by Sam Mariano
That’s fair. I don’t really want things to end that way, either. And I guess not being alone right now wouldn’t be the absolute worst thing in the world…
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” I tell him, gesturing back to the living room.
His shoulders slump with disappointment. “Ah.”
“I’m not blowing you off,” I say quickly. “I just… I’ve been keeping busy today. I was working on a school thing. I have to finish this movie and make some notes for the review I’m writing, but if you wanted to get sandwiches and talk afterward… we could do that.”
“Yeah?” he asks, brightening.
I nod. “In fact, if you wanted to help me avoid the public scene all the way around, maybe you could go grab the sandwiches yourself while I finish up here, and we could meet up at the park?”
He smiles. “I could do that.”
I offer a little smile back. “Okay.”
“I’ll meet you by the Ferris wheel,” he says, his smile growing a little more intimate before he turns and makes his way down my front porch.
There is no Ferris wheel at the park anymore, but there was over the summer when the carnival was in town. I went with Anderson. It was our first real date, but I didn’t know it was a date. He won me this little green snake at one of the game booths and then we went on the Ferris wheel. While we were waiting in line, he reached down and grabbed my hand. I looked over, surprised. Our eyes locked. His glinted with interest. I realized it was a date.
The memory brings a bittersweet smile to my face.
Then I hear a scream from the living room, and I realize I forgot to pause my movie.
Whoops. I turn around and head back in to finish my work, but I find my whole mood has changed.
Before, I was kind of dreading finishing the movie. It meant I would have to move on to the next task already, and if I completed my work too quickly, I would run out of busywork before I ran out the clock on the weekend.
It’s not just that, though.
I’m not sure how it’ll go with Anderson at the park. If anyone had asked me this morning, I wouldn’t have said I wanted to see him, but now…
I kinda do.
___
Hastings Park is a vast green expanse dotted with trees and park benches.
There’s a gazebo where carolers perform around Christmastime, but that’s not where I go. That’s where most people tend to gravitate when they come here, and I’m committed to avoiding people today.
Anderson is camped out in the middle of nowhere, a big open space where the Ferris wheel was set up over the summer.
I clutch my blanket a little closer and make my way across the park to him.
“Hey,” he says, smiling and standing up as I approach.
“I brought a blanket.” I hold it up and throw it open so I can lay it out across the lawn.
“Good thinking. What’s a picnic without a blanket?”
“A feast for ants.” I bend down to smooth out a folded edge, then I sit on the ground. “What kind of sandwich was it today?”
“Thanksgiving dinner,” he says uncertainly, handing me a heavy sandwich wrapped in white paper.
“So… turkey?” I rip into the package so I can check out the sandwich.
“Among other things. By the looks of it, I should’ve brought a forklift. I don’t know how we’re gonna eat these.”
I grin, revealing the messy-looking, delicious-smelling sandwich. “I don’t either, but I am up to the challenge. It smells amazing.”
“I think the bun is a giant dinner roll,” he says, looking at the sandwich from the side, as if he’s genuinely trying to figure out how to attack it. “Is that cranberry sauce?”
“Probably. Oh man, I’m excited.”
His gaze flickers to me. “If it’s terrible, we can order a pizza.”
“It’s going to be amazing,” I say confidently as I pick it up.
It’s impossible to take a bite in ladylike fashion, a fact I’m made more aware of because Anderson is openly watching me, but that doesn’t slow me down. I take a big bite, trying to make sure I get a little bit of every flavor for my first taste, but Anderson is right. The sandwich is too big. It’s hard to even get my mouth around all of it.
Anderson laughs as I chew my first bite, casually reaching over and thumbing a bit of cranberry sauce off the corner of my mouth.
My stomach drops when, instead of wiping it on a napkin, he sticks his thumb between his lips and cleans it that way.
“Mm, that’s pretty good,” he admits.
My stomach feels strangely hollow. I look down, feeling the faintest grime of guilt. When I try to figure out why, Hunter’s face flashes to mind.
I swallow with some effort, reaching for the Diet Coke Anderson brought me and unscrewing the cap so I can wash it down.
“Are you okay?” Anderson asks.
I hear the concern in his tone, so I look up and nod to reassure him. “Yeah. It’s good.”
Since my enthusiasm has noticeably ebbed, Anderson continues to frown. “Are you sure? You look like something is wrong.”
I put the cap back on my drink and set it down. “My mind wandered off to a prohibited area, just trying to get back.” Shaking my head to clear it, I reach for some semblance of composure. “Speaking of topics I might not enjoy, what exactly did you want to talk to me about?”
“That’s fair.” He looks down at his sandwich, but doesn’t touch it. He sighs. “Look, last night… I’m really sorry about everything. All of it. I was pissed off at the party, but after I went home and calmed down, I started thinking about it and I realized… I wasn’t a very good boyfriend.”
I frown. “What?”
“I wasn’t,” he says, meeting my gaze levelly. “I made you feel like you had to defend yourself against me. I made you feel like I wasn’t on your side. I was thinking about that day at the doughnut shop...” He sighs again, shaking his head. “You were right to break up with me. You deserve better. But that’s not the best I can do, Riley. I can be a better boyfriend than that.”
I can’t look at him.
That feeling is back, the vaguely guilty one.
I appreciate what he’s saying, but I would have appreciated it a lot more before I went into that bedroom with Hunter last night.
“Listen, Anderson, I appreciate the sentiment and… I do think we both made some very wrong choices this past week, but if one bad week was enough to break us, what we had clearly wasn’t very strong. And all of the issues we had last night? We still have them today. It’s not about being mad at each other. Yeah, we both got mad last night, but we didn’t break up because we were mad.”
“No, we broke up because you still had some kind of attachment to Hunter and I picked up on it and acted like a jealous asshole,” he states plainly. “Maybe I’m reaching here, but after last night, I’m thinking maybe you’re over that?”
My stomach hollows out. I knew he’d heard stuff about last night, but he didn’t specify which parts. I kind of figured he either hadn’t put together that I was in the room with Hunter, or he had, but in his quest to be a better boyfriend, he chose not to believe it. To give me the benefit of the doubt the time I didn’t deserve it, since he hadn’t when I did.
“I guess you’ve heard about last night,” I say without looking up.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know exactly what you heard, but… it’s not all a lie this time. I didn’t have sex with Hunter in middle school, and I didn’t sleep with my married history teacher, but I was in Valerie’s bedroom with him last night. You haven’t heard it from my perspective, but… I did hook up with Hunter after you left.”
“I figured.”
He sounds unhappy about it, but not mad.
“I didn’t know he was dating the devil,” I mutter.
“I figured that, too.”
I look up. “Did you? Know about him and Valerie,” I specify, since he never said anything to me about it.
/>
He shrugs. “I heard things, but I didn’t pay much attention to Hunter’s love life except as it pertained to my girlfriend. I take it he sent the flowers?”
I nod, looking down again. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“I don’t, either,” he says easily. “I just want to know if you’re done with him.”
I scoff, keeping my gaze trained on the blanket. “Oh yeah. I’m definitely done with him.”
“Good.” He pauses. “Then I’d like to propose we give us another shot.”
I thought that might be where he was going with that.
I sigh, my tone regretful as I tell him, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Anderson. Done with him or not, last night still happened. You’ll hold it against me, we’ll end up right back where we were before.”
“I won’t,” he says firmly. “I won’t do that, Riley. We were broken up. You didn’t do anything wrong. Do I hate that it happened with him? Yes. But I’m not going to hold onto it. I want to give us a real shot this time, none of that petty bullshit.”
“It’s not just that, though. Valerie already hated me, but now it’s going to get much worse. And Hunter… I have no idea what he’ll do. This year is going to be bad, Anderson. There’s no reason you should have to deal with all that.”
“There’s no reason you should either,” he points out.
“It’s different for you. They’re your teammates, your friends.”
“I don’t need friends that act like that,” he says simply. “If they want to shun me for dating you, let them. Maybe it won’t happen that way. Who knows? Maybe I could shelter you from some of the blowback. I know I’m no Hunter,” he says, rolling his eyes, “but I’m not exactly the head of the AV club, either. I have some social standing of my own.”
“You did,” I say, meeting his gaze. “I don’t know if Hunter will let you keep it if you date me.”
“I’m not afraid of Hunter Maxwell,” he tells me.
Maybe you should be.
I don’t say that.
I try to ignore the sinking feeling, the dread gathering around me. We’re talking about Hunter too much.
“Taking Hunter out of it, Valerie, all of them…” Anderson catches my gaze. “What do you want to do? Don’t try to protect me; I can look out for myself. No one else gets to dictate this decision, Riley. If you’re sure you don’t have any feelings left for me, then all right, I’ll accept your decision. I won’t like it, I still don’t think you’ve seen what a relationship with me can really be like, but that’s my fault. I moved too slow over the summer because I’ve never met a girl like you, you don’t act the way I’m used to girls acting when they like me and I couldn’t tell what you wanted. Then Hunter came back, and that was it. But it doesn’t have to be like that this time. If you’re willing to give us a real shot… that’s what I want.”
I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but… I’m not sure he’s wrong, either.
I do like Anderson, I enjoy spending time with him—or I did, prior to this past week. But neither one of us handled things perfectly. I knew he’d be ambushed by my reputation when he went back to school, and I didn’t even warn him. I could have prepared him, then maybe he would have handled everything differently.
At the end of the day, I think he’s right that we didn’t stand a chance with the way things were handled.
I also think he’s probably right that we’re both capable of doing better.
Yes, I wanted to break up with the football player I was at that party with last night, but I had wanted to go out with the nice boy who held my hand beneath the glow of the Ferris wheel this summer.
Hunter coming back screwed everything up. If he would’ve stayed in Italy, I doubt Anderson and I would have split up.
Maybe that means we shouldn’t have.
Hunter’s a jerk. Whatever soft spot I’ve always saved for him in my heart, there’s no excuse for what he did to me last night.
I am done with him.
So maybe I’m not done with Anderson. Maybe with Hunter out of the way once and for all, things will be different between us.
I still have reservations, but it’s nice to enjoy being with Anderson again, and it’s so nice not to be alone right now. I expected to be alone. I was prepared for it. I had tasks.
But it’s nice that I’m not.
It’s nice that he’s here.
Maybe that’s a good start.
“All right,” I say, meeting his gaze. “Let’s give it one more try.”
Anderson smiles. “Yeah?”
I smile back. “Yeah.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Riley
“We should wear dresses like those.”
I cock an eyebrow and look over at my mother beside me on the couch. We’re watching The Stepford Wives and while my mother is never lacking commentary for this particular film, her comments usually have nothing to do with fashion envy.
“Really?” I ask, grabbing a fistful of popcorn out of our shared bowl. “I think the big skirts would get annoying. Remember that Halloween party you went to dressed up as a queen? Getting your skirt in the car was such a hassle.”
“Well, yeah, but that was a floor-length gown with a hoop skirt. These seem much more manageable. I could definitely rock Faith Hill’s dress.”
I make a face. “I don’t know. I think that’s too much lace for you.”
“It’s only a little bit of lace trim on the bottom,” she argues.
“And that’s too much. I don’t think cheery sundresses are really our thing in general, but definitely not if lace is involved.”
Mom looks over at me. “Speaking of dresses, don’t you have homecoming soon? Is Anderson going to take you? We should go shopping before all the good dresses are gone.”
The mere thought of homecoming makes my stomach hurt. “It’s in a couple weeks. I don’t think I’m gonna go, though. Anderson and I haven’t really discussed it.”
“But isn’t he on the football team? Won’t he want to go?”
I suppose he probably would.
I really, really don’t, but if I’m going to date him, I guess I should take his wants into consideration.
“If he has his heart set on it, I guess I’ll go, but if not, I’m gonna pass.”
“Why? Dances can be fun, and even when they’re not, it’s a good excuse to dress up like a princess and let your mother take pretty pictures of you. It’ll be like your fifth birthday all over again, but you’re taller now.” When I do not appear impressed by that incentive, she adds, “Hey, maybe Sara could even tag along. I’m sure she won’t go if you don’t. I think you guys would have a good time.”
“I don’t know.” I grab another couple pieces of popcorn. “Not really feeling the bucket of pig’s blood they’d probably dump on my head.”
“Mm, that’s true. We’ll get you a red dress, just in case.”
“As long as my dress matches.”
“Exactly.” She misses a beat, but I can feel her probing gaze locked on me. “Is Valerie on her mean girl bullshit again this year?”
“I expect her to be even worse this year,” I tell her, though I obviously can’t explain why. “It doesn’t matter though, it’s nothing. I’m used to dealing with her. At least this is the last year I’ll ever have to.”
I can feel her disgruntlement, but she doesn’t offer further comment. I know Mom doesn’t want to let it go because she’s protective of me, but she’s not as fired up about it now as she used to be. We’ve been dealing with Valerie’s bad attitude throughout my high school career, so it’s nothing new at this point.
After the movie, Mom goes to bed.
I go to my room, too, but I’m not ready to sleep. It’s Sunday night and as soon as I go to sleep, it’ll be Monday morning.
Even in the worst of times while Hunter was away, I never yearned so vehemently to be homeschooled.
There’s nothing to be done about it, though. I just have to suck it
up and deal with it, the same way I’ve dealt with Valerie all these years.
Of course, I wasn’t tormented by confusing, conflicting feelings and memories of Valerie kissing my neck, so it’s definitely different.
Still the same basic problem, though.
A popular, well-loved pain in my ass.
___
When Monday morning rolls around, it feels like I’m shipping off to war instead of getting ready for my second week of senior year.
All the coffee and avocado toast in the world can’t help me, but I make some for myself, anyway.
Mom already left for work this morning. I’m dragging. She offered to give me a ride to school if I wanted to leave early, but I’d rather walk than spend any more time there than necessary.
Walking would ordinarily mean cutting through the woods behind Hunter’s house, but I’m too concerned he would anticipate that and be waiting on the footbridge when I needed to pass.
I won’t be cornered by him. I won’t let him get me alone. I don’t care what he has to say for himself this time—I don’t want to hear it.
I would have forgiven him for the lie, maybe I could have even found a way to get past him deliberately humiliating me the night he took my virginity, but not Valerie. I warned him, and he stepped over my line like it didn’t mean anything to him. So, I’m going to believe him. If he shows me he doesn’t give a shit about my boundaries, then that must be the truth.
Fuck Hunter Maxwell.
He and Valerie deserve each other.
I still feel a pang in my tender heart even thinking that, but I ignore it and lace up my shoes, ready to take the long way to school.
Just as I’m gathering my things and preparing to head out, the doorbell rings.
I frown. Ray should know my Mom is at work. I don’t see why he’d stop by with coffee if only I’m home.
When I open the door, I’m stunned to find the same delivery man that stood there last Monday. This time, he’s holding a huge bouquet of red and white roses.
“Someone’s popular,” he says good-naturedly.
I narrow my eyes at the little white teddy bear accompanying this bouquet. “No, someone’s just an asshole.”