Love and Other Theories (27 page)

I
t’s hard to conceal suspicion, practically impossible not to let it grow and get out of hand and smother you. There’s still an hour of school left when I leave. I don’t even worry about how I’m going to cover my tracks.

I turn into Nathan’s driveway, and the second I’m out of my car he’s walking through the front door like he saw me pull up, like he was sitting by the window. His face is confused. He does look like shit. There are bags under his eyes, and he hasn’t shaved. But he’s fully dressed and his hair is damp so I know he felt well enough to shower. Something about him looks put-together. Something about him seems torn apart. Like when a rug is laid down
to cover a stain but is still really out of place in the room.

“Hi,” he says, his voice timid, hesitant. He tries for a smile as he shuts the front door.

“How are you doing?” My hands feel empty, like they should be carrying soup or Kleenex. He’s standing on his porch to greet me, but he’s waiting for me to come up to him. In the dark places of my mind, I think he met me out here to keep me from coming in.

I walk up the stairs. There’s a moment when I reach out and he reaches out, but we both stop and smile awkwardly, because if Nathan’s really sick, we shouldn’t be touching.

“I came to see how you were doing,” I say.

He nods, but I’m not sure what he’s saying yes to. “I’ll be honest,” he says. “I’ve been better.”

I nod back because I don’t know what else to do.

He’s squinting at me, chewing his lip, scratching his unshaven jaw. In the silence, that’s the only sound, the tough prickling of his whiskers against his hand.

“Have you talked to Shelby?” he asks me. His hand bobs up and down in front of me twice, waiting for my answer. It’s the gesture of a person ready to lecture. Or explain.

“Yes,” I say quietly.

Nathan lets out a sigh.

He looks caught. He clears his throat, then slides down so he’s sitting on the top step. He rests his head in
his hands. His fingers both massage at his scalp and pull at his hair. It’s the first time I think he actually might be sick.

I sit down next to him, concern creeping up on me. Why does he look like this? I’m about to ask, but he starts talking first.

“So are you okay? Are you mad? What—what do you think?” He’s rambling. But his head is still down, so I can’t look him in the eyes.

“I think . . . I wish I knew what was going on.”

At this, his head pops up. His eyes dart back and forth so quickly I can’t catch their gaze even if I try.

“Is she coming over here?” I’m so full of questions I could burst. This is the first one to claw its way out and I feel the others pushing behind it.

He doesn’t ask how I know that, or why I’m here when I’m supposed to be in AP Physics. He just nods. “You can stay if you like,” he says. “But I wouldn’t recommend it.”

A spark of anger courses through me. “Why not? Would you just tell me what’s going on? Please.”

I regret saying
please
, a begging word. But it seems to be what breaks him. He presses his balled-up hand against his lips.

“Can you come back in two hours?” he finally says.

“Why?” School will be out in a little less than an hour. It will take Shelby at least ten minutes to get to
Nathan’s. The time that follows, when he doesn’t want me here while she’s here, doesn’t make sense. None of it makes any sense.

He turns so he’s facing me. “Please.” His right hand skims past my wrist as he reaches for me, but he doesn’t grab hold. “You’re just too early. I’ll have answers, if you just . . . wait.”

“What answers? What am I waiting for?”

“Just trust me,” he says. It’s those words that drive me down the steps. But leaving is what he wants. Leaving is saying that I trust him. I want to cling to the theories right now—
I don’t need to have any confidence in him; it doesn’t matter what he’s hiding in the grand scheme of things because he’s a high school boy and whatever we have together isn’t lasting anyway
—but I’m surrounded by lies, and it feels like I’m grasping at nothing.

“Trust you with what?” I yell at him. What else am I supposed to give him? Two hours
for what
? Shelby,
for what
?

He breathes out and looks away. He shakes his head. I think if he were talking, he’d be warning me,
Don’t do this, Aubrey
, but part of me wonders if maybe he’s thinking,
Don’t make me do this
, and the way I feel isn’t what he’s concerned with at all.

When he looks at me his eyes are dreary. “We weren’t going to say anything to you unless . . .” He shakes his head.

“Unless I found out on my own?”

“No.” He’s still shaking his head, faster now. “Unless there’s actually something to tell.”

“You guys have too many secrets.”

“What secrets?” He looks genuinely baffled, and I can’t tell if it’s an act. “I promise, there’s nothing else we’re hiding—”

“Just tell me, then.” My voice is shaky and high, but I can’t help it. “I don’t think anything could be worse than
this
.” The not knowing. The assuming.

He covers half his face, a palm fitted over his mouth, fingers padding into his cheeks, and tells me in a muffled voice, “Shelby might be pregnant.”

I feel like I’m underwater, like the walls are closing in, like I’m at the part of the roller coaster that I hate, the part right before the drop, when you just keep going up and up and you crave nothing but that release of safely free-falling back to the ground. I’m aware of Nathan coming down the steps toward me, telling me that Shelby is only seven days late, so they didn’t want anyone else to know until they were sure there was something to tell.

I feel his hands on me, his fingers around my arms right above my elbows.
He’s never touched me like this before
, I think, and it occurs to me that it’s really possible now that he might never touch me like this again. I feel like I’m losing something. I’m not even sure what it is, but I feel everything slipping away from me—there’s
no controlling all the secrets Nathan and Shelby have. There’s no stopping how what they do together could affect me, or even themselves. There’s no controlling anything. Everything I want to grab onto for comfort—every theory that promises that Nathan and Shelby could be together and it wouldn’t hurt me—is dissolving right in front of me. It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever had.

It’s worse than loneliness. It’s desertion.

“Shit,” Nathan says quietly. “I just—it might be nothing, but—” The second he sees my face his lips snap closed.

It might be nothing or it might be everything.

“How . . .” is all I can say, and it barely qualifies as a word. It comes out like a croak. All I can think about is: how could this have happened when Nathan is always so careful and Shelby is a
condom advocate
, and I’ve done my part by pushing aside those horrible feelings about them being together, the razor slices that made me drink too much vodka and throw my phone across the parking lot?

Nathan runs his fingers over his lips. I remember the last time I saw him do this. At the party during the basketball tournament right before he said something to Shelby he thought he might regret. He doesn’t want to tell me how careless he was. Nathan made me feel like the reckless one once. I remember how good it felt—powerful; brave, even. I don’t have to wonder if Nathan felt like this with Shelby. I know he did.

“It might be nothing.” He repeats what must be the mantra holding him together. It does nothing to keep me from unraveling.

I want to ask what it means if she is, what happens next, but all I can see of their future has to do with Zane and Jamie, the way they control each other’s lives but aren’t really a part of them, and how it’s nearly impossible for anyone else to be in their lives either.

Nathan shakes his head, like he can read my mind and doesn’t want us to go there yet. But I don’t know how to go back. He looks stronger now that I’m falling apart. It’s true what they say about strength thriving off weakness. I wait for something to happen. I wait to throw up, to faint, to cry. But instead I scream.

“How could you do this to me?” My voice is so loud and high and helpless that I barely recognize it.

Nathan and Shelby. It was never supposed to hurt me.

I want to make it worse for him. For putting me through this. For putting me through those few weeks when he was with Shelby, and for letting the past resurface after we perfected ways to bury it. I know I could leave this entire situation and be free of it. I could be free of him, too. But it’s so clear to me in this instant: I never wanted to be free of him. And now I might not have a choice.

“I—I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I think he’ll say it forever.

I close my eyes, but I can still feel it when he moves closer to me. I remember when having Nathan so close was exhilarating. It used to be comforting, too. When I open my eyes, I stare at him, hoping that maybe I’ll be able to feel some of that again.

“It’s probably nothing,” he says, quietly this time. “I read that usually it’s just stress. That’s probably all it is. Because finals are coming up, and we’re about to graduate, and . . . I’ll call you in a few hours, after we know.”

I don’t believe in stress; I believe in living
. I wonder if Nathan remembers—I’m positive he does. But Nathan couldn’t even bring himself to come to school. He’s even been researching it; brainstorming alternatives, forming his own theories to make himself feel better. It’s already more than nothing.

“Why does she have to come
over here
?” The thought of them together in this makes my stomach turn, my vision blur. “If it might be nothing, if it might just be stress, she should just find out on her own. She doesn’t need you.”

Nathan’s quiet for a while. He licks his lips before he says, “She doesn’t want to go through this alone.”

“She said that to you?” It’s a deafening rage I’m feeling; it’s something I’ve never felt toward Shelby before.

Nathan shakes his head.

“Then why are you doing this with her? Are you afraid she’ll stop seeing you as the
good guy
?”

Something like shock passes over Nathan’s face. “That’s not why.”

“Then what the hell, Nathan? Why are you doing this to me?”

He finally yells back. “Because I care—I’m sorry—I can’t help it! She didn’t ask me to be with her when she took the test. I told her I would be. Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“It’s nice that you care about her,” I say. I’m crying, barely. It’s most obvious in my voice. Tears sting my eyes, but they don’t fall. “Because she doesn’t care about you at all.”

He takes a deep breath. His face is hard, accusing. “I don’t know about that, Aubrey. You’re supposed to care about her, too, aren’t you? And neither one of you is supposed to care about me. But obviously that’s not the case.”

“She doesn’t care!” I’m astounded that he can’t see it—that if he does, he’s choosing to ignore it. I’m the one who cares. Shelby’s the one who created the theories, all the ways to camouflage our feelings and all the reasons it was vital that we did. “She’s never cared.”

Nathan speaks before I have the chance to keep going. “Did you know she called Patrick twenty-seven times after they hooked up for the first time, left him twenty-seven voice mails?”

He waits for me to respond, but I stay completely still.

“She even went to his house in the middle of the
night, and for about a week showed up at Robert’s anytime Patrick was over there, until . . .” He shakes his head.

I can’t help it; I think of Shelby and Conrad, and that night after the tournament when she gave him something precious and he stopped giving her anything at all.

I want to tell him it’s not true. But Nathan never lies. Not even when he should.

“She told you that?”

“Of course she didn’t.” His eyes close, like he can’t even look at me. “Patrick told me.”

Patrick and Shelby. Two summers ago. Right before junior year. Right around the same time the theories were created. The first time Shelby had sex with Patrick—the first time she did it with anyone—he went back to hovering around Leila within days. When she created the theories, Shelby used this as an example of typical high school boy behavior. And it wasn’t the only example she had involving Patrick. He kissed other girls when Leila got too clingy for his taste too. And he always did this after having a fight with Leila about why he wouldn’t be her boyfriend. Shelby shook her head like it was funny and laughed, claiming all she really cared about was having lost her virginity to Patrick Smith—the hottest boy in our class, the boy she’d had a crush on since third grade. Right after, she told us the girl code that stated we weren’t supposed to hook up with boys our friends had previously hooked up with was outdated and unrealistic.
“When you live in a town this size, with a cute-guy list this small and an average dating cycle that’s shorter than a menstrual cycle, outdated girl code just doesn’t make any sense,” she said. And we agreed.
It’s all about the numbers
.

“Aubrey, please.” Nathan grabs my hand, encasing it in both of his. “It might be nothing.” He still thinks there’s a possibility that this moment can fly by us like all the other awful moments before, and we can pretend it never happened, that we never caused each other pain.