How We Fall (26 page)

“Sorry. Didn’t know you were outside.”

I ignored him. He walked alongside me for a few seconds before grabbing my arm. “Come on. I didn’t mean for you to see that. I’m sorry.”

I shook my arm free, looked him in the eyes, and was too mad to care. I kept walking.

I didn’t want his hands on her. I didn’t want him doing with her the things he’d done with me. He’d cared about me, but somehow he could transfer all those walks in the dark and swimming trips and everything else from girl to girl, while I was left behind once again, watching someone move on while I was stuck there wishing.

“Dammit, Jackie, just talk to me,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”

I turned on him. “It looked like you knew exactly what to do.”He crossed his arms, his eyes hard. “You can’t be mad at me for this. We can’t be together. We agreed we couldn’t make it work.”

“Don’t tell me what we agreed like I don’t know.” The faint-est breeze puffed dust eddies up from the gravel road.

“I am so sick of you getting mad at me for things I can’t help. If you’re upset, it’s because you push people away because you can’t stand them thinking something bad about you. Stop letting the world hang on what other people think.”

He did not just say that. Like it was such a small thing to tell the world your brain was screwed up enough you couldn’t keep your hands off your cousin. “This coming from the guy whose go-to solution for problems is pretending they don’t exist.” All I wanted was for him to realize he was hurting me, or at least show something, anything, to let me know he missed me.

He uncrossed his arms. “You have no reason to be angry.

197

How we Fall

This is ridiculous. You practically told me to go find someone else.”

“I did not. I wanted you to be happy, and since it couldn’t be with me—”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” He stared down the road past me like I wasn’t there.

“How can you use her to get over me? That’s really low. If she doesn’t know about us, and she really likes you, and all you’re doing is distracting yourself, how is that fair to her?”

His back went ramrod straight and he shoved his hands in his pockets. “That’s the thing. I do like her. I’m not just messing around.”

My brain stuttered. “You—you what?”

“I’m not using her. I like her.”

For the briefest moment, it was hard to breathe. My heart beat once, and I got my air back in a rush. “Well, stellar job picking someone. You know she lied about Ellie? They played on the same volleyball team. She knew her. I found photos of them together. Sylvia knows something about Ellie’s murder.

She has to.”

He stared at me like I was crazy. “Is this about being jealous?

Accusing her of being involved in a murder isn’t some way for you to get back at me. That’s serious.”

“I know it’s serious, Marcus. That’s the point. You barely know her and she’s hiding something. We were together for more than a year, and then bam, you’re all over her like she’s magical.”

His eyebrows lowered. “Well, that’s the way you wanted it.”

He turned around and trudged up the hill away from me. He didn’t look back.

It wasn’t what I wanted. It was what we wanted. I sat down on the side of the road in the knee-high grass and cried.

198

My eyes were swollen and bloodshot when I got back to the house.

Mom gave me a concerned look and tried to stop me, but I ran to the bathroom and locked the door. I started the tub filling and poured in twice the bubble bath anyone in their right mind would need. By the time the tub was full, the bubbles were piled so high I couldn’t even see the water. I sank into it and absentmindedly shaped the fluff into towers.

Marcus didn’t love me the way I loved him. If he could move on to Sylvia and kiss her like that so soon, if he could really like someone else already, then he hadn’t really loved me. If I hadn’t been able to do it, and he could, clearly we weren’t thinking the same thing.

I’d almost risked so much for him.

And I was trying to stop pushing people away. But the more I cared about someone, the more I cared about what that person thought. Investing in other people but being my own person was a lot harder than it sounded.

My phone started ringing. I glanced at it, dried off my hands on the towel, and answered it.

“Hey, Jackie Lawrence.” Will’s low voice came through. “I was going to make myself give it a few days before I called you, but I couldn’t help myself. When can I take you out again?”

The smile in his voice lifted the weight on my chest a little.

“Whenever, as long as the parents don’t need me. I don’t have much planned.”

“Darn. I’d come get you right now, but I’m headed to work.

199

How we Fall

What are you up to?”

I swished my hands through the bubbles. “Well. Right now I’m in the tub.”

The line was silent for a moment. “You had better not be teasing me.”

I laughed. “It’s true, I swear. I’m taking a bubble bath.”

“I’m really trying to not be a perv right now, but I don’t think it’s going to work.”

I laughed again. “Sorry. I wasn’t going to tell you, but you asked.”

“Cruel thing to do, when I have ten hours of stocking shelves ahead of me.”

“Do you think you’ll survive?”

He sighed. “I’d better, if I’m going to get to take you out again. How about tomorrow afternoon? Evenings are hard for me because of this whole job thing.”

“Sounds awesome.”

I was trying, for me, for Marcus, for our families. Far more than he knew. But it was one thing to be hit by something when both of you were caught in the fallout, and entirely something else to be in it on your own.

• • •

“Ugh. Mom.”

“I won’t be home when you get back. Carnival planning at the library. Marcus is babysitting while you’re gone.”

“I—he is?”

His voice drifted down from upstairs, teasing one of the kids. I could hear his grin from where I stood in the kitchen.

He hadn’t sounded like that around me for a while.

200

Kate Brauning

“He said it was fine.”

If I had to babysit all four of the kids so he could go out with Sylvia, I wouldn’t have been happy. I grabbed my purse and went outside before Will could get to the door.

“Hey,” he said. “I thought we’d go bowling.”

I hadn’t been bowling in a long time. “Sounds great.”

As we headed to Harris to the bowling alley, he asked me question after question about my family and the produce stand and Marcus. And he listened. He kept his eyes on the road, but they flicked over to me every few seconds, and he nodded or gave me a half-smile every time I said something. He didn’t seem to think any of it was weird.

“It’s actually interesting,” he said. “It’s different. I wish I had a family like that.”

It had been a while since I’d thought of differences as interesting. It took me until we got to the bowling alley for me to realize he hadn’t told me a single thing about himself. “What about you?” I said. “How many girls have you taken bowling?”

His eyebrows disappeared under his longish dark hair. “Legit taken bowling, or like, taken bowling as a metaphor?”

We walked across the parking lot. “Let’s say metaphorically.”

I didn’t care, but I was curious. He’d probably gotten his first girlfriend in third grade.

“Hmm.” He looked me over and held the door open. “It’s a policy of mine to not tell girls I’m dating how many girlfriends I’ve had.”

“No way,” I said. My voice lowered to a whisper. “I told you I’m hung up on my cousin, and you can’t tell me how many girls you’ve gone out with?”

“Not a chance.”

“Why?” I gave my shoe size to the guy at the counter and we headed over to our lane. The place wasn’t too busy, just a few other afternoon bowlers.

201

How we Fall

“Because it always makes them angry.”

“It can’t be that many.”

He winked at me and gestured to the lane. “Ladies first.”

I chose a ball. “So, you’re insecure. That’s what you’re telling me. You’re insecure and afraid of angry women.”

“Any wise man is.”

I rolled my eyes and stepped up to the lane. He was fun.

And interesting. And I liked him so much.

We bowled for almost two hours, after which he offered to take me out for ice cream. “Um,” I said. “We can. But I wanted to tell you something.” I set my shoes on the counter.

“Shit.” His face fell, and he held the door open for me again.

“Sounds like I’m going to need the ice cream.”

I turned around on the sidewalk. His shoulders were hunched and he shoved his hands in his pockets. “So, what did I do?” he asked. “Honestly. I want to know. Is it too much?”

I put a hand on his arm. “What? No, I just can’t do this to you. You’re such a nice guy. Like, weirdly nice.”

He looked across the nearly empty parking lot. “You’re not doing anything to me. You told me what was going on.”

“Yeah. But I don’t think I’m going to get over Marcus any time soon. We had a fight last night, and—” My voice caught.

“Let’s talk about this in the car.” He headed over to his Neon. I hurried to catch up to him so he didn’t have to open my door.

When he climbed in and shut his door, I turned sideways on the seat. “I just can’t think about anything else. And I don’t want to use you to get over him.”

“Why can’t you think about anything else?” he asked, forearm resting on the steering wheel.

“Because everything I do makes him angry, and everything he says to me makes it worse. I know he doesn’t mean it, but it still hurts, and he lives in my house, and I’m terrified that even 202

Kate Brauning

when this is over, I’m still going to love him, but I’ll hate him, too, and he’ll hate me.” I would not cry this time.

Will turned toward me on the seat. “I don’t understand why you decided to end it with him. I mean, it’s not my business, but if I was that miserable, I’d fix it.”

“I can’t fix it.” I played with my thumbnail. I couldn’t change the way the world worked.

“What would happen that’s so bad it’s worth being miserable? It’s legal, you love him, and once you’re eighteen, your parents don’t have a say in it.”

I’d once thought it was to save my friendship with him. But I was losing that, too, just like Claire had said. If we kept this up, before long we’d have hurt each other too much to fix. Even ten years from now, after college, when we were involved with other people, this would hang over us.

And regardless of what it did to us, it would wreck our families. My hand tightened around the seatbelt. “Other people, I guess. We couldn’t tell anyone.”

“You could.” He rolled down the car window.

Technically, yes. I could tell people. Claire had thought it was weird, but she hadn’t made fun of me or shut me out because of it. But who knew what Kelsey and Hannah would do.

But if I didn’t care what it did to my friends and family, I’d want Marcus back. It wasn’t fair, it really wasn’t, for the world to see differences between people as gaps keeping them apart.

“He told me yesterday that he likes Sylvia.”

He lit a cigarette. “Rebounding.”

I watched him blow the smoke out the window. “He doesn’t want me back.”

“Sure he does. Make him realize it.”

I didn’t know how to do that. How to get him back. I shouldn’t even want that. “I don’t know. But I’m not ready to date someone else.”

203

How we Fall

“Well.” He held the cigarette out the window, resting his arm on the door. “I’ll make you a deal.”

Strange. “Okay.”

“What made you realize you wanted him back?”

I’d always wanted him back, I just hadn’t been able to accept it. “Seeing what being apart did to us, I guess. And seeing him with Sylvia.” I couldn’t be with Marcus, but I did want him to miss me, to not be able to replace me so fast.

“So keep going out with me.”

“What? Why?” This guy made no sense.

“I like you. Are you okay with that?”

“It’s actually really nice.” I played with my fingernail again.

“You’ve been great.”

His smile was faint. “Then I’ll stick around. Marcus will realize the same thing you did, and that will be that.”

“I can’t be your girlfriend.” As much as I’d like for that to be the way things were going, they just weren’t.

“You don’t have to be my anything. I’ll come hang out and take you out sometimes and be your boyfriend or whatever, and you can just work on making him jealous. As long as you keep me updated on what’s going on with you and him, I’m okay with it.”

I didn’t want to make Marcus jealous. I wanted him to miss me. “That doesn’t sound fair to you. I seriously don’t think I’ll be dating anyone for a long time.”

Now he grinned for real. “Don’t worry about my feelings, okay? Let me decide what’s fair to me. This is a win-win. You get the guy you want, and I get to hang out with you until he gets his head on straight.”

“But if you genuinely like me—” I’d end up hurting him.

And I couldn’t do that to someone else.

He flicked the cigarette onto the cracked pavement and rolled up his window. “I’m a pro at not falling in love, Jackie.

204

Kate Brauning

For real, don’t worry about me.” He started the car and spun the steering wheel as he backed the car out of the parking space.

“I guess I can tell you now. I’ve had eleven girlfriends. And I haven’t been in love once. I’ll be fine.”

We didn’t talk much on the drive home. Will toned down the flirting, which was okay. He told me a little about his job and I watched the hills go by. When we pulled into the driveway, I saw Marcus through the kitchen window. He was sitting at the table, mug in hand. Hot chocolate, probably.

Will saw him, too. He parked and I climbed out, but so did he, and he came around to my side of the car. “Thank you,” I said. “I had fun. For real.” And I’d needed it.

He slid his hand into mine. “Anytime, babe. You think your parents are home?”