The Love Story (The Things We Can't Change Book 4) (7 page)

When I pull up to the school, I can see Zeke leaning against the brick wall and my heart gives a happy thrum of approval at the idea of being near him again. And the prospect of another date, another earth-shattering kiss.

I practically skip up to the front steps of the school but slow down the closer I get to Zeke. Something isn’t quite right. Even though I’m twenty feet away, I can sense it in my bones. Steps, faltering, I make myself approach him.

“Hey,” I say, forcing an upbeat note into my voice, even though I’m no longer really feeling it.

Zeke turns to look at me and there’s a coolness in his eyes that I haven’t seen in a long time. Coolness like when he used to keep his distance from everyone.

But he doesn’t do that anymore,
I tell myself firmly.
Zeke and I are both different now. Healed. He’s just having a bad day.

“Hey,” Zeke replies, pushing away from the wall with a slow, languid movement.

As he moves, I catch a whiff of cigarette smoke on the wind and take a surprised step back. Surely it isn’t from Zeke… is it? But he hasn’t smoked in ages. Why would he start up again now?

“What’s up with you?” Zeke asks bluntly, and I’m jolted from my thoughts by his voice.

I look up to see him staring at me strangely. I realize I’m still standing a step back from him, off the sidewalk and on the grass.

Stupid,
I chide myself, and step up beside him once more. “Nothing,” I tell him, and he grunts and leads the way toward the school building.

I feel awkward all of the sudden, in a way I have never have around Zeke before. Not even when we first met and kept running into each other, not over the summer when we laid out our deepest, darkest secrets for the other one to see. No, this is a strange, different kind of awkward. I have the strange sensation of not knowing what to do with my hands. One arm is wrapped around my books and the other hangs limp at my side, feeling very obvious and strange.

I want Zeke to take it, to hold it and squeeze it reassuringly as he did the previous week. I need that small, extra reassurance to bolster me as we walk down the halls and the whispering begins. Whispers that start out as a small gust of wind and grow into a full blown tornado, hissing and coming at us from all directions.

But he doesn’t. His hands remain solidly at his own side and my own hang limply. I wonder what in the world is going on and if I am the one to blame for it. We stop at our lockers and it isn’t until we get to the point where we normally part ways that I can’t take it any longer. I stop walking and wait until Zeke turns and looks back at me with raised eyebrows.

“What happened?” I ask softly. I see annoyance flash across his face and want to back down, just so he won’t be annoyed with me. “I know something happened over the weekend, Zeke. Please, just tell me so I can understand.”

He hesitates and then says without looking at me, “My dad and I had another fight. He kind of… kicked me out.” He holds up a hand when I open my mouth, already knowing what I’m going to say. “I’m staying with Alex. It’s fine. Really. But I’m just… I’m
feeling
it this time, you know? And it’s kind of intense. So I just need some space. Okay?”

“Okay,” I say quickly, understanding how he always gets about fights with his dad. I want to hear the whole story, know how it got so bad that his dad actually kicked him out of the house, but I don’t. I let Zeke walk away from me and get the distance he wants so badly.

But as the week goes on, the distance doesn’t go away. I try to bring up the subject, tentatively and carefully, several times. All I get in response are snapping replies or a cold stare accompanied by silence. Zeke is cutting me out, blocking me in a way that he never has before. On Monday, I tell myself it’s nothing. When he is the same on Tuesday and says he has plans with Koby and Dominic so he can’t study when I ask him, I tell myself the same thing. When he’s just as cutting on Wednesday, however, I know something is really wrong.

I’m his girlfriend. I should be the first person that he comes to when he’s having a problem. He’s tried to block me out in the past, but eventually I always got through to him. Except that we’re dating now and so he should be able to trust me more easily.

If he can’t tell me, then there must be some kind of deep, underlying issue with
me
. A reason he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing it with me. Somehow I convince myself that it can’t just be that his dad kicked him out. There has to be a deeper reason, something bigger that is keeping a wall up between us. And it has to do with me.

I go crazy trying to fix it. I keep telling myself that if I just try a little harder, everything will go back to normal. I just need to spend more time trying to fix myself. I style my hair with a critical eye, knowing Zeke’s fondness for it. I spend agonizing hours every night planning out every detail of my appearance. I hold my tongue when he snaps at me and shut up whenever I begin to sense that he doesn’t want to talk. I don’t trouble him with tales of Tiffany and the other girls, since it seems to annoy him. I use every trick and weapon in my arsenal to please him.

I tell myself it’s enough that we’re together, that so long as I at least
have
Zeke, I can get through it all. I just have to not anger him, not give him any excuse to not want me anymore. I can withstand the bullying, the whispers, the times at home with Clarissa and her drinking, so long as I have Zeke there at the end of the road, at the end of class, at the beginning of the day, to cling to and pull me through everything.

But there’s still a distance between us, one that isn’t visible at all to the casual eye. It can only be felt, and feel it I do. And I try everything in my power to erase it, to change it and fix it because I know that the problem probably has to do with me. I need to try harder, be more agreeable, more polite, dress better and do everything I can not to trouble Zeke.

Nothing works and the distance grows bigger and longer and I feel more and more like a failure.

Ezekiel

90

I thought pushing Evie away, cooling the emotional connection, would help to calm me and make me feel a little bit more in control. Instead, it just makes me feel like the world’s biggest ass and makes me have another problem: missing Evie. Baly.

Our kiss runs through my mind at really random, inopportune times and I remember how it felt to have my body up against hers. It makes me flush with heat, remembering the intenseness, the explosiveness of it all. It has to be the emotions involved. That’s what makes it all ten times better with Evie—and ten times scarier.

All my life, I’ve run from emotions, shied away, repressed them. I tell myself that’s not what I’m doing now. I’m not running away. I’m just… retreating. Giving myself some distance before I ease back into it once more. Somehow, it’s not as easy to believe the lies I tell myself now as opposed to this summer.

Instead, I turn my attention to two things: my art and the bullying. Even though I don’t really want to admit it, art is the highlight of my day. Aside from seeing Evie, although I don’t really say that either.

Still, it’s a relief to spend my mornings drawing and painting to my heart’s content, helping to keep everything under control or at least manageable to a certain degree. I keep working on “limbering up my drawing muscles” and on pieces for my portfolio and for the fall art show.

To my surprise, my
Lola
sketch impresses Mr. Bryant to no end and he orders me to paint it for the show. It’s vitally important that my piece for the show is the best it can be, because winning means I’ll be able to go on to other competitions and winning those means badly needed scholarships. So I pour everything I have into my painting and drawing and pray that for once in my life, I land on my feet.

The bullying is starting to get on my nerves, gratingly so. The worst is that it isn’t always
bullying
, precisely. Yes, people whisper under their breath and make rude gestures at me and I’ve found a note or two in or on my locker, but it’s the shitty kind of stealth bullying that is hard to pinpoint. It’s impossible to report and stop it. Not that I would ever tattle, of course.

No, the worst for me is simply the way everyone falls silent as I walk into a room. The way everyone stares at me and freshman girls skitter out of my path with wide, terrified eyes. For me, the worst is the way all of Tony’s old friends are managing to keep every single rumor alive and the attention on Evie and me. And you can’t stop people from paying attention to you because of rumors, no matter how you dress, how quiet you are or how few friends or emotional connections you have.

I want to rail and scream at everyone, shout the truth at the top of my lungs and force them all to believe it. But as I learned over the summer, you can’t
force
someone to believe something. They have to do it on their own.

Moments that are particularly hard to get through are ones at the club, where I am surrounded by people just like Tony and his whole family. I know I’m in for it on Saturday night—a night Koby offered to trade with me and I could have spent with Evie, except I’m a dumbass—when Tiffany, Grace, Chantal, Aaron and Josh and the whole crowd strolls into a wedding reception.

From across the room, Dominic and I exchange a long suffering look, followed by an eye roll. I launch into what is always the best and most difficult plan: avoidance.

It works out well for a while, since I don’t serve their tables at the meal and then they are too busy spiking their drinks from flasks in the girls’ purses to pay much attention to me.

I shake my head. I’ll never understand the need to go through life permanently drunk. I like the release, yes, and I may have abused it a little when I lost Cindy, but I don’t need to be drunk to have a good time. Especially in public places where I might get caught.

The DJ takes over as we clear the tables and people go through the rituals; mother-son dance, father-daughter, couples, on and on until finally, the real dancing begins. We sneak in between the oooing and ahhhing couples and gather up the dishes and then take up our silent posts around the room.

I plant myself next to Dominic, the first time I’ve been able to talk privately with him since I started staying with Uncle Alex. About time, too, because the suspense of waiting has been killing me. We make our requisite whispered jokes first, about the mother of the bride and the drunken uncle, then compare ratings on the bride (this one is a solid six: rocking body but mediocre face) before the talk finally wanes a little bit and I casually slip in my question.

“Have you heard anything about Cameron since he went to jail?”

Dominic is trying to discreetly check his cell phone but it’s hard in the dim light and Uncle Alex is on us in an instant.

“Not on my dining room floor, Alverson!” Alex snaps as he rushes by. “I’ll confiscate that shit if I see it again!”

Dominic scowls at his retreating back and shoves the phone back into his pocket. “Not really. If you mean, is he still in jail, then yes. If you’re asking if he’s been butt raped or something, I have no idea. And I honestly don’t think he’s pretty enough to tempt anybody.”

I hold back a gag at the idea. “You’re sick, you know that?”

Dominic’s teeth flash white in the darkened room, highlighted in flashes by the disco ball and strobe lights. “Hey, I tell it like it is. Reality is harsh, you feel me?”

I have to admit that he’s right. My situation could technically be worse. At least I’m not in prison or juvie. Dominic doesn’t really talk about his six-month stint there in eighth grade and that’s telling enough.

“What about his friends?” I continue. “Kendal? Tyler? Were they with him when he got caught?”

I’m lucky that Dominic is distracted enough by trying to check his phone again that he doesn’t question my own questioning. He only turns so it looks like he’s hugging the wall with his right side to try and conceal the light of his phone as he answers, “Ummm, I’m not sure. Tyler moved to Cincinnati at the beginning of the summer and last I heard, Kendal was still working at Brothers. But I’ve been there the past couple weekends and haven’t seen him so he might have tried the college thing again and be back at OU.”

“Gimme that!”

We both jump as Alex swoops in from nowhere and snatches the phone out of Dominic’s hand.

“Alex, aw, come on, man!” Dominic hisses after him, but Alex doesn’t turn around and Dom kicks the wall, cussing.

I roll my eyes and move on from my spot against the wall, seeing a lot of movement around the cake table and knowing we’re back on for the moment. We go through the whole reception without any trouble from the club patrons and I allow some premature sighs of relief to escape the longer the evening goes without incident. The DJ announces the last song of the night and I’m thinking I may escape an ugly encounter when I turn around and find Josh blocking my path back to the kitchens.

He sneers at me. “What’s up, Quain?”

I dig up a bland waiter’s smile from somewhere. “Surprised you’re brave enough to talk to a rapist and murderer all by yourself, Chambers.”