Authors: John Goode
I was in a pissy mood all the way till lunch. It felt like I had pulled a thread loose in my mind. Now my defenses were unraveling against my will, exposing something I didn’t want to face. When I got to the music steps, Sammy and Kyle were already there, deep in conversation. For some reason even that irritated me.
“Hey, I got you a Pepsi,” Sammy said as I sat down.
I mumbled a thanks and drank half of it in one gulp.
“Thirsty much?” Sammy asked under her breath.
I felt my temper start to flare, but I forced myself not to say anything rude to her because I was 99.9 percent sure it was not her I was pissed at. Instead I looked at Kyle and asked, “How was the test?”
He rolled his eyes and sighed. “I don’t know. Between having to going to the bathroom every ten minutes and feeling guilty, I barely noticed the test.”
“Guilty?” I asked intrigued. “Guilty about what?”
“I am a horrendous boyfriend, and I need to make it up to Brad.”
That gave me pause. Brad had actually said something? Maybe I was wrong; maybe he had grown up some. “Don’t worry about it. He’s more tired than sore. It’s not like he isn’t enjoying it.”
I finished my Pepsi and saw Kyle looking at me oddly. “Enjoying what?”
“The sex,” I answered, confused. “He told me that he was worn out and didn’t know how to bring it up to you. I’m impressed that he did.”
“Brad said what now?”
The tone in his voice brought me to a screeching halt. Time slowed down as I realized that Brad had not said a word to Kyle and that I had just said the absolutely wrong thing. I mentally tried to backtrack, but it was way too late. “I mean… what were you guys arguing about?”
“Brad is enjoying what?” he asked again, his tone growing cold as his face contorted in anger.
“Nothing,” I said lamely.
Shit, shit, shit
, I thought to myself in a panic. What the hell did I just do? “So how was the test?”
“You already asked that,” Sammy said from behind him.
“What did Brad tell you?” Kyle asked, every syllable sharp enough to cut glass.
I panicked. There was no good answer to that question, and right now all I wanted to do was to get the blame off of me.
“He said he was worn out because you guys have been having sex all the time lately and that with the practice and the stress over the test he was just beat.” My words tripped over themselves as I verbally threw Brad under the bus. “But he said he was enjoying it.”
Silence like I had never heard before surrounded us. Kyle looked right into my soul with those eyes, and Sammy stared at us in shock. “He told you that?” she asked in the gap of silence.
“He’s my friend,” I snapped at her, my emotions exploded over themselves as my lips suffered from some form of emotional diarrhea. “We’ve slept together, for God’s sake! It wasn’t like he’s sharing state secrets.”
“He told you about our sex life?” Kyle asked, drawing my attention back to him. “He complained to you about us having sex?”
Abruptly, I knew what it felt like on the
Titanic
. The deck is tilting, you know the ship is sinking, and you’re just desperate to grab on to anything and hold on. “He was just talking, Kyle. It’s not the end of the world if your boyfriend wants to talk to someone about their life. It’s just what friends do.”
“Do you like your nipples played with?” he asked out of nowhere.
“What?” I stuttered, dazed. The sudden shift in the conversation made me feel like I’d just hit a brick wall.
“Do you like you nipples played with in bed? How important is foreplay? We’re friends, so it’s no big deal for you to share these things, right? Or it would be okay for Brad to tell me that stuff, right?”
I had heard Kyle rip people to shreds before, but hearing it and having it done to you are two different things. Hearing it, you have a dozen thoughts in your mind, and you’re cheering him on. But when he’s in front of you doing it, your only thought is to run.
“Ask him whatever you want, Kyle. He told me as a friend, and I’m sure he didn’t think he was betraying a trust.” I gathered up my stuff and turned to the both of them. “I have prom committee. Talk to you guys later.”
They said nothing to me as I walked away. I’m not even sure I wanted them to.
E
VERYTHING
HAD
faded into a small buzzing sound.
Not that I paid a ton of attention at these meetings anyway, because usually the first twenty minutes or so are spent gossiping and backstabbing by the Bitches of Eastwick, as Robbie called them. They prattled on about whoever they hated that week, and I sat there wondering why I’d ever opened my mouth. Of course Brad hadn’t said anything to Kyle. Why would I think differently? I hadn’t just made things worse between them; I made things worse for all of us.
“Yeah, it was a total passive-aggressive slip. I didn’t even know until later that I wanted to say that.”
I looked up at Stacy, the girl who had been talking, with a glare, thinking she had been talking to me. Instead Patricia, the girl she had been talking to, nodded and said, “I know! I always do that when I’m pissed. I don’t mean to say mean stuff, but then it comes out anyways, and later that night I realize I wanted to start shit with that bitch. My mouth just figured it out first.”
They cackled like the hags in
Macbeth
, and I felt my blood turn to ice water.
Is that what I’d done? Did I say that to Kyle knowing it was going to cause a fight between them? Maybe I had been fooling myself this whole time. Maybe deep down I was nothing more than a shallow bitch who only cared about herself. I
had
just been commenting that seeing them that much in love reminded me of how lonely I was. Did I really sabotage them on purpose?
“I need to go,” I said, interrupting their talking.
“Um, what about the prom?” Stacy asked, caring more that I had stopped her tirade about
Teen Mom
than the actual prom.
“What about it? We picked the theme. We have the colors. What else is there to talk about?” I grabbed my purse and headed toward the door. “See you next time.”
If they said anything to me as I left, it fell on deaf ears.
I
NEARLY
pounced on Kyle as he walked out of his last class.
“We need to talk,” I said as I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the building. I had no illusions that if he didn’t want to go he couldn’t have stopped me, since I wasn’t gripping him very tight. But he came along, which meant he was at least willing to hear me out.
That was a good thing.
Once we got out toward the quad, I let him go. “Okay, look, I’m going through a lot of crap in my head right now, and it’s possible I might have said what I said because I am incredibly jealous of what Brad and you have. That makes me a raging bitch, and you need to take that into account when being mad at him.”
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds. At first I thought he was thinking about it, but then he let out a huge yawn.
He apologized by covering his mouth. “Sorry, I am completely burnt. I’m not mad at you. I’m just mortified that Brad would tell someone else about our sex life. I don’t know why I expected more from him, but I did, and I am just sad. You didn’t deserve me attacking you. I’m sorry.”
The words lifted a great weight off my shoulders, but I still felt lousy for getting Brad in trouble. “Look, Kyle, you should give him a break. He’s new to this whole thing.”
He looked at me with bloodshot eyes, and I really began to grasp how tired he actually was. “Jennifer, do us both a favor. Don’t try to jump in front of Brad to save him on this. He screwed up, and I don’t want any reason to be angry at you. Okay?”
I understood what he meant. I had been seconds away from never talking to Robbie again because I had thought he’d been trying to justify what Brad had done to me. Even though what Brad had said was no big deal to me, it was to Kyle, which meant it was now a huge deal between the two of them. “Okay, but try to take it easy on him. We both know he didn’t mean anything by it.”
“No, we both know he didn’t think before he said anything.”
He was right, and there was nothing I could say to that. “You want a ride home?” I asked, since he looked like he was about to fall over.
He shook his head. “The walk will do me good.”
It felt like he was blowing me off, but the only thing I could do was give him some space. “Okay, well, call me later. Let me know what happens.” He nodded and tromped off toward home.
I had a sinking feeling this was about to get much worse.
I
WENT
through several bouts of crying waiting for a phone call from Brad.
The team had gotten home a little bit ago, according to some of the guys’ tweets. Which meant it was a countdown now until Kyle laid into him. My dad was working, which meant I didn’t need to hide behind a closed door pretending I was asleep. I expected Brad to call or to text, but instead I got him showing up at my door.
Thank God for both of us my dad wasn’t there.
I swung open the door and just started to ramble before he could start screaming at me. “I’m a horrible bitch and don’t know when to keep my mouth shut and fucked it up for you.” I walked into the house. “If you have anything you want to add to that, come in.”
I didn’t have to wait long. He slammed the door and began screaming. “How could you? How could you even bring it up to him?”
I was done being yelled at today. Maybe tomorrow I could summon up the courage to be a punching bag for one of these guys, but tonight, I was done. I spun around and screamed back. “I was trying to help you. I thought maybe if I eased into it that it would make it easier for you two to talk. I didn’t expect him to get that crazy.”
“He’s crazy,” he said back. “I told you he was crazy. In fact, you told me before I left not to say anything because he was crazy.”
I choked back another round of crying. “I know, and I fucked up.” I wiped my nose. I had to look like a complete wreck. “How bad is it?”
He showed me his ring, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. “The only thing missing was a bucket of Coke dumped over my head.”
It was so much worse than I thought it was. “I can fix this,” I said quickly to him. “We can fix this.”
He finally stopped pacing and fell into one of the chairs and sighed. “I hope you have a plan because minus a time machine, I don’t see how.”
“Look, Kyle loves you. He’s just been crazy the past few weeks because of everything. He has the alliance, the SATs, and college. Trust me, once he gets some sleep and works it out, he’ll be fine.”
He looked up at me with the saddest eyes I had ever seen. “I don’t think so.”
I wanted to argue with him, but in the pit of my stomach, I felt the same way.
T
HE
NEXT
morning Kyle texted me.
Skipping school today.
Damn, I was really counting on having all day to wear him down about the whole Brad thing. I texted him back.
Do u hate me?
I held my breath as I waited for a response. This answer would determine the rest of everything, really. If he hated me, there was no one except Sammy to plead Brad’s case, and she wasn’t his biggest fan. The only chance we all had of things going back to the way they were was if Kyle didn’t hate me.
Even though he had every reason to.
No, not at all. We broke up, and i cant face him.
The last thing I wanted to do was tell him I knew they had broken up already. He was mad enough about Brad telling me stuff; admitting he had told me more wasn’t going to help anyone. So I typed back.
Omg u broke up?
He texted back:
Yes. Will call u l8r and nothing else.
I sighed as I headed to school to tell Brad that things were as bad as he thought they were.
When I got to school, Brad was sitting on the band steps alone, looking like someone had run over his dog. I walked over to him and heard him muttering something to himself.
“Talking to yourself is a sure sign you’re crazy,” I said, sitting down next to him. He looked at me hopefully, but I shook my head. “He isn’t coming to school today. He texted me so I wouldn’t worry.”
I saw the tears begin to well up in his eyes as he asked me, “What if I can’t fix it?”
I pulled him into a hug because I honestly didn’t have an answer.
S
ATURDAY
AFTERNOON
I walked into Robbie’s shop.
He arched an eyebrow at me and commented, “You look like someone just told you everything Bernadette Peters sang was Auto-Tuned.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “Kyle and Brad broke up.”
He paused for maybe half a second. “Well, that didn’t take long,” he finally said, going back to folding.
I tried not to gape at him. “Why would you even say that?”
He tried not to sigh but failed miserably. “Did I ever tell you about John Black?” I shook my head. “He was the boy I was going to marry. He had dirty-blond hair, these incredible hazel eyes, and a body that most of the boys in West Hollywood would kill for. He was tall and lanky and did all that sports stuff like every boy in the world did. From the moment I laid eyes on him, I was utterly smitten.”
“What happened?” I asked, curious.
“Well, we ended up talking once in detention and became quasi friends. Which here means ‘friends that no one else knew about.’ He came over a few times, and one night he admitted he was curious, and we fooled around. It was like tripping over a muse who roller skates.” I gave him a confused look, but he just waved it off. “It was incredible for a little while. Then you know what happened?”
“Something bad?” I offered.
“No. Life happened. It was high school, and life happened, and what seemed to be the most important thing in my life became a footnote in the long and highly entertaining story of the rest of my life so far. We all have Johns, my dear. In this case, you and Kyle have the same one.”