“Me neither,” I say, unbuttoning my Oxford and tossing it off; it falls onto the riverbank where the water runs over it. I watch Taylor’s eyebrows continue their upward journey as I dash out into the water in my tank top and skirt. It takes a little extra work to swim in the skirt, but I’m an athlete. I pull up to the dock pretty quickly and climb out of the cold water, wringing the water from my thick skirt. I lie back against the deck and a few moments later, Taylor surfaces, the sun reflecting off his pale chest as he pulls himself over the side and tilts the deck precipitously with his weight. He sighs.
“I’m taking my pants off,” he says, and I laugh out loud by accident, a sound I’ve become unfamiliar with cutting through the silence. He stands up on the deck and starts undoing his soaking khaki pants, sliding them down his legs until he’s left in a pair of boxers covered in jalapeños.
“Shut up,” he warns.
Once I’ve started laughing, I can’t stop.
Finally, he spreads the pants out to dry and lies down on the deck right next to me, putting his arms behind his head. My hair hangs over the edge. We stay like that, in silence.
“Do you see me differently now?” I ask Taylor after a while. My eyes are closed and the world is still. I feel him shift beside me.
“What do you mean, ‘now’?” he asks.
I think about that for a minute before I say, “Since Jackson. I can’t help but feel like everyone who knows—even your sister—sees me as, like, someone something happened to. Not interesting enough for my own story, just a page in someone else’s. I don’t know.”
“Do you see yourself differently?” he asks.
“In some ways, I guess,” I tell him. “Like I got fooled. Another girl who fell for a boy’s lies. Like during weight training last year, I felt like I fit in automatically. I was sure, confident. I never would’ve let something like Jackson get in my way. I was different and now…” I trail off, trying to send all the thoughts to the back of my brain.
“There’s no you and them, Nell.” I feel his eyes on me. “That’s never how I saw you at all. You’ve always been Nell to me.… Stop trying to be someone you think you’re supposed to be. You’re you.”
“No one deserves this,” I say after a moment. I close my eyes against the sun, thinking of them. Mr. Hart. Jackson. Our mouths. Mom’s hand touching Mr. Hart’s. Us laughing. The boat. After the boat. I feel Taylor’s hand on mine.
“They’ll always take advantage,” I tell him, repeating my mother’s words back to myself. “He called me a slut.” I open my eyes. Taylor stares at me, disgusted.
“I’ll kill him,” he says, sitting up straight.
“It’d just be what he wanted,” I say, and Taylor stares at me, eyes hard against mine. “Jackson knows—he always knows exactly the best way to dig into you.”
I look up at the sky, thinking. In competition, you find your opponent’s weakness and try to exploit it. Jackson knew that better than anybody, studied people like a book, pulling them apart at their edges.
He knows what I care about. Control.
But him. His weakness is want. It’s always been want. Wanting to win, wanting to be seen, wanting to be good. In odd moments, I still find myself trying to live in his head, be him. But I think too much.
At the end of the day, I’ll always just be a girl.
And he’ll still be the boy who has everything.
40
We spend the rest of the afternoon lying side by side on the dock, and only return to the shore as the sun begins its retreat from the sky. Taylor doesn’t even say anything about missing cross-country practice.
“What are you doing tonight?” he asks as he buttons his white shirt back up. He saved my shirt, too—from the watery grave I had hoped would claim it—but I don’t put it back on.
“Studying,” I say automatically. It’s Friday night. The football game is away so I don’t have yearbook duty, and Coach Madison gave us the day off.
Taylor gives me a look. “You’re not studying,” he says, as if that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.
“I’ve got a couple of quizzes coming up next week. I need to keep up with my reading,” I say, rolling my shoulders as the anxiety the water had washed away creeps back in.
“You can take one night off.”
“And do what?” I ask.
“Well…,” he begins, his face immediately turning apologetic. “There’s a party at Alston Marcus’s house.”
“Taylor.”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t own this town, right? He doesn’t own you. Why should you hold back just because he’ll be there?”
I shut my eyes tight. Something about going to Alston’s feels dangerous, but running is getting pretty tiring. From him. From what’s happened. From a truth I don’t want to face.
Maybe at Alston’s, I could be somebody else again.
And then maybe after, I could face who I’d become.
* * *
It’s early when we pull up at Alston’s—Taylor, a begrudging Lia, and me. Early enough that we get a parking spot right in front of the house. And I’m staring at this stupid house, thinking it’s a perfect microcosm of everything about this town. Every weekend there’s a party at Alston Marcus’s house because nothing ever changes here. You keep showing up at the same place every weekend, drinking the same beer, and trying to kiss the same people, lost in the same patterns.
Because even if there were no Alston Marcus, there would always be an Alston Marcus.
I’ve never actually seen Alston before, but he’s there on the front porch when we walk in, mixing up jungle juice in an oversized cooler. My nose wrinkles in disgust at the sight of it. He’s a big, burly guy, almost too big for the crumbling porch, but he looks like a teddy bear when he smiles. He’s also wearing a hemp necklace and drinking kombucha. “It’s important to properly hydrate,” he tells us solemnly.
“What do you want?” Taylor asks me, reaching to pull a beer out of an ice-filled kiddie pool near Alston’s feet.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
Taylor gives me a look but doesn’t say anything as he pops the top on his beer.
I hang back with Lia as Taylor steps through the threshold into the house. I hold out a pinkie to her. “I’m sorry about earlier,” I say. “Truce?”
She looks from my hand to my eyes. “Promise,” she says. “Tonight. Promise you’ll take the test.”
I resist the instinct to recoil. “I promise.”
“Nothing changes between us either way,” she tells me, and then she wraps her pinkie finger around mine and we walk in side by side.
The kitchen looks bigger without all the people inside. Doug and Michonne are standing around the island with Taylor, all taking a shot together.
“Hey, Nell,” Doug says, subdued, as if he’s not sure how to talk to me. Taylor gives him a look and then shudders like the liquor is hitting him all over again.
Michonne gives me a scrutinizing once-over. I’d bailed on lunch every day this week, so I want to make it up to her.
“Let’s go downstairs,” I say, grabbing on to her hand and pulling her behind me. “We can pick the music. C’mon, Reagan.”
He follows obediently, playing the part of protector he loves so much. But once I open the door, music is already blasting. It almost knocks us down as we take the stairs into the basement.
I should’ve known—somehow known—what I’d be walking into.
I know that soft dark hair and that hand splayed against the wall next to a girl I’ve never seen before. I know the way his head moves when he kisses someone, and worse, when he looks up and sees us, I know that glassy look in his eyes that means he’s not really there at all.
The girl giggles, covering her mouth with her fingers. I feel Taylor’s hand wrap around my arm.
Jackson’s eyes don’t leave mine as he drops his hand from next to her and marches over to where the three of us are standing, frozen.
“
What are you doing here?” he asks me, pushing his hair back out of his face. His hands don’t stop once they’ve started.
I keep my voice even. “It’s a party.”
“What’s your problem?” Michonne asks, looking him up and down.
“It’s a party,” I repeat, my words clipped. “And I get to be here.”
Jackson looks from Taylor to Michonne and then to me. “May I speak with you privately?” he asks.
“No,” I answer. Then I can’t help it. I shake my head. “I can’t believe you.”
“Just let me—” He puts his hand up like he’s going to touch me and Taylor shoves him away.
“I think that’s enough,” he says, his voice lightly menacing.
Jackson steps back, his eyes glazed over, looking at Taylor. He sighs deeply. “I think you’re right,” he says at last.
And then he walks around the three of us and up the stairs, not looking at the girl again.
“Hey!” she calls after him.
My practiced calm deserts me, my heart hammering in my chest. I shake off Taylor and Michonne and escape, upstairs and back outside where there’s oxygen by the ratty old swing set in Alston’s front yard. I have to find Lia.
“Old habits die hard.” It’s his voice in the dark, a tenor that makes me shiver involuntarily, my body responding like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Jackson Hart. “Always trying to run away.”
He pulls against the rusty bar holding the swing set together. I take a step back, my arms crossed protectively. I should’ve guessed he’d find me out here; he always finds me.
“Don’t act like you know me,” I say, because at this moment I really have no idea what I might do if I have to spend another moment with him, and that scares me a little.
“I like to run, too,” he continues. He puts his hands in his pockets. “Just give me a minute. Look, I get that you must hate me, but I just need you to know that I didn’t—”
“No,” I cut him off, my mind suddenly clearing. “No, you don’t,” I say, and I feel like I’ve just stepped onto the court. I push forward again, nearer to him. “You have no idea how much I hate you. How watching you suffer would give me the most intense kind of pleasure imaginable. You threaten my reputation and you threaten every-fucking-thing I’ve worked for in this world and you think you have a single idea of how much I hate you?”
He swallows. “I know.”
“No, you don’t!” I scream. I want to scare him. I want him to feel what I feel, this ache cutting through me every day. The way I’m being torn apart.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
Those are the words that change everything. The bored way he’s standing and the faraway look in his eyes vanishes and he suddenly jerks forward and feels much closer to me. “You think?”
I swallow, command myself to maintain my composure. “Yes.”
“Jesus Christ,” he says. “Jesus Christ.” He runs his fingers through his hair. Again. And again. “I thought we always— Shit, the boat? Weren’t you going to…” But even he can’t make himself finish saying it because there’s a limit to that kind of gall.
“I got a little distracted,” I tell him, keeping my voice neutral. And I see it then, his weakness. “In case you don’t remember, my judgment was clouded around that time.”
He takes a deep breath in and out. He struggles, caught the way I have been.
“Okay,” he says at last. “Okay. You can’t be sure.” He stands stock-still, like he can’t even make himself move.
And the truth is, I can’t make myself say it. That I’m not sure. Not when I have the power.
“I have to go,” I say, and he lifts his hand toward me.
“Nell—wait—”
I hold my spine straight and I take so much pleasure in my height then, in how close we are to matching up face-to-face.
“There’s nothing you can say, Jackson. It doesn’t matter. If the world ended tomorrow, I’d pray more than anything that you survived because that would be too easy of an out for you.” The rage creeps back into my voice. “If I’m still here, all I want is you along with me so I can watch you suffer.”
He swallows, his Adam’s apple going up and down.
“So, no, don’t presume to know how I feel. Don’t follow me. Don’t even look at me. Stop, Jackson! Just stop!”
And I can feel I’m about to cry angry tears, and he’s standing there like he has no idea what to say, how he’s going to try and trick me this time, and I want to run run run—
I head in the direction of the road, walking away as if with purpose, and he doesn’t call after me the way someone who always has a game plan would.
Then I do hear someone calling my name. Running toward me.
It’s Lia. She catches up to me and is quiet because she knows—she can tell. She slides her hand into mine and squeezes.
“Let’s go home,” she says.
41
“It’s negative,” Lia tells me.
I fall back against the wall of Lia’s bathroom in relief. I’m sitting on the floor, the lowest place I can reach. Lia sits next to me and wraps both arms around me, holding on tight. I sit still, letting her do what she needs to, my mind continuing to spin. Finally she says, “You should do another one. Just to be safe. I’m sure it’s right but…”
I nod, not really listening to her.
“You know, nothing means anything to him,” I say instead.
“I know,” she answers darkly.
“I’m going to destroy him.” I stare ahead, the words coursing through me, filling up the empty space left behind.
She hesitates. “Nell…”
“Just this once, he needs to lose something real.” I glance at her. “He needs to have consequences. It’s not just about me. Think of all the girls he treats like they don’t matter.” I close my eyes. “Jesus, I used to think his room was our holy ground, Lia. No telling how many girls he’s ruined there. But that’s not me, and I can’t let him.”
“Nell,” she tries again, her voice perfectly calm. “You’ve got to put him behind you. You can do that now. There’s no good that’s going to come from having anything else to do with him and you know that. You can’t save the world from people like Jackson.”
I stare up at the pregnancy test on the counter. I remember the way he walked up to the stage. In my spot. On my stage. Sloppy. Drunk. The things he said to me in the closet. The way he kissed that girl at the party tonight. Because it didn’t matter at all to him.
“He called me a slut,” I say. “He wanted me to hate myself. He wants us all to hate ourselves. It makes his life easier.”
Lia takes a deep breath, as if restraining herself. “He knows what he is. You don’t have to sink down to his level.” She spins around in front of me, kneeling down and pushing my hair back from my face. “This is all going to be a distant memory soon.”
She’s looking so hopeful, I have no choice but to give her what she wants. “I know,” I say at last. “It’s all still so raw. I don’t want other people to have to feel this way.”
“Me neither,” she agrees, grabbing on to either side of my head and pressing her forehead against mine. “Love you, Nell.”
“Love you, Lia,” I answer, more robotically than I mean to, and when she pulls away, we pinkie swear on it again.
42
It’s Saturday. It’s Saturday and I should tell Jackson that I was wrong. It’s a relief, I know, but I hate thinking of his voice on the other side of the phone, the way he might draw his words out lazily. The way he might tell Tristan and Doug and pop beer tops to celebrate the victory.
I can’t stop feeling sick to my stomach.
There’s a knock on the front door and I sit up, going to answer it. No one comes without warning around here.
But it’s him, as if summoned here by my thoughts. It’s Jackson standing in front of me with a grocery bag and a determined look on his face. “Come on,” he says, walking past me into the foyer.
“Get the hell out of my house,” I tell him. My mind, outside of my control, flashes to the day of the concussion. How can he be that person and this person, all rolled into one? I wanted to protect him or shelter him. And every time I had let that instinct take over me, he had played me again.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve been driving by for the past hour and a half, waiting for your parents to leave. Dad said he has a lunch meeting, so I kind of figured,” he says, his voice completely breezing over the implication that our parents are still screwing. “We need to make sure you weren’t getting a false positive or something. That can happen, I’ve been reading about it. And we’re not doing this at school.”
“Oh yeah, wouldn’t want any of those girls who have been drooling all over you to find out there might be some extra baggage to deal with.”
“Don’t go there,” Jackson says to me. “I can only imagine how you would feel if someone at school got wind of this. I was trying to respect your privacy.” He thrusts the bag out to me. “I bought the test.”
I laugh. “Wait. You don’t believe me? Are you joking?”
“It’s not like that,” he tells me. “Look, they can be wrong. This is for both of us to know for sure.”
“You don’t think I took three tests?” I ask him.
“I know you did,” he says, sitting down on a decorative chair in our foyer and resting his forearms on his thighs. “Can you please just do it?”
“Fine,” I say, going into our guest bathroom and slamming the door behind me.
Shit.
I stare at myself in the mirror, waiting for my own reflection to tell me to do what I know I should. But she looks just as clueless and desperate as I am.
I could take the test. Let him have his way, tell him he was right and say I got a false positive. But that feels hollow. If I refuse to do it, he’ll just label me as crazy. I should tell him—tell him now that it’s not happening. That I took the tests and they were negative.
It’s like everything else in his life, coming together the way he wills it. I can’t be pregnant because everything that Jackson Hart does is part of a plan he’s been constructing. And it doesn’t matter if he’s lying or cheating or hurting anyone else, it will turn out in Jackson’s favor.
Winner Take All Page 24