Aftershocks (30 page)

I’d caled Nicky in a rage. She met me at the coffee shop where I complained openly to her al the while enjoying a ful fat white chocolate peppermint mocha that didn’t do much to make me feel cheerful like it usualy did. Then we ducked into our favorite boutique next door and bought ourselves presents – me out of self-pity and Nicky because she had a date with some mystery guy she wouldn’t tel me about. Al in al, it was a very depressing night.

Four days later I was stil pissed at Connor but was also pissed at myself because I knew that if he walked in the door that minute to tel me he’d picked me, al would be forgiven. I was pathetic.

“Hey Abigail,” Luke caled from the boot area, puling me out of my head

I wasn’t sure why he was al of a sudden caling me by my ful name, but I didn’t stop to question him. He was helping a customer try on boots, so it wasn’t the right time.

“Yeah, Lucas,” I said, ful-naming him right back.

“Can you grab me a pair of these in size eleven?” he asked, holding up a pair of Spyder snowboard boots.

I nodded. “You got it.”

I went to the back to fetch what he needed and heard the door chime from the backroom. I was surprised when I re-emerged to see Sophia standing by the front counter. She didn’t seem like the winter sports type, so I was wondering what she was doing there. Maybe she needed a Christmas gift for her brother, or maybe she was coming back in to torture Luke some more.

He’d confessed that they’d hooked up a few weeks earlier but then she’d been out the next night with Bobby Schaffer. Luke had pouted for two days at work before he seemed to get past it. Now I watched him warily eye Sophia before turning back to his customer.

“Hi Sophia,” I said. “I’l be with you in a minute.”

I walked the boots over to Luke and could see on his face how much he wanted to abandon his customer, so he could give Sophia a piece of his mind, but the guy had already planned to purchase close to a thousand dolars in snowboard gear, so it wasn’t like he could walk away –thankfuly. We didn’t need any more drama in the store.

I walked back over to Sophia. “What can I help you with today?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level. I wasn’t her biggest fan anymore, especialy since she’d hurt my friend.

“I just wanted to let you know about a party that I’m having tonight, and I’d realy like for you to come.”

I looked at her skepticaly. Why was she inviting me to a party?

“Realy?” I asked, out of sheer disbelief.

“Yeah, wel, it’s more of an invite from Alexis.”

That made even less sense.

“Why would she want me there?”

“She’s sorry for the way she treated you and wants to make it up to you. She wants to be friends,” Sophia said.

“Why couldn’t she just tel me that herself?” I asked, curious to find out Alexis’s endgame. My trust radar was on high-alert.

“She’s afraid you won’t talk to her.”

It was a valid concern.

“Sophia, I’m not realy feeling up to going out tonight, but thanks for the invite,” I said, not addressing her assumption and flat out lying since I had plans to go out with Nicky that night.

“It’l be fun,” she said then, and I somehow didn’t believe her. “You should come.”

“I’l think about it, okay?” I told her, more to appease her than anything else.

“Please do,” she said. “I know it would mean a lot to her if you came.”

“Ok-ay,” I said, not realy caring – or believing for that matter – how much it would mean to Alexis, the girl who stil spent a ton of energy hating me, if I went to Sophia’s party or not. Why did she have to keep cropping up in my life? Why couldn’t she just ignore me?

Sophia left before we could discuss the matter further, satisfied with my half-hearted agreement to go to her party, and I pushed her invite from my mind. Maybe Nicky would be okay with going to a movie instead.

An hour later, Luke let me go home. The store was dead, and we’d already finished our closing duties, so he was going to stay to lock up but told me I didn’t need to.

As soon as I emerged from the store, the frigid air hit me in the face. I wrapped my coat tighter around me and puled my hat down further. The cold seeped through the bottom of my motorcycle boots that were more decorative than warm. I took a deep breath of the cold air. It smeled like snow. The sky above was heavy with clouds, and I would bet the ground would be covered in white when I woke up the next morning.

As I made my way to my car, I noticed someone walking toward me looking quite underdressed for the icy air that was biting into the skin on my cheeks, as they were the only parts of my body that were exposed to the elements. I realized too late that it was Alexis, and she had spotted me. As much as I wanted to duck between the cars to avoid her, it seemed that saying helo would be inevitable. I took a deep breath and squared myself for what was to come.

I saw that she was dressed to go out underneath her puffy coat with a short black skirt and black thigh-high boots. She had overdone her eye make-up just a bit. God, what did Connor see in her?

“Hi Abby,” she said timidly, which was completely out of character for her.

“Hi,” I said, keeping my tone measured. I wasn’t sure what angle she was playing at, so I wanted to keep things neutral until I figured it out and could respond accordingly. She was not to be trusted.

“Can we talk?” she asked, surprising me a little. It seemed Sophia had relayed my reluctance to engage at whatever game Alexis was playing when I hadn’t readily agreed to go to her party.

“Sure,” I said, trying to be nice.

“Can we go inside?” she asked, gesturing to the coffee house a few doors down. Her breath was coming out in white puffs.

I nodded and folowed her to the door.

She didn’t say anything until we were settled into armchairs and sipping on lattes. When she finaly spoke, I was unprepared for what came out of her mouth.

“Abbs,” she started, and I couldn’t help but see that she was nervous. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry for treating you the way I did. I haven’t been a very good friend.”

I didn’t say anything for a few seconds.

“Um, I would say that you haven’t been a friend at al,” I finaly said. I wondered how much she was deluding herself.

“I know,” she said, and I caught a glimpse of the vulnerable Alexis trying to poke through her hard façade.

“Why did you do it?” I asked, my eyes flashing as the rage I’d felt for so long bubbled to the surface. “What did I ever do to you?”

She got quiet for a minute as she searched for how to respond to my accusations. I noticed how smal she looked sitting there in her puffy coat, her make-up much too thick. I watched tears wel up in her eyes, but they didn’t fal. She took a deep, shaky breath and composed herself.

“You changed,” she said, so quietly I had to strain to hear her.

“Excuse me?” I asked, dumbfounded as I let her words soak in. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about.

“From third grade on, it was me and you. We were so close, but then high school happened and you were friends with Wyatt and Jack, and it was like you suddenly liked them better than me.”

My memories were a little different than hers. If I recaled everything correctly, she’d started drinking like a fish and hanging out with boys at parties, disappearing into bedrooms and leaving me alone. I’d sought out guys like Wyatt and Jack because I didn’t want to hang out by myself. The guys were fun because they didn’t carry around ten pounds drama wherever they went, nor were they faling over drunk al the time. They were easier to be around.

“Do you remember that party I had over Christmas break during our sophomore year?” she asked, and I had to wrack my brain to remember. She’d had a lot of parties at her house.

“Vaguely. Why?”

“Wel, it’s not vague to me,” she said. “That was the night I had sex for the first time. Did you know that?”

I looked at her confused for a second. She’d told me about the first time she’d had sex, and it had been over Spring Break with a lifeguard she’d dated whose name I couldn’t recal.

She sighed, letting out a long slow breath. “I was dating Eric Gerber, remember him?”

I nodded. Eric had been a senior at the time and was easily the hottest guy in school. Alexis had been so smug when she’d started going out with him, and I remembered being annoyed at her arrogance. That was right around the time she’d started to get a big head and was becoming difficult to be around. If anyone had changed, it was her.

“So we were fooling around at my house the night before my party, and he was pressuring me to sleep with him. I tried to tel him I wasn’t ready, but he was persistent. He said he was tired of waiting for me to grow up, but I held firm and told him he would just have to wait. I thought I was exercising my inner bitch, but in reality he was in control al along.”

She closed her eyes, and I wondered if she was trying to remember or trying to push the memory away. I watched as her defenses came down. She looked smal and scared and so much like the Alexis I’d been friends with for so many years that it was almost hard to remember how mad at her I was. I had to remind myself that she’d hurt me and she’d hurt Wyatt – almost irreparably.

“The next night he slipped me something and took what he wanted. I was out of it, but I knew what was happening. I just couldn’t do anything about it.” The tears weling up in her eyes spiled over in that moment and her bottom lip trembled fiercely. “The worst part was that when he was done, he invited Steve Riggs in to take a turn.”

I couldn’t help myself. I reached out and puled her into my arms. There was no way I was going to let her sit there sobbing alone while she recounted being date-raped by two guys in one night. I didn’t care what she had done to me or how bad of a friend she had been, no one deserved that.

She let me hold her for a few minutes before she puled out of my arms and glared at me.

“Why didn’t you ever tel me?” I asked.

“Because you weren’t there,” she said, teeth gritted. “You left the party to go back to Jack’s house to play pool with him and Wyatt and Wes.”

“Lex, you could have told me the next day,” I said, wishing she would have opened up to me back then. I was her best friend.

She shook her head. “I was too mad at you. Wes had just told you he loved you, and you had al these great guys who were just waiting to date you and be your friend and you were so happy, and al I wanted was for someone to love me like that. I was miserable, and my own best friend didn’t even notice.”

I put my head in my hands for a minute, trying to draw back memories of that time, and I realized she was right. We’d started to drift apart around that time. I’d started dating Wes, who was a year older, a basketbal player and friends with my brother, so I’d hung out with their group a lot. At the time, Alexis never batted an eye, and I figured she didn’t care. She was always with the cheerleaders, so it wasn’t like she was inviting me to come hang out and I was turning her down.

“So, you tried to steal my boyfriends to get back at me? That’s why you hooked up with Colin after I started dating him?” She nodded.

“And you started al those rumors that I was the biggest whore in school.”

“Yeah, I did. I figured I’d give you a taste of what I was feeling.”

“You’re pathetic,” I said, al my heartfelt support for her gone in the two second in which she revealed that she’d tried to ruin my life because she was jealous.

“I know,” she said, and she looked introspective as she pondered my words.

“You weren’t realy interested in Wyatt were you?” I asked, saving the biggest question for last.

She waited for a few seconds before she shook her head shamefuly. “No, I wasn’t, but I figured if I dated your best friend – got what you couldn’t have because everyone knew you were in love with him – you would finaly know how it felt to be on the outside looking in.”

“Alexis!” I said, trying to keep my composure but failing miserably. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”

She let out a short, derisive laugh. “Oh yeah. Isn’t that why you stole him from me? I guess the joke was on you in the end since it turned out he wasn’t a big fan of girls.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head, realizing how deluded she realy was.

“I was never in love with Wyatt! I knew he was gay back then. I’d known for months. That’s why I stayed so close to him.”

“You knew?”

“Yes!” I huffed. “After everything with you, he begged me to pretend to be his girlfriend. He couldn’t take the pressure to be ‘normal’

and couldn’t come out, so he asked me to help him. And I did it, because I cared about him and knew how much he was hurting. You weren’t even a factor.”

She huffed quietly but didn’t respond to my statement. Maybe she was pondering the fact that I was right and that none of her unhappiness was my fault after al.

“You do know that you’re the reason he did what he did,” I said then, sharing the one thing I’d always held back.

She reeled back and looked at me in horror. “I didn’t make him kil himself,” she said, and I had to close my eyes and take deep breaths so I didn’t lunge at her.

“No, you’re right,” I said, slowly and calmly as I opened my eyes. “But you pushed him over the edge. You had no idea what he’d been going through and how much pain he was in. He was at a realy low point, and you told the whole school he was gay because he wouldn’t sleep with you! You outed him to everyone!”

I was starting to lose it. Al of the bottled up energy I’d suppressed for so long after I’d found out she had shared Wyatt’s secret suddenly bubbled to the surface, and I was in serious danger of going off on her.

“I didn’t know I was outing him at the time,” she said harshly. “It was joke. I didn’t know he was actualy gay. I just thought he was afraid of sex.”

God, I hated her. I truly hated her.

“His parents found out, Alexis. They told him he was an abomination and kicked him out of his house. That’s why he tried to kil himself, so yes, indirectly, you contributed whether you want to admit it or not.”