Between Now & Never (19 page)

I
return to the living room to find Julianna’s eyes still closed, her head resting back against the couch. I hold out the water bottle and sit. “Here’s your water.”

No response. I grab a coaster and set the perspiring bottle down, my eyes glued to Julianna. Still nothing.

“Jules?” I ask.

Her lips part, her jaw inching down. She’s totally asleep.

I smile.

I start coloring again, glancing up every few minutes to check on her. Her head has tilted to the side, like at any moment it’s going to fall the rest of the way and jar her awake.

I scoot closer. “Jules?” I whisper. Nothing. “Julianna?” I ask.

If she wakes up now and finds me this close, she’ll freak. Still, she looked exhausted today. I guess there’s no need for her to wake up yet. If only I could slip a pillow between her head and her shoulder. Or better yet . . .

I close the distance between us, leaning up against the couch. I’m almost finished with my project when her head slides the last few inches and rests against my arm.

Her head is on fire.

I toss my project onto the coffee table and look down at her head of dark hair resting on me. Slowly, I inch my cheek down to touch her forehead like my mom always does when I’m sick. Yep, she’s definitely got a fever.

Just like Jimmy.

I don’t let myself think about that.

We sit like this for a while, long enough for me to think back on the tears in Julianna’s eyes on our drive over. She can pretend to be strong all she wants; I know better. She needs someone. Help.
Protection
.

The mall. I’m in my living room next to Julianna now and yet I can picture her across from me in that chocolate store, the lock around my memory breaking loose.

Music blares, cutting the stream of memories short. Rachel. Her room is overhead. I glance down at Julianna to find her in the same position, her chest rising and falling slowly. If that music doesn’t wake her up, nothing will.

Mom hurries into the kitchen and I hear the jingle of car keys. “Hey, Cody, I’ve got to hurry and pick up Lizzy from her dance class.”

The love seat is blocking me and Julianna from her view, so I guess she doesn’t see the cozy position we’re in.

“Don’t forget,” she says on her way out, “I’m hosting book club tonight at seven.”

Which means Dad and the rest of us need to clear out. And this living room needs to be spotless. I look at the stack of colored pencils on the floor.

The garage door slams and I freeze, sliding a glance down to Julianna. She slept through all of it. How long has she been asleep? Ten, fifteen minutes?

Dad will be home soon. Imagine how much Julianna will freak then. Would he recognize her? Probably not. I can understand why Julianna would never forget him, but my dad arrests people all the time.

I slide my arm between the couch and Julianna’s back before I think twice about it. If this wakes her up, I’ll drive her home. If not . . . well, she might as well sleep comfortably. I get my feet under me and lift her into my arms. Man, she sleeps deep. I’m about to set her on the couch, but then I look at the clock and realize it’s almost dinner time. And then book club.

I look down at Julianna’s sleeping form, curled up in my arms, and I start for the stairs instead. I navigate the staircase despite the boot, keeping her as still in my arms as possible.

My room is the farthest from Rachel’s loud music. I nudge the door open. Carrying a girl into my bedroom and laying her down on my bed isn’t something I foresaw happening today. Especially a girl like Julianna, who hates me. At least she used to hate me.

As I lay her down and look at her sleeping form, I think back. She seems less jumpy now. In fact, sometimes she looks happy to be here. Relieved. She’s not all hard as nails like she acts either. She mentioned her mom today, something I imagine was hard. Even her blushing smile when I bought her those sunglasses is evidence. She doesn’t hate me, not anymore.

Man, I want to kiss her.

Not like this, though. Asleep. Sick. Of course not.

Still, I’m tempted to gather her up in my arms again. Run my hands through her hair. Down the side of her waist.

I back up before my imagination gets away from me.

 

“So, Julianna . . .” I say at the dinner table forty-five minutes later, “the girl who tutors me—”

“She’s purty,” Lizzy says with a mouth full of mashed potatoes. “Can I have some chocolate milk, Mom?”

“You’ve got a tutor?” Dad asks, his forehead gathering up over a confused stare. “Since when do you need a tutor?”

“He needs help in art, honey,” Mom cuts in with a light whack on his arm. “There’s no shame in that. Rachel, take out your earbuds.”

Rachel doesn’t hear. It’s almost six o’clock and Julianna still hasn’t woken up. She’s been asleep for over an hour and a half. I’ve checked on her several times, wondering if I should wake her. Each time I chicken out.

“Ryan, say something,” Mom whispers, her eyes shifting between Dad and Rachel.

“Rachel. Earbuds.
Out
,” Dad orders.

Rachel’s eyes snap up to meet his gaze and she yanks the earbuds out.

“Anyway,” I say, “she’s sleeping in my bed.”

Now all eyes are on me.

There’s a real possibility Julianna might walk down any minute, so I figured it was best to get this out in the open. It was either this or wake her up and sneak her out. Now, with everyone staring at me and Lizzy’s mashed-potato-covered mouth hanging open, I wonder if that wasn’t the better option.

Dad drops his silverware and directs a firm hand toward me to emphasize whatever point he’s about to make. “Son, I know we’ve discussed the importance of using protection, but I figured it went without saying that bringing a girl into our home—into your bedroom! —is out of the question.”

“Ryan!” Mom snaps. “Lizzy, cover your ears. Cody, save it for marriage.”

This is the first dinner conversation Rachel has been interested in for months. She snorts back a laugh.

“It’s not like that,” I say, hardly able to hold back a laugh myself as I realize I should have phrased this better.

Dad’s lips form a stern line. “This is not a laughing matter, Cody.”

“She fell asleep, okay? While I was working on my art project.”

“Your art put someone to sleep?” Rachel says. “What a surprise.”

“Rachel, cut it out,” Dad barks.

Mom simply looks grateful to have Rachel participating at the dinner table.

“How did she end up in your bed?” Mom asks.

Lizzy’s wide eyes ping-pong from Mom to me.

“I carried her.”

“And she didn’t wake up?” Rachel asks.

“She was pretty out of it,” I say. “I think she isn’t feeling good.”

Mom looks at the clock. “Won’t her parents be worried?”

“They—” I say and pause. “Aren’t home.”

A muscle in Dad’s jaw flinches. He picks up his fork and knife and starts cutting into his meat again. An awkward silence with no end in sight falls over the table.

“Can I have my chocolate milk now?” Lizzy asks.

I’m not sure how I figured this conversation would go, but this certainly wasn’t it.

I
’m lying on a fluffy cloud, a cool breeze sweeping over me—must be a dream. A soft dream I don’t care to awaken from. My eyes open and adjust to the darkness. A sliver of light from the door behind me lights a portion of the wall I’m staring at. I wonder if Dad is up late working on projects. But wait, he’s gone. Vic, then? Actually, where am I?

The bed beneath me suddenly feels too soft. No errant coil digging into my back. And the silky smooth sheets have a thread count way above what I can afford.

I bolt upright, nerves stacking up as I realize I’m not home.

A clock near the bed says 9:10 p.m. I scramble toward the lamp beside it, fumbling to turn the little knob before I have a heart attack.
Where am I?

Light illuminates the room and I squint before my eyes rest on a framed picture on the wall. A bare-chested Cody Rush stares back at me with nothing but shorts, a backpack, and a pair of hiking shoes covering his chiseled body as he poses on beautiful Camelback Mountain.

I fly out of the bed, bottling up a scream.

Cody’s bed. Cody’s
sheets
. Oh my gosh!

It flits back to memory now: the car ride to Cody’s, the sunglasses, the broken colored pencils on the floor. And then what?
I ended up in his bed?

I remember leaning up against the couch. I was exhausted and sick. Yes, I fell asleep. But that was at, like, four fifteen in the afternoon. Now it’s nine o’clock at night?

My head feels so much better. Still, I can’t believe I did this. And where’s Cody? Thank goodness not in here.

I find a mirror on the wall, cringing at my ratty hair and smeared makeup. Escape plans quickly form in my mind. I picture myself darting down the hallway and through the front door hoping no one notices. Plan B involves me crawling out Cody’s window and running like mad. Neither option looks promising. I bite my lower lip, unable to make up my mind.

A blue comforter covers Cody’s queen-size bed, matching the oversized beanbag in the corner as well as the drapes. This room is immaculate, so different from Vic’s. A desk is situated nearby, a key chain collection decorating the wall above it, along with a poster of a pro basketball player. When I realize someone is standing in the far corner, staring at me, I let out a muffled scream for real this time and jump.

He wears a cowboy hat and boots, the whole getup. It’s only a stand-up. Of John Wayne. Guys’ rooms are so weird.

The collection of pictures on the wall snags my attention again, first the one of Cody’s impressive bare chest and then the others. One picture of a little boy holding a bat over his shoulder tugs at my heart. Jimmy.

He draws me in, won’t let me go. He was a photogenic kid, his eyes containing that clear quality that Cody’s have. They look alike but different, Jimmy’s hair curlier and blonder than Cody’s, his frame skinnier. In several of the pictures, both boys are wearing overalls and they’re standing in fields of corn or on top of bales of hay like they used to own land.

A soft rap at the door sends me running for the window.

“Hey,” his voice greets me.

I whirl around, feigning composure. Cody leans up against the door frame and casually slings his hands in the pockets of his basketball shorts, like finding me in his bedroom is completely normal.

He
carried
me in here. He had to have.

“Sleep well?” he asks.

“It’s, like,”—I gesture to the clock—“nine o’clock. And I’m in your
bedroom
.”

“Yeah, you looked pretty tired. And your head was on fire. I put some medicine on the nightstand. Here—”

He crosses the room to the nightstand, his shadow against the far wall stretching as he draws closer. Now I notice the glass of water and little bottles of medicine clustered around it.

“Headache reliever and fever reducer,” he reads from the first bottle and then picks up another. “I wasn’t sure which one you’d want, if any.”

I watch him fish through the medicine that he set out for me while I was sleeping. This is so unlike Vic or Dad, so unlike Lucas or any other guy I’ve met, and I suddenly have a very hard time swallowing.

He reaches up toward my face, his intent gaze nearly undoing me. My heart flings a stream of flutters against my rib cage and I hold my breath. His thumb brushes my cheek, that weak spot of mine that turns me to mush. And this is
Cody Rush.

“Here,” he says, his eyes shifting to follow the motion of his thumb. “You have something under your eye.”

Mascara. Makeup everywhere. Ratty hair. “I’ve got to get home.”

He takes a step back. “I’ll take you. Let me change my shirt real quick. I made Lizzy laugh when her mouth was full of chocolate milk and I learned my lesson.”

I glimpse the specks of brown covering his shirt before he whips it off in one swift motion right in front of me.

I spin away, looking anywhere else. “Ah . . .”—I motion toward the door—“I’ll just, you know—”

“Come again?” he says, pretending not to hear me. I’m well acquainted with that playful tone in his voice by now and I turn to meet his eye, instantly knowing it was a mistake. The dim lighting of the lamp casts shadows in all the right places along his defined chest and abs. His mischievous smile sneaks out to tease me right before he pulls on a new shirt.

“Come on,” he says with a wink as he heads to the hallway. “Let’s go.”

“Your parents,” I venture as I follow Cody down the stairs. “Will they be upset?”

“Nah, they’re cool with it.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

At which point I run into Special Agent Rush himself.

I gasp and step back, nearly tripping over the bottom stair I just stepped off.

“Hey, Dad,” Cody says.

Agent Rush slides a pair of glasses down the rim of his nose. His lips are unmoving, his blue eyes sliding between Cody and me as he shifts a stack of papers from one hand to the other. It’s weird to see him here like this all dressed down, puttering around his home office.

“Are you feeling any better?” Cody’s mom asks, and I turn, realizing she has company. Two other ladies stand in the living room with her, and one is Candace’s mom.

“Yes, thank you,” I say.

“There’s some leftover meat and potatoes in the fridge,” Cody’s mom tells me. “You’re probably starved. Cody, make sure she gets some.”

Candace’s mom is one of those involved moms, so I’ve seen her a lot in the past six years. She looks at me curiously, like she recognizes me as well.

When I glance back to find the same quizzical stare on Agent Rush, crippling fear threatens my already shaky knees.
He recognizes me.

“That’s right,” he declares as his face lights up with recognition. I nearly keel over. “You’re a TA in the front office, right?”

Relief washes over me, too good to be true. “Right.”

“I’ll be back,” Cody says and snags a set of keys.

My heart hasn’t slowed its frantic pace five minutes later as we drive to my house under a starlit sky in Cody’s convertible.

“Can I ask you a question?” Cody says. “About that night at the mall?”

I take a deep breath and resituate the container of meat and potatoes on my lap, finally relaxing. He shifts the gear and we pick up speed, his knuckles only inches from my knee. I picture those hands sliding under my legs and around my back, lifting me up and carrying me upstairs. To
his bedroom
.

“Jules?”

“Hm?” I reply. There’s that nickname again, like he and I—the convict’s daughter and the FBI agent’s son—are actually friends. Should I be okay with this? I slept in his bed, for heaven’s sake.

“That night,” Cody repeats as we near my neighborhood, “at the mall.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. What is it?”

“Was Vic there, too?”

“Vic?”
I ask, caught off guard.

“Yeah, or did I mention him?”

“Wait, my
brother
Vic?”

Cody hesitates. “Yes.”

“How do you know Vic?” Seriously, now that I think about it, I’ve hardly mentioned Vic.

Cody pins a questioning stare on me before focusing on the road again. He pulls into my neighborhood. “Ah, we met at a basketball tournament at the beginning of the summer.”

This piece of news is a total shock. “Like,
before
you and I met in the mall that night?”

“Yeesss,” Cody says, his brow lifting curiously. “I didn’t mention any of this to you at the mall?”

“No.”

The rich rumble of Cody’s car dies down as he pulls up beside my house and parks. He studies the dashboard. “How long were we together at the mall?”

“Well, you showed up at The Chocolate Shoppe—”

“I remember that,” he says.

“You do? I thought you said you didn’t remember anything.”

“Bits and pieces are coming back.”

“I don’t know, Cody; you just sort of showed up out of nowhere a few minutes before closing. We talked for a while and then you bought some chocolates.”

“And I didn’t tell you my name?” he asks.

“No.”

He shifts his probing gaze to me. “And you didn’t ask?”

I drop my chin and give
the look
. “Does
every
girl have to ask for your name and number?”

“But somehow we ended up in a photo booth together,” he counters. “How did
that
happen?”

“You pulled me in there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Like, total creepo-dragging-me-in type thing.”

He leans toward me, resting his elbow on the narrow console between us. “But you didn’t protest, did you?”

There’s that naughty grin of his again, the devil inside of him sneaking out to drag the confession from me.

“No,” I admit reluctantly.

“How come?”

He is so full of himself. He knows very well why. “Because, Cody, I think I could already tell . . .”

It hurts my pride to give in like this.

“You could already tell what?” he asks when I fail to finish.

He’s gorgeous, that’s why. But it was more than that, and I realize this now. “I could already tell you’re a good guy.”

There it is, the truth stripped down and in the open. This is the part of Cody that keeps my curiosity hooked, the part that makes him hard to ignore. He’s not only a handsome face and an athletic body. It would be so much easier to hate him if that was all he was. The past several weeks have shown me how very real he is, a person with pain and weaknesses and mysteries not even he knows about.

“Thanks,” he says with a genuine grin and leans back in his seat. “Vic and I were on our way to a post-tournament party that night. All I know between that and waking up in the hospital is that somehow I ended up in the mall photo booth with you.”

I’m not sure what to make of any of this, it’s so bizarre. “
You
and Vic,” I say.
“Friends?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“Kinda,” I say. Okay, big-time. I picture the rich, tidy, straightarrow Cody Rush hanging with Vic, my pothead brother who can sink ball after ball into a hoop but can’t seem to get a single gym sock in the laundry hamper.

“Here, I’ll get this,” Cody says and reaches for my backpack in the backseat.

“I can get it.”

“No, I got it,” he says, beating me to it.

I look at my house, the faded stucco and darkened windows, and admit that it was nice for once to be the one being cared for today instead of the other way around.

“Thanks,” I say and get out.

When we reach my door, Cody looks up at my darkened house. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah.”

Darkness masks his face from view. A beat of silence passes, during which time my eyes adjust enough to glimpse a grin on his face, his eyes focused on me.

This is the first time someone besides Lucas has dropped me off on my porch like this.

Cody’s gaze travels over my face, and when his eyes pause on my lips, I hold in a breath, split between want and trepidation.

“Take care, Jules,” he says, and then he’s gone.

I watch him walk back to his car. I’ll never admit it, but the nickname is growing on me.

 

“Jewel!” Vic’s voice roars downstairs.

I set the novel down on the edge of the bathtub and sit up, bubbles covering me from the neck down. It’s nearly midnight. After enjoying the meat and potatoes Cody’s mom sent home with me, I cleaned the bathroom, wired after all that sleep I got at Cody’s. Not even Vic’s filth could spoil my good mood, and when I found the long-forgotten bottle of bath bubbles in the cabinet, I decided a cool bubble bath in a clean tub with a good book was long overdue.

The front door slams, shaking the whole house, and I stand.

I wrap a towel around me, knowing that edge in Vic’s voice all too well. I recall his bloodshot eyes last night, the hole he punched in the wall. Is he high? No.
No.
He can’t be. I wish Dad had answered my call earlier today, wish I had called him again. I grip the door handle and swallow hard, fear making my heart flicker out of rhythm.

I open the door and start down the darkened hallway toward my room, peeking into Vic’s room on my way and looking back up to find the shadow of his intimidating form right in front of me.

A scream escapes me as I jump back. My shaking hand flies to the light switch on the wall. A flash of light followed by a loud pop and a return to total darkness makes me scream and flinch again. I grab the towel around me before I lose it. Great, now the lightbulb is out and we probably don’t have a replacement.

“Vic,” I say, the quiver in my voice giving my apprehension away, “what’s wrong? Where have you been?”