by K. A. Tucker
“And you thought my mother, a reputable surgeon, would tell me something like that, and I’d run off and tell Bonnie?” My mother didn’t even tell me who Alex really was. Why would she divulge private information about a complete stranger who has no impact on my life at all?
Ivy slams back her whiskey and I follow, twisting my face up with disgust, the vile taste burning in my gut. It’s taken four rounds for Ivy to break out of her spiky shell and tell me exactly how awful I apparently made high school for her. She must be feeling the alcohol because she’s a lot louder and more animated than she was an hour ago.
“Three weeks into my sophomore year, in a new high school, in a town we had just moved to, and I was dubbed ‘the crazy girl who might stab you.’ Great reputation to have, right? I spent a lot of time at home, hanging out with my little brothers, that first year.” She keeps her eyes on our empty shot glasses as she balances them on top of each other. “When those rumors started, Jesse gave me some lame excuse and broke it off. Just like that.” She snaps her fingers, her short nails painted with black lacquer. “I know we’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks, but it still hurt . . .”
I groan out loud. Why does everything in my life somehow lead back to my brother? Of course Ivy’s heart would fall casualty to his good looks and poor judgment calls. And, of course the blowback would land on me. I sigh. “For what it’s worth, I never knew you two were ever a thing in high school.” Jesse had a lot of “things” with a lot of girls and got bored easily. I could never keep up, and by our junior year, I didn’t want to. “And I can’t make excuses for my brother except to say that he was an idiot back then.”
“An idiot who didn’t want a girlfriend that apparently sets houses on fire and tortures small animals. I don’t blame him. I would have stayed away from me, too. I figured your dad demanded as much.”
I snort. “Please! If my dad told him to not date you, he would have proposed.” A quick replay of my words in my head makes me cringe, realizing that hearing that isn’t going to help heal Ivy’s deep wounds. “I’m sorry someone started saying those things about you. But it wasn’t me.”
Ivy’s lips purse. “And are you gonna try and convince me that you didn’t accuse me of spray-painting the side of Poppa’s Diner?”
There it is. I knew this would come up. I knew that Ivy figured out I was the one who reported her to the sheriff. “No. That, I did do. Poppa showed up at our ranch in his El Camino in tears. Do you know how awful it is to see an old man cry?”
“Funny, because when your dad hauled me into the station for spray-painting the side of the diner, I did cry. Your dad scared the shit out of me.”
“What did you expect? You can’t cover walls with racial slurs and swastikas and get away with it.”
She simply stares at me for a long moment, as if in shock that I would even suggest it. “I didn’t do it, Amber. You did!”
My jaw hangs open as I stare into those accusing black eyes, looking for the joke in them. There isn’t one. She’s serious. “What?! You are insane!”
“Okay, fine . . . maybe you didn’t actually paint the wall, but I know you were in on it. Don’t sit here and lie to me, now, after all these years. You and your little posse of mean girls and dickhead boyfriends planned it all.”
I roll my eyes and start laughing now. “Oh come on! Everyone in school knew you did it. You practically lived behind Decker’s with that big box of spray paint.”
“That’s because Sue and Roger let me.” The owners of the bowling alley were known to be really nice, fine with letting kids cover the massive brick wall in graffiti, as long as there was no profanity or gang symbols, or any sort of hate speech.
“Your tag was on the bottom right corner, Ivy. I know what your tag looks like because every new thing you added to Decker’s wall had that little pink squiggly line.” Her brow quirks sharply and I shrug. “What? So I admired your work. You’re good.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “First of all, whoever did that to Poppa’s was an idiot and a complete amateur. I’m better than that. I was better than that when I was seven years old. Second, do you really think I’d be stupid enough to vandalize a store and tag it?”
“Maybe you wanted people to know that you did it.” I shrug. “You did seem kind of angry back then.”
She throws her arms up in the air in a rare bout of melodrama. “I was kind of angry back then! Because high school sucked! But it had nothing to do with the Jews or the Middle East. I was set up!”
I give a furtive glance around, hoping no one’s paying too much attention to us. My gaze catches River’s and a distracting blip of excitement flutters inside my stomach. He frowns and nods toward Ivy, then mouths, “Everything okay?”
With a quick nod, I turn back to her, not wanting her to accuse me of ignoring her for a guy. “Why on earth would I go to all the trouble to do that to you, Ivy? We weren’t even in the same grade. We didn’t have a single class together!”
She exhales heavily and her scowl softens. “Do you remember that big party in Piper’s Mill Park in the spring? The one where Ashley Johnson tripped over a case of beer and broke her nose?”
“Yeah.” I chuckle. She ended up needing two rounds of plastic surgery to fix it. I was at home, sick with the stomach flu that night.
“Well, Jesse and I had just started talking again, after breaking up the September before. He invited me to go, so I did. Anyways, that night we got really drunk and broke into the park office.”
My eyes widen. “That was you? Man, my dad was pissed . . .”
“Yeah, well . . . young and stupid and drunk, right? Anyway, Bonnie barged in on us . . . you know.”
I groan, seeing where this is going. At least she isn’t trying to give me details, as Bonnie has tried to do on more than one occasion.
“She was pissed. Screamed at him for slumming with a psycho slut like me. Then, a week later . . . voilà! I get arrested for graffiti that I didn’t do. By your father. I figured Bonnie told you and you got mad because you didn’t want your brother with the ‘psycho slut,’ so you and her concocted that graffiti plan.”
“Ugh . . . this sounds like the plot of a really bad teen movie. I hate drama!” But it’s also shedding some new light on those years. “When did you say you and Jesse started dating for the first time?”
“The first day of my sophomore year, in art class.” A soft smile touches her lips. “I was so nervous; I didn’t know a single person. I spent most of the class with my head down, sketching tattoo designs on my notebook. I guess he looked over my shoulder and knew what I was doing because he asked me if I could design a tattoo of a ’69 Plymouth Barracuda.”
“The one on his back.”
She nods.
I take a deep breath, because this is my best friend that I’m about to throw under the bus. Though, from the sounds of it, she may deserve it. “Did you know that Bonnie and Jesse dated for the summer between our sophomore and junior year?”
“I heard something about that. But she broke it off, right?”
I shake my head slowly. That’s the story Bonnie told everyone, even though I knew it wasn’t true. Jesse didn’t care enough to correct it. “He ended it the second day into our junior year. She was devastated. She spent our entire junior year trying to get back with him. Secretly, of course. She’d never admit to being hung up on a guy to anyone.”
She chews the inside of her mouth. “You think that’s why she went after me?”
“She had a huge crush on Jesse.”
“Huh.” She leans back into her chair as realization takes over. “So she’s probably the one who vandalized Poppa’s Diner, isn’t she?”
I shrug. “She never said anything to me about it. Probably because she knew I’d never be okay with it. But she was hanging around with Doug Bentley and those guys, too.” Complete shitheads. “If I had to guess . . .” Bonnie has been my best friend since kindergarten, but she has her faults. One of them is being a
jealous, competitive bitch, especially when it comes to guys.
“And you honestly didn’t know about any of this?” Ivy’s eyes remind me of an owl’s—piercing—as she tries to read me.
“I knew that she didn’t like you, but I didn’t know why.” And to be honest, I never really bothered to ask. I didn’t care. “Bonnie and I had a rule about Jesse: she wasn’t allowed to talk to me about him.”
She chews the inside of her mouth, pondering that.
“If I wanted to keep you two apart, believe me, it would have been because I had your best interests at heart, not Jesse’s or mine. My brother was a major fuck-up. My father almost arrested him for stabbing Tommy,” I remind her.
She rolls her eyes. “I knew Jesse would never do that. I can’t believe your dad even considered it.”
“He was just doing his job.” And it nearly tore our family apart. “He let you off for the diner, though, right?”
She sighs, the steam fueling her anger before evaporating quickly. “Yeah, because he had no real proof. But my parents still made me paint the entire wall because they figured it was somehow my fault that it had happened in the first place. Plus Poppa banned me from the diner. For life.”
“That old man has a long memory,” I murmur.
She strums the tabletop with her fingers. “So she’s probably the one who started that rumor about me making out with Liz DiPalma behind the portables too, then.” My knowing stare answers her question. “What a fucking bitch!”
“Well, to be fair, you did shave your entire head out of the blue and start hanging out with the school’s token lesbian student almost exclusively, so anyone could have started that rumor.”
“Liz is a nice person.”
“I’m sure she is. But that was high school, and teenagers can be jerks about that kind of stuff.”
“What a bunch of assholes.” Ivy flags the waitress down for another round.
I think I’m going to puke.
But I also feel somehow lighter with all that dirty laundry finally aired. “So you actually thought I was masterminding your systematic destruction?”
“Wouldn’t you? I mean, no offense, but that group was like some single-minded neutron force and you were its leader. You all looked the same and acted the same and dressed the same.” She snorts, twirling a strand of her hair between her fingers. “I remember when you started coming to school with those perfect, fat curls. Bonnie and all the others came to school with perfect, fat curls the very next day. It was pathetic.”
“Curls? You hated me because of my hair?”
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
“All I know is that judging me for that would be like me judging you for your hairstyle choices.” I stare pointedly at the shaved sides, hidden beneath that mass of long black hair.
“Maybe. But at least I didn’t sit at that cafeteria table every day at lunch and gossip about everyone.”
“Ivy . . . half the time I wasn’t even listening to what anyone was saying,” I answer truthfully. There were so many rumors milling around, I didn’t even remember the one about Ivy being locked up in a mental institution until tonight, when she brought it up. All I really cared about was that I wouldn’t be at the receiving end of one of the nastier ones.
But Ivy has clearly never forgotten, all these years later.
“That group was always talking about someone. Laughing at someone.” She shakes her head. “High school sucked for me.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t so great for me either.”
She tips her head back and throws out a huge, “Ha!”
“I’m serious, Ivy!”
“Most popular girl in school . . . perfect body . . . perfect face . . . valedictorian . . . sheriff’s daughter . . . surgeon’s daughter . . . freaking Rodeo Queen . . .” She bends each finger back on a hand, counting all the ways that my life sounds so wonderful on paper.
I start my own list, mimicking her finger-counting gesture. “Girl most talked about in school . . . girl who could never misbehave because her father was the sheriff . . . girl who most guys were afraid of dating because her father was the sheriff . . . girl who was never really sure who her true friends were . . . And how do you remember so much about me, anyway?”
She twirls her coaster. “Did you even notice that our lockers were four apart my first year there?”
“I saw you in the hallways sometimes.” She had a tamer, almost mousy look to her back then. Less makeup, no tattoos. More plaid and loose-fitting blue jeans than lace and Goth. I remember thinking she could be pretty, with a little bit of work.
Her voice drops its edge, leaving vulnerability behind. “Then why didn’t you ever say hi?”
I open my mouth to answer but nothing comes out, because I don’t have an answer. Not a good one, anyway.
I’m saved from making something up by one of the men who stumbled out of the bar earlier, on our way in. He’s drunker and comes to a standstill in front of our table, his red-tinged, glossy eyes boring into me.
“Can I help you?” I finally ask, sharing a glance with Ivy.
He drops to one knee in front of me. “I need me an American wife so they’ll let me into America!” he professes in a slurred Irish accent, grabbing my hand and pulling it to his lips.
I tug but he holds on tight. I look to Ivy for help but she’s laughing. No one around seems at all uncomfortable. Several are cheering and clapping, in fact.
“Go on now, Killian. Before I boot you out.” River sets three shots on the table and then peels the guy’s grasp from my fingers. I revel in the heat of his palm as he hangs onto my hand for three long seconds, giving it a light squeeze before finally letting go.
“Thanks . . .” Superman. That’s now three times that he’s come to my rescue.
The sly twist of his mouth is so subtle I almost miss it. “You’re going to make me crack another bottle, if you keep this up. Locked yet?”
“What yet?” What does that mean?
“Ask us in another hour.” Ivy lifts her glass. River does the same. I groan, lifting mine.
“Cheers.” I watch him bring his to his mouth and pour it down like it’s nothing. I’m tempted to plug my nose to handle this but I don’t, seeing as he seemed impressed by Ivy’s tough-girl choice of hard liquor over beer.
River sees my sickened face and just laughs, collecting the empty glasses and heading back to the bar.
“God, how can you stomach this?” I stick my tongue out with disgust.
She shrugs. “We can call it a night if you can’t handle it.”
“No!” That came out a little too eager.
She glances over to the bar and then back. “He’s not your type.”
“You don’t know what my type is.” She may be right, but making such a frank observation irritates me. She’s judging me again.
“Well . . . let’s see. There was Neil Allen, the preppy son of the mayor, who lived in a million-dollar house. Where is he now?”
“Harvard Law.”
“Right.” She drags that out with an obnoxious know-it-all voice. “You were with him for a long time.”
“Most of my junior and senior year.” Though I’ve known him all my life. I used to throw mud at him in the kindergarten playground. He was the captain of the ski and debate teams, honor roll; tall and blond and somewhat baby-faced, now that I think back to it. I don’t think he even started shaving until college. He was considered the boyfriend to have in high school from any parent’s point of view, and I had his eye for almost two years. I broke up with Neil before we both left for college, not willing to try a long-distance relationship while he was out East. That was the official excuse, anyway. I was ready to end it months before, but I didn’t have the heart. He was such a nice guy, and we had such an easy, calm relationship. That was part of the problem. While my friends were partying in Portland and Seattle, we were sitting at home, watching movies. Even the sex was boring. What teenager
has boring sex?
“And your boyfriend in college, what was he like?”
“Who says I had one?”
Her steady gaze is drenched in amusement, like the very idea that I’d suggest I wasn’t tied down in college is preposterous.
“His name was Brody,” I admit reluctantly, though I won’t admit out loud that he reminded me of a slightly older version of Neil, in that he was tall, blond, and handsome in an average way. An intelligent guy, also from a small town.
“And he was in school for . . .”
“Philosophy major. He planned on doing his PhD and becoming a college professor.” We were together for almost three years, until I realized that I liked the idea of him—the comfortable hum of routine he brought to my life in Portland, while I was in school—but I didn’t love him. I made a clean break when I moved back to Sisters.
I don’t know if Ivy can somehow read my silent acknowledgment in her eyes, but she’s smirking like the Cheshire Cat. “Oh, and then there was a doctor, wasn’t there? Alex told me about him. I’m guessing him and this guy, here, don’t have a lot in common?” She must see the discomfort in my face because the smirk slips off and she offers a muttered, “Sorry.”
My eyes roam the bar. I’ll admit the pang in my chest now is nothing like it was before I met River. One date with this bartender and I may never think of “the surgeon” again. That tells me that maybe my pain over Aaron has less to do with missing him and more to do with missing the idea of him, and the humiliation of being dumped because, let’s face it, if he really cared about me, my age wouldn’t matter.
When I was with him, I felt like I wasn’t far from a trip toward the altar with a well-respected, handsome doctor. I could see the pride in my parents’ smiles, the envy in my friends’ eyes. Which means I’ve now three times fallen for the concept of a relationship—and what that relationship looks like to the outside world—rather than the actual guy I’m with.
“So . . . Where’d you meet this guy?”
“At the park one day. He kind of . . . ran into me.” I toy with a coaster to avoid her gaze.
“Sounds romantic.”