Most Likely to Succeed (20 page)

17

I SLEPT UNTIL NOON. AFTER
that I stayed in bed for another hour, trying to go back to sleep just to avoid thinking about the night before. The bright sun wouldn’t let me, and the deep blue sky flashed at me through the palm trees outside my window. If last night’s cool front was any indication, today would be warm—not hot—and perfect for a jog. A jog would give me time to think, exactly what I couldn’t stand. I rolled over for the millionth time.

A soft knock sounded at my door. I knew from the fact that the door opened without me giving permission that it was my mother. She sat on the edge of my bed and put her hand in my hair.

“Harper’s mom called,” she said. “We had a long talk. She’s dating Tia’s father!”

In answer I gave her a sigh.

“I guess I’m surprised enough for the two of us, then.” She rubbed my shoulders vigorously, like trying to rub the life back into me. “Sit up and let’s talk.”

Slowly I dragged myself up against the pillows, because once she decided we were having a talk, she never went away until she was done.

“Oh, honey.” She reached out to brush away the tears under my eyes.
Like you care,
I wanted to say, but that would just keep her here longer. I was all sassed out.

She smiled sympathetically at me. “Lynn actually called because she’s worried about you. Harper told her what happened last night. Lynn wanted you—and me—to know that Sawyer moved out.”

“Oh no!” I cried. “Where did he go?”

“Back to his father’s house, though he’ll still be working for Lynn in the mornings.”

“Oh.” I covered my mouth with my hand, relieved that he’d come back last night. And that he’d finally gone home.

My mother patted my leg under the covers. “You didn’t tell me he’s been having so much trouble.”

“I didn’t think that would help his case with you.”

She nodded, gazing out my window at the blue sky. “Lynn loves him.”

“A lot of people do.”

“So does Harper’s grandfather, which is saying a lot, because that man . . .” She didn’t have to finish. Everybody knew Mr. Moreau was hard to get along with. If he loved Sawyer, Sawyer was special.

“Lynn says I’ve been too hard on him,” my mother said, “and on you. After discussing it with your father, I think I was wrong to ground you, or to prevent you from dating him. But if you do have sex, you’re using a condom in addition to your IUD every time, yes?”

“Mom,”
I said with both hands splayed in front of me, “we broke up.”

“Oh.” My mother sounded sad.

I was so angry with her that I couldn’t even feel anymore. I flopped backward on the bed and closed my eyes.

“Tell me what happened,” came my mother’s voice.

“He stuck by me through a lot,” I said woodenly, “but you have been awful. There was just so much even he could stand, I guess.”

She shifted up the bed and twisted a lock of my hair to make a tighter curl when she fingered it out. “I’m confident you can solve that problem,” she said. “You are smarter, and stronger, and more of a woman than I’ve given you credit for. I’m sorry.”

I opened one eye, and then the other, to stare at her in disbelief. She concentrated on pulling out the twist and placing the curl across my temple, framing my face. Finally she met my gaze. She said again, “I’m sorry.”

My voice sounded throaty with crying as I said, “I have an appointment Monday to see a counselor at school about stress management.”

My mother raised her eyebrows. “That’s a positive step.”

“I think so too. It was Sawyer’s idea. He set it up for me.”

She nodded slowly. “Why don’t you invite him over to go out on the boat with you and your father tomorrow? He can stay for lunch.”

“Because we are not spea-king,” I enunciated. My mother didn’t quite seem to get that Sawyer and I were broken up for good.

Then she said, “You need to eat breakfast, or lunch, or whatever you want to call it. I’ll fix you anything you like. But right now, you need to hop downstairs, because Aidan is here.”

“Oh. My. God.” The last person on earth I wanted to deal with this afternoon. The thought of him made me feel like I weighed five hundred pounds and had sunk permanently into the bed. “I don’t suppose you could tell him I’m asleep. Or dead?”

My mother shook her head, as I knew she would. She’d never in my life let me avoid a confrontation.

I rolled my eyes, put on a bra under my T-shirt, and slouched down the steps and onto the front porch. I never would have appeared like this in front of Aidan before, but I honestly didn’t care what he thought of me anymore. My decision was reinforced when I saw he’d taken the swing with the comfortable cushion. I had to settle for the seat across from him. I didn’t even bother to hold my head up, just collapsed across the wicker and waited for his bullshit.

“I came to apologize,” he said.

Now I looked up at him, curious. This was one of those rare times he dropped his pompous tone and let me see the real boy he’d been hiding under all that bravado.

He really was sorry.

“I’ve been thinking hard about what I did to you last night,” he said, “and what Will said to me afterward. I really regret it.” He mumbled under his breath, “The hangover doesn’t help.”

I squinted my eyes to focus on him in the dappled shade. He
did
look a little green. I said, “I imagine not.”

“The office of the president went to my head,” Aidan said. “You’ve been telling me that, but I couldn’t hear you. We’ve been drifting apart for a while. Probably ever since we
started going out in the first place. I’ve been angry with you about that, which got rolled into my feelings about student council, and . . .” He heaved a sigh. “I hear you now.”

“Good.”

“The last time I was over here,” he said, “I got that letter of recommendation from your mom. You were mad at me for waiting to break up with you until after. The truth is, I was thinking at that point that it would be cool if I got into Columbia and you didn’t.”

“Really.” I swallowed. I’d understood he resented me. I hadn’t realized how much.

“I should have known better than to ask you for a break rather than a breakup, and to try to hold on to you at the same time I was letting you go. I don’t know where a lot of this negativity comes from. Maybe we just got together too young, and we were together too long.”

I finally sat up. “It’s not all your fault,” I said. “Lately I’ve realized I was counting you as one of my accomplishments, something to put on college applications. You know, ‘Dating the student council president, Most Likely to Succeed.’ I thought that way in ninth grade. I guess I don’t think that way anymore.”

“Well, maybe we won’t have to cross paths in college. I’m not sure I want to apply early admission to Columbia
anymore. If we get in, we’re locked in, and I’m not positive I want that to be my one and only choice.”

“Me too,” I said, seeing this for the first time. Flopping across the seat again, I asked, “Are you going to apologize to Angelica, too?”

He massaged his temple. “After last night, I think my relationship with Angelica is a lost cause. She’s not a fan of drinking.”

Or boyfriends who can’t get over their old girlfriends,
I thought. “Maybe there’s still hope,” I said cheerfully. “I overheard Tia talking with her. She was upset, which means she’s into you. I’ve never seen Angelica express an emotion before, so that’s huge.”

He nodded slowly. “I heard you and Sawyer broke up. If I caused that, I’m sorry. If you actually wanted to be with him, I mean.” He sounded doubtful.

“I did,” I said.

A silence fell between us, long and dead, while Aidan squeaked back and forth on the swing.

“Well,” I finally said, “we still have eight months of student council together. I’d like us to try to get along from now on. We’ve broken up, but that doesn’t mean the last three years didn’t happen.”

“Right.” He leaned forward in the swing, put his hand on
mine, and stroked his thumb over my palm. Maybe he was thinking about the fact that we’d been each other’s first time.

As I gazed at him, I wished again that I’d waited. My attraction to him, and my dreams of spending the rest of my life with him, seemed to belong to another girl entirely. It was hard to believe I’d ever been young enough to love him.

I drew my hand away. “I’ll see you at school Monday.”

“Yeah.” He stood, sending the swing into wild motion on its chains. “We need to start planning the student council haunted house.”

“Oh boy. Maybe somebody else could head up the committee for this one. Will. Or Sawyer.”

He coughed at my mention of Sawyer. But all he said was, “That will work. You deserve a break.” He jogged down the steps, then turned around on the sidewalk. “By the way, Kaye, you did an awesome job on the elections, and the float, and especially the dance. I didn’t want to admit it, but you were right and I was wrong.”

“Thanks,” I called.

I went back to bed.

But an hour later, I did get up and let my mother cook for me. I watched a little football with Dad. Then I spent a few hours doing something I rarely did at home: I blasted music in the backyard and worked out cheerleader
choreography for a couple of new songs the marching band was playing.

My mother didn’t say a word.

About four thirty, Harper surprised me by appearing in my driveway in my car. She had a key, but it was a real favor to bring my car over from Tia’s without me asking. Brody was right behind her in her new (to her) car. He didn’t get out to talk to me, though. He gave me a brief wave and disappeared into the back seat.

“What’s up?” I asked Harper.

“Come with us to downtown Tampa, to the marching band’s first competition of the year!” She announced this with the enthusiasm of a used-car salesman.

“Mmph. I don’t feel like seeing anybody.”

“I thought you hated being here with your mom nowadays.”

I
had
complained to Harper about this in the last few weeks. But looking back at the house, I said, “I think we’re over the worst of it.”

“Well, you’re the head cheerleader,” she said. “You’re the student council vice president. You have to support Will and Tia.” She raised her eyebrows behind her glasses. “And I have things to give you, and things to tell you.”

That did it for me. I’d almost forgotten that my time
with mischievous Harper and crazy Tia was drawing to a close. I needed to enjoy every second.

As soon as we’d set off in her car, she handed me a little satin pouch. “This is for me?” I asked.

“Yes. From Sawyer’s dad.”

“Sawyer’s
dad
. What in God’s name. Is it dangerous?” I dumped the contents of the pouch out onto my lap, then wished I’d been more careful. It was a little glass pelican, carefully handmade, colored like Sawyer’s costume with white feathers and a yellow beak and feet. This one had a tiny red heart on his chest. A red ribbon was looped through the back of the figure to turn it into a necklace.

“Sawyer brought it over,” Harper said. “His dad made it out of the blue and wanted to tell you he’s sorry about what he said, and sorry you found out.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I put the ribbon over my head and touched the cold pendant. “Sounds like he and Sawyer had a heart-to-heart.”

“They did.”

My stomach was beginning to twist. That was all I wanted to hear about Sawyer. I changed the subject. “So, your mom and Tia’s dad are officially dating?”

“Yes! Well, they’re going out on a date tonight.”

I asked carefully, “Is that okay with you?”

“I’ve always liked Mr. Cruz,” she said. “I do not want four sisters. Maybe they’ll just date for a while. And speaking of dating . . .” She glanced in the rearview mirror at Brody, who stretched across the back seat with his earbuds in, snoring softly.

“Poor thing,” she said. “He got sacked so hard last night. Did you hear it?”

I shook my head. “I saw it, though. He was airborne. It looked painful.”

“I heard it from the sidelines. It made me ill.” Then she grinned at me and whispered, “We did it last night!”

“You
did
?” I squeaked.

“Shhh! Yes. After we took you home, he started to feel really bad. My mom was still hanging out with Tia’s dad, so Brody and I went over to my house. We thought he might start to feel better if he could lie down for a while. We decided we’d better go ahead and have sex in case he died.”

“That’s . . .” I didn’t have a word for it.

“A really great excuse to do it,” she finished for me. “He couldn’t move, so I was in control. I think that’s been my problem all along.”

“You seem happy about it,” I said. Then I laughed at the understatement. She was blushing and glowing.

“I
am
happy. He’s so great.” She looked into the mirror
again and smiled at the sleeping hulk of him. “For
not
being the perfect couple, I can’t imagine it working out any more perfectly.”

She must have suddenly remembered that Sawyer and I
were
the Perfect Couple That Never Was, in name only. She gave me a guilty look and put her eyes back on the road.

The parking lot at the stadium where the band contest was being held was littered with cars and buses. Harper cruised until she found our school buses, with our band hanging out the windows. She parked nearby.

While she was still helping Brody maneuver his damaged body out of her back seat, I popped out of the car and thought I recognized the car next to us. “Quinn and Noah are here,” I mused, peering inside to see if it was really Quinn’s. I was looking for the interchangeable components of his black leather Goth look. What I saw instead was Sawyer’s madras button-down.

“Sawyer’s here.” Looking up, I recognized him before the words had escaped my mouth. In his mascot costume, he was bouncing along underneath the bus windows, high-fiving the marching band.

“Hey, pelican,” I heard Tia call, “your girlfriend’s looking for you.”

Sawyer turned and saw me.

And least, I thought he did. I still wasn’t sure which part of the bird head he saw from.

And then he was loping toward me with his wings open.