Winner Take All

by Laurie Devore

  What a judgmental bitch I’ve been.

  I nod at Lia, sinking my front teeth into my bottom lip. “Because it doesn’t matter how far I’ve climbed. It’ll never be quite enough. I’ll always be just a little bit less to them. The girl who can’t accept her fate. Who won’t stop fighting.”

  Her eyes flash in the mirror then, glancing up at me. “You’re my best friend. And that’s all you’ve ever been to me. It’d be nice if you acknowledged that for a change.”

  I deflate, running out of room to hold my anger. “You are my best friend,” I say simply.

  She closes her eyes, a beat and then two. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “Of course you are. Stringing him along isn’t going to change anything. I can’t stop the Jacksons of the world. It’s never going to end in my favor. Instead, I’ll end up like Mom. Chasing Jacksons my whole life only to finally have one catch up to me.” I almost laugh. “I guess I already did.”

  Lia is frowning but she nods anyway. Whatever it takes to stop me.

  “But not this weekend. I can’t see him again, not when I don’t have to. Please don’t ask me to do that.”

  She surveys me momentarily before her eyes change into something like acceptance. “Just get this fixed,” she says, walking behind me and pushing open the cracked bathroom door to leave me alone. I turn back to my reflection, tracing the outline of my face with one finger. Finding all the flaws, the imperfections I can’t hammer out. Sometimes I want to start over. To be someone else. Someone simple because that’s what people want.

  Not me.

  I leave the bathroom, following her to her bedroom, where she’s already turned the lights out. I climb in beside her, just like always.

  * * *

  I wake up at two AM.

  There’s no running into side tables or hitting my knee on doorframes. I know the way. I slink through the darkness, across the hallways, and so quietly open Taylor’s door, closing it behind me just as softly and climbing under the covers next to him.

  It only takes moments before he moves, his arms sliding around me and pulling me to lie against his chest. He’s never pulled me to him so quickly before.

  Right then, I don’t know what makes me do it. Desperation or some feeling of belonging or just missing the way someone else’s skin feels, but I press my mouth against his. I feel his fingers tangle up in my hair in a way that feels so safe, our legs wrapping around each other.

  It’s so comfortable, I don’t even think about how strange it is to be kissing Taylor. The way his tongue feels against mine. The way our bodies fit so nicely together.

  “Nell,” his voice creaks as he pulls back from me. I wait for him to tell me to go. He’s so warm. “Are you … pregnant?”

  My throat closes. How can he be holding me this close and not notice I have stopped breathing? He heard Lia in the bathroom, misunderstood. And now he thinks—dammit.

  “Taylor, I—” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. I freeze. Press my eyes closed, crushing them together like perhaps it will help me escape this mess.

  What if he tells Jackson before I do?

  He takes the whole thing—my stiff body, my cringe—the wrong way. He takes it to mean something it doesn’t and, if anything, holds on tighter. I wonder if I cannot say anything at all, become nothing but silence, and this will pass completely.

  His thumb caresses the back of my neck, pushing against it tenderly, tangling my hair. I hold myself against him, listening to the sound of his steady-beating heart.

  44

  I wash my hands in the restroom sink at school on Monday morning, then shake them out and grab a paper towel from the dispenser. I’m supposed to talk to Jackson, but every time I think about it, I find it almost impossible to breathe. As I work to comb my fingers through my hair, watching myself in the mirror, the stall behind me opens and Tristan comes out reflected over my shoulder, her eye makeup darker than the night sky.

  “Oh,” she says, walking over to the sink. “It’s you.”

  I toss the paper towels into the trash. “It’s me.”

  She cuts off the water. “Heard a nasty little rumor about you.”

  I stop, facing her. She takes her time, pulling her own paper towels out. “Don’t you wanna hear it?” she asks at last.

  I go to leave instead of sticking around for her to gloat and she calls back to stop me. “Jackson thinks you’re pregnant.” I turn back around, all the way, so we’re looking right at each other. She balls up her paper towels and tosses them in the trash can. “I told him it was bullshit.”

  “Because I’m the liar,” I say.

  “Because you’re the one with something to prove,” she returns.

  My blood boils. “Must be nice to know it all.” I tug at my bag. “Did he tell everyone when he was drunk?” I can imagine it running through the basement of Alston’s house like an electric current, finally giving everyone something to talk about. Someone new to tear apart.

  “He told me yesterday when he wasn’t drunk.” She gives me a dark look. “Because he knows I know what it’s like.”

  I pause. “Tristan…,” I start to say, but she’s already walking around me.

  “Just have your fun with him and cut him loose,” she calls behind her. “I can’t take the angst. But, Nell”—she turns back around so I have no choice but to face her—“this is a dangerous play, so you better know what you’re doing.”

  I meet her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She nods, once, and closes the door behind her.

  * * *

  I can’t believe he sicced Tristan on me. That he told her.

  He had to do one thing—keep one secret for me, after everything he’d kept from me. He couldn’t even let me have this to myself.

  So I take it all out in volleyball. Like I always do.

  I can feel the chill from Lia, without her saying anything. Things aren’t going to be the same until I come clean. And I can’t help but feel like she knows about Taylor.

  What she knows about Taylor—I’m still not sure.

  I’m too anxious to leave after practice. Need to tamp it down, get it under control. Get myself under control. Breathe. Nell.

  I walk around the back of the school, edging toward the athletic complex. The sound of a pitching machine throwing balls out echoes from the baseball field. I feel the eyes on me before I see him, watching me instead of the ball flying by him in the batting cage. My heart goes into the pit of my stomach.

  “Wait,” he says, barely dodging a ball the machine pitches out, tossing his bat and helmet aside at the edge of the fence. He runs over to me before I can get away.

  “What could you possibly want from me now?” I ask.

  “I don’t know how stuff like this works,” he says, stopping ahead of me. “Is it safe for you to be diving around on the floor like you do? Don’t guess I could convince you to slow down.”

  I look at his face. Clear, like nothing on Saturday night happened. And here he is, so proprietary over my body. As if he’s in charge of that, too.

  “You’re unbelievable,” I return, looking out over the baseball field. “Like you care about my well-being or anyone else’s.”

  “You act like I’d prefer you dead.”

  I unleash my fury. “Of course not, because you can’t screw up the lives of dead people. How dare you tell Tristan? And how dare you have her threaten me?”

  “She wasn’t supposed to do that,” he returns. “I’m worried, all right? Is that what you want to hear? That I’m worried about you?”

  “Is that what you have to tell yourself to sleep at night?”

  “What do you want from me?” he demands. Nothing, I think. And then, Everything you have.

  I shake my head, running my hand through my sweaty hair as I do. “Just a little bit of honesty,” I tell him. “One single moment where you admit that you don’t care. That you got to see my face that day by the lake and
that was all you wanted anyway. You controlled me, Jackson. You controlled me, you controlled our parents, everything that happened. And even after everything, you still want to control my body?”

  “Please,” he says then, “it’s not like that.”

  I chuckle darkly. “It’s always like that with guys like you. You always win.”

  But I’m not playing by his rules anymore.

  He closes his eyes for a moment. I wonder, despite myself, what’s back there. What gets through to him. How much of his emotions he can fake. I wonder if he’s ever felt anything real.

  He got me to put my guard down. But did I ever, truly, see him without his?

  “I’m sorry,” he says at last, “but I can’t let this go. I have college applications staring me in the face and I don’t know what to do.”

  “You should’ve thought of that before,” I tell him. It’s a specific kind of satisfaction, one I might go my whole life and never understand again. To finally own that feeling of power that I always knew he had. To watch his sad eyes and his sad posture and to know that he feels as hopeless as I did staring at myself that day in the locker room.

  He gets money and power and safety.

  But I’m the one thing he can’t make disappear.

  “Beg me,” I return, watching his downturned face. “Say it.”

  “What?”

  “What you want me to do. Ask me to fix your problem.”

  “Nell…” His voice is a warning, a question.

  “It’s what any guy would want in this situation. So beg me.” I step closer to him. “Fucking beg me, Jackson.”

  He’s staring at me. “You can’t be serious.”

  I have never been more serious in my life.

  “I’m not doing this with you,” he says at last. “Because it’s not a fucking competition. It never was, Nell.”

  I take one last step. “Wasn’t it?” I ask at last. “You still haven’t apologized. Not for lying. Not for Saturday night or the girls or even”—my voice catches a moment—“or even for that day in the closet. I don’t think you’ve ever truly apologized for anything in your life.”

  He swallows slowly, starts to speak. But I don’t wait to hear his reply. I don’t want to hear it, not when his hand has been forced. A stick cracks somewhere in the distance, beckoning me, and I take off. Running my troubles away and holding on to the look on his face.

  I can’t hear anything but the whirring pitching machine behind me, trying to keep throwing out baseballs that aren’t there.

  45

  I’m sitting in first period the next day when Lia comes bursting into the room. She tries not to look it, but I can tell from the set of her jaw. She’s angry.

  “Ms. Macintyre,” she says with a big, fake smile, “can I borrow Nell for just a quick second before class starts? Official student council business.” She doesn’t wait for an answer before she motions me to follow her into the hallway. I do.

  Once the door closes behind her, she continues walking down the empty hall before turning back to me, taking one step forward, and stopping. “Nell, I know you’re avoiding me. And I am so done. You let my brother believe you were pregnant?”

  “Lia…,” I try.

  “Nope.” She puts up her hand. “No more talking for you. Time for you to listen.”

  I watch her, already trying to figure a way out of it. Calculating the odds. Constructing my narrative.

  She holds up one finger. “You’re going to tell Jackson.” Another finger. “You’re going to tell my brother. You’re done jerking Taylor around.” And one last one. “You’re going to tell anyone else you’ve pulled into this. And we’re going to pretend it never happened because I get it, Nell, I do. And it’s not okay. But neither is this. Don’t you see what you’ve become? And what about me? What about your best friend? I can’t deal with any more. I’ve been dealing with this shit for four months and it has to stop. I’m watching you come goddamn unraveled. We’re supposed to have each other’s backs.”

  I take a deep breath.

  “When you promised me on Saturday night, was that another lie?”

  I think back, turning it around in my head. “I … I don’t know. When I said it, I meant it, but it’s not as easy as it seems. Once I do this…” I trail off. Once I do this, it’s over. He’s free.

  I close my eyes, taking it in. Because I’m not sure I’ll ever really be free again. Always watching. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Fearing I’ll be played again. At least this had been a distraction. From Mom. From the thrumming ache in my heart.

  “Nell,” Lia says, her voice softer.

  “Okay,” I say, putting my thoughts on pause. I nod. “Okay, you’re right. I’ll tell them.”

  She exhales. She already wants to apologize, I see it in her features. Put things back right again. Lia’s my constant, my person. I spin in circles. She’s fixed.

  “I’ll tell Jackson at lunch. And then…” I swallow. “I’ll talk to Taylor.”

  “Tell him everything.”

  I nod. “I’ll be completely honest.”

  She closes her eyes for a second, letting it all roll off her. Finally, she opens them. “Okay.”

  46

  When I walk into fourth period, I slip a note written in blue ink onto Jackson’s desk.

  Tennis court. Lunch.

  Nothing changes in his posture when he reads it. He leans back like he always does and watches everything move around him like he always does.

  When the lunch bell rings, I take off without glancing back. I stuff my bag in my locker and then hide in a bathroom stall, my head pressed into the door, listing dates, counting backward, breathing breathing breathing. It’s like that for a couple of minutes before I go outside, walk the length of the athletic complex and through the woods toward the forgotten tennis court.

  He’s sitting on the clay, scrolling through his phone. Even looking at him now, I can’t help but think it—how easy everything looks for him. How simple it must be.

  Jealousy still burns through me whenever I see him.

  When he feels me watching him, he stands up, stuffing his phone in his pocket.

  “Thanks for waiting,” I say, and a crease forms in his forehead. Confusion.

  “Thanks for”—he searches for a word—“talking to me.”

  I nod, walking down the length of the crumbling fence, running my hand over the rusted chain link. I’m trying to speak, to form the right words, when he takes the pressure off.

  “I have to tell you something,” he says.

  I turn back around to face him, grateful for the distraction. “Oh.”

  “Look.” He glances up at the sky, as if praying for help, before looking back down. “I don’t even know if I should tell you this. I know this whole mess is my fault. And I treated you like some sort of collateral damage, but I mean, you know that. I treat everyone like collateral damage.”

  My heart beats against my chest in a way that makes me unable to decipher between anger and nerves. I don’t want to hear whatever’s next but I need to hear it.

  “Nell, you’re right, I never did apologize. And I’m so desperately sorry for lying to you about our parents and putting you in the middle of it. For throwing other girls in your face when I’m the one who was so fucked up. And for Saturday night. For dragging you through my depression like you should feel sorry for me.

  “And most importantly, for what I said in the janitor’s closet. I didn’t mean a word I said that day. Can’t you tell? I’m stupid fucking in love with you.” He does that thing with his hands where they won’t stop moving. The fence and then his chin and then his hair. “It was just—that night by the water. I couldn’t tell you then. I couldn’t look you in the eye and then admit something like that, like, that I’d always been in love with you, even before I really realized it. I knew it wasn’t fair to put that on you when you had earned the right to hate me but now with the mess we’ve created, I can’t not tell you the truth. You do
n’t deserve to have to listen to my shit, but I can’t let you keep thinking I meant a word of it.”

  “You called me a slut,” I say, holding on to it so tight.

  “I resorted to the worst parts of myself. I knew exactly what I was doing and I know I’m the world’s biggest hypocrite. I never once thought you were a slut. I’ve never thought anyone was a slut because I thought I’d evolved past that,” he tells me. “But you turn off so damn easy and I wanted you to feel something. I know what I did. I thought of the first thing my father would say and I said it to you.”

  “Guess what I feel now?” I demand of him.

  “I never meant for any of it to happen the way you think I did. It wasn’t all some elegant scheme, I swear. After everything started happening with us, I thought … I thought it would disappear, the thing with our parents. I don’t know. When I was around you, I was never thinking straight, I was only wanting you right there. And then the whole thing blew up and I panicked. Look at me. I’m pathetic.”

  “It’s like, once again, you’ve made my pain about you,” I say. “All you had to do was stop. Would you ever have told me about the affair to remember?” I ask, working to keep my voice calm. “Once we got to college, maybe?”

  “I don’t know. But now here we are. I know what I did, I’m not going to deny it and you don’t have to forgive me. I’ve spent the last five weeks in misery and you’re right. I fucked that up, too, just like I do everything else. I don’t know what you want from me because I know you don’t owe me shit, but I’m not going to stand here and watch this whole thing happen and keep lying to your face. I am fucking in love with you.”

  “You’re so full of shit,” I say, my mouth in a straight line.

  “Fine, you know what?” he says, taking one step closer to me. “Do you know why it was so hard to talk to you, to be honest with you? It was always dangerous because I never knew what would shut you down. I never knew how to get through.