Complete Nothing (23 page)

I was going to have to bide my time.

“I want to try the key lime cupcake,” Michelle said as I opened the door to Goddess Cupcakes for her on Sunday afternoon. “And the salted caramel. Oh! And the gingerbread.”

“But you hate gingerbread cookies,” I said through a yawn. Every muscle in my body ached, and I felt like I was about to pass out. It had been a long night and an even longer day. I’d been daydreaming about my pillow for a solid couple of hours.

Half out of it, I glanced around the shop to see if anyone from school was there. A couple of sophomore friends of Josie’s waved, and I nodded back. I felt hot around my collar suddenly, wondering if they knew what Josie and I had gotten up to after we’d dropped them off last night. Even I wasn’t entirely sure. The whole thing was a messy, headachy blur.

I knew I’d seen a lot of skin. That I could remember. And I knew that I’d woken up at five a.m. on her basement couch, alone, and had to blearily find my way home before my mom and my sister woke up. Not my finest moment. When I’d trudged into church that morning, I honestly thought I might get zapped by a bolt of lightning.

“Well, maybe I’ll like it in a cupcake,” Michelle replied, bouncing on her toes. There really wasn’t much that got her more excited than a potential sugar high. “Besides, it’s free.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” I said sarcastically, checking my phone for the millionth time and wondering if this was a scam. I’d gotten a text this morning telling me to come in before five o’clock to claim my free half-dozen cupcakes. Normally I would have ignored it, but after mowing the lawn, weeding the garden and front walk, and hanging the garage door back on its hinges, I figured I deserved a cupcake. Or ten. Sometimes I really hated being the man of the family. And I still had to finish that damn TCNJ application tonight.

I squirmed just thinking about what an idiot I’d been yesterday. Walking out of that locker room to find Claudia, sure she was going to take me back so we could start planning next year for real. And then, Traylor. Traylor plastered to my girlfriend.

At least the yard work had been good for working out my aggression. Plus, it had given me time to think. And I had decided that I was 100 percent over her. She could do whatever the hell she wanted with that douche. Really. I was done.

“You never know!” Michelle replied. “Oh! What about the peanut butter and jelly?”

I shook my head, which felt a lot heavier than usual, like it could break off my neck at any moment.

“You get to pick two flavors.” I put my hands on her shoulders and steered her toward the line at the counter. “Mom already picked her two and I get two. You should probably get something you know you like.”

“Okay,” she groused, slouching. “One I know I like and one new one.”

“Deal.”

The girl behind the counter turned around, and her face lit up. It was True. God. Was she ever not here? At the sight of her I got this horrible twist in my stomach. There was no reason for her to look that happy to see me. Unless she wanted to rub Claudia’s new relationship in my face on her behalf.

“Welcome to Goddess Cupcakes!” she announced. “What can I get you?”

“Uh, I got this text about a free half-dozen?” I said, showing her my phone. “Is this legit?”

“Yes! Of course! One hundred percent legit.” She looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen. “Tell me what you want and I’ll bring it out to you.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “We’re going to take them to go.”

“Oh. Uh, well, you have to have at least one in the shop.”

“Okay! I’ll have a triple chocolate!” Michelle said, rising up on her toes.

“Coming right up.”

True grabbed a plate and slid open the case.

“What do you mean you have to have one in the shop?” I asked.

“That’s how it works!” she replied, looking up at me through the glass. “The promotion. They want you to eat in the shop.”

My brow knit. I was so tired I felt like I wasn’t processing anything she was saying. “Okay . . . why?”

“God, Peter!” Michelle said, grabbing the plate as True slid it across the counter. “Just shut up and have a cupcake.”

True raised her eyebrows like a challenge. I sighed. My stomach
was
grumbling. “Fine. I’ll have one of the french toast ones.”

“I’ll bring it right out to you.”

“You can’t just hand it to me?” I said.

“Nope,” she replied. “Go sit. I’ll be two seconds.”

We locked eyes in a standoff. There was something shady going on here, but I didn’t have a clue what it was or why. Meanwhile, Michelle already had a table and was flagging me down.

“Get me some milk!”

Josie’s friends laughed mockingly over their coffees until my look of death silenced them. Yeah, my sister was hyper eighth grader with no boundaries, but she was still my sister.

“Two milks, too, please,” I said, fishing out my wallet.

After last night I was down to four dollars. I paid for the two small cartons of milk and sat with my sister, waiting for True to bring over my cupcake. I could tell Josie’s friends were whispering about me and I turned my back to them, hoping like hell they wouldn’t come over. The last thing I felt like doing was explaining their existence to Michelle.

“Here you go,” True said, placing a plate in front of me. Then she sat down.

“Um, what’s up?” I said.

“I have a fifteen-minute break, so I thought we could chat.”

“About what?” I asked flatly.

She turned to smile at Michelle. “I’m True.”

“I’m Michelle, Peter’s sister,” Michelle said, sucking chocolate off her thumb. “You have awesome hair.”

“Thanks,” True said, flipping it over her shoulder. “And you have really pretty eyes.”

Michelle almost choked. “Really? Thanks!”

“I only speak the truth.” True crossed her arms on the table. “So, what’s up with you and Claudia?”

Michelle’s very pretty eyes widened. She worshipped the ground Claudia walked on and basically freaked when I told her we weren’t
together anymore. I shifted in my seat. “Nothing. We broke up.”

“I know. But what’s up? Do you still like her?”

The table of Josie’s friends had gone quiet. I didn’t think they were close enough to hear our conversation, but I wasn’t sure.

“Why? It’s not like it matters,” I said, pushing myself back in my chair. “She’s with that Traylor”—I looked at my sister and chose my words carefully—“guy,” I said, thinking
asshole, jerk, dickwad.

“He’s her rebound guy!” True exclaimed, shoving my arm like we were old friends. “Trust me. She doesn’t like him.”

“She doesn’t?” Michelle asked hopefully, her mouth full of cake.

The twist in my gut loosened, and I got this fluttery feeling around my heart. “You think?”

“Of course not,” True said loudly. “Look, you broke her heart, but only you can mend it. You simply need to prove to her that you love her.”

I snorted an embarrassed laugh even as images of that day on the beach, the day I’d almost told her how I felt, flashed through my mind. Suddenly my throat closed over, just like it had that day too. I cleared it and ripped the wrapper off my cupcake, throwing it down on the plate like some kind of statement.

“No one ever said anything about love,” I told her, and took a big, casual bite of my cupcake.

“Well, but you do. Love her, I mean. Right?”

Her smile was stiff. She seemed like she was holding her breath. I cocked my head at her, considering as I chewed. I knew I had loved Claudia then. And if she’d asked me the same question in the locker room yesterday, I probably would have said yes. But that was before. Before I’d seen Claudia trying to touch her tongue to Keegan Traylor’s tonsils. Before she’d publicly humiliated me. Before I’d started to feel completely unsure about
whether anything we’d ever had was real. Yesterday had made me doubt everything. How could I love Claudia now?

“I mean, I don’t know. I do . . . miss her,” I said, lowering my voice in case Josie’s friends could hear. “But what do I know about love?”

“Oh, don’t be a wuss, Peter!” Michelle exclaimed. “You and Claudia were totally in love. You’re just terrified to say it because of the divorce.”

“What?” True and I asked.

“We’re totally learning about it in health class, in our psychology section?” she rambled, then took another bite of her cupcake. “Children of divorce are more likely not to trust their mates and are slower to show their love. I thought it was crap because I’m in love, like, every other week, but obviously for you it’s true.”

“No, it’s not,” I said automatically.

“Yes, it is!” she cried, spraying crumbs over the table.

Gross. I handed her a napkin. “Dude. Eat with your mouth closed.”

“I
am
!” she replied, sighing with her hand over her lips. She waited until she swallowed before adding. “God! I’m just trying to help.”

“So do you think that’s it?” True asked me. “Do you think you love her but are just . . . afraid to say it?”

“I don’t know.” I took another huge bite of cupcake and stared at the bathroom door in the corner. This was a pretty heavy conversation for a Sunday afternoon. Especially a Sunday afternoon following a night of drinking and a day of hard labor.

“Look, people break up sometimes, but it’s okay to get back together,” True said. “So you wanted to sow your wild oats, see what else was out there, date some sophomore with big—”

“Hey,” I said, silencing her. My face burned, but luckily Michelle was too busy licking icing off her fingers to have heard what True was saying. “That’s not why I broke up with her.”

There was a long silence. True looked baffled. “So, why, then?”

“Because!” I said under my breath. “I couldn’t . . . All I could think about was how we were going to have to break up. Eventually. Like, before college. It was like I was obsessed with it. How she was gonna move on without me, find some guy better than me—”

“There’s no guy better than you,” Michelle said matter-of-factly.

“Thanks, Michelle, but that’s what you think. What about what Claudia thinks?”

“Oh!” True sat back hard in her chair, a smile crossing her face. “So it wasn’t that you needed space! It was separation anxiety!”

“What are you, some kind of shrink?” I asked.

True ignored the question. “Claudia doesn’t want someone better than you! She doesn’t want anyone
but
you.”

She said it with such conviction that I almost believed her. Then the door to the shop opened with a tinkle of bells, and my heart dropped out of my body. Claudia had just walked in with Keegan Traylor’s arm around her. They were so focused on each other, they didn’t see anyone else in the room, including me. I watched as they sat down on the bench behind a window table and immediately began to maul each other. Lauren walked in behind them and slouched down across from them. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she stared in the opposite direction like she was fed up. Like she’d been watching this go on for hours.

Perfect. This was totally perfect.

I turned around, stone-faced, and looked at True. “Yeah, that really looks like I’m the only guy she wants.”

True seemed paler than she had a second ago. “I see your point, but I—”

“We’ll take the rest of the cupcakes to go. Michelle, tell her what you want,” I said gruffly, getting up and keeping my back to Claudia on the way to the door. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

As far away from the windows of Goddess Cupcakes as I could get.

“Can you believe that woman thought that was her space?” Keegan laughed, reaching for his bottle of water.

“I know, right?” I said, smiling as he squeezed my shoulder.

“Well, she did have her blinker on,” Lauren stated, pressing her thumb into a leftover crumb on her plate and sucking it off.

“Yeah, but you’re supposed to pull up in front of a spot and then back in.” Keegan lounged in the booth with his arm spread across the top of the bench. “That’s the law.”

“Did you notice she had a handicap symbol on her license plate?” Lauren asked.

“Lauren,” I said through my teeth.

“So?” Keegan raised his palms.

“So, I don’t know, it might have been nice if you’d driven up the block and let her have the space. I mean, it’s a beautiful day and we don’t mind walking, right, Claudia?” she asked, looking expectantly at me.

“So I’m supposed to let her break the law because she’s got a walker?” Keegan asked, snorting. “That’s some crap. These people
want to be treated like everyone else until they can get the advantage on something. You think that’s right?”

“Are you serious?” Lauren asked, her face going blotchy.

I sat up straight, sensing this conversation was about to get out of hand. Lauren’s mother had a bad case of multiple sclerosis and had needed a wheelchair to get around since we were ten, so she was particularly in tune with the special-needs community. I would have thought that, being a future physical therapist, Keegan might have been more sensitive to people with disabilities or injuries, but maybe it’s one of those things—until you live with it, you can’t really know. Anyway, the last thing I wanted was for my best friend and my new boyfriend to hate each other. And to express that hatred in front of everyone in the jam-packed cupcake store.

Plus, Keegan had been totally cool when I’d asked if Lauren could come along today. Did she have to be so ungrateful?

“I think what Keegan is trying to say is, the law is black and white and it’s supposed to apply to everyone,” I explained.

Lauren stared at me. “So let’s say grandma is trying to get up a flight of stairs and she starts to have a heart attack, are you not going to help her because she once told you she was perfectly able to do it herself?”

My cheeks burned. “No—I just—Can we talk about something else?”

“I’m gonna go get another cupcake,” Lauren said, standing.

“You sure about that? There were about a thousand calories in the one you just ate,” Keegan told her, eyeing her plate.

I pressed my lips together. If Keegan had said that to any of my other friends, he would have been in for a world of hurt. At least Lauren didn’t care about her weight and knew how to take a joke. She always appreciated honesty and a good sense of humor. That
was why I had figured she’d get along so well with Keegan.