Very Bad Things (23 page)

Only he didn’t feel the same.
It wasn’t fair
, I
wanted to yell out. Why grant me this once-in-a-lifetime chance and then leave
me unrequited? Why was he my Romeo, but I wasn’t his Juliet?

Did I have the strength to move on and find my happy moments
with someone else? Could I let him go?

“Um,
meerkats? Yeah, not so cute and cuddly.

Have
you seen the nasty things they eat?

I
bypass them at the zoo . . . freakish little things.”

–
Nora
Blakely (shuddering)

A FEW DAYS later, I arrived at the gym
for my first day on the job. Leo let me in after I buzzed the bell since the
gym hadn’t officially opened yet for the public. He sat down with me and
explained the requirements and gave me several shirts with Club Vita’s logo on
them. He informed me he was going to pay me twenty dollars an hour, which I
thought was ridiculously too much, but he insisted. My schedule would be three
days a week from one o’clock until four, which would put me at close to
one-hundred eighty dollars a week before taxes. I did the math and figured I’d
have a small nest egg saved by the time college started.

He left me to work in his private office, so I settled in at
the front desk, getting familiar with the computer and the list Leo had left
for me to do.

As Sebastian let himself in the door from school, my phone
buzzed. I looked down to see Finn had left me another text, but thankfully no
picture. He’d been bombarding me with emails and texts all week. Usually I
deleted them without reading, but this time, I needed to know what he was
thinking. I suspected he was growing desperate, and it scared me.

I didn’t feel safe.

-- Call me. This is your last warning, sister. If you
don’t answer...

I stared at it for a long time, trying to understand why he
was like he was. I came up with nothing except that we’d both been raised by
Mother.

“Nora?” Sebastian asked, sitting down beside me. “What’s
wrong?”

“Read a text from Finn,” I said, gesturing at my phone.
“Stupid. I shouldn’t have.”

“He’s not going to bother you here,” he said, resting his
hand on my back.

I shook my head, thinking how naïve he was. “Haven’t you
ever watched a horror movie? The bad guy
always
comes back for the girl.
And he pops out of nowhere just when you least expect it.”

“But the good guys win in the end.”

I chewed on my lip uncertainly. “His messages are coming
more often. I think he’s finally lost it. I mean, he’s moving back home. He
hated it there as much as I did. Mother was horrible to us both.”

“Damn it, Nora, tell Leo. He’ll put a stop to it, trust me.”

“No,” I said, turning back to the computer.

Sebastian grunted angrily, but I ignored him.

As we worked, Tiffani buzzed and Sebastian let her in. She
breezed through the door, dressed in another designer workout outfit. Her top
was bright pink and cropped, showing off her spray tan and slim waist. The
matching pants were glued to her short legs.

She stopped at the desk and stood there, moving from one
foot to the next. I sat there pretending to type life-threatening membership
information in the computer.

“How was BA today?” she asked, her eyes darting between
Sebastian and myself.

“It was great, thanks for asking,” Sebastian replied. “Are
you here to work out?” he asked, glancing at her clothes. “Most of the machines
are up and ready if you are.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I just finished a run at the park. I must
look a mess,” she said with a tinkling laugh, smoothing down her perfect hair.
Of course, she didn’t have a drop of sweat on her, and this was September in
Texas.

“I just dropped by to see Leo. Is he around?” she asked
Sebastian, flicking her eyes at me and smirking.

Sebastian said Leo was checking on the tennis court
construction, so he’d text him. In a few minutes, Sebastian got a text back.
“Uh, Tiffani, Leo says he’s in the middle of something right now, but he’ll
meet you here in the lobby in half an hour.”

“Sure, tell him I’ll wait as long as he needs. It’s my day
off. Um, Nora, I’d like to talk to you. Can we chat somewhere privately?” she
asked sweetly, blinking her false eyelashes at me.

I fidgeted. “Sure,” I said, getting up out of my chair and
leading the way to the band room.

I held the door open for her as she walked in, and as soon
as the door shut, she said, “Stop whatever game you’re playing because Leo is
mine.”

“I’m not playing a game,” I said. Did everyone know how I
felt about Leo?

She went on. “I got news for you. I called your mother up
last week and asked her to lunch, and when she heard I knew you, she couldn’t
wait
to meet me and fill me in.”

I let out a deep breath. Mother. When would I be free of
her?

“Yeah, I thought that would get your attention,” she said,
crossing her arms. “You know, I knew you were a snobby bitch who thought she
was better than everyone else, but I never dreamed you’d be enough of a slut to
screw your own brother.”

Deep shame rushed over me, and I wanted to run from the room
and hide. She knew the truth; she knew how disgusting I was. But had Mother
told her? I couldn’t believe she’d spill our dirty secrets, but how else would
Tiffani know? I couldn’t see Finn admitting his crimes to some girl he’d never
met, so it
had
to be true.

And if Mother told her it probably meant she was paving the
way for Finn’s defense in case I went to the police. Was she spreading rumors
about me to everyone I knew? Who was next?

I sat down.

“I’m going to tell Leo
everything
about you. About
the drugs, about your brother.”

I stared out the window, imagining Leo’s face if he saw the
pictures Finn had taken. Would he blame me for it all? Would the man I loved do
that? My heart told me no, that he would never think badly of me because of
what had happened. But my head wasn’t sure.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Tiffani said with a
sneer.

I arched a brow at her. “You think you know the truth, but
you don’t.”

She glared at me. “You’ll never get Leo. He may put on a big
act about how tough he is,” she said, “but he loves me. He said so.”

Her words made me want to scream. She had to be lying.

I jumped up and paced around the room, feeling feral, like I
wanted lash out and claw her pretty face. I calmed myself by taking deep
breaths and running a list of new words through my head. Words that described
her, such as:
bird-brain
,
hobbit-chick
, and
slut
.

If Leo loved this vile creature then let him have her.

I opened the door for her.

She gave me a haughty look as she moved to the entrance.
“Tell you what. As long as you stay away from him, I’ll keep my mouth shut
about your sex life.”

“If he really loves you, Tiffani, then
he
will stay
away from me. And he’s paying me to work not chat, so if you’ll excuse me,” I
said politely, using the skills Mother had drilled into me. I straightened my
shoulders and went back to the front desk.

After a few minutes, Leo came striding down the hall with
his eyes locked on mine the entire way. I deliberately scowled at him and then
pointedly looked at Tiffani. He did not have the right to pull his eye whammy
on me when she was right here. No way.

Tiffani squealed when she spotted Leo and ran up to meet
him. She threw her T-Rex arms around him and squeaked out, “Leo! I’ve missed
you, darling!”

He disentangled himself. “What’s up? Everything okay with
the food order?” he asked her. I wanted to think he seemed annoyed at her, but
that was debunked when she asked him if they could go upstairs and be alone,
and he agreed.

Ten minutes later, she came back down without Leo. She
stopped in front of us, opened her purse, and took out a compact and a tube of
lipstick. Sebastian and I watched as she carefully applied it and then puckered
her lips at herself, wiping the excess away with her fingers. She snapped it
shut, dropped it back into her purse, and looked over at us slyly. “I don’t
know why I even bother wearing makeup around Leo.” She shrugged and walked out
the door.

We watched her the entire way, both of us deep in thought.

“She’s smarter than I thought,” I said.

Sebastian nodded. “Yep, that whole scene was orchestrated
for your benefit. She thinks you’re a threat, always has.”

“Not anymore.”

“She’s a naturally territorial person,” he mused.

“Yeah, she reminds me those meerkats you see at the zoo. You
know, they’re kinda small, excitable, and self-absorbed in hierarchy. That’s
her, an evil little meerkat.”

Sebastian exploded in laughter. “Nora, you’re a nut.”

I agreed.

“What animal am I?” he asked, wrapping his arm around me as
we headed to band practice.

“Still working on it, my friend. Keeps me up at night
thinking about it.”

“I’m not that hard. Hell, I’m a guy. Aren’t we all
open-books?”

I stopped and pointed my finger at him. “Sebastian Tyler
Tate, you are not fooling me one minute with your happy-go-lucky,
couldn’t-give-a-shit-about-anything attitude.” I poked him in the chest. “You
got some deep stuff in there and one day somebody’s gonna come along and
wham!
steal your heart.”

“I seem to remember saying almost the same thing to you at
Emma’s party,” he chuckled.

“And that’s why I love you. You’re always looking out for
me,” I teased.

He wiggled his brows at me. “Wanna go get in the cleaning
closet?”

I punched him in the arm, and he laughed, following me into
the music room.

Later, when Leo came down to join us, he looked disheveled
and preoccupied, and I tormented myself by wondering if they’d ended up in his
bedroom again. I did my best to ignore him. He did the same.

After talking a little about the upcoming gym opening, he
handed me some sheet music he’d picked out for the band to play. It was songs
he and Sebastian already knew, so most of our practice would be for Teddy and
Vixen. We separated so Sebastian and Leo could work through the music with
Vixen while I played the pieces for Teddy.

The first song was ColdPlay’s hit “Clocks,” and I played it
for Teddy while he hummed along. The second song was Five for Fighting’s
haunting piano tune “100 Years,” and Teddy watched me steadily, his eyes on my
fingers, his head cocked in a pronounced way. After a few times of playing them
both, he said he was ready, so I listened as he played them back. Not perfect,
yet it was beautiful.

“Can I hug you, Teddy?” I was feeling needy.

He flapped his arms a little. “I like to be touched by
people I know.”

I leaned over and hugged him tightly.

When I pulled away, he said, “Are you happy?”

I thought about it, and discovered that, yeah, maybe I would
be soon. “Some. Why?”

He stared at nothing over my shoulder. “The first time I saw
you, you looked sad. Did I make you sad?”

I reached out and took his hand and squeezed. “No, Teddy,
you did
not
, but I was unhappy that day. You know, I didn’t have many
friends when I met you, so meeting you was special.”

“I’m your friend,” he said, in his sing-song way.

I smiled. “Yeah, and I’m glad you are.”

He nodded. “Okay, let’s play more music.”

The rambunctious “Great Balls of Fire” was our last song to
practice, and when Teddy heard what it was, he became the most animated I’d
ever seen. I played it while he paced around the piano, staring at the keys the
entire time. When I got to the chorus, he suddenly belted out singing, and I
grinned widely. I felt eyes on me and glanced over at Leo. He’d stopped playing
his guitar and was sitting there, watching us with a small smile on his lips. I
continued playing, beating on the keys with a passion that was born from the
ache in my heart, knowing Leo would never belong to me.

When the song was over, Teddy wanted to tell me the details
he found fascinating, and because I could appreciate his fixation, I listened.