, but I wasn’t laughing as I stood at the washroom sink for a half hour, scraping slimy goo from my long, thick locks. Brian had felt remorseful then too, only to trick me again two weeks later by sneaking an extremely lifelike rubber spider into my lunch bag, causing me to shriek so loud that the girl next to me spilled an entire Thermos of soup into her lap in surprise. He’d had the same hang-dog look after that one too. He’d never been one to think about consequences.

  I’d known Brian about as long as I’d known Ashley—we’d gone to school together our whole lives—but it wasn’t until the end of ninth grade that we’d shown any interest in each other beyond friendship and collective memories. It started this past June when my friend Erin started going out with his friend Mitchell. In our crowd, dates usually took place in a group setting, so Brian and I were thrown together a lot. Everyone thought we were dating even though we weren’t, and then all of a sudden we really were. I liked him, but it was awkward a lot of the time. This was Brian, the kid I’d witnessed blowing spitballs through a straw at lunchtime and participating in burping contests with his equally gross friends. Not someone I really wanted to kiss. He was still a boy to me. But all my other fr
iends were getting boyfriends and dating, so I figured what the hell and kissed him one night in Erin’s family room during a particularly dull movie. That I kissed him purely out of boredom should have been my first clue.

  Now here we were, three months later, at a stand-off in a school stairwell, and I knew our relationship and our lifelong friendship were both about to come to a very abrupt end.

  “About Kara,” Brian said, hitching his backpack up on his shoulder. “I’m sorry you found out that way.”

  “Sure.”

  “I was going to tell you—.”

  I held up a hand to stop him. “Save it. It doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s just it,” he said, his words exploding into the tiny space. Two girls who were standing at the top of the stairs leaned over the railing to stare at us. Brian took my elbow and led me through the doors to an empty corridor, stopping near a recycling bin. “That’s just it,” he repeated, quieter this time. “It doesn’t matter to you. I don’t matter to you.”

  “What makes you say that?” I honestly wanted to know. What was it about me that made me such a bad girlfriend?

  Brian sighed, as if he didn’t have the time or the patience to list reasons for me. “When we were just friends, everything was fine between us. But the second we started dating, it was like you didn’t give a shit anymore. You were never into it, not like I was. I thought maybe you regretted getting involved with me and didn’t want to admit it, but it was more than that. Remember the end-of-summer bonfire?”

  I cringed, knowing where he was going with this.

  “I told you I loved you, and you said nothing.”

  “I know,” I said, remembering that night. We’d been sitting together, the two of us, on the edge of a rickety old wharf. We started making out, and Brian had gotten caught up in the moment and whispered it in my ear. But instead of saying “I love you too”, like most sane people would have done, I said nothing. Because I didn’t. Love him, I mean. Not like that. In the awkward silence that followed his declaration, he’d made some excuse and then we got up and left. And we hadn’t talked about it since. Until today.

  “With Kara,” Brian said, his expression softening now, “I know how she feels about me. I know where I stand. With you I never did.”

  Did. Past tense. I tilted my head back to look at him. Brian, the kid I’d known since our swing set days, all grown-up now with facial hair and broad shoulders and a deep, manly voice. When we were twelve, I’d towered over him. Now he towered over me.

  I gave a lighthearted shrug. “It’s good you’re moving on to better things, Brian. I’m sorry you wasted three months of your life with me.”

  “That’s now how I feel. At all. It’s just really hard to get close to someone who’s scared to death to show any emotion, you know? I understand why you’re all jaded or whatever but God, not everyone is out to screw you over.”

  “You were, obviously,” I said, and then watched his face turn a pleasing shade of pink.

  “Taylor…”

  I backed up, away from him. “It’s okay. It’s better this way. We never should have started going out in the first place. It was a mistake.”

  “I’m sorry for not being straight with you from the beginning,” he said, giving me his hang-dog face again. “And for being such a coward.”

  I shrugged again, my way of covering up the sting of rejection. There were many things I could’ve said to him then, like how disappointed I felt—in him for turning out just like I expected he would, and in myself for letting my guard down, even for a second.

  But I didn’t say any of this to Brian. Instead, I said the only words I could squeeze past my throat at the moment: “I’m sorry too.”

  Leaving it at that, I turned and bolted for the exit. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  Chapter 2

  By the time I arrived at my dad’s house on Friday evening for a weekend visit, I’d gone from being pissed at one person to feeling mad at the world. My exchange with Brian the previous afternoon still weighed on me, and to make matters worse, my little sister Emma had taken the last frozen waffle at breakfast. My day just kept rolling downhill from there.

  “How was your week, sweet pea?” my father asked when I found him in the kitchen.

  “Fine,” I said, giving him a tight smile.

  “It’s just you and me and the kids tonight.” He returned to the counter, where he’d been busy shelling pistachios. Leo, my stepbrother Jamie’s golden retriever, let out a whimper from the gated laundry room, where he was sent whenever he got on people’s nerves. “No, I didn’t forget you,” Dad told Leo, who then put his front paws on the top of the gate and let out a bark.

  I went over to help my father. Slipping both thumbnails into a pistachio shell, I cracked it open and dropped the insides into the bowl between us. Over and over I did this, until my thumbs were sore and stained red. Oddly enough, it was kind of soothing.

  “Lynn on night shift?” I asked Dad.

  “Eleven to eleven, all week.”

  I nodded as I split another shell. It was at times like these, when we were doing simple, everyday things like watching TV together or talking about school or even engaging in mundane tasks like shelling pistachios, that I found myself forgetting what happened. My father was simply Dad again, my hero, the man who could do no wrong. In those moments, he wasn’t the same man who’d broken my heart when I was twelve, or the same one who’d left his family to be with a woman he’d met just a few months prior, at a colleague’s surprise fiftieth birthday party. Lynn Hayden—a no-longer-grieving widow with two kids and an eye for pudgy, balding, married English professors—happened to be the guest of honor’s sister-in-law. Little did anyone know at the time, a year and a half later she would also be my father’s second wife. Surprise party, indeed.

  “Thanks for your help, honey,” Dad said now. The pistachio supply had been depleted, leaving behind a pile of gutted shells.

  “No problem,” I said. I felt the anger start to mount in me again, like a paper cut that only stung when you remembered it was there.

  Dad tossed the empty shells in the trash and then retreated to the living room and his La-Z-Boy, bowl of nuts in one hand and a beer in the other. Craving another distraction, I scrubbed the red stains off my fingers and brought the cordless phone upstairs to my room, the one place in the house that truly felt like my own. I sat on my lumpy twin-sized bed and punched some numbers into the phone.

  “Hey, Tay,” Robin answered after several rings. “I knew you’d call me today.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because you’re dying to hear about what happened to me last night.”

  Her cheerful voice was like salve on a burn. I felt better already. “You’re psychic,” I told her. And she was also right. Her life—and everything she did—captivated me.

  “So I met this guy…” Robin began.

  “No way,” I said, faking surprise. Robin was always meeting “this guy.” She fell in love on average of twice a month, always so convinced that the current guy was “the one”, her perfect match.

  “No, really, I was standing outside Burger King with my friend Haley and he just came up and started talking to me,” she said, speaking fast like she did when she got excited. “His name’s Devon. And get this—he’s a senior at Redwood Hills High.”

  “Redwood Hills?” This was the upscale neighborhood near the golf course.

  “Yeah, I’ve been to a few parties over there. They have, like, the wildest parties ever.”

  I’d have to take her word for it. The wildest party I’d ever been to involved a stolen case of beer and a huge bowl of Cool Ranch Doritos.

  “When are you seeing him again?” I was awed by her ability to pick up boys like they were library books.

  “Tonight. He’s picking me up in about an hour. Come on over and help me get ready?”

  “Okay.”

  I let my father know where I was going and then jogged four doo
rs down to Robin’s house. She came to greet me her bathrobe, letting her cat Nermal out as she propped the door open for me. As usual, she was home alone. Robin’s mother had an even more active social life than Robin did. She usually stayed gone all weekend, leaving her daughter to take care of herself and do whatever she wanted. This constant solitude got to Robin sometimes, but I envied it. My own mother was always breathing down my neck, asking questions, and my father still thought of me as an innocent, asexual six-year-old.

  “I’m trying to decide between two outfits,” Robin said, picking up right where we left off on the phone. We went down the hallway to her messy bedroom and she motioned to several pieces of clothing lying flat on the bed. “What do you think?”

  I surveyed her choices: a plaid, pleated skirt that reminded me of a school uniform, only much shorter, and a sleeveless white top. Next to that, a pair of tight jeans and a black camisole-style top. I’d never seen her in either ensemble but I was quite positive she’d look hot in a garbage bag. Robin had been pretty when I met her, when we were both thirteen, but since then she’d bypassed attractive and landed on gorgeous. Tall and thin with not much of a chest, she could pull off any outfit she wanted and look like a runway model.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To the movies, I think.”

  “Oh. Well, either would be fine.”

  If the lack of enthusiasm showed in my voice, she didn’t seem to notice. Frankly, I was growing tired of acting as her fashion coordinator every weekend. Robin had started ditching me for guys around the time we turned fourteen, but lately it had gotten ridiculous. We rarely hung out anymore aside from these outfit emergencies. Before discovering older boys and partying, she’d practically lived at my dad’s house with me on weekends. We would watch movies, make brownies, babysit the kids, and sing karaoke in the living room. She would spread out a sleeping bag on my bedroom floor and we’d giggle over nothing into the wee hours. Now, I was lucky if I could keep her attention for a few minutes, let alone a whole weekend. She was so different now, a mature party girl who smoked and drank and did things with boys I had only read about in dog-eared copies of “older teen” Judy Blume books.