“You’ll be able to find something to eat?” she asks.
I almost let myself smile again. Dad left a note earlier that he had a late showing. It’s just another hour I can be out of the house without anyone noticing. “I’m sure I’ll think of something,” I say.
* * *
One of the best parts about this new thing between Jackson and me is that it’s okay to watch his body now when we run side by side, to see the way his calf muscles flex and release, carrying us both over the dirt paths of Cedar Woods.
“You’re doing it again,” he says, pulling my eyes back to his face.
I stare ahead then, caught. “What?”
“Watching me like you wish I didn’t have clothes on.”
One side of my mouth quirks. I pick up the pace because I know he can’t hold it as long as I can. It only takes him a couple minutes more to feel it.
“Okay, okay, okay,” he tells me, falling back and putting his arms over his head. I slow to a walk next to him, keeping my breathing as steady as possible. In through the nose, out through the mouth.
As we walk, our breath catching up with us, he falls behind me, tugging on my sweaty white tank top. He licks my shoulder because he’s disgusting. I push him away. “What is wrong with you?”
“It could not be more fortunate that you’re so tall,” he says.
I rub my sweaty arm, trying not to look self-conscious. Tall. I’ve always been the tall girl. “And why is that?”
“More skin to touch,” he says, and I feel myself shiver all over.
“Are your parents home?” I ask. We’ve had sex three more times since the first time. I don’t see myself growing tired of it very soon.
He doesn’t answer right away, and we walk in silence for a minute. “I like you when you’re near the water,” he says. “You look happy.” We’re on a nice flat bank overlooking the river. It’s after six, and still probably too hot to be running around the way we are.
I avoid his eyes. “Don’t do that. Try and analyze me. I hate that.”
“Unless you’re doing it?”
“Yes,” I say.
“So is this, like, a secret?” he asks me.
“Me and you?” I ask, pointing a finger between the two of us. “Which part?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Like if Doug says, ‘Why the hell aren’t you coming over to bring me snacks from my refrigerator since I can’t walk on my shattered leg?’ can I tell him it’s your fault?”
“I guess,” I return. “As long as you tell him we’re not…” I trail off, unsure how to finish.
“We’re not what?”
“I don’t know,” I say then. “I don’t know what we’re not.”
“Okay,” he says. “That’s fine. If that’s what you want.”
“What do you want?” I ask, and it sounds like a challenge. Something I don’t know the right answer to.
“Nell Becker,” he says, “if I knew what I wanted, there’d be nothing but fire and blood in the streets. But right now? I kind of just want to be with you.”
I don’t grab his hand or anything dramatic like that. I just wing my hands so our fingers brush against each other’s. He reciprocates with a twitch of his own finger.
“I’ll race you back to your house,” I tell him, a glint in my eye.
He looks like he’s not sure what to do for a second, but then he smiles. “You’re on.”
26
Two weeks go by like that. Two weeks of summer we’ll never get back, and I don’t even care. Because those two weeks fly. There’s still so much summer left to live and I could probably live this way forever.
Volleyball. Jackson. Tournament. Jackson. Best friend. Jackson.
Everyone’s told me—even my guidance counselor suggested it during a pretty tense meeting last semester—I have a tendency to obsess. And right now, I think I may be obsessed.
“What does pot taste like?” I ask as Tristan sucks on a joint by the fire pit at the Harts’ house. She has a boy with her. He has sort of dull eyes and a crooked nose. I can only imagine what the other girls at school would say if they could see him or any of the other guys I’ve seen with Tristan in the past few weeks.
Then again, they’d probably just say the same things they already say about her.
Doug has two chairs to himself, his huge cast propped up on one. Columbus is notably absent. Jackson gave me this ridiculous wink when he informed me. He’s leaned back in the wooden chair with his ankles resting on the edge of the empty fire pit. I’m sitting in another chair, next to him, our feet almost touching. He keeps nudging my big toe with his big toe and Tristan has seen us do it several times, sighing and rolling her eyes dramatically.
“You want some?” she asks me. She’s wrapped up as if pulling her limbs into herself. One leg tucked under her and the other knee bent, her arm wrapped around it.
“No,” I say. “Can’t chance getting drug tested.”
She laughs like that’s the most hilarious thing she’s ever heard. “That’s what Hart’s always saying.”
“Hart’s welcome to do whatever he wants,” I return. She might be good at her game, but it’s always dangerous to come at a winner.
“Give it a rest, Tristan,” Doug says, shifting his leg as if uncomfortable. “You’re being a damn pill.”
She cuts him a look, inhaling again. The dull-eyed boy doesn’t defend her.
I turn to Jackson. “My parents are going to be out of town this weekend since we don’t have a tournament.”
He looks intrigued by this information. “Where are they going?”
“Greenville, to visit my aunt, but I still have practice, so…” I shrug innocently.
“You’re a deceptively bad person,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow. “What’s deceptive about it?” He nudges my toe again.
“What the fuck is wrong with you two?” Tristan calls again. She’s picking a fight. I feel it pulsing through me without actually knowing what it’s about.
“Stop drinking dark liquor, Tris,” Jackson finally tells her, his voice several octaves lower than normal.
“No, I mean it,” she says. “Suddenly the two of you are in love or something? You couldn’t fucking stand her guts two months ago.”
“We are most definitely not in love,” I say as Jackson says, “Stop, Tristan.”
“She won’t let me intimidate her like your other playthings, will she, Hart?”
“I’m right here,” I tell her loud and clear, locking on her eyes shining in the starlight. “If you have something to say, you can address it to me.”
“You’re so stupid and you don’t even know it,” she says then.
“Will you leave her the hell alone?” Doug implores like he’s exhausted. He’s picking up the slack so Jackson doesn’t have to.
“He’ll get bored with you, just like everyone else. It might take longer and it might go down uglier, but it’ll happen. And we’ll always be here, like we are, to laugh and pick up the pieces.”
I push myself up from my chair as Jackson reaches out to grab me. I pull my arm away, step forward, and crush a soda can, tossing it into the empty fire pit. “It’s like you think I’m so easily entertained, I’ll just be hanging around hoping y’all love me. Hell, I’m already bored with this conversation,” I tell her, and then set off away from them, up the walkway and into Jackson’s house, shaking the anger out of my fingers as I go. Approximately ten seconds later, I hear Tristan’s Jeep crank and watch as her headlights zoom out of the driveway.
I lean against a couch in the great room, watching the two dark figures work together in the distance. Jackson is helping Doug toward the house, where I’ve finally figured out he usually sleeps in one of the spare bedrooms. I should go to help.
I don’t.
It takes them a bit to maneuver through the door. “I’ll be just a minute,” Jackson tells me when they hobble in together. “Gotta get Dougy in bed. He needs his rest and relaxation, isn
’t that right, Rivera?”
“You can ignore her, Nell,” Doug says to me instead. “She’s always a bitch when she starts drinking whiskey.”
I give him a weak smile.
I fall down on the couch. Neither of Jackson’s parents are around, but that’s normal. His older sister is at school on the West Coast and skipped the whole “coming home for the summer” thing—or presumably, ever again—per Jackson.
I avoid his dad as much as possible. When his mom is home, she never leaves her room. She has things going on a lot of nights—philanthropy events or girls’ nights or whatever. Sometimes, he’ll tell me that she’s home when we’re coming in after a run, but she’s always in her bedroom. He’ll poke his head in her room before we go upstairs. And I’m nosy enough to listen in.
“Mom, I’m home,” he’ll say.
I’ll hear her light reply. “Hey, sweetie.”
“I’m with a friend,” he always tells her like that is a code and she knows what it means.
“Do you two need anything?” she asks every time.
“No,” he says. Always no.
I get the distinct feeling he doesn’t want her to meet me.
Now, he comes out of Doug’s room, wearing one of his sincere expressions, his mouth a straight line, his dark brows close together.
“Can we talk for a second?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
It’s clear he does so I keep my own expression as resolute as possible, snaking my finger into his belt loop and taking a step closer. I hold his gaze until he has no choice but to look away, taking the loss in stride. He fishes my fingers from the loop and links them through his and we go upstairs. It’s our place. Hallowed ground.
After, we’re under a sheet, the comforter thrown off at the bottom of the bed days ago, though I suspect someone keeps putting it back for him to take it off again—it changes positions every time I come. I haven’t moved from the spot next to him where I’m lying on my side, so my whole body is turned to face him with one leg wrapped around his. He lies on his back. I’m not ready to leave yet. I want more.
That’s the thing about the wanting, it always leaves you with the more.
He swallows. Something is working behind his eyes, I can see it.
“You okay?” I ask.
He looks at me, then back up. It’s too warm under the sheet even. We need to crawl out of it, but he says, “C’mere,” and wraps his arms around me, pulling me on top of him, me pushing away so I have to brace my knees on either side, leaning into him. I think he’s going to do something, that he’s thinking what I’m thinking, that we can’t be in motion again soon enough.
He grabs my hand, holding it against his chest with both of his own. “Do you feel that?”
“What?” I demand, tugging my hand out of his.
He laughs, a loud quick sound. “It’s my heart. Hammering.” He carefully takes my hand back and presses it to his warm skin again.
I do. Feel it. The steady beat against my fingers, the way it propels him forward, keeps him going, so easily vibrant and beautiful.
“Why?” I say.
He rolls over onto his side, dislodging me. “I don’t know.”
I go with it, sliding off him to sprawl on my back; he reaches for me, then stops with his hand in midair when I shift away from him. “You always look at me like you’re scared I might get too close to you,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “I think you’ve gotten plenty close to me.” I sigh, pulling the sheet back over my body. I watch him out of the side of my eye for a moment. Sometimes, I find myself thinking about him so much, the way his collarbone dips into his shoulder and the perfect symmetry of his face and how he always looks so calm, like nothing is hard or complex. I ask him, “Has anyone ever told you that you might do well if you kept your head down?”
“What?”
“That’s what they told me when I started Prep. Sit down and shut up, little girl, and if you’re lucky we’ll make some good things happen for you.” Without thinking about it, I roll over, too, so we’re looking at each other.
He pushes a strand of hair out of my face. “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder.”
I shake my head. “It’s not about that. I want to be loud, to be seen. I get so tired of being told to sit down and play nice and say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ So apparently that’s a chip on my shoulder? I’m sure no one would say that about you.”
“Oh, Becker, I’ve got a hell of a chip on my shoulder, too,” he says, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
“So I can’t play this game with you. I can’t feel your heart and tell you how beautiful you are and beg you to tell me what you like most about me. I don’t do that, Hart.”
He’s looking at my fingers where I have them bunched up in the sheet. “So don’t,” he says, his eyes going to mine. “Tell me a lie.”
I scoot closer to him, push my fingertips into his cheek, and lean my face against his. “I love you,” I breathe against him.
He laughs, hard, threads his fingers through my hair. “You’re a good liar.” And then he kisses me, his mouth hungry against mine, his teeth scraping against my lip, not violent but wanting and having.
Every time I kiss him, it feels like a battle of wills, like a competition one of us is trying to win. I stop and pull away, grabbing my phone off his nightstand to check the time.
“Stay,” he begs. I love the sound of him begging.
But I turn to him and he’s watching me and he looks so startlingly earnest, I swear I can feel his heartbeat again even though I’m not touching him. I want to stay, so much, but this. This look on his face stops me. There’s something too true in it. I feel splintered, afraid if I stay, a part of me will never leave, and I have to escape before I accidentally get pulled in. “I have to go,” I say.
He stares up at the ceiling. “You don’t.” He glances back once, gives himself away.
I sigh.
“I’m sorry, Becker. I’m sorry to inconvenience you by being an actual person. My mom hasn’t gotten out of bed in three days, and I don’t know where my dad is, yet he’s somehow found time today to text me what a shithead I am because Mom hasn’t gotten out of bed in three days. But don’t let me bother you.”
So his mom is here. I stare straight ahead, digging my fingers into the tops of my thighs.
“Say something,” he tells me.
“That’s not,” I begin, “what this is. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“I don’t know what to say to you, Nell,” he tells me then. “Fine, you don’t want love. But you have to give me a little more than whatever this”—he gestures between the two of us—“is. I need something from you here.”
“You don’t get that,” I say. “It’s nonnegotiable. I’m mine.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. It’s not like that,” he says, his voice practically desperate.
“I’m not here to validate you.”
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone. See? I did it first—that’s what you want to hear, right? Is that enough validation for you?”
“Let it go,” I snap.
He breathes exactly like he’s trained to do, like he’s just run a mile. In through the nose, out through the mouth. “I never knew you were like this,” he says. “I mean, I knew you were competitive but…”
“Like what?” I demand.
“You win things,” he returns. I can feel all the energy he isn’t exerting. His constant need to be on the move. He’s speaking to me like a child now. “You can’t win a relationship, you know.”
“What relationship?”
He laughs. “Oh my God, you’re doing this on purpose.”
I’ve had enough. “Jackson, I just don’t want to hear about your daddy issues or whatever the hell your problem is. It’s always something with you.”
“Really, okay, wow. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I don’t dig
nify that with a response, just stand up and start looking around for my clothes.
“Fine,” he says after a moment. “Leave, then. I’m really not in the mood for this, anyway.”
“So now you want me to go?” I ask him like it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other.
“Do whatever you want,” he tells me.
“Okay.” I put my clothes on with my back turned to him. I should say something before I leave, can feel him waiting for it.
Instead, I grab my bag and take off out the front door. The frame shakes behind me.
Only I don’t make it very far. There’s headlights in the driveway. The sports car pulls in behind my sensible one, blocking it in. And Jackson’s dad gets out. We stare at each other across the expanse for a moment. I hear Jackson clattering down the outside stairs, shoeless, and then he’s beside me. “Shit,” he mutters. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. “You need to go.”
His dad comes over to the two of us, his eyes barely stopping on me. He’s in regular clothes—khaki shorts and a button-down. He looks disturbingly like Jackson that way, out of his normal clothes, like looking into the future. “Two thousand dollars this week,” he says, his voice low.
I glance at Jackson, whose jaw clenches imperceptibly.
“What do you want me to do, son?” Jackson’s dad steps closer to him. “Hit you?”
Jackson shrugs. “Sure.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say, grabbing the back of Jackson’s shirt and pulling him away from his dad.
Mr. Hart is looking at me again and I’m guessing he hasn’t forgotten a six-foot-tall girl. “So this is the girl you have at the house every night. Guessing she doesn’t know your extracurriculars.”
“Nell, I like to go to wherever my dad is skulking around and make charges to his credit card. There,” he says, “now she knows.”
“Don’t do this right now,” I say.
“Leave her out of it,” Jackson says to his dad.
“You think you’re so smart,” his dad says.
“I know I am,” Jackson replies.
I bite into the inside of my cheek.
“I’m not going to hit you,” his dad tells him. “You think you’re so much better than me, but nothing’s real for you, son. That’s my house and my truck and my clothes you wear around every day. That’s even my brain that you’re always using to try and outsmart me. My town, my family. Hell…” He trails off as he looks at me. I grab on to Jackson’s forearm instinctively. His fist is clenched so tight, his arm shakes.
Winner Take All Page 16