“You’re drunk,” Jackson says spitefully.
For a second I think his dad is going to say something else, but he just gives the two of us a long look; then he turns away and walks into the house, closing the door behind him. My heart is racing, my body unsure the danger has passed. I drop Jackson’s arm. Immediately, he pulls both of them up over his head, reaching for his back, taking in a deep breath. And then he lets go, releasing a loud, “Goddammit.”
He looks over at me, his face pure misery. “Please don’t go.”
I stare at the ground, something like guilt eating at me. “I have to.”
“Then let me take you. I don’t care where we go,” he says. I don’t like this noncharming, dark Jackson.
Only I do. I think it might be my favorite Jackson.
“I’m picking the music,” I tell him, and walk past him toward his truck.
When I don’t hear him moving, I stop and glance back over my shoulder. His eyes are on me. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to,” he says.
“I never have.”
He snorts and catches up with me.
27
My hand is out the window, riding the waves of cool evening air as Jackson’s truck rumbles along the road. Night buzzes around us, loud and quiet all at once.
“Where do you want to go?” Jackson asks, pushing the pedal hard. I know all he wants to do is escape. “You want to eat?”
I shrug. “Whatever you want to do.”
He laughs. “Dangerous.”
I watch him across the console, a smile playing on his lips like it’s all a game, his shoulders tense. And I see right through him, right to his core.
The ease of it is both shocking and satisfying.
We drive around like that for a while, putting nothing but miles on the truck and time between then and now. After about a half hour of aimless driving, he pulls off the road abruptly and into the parking lot of a small café nestled into a corner on the outskirts of Cedar Woods, near where the town ends and the highway begins—this side of town is supposed to belong to me. A little hanging sign out front says EDGE OF THE RIVER, paint peeling off the Es and Rs. The parking lot is small, almost empty, but there’s a side lot with a couple of eighteen-wheelers pulled in.
“Food,” he says, killing the car. He rolls his hands over the leather of the steering wheel a couple of times, hanging on to it tight. Then he lets go, shaking his hands out. I watch him with interest, feeling like I should do something but not sure exactly what that should be. He fishes a pair of worn sneakers from his back seat and then, with a deep exhale, pockets his keys and opens the door.
I follow him into the place, a dive, to be sure. A few men are sitting by themselves, sipping coffee, and there’s two boys—maybe college age—at a corner table, one laughing loudly while the other tries in vain to shush him. Jackson slides into a booth a few tables down from one of the older men.
We sit across from each other, and I think how, if we were a normal couple, we’d want to touch in some way, our fingers finding each other’s across the expanse of the table. But Jackson’s hands are just doing what they’re always doing—tapping and fidgeting and alive in a way that seems out of his control.
“Good evening, Jackson,” an old waitress says, coming over to our table to hand us menus. “Haven’t seen you here in a while.”
Jackson attempts his best charming smile, but it doesn’t quite touch his eyes. “I’ve missed you most, Madeline.” He tips his head to me across the table. “This is Nell.”
He always does that. Introduces me to people. Everyone except his family. And I never know how to look like someone he would be with, but she smiles at me all the same.
“You want the usual?” she asks him. Her voice is all warm honey, comforting in some way.
“Please.”
She turns to me. “And you, hon?”
The menu is five pages, and I haven’t even glanced at one. I panic. “Fries?” I ask desperately.
“Add cheese,” Jackson whispers like he’s telling me a secret.
“With cheese,” I say quickly. She smiles and takes our menus as fast as she brought them. I stare at the tabletop.
“You know every hole-in-the-wall in the county?” I ask him after a moment.
“As I’m sure you can imagine, I find a lot of reasons to not be at home.” He scrapes at a stain on the tabletop with his fingernail. “Late-night Edge of the River is a gift, Nell.” He’s still doing that thing, trying to be the biggest and boldest—sucking all the energy out of the room. He’s imitating the person he usually is.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” I say instinctively. “Pretend or whatever, for me. I’m not your audience—I’m just me. And it sucks.” I shrug. “Like, what I said at your house, before. That was shit. I’m sorry. You don’t have to pretend it doesn’t suck.”
He glances up and looks back down. Sighs. “My dad’s a dick. No point in dwelling on it.”
“Feeling isn’t dwelling.”
He laughs, eyes catching mine. “C’mon, you know the trick. Always gotta have on the game face.”
I pull my feet up into the booth, tucking them under me. He knows. “Fair.”
“I wouldn’t want to mope too much anyway. It might ruin the illusion of who I am for you.”
“Look, I really didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant, Becker.”
“You think you know what I meant.”
“You want to have sex with me, not talk to me. I get it. It’s not like it’s a new or complicated concept. It’s like my dad said.”
I bristle. “Don’t you dare put his words into my mouth. Look, this is all happening really fast, and I just … I need some space. I need to feel in control. Don’t you get it?” I hold a hand out as if showing him. “I know everyone always loves you immediately. It’s not real, but it’s what you expect. That’s why this is so difficult for you—it’s not because of some special thing you feel about me.”
He sighs, shaking his head. “People don’t love me, they just want something from me. They always have. You might want a different something from me than most people, but it’s all the same.”
“That’s not what I said,” I try again.
He shrugs. “You didn’t have to say it for it to be the truth.”
Madeline the server stops by then, leaving waters on our table. “You know, on second thought,” Jackson says to her right before she leaves, “I think we’re going to want to get two milkshakes, too. The birthday ones,” and Madeline gives him a knowing smile.
The two boys get up from their table, one of them still carrying on. As they pass by us, the loud boy stops, his arm pulled tightly around his companion. “This guy,” he tells Jackson and me, pulling the other boy closer, “is this not the best-looking guy you’ve ever seen?”
I laugh as the other boy blushes. “Truly,” I say.
“You’re a lucky man,” Jackson agrees.
The talking boy grins. “It’s a beautiful night to be in love, y’all.” His boyfriend excuses him and they leave together. Jackson and I meet each other’s eyes across the table and then look away.
Madeline returns soon with our food and milkshakes, placing them in front of us without fanfare. I grab a cheese fry, and it practically melts in my mouth.
“Oh my God, Jackson. These are incredible.”
The smile he gives me this time is real. “That’s the happiest I’ve ever heard you sound when you say my name.”
I throw a fry at him and cheese splatters on his T-shirt. He looks down. “You didn’t.”
I bite into my lip, resisting the urge to laugh, and nod.
“Nell, I swear to God,” he says, and then he grabs across the table at my fries, and I put them into my lap so he can’t reach. He stands up to try and reach over my edge of the table and I attempt to use my body as a shield for the fries.
“Watch out for my milkshake!” I yell at him as he comes dangerously close to t
oppling it. The other five people in the café are all watching us but no one really seems to mind. I swear I see one of the truckers chuckling. Jackson finally stops, and then he reaches out and slides his fingers into my hair on either side of my head, holding my face. We look at each other. After a beat, he falls back into his seat in defeat, attempting to wipe the cheese sauce off with a napkin.
“That was dirty,” he tells me solemnly. “That could get you killed in some places.”
I suck on my milkshake straw, watching him, feeling where his hands rested against my skin like a burn. “This is nice,” I say after a minute. “Not, like, being around your house or your friends or at school or whatever. I don’t feel so … watched.”
“People are always watching you, Nell,” he says. “In case you don’t remember, I spent the past three years unable to ignore you.”
I look down. “Not like they watch you. Everyone’s just watching me waiting for me to fall on my face. You included.”
“Why do you keep acting like I’m your two-dimensional enemy?”
I stare down at the stain he was picking at earlier. “Because it’s easier,” I say at last. When I look up at him, he’s staring at a spot outside the window, his face unguarded. And I can’t believe he’s real. He’s like an ideal of a teenage boy, and even in the unflattering diner lighting there’s something almost impossibly beautiful and effortless about him. Like he’s in his own movie everywhere he goes. Everyone loves him, everyone knows him, and he’s rich and smart and comfortable in his own skin.
And he’s so deeply unhappy.
We sit quietly after that, the minutes ticking by until Madeline finally approaches us again. “Can we get the check?” Jackson asks her.
“It’s covered,” she tells us, nodding at one of the truckers. He tips his cap at us.
“You kids have fun,” he says, a strong bayou accent coating his words. Jackson tosses down more than the price of the meal on the table for Madeline anyway and we thank the man profusely as we leave, taking the milkshakes to go.
Out in the parking lot, I glance at my phone to see it’s after midnight. I’d originally been planning to go to Lia’s after I left Jackson’s but I’d texted her I would be late after the blowup with Jackson’s dad. “Let’s go to the river,” I tell Jackson instead.
We leave Edge of the River and Jackson drives back closer to town, along a road hugging the water. He pulls into some area designated as part of the state park and positions his truck so the bed faces the river. It’s a wooded area, pretty far off from the road. We climb out and sit on the tailgate, our legs dangling over the side, music from the cab playing in the background. Jackson slurps on his milkshake loudly.
The moon is bright enough to see the water in the distance—the exact spot where the sky hits the river continuing the darkest navy forever up into it. The feeling is all over me then, the singular joy the sight gives me every time. The current sings to me in the way nothing else does, begs for me, and I breathe in every scent of a rain that wants to fall and earth that thirsts for it.
Here on the water is where I really feel it: the possibility of the world. In Cedar Woods, the river is always a barrier—a separation between them and us. But from here, I can’t see the gabled roofs or the shiny cars. I see only the water for miles until the end of the world.
“What’s going on in that head of yours, Becker?” Jackson asks me.
I crash back to reality, startled. “Thinking about the river.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“It’s not that I don’t like talking to you,” I hear myself say. “I do. It’s just—”
“A lot,” he answers for me. “It’s fine. You don’t have to explain yourself to me. Sorry I pushed it so much.”
I nod. Then, after a moment, I lean back, watching the current lap the shore. “Tell me a lie,” I say.
“No,” he returns, and I feel like I’ve lost this one based on how sharply he says it. But after a moment, he faces me. “That game is tired. Let’s play a new one.”
“Your pick,” I say, pretending I don’t care.
“Tell me a secret.”
I glance at him. “You first.”
He looks toward the sky and then back to me. “Should’ve seen that coming.” He releases a deep sigh. “Every time I’m talking to you, I feel like you’re digging, and I’m worried one day soon, you’ll want to stop,” he says, his voice touching each of the words as if he’s giving them thought. “You’ll have me all figured out, if you don’t already, and it’ll be just like you told Tristan earlier. You’ll get bored first.”
I half laugh, dry and hollow. “None of that counts as a secret.” I try to grab the words back immediately, shaking my heard. “Sorry, I ruined it again.” I push off from the truck, walking out to the edge of where the land overlooks the water. There’s a simple wooden fence there, easy to climb, and then you hang on the brink, a twenty-foot drop into the water below.
“No, it’s okay.” He startles me, standing a few feet behind me with his hands in his pockets; I hadn’t heard him coming. “I’ve got another.”
I stare straight ahead, waiting.
“I finally hit him last year. I think that’s when he really wiped his hands of me.”
I glance back at him and he shrugs it off.
“I mean,” he continues, “it was exam week so I was maybe getting a couple of hours of sleep a night. But anyway, he came in late, and honestly, I don’t know if he’d even been out screwing around or whatever, but I didn’t speak to him. Just kept reading. And he…” I feel Jackson moving, unable to stay still, his hands in his hair and then rubbing against each other, and then sliding over the fabric of his shirt. “He was like, ‘You’ll do all right, you know. These games you play, how you act like being successful is another way to get back at me, but I see right through them. I see you.’ And then he, like, touched my shoulder and I could smell that stale scent of booze that had settled on him, and Jesus, I think I fucking saw me for a minute, too, so I hit him.”
He’s looking at me again. I feel his eyes. “Of all the people I could be and all the secrets I could tell, I choose this. So, I don’t know, you’re probably smart to not talk to me.”
I can’t stand him like that, like he’s been defeated, and it’s not fair that he can make me feel this way, but I turn around and stand in front of him. His hands slide into my hair until it’s tangled up in his fingers, and then he tilts my face ever so slightly to kiss me. Soft and chaste, not like how we usually kiss. There’s nothing hungry in it. When he pulls back, we’re still looking right at each other and I’m so sure in that moment that we’re here on the precipice of something like that twenty-foot plunge into the river and the last thing I want to do is fall.
I’m not sure I can risk the drop.
28
I’m lying upside down in a lounge chair in the Reagans’ immaculately designed backyard reading a book, my head and hair hanging off the bottom of the chair. I feel someone sit down in the chair next to me.
“You look like you’re having a good time.”
I shade my eyes with the book to look up at Taylor, wearing brightly colored swim trunks with Ray-Bans covering his eyes. It’s a Friday, the sun is bright, and I have decided I have very few cares. “You don’t,” I say, pushing myself up on the chair and sitting cross-legged to face him. “Haven’t seen you around all week.”
“Yeah.” He leans back on his chair, putting his hands behind his head. “Me and Amanda broke up.”
“So Lia said.” I reach down, grabbing the cup of water below my chair, and sip it with a straw. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right. It was a long time coming. She changed.”
That’s something Taylor has been saying about girls since I knew him. She changed.
“Do you guys have practice?” I ask. I already know the answer.
“Just running some drills at, like, four.” He looks at me. “But you probably already knew that.”
Dammit.
“Who told you that?” I ask him sharply.
“I ran into Doug Rivera at the river last week and he mentioned he’d been seeing a lot of you. I don’t think he would’ve said anything if it wasn’t me.”
I breathe out a sigh of relief. “It’s not a big thing,” I say quickly.
“Well, it’s not like I’m not going to go tell everybody. But I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it,” I return.
“You know how he is. Hell, you’re basically the one who explained it to me.”
I wave a hand dismissively. “I’m not worried about it. I’ve got him figured out. We’re just having some fun with each other. Jackson’s addicted to the chase—no one is falling madly in love here. I know that’s not the game.”
“Doug made it sound like Jackson was really into you,” Taylor says, watching me with interest.
“That’s because Doug has Jackson’s back.”
“You know the thing about rich people, right?” Taylor asks me.
“They’re really good at getting off for murder?” I deadpan.
Taylor looks at me sadly. “Nell, rich people aren’t used to people who don’t do whatever they want. People who aren’t just like them. Who don’t want to bask in their glow. I remember when Doug started at Prep, I used to see Jackson tailing him, desperate to be friends with him. And he was constantly going on about how Doug wasn’t his charity case. Jackson wants to believe in his own redemption.”
“I’m not his fake redemption, if that’s what you’re implying,” I say.
“Look at my dad,” Taylor goes on. “He was going to save the city, do it for the good of everyone. And we both know where he is now.
“You don’t need any of us. You never have. And if I were you, I’d escape it all while I could. Getting involved with Jackson is … the opposite of that.”
Winner Take All Page 17