Bitter End (22 page)

I heard Bethany let out a frustrated grunt, but ignored
her. If she wanted me to suck down salsa and piña coladas with her, she was going to have to give a little, too.

Cole’s face softened. “Okay,” he said. “No problem. I’m just gonna head to class.” He squeezed my hand, pecked me on the forehead,
smiled at Bethany, and walked away.

I stared after him, my stomach getting an icky feeling—even though he’d agreed, it still felt like he was mad at me. It was
that same weird feeling in the air that I got right before the wrist incident. Bethany grabbed my elbow and started to pull.

“Forget him,” she said. “C’mon. There’s Zack.”

We caught up with Zack just as he was barreling in the double doors from outside. His face was lit up in a smile so wide I
thought it must have hurt.

“Congratulations,” I said, sidling up to him and patting him on the back. Bethany moved to the other side of him, tripping
along with such short steps and gazing up at him so loyally she almost looked like a puppy.

“What’d your mom say?” she said. “I bet she bakes a cake today.”

Zack wrapped his arms around our shoulders. “Ladies,” he drawled elaborately, “today the Mexican feast is on me. Someday when
you see me on TV accepting my Oscar, you can say”—his voice ratcheted up to a squeaky girl voice—“ ‘Hey, that dude gave me
a big burrito when he landed his first lead, and it was h-o-t, hawt!’ ”

“Ew!” we both squealed, smacking his chest and ducking out from under his arms.

He laughed, and then in the girl voice added, “And I ate it All. Night. Long.”

We cracked up, the three of us laughing and bumping into people and saying stupid stuff on our way to first period.

Except.

Well, except I was guiltily looking over my shoulder and in every doorway and stairwell, hoping my boyfriend wasn’t looking
on, spying on me, thinking I was standing too close to my best friend.

When had my life turned into this? When had I started worrying that being happy for my best friend would be making someone
else angry?

By the time we got to El Manuel’s, basketball practice had already been going on for half an hour. Zack had had to stop in
at Mr. Tucker’s office to pick up the script for his part in the play.

Bethany and I waited outside Mr. Tucker’s office for him, thinking it would only take a minute, but apparently Mr. Tucker
had plans to explain the entire play to Zack while we sat in the hallway, where I grew increasingly agitated.

“What time do you think basketball is over?” I asked, chewing on the skin around my thumbnail.

Bethany made a soft, noncommittal noise, shrugging her shoulders as she bent over her homework, which I probably should have
been doing, too, but I was too on edge to concentrate.

“You think we’ll even
be
at Manuel’s before it’s over?” I asked, spitting a piece of skin onto the floor.

“I don’t know,” Bethany said, still not looking up from her homework.

I got up, paced the hall a few times, and then slid back down to the floor where I’d been sitting before. “God, what’s taking
him so long?” I said.

Bethany set her pencil down on her book. “Really, Alex,” she said. “So what if you don’t make it to Cole’s practice on time?
What’s he gonna do? Break up with you?”

“It’s just…” I motioned at Mr. Tucker’s door. “I mean, he was going to be right back. But this is taking forever, and I did
sort of have plans…”

“Fine,” she said, picking up her pencil again. “Then go be with… your plans. I’m sure Zack will understand. Since your plans
are so much more important.”

“It’s not like that,” I said softly, stung. But before I could say any more, Mr. Tucker’s office door, thankfully, opened,
and Zack stepped out, carrying a script in his hand.

“Let’s go,” he said, rolling the script and stuffing it into his back pocket while Bethany shoveled her things into her backpack.

“Excellent!” she said, zipping her backpack and standing up. “The air in this hallway is stuffy. They need to add some ventilation
in here. The same air is just circling and circling and getting really old.”

I rolled my eyes but decided to let it go. I just didn’t have the energy to play go-between for them and Cole anymore.

Once we stepped into El Manuel’s, the tension between
Bethany and me lightened. Zack was so buoyant it was impossible to stay angry. He kept adding the word “el” to the beginning
of everything and “o” to the end of it (“We’ll have el table-o for el three-o, el please-o”) and insisted on saying “Hakuna
matata” to everyone who passed by. We were giggling before we even sat down.

“So opening night is March tenth,” Zack said, pulling his script out of his pocket and spreading it out on the table in front
of him. “You guys gonna come, right?”

“Of course,” said Bethany. “There is no way I’d miss it. You could have a costume malfunction, and what kind of friend would
I be if I wasn’t there to laugh my ass off at you when it happens?” She gave him a wide, fake smile, all teeth.

“Plus,” I added, stuffing a chip into my mouth, “I really need to work on my heckling skills.” I cupped one hand around my
mouth and mock-shouted, “You suck, mama’s boy!”

“Har har, you guys are too funny. I’m gonna hire a bouncer to kick your asses out,” he said, wiping a dropped dollop of cheese
dip off his script with his thumb. “Hey, guys, listen to the lyrics of this song I have to sing. ‘I have something in my hand,
my love. I’m going to give it to you, my love. I live to hear you swoon. Tonight we two will spoon. For what I have in my
hand is the gauzy, the shiny, the romantic December moon.’ God, when was this written?”

Bethany and I took one look at each other and cracked
up. “I dare you to bend over and moon the audience when you sing it,” I said, trying not to choke on my chip as I laughed.

“Oh my God,” Bethany gasped between giggles. “What’s the title of that song? ‘The Creepy Exhibitionist Song’? I have something
in my hand, my love…”

I laughed out loud, spitting chip crumbs across the table at Zack, who wiped his forehead dramatically, keeping his face straight
as Bethany and I practically fell under the table, we were laughing so hard.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Laugh it up, you two. Go ahead. Har har. You’re such cutups.” But when that only made us laugh louder,
he lost his straight face and struggled to keep himself from cracking up, too. “All right, that’s it,” he said, visibly trying
to keep himself composed. “You two don’t stop laughing and I’ll have something in my hand for you.” He held up a fist like
he was going to knock us out.

And just like that, it wasn’t funny anymore.

I stopped laughing and sat up, Bethany leaning against me, oblivious to my mood change. But Zack crinkled his eyebrows at
me, unfurling his fist into an open palm, which he held up surrender-style. He stared at me a little too long, and I smoothed
the napkin on my lap, clearing my throat to change the subject.

“You guys,” I said, “we probably should order. I’ve got to at least try to get to Cole’s practice.” And then I hated myself
a little for saying it, especially after Bethany groaned.

By the time we paid our bill, I knew there was no way practice was still going on. When I got in my car in the El Manuel parking
lot, the sky had already started to darken, and a cold wind had worked up, whipping a plastic bag out of my car as soon as
I opened the door.

I wasted no time getting out of the parking lot, though, just in case I could catch Cole, even at the last minute. It would
be really nice if I could play it off as though I’d been there, watching, for a long time. Maybe then he’d never know the
difference.

I waved at Bethany and Zack as I pulled past them in the parking lot. They were standing next to Zack’s car, bent over the
script, Bethany’s cheeks puffed up with a smile, her fingers pushing her glasses back up on her nose every few seconds. Zack
half-waved before sticking a toothpick in his mouth.

Basketball must have been over for a while, because the school parking lot was a ghost town. Totally empty. Even the coach’s
car was gone.

And, of course, Cole’s car was gone.

I parked, got out, jogged to the side door by the gym, and pulled the handle. I don’t know what I was hoping for—I guess maybe
that I was wrong. That Cole was still here, still waiting for me. That his car wasn’t gone and that he’d see me, wave, and
jog over to hug me, his shoulder sweaty against my cheek.

But the door was locked.

I kicked it in frustration and walked back to the car,
where I sat, uncertainly, for a few minutes. I checked my phone. No messages. No texts.

I dialed his cell number. It rang. No answer.

“Hey, Cole,” I said to the voice mail. “I’m at the school. Looks like I missed you. I’m…”

Sorry
was about to come out of my mouth, but suddenly I was struck with such a certainty that this was it for us, I couldn’t go
on. I’d already put so much on the line for this relationship. I’d already lost so much to make it work with Cole. I was losing
Bethany. I’d already lost Zack in a way; these days, he spent more time with my sister than with me. If I lost Cole, too,
what exactly would I have left? Celia? She hated my guts. Shannin? Away at college. Georgia? She had her own kid to take care
of, plus I’d already established with her what I wanted with her advice when I ran out on her the other day. Dad? He’d actually
have to be there in order for me to lose him.

I hung up and chewed on my thumb again, thinking things over. If I went over to his house, chances were he’d be really pissed
at me. But chances were he was really pissed at me anyway. And if I went to him tonight, maybe I could smooth things over.
If I waited till school tomorrow, I’d only have a few minutes between classes to talk to him.

It was settled.

I put the car in drive and headed toward Cole’s house.

Brenda answered the door. There were lights on in the kitchen behind her, and I got a good look at her for the first time.

Oddly, her skin had the same blue lit-by-TV-screen tinge to it that it had when I first met her in the darkened family room.
Yet there was something warmer about her somehow.

“Alex,” she said in that tiny mewl of hers, pulling open the door and moving to the side to let me in. “I didn’t know Cole
was expecting you. Come in.”

“He’s not,” I said, stepping through the door. “I missed him at basketball. He’s here, then?” I sounded so casual I almost
believed myself that this was no big deal. That my palms weren’t sweating and I wasn’t imagining him breaking up with me in
the next five minutes.

She nodded, turning and heading toward the kitchen. I followed her. “In his room,” she said. “I’m making us some dinner.”

I blinked at her. It was almost as if she was an entirely different woman. There was a pot of soup simmering on the stove
behind her, and the oven light was on, illuminating a batch of muffins inside. There was music coming out of a radio sitting
on top of the refrigerator, and she kind of swayed to it a little while she talked.

It was like when Cole’s dad was around, Brenda was some sort of zombie. But when he was gone, she was alive.

Again, I was struck with sorrow for Cole and what he had to live with. Brenda was anything but the perfect mom, and his dad
was so gruff and biting. Even though my family wasn’t exactly sitcom-perfect, Cole’s family seemed so… weird. Like his dad
was the negative energy that beat the family down, yet the driving force that kept it going. Like for Cole’s family to stay
alive… it had to be mean and frightening. No wonder Cole liked to keep his cell phone turned off. No wonder he never wanted
to hang out at his house. No wonder he was tense and unpredictable sometimes.

Brenda turned and stirred the soup, and I stood uncomfortably next to her, wondering if she was going to call Cole down or
if I should just go upstairs to his room.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Alex?” she said over her shoulder. “We’ll have plenty.”

I’ll bet
, I thought, eyeing her tiny birdlike wrists and spine, which poked out in knobby little juts, even through her turtleneck.
She looked as if she hadn’t eaten in months.

“Okay,” I said, ignoring the protest of my stomach, still
full of guacamole and tortilla chips. This could be a great way to make up with Cole—dinner with him and his mom. The way
she was acting tonight, we may even have a good time. “Can I go up?” I asked.

She glanced at me, and for just a split second I thought I saw those black holes behind her glasses again. But her tiny little
child lips pulled up into a smile, and she nodded. “Of course.”

I climbed the steps. Cole’s door was open. I could hear soft tinny clangs coming out of the room and stepped up into the doorway
to see him sitting on his amp, his back to the door, strumming his electric guitar, which was not plugged in. I lingered in
the doorway, holding on to the frame lightly with my fingertips, and watched him.

He was wearing a pair of jeans and was barefoot and bare-chested. His hair was wet, a few rivulets of water running down the
back of his neck. The air in the room smelled like body heat and soap, as if he’d just gotten out of the shower.

For a moment I was struck numb. He was so beautiful sitting there on his amp. And I felt like the worst girlfriend ever. I
had ditched him, after I promised I’d be there for him. I’d had plans with him first, and I’d bumped them for Zack and Bethany,
after he made the effort to be understanding about why I’d changed our plans.

My hand lingered at my collarbone, my fingers pressing into the tiny beads on the dream catcher.

“Shut the door,” Cole said, making me jump. He hadn’t
turned around, hadn’t stopped strumming his guitar, but he knew I was there. “I said shut the door,” he repeated when I didn’t
respond.

I stepped in and did what he’d asked, but stood just inside the doorway, unsure of what to do next. He didn’t turn to look
at me, didn’t stop strumming. Was I supposed to go to him? Wait for him to come to me? This was the part of our relationship
I was starting to really hate—the part where I had to try to guess what would make him happy. Or, more accurately, what would
keep him from getting mad.