SSDTU 2 - He’s So not Worth It

by Kieran Scott

  “Cool. Thanks again, Shannen.”

  “I’ll come find you before I go,” she said as I slipped out the back door.

  “Okay.” Whatever, I thought, keeping my defenses up.

  As soon as I stepped outside, I froze. Cooper was standing behind the catapult with his arm slung over the shoulders of a wispy blond girl wearing a cutoff top and skinny shorts. She had her hand in the back pocket of his cargos. My head instantly swam. I was seeing things, right? I had to be seeing things.

  “Crestie Girl!” he shouted when he spotted me. He raised the arm that was unoccupied and beckoned me over. “You’re here!”

  Everyone seemed to be watching me as I walked slowly toward Cooper and his arm candy, picking my way over the debris of shattered lawn ornaments and rotting fruit. The blond girl eyed me with obvious disdain as he pulled me into his side.

  “What’s up?” he asked, planting a kiss on my lips.

  He still hadn’t let go of the blonde.

  “Nothing. I just . . . I wanted to see you,” I said.

  Wasn’t he even going to introduce me to the girl who had her hand down his pants?

  “Cool. Well, here I am.” He let go of both of us simultaneously, lifting his arms up and over our heads. “Dudes! Let’s try the barbells!”

  “Dude! No way!” Dex shouted. “Too heavy.”

  “That’s the point, asshole,” Cooper shouted back.

  He went chest to chest with Dex as if they really were fighting, and a bunch of guys got into the mix, yelling and cackling loudly. The blond girl sipped her punch and eyed me up and down. Who the hell was she? What was she doing here?

  “So you’re the summer girl,” she said finally. Her voice was nasal and she didn’t sound too impressed by me. Plus, the way she called me “the summer girl” made me feel about one inch tall.

  “And you are?” I said.

  She scoffed. “Not interested.”

  She tilted her head back and drank from her cup as she sauntered away. Clearly we were going to be BFF.

  “Ally! Hey!”

  Jenny came barreling up behind me, planted her hands on my shoulders, and jumped up like she was trying to dunk me underwater. I buckled and we both almost hit our knees. “You’re here!”

  “Yeah. I’m here,” I said as she hugged me. “Who was that?” I asked, nodding toward the blond girl.

  “That would be Jessie,” Jen said with a grimace. “She was supposed to be in Louisiana for the summer, but she just got back.”

  “Oh.” I took a breath and steeled myself. “Are she and Cooper . . . ?”

  She rolled her eyes and pulled her hands into her long sleeves, shuddering. “They go to proms and stuff together. You know, they’re like each other’s fallback positions. So as soon as she got home, she fell back.”

  I swallowed hard. But Cooper didn’t need a fallback position. He had me.

  “Oh, but don’t worry! They haven’t hooked up or anything,” Jen said, checking the end of one of her braids. “He’s totally into you still.”

  I supposed that should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. Probably because Cooper hadn’t looked in my direction in five minutes. Plus, the “still” she tacked on the end sounded a lot like “for now.”

  “What’s up with him tonight?” I asked, lifting my chin at Cooper. “He’s being weird.”

  “He got into it with my mom,” Jen said, rolling her eyes again. “He’s been taking it out on the catapult all afternoon.”

  “Oh.”

  Suddenly I felt awkward and out of place. I looked around at all the unfamiliar, laughing faces—at Jessie’s awful sneer—and wondered what I was doing there. But then, I remembered. Cooper was my boyfriend. I’d come here to talk to him. And it sounded like he might need someone to talk to, too. I screwed up my confidence, walked over to him, and put my arms around him from behind, standing on my toes to rest my chin on his shoulder.

  “Hey,” I said. “Wanna go somewhere and talk?”

  He let out a sigh and tipped his head forward. “Hang on a sec, guys,” he said to his friends.

  I had to let him go so he could turn to face me, but his expression wasn’t exactly encouraging. He looked down at me in much the same way Jessie had moments ago.

  “Talk about what?” he said, taking a sip of beer.

  “I don’t know. . . .” I fiddled with the hem of my shirt. “Jenny said you had a fight with your mom. . . . I thought you might want to vent.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  He started to turn away again, but I put my hand on his shoulder. “Well, then I need to talk. My dad came down tonight for some kind of, like, intervention. He and my mom just jumped all over me about what a huge disappointment I’ve been this summer and—”

  “Oh my God! Enough already!” Cooper shouted, turning to face me.

  The backyard fell silent and my stomach splattered all over my feet.

  “What?” I croaked.

  “I am so sick of hearing about you and your problems with your mother and how your dad bailed on you and wah, wah, wah,” he said, his eyes blazing. “News flash, Crestie Girl, everyone’s lives suck! The only difference between you and the rest of us is that we don’t spend every waking second whining about it.”

  I felt like the very air was closing in on me. My eyes stung and I blinked back tears of shock. Why was he talking to me like this?

  “Cooper,” Jenny squeaked. “Don’t.”

  “Shut up, Jen. I know you worship the ground she walks on, but God! Thank God you don’t sound like her. I would’ve had to disown you years ago.”

  “Cooper,” I said, my voice thick. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “What’s the matter with me?” he blurted. “What’s the matter with me is I thought you were different. I thought it was so cool that I finally found the one bennie who was chill and down to earth and only cared about having fun. But deep down you’re just like every other female on the planet. Self-centered, whiny, and a prude.”

  “Dude. You are so outta line.”

  Charlie walked over and got between me and Cooper. Shannen’s hand was on my arm, but I barely felt it. I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. Cooper blinked at Charlie like he’d never seen him before. Then he looked down at me and blinked again. For a split second he was Cooper again. The Cooper I knew. The sweet, carefree, kind Cooper. But then, his expression shut down.

  “Whatever,” he said. “I’m outta here.”

  He tossed his beer bottle over his shoulder and it smashed on an old, broken-down barbecue. As he walked out, he grabbed Jessie’s hand and tugged her with him. A tear spilled onto my cheek and I swiped it away.

  “Ally,” Shannen said.

  Her voice sparked this roar of heat inside of my chest that brought me back to life. I couldn’t believe that she, of all people, had been here to witness that. First she’d brought down the worst humiliation of my life at her birthday party, and now, in one night, she’d been there for a horrifying argument with my parents, and the worst breakup scene of a lifetime.

  “I wanna go home,” I said.

  “Yeah. I’ll take you right now.”

  “No. I mean I want to go home,” I said, my voice cracking.

  But even as I choked out the words, I realized I didn’t know where home was.

  I needed to see Jake.

  I knew it as soon as Shannen pulled into Gray’s driveway and I saw that my dad’s leased car was still there. I had this vivid flashback to the night we’d come home from Shannen’s party to find my dad on the doorstep and I’d thought, for a split second, that it was Jake. I had so, so wanted it to be Jake. And just like that, I needed to see him. Now. Jake was the one who actually cared about me. Jake was the one who had actually been there for me. I’d shut him out because I was angry and embarrassed and small. Now all I could do was hope that it wasn’t too late.

  Because Jake . . . Jake was home.

  “Want me
to come in with you?” Shannen asked as we both looked up at the brightly lit house.

  “No. It’s okay. Go to Connor’s.”

  “You sure? Because it could get ugly in there,” Shannen said.

  That’s fine, because I’m not going in there, I thought.

  “I’m good. Really.” I looked at her as I got out of the car. “Thanks, Shannen.”

  She sighed and shrugged. “Anytime.”

  She pulled out slowly, her tires crunching over the pebble driveway, her headlights flashing across the garage doors. I held my breath, waiting for someone to come to the window, having noticed the lights, but no one did. I stared across the driveway at the open garage. Gray’s second car—a late 1990s BMW—was parked inside. My eyes glimpsed the drawer where he kept the emergency set of keys. If I could just get into the garage with no one hearing, I could be out of the driveway before they noticed. I looked down at the rocks beneath my feet. Damn these LBI driveways and their loud pebbly-ness.

  Tiptoeing wouldn’t work. Probably the best thing to do would be to take long strides. The fewer footfalls, the less noise. I took a deep breath, and started to leap down the driveway.

  My right foot hit the ground.

  Crunch!

  My left foot hit the ground.

  Crunch!

  I stretched as far as I could on the next leap.

  Crunch!

  One more and my foot hit the concrete floor of the garage. I paused to listen for the sound of the front door squeaking open—for footsteps on the indoor stairs that led directly to the garage from the kitchen. Nothing. I lifted my hands in victory. Freedom was mine. I raced for the keys.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  I spun around, my heart in my throat. Hammond stood at the end of the driveway, an amused smile on his face. He wore a white polo shirt with multicolored pastel stripes, the collar turned up to graze his cheekbones.

  Where the hell did he get these ideas?

  “You scared the crap out of me!” I hissed.

  “What?” he shouted. Of course. He couldn’t hear my whisper over the island wind.

  “Shhhh!” I brought my finger to my lips.

  Hammond rolled his eyes and strolled casually across to the garage, making enough noise to wake the neighbors, let alone my parents and Gray.

  “I may have to kill you,” I said, tugging the keys from the drawer.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked. Then the smile dropped away. “Are you crying?”

  “No!” I replied. I wasn’t. Not anymore. I was experiencing that total clearness of vision that came with waking up from a summer-long delusion. “And I’m going home. To see Jake,” I added, knowing that, if he had been trying to kiss me that day at Take a Dip, this might not be the best news. I walked by him and my hands shook as I tried to key the security code into the car’s door. It didn’t unlock.

  “Oh,” he said. “Okay. I’ll drive.”

  “What? No. I’m fine.”

  I put the code in for the second time and tried the door. Nothing. My skin prickled as I tried one more time, Hammond basically breathing down my neck. The code was 5885. Not that difficult. I hit the buttons and tried the handle. It stayed stubbornly closed. I groaned in frustration.

  “What’s the code?” Hammond asked.

  “Five eight eight five,” I said begrudgingly.

  He nudged me aside, pushed the buttons, and opened the door. Then he turned and held out his palm. “I’ll drive.”

  I hesitated. It was bad enough, me taking Gray’s car without asking, but should I really let Hammond drive it? And did I really want to spend three hours in the car with him, there and back?

  “Come on, Al. I’m not letting you drive all that way, by yourself, in the dark, when you’re clearly freaking,” he said.

  I blew out a sigh and dropped the keys in his hand.

  “Sweet,” Hammond said. “Let’s take this baby out and see what she can do!”

  He slammed the door and I slumped down in the seat, wondering what I was getting myself into, and just hoping it would be worth it. Just hoping Jake still wanted me back.

  “I can’t believe you made me watch that crap,” I said. But smiled.

  Chloe held the glass door for the people behind us—a mother and daughter—which was who made up most of the audience for the awful movie we’d just seen. Every girl walking out was snorting and sniffling. I didn’t get it. The whole thing was about a love triangle, and at the end, one guy ends up killing the other and the girl ends up alone. What’s the point of that?

  I’d spent half the movie wondering if Ally would have ever made me waste my time on something like this, and the other half trying not to check out Chloe from the corner of my eye.

  “Are you kidding me? It was so romantic!” Chloe protested. She tugged a tissue out of her little bag, which was on the crook of her arm.

  “Romantic? Murder is romantic now?”

  We moved a little farther out onto the sidewalk so the rest of the crowd could get out. I spotted one other guy, a dude in a Valley baseball T-shirt with a weeper on his arm. We exchanged a look. I feel ya, man.

  “But he did it for her!” Chloe said, turning her palms up.

  “Great. So now he gets twenty to life and she gets to have conjugal visits with a psychopath. Sweet.”

  Chloe whacked me with the back of her hand, but I could tell she was trying not to laugh. I took a breath and looked up and down Orchard Avenue. It felt kind of good to be out. Like I’d just been released from a twenty-to-life sentence. The air was warm, but clear. A rare nonhumid night. At the restaurant across the street couples ate at the outdoor tables. All around us, people talked and lingered. It was like no one wanted to go home.

  “You want to get some ice cream or something?” Chloe asked.

  It was like she read my mind. She lifted her light brown hair over her shoulder, and I watched the way it fell softly back down against her skin. I had this urge to touch it, but didn’t.

  “Sure.”

  We turned and walked up the street together toward Scoops.

  “Why did I have to take Orchard Avenue?” Hammond moaned, revving the engine at the corner of Walnut, like a warning to the dozen pedestrians in the crosswalk. We caught derisive looks from a middle-aged couple strolling by and I looked away. “It’s Friday night. What was I thinking?”

  “That some of the guys from school might see you in Gray’s classic ride?” I said.

  “Oh,” Hammond said with a grin, waggling his eyebrows at me. “Right.”

  There was an opening, finally, and he lurched ahead. He was right about Friday nights in Orchard Hill, of course. There were benefits and drawbacks to living in a town with more than fifty restaurants, a theater, and a ton of shops that stayed open late on the weekend. The benefit was, everything you wanted was within walking distance. The drawback was everyone else in Bergen County had to drive to get there.

  “So, did you call Jake to tell him you were coming?” Hammond asked.

  I looked down at my lap. “Not exactly.”

  He started to make the turn at the top of the Avenue, but then slammed on his brakes. My chest pressed against my seat belt and then it flung me back against the seat.

  “Hammond!”

  “What the fuck is this?” he said through his teeth.

  I looked up, my heart pounding. Walking across Orchard on the other side of the intersection was Jake. He looked amazing. Tan and tall and filling out that light blue T-shirt like it had been sewn just for him. I had this odd feeling in the center of my chest, like I hadn’t seen him in years, instead of weeks. He was walking with someone, and when I saw who it was, I stopped breathing.

  It was Chloe. Chloe with date-hair in a date-dress carrying a date-purse. And was it just me, or had their hands just grazed?

  “Drive,” I said.

  “What? They’ll see us.”

  “Just make the turn. Go! Before someone honks at you!” I felt like I was goi
ng to hurl. “Go!”

  Hammond cursed under his breath and hit the gas. He almost ran over a Lhasa apso and its owner, but swerved at the last second. I raised an apologetic hand and Hammond gunned it to the corner, weaving into an open spot right in front of the double-arched doors to the church.

  “That wasn’t—I mean, they can’t—they’re not—”

  I stared up at the stained glass window stories above my head. Mary with a halo on and her arms outstretched. “I don’t know.”

  “She’s just doing this to get back at me,” Hammond said. He slammed the wheel with the heels of both hands. “Fuck!”

  “Hammond! Shh!” I glanced out at the church again.

  “What?” His face looked like something that had just come out of a meat grinder. “You think God’s gonna come down and thunderbolt me?”

  I looked at him and, suddenly, I started laughing.

  Hammond didn’t move for a long moment, but I couldn’t stop. All this disgust and tension and confusion had built up so suddenly at the sight of Jake and Chloe together, that it had nowhere to go except out my mouth. I held my stomach and laughed until tears came out the corners of my eyes.

  “What? What’s so funny?”

  But then he choked, and he started laughing too.

  “Thunderbolt you? Really?” I said through halting gasps. “Is that what he does?”

  “Dude. Shut up!” Hammond said. His laughter was less belly-full than mine. And ended sooner. “We might have just seen our exes on a date.”

  I let out my last laugh with a wheeze. Was this the dirt Annie had been talking about all those weeks ago? Did she want to tell me that Jake and Chloe were together? But he’d come down the shore after that. Was he seeing her then, when he’d stood on the deck and tried to get me to take him back?

  Cold stones crowded my chest. I put my elbow on the windowsill and rested my mouth against my knuckles. “I guess I should have called ahead.”

  “So what do we do?” Hammond asked. “Drive back?”

  I groaned and leaned my head back. “And sit in this car for another two or three hours? I can’t.” I felt heavy, suddenly. Like my body was spreading out across the seat and onto the floor and into all the gritty crevices of the car, getting pinned there by its own gravity. “Can you drive me back to my house?”