by Amy Sparling
Really, the fault is all mine.
I call Bayleigh from the parking lot and put the car in drive before she answers. When she picks up the phone and sounds cheerful, I know I haven’t woken her up. Not that she would be sleeping at only nine at night, but with a baby, you just never know.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Just watching TV while the boys sleep. Jace played with Jett this morning so I got to sleep in until like, noon so I’m not tired at all.”
“Wow, that’s nice,” I say, pulling onto the highway. Subconsciously, I know I shouldn’t be turning this way. I normally take the back roads to go home. But I keep driving and ask Bayleigh about her son’s diaper problem. “So is Jett still taking off his diaper every chance he gets?”
She groans into the phone. “Oh my God, yes. I have no idea why he does that. I bought him a bigger size thinking maybe they were too small, but it doesn’t matter. He rips them off no matter what.”
I laugh. “He’s a little exhibitionist.”
“Tell me about it.”
We chat a little while and it’s mostly just me telling her about how much work sucked today and how a kid came this freaking close to throwing up cookies and cream ice cream all over me. She laughs when I tell her about my mad dive across the room to avoid getting puke all over me.
“Becca, something’s wrong,” she says, her voice serious.
“What is it?” I ask, still driving on the highway, headed farther away from home with each passing mile marker.
“No, it’s not me. It’s you.”
“Nothing is wrong with me,” I say, probably a little too quickly. I know that on the other end of the phone, Bayleigh is lifting one eyebrow at me, giving me her signature look of disbelief.
“Something is wrong. I can tell it in your voice.”
“No…” I say, unable to think of any kind of legitimate excuse.
“Yes. And I’ll prove it to you.”
Now I’m the one lifting my eyebrow in disbelief. “How exactly will you prove to me that you think something is wrong with me when it so isn’t?”
She snorts into the phone. “For one, you’re still driving. You should have gotten home like ten minutes ago. So where exactly are you headed?”
Eyes wide, I look at the clock on my dashboard. It’s nine-fifteen and I’m driving west on the highway. “Wow,” I murmur. “I guess my brain forgot what it’s doing.”
“Are you headed my way?” Bayleigh asks, but her voice tells me she already knows the answer.
“Looks like it,” I say with a sigh.
“Good,” she says. “Your brain knows exactly what it’s doing. I need my best friend to hang out with me and it looks like you need me, too.”
I smile as I hang up the phone, promising her I’ll see her in an hour. For the first time tonight, I’m not dwelling on Park. Instead, a quote from my bedroom of inspirational words comes back to me, reminding me that I have the best friend in the whole world.
Friends are connected heart to heart. Distance and time can’t break them apart.
It’s a little after ten o’clock when I arrive at Bayleigh’s apartment. The complex is set up to where the residents park up front near their apartment and all visitors have to park way in the back in the creepy dimly-lit visitor spots. I make Bayleigh meet me outside so I won’t be kidnapped.
She laughs when I call her to tell her this. “You’re way too old to be kidnapped, you know.” I hear her voice from across the parking lot as she steps out onto her porch and descends the stairs to meet me. “You’re more likely to get mugged or have someone ask if they can buy drugs from you.”
“You know what I mean,” I say, pressing the lock button on my car keys twice for good measure. “It’s scary out here.”
“How are you ever going to live on your own if you’re too scared of the dark?” she asks as we approach each other in the darkness. We’re still holding our phones to our ears but we’re within talking distance now.
“I guess I’m stuck with my parents forever,” I say, taking the phone away from my ear as Bayleigh crushes me with a hug.
“Don’t say that! You’ll totally move out on your own one day. But it does help if someone else is paying your bills.” She laughs at her own little joke but I know that deep down she’s not very happy with her arrangement. Jace is happy to pay for them but she hates it. She wants to contribute and she always gets annoyed when Jace tells her that taking care of their baby is way harder than Jace’s day job.
“So how’s my godson?” I ask as I follow her back to her apartment. So far, I haven’t seen any drug dealers or people who look like they’d want to kidnap us. That’s probably because Jace and Bayleigh live in a good part of town and I’m just overly paranoid.
“He’s learning to crawl and he’s decided that he wants to eat everything in the world, even if it’s not an actual food.”
“Ew.”
“Tell me about it. Yesterday he grabbed Jace’s dirty ass motocross glove and put it in his mouth! I about killed Jace for leaving it on the counter like that.”
When we reach the top of the stairs that lead to her balcony porch, I stop and hold up my phone. “I’m going to call Mom and let her know I’m hanging out with you,” I say. “You go in, and I’ll talk to her out here.” I’m taking precautions just in case Mom starts yelling at me for driving all the way to Mixon without asking her first. But I am nineteen freaking years old now and Dad has said I don’t need a curfew anymore.
“I wanted to hang outside anyway,” Bayleigh says. “That way we can talk as loud as we want without waking up the boys. Do you mind if I leave the porch light off? It attracts all kinds of bugs if I turn it on.”
“Fine with me,” I say with a shrug. We’re up a flight of stairs so that should give us time to see if a murderer is coming.” I start to call my mom and then Bayleigh puts a hand on my arm.
“You’re staying the night, right?” She asks, lifting an eyebrow in concern. “You can’t just hang out and then go home. I haven’t seen you in years.”
“You haven’t seen me in a few days,” I say, emphasizing the last word. “But yeah, I’ll stay. The things I need to talk to you about will take way longer than just tonight.”
Her eyes light up as if the idea of listening to my drama is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to her. “Awesome! I’ll go get us some drinks.” She slips into her front door, tiptoeing into the living room.
Mom is surprisingly cool with me staying at Bayleigh’s house and for some reason, it’s a little annoying. I had planned an awesome argument and everything, but I didn’t need it so now it feels weird just telling her I love her and then hanging up the phone. I guess that’s one of the benefits of growing up.
Bayleigh returns with two orange sodas and a bag of Cheetos. “Is it orange snack food day or something?” I ask her. She rolls her eyes and shoves the Cheetos bag into my lap.
We take a seat on the plastic chairs on her balcony. She cracks open her drink can and says, “So tell me the drama, lady!”
I sigh. “I’ll give you one guess as to what the drama is about.”
She puts a finger to her lips and looks up, pretending to think about it for a second. “Is it about that boy who can’t stop hanging around you even though you’ve given him the boot?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” I say with an eye roll. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Bay. I’m a complete love-sick idiot and I kind of think I hate him right now, so how is that even possible?”
Her eyebrows draw together. “Why do you hate him? He’s been nothing but awesome to you. Jace told me about the shipping boxes thing. That’s super adorable, by the way.”
I sigh because there are so many words flying through my mind and I have no idea which ones I should say first. “Clearly you only heard about the nice thing he did today,” I say, “And you apparently don’t subscribe to the motocross news emails.”
“Yes I do!” she says guiltily. “I just
don’t, you know, ever check my email because I’m too busy watching TV and playing with Jett. Why? What’s up with the professional motocross world?”
I bite my lip. It sounds so stupid in my head. I broke things off with Park so why the hell am I obsessing about that stupid blonde girl? STOP BEING AN IDIOT, BECCA.
When I do find my voice, I have to look down at the floor because I’m too embarrassed to look into my best friend’s eyes. “Remember that time when you got onto Facebook and saw all those photos of Jace at some famous people party and there were girls all over him?”
She makes a grumpy face. “Yeah.”
“The same thing has happened to me,” I say, playing with the silver ring on my index finger. “Only it was one girl, and they were on a date instead of at a party.”
I’m expecting a slur of curse words to fall out of her mouth because my best friend is always one to take up arms and declare brutal bloody murder upon anyone who hurts me. But instead, she thinks about it for a moment and takes a sip of her drink.
“I don’t think that’s the whole story,” she says finally.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shrugs. “I just don’t think Park is capable of dating someone else right now. He likes you way too much.”
“I’m not so sensitive that I’ll just drop dead if you give me the truth, you know.”
She sits up straighter. “I am giving you the truth! You should hear the things he says about you.”
“Well you should hear the way he talked to me. How he said he’s the type of guy who dates around and shouldn’t be trusted—how—” My declaration of Park’s shady behavior is cut off abruptly when the front door of Bayleigh’s apartment opens. Heat rushes to my face because Jace is probably coming out here to complain that our talking was too loud and woke him up. Or maybe Jett is awake and needs his mom to give him a bottle and put him back to sleep. Whatever the case, I’m almost glad for the interruption because had I kept talking about Park, I would have surely either started screaming or crying. The boy gets way too much emotions out of me and he doesn’t even try.
The shadowy figure that steps outside of the apartment is wearing a jacket with the hood up. He doesn’t look over in our direction, instead choosing to step forward to where the stairway juts out from under the balcony. He rests one hand on the metal railing and the other one is at his ear. He’s on the phone. I glance at Bayleigh, wondering if she thinks it’s weird that her husband has walked outside to make a phone call this late at night. Her eyes are just as wide as mine are, but she doesn’t look upset.
My cell phone bursts to life, ringing as loud as it possibly can since I had it set to loud in the car. I jump, grabbing the phone the moment someone says, “What the hell?”
The person calling me is the same person standing on the porch just a few feet away.
Nolan Park.
“Park!” I say as I gasp for breath. I’m not sure if I meant to say his name aloud. I stare at my phone in my hand, which is still ringing and then up at the man himself, as he watches Bayleigh and I with a shocked expression on his face.
“Becca?”
He steps forward, pulling his hood down around his shoulders. My phone still rings but I don’t dare press the ignore button out of fear that my racing heartbeat will somehow be louder than the phone. “What are you doing here?” he asks, sliding his phone back into his pocket. The ringing on my end stops and I lower the phone into my lap, face down. The last thing I need is for him to see how red my cheeks are in the glowing of the phone light.
“Wh—what are you doing here?” is all I can manage to say in these tense seconds of awkwardness.
“I’m crashing with Jace. You knew that, right?”
I nod, like the dumb, idiot that I am. Freaking duh. Where else does he stay when he’s in town? It’s always with Jace. I’m a complete brainless moron. Now he probably thinks I came over late at night just to see him and pretend like I wasn’t here for him. God. Why can’t the earth just open up right now and swallow me whole?
Bayleigh jumps to my rescue. “She came over after work because I begged her to. I’m so bored and I needed my best friend.”
“Cool,” he says, but he doesn’t look entirely convinced.
“So anyway, Becca I’ll go get your bed set up on the air mattress and you two can talk.”
“We don’t need to talk.” I spit the words out so fast they barely make sense. “We’re good. You can stay.”
She stands and makes her way toward the front door, ruffling the top of my hair as if I were her child instead of friend and peer. “Of course you do. Don’t worry, I’ll be awake a while so just meet up with me later.”
“No it’s fine, seriously. We don’t need to talk. I’m here for you.”
She rolls her eyes and even though I can’t see her face well in the darkness, I know she’s giving me this hint hint nudge nudge look that only I would recognize as her best friend. “He wouldn’t have been calling you if you didn’t need to talk.”
“She’s right,” Park says, breaking his bout of silence.
My heart clenches up inside my chest as I watch Bayleigh give me a tiny wave and then disappear into her living room, closing the door behind her and leaving me all alone with Nolan Park. I don’t say a word though, because in spite of it all, she’s right.
We definitely need to talk.
Chapter 9
“So what’s up?” I ask, all but bouncing on my heels. Ugh! My fake cheerful voice came out sounding entirely too fake and entirely too cheerful and now I just look like an idiot who is trying too hard to look like she’s not super uncomfortable.
Park slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leans his butt against the railing on the balcony. It makes me a little uneasy because just one slip of balance would send him tumbling backward down two stories. I guess I make a face that shows what I’m thinking because Park lifts up his hands and wobbles them, pretending to be a tightrope walker.
“I’m fine, Becca. Stop worrying.”
“It’d be safer if you got off the railing like that,” I mutter as I fold my arms and step backward, pressing my back against the safety of the wall behind me.
“Maybe I’ll just stand by you,” he says in this quiet voice that sends a shiver down my spine. He leaves the railing and walks over to me, turning to press his back against the wall, too. Our arms are touching, my shoulder to his upper arm. The urge to rest my head on his shoulder is so strong it makes my toes tingle. But I hold strong. I keep my head on top of my own neck, supporting itself, just like it was meant to do.
I am a big girl and I can deal with this.
“So why did you call me?” As I ask this, I take out my phone and swipe away the missed call notification. Park grabs my hand just when I’m about to put my phone in my pocket again.
“You changed your wallpaper,” he says, frowning in a way that makes his eyebrow ring look sad too.
Suddenly I have power. He’s upset that I changed my phone’s wallpaper to a picture of some puppies I found online instead of what it used to be: a picture of Park and me at the BMX track. I want to smile and jump and throw my hands in the air to celebrate that he is sad and I am strong, that he’s still upset over us and that I’m not (at least not on the outside) because I changed my phone screen. Of course I don’t do any of that…I even stifle the smile that tugs at my lips.
“It was time for a change,” I say with a casual shrug, right before I put my phone back in my pocket, pretend that my skin isn’t still tingling from where he had touched me.
“I guess it’s time for me to change, too?” he says, taking out his phone. Instead of turning on the screen, he just hands it to me. Confused, I reach up and press the button myself, lighting up his phone’s home screen. I’ve never held his phone before, I think as I mentally look back at all the times we’ve spent together. He’s never really had his phone out around me. I always thought it was because he was too much of a gentleman
of text other people when we were together. But lately, I thought it was because he probably had tons of other girls texting him and he didn’t want me to know.
Whatever the case, his wallpaper makes my mouth fall open. It’s a picture of me. It’s not a selfie and it’s not one from my Facebook page. It’s me, with my hair down and falling in front of my shoulders. I’m sitting at an outdoor table on the patio of Magic Mark’s Pizza. I’m wearing the friendship bracelet that Park had bought me from the craft fair we walked through on the way to get pizza. That bracelet had ripped off not two weeks later, when it caught on a bike chain while I was working.
I never knew he took this picture of me, and that’s probably because I wasn’t looking at the camera. I’m looking to the right, with one hand on my chin and I’m smiling as if I am deeply involved in whatever conversation was happening at the time. It’s a good photo, I have to admit.
I bite my lip and hand the phone back. “When did you take that picture?”
“We were with Jace and Bayleigh and Jace was telling you that story about how he ran out of gas on top of the finish line jump.”
“Ah, I remember that day,” I say, looking off into the parking lot as I recall Jace’s crazy story. “That was a good day.” It was the day Park held my hand in front of my friends and the entire world. It was also, as I can tell from his picture, an excellent hair day for me. My hair hasn’t looked that silky smooth in ages, probably because I quit caring about it once I had to start studying for finals.
“It was a good day,” he says. “It was right about that day that I realized I was in love with you.”
In the very next moment, time stands still. My heart quits beating and my body freezes. The only thing that works is my memory and that works in overdrive. I remember the time I first met Park, when we cuddled on Bayleigh’s couch and I knew I was falling hard for him. I remember when he pushed me away—when he said I shouldn’t trust guys like him. I remember Jace telling me the exact same thing.