The Stars Will Shine (28 page)

“Rhode Island,” he says.

“Yup.”

“22, huh?”

“Yup.”

“You’re a pretty young-looking twenty-two-year-old.”

“Just give me my drink, please.”

He looks me over again then slides both the drink and the I.D. to me.

“This is the last drink you get, young lady. And then you get out of here.”

I nod as I glare at him. When he leaves to attend to some other customers, the man beside me finally speaks up.

“If you’re looking to get smashed tonight, why don’t you come by my place.”

“Because I don’t know you.”

He sticks out his hand. “Derek.”

I sweep a blasé glance over his extended hand, swallow down half of my drink, and slide off the barstool.

“I’m looking for a little more than just that, Derek.”

He drops his hand. “Like?”

I shrug as I stare at the amber liquid of my remaining drink. “A good fuck.”

At my words, it’s as though an invisible knife deeply and deliberately carves a rapacious smile out of his mouth.

“That I can do.” His voice is thick and throaty when he says, “Why don’t you finish your drink and we can get out of here.”

Outside, I stumble as I step one foot in front of the other, and lean heavily into Derek’s side. I don’t even know what he looks like because I haven’t exactly looked him straight in the face yet. Honestly, I don’t want to know because it wouldn’t make a difference. It wouldn’t change what I plan to use him for tonight. He has his arm around my lower back, helping to hold me up. At one point he stops us and pulls me in for a sloppy kiss. His fingers dig into my hair, pulling at it roughly. He presses his crotch against my stomach to remind me that he’s ready for what I want.

Headlights swing wildly across the road and stop straight on us, accompanied by a screeching of tires. Blinded, I pull away from Derek and lift my hand to block out the light. I hear a door slam shut. And I mean really shut hard.

“Get in the truck, Delilah,” someone says.

I lower my hand to see who it is. I know that voice. I stumble sideways a little, the alcohol taking a stand. I know that voice.

“Get in the truck,” he repeats, his tone lethal.

I recognize the voice, but the attitude doesn’t fit. He stomps forward until his body blocks out the headlights and I can finally see his face.

“Trevyn,” I say. “It
is
you.”

He grabs hold of my arm, a wild fury in his eyes, and yanks me away from Derek. I laugh, hard.

“She’s drunk. And she’s seventeen,” he spits out at Derek. “So get lost.” Then to me, “I’m not going to say it again. Get in the fucking truck.”

He lets me go, and as soon as he does, I take off in the opposite direction.

“Delilah!” he calls after me, but I don’t stop. I pick up my speed until I’m jogging, my flip flops smacking slackly against the asphalt. I hear him behind me, quickly catching up. There’s anger in his breaths and in the growl that precedes his next words.

“Don’t run from me!”

I whip around, jaw clenched, mouth in a scowl. I laugh a little more, taunting him.

“Is that what you said to Amber, too?” With a heated step toward him, I deliver the blow. “Before she left you?” My hands fist at my sides. Trevyn looks like I’ve slapped him, and I revel in the deranged thrill I get from it at the same time my gut twists with shame.

“
She left you, Trevyn
.” I bite my lip and laugh. “She chose God knows what over
you
.”

Trevyn looks livid. “Stop.”

“You handed her your heart and she just took off with it, selfishly flaunted that she had it and tossed it aside when she didn’t need it anymore. How could you ever trust her again?”

Trevyn’s stare is furious, unyielding. “Stop before you say something you regret.”

But I don’t stop. I step closer to him, sizing him up. “The ones we love always leave us. And a part of you hates her for it, doesn’t it? You hate that she did it to you, that she dropped you the second she found something better.”

“Delilah—”

“You pretend like everything is so goddamn fine, but you
hate
her for it. You two flutter around the shop like butterflies! Like all is fucking well in life—because you can’t face the giant-ass elephant in the room.” I throw my arms out wildly, shaking my head at him. “It’s fucking pathetic, Trevyn!”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I go on, my voice rising an octave and in volume. “How many guys do you think she fucked when you were apart? How does it feel to know the woman you love was probably wrapped up naked in the arms of other men
while she was engaged to you?
”

Trevyn is silent for a long time. He regards me with a sad expression then finally swallows and speaks softly.

“I feel sorry for you, Squirt.”

His use of the nickname jolts the emotions inside of me, upsetting some of the stones I used to bury them, so that some of the softer ones seep out. I feel tears start to well up.

“I’m sorry that you can’t let go of whoever hurt you,” he says. “That you have to push away everybody you love and everybody that loves you because you’re scared to let them in.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me.”

“But I am your friend. And friends don’t let each other self-destruct, no matter how insensitive they’re being. So, get in the truck. I’m not going to say it again. If you don’t do so in the next ten seconds, I will pick you up and put you in there myself.”

I growl at him, wishing he’d just leave me alone. “Why are you even here?”

“Dylan called me.”

I let out a hiss. “What, did he follow me here?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Screw him.”

Trevyn steps forward, prepared to haul me to his truck. “He said he talked to you earlier and you weren’t in a good place. He’s worried about you. Thought you’d listen to me over him.”

I scoff because I know it’s so much more than that. Dylan is possibly the one person that is just as, or more, self-destructive than I am. It isn’t that he feared he couldn’t stop my descent further into darkness. It’s that he feared I would convince him to join me.

Chapter Eighteen

I’m hungover.

And not just from the alcohol. I’m hungover from the anger, too.

And just like anytime I’m hungover, all I feel is exhaustion and regret.

I hold a mug of fresh coffee in my hands as I watch Dylan from the kitchen window. He sits on a porch swing on the back patio, lightly swinging back and forth as he sips from a coffee mug of his own. With a long sigh a few minutes later, I go out and join him.

“That doesn’t smell like coffee,” I say, as I sit down beside him and catch the smell of beer on his breath.

Dylan smiles, but it lacks anything behind it.

“Doesn’t taste like it either.”

We sit there for a moment, rocking in the swing. The sun seems too bright for the mood we’re in. To an outsider, I imagine the two of us sitting here might look like vampires, with our pale skin and our dark hair and the way we recoil from the light.

“Your mom has it wrong, doesn’t she?” I ask. Dylan doesn’t respond, just raises a brow at me as if to ask what I mean. “It’s not Aiden that gets you into trouble. But he does take the blame.”

Dylan flashes a rueful smile, and it’s so clothed in sorrow that it makes my chest squeeze a little.

Instead of answering that, he says, “Did you see that girl at the concert the other day? Shorter than you, wavy reddish-brown hair?” It’s like he’s doing his best to describe her without letting on that he could recite every detail of her face by memory, and without letting on that he thinks she’s the prettiest girl in the world.

“She was with that tall guy with the longish hair to his shoulders,” he adds.

I know who he’s talking about. It’s the PDA couple that left the shop as soon as the girl saw Dylan on stage. I remember she had really pretty green eyes, so bright you’d think they might glow in the dark. She had a nice smile, too, one that came freely whenever her boyfriend said something.

“Well…” Dylan lets out a wounded sigh. “She’s my ex-girlfriend Jessica.”

So
she
is the mysterious Jessica.

He looks miserable talking about her, so even if it wasn’t for his professed hatred for her in the rainstorm after the party that night, it’s not hard to see things didn’t end too well between them. He takes a sip from his mug of beer.

“We dated three years, from freshman year through junior year. Broke up about a month before this summer.” His thumb traces the rim of the mug as his jaw tightens. “I found out she’d been cheating on me for, like, more than half of the time we were together. And not just with one guy, not that that would have made it any better.”

“I’m so sorry, Dylan.” I don’t know what to say. How do I comfort a boy I don’t know all that well, and who I’ve spent quite a bit of time this summer despising and he despising me? Maybe he knows that I won’t be able to. And maybe that’s the point. To have somebody who will listen for a moment to what he says just so he can get his feelings off his chest. Not someone to tell him things will be alright or that he could do better than her or that she never really deserved him in the first place. Just someone to listen.

“Leah loved her, you know. She was so good with Leah.” He takes another sip of beer and runs a hand through his hair as if reliving the shock of finding out the girl he loved with his whole heart betrayed him so overwhelmingly on every level. “Leah cried so hard when she found out we broke up. And my mom did, too, you know. Jessica was a part of our lives for three years, and she was like a sister to Leah and a daughter to my mom. My family treated her like one of its own. But the whole time, she was just taking advantage of that.” He takes in a shaky breath. “Because she couldn’t have really loved me, right? If she would do something like that not only to me but to my entire family, who had let her so far into their hearts?”

With those words, I finally have Dylan’s reasoning for not wanting me to bond with Leah. And the thing is, I don’t blame him. I understand it now, especially after seeing how attached she has become to me already. In his eyes, I’m no different than his ex-girlfriend—just some girl that spreads her legs for any guy who looks her way, some girl who betrayed her family so badly she had to be sent away. And he’s right, there will come a day when I leave them, either at the end of summer or the end of the school year. And when I leave them, I will never look back.

“Have you ever hated and loved somebody so much at the same time?”

Dylan’s words gut me. The chair stops moving, and he looks over at me because he must sense how suddenly I’ve closed up, how I’ve snapped myself shut in this exterior skin of mine. I don’t say anything for a long time, and Dylan doesn’t ask again. He just leans his head back a little and looks up at the sky.

Finally I whisper, “Yes,” and he slowly brings his gaze back to me.

I can only focus on the grass at our feet. I push the swing so that we sway again, like we’re floating on the breeze, maybe because I want his mind to focus on that for a second instead of me, as if some small distraction will help soften the way I’m visibly hurting.

“Something happened when I was—when I was thirteen.” I swallow and close my eyes against the rush of memories, a mix of sweat and tears and joy and love and desperation.

Dylan straightens a bit, shifts in the seat, and I don’t know if it’s because he’s suddenly uncomfortable or because he’s bracing himself for what he suspects comes next.

“My brother’s best friend, Tommy—you met him before. Probably played flag football with him.”

“I remember him, yeah.” Dylan’s voice is quiet and tight, already full of something like pain. Maybe he regrets asking that question. But I can’t stop; I think I need this. Trevyn is right. I need someone to talk to. I need someone to hear my story, someone I’m not really that close to, someone who already once thought the worst of me.

“Well, he slept over at our house a lot growing up, you know, because Dave and he were best friends. They’d play video games far into the night.” I take a deep breath. “One night, after Dave went to bed, Tommy sneaked up to my room. I hadn’t fallen asleep yet, but I was lying there in bed thinking about him, of all people, and there he happened to walk into my room. I had a huge crush on him, you know? He was like the only guy I had ever liked, granted I was only thirteen. But I knew him so well, growing up with him and all, and he knew me. And I really, really liked him, and wanted to show him that I could be something more, that I was grown up enough for him to like me too, that four years of age between us was nothing.” I take another breath, a heavier one this time. “He came to me, in my bed…”

“Delilah…”

“Just let me—let me get this out, okay? I have to get this out. Please, don’t make me stop.” I breathe in again and then I do it. I say it all, everything I’ve never yet told a single soul.