The Boyfriend Thief (15 page)

My phone buzzed with a new email while I still sat in the Greeleys’ driveway, unable to work up the energy to drive away. I pulled out my phone and checked the message from Ian.

The pics u asked 4,
he had written.

I downloaded the attachments, furrowing my brow in concentration. The first couple showed Hannah alone, standing outside the mall cinema. But then a tall guy joined her. I couldn’t see his face, but the blonde hair obviously wasn’t Zac’s dark head. None of the pictures showed Hannah and her mystery man kissing, only walking and talking.

The next pictures weren’t of Hannah. They showed Elliott at the Rose Castle. Ian had managed to get a shot of Elliott sitting in a booth with a girl, but a large plant behind the booth obscured the side of her face. The picture was taken from behind, probably so Elliott wouldn’t notice, and I couldn’t tell who the girl was. But Elliott sat close to her and had his arm around her shoulders, looking awfully cozy.

That lying little cheat. I
knew
he was running around behind Molly’s back! And I had a feeling I knew which little bimbo he was with—Tara from work. I was so, so right! Now I had the proof to bring him down.

Thanks. Come by tomorrow and I’ll give you a free shake,
I texted back.

My hands gripped the steering wheel tight as I drove toward Diggity Dog House. I wanted to punch Elliott Reiser right in the nose. No, I wanted to kick him in the groin and
then
punch him in the nose. Hurt him as much as he was hurting Molly. Why hadn’t she listened to me when I tried to warn her?

Elliott was on giant hot dog duty that day and I spotted him standing outside the restaurant as I pulled up. I slid to a quick stop in the parking lot, barely remembering to put the car into park as I stormed out. I marched toward him, gripping my phone with the pictures of him and his secret fling in one hand.

“Lying creep!” I exclaimed, pushing at the back of his costume.

Elliott stumbled forward a few steps before he caught his balance. He turned around and pulled back the mesh mask. “
What
is wrong with you?” he asked, glaring at me.

I held up my phone, shaking it in his face. “This is what’s wrong with me! You’re a cheater and I’m going to make sure Molly knows.”

Elliott held up his hands, which were covered by Bob’s big white gloves. “Whoa. Back up. What are you talking about?”

He tried to grab my phone, but I pulled it out of his reach. No way was he getting hold of those pictures. I knew the first thing he would do was destroy the evidence.

“It’s all right here,” I said, feeling smug and proud of myself as I looked up at him. “Your lying ends now. I don’t know how you managed to win over Molly, but I can guarantee she won’t fall for your pathetic charm anymore once she sees these pictures. I have all the evidence I need to prove to her that you’re sneaking around behind her back with some bobble headed tramp. Who is it? Tara? You two have this perfect little fling going on, don’t you? I hope you’ll be happy together once Molly finds out—”

“Once Molly finds out what?”

I leaned over to see Molly standing behind Elliott. She had just come out of Diggity Dog House, slurping on a large milkshake, but Elliott’s costume had blocked her from my view. He turned around awkwardly, holding up his hands.

“I swear, Molly, I have no idea what she’s talking about,” he said.

I scowled at him. “Oh, really? Then explain
this
.”

Molly took the phone and cycled through the pictures, her face creased in confusion.

“What are these?” she asked.

“Ask
him
,” I said. “Ask him who he’s been sneaking around with.”

Molly shook her head. “You’ve been
spying
on Elliott?”

Her tone wasn’t what I expected. She sounded angry, but she was glaring at
me
, not Elliott.

“I had Ian keep an eye on him.” I flailed my arms. “But look! I was right about him! He’s a cheat and—”

“No, he’s not,” Molly said, shoving the phone back into my hands. “The only person he’s sneaking around with is me.”

My mouth fell open as I stared at my best friend. “What?”

“Yeah,” Elliott said, putting an arm around Molly’s shoulders. “My bobble headed tramp is your best friend.”

I looked between the two of them, trying to comprehend the situation. This was not turning out anything like I’d planned.

“You’ve been lying to me?” I asked. “You promised you wouldn’t go out with him.”

Molly’s face had turned bright red and her nostrils flared. “Don’t turn this around on me. I can’t
believe
you’d spy on Elliott. How could you do something like that? You want to rave on and on about other people lying and sneaking around, when you’re doing the exact same thing!”

“Molly, I—”

“Don’t make excuses,” Molly said through clenched teeth. “You act like you’re better than everyone else because you’re so smart and have the best grades in school and you want to go off to Costa Rica. But you know what, Avery? You mess up sometimes, just like everyone else. And if you want everyone to forgive you for your mistakes, maybe you should start forgiving other people for theirs. You don’t have all the answers. You don’t have a freaking clue about how anyone else around here feels because you’re too focused on yourself.”

Tears blurred my vision and I tried to blink them back to keep them from falling.

“Stay out of my business. I don’t need you to make decisions for me.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed Elliott quickly. “See you later,” she said to him before turning and walking away.

I stared at the sidewalk as Molly’s words echoed in my head.

“Well,” Elliott said in a fake peppy voice, “that went well! Good going, James. Are you satisfied now that I’m not the creep you think I am? If you weren’t so dead set on believing the worst in people, you might have realized this long ago and saved yourself from embarrassment.”

Then Elliott replaced the mesh face mask and went back to waving to passersby, ignoring me completely.

* * *

“Does she live here now?” I muttered when I saw Trisha’s SUV in my driveway. Scrubbing at my teary eyes, I marched up toward the house. I was not crying over Zac. I wasn’t the kind of girl who cried over some guy. I wasn’t even crying over Molly and Elliott. A best friend who lied and sneaked around behind my back was no best friend at all.

If anything, I was crying because the whole world sucked.

I stomped into the house, shutting the front door behind me a little harder than usual and making the pictures on the wall rattle.

“Avery, is that you?” Dad called from another room. “We’re in the kitchen. Come on in!”

I followed the sound of his voice to the kitchen, but stopped in the doorway, staring in at the sight before me. Dad held a steaming bowl of spaghetti while Ian was making adjustments to a big sign on the wall over the table that read “Happy Mother’s Day!” On the table sat a huge bouquet of lilies and violets in a crystal vase. Our best china was laid out on the table, the set we’d only used once or twice in my lifetime and the dishes to complete the meal—salad, garlic bread, and steamed broccoli—crowded around the flower arrangement.

And already sitting at the table was Trisha Montgomery. In Mom’s old seat, smiling like she was the queen of the house and belonged there. A couple of gifts wrapped in purple paper and tied with silver bows sat on the table in front of her.

Mother’s Day. I had forgotten what day it was.

The fury already building inside boiled over into a full-on rage.

“What is this?” I asked in a low voice, my teeth clenched tight.

“It’s our Mother’s Day dinner,” Dad announced, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. As if we had a mother in this household to honor. As if we hadn’t given up Mother’s Day dinners back when my mother left.

“Surprised?” Ian asked. “Dad and I have been planning this for a couple of weeks.”

“This is completely ridiculous,” I said.

Dad set the spaghetti down on the table and then looked at me, blinking. “We thought it would be nice—”

“To do what? To remind Ian and me that we don’t have a mother?” I gestured toward Trisha, who looked as shocked as Dad and Ian. “To invite some woman we barely know into our house and let her pretend to have a place in our family?”

It hit me suddenly what this was all about and for a moment I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I took a deep breath, trying to regain control of my breathing.

“You’re
not
,” I said to Dad, my eyes locked on his.

The lines in Dad’s forehead creased deeper. “I’m not what?”

I pointed at Trisha. “You’re going to marry
her
? You barely know her! Do you think this is healthy for any of us?” I spun on my dad’s girlfriend, my chest rising and falling rapidly as I sucked air in and out. “I will never call you my mother. I won’t be a part of this Mother’s Day farce—”

“Avery,” Trisha said quietly. “This dinner isn’t for me.”

I scowled at her a moment. “Then who is it for?”

“For you.” My gaze shifted to my brother, who blinked teary eyes. His face had turned from red to purple and he wouldn’t look at me. “We did all of this for you, Avery.”

“It was Ian’s idea,” Dad said quietly. I could hear the anger and hurt in his voice.

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

Ian reached up and ripped down the banner he’d hung, shredding it in half. “We shouldn’t have even tried. You always ruin
everything.
”

I stepped forward, reaching toward him. “Ian—”

But my brother pushed past, not looking at me, and raced from the kitchen. His bedroom door slammed shut a moment later.

Dad sighed. “I guess I’ll put dinner away. If anyone’s hungry, it’ll be in the refrigerator.”

“Dad,” I said as he gathered up the food.

He held up a hand to silence me. “Let’s all cool off before we say anything else we might regret.”

I glanced at Trisha, but she frowned at me and then stood to help Dad with the food. It was obvious I had hurt her feelings with what I’d said. But I couldn’t apologize. The words wouldn’t come.

I walked down the hall, intending to hide out in my room, but I stopped and stared at Ian’s closed door. The idea that he had planned this dinner for me made me even more embarrassed at my reaction.

I knocked on the door softly. “Ian? Can I come in?”

Silence met my ears.

“I’m—” I swallowed the lump in my throat. Apologizing about anything was hard for me. “I’m...sorry.”

The door remained closed.

Defeated, I headed into my own room. I kicked off my shoes, tossing them carelessly across the floor instead of putting them away in their spot in the closet. Tears blurred my vision, slipping down my cheeks before I could stop them. I laid down, crying into my pillow to muffle my sobs.

I sat in my car after school on Monday while the parking lot emptied around me. Gray clouds had moved in, finally threatening to end the relentless heat wave we’d been under for weeks. A low rumble echoed across the distance as my classmates headed off to their homes or after school jobs. I sat still, my hands gripped around my gray steering wheel, the ignition idling while the air conditioner attempted to pump out cool air.

Get it over with,
I told myself, which I’d been saying in my head all day. But the right opportunity hadn’t come along.

Finally, I pulled the keys out of the ignition, tossed them into my bag and nearly tumbled from the car in my hurry to get out. It was now or never.

Hannah, like myself, was a creature of habit. She was in the library, exactly where I had expected to find her. We were down to the last two weeks of school, but that didn’t stop Hannah from taking every advantage to get in extra study time whenever she could.

“I need to talk to you.”

Hannah looked up from the open physics book on the table in front of her. Her hand was poised over her notebook, where she had been making notes in her neat, curly script. Hannah’s brown eyes studied me.

“A social call?” she asked. “How unusual for you.”

I was thankful the library was empty. The librarian was the only other person in the room with us, but she was on the other side, shelving some books. Hannah sat at a table toward the back of the room.

I decided to remain standing. I looked down at her and asked, “Do you have no conscience at all?”

Hannah’s eyebrows shot upward. “About knocking you down to second place behind me? No, not really.”

I gripped the back of the chair across from her to brace myself. “I don’t mean that. I mean what you’re doing to Zac.”

She blinked at me, her expression neutral. “You’re the one who agreed to this plan. If you’re having a guilty conscience, I’ll gladly take my money back.”

How could she sit there so cool and casual, as if she had nothing to feel bad about? This was low, even for her.

“Stop playing games, Hannah. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

She stuck her pen in her book and closed it, folding her hands over the cover. “No, Avery, I don’t. You’ll have to explain a little more about what exactly is going on in your head before the rest of us can begin to understand you.”

“You’re cheating on Zac.”

Hannah didn’t flinch from my gaze. “What would make you think that?”

“I have proof. I have pictures.” I reached for my bag to grab my phone, but my bag wasn’t there. I must have left it in the car, forgetting to grab it in my rush to find Hannah. “They’re on my phone. In my car.”

She smirked. “I don’t know what you have pictures of, but you’ve obviously completely lost your mind. I suppose it’s a side effect of all the time you’ve been spending with Zac. He can be overwhelming.”

“This isn’t about me,” I said. My fingernails dug into the wood of the chair as I leaned over it. “How could you do that to him?”

My building rage didn’t seem to have any effect on her. She continued to look at me with her calm demeanor.

“If you’re so concerned about Zac’s feelings, you might want to ask yourself that same question. You’re the one who’s been lying to him for weeks now. No one forced you to go along with my plan.”

“You threatened to blackmail me,” I reminded her.

Hannah smiled smugly. “So you chose to save your own reputation instead of sparing Zac’s feelings. And yet, you have the audacity to come in here and say I’m the bad person? Take a good look at yourself, Avery. Your halo isn’t exactly shining.”

“He’s your boyfriend,” I said.

Hannah stood so we were at eye level with each other. “And what exactly is he to you?”

The memory of Zac’s lips on mine flashed through my head. My hands shook and I gripped the edge of the chair harder, trying to keep myself steady. Zac had rejected me, he had pushed me away and went to Hannah when she called.

“Maybe I shouldn’t break up with him,” Hannah went on, gathering her books into a neat pile as she spoke. “He’s different lately. More focused, more controlled. Who would have thought you might be a good influence on him? Maybe I should keep him around. Would that make you happy, Avery? Would you enjoy seeing Zac kissing
me
in the halls? Hearing him say he loves me? Or is it possible that you’ve developed feelings for him in that cold heart of yours?”

The idea of Zac staying with Hannah after everything we’d shared the last few weeks made a cold sweat break out all over my body.

“You don’t love him,” I told her.

Hannah shrugged. “Love is negotiable. I can play the part of the adoring girlfriend, if that’s what it takes to ensure that I come out on top in the end.”

I licked my dry lips as the cold panic seeped into my bones. “It’s not fair to him. If you don’t want him, break up with him and let him find someone else.”

“Such as you?” She raised one eyebrow at me, amusement etched into her smile. “If I didn’t know better, Avery, I’d think maybe you had fallen in love with Zac Greeley. But that’s ridiculous, of course. You’ve never loved anyone except yourself.” She picked up her books, propping them on her hip. “Don’t tell me you honestly thought maybe you and Zac had something real. I paid you to spend time with him and the only reason he’s spent time with you, other than for your business project, is because he feels sorry for you.”

I took a step back, my mouth open as I tried to form words.

“He told me himself,” she went on. “He thinks you’re a lonely, miserable person who is too afraid to let people get close. He
pities
you.”

Nausea welled up inside me, rising in my throat. I didn’t want to believe that Zac would say those words.

But hadn’t he already said them to me? He’d told me—more than once—that I needed a date, I needed to loosen up, I needed to stop hiding from everyone. The truth was Zac had already told me what he thought of me, and it wasn’t something good.

I stumbled backward away from Hannah’s table as she continued staring at me with a gleeful look in her eye. She knew she had me. She could see that underneath the walls of a perfect life I had built, I was crumbling into nothing. Everything I had worked so hard for was falling to pieces. Because of Zac. Because of a guy who thought everything was a joke and had the nerve to
pity
me.

I spotted him at his locker when I left the library. Papers spilled from the door, fluttering the floor around his duct-taped shoes. He bent over, attempting to shove his math book into the mess inside his dirty backpack.

He
pitied me?

My heart pounded an erratic rhythm in my ears as I forced my feet forward, closing the distance between us. My vision darkened around the edges until all I could see was him, this pathetic, disorganized class clown who had come into my life and ruined everything. My chest felt tight and I gasped for air.

He looked up as I drew closer. His lips stretched into a nervous smile. “Hey,” he said.

“Hannah is cheating on you,” I said before I could change my mind.

Zac’s backpack hung limply at his side. “What?”

“I have pictures of her with another guy,” I said. My voice sounded loud in the empty hallway, almost as if I were shouting. “She wants you to break up with her so that she can look like the victim. She paid me to flirt with you and get you to fall for me so you’ll dump her.”

Zac’s face paled.

“You were
paid
to spend time with me?” His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, but it sounded like a shout in the silent room.

The pressure in my chest tightened when I saw the hurt in his eyes. I wished I could take the words back, erase them from his memory.

“Zac,” I began, swallowing a lump that had formed in the back of my throat. “It’s not like that—”

“What is it like then?” When I didn’t answer, he said in a choked voice, “Could you please explain to me what’s going on?”

He looked hurt and angry and afraid. He looked so small surrounded by the row of lockers behind him.

So I told Zac everything. The break up plot. The money. The fact that Hannah was seeing another guy.

The fact that I had, somewhere along the way, fallen in love with him. I hadn’t realized just how true that was until now.

I didn’t know what I expected when I was done. Maybe that he’d become so engulfed in fury he’d kick or throw something. Or he’d yell.

I expected Zac to do anything other than what he did. Which was nothing.

He stood there, his face set in a blank look. It was like he had nothing at all to give in response to my revelations. He was completely empty.

“Zac?” I asked.

I reached out to touch him, but suddenly he jumped back out of my reach.

“Are you okay?” I knew the question was stupid as soon as I asked it. Of course he wasn’t okay.

Zac shook his head. “No. Hannah wouldn’t...
You
couldn’t…” He paused, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “All this time, you were lying to me about why you spent so much time with me? The comedy shows, the slushies, everything?”

When he looked at me, I wanted to sink into the floor to get away from the hurt in his eyes. I realized maybe
I
had hurt him more than Hannah’s cheating had. Maybe he’d known things weren’t right in his relationship with Hannah, but he’d had no reason to suspect me of doing anything behind his back.

He wasn’t pathetic. I was. I had done the one thing I swore I would never do and yet here I was, once again pushing away someone I cared about. But this time, I didn’t think I could rebuild the walls he had broken down.

“Zac, I—”

But he held up his hands toward me, as if to protect himself from my words. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

“I’m so sorry—”

He shook his head. “I can’t talk to you right now.”

Zac turned, slinging his dirty orange backpack over his shoulder. A piece of paper fluttered out, falling to the floor, but he didn’t stop to pick it up.

* * *

The parking lot of Willowbrook High was empty when I stumbled out of the school. Lightning crackled overhead among the dark clouds. I headed toward my car, fishing blindly in my pockets for my keys.

My pockets were empty. A memory flashed through my head—pulling the keys from the ignition, tossing them into my bag.

Which sat in the passenger seat of my car. I stared through the window at it dumbly, trying to figure out why it was in there and I was out here. I pulled on the door handle, but the car was locked.

In the year that I’d owned the car, I had never once locked myself out. Avery James didn’t forget her keys. Avery James didn’t leave without making sure she had her bag.

Avery James didn’t fall in love and then crush her own heart.

The clouds opened and rain pelted me as I walked down the sidewalk toward home. I lifted my face toward the sky, letting the rain wash away the tears on my cheeks. No matter how much I had tried, it had never been enough. I chased everyone away. It was no wonder Zac, Molly, Ian, and everyone else hated me. I was damaged, deep inside.

A car horn next to me startled me out of my thoughts. My heart thumped, hoping maybe it was Zac.

But the silver SUV that had slowed to a crawl at my side wasn’t Zac’s. Trisha looked through the window at me. “Need a ride home?”

I hugged my arms around myself, shivering in the sudden chill that had arrived with the storm. Trisha didn’t look annoyed by how long I stood there while rain pelted the inside of her passenger door and she didn’t ask if I was okay. She waited, patiently, for me to make up my mind.

Trisha’s car was nearly as spotless as my own, the interior polished until it gleamed and the heart shaped air freshener on the rear view mirror giving off a vanilla scent. She cranked the heater up and pulled slowly away from the curb once I was buckled in. She didn’t try to talk to me, so we rode silently toward my house.

When we were only a couple blocks away, I finally spoke. “Thanks,” I said. “For the ride.”

Trisha nodded, smiling a little. “Anytime.”

She said it so casually, as if it were no big deal that she would do this. After the way I’d treated her the last few weeks, she had every right to leave me walking along the side of the road.

But she had stopped. “You could have left me there,” I said. “My dad would never have known if you didn’t pick me up.”

“I didn’t pick up for your dad. I picked you up because you looked like you could use a friend.”

I studied her warily. “Why are you being nice to me?”

“Because believe it or not, I care about you,” Trisha said.

She pulled to a stop in the driveway and looked at me as I unbuckled the seat belt. “Do you need anything, Avery?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I want to be alone right now.”

She pressed her lips together, but she nodded. “If you ever feel like talking, you know how to find me.”

I managed a small smile as I climbed out of her car. “Thanks.”

My feet found their way up the path toward my house. My numb body moved on autopilot. I didn’t have my house key, which was on the keychain in my bag, but I did have the extra key Zac had made for me. I fished it out of the little groove in the front porch where I’d hidden it.

I rubbed my thumb over the grooves cut into the key Zac had made for me. He was saving me, even now when he hated me the most. The soft click of the lock as I slid my key in barely even registered in my head.

In my room, I paused in the middle of the floor and stared at the map on the wall. Where had I gotten this insane idea that I could possibly fix things? How could someone who was broken ever begin to repair anyone else?

I leaned over the bed, reached up, and ripped the map off the wall. The thumbtacks stayed behind, clinging to tiny pieces of the map they held in place. I crumbled the rest in my hands and then hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and fell to the floor behind my TV.