by Annie Stone
Gasping, I stand still, leaning against the wall, until my breath settles. When I can move again, I go grab some kitchen towels to remove the evidence.
“I don’t have time today,” Dad tells Carey yet again.
“It’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair about me having to work? You’re benefiting from it, too, you know.”
“I’m almost sixteen. I want a car and a driver’s license.”
It’s clear he’s putting Dad’s patience to the test. “You’ll get the car when you have a license,” Dad snaps.
“How am I supposed to get a license if you won’t drive with me?” Carey yells.
Dad runs his hand across his face. He can see the dilemma, but something must be wrong at work because he’s hardly ever home. He looks at Mac. “Would you—”
“Me?” She looks horrified. “I can’t give him driving lessons!”
“Why not?” Dad looks like he’s just suggested the best idea ever. “You’re twenty-five. You have a safe car. And I’ll pay for any damage he causes.”
“No, Carter.” Mac shakes her head. “I can’t.”
Dad looks back at Carey. “I don’t have the time. Convince Mac to give you lessons, and I’ll sign whatever I need to for your test.”
“Okay!” Carey smiles, and the look he gives Mac tells everyone in the room she’s already lost another battle.
She looks totally scared, and I’m not sure why. I squint, trying to analyze her face. When she sees me studying her, she looks away—as she’s done every time I’ve looked at her since that night. I could kick myself. It has obviously profoundly changed our relationship. Of course, she never was as relaxed with me as she is with Carey, which is my own fault, but now she’s really keeping her distance. It’s like she’s put up a fence between us—no, a moat—no, a mine field.
I hate it. I hate that she’s scared of me again. Every time she turns her face away, it breaks my heart. I’m a fucked-up bastard for doing this to her. Right now, she’s kneading her hands, which she always does when she’s nervous.
“Why don’t you want to give him lessons?” I ask her gently.
She flinches like I’ve hit her. Abruptly, I get up and leave the kitchen. I can’t stand seeing her like this. And to know I’m responsible…
After changing into running clothes and putting on my headphones, I leave to go for a run. I want to run away from all these feelings inside me—feelings for Mac that are getting more confusing by the day. Do I love her? I think so. But do I even know what the hell love is?
I feel guilty, once again, because of Mac—because it’s my fault she’s feeling guilty now. Because I scared her off just when we were on the way to building a normal relationship.
I’m mad with jealousy, anger, and despair, and it’s all because of her. Mac, Mac, Mac. My whole life is focused on her. I’m losing my mind! I’m not going to survive this. Right? Can you survive love—unrequited love? Hell, is this even love?
Deep in my heart, I know it is. I love her. I love her more than I ever thought possible.
Fuck love!
Yeah, fuck off, love, if all you’re going to do is make me feel horrible!
I run faster and faster, trying to win the race against my thoughts, against her. But all I can see is her face, her brown eyes, and her long, brown hair, all of her mocking me because I can’t have her. I can never have her. I’m done trying.
“Are you coming to Jerry’s?” Devon asks one day as we walk down the hall after football practice.
I kick at a stone, which sends it soaring. “Don’t feel like it.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, not meeting his eyes.
He gives me a questioning look. “You’ve been walking around with a shitty look on your face for weeks.”
I snort. I have, because Mac’s still avoiding me, two months after the incident in the hall. She’s as loving as ever with Dad, and she jokes around with Carey like nothing’s happened, but with me… She doesn’t even meet my eyes, like I’m scum she can’t stand to look at.
“You’re not fucking Liza anymore.”
“Jesus, did you bug my room or something?” I ask, throwing him a dark look.
“No way. I don’t want to see your tiny dick in action.” Devon grins, but when I don’t respond to his joke, he gets serious again. “Liza keeps whining about it to Ava, and Ava asked me to find out what’s up with you.”
I scoff, the anger rising in me. “Jesus Christ.”
“That’s all you’re gonna say?”
“It’s none of your business, Sawyer,” I snarl.
He raises both hands. “Oh, the young lion’s getting angry.”
I grab him by the collar of his jacket and slam him against the bank of lockers beside us. “It’s none of your fucking business, all right?” I’m so angry I’m sure smoke is coming out my nostrils.
“Calm down, man,” Devon says, forcing my hands off of him. Of course he’s not going to let me treat him like that. “What’s your problem?”
“This conversation is over!”
He straightens his jacket and looks at me with admirable calm. “Your problem is that you haven’t fucked anyone in two months, when you used to fuck someone every other day. You could fix that by giving your little doll a call.”
Anger boils in my veins. My doll is Mac! She’s the only girl I call that anymore. Why did Devon have to bring her back into my head? But she’s not who he means, as I well know. And that only makes me angrier. “I don’t want that cunt,” I mutter.
Devon’s eyebrows shoot up. I’m pretty sure he’s never heard me use that word.
“Fuck.” I run a hand over my face. “I didn’t mean that. I just…I don’t want Liza anymore.”
“So find yourself somebody else, man,” Devon says. “You could have anyone.” He gestures around as if the hallway is full of girls, but we’re actually the only ones left in the building this late after school.
“I don’t want anyone,” I say.
He stops walking.
I turn around. “What?”
He nods slowly, and I can see the wheels in his brain turning. “You don’t want anyone, you want someone very specific.”
I shake my head. If he starts guessing now, it’s only a matter of time before he lands on the truth. “No, it’s not—”
“Oh, yes, it is.” Devon grins. “So why don’t you just go get her?”
I turn around and continue toward the exit. His footsteps fall in behind me.
“Ahhh,” he says. “You want her but you can’t have her.”
Right about now, I’d like to punch him in the face to stop this line of questioning, but he’s my friend. That wouldn’t go over so well.
“Hmm,” he says. “If it was just that she was in a relationship, you’d hit on her anyway. Unless she was in a relationship with someone you care about.” I push open the door and hope it knocks his teeth out as it swings back. But he follows me out before it has the chance. “Like Ava.”
I stop dead, about to swing around, but he continues.
“But it isn’t Ava, obviously. And you wouldn’t start anything with Carey’s girlfriend, but I don’t think Katie’s your type, anyway.” He suddenly stops and pulls in a sharp breath.
He’s got it now. I just know it. I can feel it, like the air in the atmosphere has changed. I glance back at him and see knowledge shining in his eyes, his face wearing an expression that tells me he’s found the answer to the riddle.
It’s like a car wreck. I can’t look away, even though the sight is horrifying.
“No!” he shouts, incredulous.
I’m rooted to the spot, my mouth clamped shut. I can’t even get it open to deny it, either, because I can’t deny my feelings for Mac. I know it’s stupid, but I could never deny my feelings for her, even if she’ll never return them.
“But you hate her!” Devon says, confirming that he’s finally solved the riddle.
<
br /> I shrug.
He runs his hand through his hair. “Fuck, man.”
I nod. “You can say that again.”
“How? When? Wow.”
I turn around and start walking toward the car.
“Hunt, wait!” He comes chasing after me. “Talk to me!”
“What’s there to talk about?”
I get in the car, and he climbs into the passenger seat. “You love Mac.”
“Listen, you’re my best buddy, after Carey,” I say, drumming a mad rhythm on the steering wheel. “So promise me you won’t tell anybody. You can’t tell anybody. Nobody else knows.”
“Including her?”
I look at my hands. “I don’t know. She’s probably got a hunch. Or maybe she just thinks I want to fuck her. No idea.”
For a minute, we’re both quiet, thinking about the fucked-up situation. Finally, Devon asks, “Do you think you’d stand a chance if she found out?”
I shake my head. “No. She loves Dad.” At least I think she does. I’m still not sure if she has other motivation for going out with him, but I’m pretty sure it’s not about the money. I wish it was. Then I might actually stand a chance to show her what real passion is. “Besides, even if she didn’t,” I add, “she’d never start something with a minor.”
He shrugs. “You can’t choose who you fall for.”
“Devon, people over twenty-one who sleep with a minor could go to jail for a year! Nobody would risk that. I would never want her to risk that.”
He nods. “But what if she’s just a gold dig—”
“She isn’t,” I interrupt.
Devon looks at me. “But you’ve always been so sure about that.”
I run a hand across my head. “Yeah, damn it, but I didn’t know her back then.”
“And now you do know her?”
“I dunno, Dev. But I do know she’s not the type to go after the dough. She won’t even let Dad buy her a new car. She still drives her little pink clown car.” I look at him. “I told you where she works, right?” He shakes his head. “At this private center for abused women. She’s really smart. She could have been anything. But she went into something that’s not going to make her rich, just so she gets to help others. She’s not after the money.”
“I never thought she was, either,” he says calmly. “I never understood why you two hated her so much.”
My fingertips tap furiously against the steering wheel. “We don’t hate her. Not anymore. Carey worships the ground beneath her feet, because she…” I stop myself. I can’t tell him. It’s Carey’s secret, not mine. “Anyway. She’s shown us more than once that we can rely on her.”
“She’s a cool girl.”
“She is, and I’m fucked.”
For a second, it’s quiet. “What if your Dad dumped her?”
That would be great, I think, but out loud, I say, “He loves her. He looks at her in a way he’s never looked at our mom.” Even as I say the words, I wonder, Is that really still true? I’m not sure. He’s gone so much, it’s hard to know.
“Fuck, man,” Devon mutters.
“You can say that again.”
Silence spreads around us once again. We’ve simply run out of things to say. He knows it, too, but he doesn’t want to leave me alone. God, at what point did we turn into little girls who want to talk about everything? And, worst of all, when did it start feeling so good to confide in someone?
Obviously I can’t talk to Dad or Carey. What would I say? Hey, Dad, I’m in love with your girlfriend. And Carey loves Mac. He would never understand me risking our relationship with her. He would never forgive me.
“I don’t know what to say,” Devon says after a while. “I wish I could tell you you’ll fall out of love with her if you just try hard enough…” He gives me a thoughtful look. “Have I ever told you how Ava and I got together?”
I shake my head. “You just said you fell for her on the first day of high school.”
He nods. “Yeah, when I saw her that first day, I was completely smitten. But she…wasn’t.”
My eyes widen in surprise, and he laughs.
“Yeah, we were both only fourteen, but I was already an arrogant loudmouth.”
I throw him another incredulous look, because Devon’s the exact opposite of an arrogant loudmouth now.
“Trust me,” he says, “I was. So, I took one look at her and started talking big about how she was gonna be my girlfriend. When word got back to her, she said she wouldn’t date me until pigs fly.” He smiles wistfully. “Obviously, I couldn’t let that stand. So I set out to prove to her that I could win her if I tried hard enough.
“I tried every trick in the book, man, every single one of them. But she wouldn’t budge. Recently, she actually told me that back then she was scared that if she did give in, I would lose interest in her. And, to be honest, she was probably right. Our whole freshman year, I was obsessed with trying to woo her. And that summer, I saw her down by the lake with another guy. It broke my heart, and I finally realized it was no longer about some stupid challenge—it was about her. I liked her, and I wanted her to like me back.”
He casts a thoughtful look out the window. “While I’d been enjoying our little challenge, having fun thinking up ways to make her fall in love with me, I hadn’t understood that it wouldn’t end well. And seeing her with that other dude, I realized she obviously wasn’t enjoying our little challenge as much as I’d been, and she definitely didn’t intend to budge, no matter what I did. So I decided to let it go. I decided to fall out of love with her and find a girl who loved me back.”
At this point, I understand what Devon’s trying to tell me, but I don’t interrupt him. We’ve never talked this much, and I want to hear the rest of his story.
“All of sophomore year, I tried,” he continues. “I stopped chasing after her and hoped my heart would follow suit. I started seeing these sad, questioning looks from her. She was confused, didn’t appear to get why I had given up on her. Every time I saw her sad face, my heart started beating louder, calling me an idiot, but I’d made my decision and was determined to go with it. For my own sake. Well, just before that miserable year ended, I was biking out in the hills when I suddenly saw Ava. She had a flat tire, and cell reception out there is close to zero. I was going to just leave her there, but when she said my name, I couldn’t.” He shakes his head, smiling faintly.
“She didn’t have a spare, so I put her on my bike and took her home. When we got there, she thanked me, but I just nodded, all awkward, and started to leave. But she called after me.” Devon brushes hair out of his face, his smile growing bigger. “She yelled, ‘Why do you hate me?’ I was shocked. I stopped and looked at her in disbelief. I was like, ‘Hate you? You’re the love of my life.’ Then it was her turn to be shocked. She whispered, ‘What?’ And it just made me feel annoyed. I was like, ‘What the fuck? I’ve been very clear about it since the first day of school.’ She was all surprised and was like, ‘I thought it was just a game.’ That made me so mad, because it had never been just a game for me. I told her, ‘A game? A fucking game? I put my fucking heart on the line! That was my heart, and you just trampled all over it.’ Then I just got on my bike and rode away. But I could hear her running after me, and that just made me pedal faster. Suddenly, she shouted, right in the middle of the street, ‘I love you, too, Devon!’ I stopped so abruptly I fell off my bike. So there I was, sitting on the ground, staring at her. She ran up to me with tears in her eyes and checked me for injuries. And I just couldn’t help it. I put my hands around her head and kissed her.” He laughs, but it sounds kind of pained, which makes sense, because the whole ordeal obviously hurt.
“Anyway, if you tell that story to anybody, I’ll have to kill you,” he says. Smiling, he holds out his fist.
I bump it, and as they smack together, I smile, too. “Wow.”
He nods. “You can’t fall out of love with the love of your life. And if she wasn’t so important to you, you wouldn’
t feel so horrible.”
I hang my head, even though sparks are flying through my body. The love of my life? Is Mac the love of my life?
13
Mackenzie
I run after Carter. “You promised!”
He pours himself a Scotch. “I know, sweetie, but I can’t. I have to get the redeye to New York. I have to go tonight.”
I don’t know what to say. He’s been spending so much time in New York, leaving me here with his kids more and more. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just a cheap housekeeper for him. His kids’ nanny.
“Carter, please. Tonight’s an important event for me. It’s such a big night at our center. Please don’t do this to me.”
He gives me a contrite look. “Sweetie, I know. But I can’t do anything about it. I really have to be at this meeting tomorrow. Otherwise the whole deal will fall through. I wish I could change things, but unfortunately, I can’t. I’m so sorry.” And like that’s all there is to it, he sits on the couch and starts reading the paper.
“Is it always going to be like this?” I ask.
He lets the paper fall. “Like what?”
“This. Everything else is more important to you than me.”
He rolls his eyes, clearly annoyed. “Mackenzie, sweetheart, nothing is more important to me than you and the boys. But I can’t do anything about being needed in New York for this deal. I have no idea how else to do this.”
“You’ve been in New York three of the last four weeks.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But at the moment, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“You’ve been in New York four out of the past five months.”
“Sweetie, I know you’re angry, but this is my job.”
“Angry, Carter?” I look at him, trying to swallow my anger in order not to scream, trying to see just the facts. “This is starting to feel like a long-distance relationship.”