by Sam Mariano
___
I never look forward to going to the cafeteria for lunch, but as we grab our trays and go to find seats today, I’m actually anxious about it.
Sara must notice. As we make our way to one of the empty tables, she says, “The first day’s always the worst, you know.”
I offer a weak smile. “Yeah. Anderson might sit with us. I tried to talk him out of it, but he seemed pretty insistent.”
“You don’t want your boyfriend to sit with you at lunch?”
“He’s not really my boyfriend.”
Sara shakes her head. “You and your mother, I swear. Most girls like having a boyfriend. You guys have boyfriends and pretend not to. I can only imagine how confused men must be by the both of you.”
I shoot her a look for comparing me to my mother. I love my mother, but we’re not the same. “It isn’t remotely the same situation. Things are new with Anderson, that’s all.”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmurs, clearly unconvinced. “You’ve been dating for two months. How do you date someone exclusively for two whole months and not call him your boyfriend?”
“It hasn’t been two months,” I say, frowning.
She nods, more sure of the timeline than I am. “More than that, depending on which date you go by. I know you guys started talking before the Fourth of July because he came to fireworks. It was the first time I was like, ‘Oh my God, she has a boyfriend’ and then I kept waiting for you to make it official and you just never did.”
That doesn’t seem right, but Sara is much better at keeping track of stuff like that than I am, so I guess I should take her word for it.
“Huh. I didn’t realize it’d been that long. Still, he didn’t even kiss me before today. That doesn’t seem like boyfriend territory to me.”
“When you get married, you’ll be walking down the aisle in a big white dress convinced you’re not in wife territory yet.”
“Hey, until the vows are spoken, nothing’s official. I could still change my mind,” I joke.
“See,” she says, shaking her head and opening her fruit cup. “Boys are wasted on you.”
I almost tell her about the flowers that were delivered to my house this morning since I haven’t had a chance to yet, but looking around the cafeteria, I can’t find Anderson. I don’t want to start telling Sara the story and then have him come over—especially since now I know who the flowers are actually from, but I’m not sure I want to tell him.
Thinking of the flowers makes me think of Hunter and my gaze drifts toward the table I know he’ll be sitting at.
Sure enough, there he is. I knew he’d be at the popular table with all of his dumb friends. Their table is always the loudest one in the cafeteria, but today they’re buzzing with even more energy because their king is back.
The sound of a tray hitting the table right next to me draws my attention away from Hunter and his most ardent followers. I look up just in time to see Anderson’s smile before he drops into the seat beside me.
“Hey, you came.”
“Of course I did.” He leans in. I fight the urge to lean back—two kisses in one day?—but it’s another quick peck, then he looks to Sara. “Hey, Sara. Hope you don’t mind me crashing your party of two.”
“No, of course not. I was just telling Riley…”
She keeps talking, but my attention fades out. I feel eyes on me. I look back at Hunter’s table and our gazes lock.
I break it quickly, trying to focus back in on Sara and Anderson, but I can’t help wondering if Hunter saw Anderson kiss me again.
He saw it in class, too, but it was different that time. I didn’t know he was even there, and once I realized he was, I was too blown away to even think much about him watching my first kiss with Anderson.
His commentary on that kiss crosses my mind. If he saw this one, it probably looked like another kiss I didn’t want.
My stomach tightens thinking about it. Why don’t I want his kisses?
Maybe if Anderson would have kissed me somewhere more private, I wouldn’t feel so reluctant. I certainly wasn’t reluctant or cold when Hunter kissed me in my bedroom. Maybe I’m just not into PDA.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
Even as I think it, I’m not convinced. I know that kiss with Hunter has lived in my memory for so long, I may have made some unintended revisions on it, but thinking of it still brings a flush to my cheeks, and it happened four years ago.
Hunter has the most perfect lips. Kissing him felt so much different. So much more meaningful.
I shake my head, trying to drop thoughts like that. They make me feel guilty. I shouldn’t even be comparing the quick pecks Anderson has given me with the tender, emotionally charged kiss I got from Hunter.
Maybe Anderson doesn’t kiss like Hunter, but he doesn’t hurt like him, either.
I fight the temptation to look at Hunter again and keep my attention where it’s supposed to be as I make small talk about the school day with Anderson and Sara. I figure he might ask me questions I’m not excited for if Sara and I stop talking, so we don’t. Sara hasn’t spent much time with Anderson yet. Now that school is back in session, we’ll all see a lot more of each other, but for now, she takes advantage of the opportunity to get to know him and I encourage it, figuring as long as they’re talking about nothing, he can’t ask me about Hunter.
“Favorite Disney movie?” she asks, dipping her plastic spoon into her fruit cup.
Anderson pops a fry into his mouth. “Lion King.”
“Best pizza topp—”
Before she can further quiz him, someone walks up to our table and steals all the words from her head.
Only one person can do that.
I glance up at Wally Kazinsky. His dark hair’s shorter this year—he buzzed it over the summer, so it’s just starting to grow back out. Like Anderson and Hunter, he’s wearing his letter jacket even though it’s a hot day.
“Hi,” Sara says, failing to contain her wonder.
I sigh to myself. Wally is much better-looking now than he was as a gawky tween, and she was thoroughly hung up on him even then. I didn’t at all understand what she saw in him when we were in middle school. I still don’t, really. He’s handsome, I guess, but I still don’t think there’s anything special about him.
Sara can’t be convinced, even though I’m still not sure he knows her name.
He lifts his chin in bland acknowledgment. “What’s up?” Without giving her a chance to get the mistaken impression he cares about a response, he shifts his gaze to Anderson. “You lost, Milner? Our table’s over there,” he says, pointing back at Hunter’s table.
“Oh, yeah, I saw. No, I actually figured I’d sit with my girlfriend today. First day and all.”
“How cute,” he says, his tone making it clear he doesn’t find it cute. “Well, maybe you should reconsider. Hunter had catering brought in for all of us to celebrate his first day back. It’s a lot better than this crap,” he says, making a dismissive gesture toward the tray full of standard cafeteria fare.
“Can I get catering for them, too?”
Wally looks from Sara to me, his gaze cooling when it hits my face, then he looks back at Anderson. “No.”
“Then I’m all right,” Anderson says.
Wally smiles, but it’s a smile that says he’s losing his patience. Placing a hand on Anderson’s shoulder and squeezing, he leans down. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear. You can’t sit with them.”
Anderson stares at him, not defiantly, just confused. “Why not?”
Wally licks his lip and chuckles, looking down. “You haven’t heard about—”
“Anderson,” I interrupt, before Wally can tell him something I haven’t had a chance to yet. “Just… go. They’re your teammates, it’s the first day of a new school year. You should sit with them.”
Anderson frowns at me. “I should?”
“There’s catering,” I say brightly.
“Who cares?”
“Plea
se go,” I say, pleading with my eyes. “I told you they probably wouldn’t like you sitting with me. It’s not worth it.”
“I don’t understand,” he says, shaking his head.
“You don’t need to understand,” Wally assures him, giving him a pat on the back. “Up. Let’s go.”
Anderson frowns at me, but since I’m shooing him away instead of hoping he’ll stay, he grabs his tray and stands.
“Well… I guess I’m gonna go sit with them.”
I nod my head. “Have fun.”
I watch them walk away together, two broad-shouldered letter jackets heading back toward the popular table where they both belong. Wally grabs Anderson’s tray on the way and tosses the whole thing into a trash can. A lunch monitor has to dig the plastic tray out of the trash and haul it to the kitchen to be cleaned.
I stop watching when they approach Hunter’s table.
I sigh, looking back at Sara.
I’ve lost her, though. She’s sitting there with her chin propped on her palm, gazing in that direction. Judging by the look of yearning on her face, I figure she’s gazing at Wally.
I look over there again, but only to verify my suspicions.
Sure enough, her gaze is glued to Wally. He’s at the main table, of course, right next to Hunter.
Since I’m already looking, I figure I may as well peek at Hunter again...
I’m curious. I want to see if he interacts with Anderson, see if he’s at least nice to him since he just forced him to sit at their table.
I’m not an idiot; I know Wally didn’t come over here on his own.
When I look again, Anderson is searching for a seat after grabbing food from the catering spread.
Turns out, there’s no room for him at the table, after all. I mean, there could be, if everyone moved down a little, but they don’t.
He stands there, looking lost for a minute, before one of Valerie’s lackeys grabs him by the shoulder and beams up at him, leading him over to the run-off popular table. It’s where you sit if you’re in the vicinity of the jocks, but not important enough for the main friend tables.
My stomach twists with guilt. Maybe I shouldn’t have made him go over there. They’re probably shunning him a little now to punish him for sitting with me in the first place.
Or maybe Hunter just doesn’t want to sit at the same table as my boyfriend.
Whichever it is, I don’t feel like I sent Anderson to a better place.
Chapter Fifteen
Riley
Homework tonight is a nightmare.
I can’t focus at all.
I need to finish my reading for history class, but every effort I make to concentrate fails spectacularly. I can only focus for about three seconds, then my mind splinters off in a thousand different directions—most of them, unfortunately, Hunter-related.
I think about how close our bridge is. How close his house is. How close he is.
Why did he want to know my schedule? What does he want with me?
Why did he come back? How long has he been back?
It was summer, so I guess he could have been here longer than I realized. It’s not like I was looking for him, but I never saw him around town.
Then again, I guess I don’t really pay that much attention. I’m off in my own little world more often than not—it was an easy habit to get into since it’s preferable to be ignored by my peers these days. When I have their attention, it’s never anything good.
I’m sure he doesn’t have the same number, but I find myself pulling out my phone and looking at his name in my contacts anyway. It was stupid and sentimental since he left the country, but I never deleted it.
For the longest time, I told myself maybe he would cool down and reach out to me.
If he apologized for that lie he told about me, I would have forgiven him. I knew he was hurt, maybe even scared. I understood him being angry with me. I was only trying to protect him, but in doing so, I did turn his whole life upside down.
I kinda want to talk to him. We talked a little in school, obviously, but I don’t want to talk to him there. I want to talk to him like I used to talk to him, when we were the only two people in the world and he trusted me enough to open up.
He doesn’t trust me anymore, though. I want something I can’t have.
Maybe I could get his trust back. Maybe after all this time, now that he’s home and it seems kinda permanent…
Maybe I just need to talk to him.
I set the phone aside and sigh, glancing at my school books.
There’s no point sitting here wasting more time trying to focus when I just can’t.
Maybe if I go for a walk, my head will clear. Then I can come home and concentrate so I can finally get this reading done.
And if I happen to take a walk that takes me through the woods behind Hunter’s house… well, where else would I walk to get a little peace and quiet?
Feeling rejuvenated, I put my hair up in a ponytail and smear some gloss on my lips. I eye myself in the mirror as I apply it, but I tell myself to shut up—it’s just to protect my lips from the wind, that’s all.
Surrre it is.
I’m feeling good, really good as I start walking. I’m moving fast, more eager than I want to admit to get off the sidewalk and into the wooded area that’s basically Hunter’s enormous back yard.
I wonder what he’d do if I just stopped by? He certainly wouldn’t be expecting it, and maybe it would be fun to catch him off guard this time.
Plus, then I would get to test out my theory about how we would interact outside of school with no one around to witness it. Maybe getting him on his own home turf—and somewhere we have memories together, even if they’re not the best—would work to my advantage, get him to lower his guard a little and I could really reach him.
Maybe we can completely sidestep the grudge he swore he’d nurse against me and be friends again.
I get carried away on this hopeful train of thought, convinced this is how it’ll go as I pick up the pace even more in my haste to get to his house. Dozens of questions surface in my mind—I want to know all about what his life in Italy was like.
Did he and his father form some type of relationship, or was he just living a rich kid existence, all by himself in an expensive home in the Italian countryside with only a housekeeper to keep him company? I bet she was a good cook. Maybe she took to him lovingly, like an adoptive grandma, and taught him how to cook. I bet she makes delicious pasta and homemade sauces. It’s settled—I’m gonna talk Hunter into making me homemade pasta for dinner, because apparently I’m staying for dinner now.
I can hardly tamp down my excitement as I cut through the woods like we did the time he led me this way to his house, but as I approach, I start to reconsider.
Dread fills me at the prospect of going to the front door. What if he doesn’t answer? What if his mom does? I don’t know if I can be nice to her. I’m fairly sure Hunter would want me to be, I just don’t know if I can. I have no respect for the choices she made, for the danger she put him in, for her failure to protect her own son. I don’t know how I’ll be polite to her when I have 14-year-old Hunter living in my memory, telling me she didn’t call an ambulance when he was unconscious because she was more concerned with protecting his attacker than him.
As I approach the front of the house, I prepare myself in case Venus answers. I haven’t seen her since my mother outed her to the school all those years ago. There’s probably a chance I don’t even have to worry about being polite to her—she might take one look at me and kick me off her property.
This is starting to seem more and more like a bad idea.
I want it too much to change my mind now, though.
My steps slow as I approach the front door. I take a deep breath and let it out, then I raise my fist to knock before remembering there’s a doorbell.
I look at the doorbell, but I don’t ring it for a second.
Are you sure about this?
; Nope, but I’m doing it anyway. I’ve come too far to turn back now.
I ring the doorbell.
It feels like an eternity passes while I stand there, tenser by the second.
Finally, I see a shadow in the frosted glass.
Oh man.
The door opens. I attempt a half-hearted smile that comes out as more of a grimace when I see Venus Keller standing there. She cocks an eyebrow immediately upon seeing me, her lips pursing with obvious displeasure.
My grimace deepens. Even though I was worried about being polite to her on the way here, the dynamic of an adult being displeased with me seems to hit first.
“Hi,” I say a little sheepishly.
She fakes a smile. “Riley. What a surprise.”
I swallow and attempt to stand a little straighter since I feel hunched and small. “Hi Mrs.—um…” Is it still Keller? Did she change her name back to Maxwell after the divorce? I don’t know what to call her.
Last time we met, she rushed to tell me I could call her Venus, but this time she just watches me struggle and maybe enjoys it a bit.
That annoys me, and my annoyance snaps me out of my awkwardness. “I’m here to see Hunter—is he home?”
She smiles sweetly. “He is. Follow me, I’ll take you to him.”
She sure changed her tune abruptly. I’m immediately suspicious and a little cautious as I step inside the cool, air-conditioned interior of the house and watch her close the door behind me. I keep watching her uncertainly as she flashes me another smile and walks ahead of me, presumably leading me to wherever Hunter is.
I haven’t been through their whole house before. I could tell it was big when I was in it four years ago, but while most houses seem to shrink as you grow older, Hunter’s feels like it got even bigger.
Venus leads me out a back door and down a corridor that puts me in the mind of a castle hallway, pretty and imposing, but only semi-enclosed. We’re outside, but sheltered by nice-looking stone walls with rounded arches every few feet leading to the yard.
Rounded arches ahead lead to a gathering area with patio furniture set-up and a bar at the end with a fireplace behind it. There’s no fire since it’s already hot, but it’s definitely a neat area to hang out in when you need a break from the sun. I could definitely see myself curling up on the couch over there with a good book on a drizzly fall day.