If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (159 page)

Before I drift off to sleep, I tell myself tonight I won’t dream about Will’s voice. I won’t look forward to seeing him. Whatever I feel, whether its curiosity, infatuation, or lust, isn’t worth what it could cause between my sister and me. It’s nothing. I will make it be nothing.

It will be nothing.

My plan is to keep busy. If I keep busy, I won’t have time to think or analyze my feelings for Whatshisface. I’ve convinced myself if I refer toWill as Whatshisface, my feelings will cease to exist. I mean, who would have feelings for someone they refer to as Whatshisface?

While Gia is out, I clean the house. I read books, and I watch TV, though Gia doesn’t have cable. I talk to Zach as much as I can, but since he’s working more hours at the gas station and his uncle isn’t keen on him being on the phone, I can’t use him to pass the time as much as I like. By day three, I feel restless. With Gia at work and school, she’s not home as much as I’d imagined her being. This is actually nothing at all like I pictured life here being. I guess I only imagined freedom—lots and lots of freedom to do what I want—but when I don’t have to go to school or work, freedom doesn’t really matter. Boredom isn’t as glamorous as I thought it’d be. I have absolutely nothing to do.

By day four, after I’ve watched as much crappy TV as I can stand and cooked everything in the house, I decide to try my hand at the public transportation system. There’s a bus stop on the corner of Gia’s block. From talking to a woman in the gas station, I think the bus will take me right to the train station, which would take me into the heart of Chicago. If you can’t find something to do there, you’re a lost cause, at least that’s what the clerk at the gas station tells me.

So I buy a transfer to get on the bus, and with the train fare in my pocket, I start my journey. It seems like a great idea until four hours later, when I somehow end up in a suburb on the opposite side of town from where I live and it’s starting to get dark and I’m too embarrassed to ask someone how to get home. Why would
I,
someone who’s foreign to the public transportation system in my own hometown, attempt to conquer it in one of the biggest cities in the world?

I finally swallow my pride and head to the payphone, where realize I don’t know Gia’s work number. I can barely remember the name of the firm she’s interning at. Is it Waters and Mitchell or Waters and Michaels? The operator gets frustrated with me, saying she has over a hundred listings of law firms in Chicago with the name Waters in them. I hang up, frustrated, and laugh at myself. The reason I wanted to get out of the house was so I wouldn’t be bored and think about the only person in this city whose number I remember, and that’s who I’ll have to see.

He picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”

I bite my lip. He doesn’t sound like a Whatshisface. He sounds anything but.

“Hey,” I say quickly.

“Gwen?” he asks, but it’s more of a statement.

“Yeah,” I say, embarrassed.

“Long time, no hear, stranger.”

My heart skips a beat. He’s noticed that we haven’t talked. I wonder if three days seemed as long for him as it did to me. Of course not. He has a willing girlfriend to talk to. Not a girlfriend—my sister.

“Are you busy?” I say hopefully.

“Not so much… what’s up?”

I explain how I’m an idiot and lost and ask if he could pick me up. Before he says anything, he laughs at me, which is expected. But he asks me where I am, and once I tell him, he says he’ll be here to get me in thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes can’t go fast enough, especially when some creepy guy who smells like old cabbage keeps asking for my phone number and saying he’s a lot younger than he looks. I couldn’t care less how old he is, but he smells as if he’s over a hundred. I’m so glad when Will pulls up I could kiss him.

“See, there’s my boyfriend over there,” I say, jumping up from my seat in the train terminal and practically skipping to Will’s truck. When I get in, he can’t stop laughing. “Oh, my being harassed by a possible rapist who smelled like an old produce section is so amusing to you.”

But his laughter is a sound I always welcome. It has a way of making me feel better.

“You want me to go kick his ass?” he says in a coddling voice.

“Yes, that would be nice,” I say sarcastically.

He rolls down our windows and looks at Mr. Cabbage. “Hey, you,” Will says in an angry voice, which surprises me.

Mr. Cabbage flips him off. When Will opens the car door and starts to get out, my heart races, and I grab his arm.

“I was kidding!” I say, and when he flashes me a breath-stealing smile, I realize he was only kidding too.

“I wasn’t going to hurt him. Look, he’s gone.”

I look over and see that Mr. Cabbage has run clear across the street and hasn’t stopped. I swat Will with pretend anger. He winks at me, and my heart nearly stops. I grasp the chain Gia gave me and remind myself of the reason I’ve been avoiding him in the first place. When he pulls off and turns the radio down, I know he wants to talk. Talking is what we do after all, but talking has caused so many problems.

“What made you decide to go downtown?” he asks.

I shrug. A valid response with no words spoken. He glances at me expectantly, waiting for me to follow up with a verbal answer, but I don’t.

“You don’t know…?” he prods, and I shake my head. He looks a little confused. “Are you okay?”

I only nod. He doesn’t say anything for a while.

Suddenly he asks, “Have you decided take a vow of silence?”

I can’t help but crack a smile.

“You’re being kind of weird,” he says, turning the radio completely off.

I turn it back on, and he turns it back off. When I reach for it again, his fingers land on mine. I snatch mine back, trying to ignore the jolt of electricity that shoots through me.

“What, do I have rabies or something? Is this about that guy back there?” he asks.

I realize how ridiculous I must look. I can’t become completely mute around him. That’s not going to look normal at all.

“What’s up?” he asks, genuinely confused.

Of course he’s confused. He has no clue what’s going on in my head, and I’m pretty sure that aside from that brief lapse in his judgment at the carnival, my feelings are completely one-sided.

“I just don’t feel like talking,” I say, forcing the words out.

When we get to a stoplight, I feel him staring at me, probably trying to figure out what the hell my problem is. Little does he know
he’s
my problem.

“Gwen. Can you talk to me?” His usually playful voice is serious, and for some reason, the tone makes something move in me.

I suddenly feel my throat burn, and I feel as though if I do or say anything, even one word, I’ll start to cry.

“Please,” he says in a soft tone that makes my stomach flip. “Did I do something wrong?”

I want to tell him that I’m wrong, that the feeling I have for him is wrong and I hate it…so much that he’s driving me crazy.

Instead I lie. I take a deep breath, and my voice breaks as I tell him, “I just miss my dad.” My voice is so weak it sounds like a six-year-old’s. It’s a lie but partly true. I could never talk to my mom about this. She’d look at me as if I had two horns growing out of my head, but my dad, he would listen. He would give me the right advice. He wouldn’t judge.

What happens next surprises me. Will pulls over to the side of the road. He takes my hand and pulls me into a hug. He holds me close and tight, which makes me cry harder because this closeness, his touch, is so comforting. As he strokes my back, I yearn for him to touch my skin, but at the same time, my skin crawls, and I cry more. I think about when my English teacher asked us for an example of an oxymoron, and I realize I’m smack dab in the middle of one. My problem is right next to me, and my solution is being wrapped in his arms with the little silver necklace between us.

C
hris and Amanda are officially dating, or so it would appear. Something I never in a million years thought I would say. It’s been five and a half weeks since I had the bright idea to put them together, not thinking it would turn out like this, and now they’re officially an item.

“You should have seen him. He was amazing. Those other guys didn’t stand a chance,” she says in excitement before kissing Chris’s cheek as she sits on his lap at lunch, recapping the audition Aidan and I weren’t allowed to attend.

I really think his reason is a crock of shit right about now. I glance at Aidan, who has the same sneer I’m hiding behind a weak smile.

“It was stiff competition. I’m just lucky,” Chris says modestly.

“They play their first set this weekend at the Deegan’s in Sheridan. You have to come see how good he is,” she says in a sickly sweet voice, almost like the mother of a five-year-old.

“Sweeet! Chris!” Devin slaps Chris’s back, giving his approval.

“We’ll be there,” Mike and a few others at our lunch table chime in.

“What about you, Lisa? Maybe you can ride with me. That is if we can remember to not embarrass our town rock star,” Aidan says with a sarcastic snarl.

Amanda frowns, and Chris grimaces.

“You know it wasn’t like that,” Chris says, his tone apologetic.

“I don’t know what it was like. I just think it’s weird that you wouldn’t want your two best friends to come support you but you let cheerleading Barbie be front and center.” Aidan’s tone is joking, but the undercurrent is bitter, and I can’t say I don’t feel the same way.