Hector (50 page)

Charlee couldn’t even respond now that she reread the letter from
Danny. If this were really true, if Drew were capable of doing this, tempting
Hector with who knows what and telling him Charlee was complicated, then maybe
she did know about the dog party beforehand.

Her mind raced now as she paced in her room. Could Hector have
really done something with Drew, even if it now felt wrong and had turned
Drew’s offer down? She remembered his interest in Drew before he showed any in
Charlee. Her head buzzed with so many things coming to her now.

The day after the keg party, Charlee had gone back to bed, and
Drew was gone when she woke. Then Drew had acted so weirdly when she got home,
and Charlee had asked her where she’d been. Unable to take it anymore, she
rushed out of her room, stopping only when she saw Drew’s phone on the table in
the front room. She picked it up and opened the text message log and clicked on
Hector’s name. She scrolled randomly, reading the first exchange it stopped on.

Drew: I can’t believe you’ve never noticed. She so pathetically
obvious about how lovesick she is!

Hector: Yeah, well, kill me I hadn’t. Maybe my mind being
so preoccupied with another girl had something to do with it.

“Are you . . .” Charlee looked up at Drew, who stood by
the dining room entrance staring at Charlee holding her phone.

Hot tears blurred
Charlee’s
vision now.
Drew had been the number one advocate all her life for trying to convince
Charlee she wasn’t pathetic. Her using the word in describing her, and to
Hector of all people, hurt more than her not telling her about the texts.

“Did you know about the dog party before I went to it?” Her words
were a strained whisper. She could hardly believe she was saying them.

Drew’s expression fell, and Charlee knew right then it was true.
“Who told you?”

A numbing chill ran down her spine. This couldn’t be possible.
“Danny did. Is it true?”

She shook her head, but Drew’s words said otherwise. “I couldn’t
tell you, Charlee.”

Feeling as if her heart had just been ripped out of her chest,
Charlee sucked in her breath but couldn’t hold back the emotion any longer.
“You knew?” Drew’s own lip quivered now. There was no denying
Charlee’s
worst nightmare. Drew had done the unthinkable
and joined the bullies against her. “You knew and you let me go?” She raised
her now-sobbing voice. “
Encouraged
me
to when you knew I didn’t even want to in the first place!”

Drew’s dad came to the dining room doorway, looking very
concerned.

“I wanted to tell you,” Drew took a few steps toward her. “But I
couldn’t.”

“Why? How could you let me go? How could you do that me?” The
pain was so profound Charlee could barely breathe between sobs now.

Drew turned to face her dad then Charlee again. “I just couldn’t.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out that way. You know I’d never hurt you like that,
Charlee.”

“But you did! You knowingly let me do something that you knew
would humiliate me. You pushed me to do it!” She sobbed, unable to understand
how she could be so wrong about Drew. Then she gasped and looked back down at
Drew’s phone in her hand.
“You and Hector text?”

Drew’s eyes became a little wider. “I didn’t tell you because I
thought you’d be mad.”

“You think!” Charlee dropped the phone onto the sofa and spun
around.

The mortification that possibly Drew had told Hector about the
dog party and maybe he too knew that Drew had been in on it sunk in.

“Charlee, please let me explain,” Drew hurried into her room
behind her.

Charlee grabbed her still-packed carryon, her purse, and her keys
and rushed out past Drew. “I’ll send for the rest of my things.”

“Don’t go, Charlee. Please!” Drew sobbed. “I’m begging you. I’m
so
sorry.”

Ignoring Drew’s pleas, Charlee walked out of the room and stalked
through the front room.

“It’s late, Charlee,” Drew’s dad insisted now also. “Maybe you
should wait until tomorrow morning if you really wanna leave.”

“I’ll be fine, Mr. Morris,” she managed to say before walking out.

She wanted to thank him for his hospitality, thank him for
allowing her to stay there rent-free all this time, but she couldn’t. Her
throat was so swollen it hurt. Saying the few words she had said alone was a
struggle. Drew followed her all the way out, continuing to plead and apologize
over and over.

Throwing her suitcase in the backseat of the car, she glanced
back at Drew, who was now on her knees on her front lawn while her dad stood
over her with one hand on her shoulder. “I love you, Charlee,” she continued to
sob.

Never, not in a million years, would Charlee be able to
understand how Drew of all people could do this to her.

~*~

The continued buzzing woke Hector. Frowning, he glanced
at his nightstand as his phone finally stopped buzzing. He laid his head back
and began to close his eyes when the buzzing began again. Grumbling, he reached
for it. It took a moment for his eyes to focus enough to read the name on the
screen, but he sat up instantly when he saw it was Drew calling him.

“Hello?” he answered, hoping nothing was wrong.

Drew said something he couldn’t understand through her sobs, but
his heart was already racing. Something was definitely wrong. “What?”

“Is she with you?”

“Charlee?
No? She’s not with you?”
Hector pulled his legs off to the side of his bed.

“She left about an hour ago. She was upset.” Hector heard Drew
take a deep breath and clear her throat in an attempt to speak more clearly. “I
figured it would take a while to get to your place since I’m assuming that’s
where she’s going unless she’s headed straight to the airport.”

“The airport?”
Hector gripped his phone.
“Why would she go to the airport? What’s she upset about?”

“I couldn’t tell her, Hector. I know she probably thinks I’m the
worst person in the world, but I couldn’t, and it killed me to not be able to,
but I swear if I had known how things were going to turn out I would’ve never
encouraged her to go to that party.”

Hector stood up, bringing his hand to his confused head as he
shook it. “What party? What are you talking about?”

“The dog party last year.
She said she
told you.”

The puzzle came together suddenly, but he still didn’t understand
what Drew was saying exactly. “Yeah, she told me about it.
So
back up.
What happened now?”

“She found out I knew it was one of those parties before she went
and didn’t tell her.”

Everything Hector was trying to put together in his head stopped
at once. “You knew?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t tell her—”

“You fucking knew they were setting her up, and you still let her
go?”

“I couldn’t explain to her because my dad was here. I wouldn’t
have even cared if he found out about the picture I texted an old boyfriend of
my tits, Hector. But I didn’t want him to hear the rest.”

The anger was already too overwhelming, and she was still saying
things that made no sense to him. “What are you talking about? What does that
have to do with you not telling your best friend she was being set up?”
Thoughts of Charlee being out there right now possibly on a plane back home
inundated him. He rushed to the window, hoping he’d see her car out there.

“Danny came to me and confessed about the party. He said he only
asked Charlee because word had gotten around that he was talking to her and he
was being pressured to invite her to it. He said he only had because he knew
how shy she was and was certain she would turn him down, which she did.”

Hector started out of his bedroom toward the front door. He
hadn’t seen
Charlee’s
car from his window, but maybe
he would if he walked outside. This shit was getting more confusing by the
second. “I don’t get it. She turned him down? So how she’d end up there
anyway?”

“I convinced her to go.”

Feeling even more disgusted with Drew, he understood completely
now why Charlee would be so upset. He stopped at the top of his porch steps.
“Why? Why would you do that?” Then it suddenly hit him. “How did she find all
this out now?”

Drew was quiet for a moment then finally spoke again. “I don’t
know. All she said was Danny told her, so I’m assuming she saw him in Maryland
this weekend.”

Hector stopped once again at the bottom of the stairs and thought
about that. Charlee had only mentioned meeting up with her mom on Saturday for
lunch. She didn’t say anything about seeing the asshole. He did remember
thinking she seemed a little weird on the flight home and when they said
goodbye tonight, but he’d assumed she was just as exhausted as he was.

“Hector, she didn’t give me a chance to explain,” she said, her
voice cracking once again. “And I know it was awful of me, but I had no
choice.”

“What do you mean you had no choice? Of course you did. You know
what?” he said ready to hang up on her ass. “I don’t even wanna hear your
bullshit reasons. What you did was
fucked
up,
and I don’t blame her for leaving. I don’t care that you’re feeling
like shit right now either. You should be.” Slammed with another realization,
he stopped where this thought was going, his mind rewinding back to a few
things that infuriated him even further. “Was this why you said you had to do this
for Charlee as much as yourself?”

”Yes,” she whispered.

“You selfish little bitch.” The words flew out without thought.
“So after you literally helped set up your best friend, the one you claim to
care so much about and who deserves to be happy, you watched her fall apart, saw
what it did to her, and then you brought her out here and took credit for
making everything better. So you could feel better about
yourself
?”

“I do care for her!” She yelled. “What I did could not be helped.
I feel terrible about it, yes, and does it help me feel better to see her
happy? Yes!
Because she
does
deserve to be.
And you will listen to my reasons, damn it. You are no angel
either. You know all about feeling guilty and wanting desperately to make up
for it.”

Hector didn’t say anything, but he continued to listen to her, partly
because she was right: he wasn’t without his own faults, but mostly because she
was hysterical now and he figured he may as well let her finish. But there was
no way she’d let her lump them in the same category. He wouldn’t even help set
up someone he didn’t know well much less one of his closest friends.

She was just about done with her explanation when his other line
clicked and he saw it was Charlee. His heart jumped to his throat with
excitement, but at the same time with the dread of hearing her cry. Because if
Drew was hysterical about this, he knew Charlee must be too.

“That’s her on the other line,” he said quickly. “I gotta go.”

“Call me back,” was all he heard as he clicked to the other line.

“Charlee!” he said, bracing himself to hear her sob.

The last thing he expected was to hear a dude on the other end
and the resounding words he said loudly. “You’re an asshole. You know that? And
I don’t care if you are a badass boxer. If you were in front of me right now,
I’d still take a fucking swing at you!”

Chapter 31

“Walter?”

“You suck!” Since the day Walter had thrown his own backpack at
the fence after getting his ass kicked in front of Charlee, Hector hadn’t heard
him this wound up.
“How could you do that to her, man?
If I’d known this is what you were up to, getting your jollies by doing two
best friends, I would’ve never agreed that I was okay with you asking her out.”

“Whoa, whoa—” Hector tried to interrupt, but Walter kept on.

“
Charlee’s
not like one of those skanky
whores you’re used to dating, okay? She’s a nice girl, and she doesn’t deserve
for some asshole stud like you to come along and trample on her—”

“Dude!
What the hell are you talking
about? I didn’t trample anything! Everything’s cool with Charlee and me.”

“Oh, you call banging her best friend behind her back cool?”

“What!”

“If everything is so cool with you two, why is your girlfriend
passed out on my bed right now after crying herself to sleep?”

Hector spun around, already on his way up his porch steps. “She’s
in your bed right now?”

“Yes. She said she didn’t know where else to go, but she did say
she’s driving home tomorrow. You know how long that’s gonna take her?
All because not even Charlee was enough for you.”

Hector rushed through his house and into his room. Holding his
phone between his shoulder and his ear, he pulled off his shorts and pulled on
a pair of jeans. “She is enough for me, Walter. I don’t know where she got the
idea that I’m doing anything with Drew.”

He sat down and pulled on some socks, wondering if maybe Charlee
was too embarrassed to admit to Walter why she was really so upset.

“It’s not an idea. She read the texts between you and Drew.
That’s proof, so don’t try to worm your way out of this one, asshole.”

Read the texts? Hector stood up after slipping on his shoes.
“Okay, first of all, you really need to stop calling me that,” he said, more
annoyed now than ever. The fact that Charlee was in another guy’s bed right now
was already annoying as shit, even if was Walter’s. “Second, I have no clue
what texts she’s talking about.”

He sort of did, but he wasn’t going to tell Walter about his and
Drew’s combined effort to help set Walter and Natalie up so he’d be free to go
after Charlee. He slipped a white t-shirt on that was too damn tight, but he
didn’t have time to look for another one.