Breathless (114 page)

“Now will you thank me?”

“Thank you.” I glared at her as I did. “Cut me a break. It hasn’t been an easy night, you know.”

The snarky tilt to her mouth dropped and her eyes widened as she shot off the garbage bin. “I’m sorry, Alex. I am. I sort of forgot about the game and…”

And Ethan.

“And everything,” she finished.

I jerked my head in a nod, but turned for the sink and splashed some water on my face.

“Don’t smudge your make-up.”

I looked up. Too late. The mascara was smudged, my concealer was in clumps, and my lipstick had long ago been rubbed off. I was a mess.

“What am I going to do?” I heaved a deep sigh. What the hell was going on with me? I’d been a crying fool in front of thousands and now I almost had sex in public. Thousands could’ve seen that, too.

Angie gave me a sympathetic smile and stood in front of me. She flipped the water on and dabbed a paper towel under the faucet. Then her gentle hands took my face as she started to wipe away the rest of my smudged make-up. While she did, she asked, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” I was already at the mercy of her hands.

She hesitated a second, but asked, “Why did you sleep with him?”

“What?” I stiffened and opened an eye, but she started dabbing my eyelashes. Then I took another deep breath. I felt the confession building inside of me.

“I thought you were going to wait, you know, for a steady boyfriend? And you wanted to make sure he loved you back. Why’d you break that vow to sleep with Jesse?” She chuckled to herself. “I mean, I get it. I do. You two have some damn amazing chemistry, but still, that’s what you preached before…”

I felt her hesitation again. It stung.

“Before Ethan died,” she finished as she started scrubbing the other side of my face.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Alex. You do too know.”

“No, I don’t. The night we did it, the first night was hard. Ethan had just died and it was his funeral that night.”

“I always wondered where you went that night, but I stopped wondering.” Angie sounded far away. Her voice was so soft. “That was the beginning when you never seemed with us, you know.”

“I know.” And I did, because a part of me had died with Ethan. I had ceased feeling grounded, except with Jesse. He grounded me, he anchored me. “So that was the first night, and honestly, it wasn’t something I planned. He was hurting. I was hurting. We stayed the night together and everything went away, just for the night. The next morning was a whole other thing to deal with, though.”

“So you lost your virginity to him?”

“I did.” And I didn’t regret it. I loved Jesse. He might not love me, but I loved him and I needed to be with him. Even though it wasn’t permanent and had lasted longer than I had thought it would, I would never regret giving myself to him.

“Are you happy that you did that? I mean, he’s not boyfriend material, Alex, but you’re still with him. The two of you have some weird relationship together. It’s not healthy.”

“It’s not.” But I wouldn’t want it any other way.

“What about someone like Eric?”

I held my breath. My heart picked up its pace as I waited for her to continue.

She lifted my face and started to wipe underneath my jaw. She cleaned it all up. “You know he’d date you. He’s a good guy. He’d treat you right, be patient with you. He would go the extra mile for you and I think you know that. Jesse wouldn’t do that for you.”

But he already had, in some ways.

I sighed and looked down. What was I doing? Why was I such a mess inside?

She moved away and washed her hands under the faucet, but leaned against the sink when she was done. I looked up now. The somberness in her eyes nearly brought me to tears. Oh god. What was I doing to make a friend like Angie worry so much for me?

I whispered, “What do you want me to do?”

“Stop it.”

A tear slipped out. Then I nodded.

She added, firmer, “Stop it right now.”

“One more night,” I gasped out. I needed one more night.

“No.” She stood in front of me and grasped my arms. The severity in her took my breath away. It meant so much to her. “No more ‘one more nights’. You’ll keep wanting that. You’ll keep saying that. Stop it right now. We’ll fly home tonight. We’ll leave tonight. Just stop it with him. I just got you back. The old you is coming back. I can see it and I do not want him to take it away. He can’t take you away again. I won’t let him.”

I closed my eyes as I heard her words. Pain whirled around in me. I felt ripped open from the inside out. My heart was wrenched out and squeezed so it would stop beating. But she was right and I knew it. I had already started down that path. I told myself to walk away, but I wanted one more night. I needed it so much, but she was right.

It had to end.

I nodded. The relief that came from her almost brought me to my knees. Angie swept me into a tight hug and kissed my forehead. She continued to hold me against her and brushed my hair away from my forehead. It was a motherly gesture, a realization that had new tears come to me, but I held them back.

When we walked outside, Jesse and Justin were waiting in the darkened hallway. A fierce emotion was in his depths, but he wouldn’t let me see it. As I stepped closer, he turned away. I sighed.

He had heard.

“We’re going home,” Angie murmured to Justin in a hushed voice. He pulled her in for a hug and pressed a kiss to her forehead, the same way she had to me.

“Jesse.” My voice cracked.

He shook his head, but then whirled back around. His lips were on mine and he kissed me like he was drowning. I raked my hands through his hair and surged to meet him. When he would normally pull away, he didn’t. He kept kissing me. His lips were trying to cement his memory on me. I let them. I needed to remember, because I loved him. I didn’t know if I would love another like I did Jesse. But then he pulled away and rested his forehead against mine.

I clung to his shoulders, weak and helpless. Everything hurt. It was painful to breathe.

He brushed a hand against my cheek and tucked some hair behind my ear before he whispered, “It’s Ethan’s birthday, but I understand.”

He pulled away. He pressed one last kiss to my forehead and then turned and went back into the club.

A part of me went with him.

Nineteen

When we got back, Angie stayed with me. It was hard, it was really hard. Jesse and I were done. I knew it was true this time and the pain crippled me every day, but I heard Angie’s voice in my head. Every morning, she said to get up. ‘You get up every morning. You shower every morning. And you go through the motions. You do what you’re supposed to and someday it won’t hurt as bad.’ I had looked up at her and asked, ‘Do you promise?’

‘I promise. It’s better this way. I promise, Alex. I do. You just have to get up every morning.’

So that’s what I did.

At first I didn’t notice much. School seemed the same. Angie would tell me later that everyone knew about our fight with Marissa. She became best friends with Sarah Shastaine. When I heard that, I was dumbfounded. I thought that I would’ve noticed if Marissa had become best friends with Jesse’s ex-girlfriend, but I hadn’t. I’d been clueless. Angie told me that I walked through the hallways like a zombie. I was the living dead. And she also told me that Eric apologized to me about something in the first week. She didn’t know what he apologized about, but I had told her that he said he was sorry for something.

I shrugged at that information. I didn’t remember. I didn’t remember anything anymore.

Christmas passed. New Years passed. Easter passed.

I didn’t remember any of it, but I did what Angie said. I got up, showered, and I did what I was supposed to do. I studied and I did it hard. My grades shot up. My test scores went with them and when the school counselor called me to her office to offer her congratulations, it took me five minutes before I comprehended what she was saying.

I’d been awarded a full scholarship to Grant West University for my academics. I was the second student to receive a full scholarship and the third to receive a scholarship in general from there. I already knew the other two, Jesse and Cord. I was the third, but I knew Jesse had received a full scholarship, so that meant Cord hadn’t. He’d gotten something, but not a full scholarship. I’d forgotten that I had applied the year before, before I knew Jesse was going there.

Huh.

I should’ve cared, but I didn’t. I left the office that day, but I never saw the odd expression on her face or how she reached for her phone afterwards. It wouldn’t be until later that I would find out that she had called my parents. Of course, there’d been no word. They were still gone. Where they went, I had no idea. What they were doing, I had no idea, but I knew my father traveled for his job. I guessed that’s what they’d been doing, traveling for his job. I would never find out that they had gotten an apartment in the city closer to his office and that they were living there. They’d left me the house, but never told me. They never cared to.

I was 18; I had been for a year now. They didn’t have to tell me a thing anymore.

It was the end of April when Angie asked me a question that I had never considered before.

“Who are you going to prom with?”

My head jerked up. “What?”

Then she slammed her locker and raised her eyebrows.

“Huh?”

“Prom. You. Me. It’s in two weeks. Who’s taking you?”

“No one.” I blinked rapidly, for some reason dumbfounded again. Prom? I’d only been thinking about graduation, well, not really. I still hadn’t told Angie about my Grant West scholarship. I’d been holding that in for two weeks, waiting for the right time. It never happened. I never wanted to risk Angie’s wrath again.

“No one? Are you kidding me? I thought Michael Helmsworth was drooling all over you at the party last weekend.”

Oh. That’s right. I’d forgotten about the party.

Angie snorted as she slung her purse over her shoulder, along with her book bag. “What? Did you forget?”

I had. “No.”

She stared at me with narrowed eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Then her hand went to her hip. My eyes widened. I knew what that meant.

“Alex.” Her voice dropped to the no-nonsense tone. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“I forgot about Mike. Really.” I scratched the back of my head. “But I thought it was Carl, his brother.”

“Oh, yeah.” The hand fell away.

Thank god.

And we were walking again, towards the parking lot. “So, who are you thinking?”

“For what?”

“For prom.” Angie threw her hands up. “I swear that I’m having a conversation with myself here. Are you here? Are you actually Alex? Or did we leave you somewhere I don’t remember?”

“Yeah, Las Vegas,” I muttered before I realized what I said. Then my hand clamped over my mouth and I stopped in my tracks. I had not said that. I really hadn’t.

But Angie grew quiet and looked away.

I had said it.

When she turned back, I wasn’t expecting the tremor in her voice as she rasped out, “I’m sorry, okay? I thought it was for the best if you and he stopped doing whatever it was that you were doing. I didn’t expect for you to be like a zombie again.”

A baseball formed in my throat and I swallowed it away. It was painful as it slipped down, but I mustered up a tentative smile. “It’s okay, Ang. I was going to end it with him anyway. I just did it ten hours earlier than I had planned. That’s it.”

“Really?”

I touched her hand and she held onto it tightly. “Really.”

She let out a deep breath of air. “Thank god. You don’t know how guilty I’ve felt since that trip, not to mention Marissa.” She sneered as we went past the name-we-rarely-used’s locker. And she was there. She straightened with a book in hand and glared back, but her eyes flickered as they rested on me for a second. Sarah Shastaine cleared her throat behind her and the name-we-rarely-used turned her back to us.

That was the most interaction we’d had with her since Thanksgiving break.

“Ugh,” Angie growled. “She drives me crazy.”

“Yeah, that happens when people suddenly drop out of your life with no explanation.” There was heat to my words and I was surprised at myself. Where had that come from?

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh. Okay. Well…” We approached the parking lot now and she paused by the door. “If no one’s asked you, then I think you should ask someone. What about Eric?”

My stomach dropped. “Like hell.” He already had chewed me out once. I wasn’t giving him another reason to do it again. Eric and I were better left forgotten, like everything else in my life.

“Okay.” She grinned. “But he asked Justin about you at baseball practice. He wanted to know if you were still with Jesse.”

“Really?”

She nodded and then pushed through the door. The sun was blinding, but the air immediately rushed at us. The air conditioning inside was cool, but I warmed up as soon as we took another step outside. “So I think you should go to his party with us tonight. Talk to him there.”

“Talk to Eric?”

“Yeah. He and Brianna broke up. Can you believe he dated that cheerleader?” She snorted. “Although, I think he did it to piss off Marissa since they’re on the same squad together.”

“Good,” I murmured. I meant it.

“Yeah…” Angie’s eyes had taken on a thoughtful look to them. She was biting her lip.

I readied myself. She had something on her mind and she was going to say it. I knew the signs like the back of my hand by now.

“So.”

Here we go.

“What happened to your parents, Alex?”

Dread filled me, but I forced my tone to be casual. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” She looked around and inched closer. Her voice dropped low. “The counselor called me into her office today. She said she’d been trying to reach your parents, but she can never get a hold of them.”

“What’d you say?”

“Nothing. I mean, I don’t know anything. I know they went on that trip, but to be honest, I haven’t seen them since. That’s weird, Alex. Really, really weird. Are your parents around? Please tell me they’re around.”