Any Other Girl (20 page)

The nurse smiled thinly before disappearing back down the hallway. Emmett stood up, his strong, toned runner's legs trembling beneath him. My body ached with the urge to jump up and wrap my arms around him, but I didn't budge from my chair.

“Thanks, Kat,” he said, looking down at me with those blue, blue eyes. “For everything.”

I wasn't sure if he was referring to just tonight or the entire summer. In any case, there was an air of finality to his words.

“You're welcome,” I said.

He turned and walked away, toward Room 214 and his mom. I knew he didn't want me to follow.

Pop returned a couple minutes later, bogged down with to-go cups of coffee and mini bags of crackers. To my surprise, he handed one of the coffees to me. I guess he figured his reservations about me and caffeine overdoses didn't apply tonight.

“Emmett in with his mom?” he asked, sitting next to me.

I waited until he'd finished balancing the coffee and crackers on the empty chair beside him before saying, “Pop, I want to go home.”

“Shouldn't we wait for Emmett?”

“No, I want to go
home
. To Weldon.”

“What? Kat, we still have two weeks left.”

“Only for a few days,” I amended. “I just—I don't want to be here right now.”

He stared at me, perplexed. He knew how much I hated the city in the summer, and how I counted down the days every year until I could breathe in the clean, pine-scented air of Millard Lake and finally feel free. What he didn't know was how tainted it had become for me, and how the thought of spending one more day surrounded by trees and water and this small stifling town made me feel like I was about to suffocate.

“Well,” he said slowly. “There
are
a few things I should probably take care of at home. And your father would be pleased to see us. We'll leave tomorrow, okay?”

I nodded, relieved. I knew he didn't really have anything to do at home, that he was just saying he did to make me feel less irrational for wanting to leave, but I appreciated the lie. In a world overrun with crappy fathers, I'd somehow snagged two of the best.

chapter 26

I
n spite of everything that happened, I didn't feel right about leaving without letting Harper know. While Pop shut down our cottage, I walked the familiar path through the woods.

Aunt Carrie answered my knock. “Good morning,” she said, looking me over.

I hadn't bothered with my regular beauty routine, opting instead for a messy ponytail, no makeup, and one of my dad's T-shirts over faded denim shorts.

“Come on in.”

I shook my head. “I have to leave soon. Pop and I are going home for a few days.”

“I know. He told me.” She leaned her shoulder against the doorframe, propping the screen open with her foot. “He asked me to check in on Holly this week. Did they catch her husband yet?”

I nodded. Mrs. Reese had called from the hospital earlier to thank us and to give us an update. The cops had arrested Mr. Reese late last night at a gas station halfway between the lake and Hyde Creek. He'd remained safely behind bars until official charges were brought, and eventually he and Mrs. Reese would have to go to court. I'd assumed she and Emmett would close up their cottage early, but she'd decided she wanted to finish out the summer before heading home and filing for divorce. I hoped for both their sakes that she'd stick to her guns.

“Is Harper here?” I asked after I'd filled Aunt Carrie in on the latest news.

“Yes, but I think she's still—”

“I'm awake.” Harper came up behind her mom, blond hair tousled from sleep. She met my eyes briefly before lowering her gaze to her bare feet.

“We'll see you in a few days, then.” Aunt Carrie squeezed my hand and gave me a sad little smile, telling me without words that she still loved me but at the same time wanted me to get my act together and mend things with my cousin.

I nodded solemnly back at her, letting her know I'd do my best.

“Go ahead,” Harper told me once her mom had gone back into the cottage.

“What?”

She stepped outside and closed the door behind her, then stood in front of me with her arms crossed over her chest. “Say you're sorry and smile and charm me into forgiving you. That's what you came here to do, right?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. She was at least partly right. “I
am
sorry, Harper,” I said after a pause. “But I don't expect you to forgive me. There's no excuse for what I did. I knew you liked Emmett and I went and—”

“You honestly think this is about Emmett? No, Kat. It's about us. You and me.”

That shut me up. I clamped my lips together and looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

“You didn't even consider coming to me and telling me how you felt. No. Instead, you went behind my back and hid it from me like I'm some kind of delicate flower.” She pushed her hair off her face with an impatient hand. “Why, Kat? Yeah, okay, so I had a little crush on Emmett. But did you really think I'd stand in your way if I knew how much you liked him? You think I'm that selfish?”

“No,” I said quickly.
Where is this coming from?
“I just hated the thought of hurting you.”

“I get that, and it
did
sort of bother me when I found out you guys were together. I'll admit it. But I can't say I was surprised. You're Kat Henley, after all.” She gestured her arm toward me and laughed—a dull, joyless sound. “You have not just one, but
two
amazing fathers who adore you. Guys fall all over themselves around you. You're pretty and charismatic and everything I'm not. So of course Emmett would choose you over me. But you know what hurt me the most about all this?” She placed her palm against the screen door and pierced me with one last accusing glare. “That you assumed I wasn't strong enough to handle it.”

And with that, she stepped back inside the cottage and shut the door in my face.

 

“
Written on the Wind
is on TCM tonight,” Dad told me during dinner the next night. “Want to watch with me?”

“Um,” I said. I didn't want to tell him that I was starting to lose interest in old movies, even the ones featuring Lauren Bacall in all her 1950s glory. The main reason I'd watched them in the first place was to get ideas for hair styles and clothes, and I didn't need any more. Ideas
or
clothes.

“Already have plans tonight?” Pop inquired as he dug into his baked potato—plain, of course. He was back to watching his weight again. “Seeing your friends?”

What friends?
I thought. I'd alienated every one of them. “I'm kind of tired,” I said, popping a big chunk of steak into my mouth so I could chew for a while instead of talk.

“Speaking of your friends,” Dad said, eyeing me. “I called Holly last night to see how she was doing and Emmett answered the phone. He seemed surprised to hear that you're back home. You didn't tell him?”

“How
is
Mrs. Reese?” I asked, ignoring his question. I didn't want to talk about Emmett.

“Very sore, but she's healing.” He reached for his beer and took a sip. “Physically, anyway. The mental part will take a bit longer.” A cloud passed over his face, and I knew he was thinking about our conversation yesterday evening. He'd heard Pop's version of what had happened between Emmett's parents, but he'd wanted to hear mine, too.

I basically repeated what Emmett had told me at the barbecue about how his father had freaked out after witnessing Dad interacting with Mrs. Reese. “He feels threatened by you,” I'd told him.

“I think he's more threatened by the idea of another man treating his wife with respect,” Dad had replied. “It doesn't really matter who it is. He just doesn't want her to see that there might be something better out there.”

He was probably right, but still. I could tell he felt somewhat guilty about his indirect role in it, just like I did. Even though Pop had told us a million times each that the only culprits in this situation were Mr. Reese's fists.

“Well, I'm glad she's going to be okay,” I said as I gathered up my half-full plate and stood up. “And no,” I added before heading to the kitchen, “I didn't tell Emmett I was leaving because he and I aren't friends anymore.”
Or anything else
.

“That's too bad, Katrina,” Dad said, his resonant voice following me out of the room. “Because he really needs one.”

Irritated, I dumped my dishes in the sink and went to my room. I didn't mind having parents who genuinely cared and took an interest in my life, but sometimes they got a little
too
involved.

Alone in my room, I flopped on my bed and opened up my laptop. It felt strange being in our condo again. In past summers, I would've died before leaving my cousin's side for even a day. We'd never purposely avoided each other before, but then again, I'd never betrayed her before either. There had always been a mild competitiveness between us, a hint of unbalance, but I'd had no idea Harper thought those things about me, or believed I thought those things about her. Maybe these feelings had been brewing between us for years and we were both to blame. Or maybe it was just me, ruining yet another relationship with my short-sighted mistakes. No wonder Shay had been so angry and unforgiving. No, I hadn't set out to flirt with her boyfriend that night, and yes, I'd apologized for it a million times. But had I ever once tried to imagine my actions from
her
perspective?

Sometimes, a person needed more than apologies. The only thing that mattered, really, was to be heard and understood.

Impulsively, I logged onto Facebook and scrolled down my newsfeed. Shay had unfriended me months ago, preventing me from seeing her page and statuses, but that didn't mean she'd disappeared off the site completely. A couple of our old mutual friends hadn't bothered to unfriend me and one of them, Elissa Warren, had just posted a CHECK IN of her current location (South End Mall) and had tagged several friends who were there with her. One of them was Shay.

“I'll be back in about an hour,” I said as I passed by the kitchen where my dads were cleaning up the dinner mess. Before they had time to ask any questions, I was out the door and in the elevator, heading to the lobby and outside.

South End Mall was at least fifteen minutes away by foot, but walking was usually quicker than contending with traffic and parking. I got there in no time and pushed through the glass doors into the blessedly cold air conditioning. After ten minutes of searching, I finally spotted Shay's glossy black hair outside the entrance to the movie theater. She was holding hands with Braden and laughing with her friends like she didn't miss me in the slightest.

Steeling myself, I walked up behind her and touched her arm. “Shay.”

She whirled around, her dark brown eyes growing wide at the sight of me. I wasn't sure which had surprised her more, that I was wearing ordinary clothes and no makeup in public or that I was there at all.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, her shock over my presence overriding the anger that I knew was still there. “Shouldn't you still be at your cottage?”

“I came home for a few days. Can I talk to you for a minute? Alone?” I glanced over at my old friends, who stared at me with a mixture of discomfort and curiosity. They'd all taken Shay's side without question, and I couldn't blame them. My reputation didn't exactly make me a sympathetic figure.

“Uh . . .” She looked back at Braden.

He met her eyes for a moment and then shot me a suspicious look, like he wasn't entirely sure I wasn't about to maul him right there in the middle of South End Mall.

When Shay saw me look back at him, she stepped in between us protectively. She no longer trusted me anywhere near him. “I don't think so, Kat,” she said coldly.

“Fine. Then I'll say this in front of everyone.” I took a deep breath and caught the buttery scent of popcorn from inside the theater. On my left, Cassidy Boveri nudged Miranda Lipton's arm and tittered.
This should be good
, her expression said.

Ignoring them and everything else, I shifted focus to my former best friend. “I just wanted to tell you that I get it now. Why you refuse to forgive me. You're mad at me for what I did, but you're disappointed, too. You were nice enough to give me a chance, even after people warned you that I couldn't be trusted. And instead of proving you right, I let you down.” My eyes started burning and I dropped my gaze to the floor, aiming the end of my speech at the speckled tile. “That's all I wanted to say. I won't bother you again.” Then, too scared to venture even a glimpse of Shay's reaction, I turned and walked away.

When I got home, my dads were sitting in the living room together, watching TV. They both looked up as I entered the room.

“You okay, Noodle?” Pop asked, examining my face.

“Yeah.” Surprisingly, I actually was.

“Where did you go?” Dad asked.

I reached up to smooth my windblown hair, which felt dull and flat from lack of product. “I'll tell you later, okay?”

He nodded, satisfied with my answer, and the two of them went back to watching TV.

I once again headed for my room, which was currently downright freezing. Dad had a habit of cranking up the air conditioning to “Antarctica” in hot weather. Shivering, I opened my closet and yanked a sweatshirt off its hanger. As I did, my eyes lit on something wedged in the corner of the top shelf. My old boxing gloves.

I flung the sweatshirt on my bed and turned back to the closet, standing on tiptoe to reach the gloves. It had been two years since I'd held them in my hands. The red leather was scuffed from the hundreds of punches I'd thrown while my grumpy old boxing teacher urged me on. I kind of missed Mr. Ogilvie. He'd been so disappointed when I quit. My sprained wrist was only part of the reason; I could have gone back after it healed. Instead, I just gave up.

No longer cold, I gathered up the gloves—along with an unused roll of hand wrap I'd discovered way back on the shelf—and left my room.

“Where are you going
now
?” Pop called as I passed the living room.

“To get some exercise,” I called back, ducking out the door before they had time to inquire about my cagey behavior. A girl was entitled to a few secrets, after all.

I'd been in our building's top-floor gym only a handful of times in the past two years, and not to work out. Mostly, I'd just popped in to ask Dad something while
he
was working out. I hadn't actually used the equipment in ages, even though the gym was large, well-appointed, and just a short elevator ride away. The only piece of equipment I was interested in at the moment, however, was the free-standing heavy bag in the corner.

The gym was pretty deserted that time of night, so there was no one to see me sit down on one of the bench presses and wrap my hands and wrists, protecting them from injury. Once the wrap was secure, I shoved my hands into the gloves and approached the bag.

At first, I tapped it gently, getting a feel for the movement. Then, when that became comfortable, I started hitting harder, the muscles in my arms and shoulders settling into a rhythm they still knew by heart. My bad wrist ached, but I pushed through it, hammering my target until I felt exhausted and breathless . . . and finally, free.