Heat of the Moment (15 page)

I look down at my ankle. A line of blood has snaked down my shin and pooled in the bottom of my shoe. A couple of girls walking by in matching sorority shirts look at me and wrinkle their noses, then keep a wide berth as they inch across the sidewalk.

“That doesn't look good,” Derrick says. He bends down and gently pulls my Band-Aid off. He studies the wound. “It's not closing,” he reports.

“I'm fine. I'm sure it will end up clotting once we get back to the room.” Now that I've already started to tell
him, I want to get this show on the road. I just want the whole thing to be over with.

Derrick stands up. “I don't think you're going to be able to get there,” he says. “Every time you try to walk, you're going to break it back open.”

“But when I sit down, I should be fine.”

He shakes his head. “I don't think so.”

“So what should I do?” I ask.

I'm not sure, but I think I see a look of annoyance pass briefly over his face. “You're going to have to go to the hospital.”

“This looks like a sketchy part of town,” I say half an hour later as our taxi pulls up in front of the emergency room.

“This isn't a sketchy party of town,” Derrick says. He reaches into his wallet and pulls out some money and hands it to the cabbie. I'm not sure, but for a second, I think I can see him giving me an eye roll. Why would he roll his eyes at me when I'm in a weakened state?

I look out the window of the cab. Okay, I guess Derrick's right. This isn't a bad part of town, it's just a little more city-like. There were no hospitals on the island, so we had to take a taxi into the main part of Sarasota.

“Are you coming?” Derrick asks. He's standing outside the cab, the door open, looking in at me like I'm being an idiot.

“Yes.” I take his outstretched hand and scooch forward on the seat, until my legs are hanging out the door. Then I stand up. There's a weird ripping sensation coming from my ankle, and I look down, expecting to see a gaping wound. But it's just my same wound, covered with a fresh Band-Aid that Derrick got for me at a drugstore while we waited for the taxi to show up. This one's starting to bleed through now, too.

“Can you walk?” Derrick asks.

“Yes.” Well. I can hobble. We hobble toward the door. We hobble inside the lobby. We hobble up to the desk. We hobble over to the waiting room chairs with the forms the nurse gave us to fill out.

“They're probably going to call my mom,” I say.

“So? You already spoke to her.”

“I know.” My mom happened to call me on my way over here. It was a relief to know that my phone was at least kind of working, even though the screen was still a complete mess. I told her I'd gotten the smallest cut ever and I was going to the doctor to get it looked at. She didn't even freak out that much, even though I texted her a pic of the wound so she could see how bad it was. It was very hard, texting on my ruined phone. I had to be careful not to get any shards of glass in my fingers.

“So then who cares?”

I shrug and fill out the forms, thankful I have my license and my insurance card in my purse.

Derrick brings everything back up to the window, then sits back down, his leg jittering nervously.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He glances at his watch. I can tell he's annoyed we had to come here, but he's trying not to show it. Actually, he might be kind of annoyed with
me
. We got into a little bit of an argument while we were waiting for the cab. Derrick wanted to call our class adviser, Mr. Beals, and tell him what happened. I thought it was a ridiculous idea. If we called the class adviser, then we'd have to wait for someone from the school to come meet us and take us to the hospital. We'd probably have to fill out an accident report for the school's records, and then we'd be stuck going to the hospital with some stupid chaperone.

Derrick thought it was too dangerous to keep it from the teachers, like if they found out another way, we were going to get in trouble. And then I told him that if he was willing to take that chance to go to cuddle and bubble (yes, I said those words), then he should take that chance to take me to the hospital. And
then
I said if we got done at the hospital quick enough, that maybe we could still go to the hotel he'd picked out. It was actually a really annoying fight. What guy would risk having sex with his girlfriend just to tell a teacher what happened? It didn't make sense.

Whatever. It doesn't even really matter. Because looking around the waiting room, it seems like we might be here for
a while. The place is packed. I start cataloging all the other patients in my head, wondering which ones might be worse off than me and therefore probably going to get called in first.

The guy in the corner, definitely. He's sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and he's hunched over, his head in his hands like he has a headache and can't take the pain anymore. There's a little boy in fire-truck pajamas curled up in his mom's lap. His face looks feverish, and his eyes are glazed. Definitely a child should get in before me.

“I think we're going to be here a while,” I say.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“You don't have to give me attitude about it,” I say. “It's not my fault I got hurt.”

He snorts. Well. It's a half snort. The kind of snort he's probably hoping I'm not going to hear.

“What?” I ask. “It is?”

“Well, you're the one who dropped your phone.”

Good point. I wonder what he would say if he knew I actually threw it onto the pavement in a fit of rage. He would definitely think it was my fault then. “Whatever,” I grumble. “You don't have to be mean to me.”

“Look, I'm sorry,” he says. He reaches out and takes my hand. “I'm just disappointed. This isn't how I was expecting this night to go.”

“Me neither!” I say.

He looks me right in the eye, and I try not to be mad at him. I try to think about how when I first met him, he'd take me out for hamburgers after school, and I loved the way he would open my ketchup packets for me. My heart squeezes. I love him. Don't I love him? How can I love someone and then kiss someone else? Am I too young to know what love even is? That's what my mom is always telling me. Quinn used to say it, too. That love isn't just your hormones running around all crazy, that you have to have a history, a life built with someone, before you can really love them.

But then wasn't kissing Beckett just my hormones? I know it was. I don't even know Beckett. Is that why I'm too young for love? Because I can't keep myself from kissing other people?

I feel tears starting at the back of my eyes, burning, and then before I know it, one slips down my cheek.

“Hey, I'm sorry,” Derrick says. “I really am. Don't cry.”

I want to tell him not to be mean to me, but I don't. How can I tell him not to be mean to me after what I've done?

His fingers squeeze harder around my hand. “I'll do better. I promise.”

“No.” I shake my head. “I don't deserve it.” All of a sudden I can feel something building inside me—it's what I was trying to let out when I smashed my phone. But it didn't work. The tension didn't go away—it just got worse. I have to tell Derrick. I have to tell him now or I'm going to explode.
My head is going to burst all over the waiting room, right in front of the kid with the fire-truck pajamas. He'll be scarred for life.

“What do you mean you don't deserve it? That's crazy. Of course you do.” Derrick brushes a piece of hair off my face. “I'm sorry I said that about it being your fault you got hurt. Of course it wasn't your fault.”

“No, I . . .” I take a deep breath. It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. I'm looking down at the water. I know I can't turn back. I've climbed the mountain. And I can't get down unless I jump. “Derrick, I smashed my phone.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, I didn't drop it. I smashed it on the pavement. On purpose.”

“You smashed your phone on
purpose
? Why?”

“Because I saw Katie Wells in the bathroom.”

Derrick shakes his head. “I have no idea what you're talking about.” He looks down at my wound nervously. “How much blood do you think you've lost anyway, Lyla? Maybe I should go tell the nurse.”

“No. It's not . . . I'm fine. I'm trying to tell you something.” God, can't he just shut up and listen for one second? “I saw Katie Wells in the bathroom. And I got really mad at her.”

“Why?”

“Because she was with Beckett.” My heart is beating fast,
the blood whooshing through my body. Everything feels hot, and Derrick's grip on my hand loosens.

“But why would you be mad about that?”

I don't say anything.

“Do you like Beckett?”

“No.” I don't know.

“Then I don't get it.”

“Derrick, he . . . Beckett kissed me.”

I expect an explosion. But instead, everything settles into an eerie silence. Even the hospital noises seem to somehow fade into the background. All I can hear is the low murmur of the TV in the corner and the slow breathing of the man in the wheelchair.

It stays that way for what feels like forever.

“When?” Derrick finally asks.

“This morning, on the beach.”

“This morning?” He looks stunned. “You were with me this morning.”

“Before that. You were sleeping. He . . . he came to my room and told me that Quinn was—”

“You left the hotel with him?” He drops my hand. “He came to your room and you
left
with him?”

“He told me Quinn was in trouble. And that we had to go help her.”

“Who gives a fuck what he told you, Lyla?” His voice is rising now, and the mother holding her son in the corner
gives us an uncomfortable look. Probably she's a little nervous about her son being witness to a domestic disturbance.

“Keep your voice down,” I say.

“Oh, now you're going to tell me what to do?” He takes in a long, slow, deep breath, his nostrils flaring. “So then what? He kissed you? Why didn't you tell me? I would have kicked his ass when I had the chance.”

He gets up and starts to pace the floor back and forth.

“Sit down,” I say.

He sits back down.

“It wasn't . . .” I swallow. “It wasn't like that.”
Stop, stop, stop, stop
. There are alarms going off in my head, the kind of alarms that are telling me not to do this, to stop right this second, that something really bad is about to happen.

“Oh, yeah?” he says softly. “Then what was it like?”

Lie. Lie. Lie
. The voice in my head is telling me to lie, that I should say Beckett kissed me, that Beckett is a complete asshole for doing that, that I didn't kiss him back. I'm about to ruin everything with Derrick, and for what? A stupid kiss?
Don't throw it away, don't throw it away, stop, stop, stop
.

“He . . . he kissed me and I kissed him back.” Derrick stiffens next to me, but he still doesn't say anything. I feel like I'm in a nightmare, one of those ones where you're trying desperately to wake up, but you can't. For a moment, I want to take the words back, to tell him I was joking, but it's too late. I've told him the truth, and I can't change it now.

“You kissed him back?” he finally repeats.

“Yes.”

“And then you got mad at him because he brought Katie to the club.”

“Yes.”

More silence.

“Do you like him?” he asks me again.

“No. I don't know.”

He looks at me, and his eyes are filled with hurt and heartbreak, and I reach for his hand but he pulls it away. I want to throw myself at his feet and beg him to forgive me. “Don't,” he says, and his voice is cold. “Just don't.”

“Derrick, please, I don't . . . I don't want anything to break us up.”

He makes this weird sort of sound, almost like a laugh, but it doesn't actually get there. It's like a laugh he was holding in. “Really? You don't want anything to break us up, but you kissed another guy this morning and you were going to sleep with me tonight? Were you even going to tell me before we slept together?”

“Obviously.” Maybe.

He doesn't reply.

After a few seconds, I say, “It didn't mean anything.” The words are hollow, even to me. And as I'm saying them, I know they're not true. It obviously did mean something. It meant a lot of things. It meant I was cheating on my boyfriend.
It meant I was attracted to Beckett. It meant I liked him enough to kiss him, to get upset at him when he brought Katie to the club. It meant everything.

“Yeah, well,” Derrick says. “It meant something to me.”

And then he gets up and walks out.

Well. So this is how it is. Me, sitting in a hospital waiting room, by myself, with no one. My boyfriend has broken up with me. Are we broken up? Maybe he just went for a walk. But I know it's not true. He didn't just go for a walk. He's not coming back. I told him I kissed another guy, and now that's it. Finito. Dunzo. Finale. Bye.

The woman with her son gives me a sympathetic smile.

But I don't return it. What do I have to smile about? I'm probably going to die in this hospital. I'm probably going to get an infected leg with all kinds of disgusting bacteria in it. I saw something about that on TV. How hospitals are actually the most dangerous places to be because there are all kinds of germs lurking around.

First they'll cut my leg off, and then they'll tell me I'm okay but it won't be true. The infection will have spread all through my body, and it'll start shutting my organs down one by one until it finally gets to my heart. And then it will turn my heart black, the way it obviously should be. Black, black, black. And it will serve me right. That's what you get
when you cheat on your perfect boyfriend—death by black heart.