Knockout (5 page)

“Ughhhhhhhh,” I groaned, sitting up. “What do you want?”

“He said he loves me.”

My eyes shot open. Laney was sitting on the side of my bed illuminated by the moonlight. Her eyes were bright and excited, her face flushed. Her lips full. Swollen.

“Seriously?”

She nodded, smiling. “Yeah. He said he loves me, Jenna.”

I didn’t get too excited. For one, I’d heard him say that to a burrito before. A couple of times actually. Once to a Danish. And two, it made my heart hurt though I didn’t really know why. I was fourteen and feeling like I was
finally closing that age gap between Kellen and I but time is a bitch and she doesn’t work like that. He’d just turned eighteen that month, widening the gap yet again. This, he and Laney being in love, made that gap feel even bigger.

They had been dating casually for almost four months and in that time I had carefully ignored their relationship. Dad was hoping it was a simple summer fling, just two kids having some laughs before Kellen left for college, but mom and I knew better. I
was in denial but she had her eyes wide open. Laney was ridiculously into Kellen and he couldn’t look away from her. I wasn’t really surprised that he’d said he loved her. I’d seen him struggle to keep his hands off her when my parents were around. My dad had several times had to cough pointedly at him when he was caught staring beside the pool. Laney was a knockout, there was no denying it, and even Kellen with all his confidence and cool wasn’t immune to it. She didn’t make it easy for him either. My sister was a bit of a tease.

“Did you say it back?” I asked.

Laney nodded enthusiastically. “Of course I did! Well, actually I said it first and he said it back, but he still said it.” She flopped back dramatically onto my mattress. “Oh my God, the girls are going to die! I can’t wait to tell them.”

Of course. Laney had hung the fact that she’d landed Kellen over the head of every girl in her very large clique all summer. This was her crowning moment. Her coup de gras. The moment she’d put them all out of their longing, lusting, conniving misery and claim Kellen fully and forever as hers. It didn’t matter that he was already graduated and gone from their school. He was a legend that would live on in their minds forever.

I slipped back down under my comforter and kicked at my sister’s dead weight.

“Then go text them all about it and let me sleep.”

She slapped at my feet, asking angrily, “Aren’t you happy for me?”

I sighed. “I am.” And I was. Sort of. “But I’m also tired and there’s not much else to say is there? You said you loved him, he said it back. That’s awesome.”

“It is. Afterward we made out for an hour in dad’s car. He’d be so pissed! Did I tell you he’s getting a motorcycle?”

“Dad is?”

“No, stupid, Kellen is.”

“That suits him.”

“I guess. I’m hoping he gets one of those really hot street bikes. Like a Ducati or something. Ellie’s brother has one and it is so sexy. I’ll take a picture of it and send it to him the next time I’m over there.”

“Is that the kind he wants to get?” I asked,
dubiously.

I couldn’t see him on a small sport bike. He was too much for that. Too big, too bold. Classic somehow. I saw him on an old Harley, leaned back with his arms stretched out to the tall handlebars. Not crouched down on a gleaming crotch rocket.

“No, he wants something used,” Laney said, sounding annoyed. “Something big and ugly.”

“Mom will flip.”

“Right? She’ll hate it. I guess he’s talked to dad about it. He wanted to find out what insurance and everything would be. I think he just doesn’t have the money for a Ducati but dad would totally help him buy it if he’d let him.”

“But he won’t.”

“No,” she admitted. There was that annoyed tone again. “He is so weird about money.”

“He’s weird about taking money. And I don’t think he’s weird about it, Lane. I think he just doesn’t like charity.”

“But it wouldn’t be charity! He never lets mom and dad give him anything, not even for Christmas or birthdays. No one even knows exactly when his birthday is! It’s so weird.”

I knew. August 8
th
. But I’d never tell.

“It’s just how Kellen is. He’s proud.”

“He’s stubborn.”

I grinned against my pillow. “Yeah, he is.”

“At least I know if he’s getting a bike he won’t be having sex with college girls in his car the way we just did in dad’s.”

I sat up sharply. “I thought you said you made out in dad’s car.”

She grinned slyly at me. “Did I? Well that’s what I meant then.”

“Laney, have you had sex with him?”

She laughed hard, rolling up into a sitting position. “Of course I have! Have you seen him? But we haven’t done it since he turned eighteen. He keeps telling me to slow down because he’s eighteen and I’m only sixteen and it’s all illegal and shit, but I want him so bad! Jenna, sex with him is soooo good. You have no idea.”

No, I absolutely did not.

“But you haven’t in a while?” I asked even though I really didn’t want to know. So why did I have to ask?

“No. We do plenty of other stuff when I wear him down, though. The things that guy can do with his fingers. And his tongue! Fuck!”

I wanted her skank ass off my bed that very second.

I didn’t respond to her, mostly because it was too much information. I wasn’t shocked but I was mad for some reason. Not even really jealous, just mad.

Initially, I had been closer with Kellen than Laney was. She liked that he was at the house and we knew him because he was a big deal at her school, blah blah blah, but it was me that he spent time tutoring every day. Me that he sat next to on the floor and joked with, talked with. He looked at my drawings and offered encouragement. I went to his boxing matches and shouted his name. I felt free with him. Like he saw me and knew me and he liked it all. I wasn’t used to that. I was used to being shoehorned into a mold, a dye my sister had cast and my mom was so excited about. One she demanded for both of us.

When Kellen and Laney started dating I got a little territorial about him, feeling like he was my friend and she was going to steal him, but Kellen never bailed on me. He never treated me like I was nothing but a student or Laney’s little sister. I was always Jenna to him. I was his Nonpareil.

I was worried with him going away to college that we’d lose that closeness. I worried that friendship with a fourteen year old Freshman in high school wouldn’t fit into his new college life. I was scared to lose him. Knowing he was so intimate with Laney was terrifying to me. They were working on a level I couldn’t operate at and I didn’t know what that meant for him and I. For me and my best friend. He was in love with her now and she was going to take him from me completely and the thought left me cold.

And angry.

“Are you done bragging now?” I asked sharply. “Can I go back to sleep?”

Laney frowned. “What’s your problem?”

“You woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me dirty stories, that’s my problem.”

“I thought you’d be excited for me!”

“I am but I’m also tired! Tell me all about it in the morning but let me go back to sleep now!”

“Whatever,” Laney snarled, angrily jumping off my bed and heading for the door. “I’ll remember what a bitch you were just now when you come running to me to talk about the first time you’re in love. Oh wait, that will never
happen because you’re a weird loner freak with no friends!”

She slammed my door when she left.

A few days later I was awakened in the night again. This time it was the sound of a car coming into the driveway. A door opened and closed. Soft shouts. A hesitant knock on the front door.

I glanced at the clock. It was 3am.

I recognized my dad’s footsteps hurrying down the hall, heading toward the stairs. I slipped out of bed silently and crept toward my door. After he’d passed by, I slowly opened it and snuck out onto the dark balcony as he headed down the stairs. I knew he couldn’t see me there, not without the chandelier in the foyer turned on and he wouldn’t risk it. Not with mom and Laney still soundly asleep.

He looked through the glass on the side of the door to see who it was then quickly opened it.

“Kellen,” he said, sounding startled, “are you alright? What’s happened?”

I couldn’t understand Kellen’s words but I could read his tone. It was low and dark. Dead.

“No, of course. Come inside,” dad told him. He stepped aside to let Kellen in but then he paused, listening to Kellen’s low voice again. “That’s alright. Get inside while I grab some money from Karen’s purse in the kitchen.”

Dad left the door open as he headed for the kitchen. Kellen didn’t come inside. I could see his lower half through the doorway. Only his motionless legs and feet illuminated by the porch light. Old tennis shoes and holey jeans.

Dad came back with money in his hand. He went outside to pay whoever was waiting in the driveway. I didn’t hear anything for a long time. Then there was the sound of tires on the drive again. This time they were leaving. Kellen’s feet still hadn’t moved.

“Inside,” dad said sternly. He came back into view. His naked feet were standing beside Kellen’s. Waiting. “Let’s go. Now.”

Finally Kellen moved. He stepped into the house, his body coming into view through the doorway but leaking from sight in the shadows. I could see his outline. He was moving stiffly, almost hesitantly. It was something I’d never seen him do before. Dad came in behind him, firmly shutting the door and locking it.

“I’m sorry about the cab,” Kellen said. His voice was off. Strange. “I didn’t know what else to do. The buses are running but I couldn’t sit still. I—“

“It’s alright. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

“No, I will pay you back,” Kellen insisted, his voice rising. “I have the money. Just not on me.”

“Hey,” dad said softly, stepping in front of him, catching his eye. “I know you’re good for it. Let’s not worry about it right now, alright?”

I saw Kellen nod.

“I’m sorry I came here,” he said sounding exhausted. His voice was growing quiet again. “I didn’t want to wake any of you but I—I didn’t know where else to go.”

“This is where you go, Kellen. Always. This house is where you go, do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir,” he whispered.

“Now, how bad is your eye? Do we need to go get you stitches?”

Kellen shook his head. “I don’t know. I haven’t looked at it. He started laying into me and I tried to walk out but he kept getting in my way. He was telling me to hit him. He was begging me to but I kept thinking about what you said. I kept thinking that I’m almost out. I’m almost free and clear and my own man but he just kept at me and I wanted to hit him so bad, just to get him to shut up. Finally, he got tired of waiting and he started punching me.”

“What was he saying to you?”

“He told me I’m no good. That I’m playing house with a rich girl but she’s slumming and she’ll drop me when she gets bored. He said I’m trotting off to some big college thinking I’m hot shit but that I’ll fall flat on my face the second I get there. He said I’m a poor bastard child of an Irish immigrant whore and that’s all I’ll ever be.”

“That son of a bitch,” dad muttered. “And you didn’t hit him after that? Kellen, I’m proud of you.”

“I was so close. I’m still shaking from it. I feel like I need to hit something to get it out but if I do, if I get arrested again, I’ll lose everything.”

Dad touched his shoulder gently. I saw Kellen jump.

“Not everything, son.”

“No. You couldn’t let me back in here after that. I wouldn’t want you to. I couldn’t look Karen in the eyes. I couldn’t face Jenna and Laney after that. What would they think? I’d be everything he said I am. Shit,” he groaned, running his hands through his hair. “Maybe I already am.”

“Stop it,” dad snapped. “You know who you are. Don’t ever let anyone tell you, because they don’t know. No one knows but you. Look me in the eyes, Kellen, and tell me that you’re nothing. When you’re in school making better grades than half the rich brats there, are you nothing? When you’re pulling in acceptance letters from colleges across the country willing to practically pay you to go there, are you nothing? When you’re in the ring, what are you then?”

Kellen dropped his hands to his sides. They were still clenched tight.

“I’m a man,” he said roughly.

“Damn straight. One of the best ones I’ve ever had the privilege to know. Do you think I’d let you around my daughters if I thought any less of you?”

“No.”

“No. Don’t listen to that man anymore. He’s lashing out because he’s jealous and scared. His life is going nowhere because he never tried. You’ve never stopped trying, Kellen, and you never will.”