I got to the door in record time and of course Zac was right behind me. I really just wanted him to leave me alone already. Maybe not for forever, but at least for now. There were too many things going through my head to deal with his guilt over whatever he’d done or his fucking feelings.
I needed to take care of me.
Chapter Five
“Why are you leaving?” Zac asked as he followed me down the sidewalk.
“Why do you think? You got weird and everything is awkward. I’m not hanging around for that. I’d rather be alone. Besides, you have no reason to be weird around me.”
I kept walking. He could’ve caught me easily but instead chose to trail behind.
“No reason?” he snapped. “I just heard that a friend of mine felt up another friend of mine and that didn’t sit so well with me.”
“Like hearing about your hookup with Maddie?” I called over my shoulder. “Or that you went and had a kid with her? I don’t think so.” I made the next turn so quickly that I might have gotten whiplash if I weren’t so pissed off. Every stomp of my foot against the cement was with purpose.
“How far did it go, Laney? With Brad. I told you when I lost my virginity,” he called out way too loudly for only being three feet behind me.
I cringed at that particular memory because I didn’t want to hear about it back then. But he’d been my best friend, so I’d sat there and pretended to not be bothered by the details he’d given me. Zac had treated me like one of the guys; that was the position I’d put myself in. Every one of the guys would have wanted the details, so I’d listened.
However, I did not high-five him the way Porter had. That would have been one step too far for me.
“Yeah, I know, asshole. I didn’t need to hear about your first time and her talented tongue. You think that was fun for me?”
“You were my friend.”
I stopped dead and spun on him, my voice allowing anyone in a three-block radius to know I was pissed.
“Fuck you. You were my friend, Zac. At least until I became too inconvenient.” The tears burned my eyes, but no way in hell were they falling in front of him in that moment. “So excuse me if I didn’t enlighten you as to every detail of my life.” I chewed my bottom lip for a moment trying to decide what I wanted to say to him, if anything. “Don’t worry. I won’t be around much longer. I’m just going to hire someone to pack up my dad’s stuff. I should be gone in a few days and you won’t have to see me again.”
When I tried to get away from him, he grabbed my arm to spin me back around, but I was able to shake out of his grasp.
“I don’t want that,” he said quietly. “Nobody wants that.”
“Yeah?” Now the tears were making a real play for air. “Well, I’m too fucking lonely to stay here anymore. Without my dad… ” I shook my head. No idea exactly what I was trying to say. All I knew was I needed to get away from him.
So I left him standing on the sidewalk with a sullen face and, hopefully, a broken spirit. He deserved it and I just wanted to get home to bed.
Yet when I finally got what I wanted, I lay in bed for hours, but I couldn’t fall asleep. Since it wasn’t going to happen for me that night, and the cooler air was so nice, I went out onto the back porch to sit on the bench Dad had back there. He used to like to sit outside on cooler nights. It was something we did together. He’d put his big arm around my shoulders and pull me into him as we quietly watched the sky. One night when I was twelve, we saw a shooting star and he’d said we both had to make a wish. I’d wished for Zac to like me the way I liked him. Dad confided in me that his wish had been to never lose me.
I elbowed his side and told him he was ridiculous. He was my dad. Of course he’d never lose me. But his fear, he’d said, was that as I became a woman, I’d have less time for him. To which I promised to always have time for him. That promise was what brought me back to East Branch in the first place. He might not be here anymore but I still had his back.
Even though in a moment of anger I’d told Zac I was going to hire someone to pack up the house, I knew as the words came out that I couldn’t do it. I’d always had time for my dad and this was no different. He’d hate for a stranger to rummage through his things.
It had to be me.
Pulling my knees up, I set my chin on top and stared out into the yard behind the house and wondered if the same people still lived back there. As memories washed over me, the tears I’d wrangled into submission earlier would no longer be held back and I started to cry.
I mean really cry in a way I hadn’t done in weeks. After the initial shock of Dad’s death, I’d forced myself into control. The feeling of loss wouldn’t go away anytime soon. Now I basically sobbed for several moments before bringing it all back in. Some tears were for my dad, some for me.
I’d told Zac I was lonely. Why the hell did I do that? He wouldn’t have cared and I shouldn’t have bared myself to him like that.
As I wallowed in my self-pity, something heavy dropped onto the bench beside me. I wished as hard as I could that it was a bear coming to eat me for dinner, but my luck never worked like that.
It was Zac. I smelled his soap before I saw him. His arm slid around my back, pulling me into his chest and he just let me cry.
And I did. A lot.
His fingers drew small, soothing circles on my back as he let me soak his T-shirt with my tears. I hated that I was crying in front of him. Even more than I hated the things I’d said to him.
“I don’t want you to be lonely,” he whispered then dropped a kiss onto the top of my head. He’d done that same thing a hundred times before, yet I’d forgotten how comforting that small gesture really was. “I want there to be something here for you, Laney. I’d like to be your friend again if you let me.”
His words let loose a whole other stream of emotion. He wanted to be my friend, after all this time. I’d been his friend before, but I hadn’t wanted to be. I’d wanted to be more. Still did if I were being honest. The universe was cruel to make me want a guy I couldn’t have, never had a shot of having.
Once my breathing came back to normal, I wiped my face again but couldn’t look over at him, though. Didn’t need to see him to know he was watching me. He got up, went into the house, and came back with a glass of water that I sucked down with one unflattering gulp after another. I was thirsty and needed to wash down all the tears. Zac sat back running a thumb over his bottom lip while watching me.
“Sorry about that,” I croaked, my voice breaking on the last word. “Didn’t mean to cry all over you.”
“No problem.” He kept his dark eyes on me until I started to squirm.
“OK, now that my mental breakdown is over, I think I’ll get some sleep.” I stood to go inside, then stopped. “Why did you come over here?”
“I heard you crying.” He stood to his full height, not quite a foot taller than me. “And I wanted to make you feel better or at least… be here for you.”
“Well, thanks. I do feel a little better.” Lie, I yelled at myself while scooting toward the door.
“Laney… ”
“Thanks,” I called over my shoulder, slipping inside and locking the door before he could say whatever came after my name. He stood there for a full minute before punching his thigh and walking away.
Obviously, he had something more to say. I just didn’t want to hear it right then and had to remind myself that I owed him nothing.
I vowed to steer clear of Zac and it worked for the rest of the week.
Once again, I was all alone which was only interrupted but a quick chat with my mom and then a longer one with Rhian. Otherwise, I was poised to become the Hermit of East Branch. But really, I needed to get moving on Dad’s stuff so I could get out of town.
Someone pounded on the front door and I didn’t want to see who it was, but since Zac hadn’t tried to contact me once since that night on the back porch and probably knew better than to come over, it shouldn’t be him. I’d avoided him,
but sometime during the second day, I realized he wasn’t all that hard to avoid. Almost like he was purposely making it easy for me.
Surprisingly, Maddie stood on the other side of the door shifting her weight from one foot to the other with a six pack of beer in her hand. While I wasn’t sure I wanted to open it, I knew that I should at least hear her out. That was the mature thing to do. I wanted answers anyway, so I opened the door.
“Hey, Laney.” She smiled at me. “Thought we could hang out this afternoon.”
“And the beer?”
She shrugged but didn’t look away. “I figured it’d be an uncomfortable conversation, so a little liquid courage would be in order.” She had the whole thing right, but at least she knew what we’d be talking about. Her brown hair was pulled back into a short ponytail. Her hair barely reached her shoulders when it was down, but it was so damn cute. She always had been the cute one.
I stepped aside so she could slip in past me, expecting Dylan to be right behind her. But he wasn’t. I leaned out of the door to scan my yard and Zac’s but still didn’t see him.
“No Dylan?”
“Nah. He’s with Zac. This is grown-up girl time.” Maddie dropped to the couch, pulled a bottle of beer out of the cardboard container then held it out to me. I took it, twisted the cap off and sucked as large of a gulp down as I could. She did the same as I dropped to the other end of the couch. We were both turned to face the other and my jaw tightened. “Where do you want to start?” she asked.
“Where do you want to start?”
Maddie clamped her teeth together, her eyes darting around the room before settling on me. She knew what I wanted, but now I wanted to see where she thought this whole problem started.
“OK, so you knew I hooked up with Zac, right? Before you left?”
“Yeah.” I sighed. “He told me.” Because back then he’d felt the need to tell me everything. I used to appreciate it, even when what he told me hurt. The fact that he hadn’t told me she’d gotten pregnant hurt even more.
“So, timeline. We only hooked up once and I got pregnant. That was January. It wasn’t until late April that I forced myself to go to the doctor and I told him right after.”
“What did he say?”
She ran her tongue over her bottom lip then gave me a sad grin. “The first thing he said was ‘We can’t tell Laney.’ Sorry.”
I swallowed hard under her watchful gaze. They’d never intended to tell me. It wasn’t a decision they wrestled with even a little bit. That hurt like a punch to the chest. We hadn’t just lost touch; they’d conspired against me from the start. The urge to kicker her out right then was strong. Doing that wouldn’t give me the answers I still wanted either.
“We already knew you were leaving by then,” she continued as if that mattered at all. “By the time it sunk in that I was pregnant, it was too late to do anything but have the baby. Not that I would’ve had an abortion.” She groaned. “I don’t know. It just wasn’t an option, so I didn’t have a choice.” She took another long drink, so I did too. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I wanted to hear. That was a lie. I wanted to hear it all. I was done being out of the loop but my stomach turned at the idea of her and Zac. “So we decided not to tell you because you and your mom were leaving,” she said.
“Why didn’t you guys tell me after I was gone?” That was the million-dollar question.
Maddie swallowed hard, hesitation on her face. “I wish we had, but you were so different from us, Laney.”
“No, I wasn’t.” I’d been one of them. Part of their group. They’d been my family.
“Yes, you were. You are. We knew in middle school that you were getting out of this neighborhood. You were going to do more than what staying here would allow and you wanted to go to college even then. I wasn’t going to college. Zac wasn’t leaving. We all knew this, but you always acted like we could do whatever we wanted.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” I opened a second bottle without realizing I’d finished the first until half the new one was gone. “So because I believed in you guys, I’m the judgmental bitch in all this?”
She shook her head. “No. That’s the thing. You wouldn’t have judged any of us. You never did. But you made us feel like we could do anything and sometimes that’s dangerous in this neighborhood.”
“Because you could have done anything!” I practically yelled at her, my hands flinging into the air. Everything about this was frustrating as hell.
“Come on.” She rolled her eyes. “What did my sisters do? Went to beauty school and they do hair. I knew that’s where I was headed and honestly, I was fine with that. We might not have a lot money, but no one is starving. And you had to know Zac wasn’t getting out. You had to know even if he would have followed you anywhere, it doesn’t mean it would have worked.”
I chose to ignore the comment that he would have followed me anywhere because she was wrong there. He’d been my best friend and I’d been his. You don’t follow your best friend.
“Then?” I asked. Her eyebrows shot up as she grabbed a third beer. “Did you have a meeting to vote on never speaking to me again? Or was it a spur-of-the-moment decision?”
“No.” She sighed, sadness replacing any hesitation she’d been feeling earlier. “The closer my due date got, the harder it was for me to not tell you. So I stopped calling. Then I stopped calling you back.” She took another long drink but now she wasn’t meeting my eye. Instead she fiddled with the label on the bottle. “For Zac, I think he just got busy at first. He was working so much because both of our parents insisted that we were at least finishing high school so he wanted to save up money to work less during the school year. Then Dylan showed up a bit early and having a newborn is hard and tiring and insane. I think that it was just easier for him not to talk to you, but you’d have to ask him about that. We didn’t discuss you. It was too hard.”
“I would have been here for you, Maddie,” I said quietly.
“I know.” She nodded, swallowing hard, her eyes filling with tears. “Which was another reason I couldn’t tell you. I assumed your dad would say something eventually. Guess that’s a lesson in not waiting for someone else to do your dirty work.” Maddie finally looked at me again. “I can’t regret Dylan because I love that little guy more than life, but I am sorry that we didn’t do better. That I hurt you.”
Chapter Six
Once Maddie and I each finished off our third beer each in a couple of hours, we were nowhere near drunk enough. But we could pretend that our inhibitions were down, pretend we were comfortable with each other.
We talked about my dad, which didn’t hurt as much as it had. Maybe the alcohol helped the pain or it could’ve been that for the first time in a long time, I was reliving good memories. It wasn’t about his death or anything sad. We laughed to the point of almost tears. I filled her in on my senior year. That I’d gone to prom with Greg Wilcox. Even grabbed one of Dad’s albums to show her a picture of him. I didn’t owe her any of this but for some reason I wanted to tell her.
“Wow, he’s hot,” she said with approval. He was that clean-cut, all-American guy. Played three sports… the whole deal. Totally not my type. I’d known that when I said yes to going with him. “So, is it true what they say? Everyone has sex on prom night?” she asked as I brought us each a huge glass of water to counteract the alcohol, though we’d been sitting there talking so long, I hardly even felt the drinks anymore.
Laughing, I shook my head at her. “I don’t think you and I are quite there yet, Maddie.”
Her back straightened and she sat up taller. “You said yet! Does that mean you’ll forgive me and we can be friends again? That eventually we will be there?”
I took a deep breath, then blew it out slowly.
“I’m working on it,” was the best answer I could give her. “When you guys stopped talking to me, I didn’t have any new friends yet and it hurt. It hurt a lot. I didn’t expect to keep up with most of the others, bu
t you and Zac… ” I shook my head sadly. “I didn’t see it coming. It’s going to take me some time.”
“I can accept that. It’s not a no.” Maddie smiled and while she tried to make it a big one, it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I really am sorry, Laney.” She kept looking at me with shifty eyes that said she wanted to ask another question, so I twirled my finger in a circle to tell her to get on with it. I might not answer, but she could ask anything she wanted to. “You weren’t upset that I hooked up with Zac, right? When he told you? I mean, Brad and Porter said some things that made me question it for like a second. And there were times that I thought you liked him, but when we talked, you swore you were just friends and that was all you’d ever be. We talked about it a couple of times, right?”
“Yeah, we did. I wasn’t upset,” I lied right to her face.
It had bothered me back then because I’d wanted to be with him, but that feeling had frown familiar, so it hadn’t hurt too much. She was right, too. We’d talked about it and I’d insisted Zac and I had just been friends. That part was on me.
“I mean, he told me he didn’t have sex with many people, but I figured that was a line,” she continued. “Lots of girls claimed to have tamed him at least for a while.”
“He didn’t have sex with most of them,” I said. Her eyes bulged. “Back then he didn’t anyway. He told me freaking everything, Maddie until… ” Nope. Not going down that path again. “Anyway, he didn’t go all the way with most of them. He’d go down on them and them on him, but full-on sex—he had a much lower number. I wouldn’t know about now.”
Maddie cringed. “I sure as hell wouldn’t know. ‘Course, he didn’t tell me shit back then, so I guess nothing’s changed.”
We laughed again, the sound becoming more common to my ear, but I had to get off the topic of Zac because feeling the way I was, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that I’d spill my guts about my feelings for him back then. Yes, I stressed to myself, it was in the past. But questions still lingered in the back of my head. I’d just leave those for another day.
Last Good Thing (The Fallout Series Book 1) Page 4