Tastes Like Winter (14 page)

Me: Jake?

Jake: Sorry, I can’t… Bye.

His name goes grey.

***

It’s been forty-five minutes, and I’m still frozen in place with our
conversation open in front of me. I have re-read every word. I have memorized
each one.

Did Jake just tell me he loved me?

No.

Yes.

Maybe?

I pick up my phone and text him. Jake,
please talk to me. Please don’t close up again.

But he doesn’t respond.

***

It’s been two hours, and I’m still
frozen in place. He is still signed off and hasn’t responded to my text.
Something monumental happened tonight, I know it did, but I need him to answer
me so that I can figure out what exactly that is. He must have feelings for me,
feelings that he is too afraid to face. I want him to admit them, but dammit,
if confronting his feelings is going to make him run from me again, I almost
wish we could go back to ignorant bliss. At least then I had a part of him.

But now I am panicked and afraid that I screwed up this time. I
shouldn’t have told him I liked him. I shouldn’t have poured all of my love
into him with my kiss. I pushed him too far.

I sit and I sit until finally, I force myself to move, and with my
movement, the blood returns to my now tingly limbs. With the rush of blood,
anger pours into me, and I violently kick my bag. That stupid lion drawing
won’t stop staring back at me.

“Dammit!” I scream into my silent, empty room. I’m completely out of
control here, and it fills me with frustrating rage.

I hear footsteps pad down the hall, and
my mom quickly swings open the door.

“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” Her voice is laced with concern.

I look up, shock obviously written all over my face. I hadn’t
considered that she was sleeping in the room next door before my violent
outburst. I hadn’t been thinking at all.

I recover as quickly as I can. “
Uhhh
, I—
uhhh
… yeah… Sorry for waking you. I—I stubbed my
toe.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She rushes towards me, to inspect my fake injury.
“Are you all right? Do you need me to get you some ice? When did you get home,
and what are you still doing up?”
                       

           
“I’m
fine; I’m fine. I got home a while ago.” I look around my room blankly for
another excuse. Grabbing a half-full water bottle from my desk, I add, “I was
thirsty and needed a drink.”

I shrug and put on my most innocent face, and she buys it. She gives
me a motherly kiss on the head and sleepily shuffles out of my room and back to
bed.

The outburst from my tantrum and the need to recover in front of my
mom has caused some of the anger to subside. However, I am now overcome with
despair and fatigue.

I glance at the clock and see it is already after one o’clock. It’s
late, and he isn’t coming back online, so I too head to bed, praying for sleep,
and weighed down by hopelessness once again.

***

Sleep escapes me all weekend, and when the sun rises Monday morning, I
am tired to the bone. Genna picks me up at our usual time, and I’m greeted with
a disapproving glare. She called me a few times the past two days, and not
feeling up to talking to her, I sent her to voicemail. She already knows—thinks
she knows—about my evening at Jake’s house. Apparently, little Miss
Pissed Off, a.k.a. Sam, spent the weekend spreading around that it’s my fault she
wasn’t allowed out Friday night. Apparently Betsy grounded her after Jake and I
went upstairs. Sam has even gone so far as to tell people that I am nothing
more than Jake’s plaything, one of the many girls he keeps around. She says I’m
something to keep him occupied when he isn’t busy screwing up her life.
Un-freaking-believable!

Genna is pissed off that I didn’t call her right away and fill her in
about the drama myself. She hated hearing about me from someone else and hated
being ignored by me even more. I apologize but quickly set her straight and
tell her how things actually went down with Sam. I recant the true (and
disheartening) events of my evening with Jake, including the stuff that
happened after the little blow up in the
Addler
family foyer, and her mouth hits the floor.

“Jeez,
Em
, I thought we were past this
garbage. That boy has some serious commitment issues, and I am afraid that you
are going to get hurt.”

Too late. I’ve already been hurt.

“Sam says he has other girls?” That is the one thing out of Genna’s
mouth I can focus on. What other girls? The idea that there might be truth to
that claim is pure torture. It’s not possible… Is it?

Genna shakes her head. “I don’t know if that’s true. He did have quite
the following in high school. I warned you about his reputation months ago… But
maybe it’s not true. You never know with Sam.”

A weak attempt at reassurance.

I can’t bring myself to respond, because honestly, she’s right, and I
should have listened to her sooner. I feel like an idiot. I haven’t heard from
Jake all weekend, and I don’t think I’m going to. I need to stop torturing
myself and move on. The highs with him are great, but the lows, all this
confusion, it isn’t right. Coming home Friday night so happy, only to be thrown
another curveball, is too much to take.

I don’t want to think about it, so I try to distract from Jake’s giant
elephant (or should I say lion?) in the room. I try to shift the focus by asking
Genna what she thinks about Sam’s reaction that night, as well as the negative
rumors she has been spreading. She shrugs the incident off as an adopted
sibling rivalry that, because of my relationship with Jake, is being poorly
misplaced. Ever positive as always, Genna assures me that Sam is sure to get
over it.

Jake, on the other hand, is another beast entirely, and one she swears
she will never figure out. While I want her to be right, my gut tells me that
the interaction I observed between the pair of them that night went much deeper
than that, and I might need to watch out for Sam in the future.

Sure enough, and even though I wished I wasn’t, I am right. Over the
next two weeks, Sam does not warm up to me as Genna predicted. Every morning, I
am greeted by an evil look, Sam’s eyes getting darker and meaner each day. By
the third week, she has her friends all glaring at me too.

Genna was the one who actually picked
up on that. One morning, the daggers are being sent my way before the car is
even straightened out in our usual spot in the lot. As soon as Genna throws the
car in park, she flips out, beating her hands against the steering wheel in a
way I have not seen her react before. “This is bullshit! Look at them! I don’t
care who the hell Sam thinks she is, but you are my best friend, and most of
those girls are on my team! Unacceptable! I am going to have myself a little
chat with them today. Don’t you worry about that!”

My heart swells at
Genna’s
protectiveness, but I have to insist that she please refrain from saying
anything. “It doesn’t bother me. Really, Gen. I think saying something will make
it worse, and I don’t want to cause any problems for myself at school or for
Jake at home. You know his situation there is delicate enough.”

I plead with my eyes and am forced to sic her with a puppy-dog pout
before she agrees. As we walk up the entryway stairs a moment later, I return
the group’s glare with my most winning smile. You’ve got to kill ’
em
with kindness, right? But as soon as I am through the
door and away from
Genna’s
prying eye, my smile
slips.

I don’t mind taking Sam’s abuse, but the fact that I still haven’t heard
from Jake does not help. I’m too ashamed to even talk about it with my best
friend. She kept warning me, but I didn’t listen, and even though I tried not
to get lost in him, I did. I tell myself that it was only two dates and a
handful of kisses, nothing serious enough to get upset over, but my heart is in
my stomach, and my throat is thick.

Every day when I head to High Street, I am nauseous, wondering if he
will be there, but so far, he has been a no-show. I don’t know how much Betsy
knows or what reason he gave her for wanting to stay off the schedule, but I
sense she knows something because she has been tiptoeing around me lately.
Maybe I’m being paranoid, but she’s been extra nice, and sometimes I swear I
catch her looking at me with pity in her eyes.

I could ask her. Heck, I could grow a set of balls and confront him
directly, but seeing my mom looking so vulnerable and desperate this past year
has affected me profoundly. I don’t want to be weak, I don’t want to look desperate,
and I definitely don’t want to be the girl who begs a guy to like her back.
Even I know I’m worth more than that.

I’ve tried to distract myself again, a game I should be a master at by
now, seeing as I have played it off and on all year, but reading and being at
the shop reminds me of him, and hence my methods of distraction, once tried and
true, no longer work. Fortunately for Mom, my sorrow has been her gain, and my
latest tactic is having her teach me how to cook. She loves it, and spending
more time together has been great for our relationship. She is stronger every
day, and I am so proud of how far she has come since Dad left. In addition to
being a great distraction, spending this time in the kitchen together has also
allowed me to get my hands on all our secret family recipes, which was always
on my ‘to do’ list. However, trying not to eat the whole pie after we finish
perfecting Gram’s caramel apple walnut has been a struggle. Misery does love
pie.

APRIL

Still no word from Jake. My pie repertoire now includes lemon
merengue, peach, and chocolate soufflé.

MAY

Add banana cream and peanut butter to the list.

JUNE

The weather has been slowly shifting and becoming sunny and warm once
again. The nice weather helps boost my mood some. Spring in New England is a
gift to savor in the moment, for it doesn’t last long. My teachers are
understanding of that fact and have made certain allowances. English this
morning is spent writing nature poetry outside on the grassy area by the east
wing’s door. The grass is more bald patch than greenery, but it is nice to
enjoy the fresh air and soak up some vitamin D, nonetheless. We sunbathe more
than verse-craft, but since Mrs. McCarthy is doing the same it goes unnoticed.

Gym, too, is spent outdoors, with an announcement that the remaining
school weeks will be spent on a tennis unit. For those less actively inclined,
we are given the choice to walk the track if we so desire. Mary and I pick the
track, which morphs into more sunbathing in the grassy center while Coach
Murphy is distracted by swinging racquets and overshot balls on the paved
courts on the other side of the field.

The day wraps up in AP Biology. We don’t get to break free of the
building again, but Mrs.
Bloomquist
is equally antsy
for the school year to end and summer to begin and has us spend the period on a
fun exercise. We are all given a big piece of colored construction paper, the
kind you use to learn how to cut with scissors in kindergarten, and told to
outline the shape of our hand. We are then instructed to walk around and have
five people write us an end-of-year message in each of the fingertips.

“Think of positive messages, people! Tell each other what you like
about them!”

I slide my paper across to Mary first, delaying the lab room shuffle.
She trades my paper for hers, and I tap my pen hard against the desk, thinking
of what to write. I write Mary, you rock my world with your biological genius
and pass it back to her. I take back my paper and glance down to see what she
has added to my handprint. Thanks for sharing my desk space. I can’t wait for
the alphabet to bring us together again. Hang out this summer? The last bit is
squeezed into the fingertip, as she obviously ran out of space to write. I
smile up at her and nod, even though I know we probably never will.

I search around the room, looking for my next victim. Other students
have already started moving about, and there is a cacophony of excited chatter
and the continuous scraping of chair legs against the tile floor. I lock eyes
with Hannah across the room, and she smiles back sweetly in acceptance of my
visual offer. I push back my chair and shuffle over to her lab table. The seat
beside her has already has been vacated by her partner, so I plop down. We
exchange pages, and, without hesitation, I write—You are the kindest
person I know. And she is. Hannah has always struck me as one of those good-hearted
souls. She is always smiling, always helping, and seeing her during the day lightens
my mood without fail. She is one of the few people that I would probably make
the effort of friendship for. When she hands me back my paper, she has written
the exact same thing as I have. My eyes jump up, and we beam at each other and
share a laugh.

“Why aren’t we better friends?” she asks rhetorically, never losing
her beautiful smile, and I vow to try harder with this one.

Confident now, I walk over to Nolan. He is still in his original seat,
having opted, not surprisingly, to make people come to him. I eye his paper and
notice that his method has indeed worked, and he already has four fingers
complete. My paper comes to rest beside his head, which is perched atop his
arm. Half asleep, he wordlessly puts pen to paper and scribbles something out,
passing it back before I can add my own note to his sheet. Scrawled in his tiny
handwriting is: Emma, you have always been nice to me for no reason. I don’t
know why, but I do appreciate it.

My heart skips a beat. I’ve thought Nolan is cute since the sixth grade
but never, in a million years, thought he noticed me in return. He has always
been friendly enough, but his surfer-slacker personality makes his actions look
careless. Before I lose the courage, I jot down: You have the most handsome
smile I have ever seen. I try not to think of another smile when I write it. I
turn the page face-side down, and when I hand it back, I’m embarrassed. I can’t
believe I wrote that—in pen! He flips the paper over, and after reading,
rewards me with a charming-as-ever grin, eyes still half-closed.

Feeling a little lighter after that brief encounter with a boy who is
not Jake, I sit back down at my lab table. The bell rings before I can fill my
last two fingers. I fold the paper into quarters and tuck it into the zipper
pocket on the front of my bag for safekeeping and head out to my locker to
collect a few books before meeting Genna in the lot to drive home. Still high
on the biology compliments, I am distracted and walk right smack into Sam.

“Sorry, Sam!” I rush to say, hoping my apology will smother any
outbursts and save me the grief of dealing with her now-constant attitude.

She spits fire in response. “Watch where you’re going!”

“Like I said, I apologize. It won’t happen again.” I add a bit of
sarcasm this time, frustrated that I am now apparently being full-on bullied by
a sophomore.

“You know what? It better not!” Encouragement from the small crowd
behind her spurs her on. “And you know what else? I don’t want to be bumping
into you at my house, either! You and Jake can take your make-out sessions
elsewhere!”

Pissed now, I turn on her. “I don’t really give a shit what you want,
Sam. My relationship with Jake is none of your goddamned business.”

I tried nice and it didn’t work. If confrontation is what she wants,
then confrontation is what she’ll get. Besides, I haven’t even been to her
house since our one and only encounter there, which was forever ago.

“Your relationship with Jake? You don’t know anything about Jake!”

That hits a nerve. “I don’t know what your problem with him is, but I
am pretty sure it’s your issue alone, not his.”

“My problem? My problem! He is a no-good stoner criminal. Criminal!”

“Not anymore. Not since…” I add with
less steam, afraid to mention the accident aloud. He told me he changed and
didn’t party anymore.

“Not anymore?”

Apparently, her tactic here is to repeat everything I say. I roll my
eyes.

“What about when he was arrested for driving under the influence? Him
and his buddies all messed up and going for a joy ride? That certainly wasn’t before!”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, and it scares me. I don’t want
to let on that it bothers me so she can use it against me as further
ammunition.

“Still none of your business,” I mumble.

“Oh, but it is my business! The asshole gets arrested, and what do my parents
do? Buy him an expensive therapist and a new PlayStation. He should be in jail!
Not living large in my house! My mom and dad treat him like a king, and it’s
gotten so much worse since you started coming round.” She bites off at the end,
almost as if she’s said too much.

I stare back at her, mute, unsure of how to respond to that last
remark. She throws me a final victorious smirk and turns away, storming down
the hall with her friends in active pursuit behind her.

What a bitch! What did I ever do to be treated this way? I am so tired
of feeling like this, and getting over Jake is not any easier with Sam acting this
way. I was just beginning to feel better, and now I’ve been pushed down again.
When will it stop?

Even though I’m sure she is reacting to her own jealousy, the news of
an arrest has caught me off guard. Jake doesn’t like to talk about the
accident, understandably enough, but I thought his reckless behavior was over
and done with. I thought the death of his parents would have taught him this
lesson in the worst possible way. I wouldn’t associate with someone stupid
enough to do drugs, and despite his reputation, Jake promised me that those
days were long over for him. Living through something like that and becoming a
better person because of it is admirable, but surviving that experience and continuing
to act so stupid? That is not okay and goes against everything I believe in,
not to mention everything I thought I knew about Jake.

When I sink into Genna’s plush car seat
a minute later, I have decided to keep quiet about my recent run-in with Sam.
It was a rather public display, so it will probably get back to her eventually,
but I would like to sort out my own feelings on the topic before bringing them
up with her. I also don’t want to encourage her to have her own chat with Sam and
posse like she has been threatening. Things have already been so confusing, and
I don’t want Genna to start to pick up on everything that I have been avoiding
talking about with her. I don’t want her to know how much I am still hurting,
and I definitely don’t want to hear her tell me everything is going to be okay.

I try to remind myself of the pain Jake caused me with his constant back-and-forth
and at-will decisions to either place himself in my life or remove himself
completely, regardless of my own feelings. I try to think about Nolan
complimenting me earlier and how well I was beginning to do without Jake, but
it’s useless.

Despite the past, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and
ignore Sam’s comments, but I feel like an idiot, and the benefit of the doubt
is something that is getting harder and harder to give. I convinced myself that
his tendency to crawl back in his shell was a product of his past and that he
was a scared little boy, not worth the constant struggle. I rationalized that
he was omitting his feelings, not blatantly lying about them. But maybe it’s
like Sam said—not all history, and he has actually been deceiving me this
whole time. Maybe his off-and-on is actually a cover for the current behaviors
he is trying to hide.

I’ve been trying to convince myself that he isn’t worth it, pushing
myself to move on, but I’ve been failing miserably. I don’t want to chase my
tail anymore, but I am so conflicted. Maybe Sam’s revelation today is the sign
I needed to once and for all move on.

Yet I can’t help myself, and when I go online later, I immediately
bring up Google. I do a number of different searches, trying to find out more
about what might have happened with Jake before finding an article of interest.
The High Beach Ledger has a section where all local arrests are published, and
when I find Jake’s name in the archives, my heart sinks. I click on the link,
and it brings me to a news article dated a little over a year ago that describes
the arrest of the driver of a car containing four other adolescents. Sure
enough, the driver, one Jake
Addler
, was arrested for
driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, before later being released
and brought up on probation charges. Since Jake was an adult at the time, they
were allowed to print his name. There is no mention of any other passenger
names, presumably because they were still minors, but the article does go on to
mention that the police found several empty alcohol containers and marijuana paraphernalia
in the vehicle.

I am speechless. How can I not remember hearing about this? Why hasn’t
Betsy, or better yet, Jake, mentioned it before? I suppose because it’s not the
easiest thing to insert into conversation. “Oh and then that one time, I got
messed up, drove my buddies and me home, and got taken to county…” Still, I am sideswiped.

He lied to me.

As soon as I close the search window, a new box pops up on my screen with
a message from Jake.

Jake: Hi.

I stare at the two small letters for several minutes in complete
shock, wondering if he is contacting me now because he already heard about what
happened at school or if this is simply him inserting himself back into my life
again after months of absence. I am confused and sick and I don’t know what to
think anymore.

I shake my head as a tear breaks free and rolls over the rim of my
glassy eye, sliding slowly down my cheek. I can’t do this with him anymore. I force
myself to close out the window and power down my laptop before I am stupid
enough to respond and fall back in.

I want to be strong, but my throat burns, and another tear soon makes
it past the gates. My resolve weakens, and I decide to allow myself one moment
to feel, to mourn. I push myself out of my chair and flop down onto the bed.
Not even bothering to remove my shoes, I pull the comforter over my head and
curl up into a ball. Once inside the safety and darkness of down feathers, I allow
myself to experience the heartache I have been trying to hold at bay.

Sobs rack my body, and I shake while cursing his name. “How could you,
Jake.”

***

Even though my heart has been put on pause, the world does not stop
turning, and June continues on. Instead of hanging out at High Street, risking
a run-in with Jake, I have taken to the library. I spend every waking hour
there studying, and so far it has done wonders for my classwork, not that my
GPA needed it.

But the library is full of books, and books remind me of him, and no
matter how much I try, he won’t get out of my head. The library is quiet enough
to hear a pin drop, but some days my thoughts scream so loud, I am paranoid
even the librarian can hear them.