Secret Life (RVHS Secrets) (19 page)

Chapter
26

It’s all in my head. It’s all in my head. It’s all in my
head.

Except there was a very good reason I felt like everyone was
staring. They were.

I pulled the sleeve of my sweater further down over the
bandage on my hand and walked
on,
hoping Amy would be
at our lockers when I got there. I made it to the Crossroads and kept my eyes
straight ahead. Just keep moving.
One step at a time, just
like every other aspect of my life.

Get out of bed. Don’t stretch to see if your body feels
awkward. Don’t look in the mirror. Shower without thinking about how big your
feet look. Ignore your stomach while you towel off. Get dressed in the safe
clothes you laid out the night before. Deep breaths before you leave your room.

Step.
By.
Step.

But now, everyone was looking and I could feel my hands
start to tremble and my skin heat all over, worse than a normal schoolgirl
blush.
Worse than Chris’s ears when I caught him at
something.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do if a full-fledge attack hit me in
the hall.

I clutched my good hand into a tight fist, willing the
tremors to stop, when a large hand closed over it. I wanted it to be anyone but
him. I wanted absolutely no one
but
him. I wanted it to be him more than I wanted my next breath. More than I
wanted my sanity at that moment.

“I thought you might need that friend.”

I let my fist
slip,
just enough so
Chris could slide his fingers between mine.

He led me down the hall and straight past my locker,
ignoring all the gazes following us. I
hesitated
only
a heartbeat when he ducked his head in the boys’ locker room and shouted,
“Hello?” tugging me in behind him when no one answered.

We passed several rows of lockers, and I should have been
thinking, “What am I doing? I can’t trust him.” But instead the only thought
running through my mind was how bad it smelled in there.

At a glass door, Chris stopped and gave my hand a tight
squeeze before knocking.

“Yeah!”

Chris shoved the door open, keeping me close but a little
behind him.

“Coach, I was hoping, just this once, that you might give us
a pass for first period.”

His gaze dropped to where Chris’s hand wrapped around mine,
and then glanced to my other hand peeking out from beneath my sleeve. I stuck
it behind my back, my biggest fear—that someone thought I tried to kill
myself—churning my stomach.

“Don’t make this a habit, Kent.” Coach opened his top drawer
and tossed a set of keys to Chris. “Coach Johnson’s office is quiet.”

“Thanks, Coach.” I could hear the tremor in his voice, and I
wondered if my hand shook in his or his was shaking in mine.

Probably a little bit of both.

He unlocked the door and pushed it open. For the first time
in over a week, he stopped and looked me in the eye.

“Do you want to be here…with me?”

I wanted to hate him. I really did. But I thought of all the
people I’d lied to and hurt by accident and wanted to give him that one chance
to apologize so we could let it go and maybe be friends again.
Maybe not friends.
Maybe just people who needed to survive
being in the same school together.

“Yes.” I couldn’t even hear it myself, but he must have read
the answer on my lips, because he pushed the door open to let me pass in front
of him.

“Kent!” Coach’s voice came as if he were standing right
there with us instead of two doors down. “Leave the shades up.”

I couldn’t help myself. I was nervous and exhausted and more
than a little anxious about what Chris was going to say. But
, “leave the shades up”
seemed so beyond
anything we needed to be worrying about, that I couldn’t help the laughter
slipping out of me.

The tips of his ears flushed pink against his pale blond
hair as he pushed the door shut and leaned against it.

After a second, I decided to sit. I might as well be
comfortable for the most uncomfortable talk of my life.

And then I waited.

This was his gig. He was going to have to do the talking.
Apologize, simplify, and move on. Then we’d be finished and I’d have a
semblance of that section of my life flying normal. Another step-by-step done.

“You were right. It wouldn’t have been just sex.”

Oh God, I was going to be sick. I’d honestly thought he was
just going to say something more like,
I
screwed up, but you lied and let’s get over it and
be
friends again.

What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

“It would have been a lot more. I freaked out because all I
could think of was all the girls who’d meant nothing and doing the same thing
with you …I didn’t want it to be nothing…but it scared the hell out of me to be
something too, you know?”

Maybe?
I wanted to say, but kept my mouth shut.

“And then—and then, yeah.
I have no
excuse.” He dropped his head, a hand coming up to cover his eyes. “Rachel, I
was right and that’s why, no matter how much I want to be with you, I can’t. I
don’t think I can even really be your friend—not that you’d have me. You
shouldn’t. But it doesn’t even matter.”

It sure as damn well mattered to me, and I couldn’t even
figure out what he was talking about.

He just stood there, head lowered, sucking in air. I
couldn’t stand it any longer. I went to him and pulled his hand down in mine.

When he looked at me, those deep green eyes were flooded
with tears that seeped over his pale lashes.

“I’m just like him. See? That’s why I can’t even say I’m
sorry.”

My heart shattered into little pieces…the dust of the dust.

“You’re not sorry?”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry that it’s not even the right word.” It
sounded like his heart was breaking too.

“Tell me why, Chris. Tell me why you were in that room with
her.”

He blinked and another few tears slipped out.

“She was there.”

I dropped his hand and stepped away. It was done. I couldn’t
recover from that.

“She was there, and I was so desperate to forget that I took
the opportunity. But for the first time I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t forget
about you and how you made me feel and that I wasn’t good enough to touch you
let alone think you’d…you know…want me.”

He stared at a spot over my shoulder, his red-rimmed eyes
vaguely intense in the way they avoided mine.

My heart must not have been the ashy dust I thought it had
been, because it suddenly ached.

“I just wanted to tell you so you didn’t think it was
anything about you.
That I didn’t want to be with you.
I just knew that …”

“You knew what?”

“I just knew that once you got close to me, you wouldn’t
want to be there. You wouldn’t want to be with someone who’s been so…used.”

If there were two more broken people in this world, I
certainly couldn’t have named them.

He still wouldn’t meet my gaze, still couldn’t do this
straight on. “I told my mom and we decided I should talk to someone.”

“You told your mom?” Oh my God. “About…”

“Yeah.
About
everything.”

“That must have been…”
Awkward.
Humiliating.
“Hard.”

He choked out a laugh. “Hard. Yeah. She was pissed.”

“Why?” I thought of my own mom breaking down a door to hold
me until help got there.
Taking on bruises and cuts and
heartache for me.

“Like she really wants two guys like my dad and me in her
house.”

“You are not like your dad.” I didn’t realize I was shouting
until the words echoed back off the tight walls of the office.

I took that hand I’d dropped in fear and disgust just a few
moments earlier and squeezed it, keeping it wrapped in my two smaller ones.

“Yeah, well. She’s going to her parents’ house and joining
AA. So, I’m staying with the Parkers.”

“And the talking to someone?”

He nodded. “I went twice last week. The first time we talked
about me and everything going on. The second time he made an extra hour to talk
about you.”

“Me?” He’d gone to therapy to talk about me?

Not that I hadn’t done a lot of talking about him. I went in
to see Dr. Meadows six of the last nine days. We’d talked about Chris quite a
bit actually.

“I wanted to understand what you’re going though, but your
mom said you probably wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

He studied me a moment, his liquid filled eyes like a meadow
after a hard rain. “I’m not going to ask. Whatever you want to tell me you can,
but I swear I won’t put you on the spot. I’m talking to him and reading this
book and just kind of waiting. So, you don’t need to talk to me if it’s too
hard.”

His gaze strayed to the wall again. “Or, you know, if you
don’t want to.”

“Chris.” When he didn’t answer or look at me, I took his
chin and forced it my direction. His lashes were still damp with the tears he’d
cried for both of us. “I’m not ready to talk about it.
Yet.”

Those eyes slid shut, his shoulders lowered, and I finally
realized how much tension he’d been carrying.

“Would you consider talking about it in three months?” His
eyes fluttered open and sought out my own worried gaze. “My doctor …and I
…think some time to get on track…”

Three months. It sounded like a long time, but in terms of
where we both were, it was nothing. It might even be too soon. And who knows,
maybe there’d be nothing to talk about in three months.

Okay, maybe
he’d
have nothing to say in three months.

“I might be.” That’s the best I had to offer. It was better
than I’d had walking into school that morning.

~*~

The first day back was long.
Long as in
shouldn’t-there-be-hovercrafts-and-people-living-on-the-moon-by-now long.
Amy, Luke, and Ben had been vigilant. I’d like to say suffocating, but really,
that wouldn’t be fair. They were extra careful to keep things light while
trying to have someone with me at all times. Ben had even shown up this morning
with a vanilla flavored lip gloss.

After our talk, Chris had been…distant isn’t the right word.
I was aware of him keeping watch, not quite hovering, but there.
For me.
Giving me the space we both needed. I kept telling
myself,
the first day is the hardest.

That afternoon, the deal was that Amy would meet me at my
locker at the last bell. We’d get out fast before dealing with crowds and
people got to be too much.

I should have known the simplest plan could go wrong. I
should have met her at my car. I should have done a lot of things, but I
didn’t.

What I did do was
keep
my head down
and focus on my locker. I must have reorganized the bottom seven times waiting
for her. I was just about to leave her a note when an all too familiar voice
said my name.

It challenged every Be Polite lesson my mom ever taught me.
Would anyone really blame me if I just kept sorting through my locker?

Probably not.

But, I had a core-deep feeling he wasn’t going away, so I
turned to get one more confrontation out of the way.

“Hi, Jared.”
Translation:
Hi, you idiot who’s been ignoring me for
weeks after dumping me when I thought everything was good and now waited till
the worst possible time to speak to me in public, which will either cause pain,
humiliation, or annoyance
.

He couldn’t look me in the eye. Two weeks ago I would have
assumed it was because of me—of how I disfigured I was—that he couldn’t bear to
look at me.

Now I was guessing it was something else. Not guilt, but
maybe guilt’s cousin.

“Hey. So…” Nice fadeout Jared.

I know Dr. Meadows would tell me I should grab the chance
for closure and also not make someone’s life tougher. But, two things occurred
to me as he stood there looking as bright as a burnt out headlight.

First was that if Jared was going to put me on the spot like
this, today of all days, he deserved to squirm a little.

The second was even better.
I didn’t need closure
. It might have been that everything else had
grown so big that they overshadowed the earlier trigger. Or maybe it had to do
with feeling something so much deeper. Realizing that Jared, and everything I’d
felt for him, all the quirky, excited emotions were nothing. Like an early dew
on your shoes after walking through a hurricane.

He shuffled a little and finally stared at me.
Just stared at me.
I could almost read the thoughts flashing
through his mind, as he looked deeper than he had before, trying to see what
was so wrong with me that I’d put my hand through a mirror and had to be
hospitalized.

Can you hear that?
Thank
goodness I’m free of the crazy girl.

His gaze skittered away and I wondered what exactly he was
afraid of. “I just wanted to see how you were and say I’m sorry.”

He wanted to see me
today?
And what in the world was he sorry for? Breaking up with me? Doing what I’d
done too many times? Letting me be free to find something more right for me?

“I feel…”
Another fadeout.
Jared
needed to work on his communication skills. “I feel horrible about my part in
all this.”

“Your part?”
I actually wasn’t
goading him.
Seriously?
What was he talking about?

“I know that our breakup kind of started everything, and I—”

“Stop right there.” This was too much self-involvement even
for me, maybe especially for me. “You dumping me did not start this. I’ve been
dealing with this since before you moved here—since before you were even in
high school. So, whatever you’re trying to do here, stop. If you feel bad
because you told me we were great together and dumped me the next day, well you
should. But if you’re trying to take on the responsibility of this final
meltdown—get over yourself.” And then, because I guess I wasn’t as over being
dumped as I’d thought I was I added, “I have.”