Aftershocks (11 page)

In response, Connor grabbed my hand and squeezed it for a few beats before he spun me around, puled me back against his back and started tickling me. I made every attempt to squirm out of his grasp, but he had me in an iron-grip.

He finaly stopped, but didn’t release me right away. “Gotcha,” he whispered in my ear, his breath tickling my skin.

“Jerk,” I said, playfuly as I spun out of his grip. He just grinned down at me and shook his head before taking my hand.

He kept ahold of it as we fought our way through the crowd to the parking lot, but I told myself it was just so we wouldn’t get separated. It didn’t mean anything more.

“So, we’re hanging out again,” I said, as he started the car. “You have to tel me something else about you.”

Connor looked quizzicaly at me. “I already told you something today. You have to wait until tomorrow,” he chastised.

I shook my head. “Nope, it’s each time we hang out. By leaving, you voided your answer from earlier. Now you have to share something.”

He half-laughed at me. “Okay, I’l share, but for the record, I think you’re changing the rules on me.”

I play punched him in the arm. “I just want to know more about you. You’re like a closed book.”

I had changed the rules, but ever since my mom had revealed what she knew about him, I was dying to know the ful story.

“I just don’t let many people in,” he said, turning to look at me for a few seconds, a deeper meaning in his eyes that I wished I could read.

“Do you want to let me in?” I asked, praying that I hadn’t freaked him out with my question. I had to remind myself again that even though I felt like I’d known him forever, we realy didn’t know each other that wel. Maybe I was being too presumptuous.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “But I need to do it in my own time, okay?”

I nodded, suddenly realizing he was wiling to let me into his world, and I knew there was absolutely no place else I’d rather be.

“Okay,” he said, bracing himself. “You should know that I hate broccoli,” he said, and I just laughed.

Normaly, I would have told him that reveal sucked, but for some reason I knew I shouldn’t push him. I knew without knowing that he had some skeletons in his closet. I was afraid if I tried to pul them out too fast, they’d al fal on top of us and end up hurting our friendship.

I’d let him show me in his own time.

“Okay, duly noted. I’l never feed you broccoli.”

“Your turn,” he said, turning to me.

“No way. You found out my family is super-diverse. That counts.”

“Fine,” he said. “Technicaly you didn’t tel me that, but I’l let you have a pass this time. Tomorrow you have to tel me something real.”

“Fine,” I said, echoing him and roling my eyes for his benefit, although I was secretly thriled that I’d be seeing him the next day.

“You realy have a black adopted brother and a gay step-brother.”

He just blurted it out, and I had to laugh. I hadn’t expected such a blunt statement from him.

“What?” Connor asked, and I could tel he was realizing how his comment had sounded. “Shit, now I sound like a racist again.

Dammit!”

His jaw was tense as he shook his head from side to side slowly, visibly aggravated with himself. I rested my hand on his. It gripped the gear shift so tightly his knuckles were turning white. He wasn’t shifting, so I prized his hand free and took it in mine.

Connor looked over at me and grimaced. “I suck. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t suck, Connor. It’s fine – realy. I get questions al the time about my family. We’re actualy quite normal, but if you have any questions, please ask. I’ve heard them al.”

Connor took his eyes off the road again to glance over at me, but he didn’t say anything. I could tel he wanted to but held back. A part of me was glad. I didn’t want to tel him about Wyatt just yet.

“Did you realy have fun at the game?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah, I did,” I said, noticing he hadn’t let go of my hand. “I have to confess, I stil didn’t know what was going on half the time, but it was fun.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I figured. We can work on the knowledge part. That’s easy.” We were silent for a few minutes before he asked,

“You’re sure you won’t consider coming out tonight? It’l be fun, but more fun if you’re there.”

Even though I’d turned him down half a dozen times already, I figured this was his last-ditch effort to convince me. I was tempted, but I didn’t want to third wheel with him and psycho-bitch. I would spend time with Connor when it was just the two of us.

“I’m definitely good with staying in,” I said with assurance in my voice.

“Okay, wel, we’l miss you,” he said, letting my hand go so he could downshift.

His comment made my stomach flip. Even though he’d said ‘we’l miss you’, I hoped what he realy meant was
he
would miss me.

Before I knew it, we were in front of my house and Connor had the car in neutral. I looked over at him, not knowing how to proceed.

Should I hug him? Would that be too much? I felt like I was at the end of a first date. Luckily I didn’t have a chance to over think it longer than a few seconds.

Connor reached over and hugged me tightly. “I had fun, Abby.”

“Me too. Thanks for talking me into going.”

“You sure you’re okay staying home tonight?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. Go have fun with your girlfriend,” I said, half to remind myself that he had a girlfriend and half to remind him, since sometimes it felt like he needed to be reminded.

Chapter
9

The next day I was lounging on my bed reading. I’d just gotten to a good part when my cel phone rang. I looked down at the caler ID, but it came up as a number I didn’t have programmed into my phone.

“Helo?” I said, sitting up so I could talk and simultaneously hoping it wasn’t a telemarketer.

“Helo Abby,” came the voice I’d hoped never to hear on the other end of my phone again.

“Hey Alexis.” I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice. I wasn’t quite sure why she was caling me, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a social cal.

“Did you have fun with my boyfriend last night?” she asked icily.

“I sure did,” I said, adding a little exuberance for emphasis. I shouldn’t have wanted to get her riled up, but if she caled me to tel me off me for going out with Connor, she deserved a little of my snark. “We had
a lot
of fun.”

“Yeah?” she asked, and I could tel she was baiting me. “Wel, that’s super, but I can assure you that he’s with me. He’s not interested in you, and you need to know that.”

God, she was insecure about her relationship. The fact that she felt the need to cal me up and berate me made her just a little sad.

“Ok-ay,” I said, dragging out the word. “For the record, we’re just friends.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Your track record speaks for itself.”

I sucked in a deep breath. “For the ninetieth time, I didn’t steal Wyatt from you – or anyone else,” I said, through clenched teeth.

“Yes, you did,” she said, her voice rising, and I imagined her stomping her foot like she had outside the party where our epic fight had taken place in front of most of the junior class the year before.

Ironicaly, it was the last hour of normalcy I had before everything went to shit. At the time, proving that Wyatt had acted on his own accord when he’d asked me to be his girlfriend after breaking up with Alexis had been the most important thing in the world, but then everything came crashing down around me, and I wished I’d been someplace other than that backyard when it had counted most.

What I didn’t tel her was that Wyatt had come to me out of desperation, begging me to pretend to be his girlfriend for the rest of the school year. I wasn’t actualy dating him. It was al for show. But I didn’t tel her that. It was our secret, and I cared about keeping my promise to Wyatt more than I cared about Alexis’s battered ego. I’d known he was close to his breaking point when he’d come to me, so I was doing everything in my power to protect him.

After a summer spent attempting to see if he could lead a double life of being gay on the sly, Wyatt had realized it would be more difficult than he thought sneaking around behind the backs of his parents and friends, always fearful that he’d get caught. Then he’d gotten beaten up outside of a gay club downtown where he’d gone to meet a guy he’d been talking to online. He’d ended up in the hospital with broken ribs, cuts, bruises and a completely deflated spirit.

As I’d sat on the edge of his bed the day he’d gotten home from the hospital, staring at his stil puffy, black and blue face, I saw how much pain he was in. It was then that he told me he couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t understand him at first. He was gay. It wasn’t like he could wish it away. It was who he was, but he had this crazy notion that he could train himself to be straight.

He thought if he started dating girls, over time he would learn to like them. It was al I could do to keep the look of utter disbelief off my face, but he seemed so determined that it would work that I didn’t say anything in protest. Had his upper lip not been cut and swolen I probably would have kissed him right then to show him just how wrong he was, but I didn’t want to hurt him. He would know. As soon as he kissed a girl and realized it didn’t do anything for him, he would know.

Of course I assumed he’d start slow – maybe go on a date with a nice girl and kiss her at the end of the night. But no, Wyatt had to jump into the deep end with Alexis at a party one night, lose his virginity and hate every minute of it. Then he proceeded to date her for almost a month. I knew it was an epic mistake at the time, but of course he didn’t listen to me.

“Fine, I stole Wyatt from you. Whatever,” I said to Alexis, not wanting to argue a very old point any longer. I was ready to be done with this conversation since I knew she was smiling triumphantly on the other end of the phone.

“Just do me a favor and don’t repeat history, ‘kay? Connor’s mine.”

I gritted my teeth. “Fine.”

“You missed a great party last night,” Alexis said, changing her tone. “We had so much fun.”

“Great,” I deadpanned. I had no desire to hear about the party from her. I wasn’t exactly sure why she was stil talking to me. We weren’t friends and we hadn’t been for a very long time.

For years, she was one of my best friends, but things had changed sometime our sophomore year, and we’d never gotten back on track. It was the year she became a varsity cheerleader and spent most of her time with her cheerleader friends. Since I had no desire to associate with those girls, I’d found my own crowd. Alexis started to get irritated with me that I wouldn’t folow her around and got upset with when I made plans for Friday or Saturday night that weren’t in line with what she was doing. We fought regularly over that year as our relationship slowly deteriorated.

By the time we found ourselves fighting over Wyatt, our friendship was a distant memory. She’d done too much to hurt me that by that point.

“Yeah, the party was great,” she said. “Especialy when Connor and I went upstairs to the guest room.”

She let her statement linger in the air for a few seconds in an effort to realy let it sink in.

“He’s amazing,” she finaly breathed out, sighing for emphasis, and I fought the urge to vomit in my mouth.

“You had sex,” I said in my most disinterested tone. “Awesome.”

“You’re just jealous,” she said, and then proceeded to elaborate on her accusation. “If you knew how amazing sex is with Connor – or with anyone for that matter – you’d be even more jealous.”

I bit down hard on my tongue, forcing myself to not share with her what I’d done with Jack. She didn’t get to know that.

“Oh, so you admit that I have limited experience,” I said, taking a different route.

“Duh. You’re like the freaking Virgin Mary.”

God, she was vapid.

“So why did you spread al those rumors last year that I was a giant slut and slept with seven guys over the summer, not to mention the supposed threesome, the half-naked show I put on at a Northeastern frat party and my brief foray into lesbianism.” I ticked the list off on my fingers for her. “Did you think I wouldn’t know it was you who spread those lies?”

Alexis just huffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe you’re not as pure as I assumed you were. Come to think of it, I did hear some of those things. I guess I was just giving you the benefit of the doubt because we’d been friends for so long, but maybe you are a giant slut after al.”

Her voice was dripping in sarcasm, and I wanted to punch her through the phone. When the doorbel rang a few seconds later, I realized I’d never been so relieved to have to get up to answer it.

“Hey, Lex,” I said, my tone al sugar. “I realy have to go. Someone’s at the door. Have a great day.”

I hung up before she could respond. I should never have let her pander on like that for so long. It just made her think she had a hold over me when she didn’t. The fact that what she said got to me irritated me to no end.

I walked downstairs and looked through the peephole. It was Connor and slowly my anger and angst melted away. I opened the door with a flourish.

“Hey!” he said, smiling widely.

“Hi!” I said, never so happy to see him. It was realy too bad I didn’t have a video phone, or I would have caled Alexis back to show her just who had shown up at my door.

Connor stepped into the front hal and gave me a hug, puling me close. As I hugged him back I fought the urge to say, ‘so, your girlfriend is psycho’. He probably wouldn’t have responded wel to that, so I bit my tongue.

“What’s up?” I asked instead.

“I just wanted to see what you were up to today. I thought we could continue your education this afternoon. You up for it?”

“That depends. Are you going to make me do something physical, because I’m realy sore from playing footbal yesterday.”

I had woken up that morning, roled over and felt pain throughout my whole body. I had apparently used muscles I didn’t know I had.