Ever: The Ever Trilogy, Book One (Volume 1) (9 page)

I felt my face flush as I was flooded with guilt over being out with Toby. Then I remembered the kiss we’d shared, and my cheeks flamed up even more. I bet they were about as crimson as humanly possible, and I was glad to be facing the computer screen and not Frankie.

“I was out with Jessie.”

Oh boy.
I never lied to Frankie.
Who am I
? One minute I was allowing Frankie to join me in my bed, all the while practically
naked
in front of him, and the next minute I was lying to his face. What a mess.

“Out with Jessie, huh?”

In the reflection of my computer screen, I saw him tilt his head and look at me, twirling an unlit cigarette in his fingers. I felt as if he could see right through me, right into my soul. I felt like he somehow knew I was lying. I was sure my guilty conscience was to blame, but I felt it nonetheless. I may as well have branded a scarlet letter across my forehead for all the shame I’d been feeling lately. Like no matter what I tried to convince myself, or how innocent I knew I was, my heart still swore I was betraying Frankie.
Stupid heart.

When he finished analyzing the back of my head, I watched his reflection in my dark computer monitor as he took a seat on the edge of the bed.

“Okay.”

Phew.
I’d freaked out for nothing. I mentally breathed a sigh of relief.

“Oh, by the way, I heard your mom and dad arguing about that new kid next door. It sounded pretty heated. Do you know what that was all abou—?”

“Fine!”

I threw up my hands and spun around in my chair to face him.

“Yes, Frankie, I was out with Toby, okay? Are you happy now? Ugh! Just … just
go
, Frankie. I want to go to bed.”

His eyes practically bulged out of his head as I yelled at him, and he was clearly confused by my outburst. Well, that made two of us. I couldn’t believe I’d just shouted at him like that, totally unprovoked.

“Wait, what? You were out with … but … I thought you said … ?”

The wounded expression on his face made me feel even
guiltier
, which in turn made me feel even
angrier
. It didn’t make sense, but sometimes feelings just don’t. His confusion should have softened me, caused me to rein myself back in. It didn’t. Instead, it irritated me, confusing me further, if that’s even possible.

“Yes, Frankie. I was out. On a date. With
Toby
. That hot new guy from next door. Okay? We had a
blast
. We kissed too, Frankie. Now run along and tell everyone about it.
Good night
!”

I emphasized each part of my story, unable to stop the words from flying out of my mouth. I’d gone too far. Like I was deliberately
trying
to hurt him.

He was gone instantly.

No comments. No theatrics. No puff of smoke. Nothing.

He was just
gone
.

I felt like someone punched me in the gut.
Why did I do that?
I was so beyond ashamed of myself—even more so than I had been about the date with Toby. I had never lied to Frankie, and I had
never
attacked him the way I just did. I would never forget the stricken look on his face.

I crawled into bed and fell asleep crying, though my sleep was again troubled. My subconscious continued to dissect my relationship with Frankie and my feelings for Toby, leaving me restless.

When I awoke in the night, I was again terrified and sprawled out on the floor. Like before, I was unable to remember a single thing about my nightmare, except my fear for Frankie’s safety and my desperate need to find him. Frankie was back in my room, obviously responding to my calling out for him from the terrifying world inside my dreams.

He was squatting just a few inches away, leaning down over me, his weight resting on his fingers like he was about to play a childhood game of leapfrog. He was watching me intensely, his face twisted with distress. He looked frozen in place—like half of his mind was telling him to reach for me and the other half was dutifully reminding him he could do no such thing.

“Frankie.”

“I’m here, Doll.”

We stood at the same time and ended up almost nose-to-nose. My breathing began to slow as we stared at each other, and my fear eased slightly with every second. He licked his lips, and out of the corners of my eyes, I saw him begin to reach for me, only to see his fists clench in mid-air and land back at his sides.

I climbed back into bed, my eyes never leaving Frankie’s, trying to grasp for something—
anything
—that I could remember about my dream. I couldn’t come up with a single image or scene, aside from Frankie’s face, and Frankie’s name on my lips.

He walked over to the bed and looked down at me, his expression pained.

“Was I loud? My parents will come in … .”

“No, Doll, you weren’t loud. I was pacing outside your door. I doubt they heard you all the way down the hall.”

I don’t know if it was the shame I’d felt earlier, the confusion of all the strange feelings I was having, or the leftover terror seeping out from my dream world, but hearing that Frankie was pacing outside my door brought tears flooding down my cheeks. I’d obviously really hurt him earlier if he found himself pacing outside my room.

“Shh, Doll, please don’t cry.” Frankie paced restlessly back and forth over the floor in front of my bed, his eyes remaining on me the entire time.

“I’m so sorry, Frankie. I didn’t mean to be so rude earlier. I just … .”

“No, Ever. Please, don’t cry. You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to tell me what you do every single time you leave this house, and I shouldn’t have asked you. It’s not my business.”

“But it is, Frankie. It
is
your business. You’re—”

He looked at me expectantly when I paused, eyes intense, as he waited for the next words. As if he
wanted
me to say how I felt about him, who he was to me. Did he already know my feelings for him were so much more than they should be? Could I say them out loud?

You’re my entire world.

”—you’re my best friend, Frankie … and I … I just … .”

He flinched slightly when I said
best friend
, but I couldn’t take it back, couldn’t change the words without letting out the truth. The truth that he was so much
more
than my best friend remained unspoken. Where would that leave us anyway?
Nowhere. Absolutely
nowhere.

I had to move forward and see where this new thing with Toby would lead. I couldn’t tell Frankie that I loved him any more than I could
continue
to love him.

“No. Shh. Really, it’s okay. Go back to sleep, Doll. I’m not mad at you.”

After I crawled back under the covers, chilled from the night sweats and exhausted from crying, he sat down on the edge of my bed with his back to me. He fit almost perfectly in the crook between my knees and my stomach, as though I was curled up around him. The pained look was still on his face, though he tried to mask it.

Before I drifted off, I saw that his hand was resting on top of mine.

But I couldn’t feel it.

D
ays later, almost the entire week of Spring Break had passed since I’d seen or heard from Toby. It hurt. We’d been on two dates back-to-back, and I had really thought we’d hit it off. Maybe my lack of experience with boys was rearing its ugly head, because clearly, he’d been uninterested.

Mom and Dad had relaxed about Toby’s age, which was perfectly ironic considering he’d burned me. I didn’t tell them that though.

Frankie and I were pretty much back to normal, my unspoken secrets still tucked down deep, safely hidden away from exposure. It seemed my moment of insanity when I’d yelled at him was a distant memory.

I hadn’t had any more nightmares, which also meant no more late night visits from Frankie … which sort of sucked, but let’s face it,
what
on earth would have ever come of
that
? The fact that I
wanted
him in my room at all was big enough to deal with, let alone the intense feelings I had when he was actually there. His concern for me was adding fuel the fire. When I was trying to get over him by moving on with Toby, he was being all compassionate and showing up to comfort me in the middle of the night, thus totally confusing me further. So yeah, avoiding those late night situations was best. Or so I kept telling myself.

On Friday afternoon, Jessie and I were hanging out in the backyard, getting some sun, when she randomly started yelling at me.

At least, I thought the yelling was random. I was pretty sure it was the first I’d heard from her in the past hour or so.
I think. Shoot.

Actually, now that I thought about it, I couldn’t really recall if I had been ignoring Jess or not. Had she been talking?

“
Ever
! Do you even realize that you first
agreed to
, and then
allowed
me to paint your toenails pink? Pink, Ever! And not just any pink, oh no, I painted them the
brightest
pink I could find just to prove a point!” She waved the hideous pink bottle—which she obviously carried around in her purse—in my face for emphasis. “Right after I told you I was skipping college, moving to Las Vegas, and becoming a showgirl! A
showgirl
! This is spring break, Ever! The
last
spring break of my high school experience, and
you
have ignored me the whole time! Ugh! I should be off on a senior trip or something, meeting boys in Mazatlan and drinking cold drinks on hot sand, but oh no, I’m here with
you
. And frankly, Ever, you are being a little too
emo
for my liking.”

The word was laced with disdain.
Emo
and Jessie had about as much in common as glitter and football.

“Will you snap out of it, Ever? As if your constant pining away for Frankie hasn’t been enough to deal with all this time, but now this? Just go knock on his damn door and get it over with already!”

I was still trying to recall any bits of the conversation we’d most likely been having for the past hour, and barely processing her rant, when I looked down and realized my toenails actually
were
pink.
Oh my god. Have I been that out of it? Really? My toes are pink. Of all colors!

“Or
I
will.”

Wait.
What?
I looked up at Jessie and tried to process what she had just said.
Will what?
She was standing at the foot of my lawn chair with her hands on her hips, glaring down at me. Well, I assumed she was glaring, but the sun was behind her so all I could see was the dark outline of her body looming over me.

No, scratch that. I could actually
feel
the glare. Any normal person would have shrunk under the heat of Jessie’s gaze, and I didn’t have to see it to know.

“Did you hear me, Ever Van Ruysdael? I am going to go right over there and knock on his door if you don’t snap out of this and enjoy the rest of this spring break with me!”

I jumped up, suddenly very aware of the close proximity to Toby’s backyard, and hoped he and his dad were nowhere near enough to hear Jessie’s ranting.

“Jess, shh. He’ll hear you!”

“So? Let him hear me!
He
is the reason that my best friend has ignored me for four days! Four days! Do you hear me over there,
Tobyyy
? I will not allow some
guy
to ruin
my
vacation.”

I was waiting for her to pump her fist in the air for emphasis, but her hands remained firmly on each hip. I slumped back down on the lounger, grabbed Jessie’s pink, wide-brimmed floppy sunhat, and hid my face under it.

“Ohhh, no you don’t. You are getting up and marching over there right now, or I am going to do it for you. I’m not kidding, Ever.” She yanked her hat away and plopped it onto her head.

She was dead serious. I knew it. I knew she’d go over there, and I knew she’d make a scene, and I knew that somehow, at the end of it all,
I
would be the
only
one embarrassed. I also knew without a doubt, that there was no way in
hell
I was going over there myself. But I had to do something before she acted on her threat.

I got up, put on my crocheted bikini cover-up, then stared hard at her until she sat back down in her chair. Content that her tirade had worked, she happily coated her long legs with yet another layer of tanning oil and continued sunbathing like nothing had happened. She nonchalantly flipped through the latest US Magazine, sneaking peeks at me while I stood in front of her fuming.

I made my way through the house, pretending to head toward the front door. Yeah right!
As if I’m actually going to go over there and confront Toby for not calling me after our dates.
Please. I may not have known much about guys, but I was pretty sure they weren’t into psycho stalkers, and I was
definitely
not the kind of girl to
grovel
.