Blowback (8 page)

Standing, I brought my hand to shield my eyes from the strengthening breeze and looked down the street, but Jet was nowhere to be found. I’d apparently gotten myself all fixed up for nothing. He was always there by four thirty if he was coming, and it was already almost five.

“You look really pretty.”

His voice was like a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds. He’d come from around the back of my house. I hadn’t even thought to look for him that way. I whirled around to face him, his voice drawing me to him.

Just as I turned, he slunk to the ground, holding his side. My heart jumped into my throat, stifling my breath when I saw him. Beneath his crimson-stained fingers, I could see the tattered bits of his T-shirt exposing wounded skin.

“Oh my God.” I gasped. “What happened?”

Rushing to his side, I dropped to my knees. My skirt would be stained by the grass for sure, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was making sure he was okay. My skirt could be replaced. He couldn’t.

“Just a scratch,” he said. His normally pale complexion turned ghostly white and his hand trembled at his side.

“Do you need to go to the hospital?” I asked. I barely had my license, but there was a car in the garage. I was only allowed to take it out in an emergency when my mom wasn’t home. This seemed like it fit the bill.

“No,” he said. His voice was stern. I knew unless he was bleeding to death, there was no changing his mind.

“Let me see,” I demanded.

“I just need to get cleaned up. Can I do that here?”

“Of course,” I said and rose to my feet. “Come inside. I’ll get the first aid kit.”

“I don’t want to bleed all over your floor. Just turn the hose on me and bring me a Band-Aid.”.

“Get your ass up and inside,” I said, pointing toward the door. I was not playing. This was some serious shit, and it was no time to crack jokes.

“Yes, ma’am.”

He struggled to stand, and if it hadn’t been for me helping him up, I wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to do it on his own. How he’d managed to get to my house was a mystery to me. His wound appeared to still be oozing a small amount of blood under his fingers. He held his side as we made our way inside the house and to the kitchen. I left him sitting in a chair while I ran upstairs to get the first aid kit and a washcloth.

What could have possibly happened to him? My first thought was that he’d gotten into a fight as he was prone to do at times, but he’d never come out on the bottom of one as far as I knew. I’d never actually seen him fight, but I’d heard it wasn’t pretty when he did.

When I returned to him, he lay on the floor, still clutching his side, but he’d taken off his shirt. My body tensed, stopping me in my tracks as I got an eyeful of him. His body was made of defined abs and hard pecs and all those muscles that made girls go stupid when they see them. Most boys that age I’d seen with their shirts off were nothing more than a little skin over bones. If they were lucky, they maybe had a little definition. Even the jocks I knew weren’t all that big. But Jet… Jet looked like a grown-ass man sprawled out on my kitchen floor. I often fantasized about what he looked like with his shirt off, but reality blew my fantasies away.

Shaking the fog from my brain, I grabbed a bowl, ran some warm water into it, and got down to the business of washing the blood from his body and hands. He winced when the alcohol hit his tender flesh after I’d cleaned the blood, but I still thought he was brave. A nasty gash like that would have had me screaming bloody murder before the disinfecting stage.

“I don’t think you need stitches. It doesn’t look too deep.”

“Told you it was just a scratch.”

“Yeah, except scratches don’t bleed that much. What happened?” I asked as I placed some liquid bandage over the wound.

He made a hissing noise as he sucked air sharply into his lungs when the liquid touched his broken skin. “Nothing. I fell down.”

I looked at him like he was crazy, knowing he was hiding something from me. The more resistant he was to spill his guts, the more I suspected something huge had happened. But I wouldn’t push him. He had to tell me because he wanted to. Not because I forced him into it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“Okay,” I said and reached for the washcloth so I could start cleaning everything up.

He sat up quicker than I expected him to be able to with his injury. His hand grazed my cheek. The next thing I knew, his gloriously warm lips melded to mine. Every bit as exquisite as I’d imagined. I knew then that I’d never get enough of him and the delicious way he tasted. But what came out of his mouth when he pulled away floored me.

“I love you, Evie,” he said, peering deep into my eyes.

He had me in a trance, but I managed to blurt out the worst possible thing I could.

“But… we aren’t even dating.” Not the response I’d imagined having the billion times I dreamt of him telling me he loved me. I wanted to believe I loved him, too, but it was all happening way too fast for me to process.

“I know, but I came over to ask you if you’d be my girlfriend. I just got held up,” he said, glancing down at his wound.

“You’re serious? You want me to be your girlfriend?”

“Yeah. I mean, if you want to,” he said, tugging briefly at his earlobe, an act he often did when we spoke about things that made him nervous. “Everyone thinks we are anyway.”

“Oh, great. You only asked me because of that?” I asked. My heart started to ache. I wanted to be with him, but not because he thought he was expected to date me.

“That’s not why.”

“Why then? Tell me what it is about me that makes you say you love me.”

“I can’t. Just know that I do.”

“Why not? If you can’t tell me, my answer is no.”

“Fine, I’ll go.”

“Wait,” I said. He couldn’t go. I wasn’t ready for him to leave. “Please, don’t… You have to understand something about me. I don’t know how to do this kind of stuff. I’ve never…” I trailed off.

“You’ve never what?”

“Never anything. No boyfriend, never been kissed, never anything. I haven’t even held hands with anyone but Sophie when we watch scary movies.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I just kissed you, so you can mark that off your never list. And as far as I’m concerned, I’m your boyfriend, so that’s another one down,” he said, taking my hand gently in his. “And your parents aren’t home, so I’m thinking we could knock that last one off your list depending on when they’re getting back.” His eyebrows rose as the corner of his mouth turned up.

“Jet,” I whispered. “I mean, we’ve been dating for less than two minutes. That’s entirely too fast for me… I mean, I want to, I’m just not quite there yet.”

“I get it.”

“Have you? You know.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking away from me like he was embarrassed. If he were embarrassed, I was absolutely mortified by the thought. “No one you know.”

* * *

People giggling in the hallway outside my hotel room caught my attention, pulling me out of my stroll down memory lane. One of them was definitely Sophie, and I sprang from the bed and sprinted over to open the door. It’d been far too long since I’d seen her. It was an odd thing to go from seeing your best friend nearly every day to only seeing them every couple of months. We texted each other incessantly so we still felt like we were a part of the other’s every day life. Every time we got together, it was like no time had passed at all since the last time we’d seen each other.

As I swung the door open, I was practically tackled by my blonde-haired, blue-eyed best friend. Her boobs slammed into me a full second before the rest of her did and almost knocked me to the ground. Seriously, those things were ginormous and could be classified as a couple of concealed weapons.

Someone close to Sophie’s build but with short, inky black hair and bright green eyes followed her into the room. She was a smidge taller than Sophie, but not by much. I’d never met her, but she had a familiar face. Like one of those people you’d swear you’d seen a million times, but you’d never laid eyes on them before that you can remember.

“Hi,” I said and held my hand out to her after I freed myself from Sophie’s embrace. “I’m Evie.”

“I’m Alex,” she said and shook my hand. A mousy smile brightened her face. “I’ve heard so much about you, Evie. I feel like I’ve known you as long as Sophie has.”

“She’s told me a lot about you, too.” I smiled warmly at her. The vibe coming from her was nothing but positive, and I looked forward to getting to know her better. I’d been concerned that, by some chance, we wouldn’t get along, but my fears seemed to be unfounded.

They followed me into the room and sat down at the table near the window as I plopped myself on the bed.

“Well, Sophie, my car finally died on me.”

“About time. I knew it wasn’t long for this world,” she said as she rummaged through her purse and pulled out a brush. “Surprised it lasted this long.”

“Are you staying in town tonight?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, working the brush through her hair. “I’m not planning on being sober tonight. Maybe not tomorrow night either. We should make a weekend out of it.”

“Can you take me to a rental car place sometime before you go home?”

“Nonsense. I’ll just take you home. It’s not a big deal.”

“I know, but I’ll need something to use for a few days until I get another car anyway. It’s just easier to go ahead and get one.”

“Where’s your car now?”

“At a garage. I junked it for a grand, and guess who owns the place? Big. Remember Big? He lived down from me for a while.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “How’s he doing?”

“Not bad. He’s a giant piece of man-meat now. Seriously, I didn’t think he could get any bigger, but he did. Rock solid now.”

“Well, it sucks that your car died, but at least you got something out of it.”

“That’s not the only thing I got for my troubles,” I said, smirking and glancing away from her.

Sophie leaned forward, her mouth curling up into a grin. “Tell me what happened. Did you get it on with Big in his garage? Is that how you know he’s a hot piece of man-meat now? You got an up close and personal view?”

“Not even close… but I did end up getting a nice meal out of the whole thing.”

“That’s nice of Big, though I would rather hear the details of a fling, but dinner is good, too.”

“Not Big.”

“Then who?” she asked. I could tell by her tone that she was starting to get impatient.

“Jet Flanagan, of all people.”

“What the actual fuck?” she asked. Her voice rose to almost a screech as she dropped the brush onto the table. “You can’t be serious.”

“Who’s Jet Flanagan?” Alex asked.

“Only the love of Evie’s life who dumped her to go get engaged to someone else. Please tell me you kicked him in the balls after he paid for dinner.”

“I didn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t,” I said. The butterflies started fluttering again as I thought of him and the way his gorgeous eyes looked at me just like he used to. I tried to remind myself of the bad deeds he’d committed against me, but they seemed to fade away by the second.

“Oh, God. You’re making those googly eyes. You’ve got it bad again, don’t you?”

“No… Maybe. What’s wrong with me? How could I see him and practically forget everything that happened? Why does he
still
make me feel the way he used to?”

“Nostalgia, maybe?” she offered.

“Could be. I swear it was like no time passed since the last time I saw him. You know, before he ran off into the sunset with some other girl without even so much as a
Dear John
letter.”

“I’m no expert, and maybe it’s not even my place to speculate,” Alex said with a nervous giggle, “but you probably love him. We never shake the ones we truly care about.”

“She does love him. Always has. I’ve known it all along,” Sophie said, her tone matter of fact as she brushed powder onto her face.

“Oh, really? Care to enlighten me on that one?”

“You married Preston. Jet
hated
Preston. They were practically mortal enemies,” she said as she stood. Taking a couple of steps toward the suitcase she’d brought, she knelt down to unzip it. “You did it to spite Jet.” She pulled out a slinky, silvery dress and brought it over to me. Holding it up to my body, she nodded to herself. “If you didn’t love him, you wouldn’t have wanted to hurt him so badly. The part of your plan that failed was that Jet probably never knew you married Preston, and, therefore, was never in the position to swoop back into your life and reclaim you.”

“That’s not why I married Preston, and you know it,” I said, snatching the dress from her.

“Okay, so it might not be why you married him, but it’s why you said yes when he asked you out senior year.”

She had me there. I’d had this scenario dreamt up that Jet would somehow find out I was dating Preston Payne—the same guy he’d defended my honor to. I didn’t know what I wanted to happen next, but I was pretty sure it involved Jet heartbroken and feeling the way he’d made me feel.

Preston turned out to be a much nicer guy than I ever thought he could be. He approached me one day after school while I was sitting outside reading a book. My instinct was to flip him the middle finger and tell him to be on his way, but then I noticed the genuine look he had on his face, not like the sneer he’d worn the day Jet had taken up for me.

He apologized for the things he said to me, claiming he didn’t really mean any of it, and that he was only showing off for his friend. He wanted to make the whole incident up to me by taking me out to a movie. Of course, I was skeptical, but I agreed to go. That’s when I got to know how sweet he could be.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last long after we married. Once we said ‘I do’, I became his property instead of his partner, and the marriage was doomed from the start. We were together a total of three years, married for one, and I often thought we might still be together had we never gotten married, but his true colors would’ve come out eventually, regardless. Coincidentally, he started drinking heavily around the time we got married. That’s what changed him, I believe.