Four Years Later (2 page)

“Which I can’t believe,” Fable says, causing me to look at her. Ah hell, she’s pissed. Her green eyes—which look just like mine—are full of angry fire and her mouth is screwed up so tight, I’m afraid she’s going to spit nails. “You’ve always done so well in English. Once upon a time, you actually liked to write.”

Once upon a time, I had all the hours in the world to write. Well, not really, but I could carve out enough time to get the words down. It was therapeutic. I copied Drew at first with it. The guy used to always scribble a bunch of nonsense that made my sister look like she wanted to faint, and I wanted to do the same. Not faint or make my sister faint, but touch people with my words.

So I became a carbon copy of Drew Callahan. I played football, I wrote, I studied, I tried my best to do the right thing. I’m a little more outgoing than Drew, though. Girls are my thing. So are my friends. And beer. Oh, and weed.

All of that equals not doing the right thing, despite my intentions.

I tried to kick the drug habit, as they call it. And I did. But then Mom came back around, and now I have a smoking buddy.

That is all sorts of fucked up.

“I don’t have any time,” I say with a shrug.

“Right. Working a job you don’t even need, you little shit.” Fable hisses the last word at me, and it stings as if she’s lashed at my skin with a whip. Drew settles his hand on her arm, sending her a look that says “chill the hell out.”

So she does. He has that sort of effect on her. The two of them together are so perfect for each other it’s kind of disgusting. I miss them. I’m alone, adrift in this town I grew up in, going to school here because this is what I wanted. Independence from them.

Now I wish I’d moved with them. Gone to Stanford like they originally wanted me to. Well, like Fable wanted me to. Drew told her not to push. The more she pushes, the more I pull away.

And I did. With the Stanford thing, with the move-in-with-my-sister-and-her-husband-in-the-big-ass-mansion thing. All of it, I said no to.

I’m one stupid asshole aren’t I?

“We’ve found you a tutor,” the counselor says, pretending as if my sister’s outburst hadn’t happened. “You’re going to meet with her in an hour.”

“I have to be at work in an hour,” I start, but Fable butts in.

“No, you don’t. You’re on probation.”

“Probation from work?” I turn to her, incredulous. What the hell is she talking about?

“Until you get your shi—your
act
together, you’re not working. You need to focus. On school more than anything,” Fable says. When I open my mouth to protest, she narrows her eyes. I shut the hell up. “They’re benching you on the team, too. You need to move fast before you lose everything. I mean it.”

Shit.

The classroom is quiet and smells like old books and chalk dust, even though I bet there hasn’t been a chalkboard in here for years. We’re meeting in one of the original buildings on campus, where the air is thick with generations of students past and everything is drafty and old, broken down and historic looking.

I feel very shiny and brand new, and that’s a feeling I haven’t had in a while. I’d almost forgotten what it was like. I got my hair cut yesterday—splurged for the blow-dry treatment, too, so it falls in perfect waves just past my shoulders. Waves I don’t normally bother to make happen since my hair is boringly straight. I’m wearing a new pair of jeans and a cardigan sweater I picked up at Old Navy yesterday with the 30-percent-off coupon they emailed me. Mom would be proud of my newly found thrifty ways.

I don’t have a choice. Being frugal has become a way of life.

Now I’m waiting for the new student I’m going to tutor for the rest of the semester. It’s already October, so we don’t have much time to turn his grades around; not that I’m worried. I’m good at my job. So good, I get the tough cases, and supposedly this one is extra tough.

I’ve been a tutor since I was a freshman in college, and considering I graduated high school over a year early and I’m now a junior, that’s going on three years. I have a lot of experience. I’m not bragging when I say I’m smart. I’m what some people might call a prodigy.

More like I’m too smart for my own good.

All I know about the guy I’m going to tutor is that he’s a football player and he’s failing English. Considering I don’t pay attention to any of the sports teams at my college, I have no idea who he is beyond his name. My first instinct is that he’s a punk with a chip on his shoulder who hates the idea of being tutored by little old me.

Whatever. I don’t let it bother me. I’ll simply collect my check every two weeks and send what I can to Mom. I’ve dealt with plenty of punk athletes in the past who are resentful that they have to do schoolwork in the first place. More than one whined at me in the past, “Who cares about my grades? I just wanna play ball.”

They think they can get by on playing ball and that’s it. Doesn’t matter what ball it is, either. Football, baseball, basketball … if they’re good at it, they think they’re invincible. They believe it’ll take them so far they’ll never need anything else.

Relying on one thing and one thing only for your happiness, your expenses, your entire life, doesn’t work. Mom is living proof of that.

So am I.

Glancing at my phone, I see my new student is almost ten minutes late. I’m only giving him fifty minutes, then. I have to go to my other job after this and don’t have time to wait for him. I work some nights and weekends at a crappy little diner downtown and I don’t really like it there. The boss is an arrogant jerk and the customers are grouchy. But the tips are decent, and I need whatever dollars I can get.

We’re two broke girls, Mom and I. Dad left us with nothing.

I hate him. I sorta hate guys in general. Once, when I was almost fourteen and suffering in high school as the young kid no one liked with hardly any friends, I went through a stage where I believed I was a lesbian. I told the few friends I had, I told my parents, I told everyone who would listen to me that I liked girls. I never told them the reason why I’d decided I was a lesbian.

Sixteen-year-old Cody Curtis had stuck his tongue down my throat, his rough, inexperienced hands roaming all over me one Saturday night at a birthday party gone wild, and I almost gagged. I decided right then and there if that’s what boys do to girls, I would have no part of it. I’d rather become an ostracized lesbian than deal with guys who wanted to grab my butt and lick the roof of my mouth.

Funny thing was, no one believed me. Not my parents or my friends. They all thought it was a stage. Especially my best friend, Kari, who
knew
Cody stuck his tongue down my throat and how much I hated it.

They were right. It was a total stage that wasn’t really a stage at all. More like a front. But I’ve never been comfortable around guys. They give me even a hint of attention and I think they have ulterior motives. They want something from me I don’t want to give.

My body. My mind. My soul.

They’ll take everything, then destroy me. Walk away without a backward glance. Look at Dad. He’s done it time and again. He leaves. My mom cries. He comes back. She gives in. He decimates her, piece by piece, until she’s a broken crumble of human spirit on the ground, and then he’s gone. This time for good.

I’m the one left who has to pick up the pieces. Glue her back together and tell her she’s strong. She’s tough. She doesn’t need him. We
both
don’t need him.

But I’m lying. I think she does need him. And I need him, too, only to keep her together more than anything else. I don’t love him, not anymore. He stomped all over that love until he made me resentful.

Seeing what he does to Mom makes me really wish I’d stuck to that lesbian deal. Or maybe I should just become asexual. That would work, too. I like it here in my little world that makes sense, with school and tutoring and plans to go on to get my master’s degree. I can be whatever I want. I don’t need a man to define me. Kari’s afraid I’ll never want to graduate college because I like school too much. She thinks something’s wrong with that.

It’s hard to confess to her how scared I am of the real world.

A creak sounds, startling me out of my thoughts, and the classroom door swings open. A boy struts in—there’s no other way to describe his walk. It’s all effortless grace and smooth movement. He’s tall and broad, and with a menacing glower on his face. A face that is … holy wow, it’s beautiful.

All thoughts of returning to my so-called lesbian ways are thrown right out the window. If I’m as smart as I claim to be, I’ll go chasing after them and snatch them back up. Pretend this gorgeous boy doesn’t exist.

“You my tutor?” He stops just in front of the table that I’m sitting behind and I leap to my feet, pushing the chair back with so much force it falls to the side with a loud clatter.

My cheeks are hot, but I ignore the fallen chair as though I didn’t knock it over. I am the biggest dork on the planet. “Yeah. You’re Owen?” I wince.
Yeah.
I’m supposed to bring up his English grade and I can’t even utter a proper yes.

“Yeah.” He flicks his chin at me. It’s a firm chin and jaw that’s covered in golden stubble that doesn’t match the color of the hair on his head. That’s brown. A rich, golden brown, though, that hints he could almost be a blond if he sat in the sun long enough. “I don’t have time for this shit, though. I gotta go to work.”

Oh.
Not even a minute in and he’s blowing me off and cursing at me.
Jerk
. “You’re late.”

“I know. Told you I don’t have time.”

“I don’t think you have a choice.” Turning, I bend over and grab my chair, righting it. When I turn back to face him, his gaze quickly lifts to my face, as if he’d been checking out my butt, and I swear my cheeks are on fire.

More over the fact that I actually liked catching him most likely checking out my butt.

What is
wrong
with me?

“I really don’t need your help,” he says, his gaze locking with mine. “I’m usually pretty good at English.”

I’m at a loss for words just looking at him, which is pitiful. His eyes are green. A deep, intense green that is so beautiful, they’re almost painful to stare into. A girl could get lost in eyes like those. I bet a thousand girls before me already have. “Really?” I ask, my voice full of contempt. “Because according to your teacher, you’re failing.”

His generous mouth sets into a hard line, the lush fullness that could be considered almost feminine if he didn’t have all those harsh angles in his face to offset it disappearing in an instant. “This is such bullshit,” he mutters, running a hand through his hair, messing it up completely.

It’s a good look for him. That I’m even thinking this makes me want to punch myself. Where did my lesbian plans go? My asexual plans? Shoved aside because of a good-looking guy sauntering into a room full of attitude and doing his best to get away from me?

I’m not one of those girls. I’m smart. Boys don’t interest me and I’m okay with that. I have a protective shell that’s surrounded me for years, but I had no idea it was so thin.

He’s shattered through it with one look of his too green eyes and he doesn’t even know it. I refuse to hand over the power.

“Why don’t we sit down and go over everything,” I suggest, settling in my chair and scooting it close to the table.

He doesn’t follow my lead. Still standing above me, he’s so tall, his shoulders so broad, he’s all I can see. I tilt my head back, hating how it feels like he has the upper hand. Hating more how he looks down at me like I’m nothing. Like he could walk away right now and forget I even exist.

Which he probably could.

“Can’t we just say I come and see you every week and you get paid and we pretend everything’s fine? You turn in your little reports and I turn in my assignments, take my barely passing grade and call it good?” he asks as he reaches out and grips the back of the chair he’s standing in front of. His fingers are long; they curl around the edge of the chair so tightly his knuckles turn white. He’s tense.

Great. So am I. “Um, that would be lying. And cheating,” I say slowly, letting my words sink in.

“So? I can make this happen. I just need to catch up on my assignments, right?” He makes it sound so easy.

“You failed three tests already,” I point out, not even bothering to look at the sheet that breaks down his epic failure of English Advanced Comp. I studied it before he arrived. Memorized it, really. “You’re also taking a creative writing class and you’re close to failing that one as well.”

“I thought …” His voice trails off and he exhales, his nostrils flaring slightly. “I thought it would be easy.”

“Apparently not.” I raise a brow, proud of my calm, cool demeanor. Inside, my nerves are starting a riot in my belly.

“I’ll pay you extra,” he blurts. “I can’t … I gotta work.”

His offer shocks me, and all I can do is blink.

“Maybe …” I take a deep breath. “Maybe we could meet at another time? Is that the problem? Does this time not work for you?”

“It doesn’t. Not at all.” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to do this. No offense, but I don’t have time for this shit.”

And with that final statement, he turns on his heel and leaves.

I hate working at the diner. It’s located in the not-so-great part of downtown, next door to a bar where the college students definitely don’t hang out. But considering it’s open twenty-four hours, the last of the college bar-hoppers tend to trickle in around two thirty in the morning, starving and drunk.

I’m working until four only because I don’t have morning classes, so I can go back to my apartment and crash for a few hours. Kari, my best friend and roommate, is rarely there. She has a heavy schedule like me and she used to have a boyfriend. She stayed at his place, smoking joints and having sex all day and night with him, but then he dumped her.

I thought it was the best thing that ever could have happened to her. That guy was a loser. My friend picks the worst type of guy every single time. It’s like she prefers the bad boys. The ones who make her feel good sexually.