by Blair Holden
“Take a deep breath, Tessie!” he shouts and I prepare myself for the fall but to my surprise he jumps along with me as we both fall into the pool with a gigantic splash. I’m swallowed by the water and Cole finally releases me, and even underwater I can see the fat grin on his face. Placing my hands on his shoulders I push him downward as I propel myself out of the water. Turns out this isn’t the greatest move since he wraps his own arms around my waist and pulls me flush against him.
He resurfaces looking every bit the male model he could be and smirks at me. I hate seeing how he’s not at all breathless or flustered like me. In fact, his gleeful expression is confusing me so much. I don’t know what we are anymore; there’s no defined relationship and our compromising position isn’t really helping it. We’re pressed together, his shirtless chest with my soaked top is no match for the water.
I should’ve done something, in hindsight. I mean there were so many options to choose from. I could’ve used one of the many witty remarks stored in my arsenal. I could’ve kneed him in the crotch or broken his nose with one quick punch, taught courtesy of a lucid Travis. But I don’t do any of that.
In fact, as I see him looking at me like he is with his blue eyes shining and the corner of his mouth pulling up into what looks like a genuine smile, I can’t help but want to be closer to him. It’s all so foreign to me, all of this. Every single touch, every look, every smile is new to me since at eighteen years old I’ve never been kissed nor have I ever dated. When you have a falling out with the girl who has the reins to the entire school in her manicured paws, guys don’t really want to be around you.
No guy, except Cole.
I shiver as his hands travel from my waist, skimming lightly up the skin of my sides until his hand’s cupping the side of my neck, angling my head toward him. I know he’s waiting for a reaction, any sign that I want him to stop but I don’t think I’m really in the mood to go all ninja on him right now. It’s like he senses this and a heartwarming smile lights up his face, one which has my heart doing Olympic-winning flips. I rest my hands on his shoulders, needing the support to just be upright. There are a lot of things that are wrong with this situation, the first and foremost being that I’m in the arms of the boy who’s done nothing but make my life a living hell for as long as I’ve known him. Does the fact that he’s currently suffering from the guardian angel syndrome necessarily have to change everything? Should I trust him knowing what our history is like? Should I . . .
“Stop overthinking, Tessie, just enjoy the moment.” He winks and dips his head so that our foreheads are pressed together intimately along with our bodies.
“What . . .” I start but he places a finger over my lips.
“Enjoy the moment,” he repeats.
I do listen to him this time. Cole doesn’t move his face even an inch because if he did, then our lips would definitely brush up and the idea terrifies me, almost as much as it strangely seems to exhilarate me. I look into his eyes trying to work out what secrets lie in their sapphire-like depths. The distance between us is becoming almost imaginary and there’s a thin line we need to cross before everything changes.
“Cole, is that you?”
Or we could just be interrupted.
I freeze, dropping my hands from Cole’s shoulders instantaneously. In response his eyes harden as they look into the distance. He can see the person who just called out, and whoever it is is the one responsible for his mood’s one-eighty-degree turn. Even though he backs up a bit so that our faces aren’t touching, his hand still cups my neck and it seems like he’s not willing to drop it. I feel like he’s challenging the person watching us.
It’s sad, though, that I know from just from the sound of his voice who the person is. Having that particular piece of information, I just wish I could drown in the five feet of water we are currently standing in.
“You always did have the worst timing, Jay Jay.”
I untangle myself from Cole who, realizing that I feel extremely uncomfortable, lets me go. Swimming toward the large rectangular steps that lead out of the pool, I begin to climb out. Fully aware that I have two pairs of eyes watching me and the fact that my clothes are soaked and dripping wet, I wrap my arms around myself and head inside the house, scurrying past Jay, who to his credit isn’t even looking at me.
I rush to my room and quickly shrug out of my clothes, throwing them to one side. I dry myself and pull on a different shirt and jeans. My sandals are floating somewhere in the pool so I trade them for flip flops. My big blond mess of hair makes me look like Cousin It so I let it down over my shoulders, running a brush through it to get the tangles out.
I don’t even care what I look like as I take two steps at a time hoping that the Stone brothers haven’t drawn each other’s blood yet. I find them in my living room standing across from each other. Cole with his hands stuffed in his pockets and Jay with his arms crossed over his chest. While the former looks arrogant as always, the latter has a deep frown set on his face, which reduces considerably when he sees me coming. I halt at the very unlikely scene before me; never could I have imagined that Jay would be in my house.
“Tessa.” He smiles but it looks forced. Cole turns his head and then averts his gaze after giving me a single glance.
“What’re you doing here?” I skip the pleasantries knowing that the atmosphere doesn’t really call for them.
“I think she means ‘how the hell did you get in my house?’” Cole adds.
“You seemed pretty upset last night.” Jay ignores Cole and addresses me. I wince recalling the memory but he doesn’t notice. “So I thought I’d check up on you. I rang the bell a couple of times but you never answered. I got worried and asked your neighbor if she had a spare key. She knew who I was and let me in,” he explains, still not looking at Cole.
As much as I want to swoon over his words, it just doesn’t seem right. It’s been nearly four years since he’s come over and trust me, there have been plenty of occasions during said four years when I could’ve used a friend. I’m not mad at him but I’m pretty okay with the arrangement we have going on here. I pine away for him in the distance and he remains unreachable and untouchable—that works perfectly.
“You’ve seen her, she’s standing in one piece, so I think it’s time to say good-bye.” Cole sounds biting, harsh, and it’s like I can almost feel the waves of jealousy radiating off him, but that’s just me, right?
“I don’t think it’s any of your business, Cole. Back off,” Jay says with barely restrained anger. I don’t think I help the situation when I finally walk over to them and stand next to Cole. It’s like he senses that I’ve picked a side.
“Like hell I will, you’ve done enough to her, man. If you can’t help her, then don’t make things worse for her.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Jay growls and marches forward looking quite intimidating. I realize that this could lead to something that could get out of hand so I position myself in front of Cole and place a hand on Jay’s chest as he approaches us.
“Calm down, Jay.” My attempts at soothing him seem to fly right out the window when a flicker of hurt and disappointment comes across his face.
“He’s the one who’s hurt you and you’re defending him? What does he have over you, Tessa? Why are you spending so much time with him? I thought you hated him.”
Yeah, well, you and me both.
“It’s a long story and not easy to explain so just let it go, please.”
“So what, you guys are buddies now, is that it? All those years he put you through hell and I’d be the one to step up and help you, but now that he shows a little interest, you switch sides.”
I back away from him like he’s slapped me and fall right into Cole’s chest. He steadies me and wraps an arm around me, pressing me to one side where I lean on him.
“You need to stop talking before I break your face,” Cole growls threateningly and Jay’s face falls a little when he meets my eyes. I know he realizes tha
t he’s hurt me and that his attack was uncalled for. In this very moment I don’t recognize who he is. His eyes aren’t the warm ones I get lost in every day and there’s no smile threatening to break out over his face. He looks cold, worn out, dejected and lost, and I have no idea who he is.
“Tessa, I’m so sorry, that came out all wrong, I shouldn’t have . . .”
“You’re the one who picked someone else, Jay. I was always your friend,” I say through the choking feeling in my throat. I’m not going to cry in front of these two; they won’t have a repeat of last night’s show since I’m so much better than that.
He looks dumbfounded for a while before hanging his head in shame; he knows what, or rather who, I’m talking about. Cole’s arm tightens around me but that’s not what I need right now. I need some space from both of them. These two bring unnecessary commotion into my life and I just need to get away from them.
“I think you guys should leave,” I say quietly before removing Cole’s hand from around me and stepping back.
With that I run back into my room and fall down into my bed. Life’s a lot of things, I ponder. It’s tough, cruel, unfair, unpredictable, and whatnot, but it most certainly isn’t all about Cole and Jay Stone. Before either tries to make amends with me, they need to sort out their own demons, they really do.
Chapter Nine: Well At Least The Kidnappers Are Keeping It Classy These Days
Discretion and stealth are not what some may call my strong suits. When you spend a better part of your life severely overweight, you tend to become a klutz and in relation to all that excess weight you also become noticeable. In the hallway you can always pick out the fat girl over and above everyone else. It’s always the fat girl who gets picked on in the lunch line and it’s always the fat girl who thinks surviving gym is tougher than going into battle. I was that fat girl three years ago.
Now since I fit society’s description of an acceptable high school girl, I’ve managed to lose a ton of those disadvantages. People for the most part tend to leave me alone. However, what I haven’t managed to lose is my lack of subtlety, which is why the moment I creep into school I’m ambushed by one of Nicole’s cronies. Even though I have my hood up and my face is hardly showing, they still somehow recognize me and one of them, Marcy, shoves into me hard enough so that all the contents of my bag spill over the floor. Sighing, I bend down to collect all the flyaway notes and important pieces of paper. It figures that they choose today to attack, seeing it’s the first time in nearly two weeks that I’ve come on my own and have not been driven by Cole.
Cole.
Another despondent sigh escapes me as I think about him and how things went the last time I’d seen him. After the two of them left I switched off my cell phone and laptop and spent the rest of the day just wandering around the house listening to sad country music and reading depressing Edgar Allen Poe stories.
Before I can reach for my notebook someone else has already picked it up and as my eyes travel from her skull-and-bones-patterned Converse to her ripped tights, warmth and a sense of relief is finally starting to fill my chest. Being tossed around by a bunch of minions isn’t the best way to kick-start your Monday mornings, now is it?
“Hey.” Beth smiles as I get up from the floor. She hands me the notebook, her hands shaking slightly as she glares into the distance, no doubt at Thing One and Thing Two.
“One of these days I’m going to rip their fake bottle-blond hair out and you won’t be able to stop me.” She’s still fuming as we walk to homeroom.
I understand why she reacts so strongly to these things. In her old school she’d been the bully she once told me, and it’d taken one near-death experience to make her realize that you just can play with people’s emotions so much. Beth looks quite intimidating but inside she’s a big softie and seeing people being taken advantage of brings back that side of her. If I were Nicole I’d tread with care because no one knows when my friend here will reach the point of saturation when it comes to bullying.
“You don’t need that on your permanent record, okay? Remember Berklee, your big dream school, I doubt they’ll take ax murderers.”
“At least I’ll rid the world of those brainless Barbies.”
“Hey! I like Barbies. You should see my collection sometime, well at least what’s left of it. Cole tended to feed their heads to his dog,” I tell her solemnly.
She chuckles and shakes her head as we enter our homeroom. Miss Sanchez is hiding her face behind a copy of Macbeth but we all know she’s asleep. There’s an essay topic written on the board, one which no one will bother to write. Well, no one except Megan, who’s already in her seat and scribbling away like crazy. As we take our seats, me behind her and Beth next to her, she doesn’t even look up.
“What happened to her?” I ask while taking out my own notebook and pretending to copy down the topic.
“She’s been grounded because she came back home absolutely smashed and threw up in her mom’s $2000 vase.” Beth tries to hold her laughter back and so do I. What I wouldn’t have given to see the expression on Mrs. Sharp’s face when that happened.
“How come I didn’t know?” I ask quizzically.
“Well, if you actually switched on your phone you’d realize that this weekend didn’t go according to our little Meg’s plans.” She smirks and I see the girl in question pause, like she’s about to say something but she thinks better of it and continues scribbling away.
I feel a little guilty and eye my phone lying at the bottom of my bag. It made sense at the time to switch it off since I needed to get some space from both Cole and Jay but I didn’t think about the fact that my friends would try to contact me. After all I did desert them at a practical stranger’s house, left them hanging for a ride, and then avoided all their calls and messages after leaving.
“Speaking of the weekend, Cole said you needed some time before you’d want to tell us about it but seriously, Tessa, we were freaking out when we couldn’t find you. Then Jay started acting all weird, apparently he punched a wall or something and Nicole was extra nasty. Does this have anything to do with your disappearance?”
I duck my face to avoid any eye contact since my blinking would be a dead giveaway regarding the lie I’m going to tell them. I want to tell someone about Hank, I really do, but whenever I try to get the right words out of my mouth, my throat constricts and my knees begin to tremble. I get terrible flashes of his hands all over me and his lust-filled gaze and all I want to do is lock those memories up in the deepest recesses of my mind.
“No, of course it doesn’t,” I say in my too-high-pitched squeaky voice, “I just asked Cole to take me home because I wasn’t feeling so good. I think someone spiked my drink so I was feeling pretty out of it.”
Beth gazes at me for a few seconds like she’s trying to call my bluff but thinks better of it.
“Yeah, he texted us after you guys left and told us his friend would give us a ride back. I tried asking him what was wrong with you but he sounded a little pissed off.”
“We had a fight,” I murmur and doodle on my notebook. I try to place his unasked-for fury but to think he acted the way he did for my sake just baffles me. Since when does he care so much? Usually it’s him that’s making me cry and for him to get so mad at the idea of my getting hurt is pretty absurd.
“Like that’s a surprise,” snorts Beth, “but he took care of you, didn’t he? I talked to him yesterday and he said that you were much better.”
“Since when are you two so friendly?” I hope and pray that in reality that question didn’t sound as pathetic and laced with jealousy as it did in my head.
“Careful there Tessa, or we might start thinking you actually care about him.” She raises a pierced eyebrow and I turn red at what she’s trying to insinuate. I’m not jealous! I don’t care who he talks to in his spare time. I’d actually be so relieved if he finds another girl he can torment all the time. I couldn’t care less.
Except Beth’s just the kind
of girl someone like Cole could fall for; she’s tough, adventurous, thrill-seeking, a bad girl out and out. The bad boy and the bad girl, they could live happily ever after. Why does this image make me want to gouge my eyes out with a blunt pencil?
“I don’t care; I just don’t want you getting hurt. Cole’s not exactly the kind of guy you want to get romantically involved with. He’s slept with half the school’s female population, you know,” I try saying nonchalantly, hoping that it’s enough to put her off him for life.
“Whoa there, hold your blond-haired Barbie-loving horses, I’m not into him like that,” she exclaims. “You have dibs on that boy, Tessa. He’s all yours even if you don’t want him to be.”
Why are they under the impression that I have some sort of twisted claim on Cole? I don’t. Our relationship is more like . . . well, I really don’t know anymore.
“Oh no, we’re not talking about this again. Cole and I aren’t like that. He’s the super villain in my life. You know the kind with a creepy white cat in their lap, who wears an eye patch,” I say animatedly, but it appears that she’s not buying my theory, seeing how she’s rolling her eyes at me.
“That’s not what Alex said.” Megan speaks up for the first time and I can see that her ears are turning red.
“Of course we’ve just got to believe what Alex says since he knows everything about anything.” Beth snorts and I stare at the two of them curiously.
“Am I missing something?”
“No, it’s nothing. I was just being silly as usual,” she chirps and goes back to working on her essay.
“Megan’s got a crush and she’s being too stubborn to do something about it,” Beth says easily and then checks her nails. “They met at the party and he’s the one who gave us a ride home. You should’ve seen the way he was flirting with her.”
“He was not flirting!” she says determinedly, finally abandoning her attempts to complete her homework at school. “We were just talking and he seems like a really nice guy.”