Aftershocks (3 page)

“Uh, I don’t think so,” my dad piped up before I could answer. “She’s too young to be staying in a dorm and hanging out with horny colege guys.”

My jaw dropped. “Dad!” I said, at the same time my mom said, “Adam!”

I instantly wondered if my Dad’s opinion that I shouldn’t be staying in dorm rooms with horny colege guys included the dorm room of my gay best friend. I certainly hoped not since I was dead-set on visiting Wyatt as soon as I could.

Aaron just laughed at my dad’s moratorium. “He’s got a point,” he said, stabbing a piece of chicken with his fork. “Tommy couldn’t stop asking when he could meet my hot little sister last year. He about lost it when he got to meet you at Parent’s Weekend.”

“Aaron!” my mother admonished.

Aaron laughed again. “Don’t worry, Mom. I told him she was off-limits.”

“Thank you,” I said, not appreciating being ogled by my brother’s roommate. Tommy was blond, freckled, pale and 6’5”. He wasn’t realy my type.

“But,” Aaron said, “you gotta check out coleges, and I have it on good authority that South Carolina would love to have you as a student. I can show you around the campus and introduce you to some real student life.”

Aaron had been lobbying me to go to colege at South Carolina since he’d started there. I knew he missed having family around, and part of me was tempted to go to school where it was warm, but I had my heart set on going to Michigan with Wyatt.

“He means parties. Don’t listen to him,” my mother said, winking at me.

“No, I don’t,” Aaron said. “I was talking about the sororities. Leah said she’d be happy to show Abby around campus and the Zeta house. I think she’d like it.”

Leah was Aaron’s girlfriend. They’d been dating since March, and since he’d been home for the summer he’d spent most of his time texting her, Skyping with her or sharing with me funny comments she’d posted on Facebook. He was smitten. From what I could tel, Leah was the southern girl my father feared Aaron would fal for. She was from Charleston, had long honey-blond hair and spoke in a drawling southern accent. I’d talked to her once over Aaron’s shoulder on Skype, and she was what I could only describe as sugary sweet, but I liked her instantly, especialy when she’d chastised Aaron for picking on me.

I speared a green bean with my fork. “Aaron, what makes you think I’d want to be in a sorority? Have I ever once mentioned the urge to have pilow fights in my underwear? That is totaly not my thing, and you know it.”

“Pilow fights?” my dad asked Aaron excitedly, sliding back into his eighteen year-old self for a few moments.

Aaron shook his head despondently. “Total myth,” he said, as he shoveled a scoop of mashed potatoes into his mouth.

“I’l pilow fight with you later,” my mom said to my dad, folowed by a round of groans from Aaron and me. Our parents could be so inappropriate at times.

***

Later that night, Nicky knocked on my bedroom door while I was lying on my bed reading
Lucky
and pondering the new fal looks.

She flopped down beside me and roled over onto her back.

“Ugh. Sir Hotness had his door open. He was baby-talking that girlfriend of his, and I tel you what, that is realy not sexy.”

“Eww,” I said, closing my magazine and roling onto my side to face her. “That’s my brother. You realy need to stop saying these things to me.”

Nicky kicked her flip flops off and lifted her long legs into the air, pointing her toes. “It’s not like you’re actualy related,” she said. “It’s totaly okay if you think he’s hot.”

I reeled back a little at her comment. “Um, I think my parents and the State of Massachusetts would disagree with you. Besides I’ve known Aaron since I was born. He’s my brother.”

“He’s stil hot,” Nic said, flexing and pointing her toes.

I roled my eyes. Ever since Aaron had gotten home for the summer, Nicky had been ogling him and talking about how hot he was. It was disturbing on so many levels, and although we weren’t blood-related, he was stil my family, so I didn’t want to hear how cute he was or what she’d like to do to him if given the chance.

My parents had adopted Aaron when they’d first gotten married. They’d tried for a few years to have kids before realizing they wouldn’t be able to do it the old-fashioned way, so they’d gone down the adoption route. When Aaron was almost two, my mother found out she was pregnant with me. I have never known Aaron as anything but my brother, and my parents have never treated him any differently. He is their son and they love him, even if he doesn’t look like them.

Truthfuly, the only way people know Aaron is adopted is because he’s black, and we’re white. If it weren’t for that, you’d never know. He and my dad have so many of the same mannerisms, it’s scary. We are also a tal family, so Aaron, at 6’4” fits right in.

I once asked him when we were younger if he felt weird that his family didn’t look like him, and he just shrugged and said he’d never realy thought about it. He had no memory of his birth parents. It was then that I realized that our interracial family was as normal to Aaron as it was to me. What wasn’t normal was my friend talking about how she wanted to make out with my brother. Yuck.

Chapter 3

I woke up early the next day and went for a run with Aaron. It was something I’d started doing with him a few years ago when he was in training and didn’t want to run alone. I didn’t love it, but my dad had bad knees, so he couldn’t run long distances anymore. Aaron had recruited me to be his running buddy, dragging me out of bed before school started to run a few miles every day when he’d lived at home. I hadn’t kept up with it, but as soon as he’d gotten home at the beginning of the summer, we’d picked up our morning runs.

We made the loop around our neighborhood, me puffing harder than Aaron to keep up with him and his long legs. I could feel the burn in my chest when we were a mile from home and knew I had to stop. I elbowed Aaron that I was going to walk the rest of the way and he just nodded before he kept going. I would have been offended if he wasn’t in training, but I knew he had to get his daily six miles in to stay in shape for basketbal.

As I walked, I listened to my iPod as my breathing slowly returned to normal. It was stil early on Saturday, and the neighborhood was relatively quiet. I wasn’t paying attention and suddenly had to jump back as I saw a car about to hit me as it backed out of a driveway at ful speed. The driver slammed to a stop just as the back bumper caught my leg and knocked me back on my butt.

“Hey!” I shouted up at the driver of the black Mustang whose window was closed, puling out my ear buds, ready to give him a piece of my mind. I had a thin scratch on my leg that was starting to bleed.

The driver’s side window roled down, and it was in that moment that I realized it was Connor Richmond. His was unnaturaly pale and had a panicked look on his face. At least he was showing remorse for plowing me over.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, his eyes flickering back and forth from my face to the blood seeping down my leg in thin trails. “Are you okay?”

“You need to be more careful,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest and not answering his question. “I like my life, so I’d sort of like to keep it.”

“You’re bleeding,” he said, looking down at my cut again.

“I’m fine,” I said, knowing it wasn’t that bad. The cut was about four inches long, but it wasn’t deep. It looked worse than it was. I looked up at his bumper which was inches from my face and saw that there was an older dent in it with a sharp edge. It was what had cut me. I didn’t see any rust, though, so I figured I probably wouldn’t need a tetanus shot. I’d live.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m in a hurry. I wasn’t looking. I’m sorry.”

“You should realy get that dent fixed,” I said, gesturing to his bumper, as I stood up.

Or you could try not hitting people with your car. Maybe watch where you’re going?

Connor nodded quickly a few times, but I wasn’t sure he was fuly focused in that moment. He seemed genuinely rattled, and I didn’t think it was from running into me. I wondered where he could be hurrying off to so early in the morning. Maybe he was late to meet the footbal jerks for surfing.

“I wil,” he said, and before I could respond, he roled up his window and backed out of the driveway at a much slower speed but took off like a shot as soon as he was on the straightaway. I just shook my head as he drove off, thinking he was probably as big of a jerk as Rich and Cameron were. It was no wonder they were friends.

***

A few hours later, after I’d showered and dressed in skinny jeans, to hide the ugly cut on my leg from where Connor had hit me, a navy tank top and flip-flops, I headed out to my car – my beloved gunmetal Audi A4 I’d gotten for my sixteenth birthday. I was picking Nicky up at her house so we could go back-to-school shopping. She’d gotten her car taken away the month before after getting her second speeding ticket of the summer. Her parents hadn’t given any indication as to when she might get it, so she’d taken to bumming rides with me or our friend Luke whenever she could.

As I puled into the driveway of her house, I could see her standing on the front porch wearing a light pink tank top, white shorts and high pink wedges that showed off her tan, toned, voleybal player legs. As soon as she saw my car, she bounded down the steps and ran over to me.

“I have news!” she nearly shouted as she climbed into my car, angling herself so she was facing me, the eagerness to tel me her news radiating off of her.

Nicky had gone to a party at Kelen Thomas’s house the night before, so I assumed she had gossip to share. She’d tried to talk me into going with her, but I’d used my family as an excuse. Wyatt and I had sort of ducked out of the party scene the year before after everything had happened, and we hadn’t ever gotten back into it. Alexis was pure evil, and I hated running into her, or anyone who thought she walked on water, so avoiding places she and her friends would be was high on my list. I realy only went to parties when I knew she wouldn’t be there because the person hosting was too far down on the social scale for Alexis and her folowers to deem the party worthy.

Luckily the night before was one of Aaron’s last ones at home, so I’d had an out. I told Nicky I wanted to stay in for family game night which she’d laughed at, but I didn’t realy care. Alexis and Kelen Thomas went back years, so I knew she would be at the party.

“What’s your news?” I asked, as I backed out of her driveway and headed toward the mal.

Her face lit up in anticipation, so I knew it was good. “Someone likes you,” she half said, half sang.

My mind immediately flitted to Connor Richmond, even though I’d decided a few hours earlier that he was a jerk. Somewhere in the back of my mind, after watching him al summer, I’d developed a bit of a crush on him. It was sily, and I knew there was no way he liked me since he didn’t even know who I was, but at least I could pretend.

I turned to face her for a second before shifting my eyes back to the road. She was glowing with excitement, and I knew she was loving the drama of the situation.

She took a deep breath. “So last night I got a little drunk and sort of hooked up with Tyler Daniels,” she said, then paused, as if waiting for my response.

I wondered if she would ever learn that hooking up with a guy while drunk was not the way to get a boyfriend which was what I knew she realy wanted. Tyler Daniels was friends with the footbal jerks and was notorious for breaking hearts. He was blond, tan, built and absolutely gorgeous, and was nothing but a mistake to anyone who deemed him worthy of a hook-up. He was a huge player. I’d seriously thought Nicky had learned her lesson from her bad judgment with Rich who wasn’t even that good looking – he sort of looked like a pug –

but thought he was hot, so he essentialy lived by the same asshole principles of treating women like shit. Apparently Nicky hadn’t learned a thing.

“Why would you hook up with him?” I asked, unable to hide the distain from my voice.

“Because he’s gorgeous,” she said, and I could tel she was refraining from adding the ‘duh’ at the end of her response.

I roled my eyes as I merged onto the interstate, putting my foot down on the gas so I could slide into high-speed traffic.

“He told me I was pretty, Abbs,” she said, pouting slightly as she crossed her arms in front of her chest. I had a feeling she was finaly settling back down to earth and knew that Tyler would never cal her. Her shoulders sunk. “He’s not going to cal, is he?”

“Did you sleep with him?” I asked, praying she hadn’t made that mistake. If she did, it would be al over school, but worse than that, I’d probably end up having to take her to the free clinic the next week because a guy like Tyler Daniels who’d slept with half the school was bound to be carrying around at least one venereal disease.

Nicky shook her head violently. “No way!” she said vehemently, but then she faltered slightly. “Almost, but no, I wasn’t that drunk.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Do you think he’l cal me?” she asked again. “He put my number in his phone.”

I looked over at her, as she looked back at me expectantly wanting me to affirm her optimism. “He’s an idiot if he doesn’t cal you, Nic,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t cal, and we would have to spend the first two weeks of school avoiding running into him in the hals until she got over him.

Nicky sighed and shook her head. “Anyway,” she said, shaking off her emotion over realizing she’d made another mistake in the boy department. “So, guess who likes you.”

“I’m guessing it’s not Tyler Daniels,” I said, sarcasticaly, and she mocked laughed back at me.

“No, not Tyler, but close,” she said, her eyes shining with the secret she was keeping, and my stomach jumped a little as I thought that maybe it
was
Connor. If he was friends with Rich and Cameron, he was friends with Tyler.

“Who?” I asked, trying to mask the mounting anticipation about finding out if the guy who tried to run me over that morning might like me. Yeah, it was a little twisted, I know.