Finding Cinderella (10 page)

Chapter Six

I couldn’t give my parents an explanation when I went back inside to grab my keys. They were apologetic, thinking they did something wrong. They felt bad about their jokes, but I didn’t even have it in me to reassure them that they weren’t the problem. I couldn’t reassure them, because I don’t even know what the problem is.

I’ll be damned if I don’t find out tonight, though. Right now.

I put my car in park and turn off the engine, relieved to see her car parked in her driveway. I get out of my car and shut my door, then head to her front door. Before I make it to her front porch, I detour to the side of the house. I know with the shape she left my house in a few minutes ago, there’s no way she would have walked through her front door. She would have taken the window.

I reach her bedroom and the window is shut, as well as the curtains. The room is dark, but I know she’s inside. Knocking won’t do me any good, so I don’t even bother. I push the window up, then slide the curtains to the side.

“Six,” I say firmly. “I’m respecting your window rule, but it’s really hard right now. We need to talk.”

Nothing. She says nothing. I know she’s in her room, though. I can hear her crying, but barely.

“I’m going to the park. I want you to meet me there, okay?”

Several silent moments pass before she responds.

“Daniel, go home. Please.” Her voice is soft and weak, but the message behind that sad, angelic voice is like a stab to my heart. I back away from the window, then kick the side of the house out of frustration. Or anger. Or sadness or . . .
shit
. All of it.

I lean back into her window and grip the frame. “Meet me at the goddamned park, Six!” I say loudly. My voice is angry.
I’m
angry. She’s pissing me the hell off. “We don’t do this kind of thing. You don’t play these games. You owe me a fucking explanation.”

I push away from her window and turn to walk back to my car. I make it five feet before my palms are running down my face and I’m wishing I could punch the actual air in front of me. I stop walking and pause for several moments while I search for patience. It’s in here somewhere.

I walk back to her window and hate that she’s crying much louder now, even though she’s trying to stifle the sounds with her pillow.

“Listen, babe,” I say quietly. “I’m sorry I said goddamned. And fucking. I shouldn’t cuss when I’m upset, but . . .” I inhale a deep breath. “But
dammit
, Six.
Please.
Please
just meet me at the park. If you aren’t there in half an hour, I’m done. I had enough of this bullshit with Val and I’m not putting myself through it again.”

I turn to leave and make it all the way to my car this time before pausing and kicking at the ground. I walk back to her window again. “I didn’t mean it just now when I said I’d be done if you didn’t show up. If you don’t show up to the park, I’ll still want to be with you. I’ll just be sad that you didn’t show up. Because we show up, Six. It’s what we do. It’s me and you, babe.”

I wait for a reply for a lot longer than I even need to. She never responds, so I go back to my car and climb inside, then head to the park and hope she shows up.

• • •

Twenty-seven minutes pass before her car finally pulls into a parking spot.

I’m not surprised she showed up. I knew she would. Her reaction was uncharacteristic of her and I know she just needed time to let everything soak in.

I watch her as she slowly makes her way toward me, never once looking up at me. She keeps her eyes trained to the ground the whole time until she passes me. She sinks into the swing next to me and grabs the chains, then leans her head against her arm. I wait for her to speak first, knowing she more than likely won’t.

She doesn’t.

I run my hands up the chain rope until they’re even with my head, then I lean into my arm and mirror her position. We’re both staring quietly into the dark night in front of us.

“After you left that day,” I say. “I wasn’t sure of what you wanted me to do. I wondered if you thought about me too and if you had changed your mind. If maybe you wanted me to try and find you.”

I tilt my head and look at her. Her blonde hair is tucked behind her ears and her eyes are closed. Even with her eyes closed I can see the pain in her features.

“For days I wondered if that’s what you wanted me to do. I waited and waited for you to come back, but you never did. I know we both said we would be better off not knowing who the other was, but honestly, you were all I could think about. I wanted you to come back so fucking bad that I spent every single fifth period in that damn closet for the rest of the semester. The last day of school was the absolute worst. When the bell rang and I had to walk out of that closet for the last time, it absolutely sucked. So much. I felt like an idiot for being so consumed by the thought of you. When I met Val, I forced myself to go forward with her because it helped to not think about that damn closet so much.”

I twist the swing until I’m facing her. “I like you, Six. A lot. And I know this sounds all kinds of jacked up and crazy, but pretending to make love to you that day was the closest I’ve ever been to actually loving someone until now.”

I turn my swing to face forward again, then I stand up. I walk to her and kneel down on both knees in front of her, then wrap my arms around her waist. I look up at her and see the pain flash across her face when I touch her. “Six. Don’t let what happened between us become a negative thing.
Please.
Because that day was one of the best days of my life. Actually, it was
the
best day of my life.”

She lifts her head away from her arm and opens her eyes, then looks directly at me. Tears are streaming down her face. It breaks my damn heart.

“Daniel,” she whispers through her tears. She squeezes her eyes shut and turns her head like she can’t even look at me. “I got pregnant.”

Chapter Seven

Sometimes when I’m almost asleep, I’ll hear something that pulls me right back into a state of high alert. I’ll listen closely, wondering if I actually heard a sound or if it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me. I’ll hold my breath and be really still, and I’ll just listen quietly.

I’m quiet.

I’m still.

I’m holding my breath.

I’m listening.

I’m concentrating really hard while my head rests on her thighs. I don’t know when I lowered it here, but my hands are still gripping her waist. I’m trying to figure out if those words are going to hit me and completely knock my heart around like a punching bag all over again, or if it was just my imagination.

God, I hope it was my imagination.

A tear hits my cheek that just fell straight from her eyes.

“I didn’t find out until I was already in Italy,” she says, her voice coated and laced with sorrow and shame. “I’m so sorry.”

In my head, I’m counting backward. Counting the days and the weeks and the months and trying to make sense of what she’s saying, because she’s obviously not pregnant now. My mind is still churning, crunching numbers, erasing errors, crunching more numbers.

She was in Italy for almost seven months.

Seven months there, three months before she left and one month since she returned.

That’s almost a year.

My mind hurts. Everything hurts.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she says. “I couldn’t raise him by myself. I was already eighteen when I found out, so . . .”

I immediately lift up and look at her face.
“Him?”
I ask, shaking my head. “How do you know . . .” I close my eyes and blow out a steady breath, then release my grip on her waist. I stand up and turn around, then pace back and forth, absorbing everything that’s happening.

“Six,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t . . . are you saying . . .” I pause, then turn and face her. “Are you telling me you had a fucking
baby
? That
we
had a baby?”

She’s crying again. Sobbing, even. Hell, I don’t know if she ever even stopped. She nods like it’s painful to do.

“I didn’t know what to do, Daniel. I was so scared.”

She stands up and walks toward me, then places her hands delicately on my cheeks. “I didn’t know who you were, so I didn’t know how to tell you. If I knew your name or what you looked like I never would have made that decision without you.”

I bring my hands up to hers, and I pull them away from my face. “Don’t,” I say as I feel the resentment building within me. I’m trying so hard to hold it back. To understand. To let it all soak in.

I just can’t.

“How could you not tell me? It’s not like you found a puppy, Six. This is . . .” I shake my head, still not getting it. “You had a
baby
. And you didn’t even bother telling me!”

She grasps my shirt in her fists, shaking her head, wanting me to see her side of things. “Daniel, that’s what I’m trying to tell you! What was I supposed to do? Did you expect me to plaster flyers all over the school asking for information on who knocked me up in the maintenance closet?”

I look her directly in the eyes. “Yes,” I say in a low voice.

She takes a step back, so I take a step forward. “
Yes
, Six! That’s
exactly
what I would have expected you to do. You should have plastered it all over the hallways, aired it on the radio, taken an ad out in the motherfucking newspaper! You get pregnant with my kid and you worry about your
reputation
? Are you
kidding
me?”

My hand covers my cheek a second after she slaps me.

The pain in her eyes can’t even come close to matching the pain in my heart, so I don’t feel bad for saying what I said. Even when she begins to cry harder than I knew people were capable of crying.

She rushes back to her car.

I let her go.

I walk back to the swing and I sit.

Fucking life.

Motherfucking life.

Daniel: Where are you?

Holder: Just left Sky’s house. Almost home. What’s up?

Daniel: I’ll be there in five.

Holder: Everything okay?

Daniel: Nope.

Five minutes later Holder is standing on his curb waiting for me. I pull onto the side of the street and he opens the passenger door, then climbs inside. I put my car in park and prop my foot on the dash, then look out my window.

I’m surprised at how pissed I am. I’m even surprised at how sad I am. I don’t know how to separate everything I’m feeling in order to get a grip on the core of what’s upsetting me the most. Right now I can’t tell if it’s the fact that I didn’t have a say in whatever decision she made or if it’s because she was even put into that situation to have to make that kind of decision to begin with.

I’m pissed I wasn’t there to help her. I’m pissed I was careless enough to make a girl go through something like that.

I’m sad because . . .
hell
. I’m sad that I’m so mad at her. I’m sad I have to know something this overwhelming and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it now, even if I wanted to. I’m sad because I’m sitting here in a parked car and I’m about to have a breakdown in front of my best friend and I really don’t want to do that but it’s too late.

I punch the steering wheel the second I begin to cry. I punch it several times, over and over, until the car begins to close in on me and I need to get the hell out of it. I open the door and climb out, then turn around and kick my tire. I kick it over and over until my foot starts to go numb, then I collapse against the hood onto my elbows. I press my forehead against the cold metal of the car and focus on burying this anger.

It’s not her fault.

It’s not her fault.

It’s not her fault.

When I’m finally calm enough to return to the car, Holder is sitting quietly in the passenger seat, watching me closely.

“You want to talk about it?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Nope.”

He nods. He’s probably relieved I don’t want to talk about it.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

I wrap my fingers around the steering wheel, then crank the car. “I don’t care what we do.”

“Me neither.”

I put the car in drive.

“We could go to Breckin’s house and let you get your aggression out on a video game,” he suggests.

I nod, then begin to drive toward Breckin’s house. “You better not fucking tell him I cried.”

Chapter Eight

“You look like hell,” Holder says, leaning against the locker next to mine. “Did you even sleep last night?”

I shake my head. Of course I didn’t sleep. How the hell could I have slept? I knew she wasn’t sleeping, so there’s no way in hell I could have slept.

“You gonna tell me what happened?” he asks. I shut my locker, but keep my hand on it as I look down at the floor and slowly inhale.

“No. I know I usually tell you everything, but not this, Holder.”

He taps the locker next to him a couple of times with his fist, then he pushes off of it. “Six isn’t telling Sky anything, either. Not sure what happened, but . . .” He looks at me until I make eye contact with him. “I like you with her. Get it worked out, Daniel.”

He walks away and I close my locker. I wait next to it for a few minutes more than necessary because my next class is down the hallway where Six’s locker is. I haven’t seen her since she left the park last night and I’m not sure I really want to see her. I’m not sure about anything. I have so many questions to ask her but just thinking about having to ask her any of them makes my chest hurt so bad I can’t fucking breathe.

After the final bell rings, I decide to walk to my next class. I debated staying home from school altogether, but I figured it would be worse just sitting in my room thinking about it all day. I’d rather be preoccupied for as long as I can today because I know as soon as school is out I need to confront her.

Or maybe I’m supposed to confront her right now, because as soon as I round the corner, my eyes land on her.

I come to a quiet stop and watch her. She’s the only one in the hallway right now. She’s standing still, facing her locker. I want to walk away before she sees me, but I can’t stop watching her. Her whole demeanor is heartbroken and I want so bad to rush over to her and wrap my arms around her but . . . I can’t. I want to scream at her and hug her and kiss her and blame her for every single jumbled-up emotion I’ve spent the last day trying to process.

I sigh heavily and she turns to look at me. I’m far enough away that I can’t hear her crying, but close enough I can see the tears. Neither one of us moves. We just stare. Several moments pass and I can see she’s hoping I say something to her.

I clear my throat and begin walking toward her. The closer I get, the louder her soft cry becomes. I get about five feet away, then I pause. The closer I get to her, the harder it is to breathe.

“Is he . . .” I close my eyes and pass a calming breath, then open them again and try my hardest to finish my sentence with dry eyes. “When you talked about the boy who broke your heart in Italy . . . you were referring to him, weren’t you. The baby?”

I can barely see the nod of her head when she confirms my thoughts. I squeeze my eyes shut and tilt my head back.

I didn’t know hearts could literally ache like this. It hurts so much I want to reach inside and rip it out of my chest so I’ll never feel this again.

I can’t do this. Not right here. We can’t stand in the hallway of a high school and have this discussion.

I turn around before I open my eyes so I don’t have to see the look on her face again. I walk straight to my classroom and open the door, then walk inside without looking back at her.