In This Moment

by Autumn Doughton

  Daniel never talks about his little sister. All I know are the scraps of information that I found online about her high school swimming career and the articles about her death. And, of course, I know that he gave up his track and field scholarship at Michigan State to transfer here so that he could be closer to his grieving parents.

  He keeps talking. “It’s hard to explain the way things went down with her and my mom after the accident. It was bad. My parents were losing their minds and in this unreal pain, so when the police couldn’t figure much out, they just… My mom needed something or someone to focus the blame on. Unfortunately, that someone turned out to be Aimee.”

  My chest constricts. I think of Aimee and how crazy sad and fragile she seems. I don’t know why I can’t get this girl out of my head, but it’s like her face, with that faraway look on it, is pinned to my skull like a nail in hardened concrete. Shit. I need to rein myself in.

  I shift on my seat and hook my wrists over the slippery steering wheel. “You should talk to her.”

  Daniel looks away, his breath fogging up the window glass. “Yeah, I know that I should. I should do a lot of things, Cole.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cole

  I don’t expect her to come.

  She has a hundred reasons to stay away and none to show up, so I don’t really think that she’ll walk through the door. Still, I find myself checking the time on my phone more often than normal. By eleven, I’m beyond pissed for no solid reason and pretty much everyone at the fucking party has started to ignore me. Quentin was the last person to talk to me and all he did was ask if I was on my period.

  Fucking fine. This is my wake up call.

  It’s the much-needed reminder that I need. This is why I don’t date. Flowers and romance and feelings are not my thing for a very good reason. That bullshit always leads to disappointment in the end. Fuck that.

  I’ve seen it happen too many times to one of my dickhead friends. They get some chick that doesn’t give a fuck about them stuck in their system and they’re gone—can’t see straight, can’t think right. Why? No one is worth all of that crap. Not when there are plenty of chicks with sweet bodies and low morals ready to step in and fill the void at any time.

  Of course, that isn’t the line that people want you to feed them. People want to believe in love and monogamous relationships and things that don’t exist in real life.

  Last year when Nate was losing it for that girl we met at Stubby’s, I warned him that he was being fucktastically stupid. He told me that I was heartless and bitter and would wind up sad and alone. A month later when he was crying his eyes out and too fucked in the head to win races, I was banging her best friend and in the middle of the best winning streak of my life. Life lesson: heartless and bitter might not be so bad.

  My dad is the ultimate sucker. He romanced my mother for twenty years and the whole time that they were married he actively ignored the fact that she didn’t give two shits about him or her own kids. He clung to this idea that we were the perfect American family, complete with the two-story house and white wrap-around fence. He went along, humming and whistling and refusing to acknowledge all of the telltale signs that it was one big fat lie.

  He gave my mother his soul, and one day she woke up and decided that she didn’t want it anymore so she left. And it wasn’t like the movies. There was no note or teary explanation in the pouring rain. The only thing that she left behind was an old bathrobe and a collection of dog-eared paperback romance novels.

  That woman raked her own family over the coals and never looked back. And now my dad is just a broken shell. He goes through the motions but he stopped living three years ago. Now he just exists.

  That shit is not for me. No fucking way.

  I take a sip of stale beer from the red plastic cup in my hand and close my eyes. It’s so loud in here. I should probably get up and go outside for some air or put myself out of misery and go to bed. I might even wake up the first time my alarm goes off instead of hitting the snooze button three times. Coach will piss himself if I make it to the field on time on a Saturday morning. Just the idea of it makes me smile.

  “What has you looking so happy, Cole?”

  I blink my eyes open. There’s a cute girl next to me with her arm slung over the back of the couch and one knee tucked up under her butt. She’s got pretty soft grey eyes and short blonde hair. I know her from someplace. Shit. I think I hooked up with her last year after a party. Melanie or Melissa or something. I’m pretty sure that she’s in Zeta. Or maybe it was Theta.

  “Huh?”

  Her plastered-on smile wavers a little. “You were smiling and looking happy. I was just curious about it.”

  I almost laugh at the irony. I feel the direct opposite of happy right now. “Oh, you know…” I stay evasive and take another sip of my beer.

  Melanie or Melissa tips her head to the side and sucks in her cheek. “So, do you remember me?”

  Damn. This girl is asking for it. I let my eyes fall to her tits and I feel a mild twinge of interest. “Sure I remember you. It’s ahhh—”

  “Megan,” she says coyly, inching closer and reaching for my chin. I don’t fight it and this seems to encourage her. She brings her moist lips to my ear and I feel the brush of her nails as her left hand creeps under the bottom of my shirt. “Well, that’s very nice to hear because I certainly remember you, Cole.”

  Aimee

  “Is it me, or are you ready to douse yourself in kerosene and light a match?” I ask, waving stiffly as I watch the taillights of my parent’s black sedan disappear around the curve in the street.

  “Try ‘slit my own neck’ and you’d be right on target with the way that I feel right now.” Mara lets her fake smile drop into a frown. She cups her arms behind her neck and turns toward the front door of our townhouse with a sigh.

  I follow her past the small galley kitchen and into the living room. Mara kicks off her black ballet flats and launches herself onto the light green couch. She closes her eyes as she drops her arms against her lap with a slap.

  I sink in beside her and reach for the remote resting on the low side table. Powering on the TV, I ask, “Do you want to watch a movie? I think we’ve got that new one with Ryan Gosling.”

  Mara’s eye pop open. She wipes her brown hair from her forehead. “Aimee, I can’t think about Ryan Gosling right now.”

  “Come on, Mara. You’re breathing therefore you can think about Ryan Gosling.”

  “Can you be serious for a minute? I want to talk about what happened at dinner. I want—” She makes a frustrated sound. “I just can’t believe her!”

  “Mara, don’t…” I blink.

  “I’m sorry that she went so far with you. I—” Mara sucks in a jagged breath. “I should have stepped in sooner.”

  She’s referring to our mother. “They just…” I let my voice fall away, not knowing exactly what to say. Handling Carl and Elise Spencer is always a delicate matter. My parents aren’t bad people—they just don’t like dealing with anything disruptive or complicated. And for over a year, disruptive and complicated means me.

  Mara shimmies closer to me and rests her cheek on the curve of my shoulder. “She just doesn’t know when to quit, does she Aimee?”

  I grunt.

  Mara’s head comes up and she looks at me seriously. “I think that Mom’s lost her mind this time.”

  “No, she thinks that I’ve lost mine.” Judging by the sour expression on Mara’s face, she doesn’t think my joke is even a little bit funny. I roll my eyes and continue talking, “Look, Mara, it’s not as bad as it seems with Mom. She’s just overly worried about me, and Dad goes along with whatever she wants because he doesn’t want to rock the boat with her.”

  Mara’s hands come up to her face. She’s annoyed. “But wanting you to drop out of college and spend the entire year at home? That makes absolutely no sense to me.”

  Mom had called earlier this week and presented the idea of us all having
dinner tonight to celebrate Dad’s birthday. What she failed to mention was that it was an ambush.

  Her voice filters through my brain.

  We hear that you haven’t made an appointment with that new therapist yet.

  You saw Daniel Kearns last week?

  Have you tried that make-up I bought you to cover up the scar?

  Your new friend has blue hair?

  From the way she was going at it, I thought that she was ready to lock me up in some institution to deal with my “emotional instability,” so I was almost relieved that all she suggested was that I take the year off and come home. Maybe college is too much pressure right now, she’d said. She even tried to entice me with talk of a trip to Europe with her and my dad in the spring.

  “You have to give her some leeway. She’s convinced herself that I’m going to slit my wrists any day now and I don’t really think anything that I say or do at this point will make her believe otherwise. Every little thing sets off some kind of alarm with her. It’s like she’s decided that if I’m closer to her physically, she’ll be able to control the situation and somehow magically turn back time to make me the person that I was… before.”

  Before.

  I don’t need to clarify for Mara. It seems like my entire life is broken up into two parts: before and after.

  Mom preferred before. Before was solid. Happy, healthy, popular Aimee lived there.

  After is unfamiliar. It’s all scars and therapists and tears. And it doesn’t make a difference if I get straight A’s or stay out of trouble. To my mom, after is an uneven pile of what-ifs.

  Mara’s hand settles into the crook of my elbow. She makes a big deal of looking me in the eye so that I know that she’s serious. “I’m glad that you set Mom straight. And, Aimee, I’m sorry that I’ve been giving her updates about you. I thought I was helping, but after tonight, I promise that’s over.”

  I swallow. Yeah, it had been hurtful to listen to my mom twist things around that only Mara could have told her, but I already knew that they were talking about me so it’s not like I was shocked. And even though my sister and I don’t agree on everything, I know that she would never hurt me on purpose. I pat her hand reassuringly. “I know that you didn’t mean anything by it so let’s just forget that tonight ever happened.”

  Mara smiles and squeezes me. “Love ya.”

  “Love ya more.”

  After that, we fall into a comfortable silence. I don’t bring up the Ryan Gosling movie again. Instead there’s an old episode of Law and Order on TV. We’ve both seen it more than once so pretty soon we’re shouting things at the characters and laughing and eating pretzel M&Ms from the stash that I keep stored next to the couch.

  When the show credits roll, Mara turns her head toward me and swirls her finger in the air. “I’m sick of sitting around. It’s a Friday night and I think that we should go out.”

  I pick up my phone and bring the display screen to life so that I can see the clock. “It’s almost midnight, Mara.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Where are we going to go? You know that I don’t have a fake ID anymore.” I got rid of it over a year ago.

  Mara snorts. “It’s not a problem. I know a guy.”

  My eyebrows go up. “You know a guy? What are you, like in the mob or something?”

  Mara chuckles. “No. It’s worse than the mob. I’m in a sorority.” She stands and holds out her hand to me. “Come on. I think that after the family dinner from hell, we deserve to have some shots and fun.”

  Cole’s words from the other day flit through my head. Maybe I do need more fun in my life.

  Cole

  The music at this place sucks. I’m sweating balls. The beer’s damn expensive. And I’m pretty sure some chick just went and puked over in the corner near the bathrooms. Classy.

  I turn on the stool and prop my forearms against the edge of the lacquered bar top. I still can’t believe that I agreed to come out so late. I have practice in the morning and my headache is getting worse by the second but I wasn’t ready to call it a night. Maybe a part of me didn’t want to sit around that couch one more second waiting to see if Aimee would show. So when Nate and Adam suggested that we move the house party to a dance club, I went along with the idea and encouraged Megan to gather up her friends.

  “Want to dance?” Megan asks me for third time since we got here. She’s crushing her boobs against my biceps and standing on her tiptoes so that her mouth can reach my ear.

  “Nah,” I shake my head and raise the bottle of beer I’m holding to let her know that I’m occupied. “I’m good.”

  I can tell by the look on her face that this is not the answer that she was hoping for. I’m being an asshole and Megan’s been taking the brunt of it for almost two hours. She might be an over-zealous flirt, but she’s actually not awful. It’s not her fault I’m in such a fucked-up mood tonight.

  I set my beer bottle down and cup my palm against her lower back. “Why don’t you do me a favor and go save my buddy Daniel over there?” I suggest, tipping my chin toward Daniel, who was cornered the minute we walked through the door by a loony chick claiming to be in one of his classes. “My boy looks like he’s ready to drown himself in his drink.”

  Megan’s grey eyes follow mine. “You got it.” She breaks into a mega-watt smile and runs her manicured fingernails down my arm before stalking away. I will say one thing: the girl has a fine, plump ass on her.

  I watch, amused, as Megan bats her eyelashes and works her ample curves to scare off the other girl. In two minutes flat she has her arm hooked around Daniel’s waist and is dragging him out with her to the dance floor.

  “She’s got skills,” I mutter and take another sip of my beer.

  “Cole, man,” Nate yells over the music. He comes up beside me and slams his empty beer bottle down on the bar top. “Ready for another one?”

  I move my head sharply to one side. “Naw, I think I’m going to call it. I’ll get myself a cab or see if I can catch a ride back to the house with Adam.”

  “What the fuck? The night’s still young!” He chants, throwing back his head and howling toward the ceiling.

  “It’s almost two in the morning.” I take a final swig of my beer and signal to the bartender that I’m ready to close out my tab. “Anyway, I’m just not feeling it anymore, and don’t forget that we have an early practice tomorrow.”

  Nate laughs, his white teeth flashing against his dark skin. “I never thought I’d see the day that you’d be the one reminding me about a morning practice.” He jabs his elbow harshly into my ribs. “Before you go, at least tell me where I can find that pretty little number that was wrapped around your leg earlier.”

  “Ahhh, I’m pretty sure that Daniel’s got his hand halfway up her skirt by now but you’re certainly welcome to go for his sloppy seconds.”

  I sign the credit card slip the bartender sends my way and I push off from the bar. That’s when I see her. Perched on a chair at a corner table with her long, slender legs crisscrossed beneath her and her head propped up on her upturned palm. She’s with another dark-haired girl. The other girl leans in and whispers something in Aimee’s ear and they both smile.

  My eyes trace the outline of her body—over the shiny skin of her bare shoulder, down the soft curve of her breasts, all the way to the valley of her waist—and everything inside of me amps into overdrive. My heart starts pumping blood faster, my fucking pores get all tingly, and I feel like the club just got a couple degrees hotter. Damn it. I need to get my dick and my pulse in check or this girl is going to think I’m some kind of deranged creep. It’s already becoming apparent that I’m going to need to go home and take the longest cold shower of my life.

  Before I can think too much or talk myself out of it, my feet eat the distance separating us and I’m tapping my fingers on the corner of her table, waiting for her to notice me.

  Four agonizing seconds later, Aimee’s head comes up and it’s like watching an
entire film reel of reactions play across her features. First her eyelids widen a fraction and her jaw drops open, and then this small, barely-there smile plays on her lips. I have to shove my hands deep in my pockets to keep from reaching out and brushing my thumb along the pink skin that lines her mouth.

  I say the first thing that pops in my head. “I thought you said that you had plans with your parents tonight.”

  With half-mast, unfocused eyes, she studies me for a long moment. Then she tips her face to one side and says, “And I thought that you said that I should have more fun. Maybe I’m just taking your advice.”

  Aimee

  Cole. Everly.

  God.

  I ignore the ripple of chills moving over my skin and the slosh of the alcohol churning fiercely in my stomach, and I lift the short glass tumbler and take another sip from the thin red straw. Swallowing hard as the vodka burns my throat, I straighten my shoulders and narrow my eyes at Cole. “Are you following me around or something? You keep showing up everywhere that I go like a stalker. I’m starting to wonder if I should be worried.”

  “Me? A stalker?” He laughs and folds his arms across his chest. I will myself not to stare at the prominent biceps straining against the sleeves of his shirt. Don’t stare. Don’t stare.

  “If the shoe fits…”

  “I think you might be the one doing the stalking, Aimee. I just happened to be out with my friends and I looked over and here you were. Either you’re stalking me or it’s a crazy coincidence.” He smiles. “The third option is that fate is playing a hand.”

  I let my head loll back. “I don’t believe in fate. It’s stupid.”

  Cole watches me for a long moment while he works out what to say. Mara uses the pause in our conversation to pipe up and flash her sorority-worthy smile. She extends her hand to Cole like they’re being introduced at a political mixer instead of under a set of pulsing purplish strobe lights at a loud club. He laughs at something she says and I want to punch him in the face. Or maybe I want to punch my sister in the face. I don’t know.