Offside (18 page)

She glared at me and then looked back toward the passenger window. Her fingers twisted around themselves in her lap.

“You know all my dirty laundry now,” I said. In truth, she only knew a portion of it, but whatever. “Tell me.”

Nicole pulled her legs up so her tennis shoes were on the edge of the seat, which I tried not to let bother me too much. Anyone else and I would have flipped out at the thought of mud on my leather. She took a deep breath.

“This goes nowhere, right?”

“Of course.”

She sighed again.

“My high school in the suburbs of Minneapolis was just like this town—no girls' soccer team,” Nicole said. “I played just for my club the first couple of years, but I wanted to play for the school, too. There weren't enough girls to form a team, so I decided I was going to try out for the boys' team.”

She laughed dryly.

“I honestly thought I'd have some kind of battle on my hands, you know? But they were okay with it. A lot of varsity players had graduated the year before, so they were a little low, and I guess I impressed them. So I made the team, and not too long after the season started, the team captain, a midfielder named Dennis, asked me out. We seemed to hit it off really well and started dating pretty seriously.”

She paused and ran her hand through her hair.

“I'd never really had a serious boyfriend before,” she continued. “He was my first…you know? I mean, we had been dating a couple of months, and it did seem kind of natural. He was really sweet…at least, I thought so.”

I held on to the bottom of the steering wheel, gripping it tightly.

“He said he loved me, and I thought I loved him, too.” She stopped again, and I heard her sniff. I looked over and could see her tearing up a bit. I released the wheel and reached over to grab her hand, and she didn't protest.

“Go on,” I urged.

“We won our division championship,” she said. “There was a big party afterwards at this other guy's place. His parents were out of town, I think. At least, there weren't any adults there. We were drinking, and I had quite a bit. But then…then Dennis asked me if I wanted to try something else.”

One of the tears escaped and dropped over her cheek. She wiped it away quickly with the hand I wasn't holding.

“It was stupid. I know it was, but he and Alex—the guy who was throwing the party—they took me to one of the bedrooms and gave me something. They told me it was ecstasy and that it would make me feel really good. It did, too. I remember it all, but it's kind of fuzzy. I know I agreed to it…to what they wanted to do…but…”

I closed my eyes for a second because I had a pretty good idea of what was coming, and the dread that was beginning to rumble around inside of me was numbing. I didn't want to hear this. I didn't want to know she had been with someone else, but I had asked for it. I wanted to believe what my father had believed, that she was innocent…

…and potentially mine.

I pushed my hormonal thoughts away.

“I think they planned it,” she whispered. “I think they planned the whole thing. They took pictures of each of them…with me. I remember agreeing to all of it, but I wasn't in my right mind, you know? And then the next Monday…at school…”

She grabbed her hand away from mine and covered her face before she blurted out the rest. I knew everything that was coming as soon as she mentioned the drug—Frankie was into that shit. I still didn't want to hear that I was right.

She blurted it out anyway.

“I let them both fuck me, take pictures of it, and then the pictures were all over the school. I went from pretty happy with a boyfriend, a starting position on the soccer team, and a fairly active social life to nothing in the matter of a day. Dennis dumped me, the pictures got back to my Mom—which is a whole other story—and every time I walked into school, I had to pull copies of them off my locker. Every guy on the team—and most of the rest of the school—started asking me out then. Every one of them stating very clearly that they were looking for someone to fuck, and they knew I was obviously willing to do anything with anyone. I won't even get into what the girls did.”

Nicole wiped off her face with her hands and dropped them back in her lap.

“During the summer, I didn't make the club team I'd been playing on for years. The rumors had gotten that far. I pretty much stopped playing altogether, and I definitely didn't have any kind of social life anymore. My friends had always been guys for the most part, and none of them wanted to have anything to do with me if I wasn't going to put out for them, too.”

“So, I left and came here,” she said after a moment, “vowing to never date again, at least not until high school is over. I thought I could start out again here…fresh. I guess that was stupid.”

When Nicole finished her story, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to comfort her like she had done for me, but I really didn't know how. All I could think about was how she was in the same situation now, which was why she left Minneapolis.

I didn't want her to leave.

What I really wanted to do was to fix it. I wanted to fix it all. I wanted to find both of these guys and rip their fucking heads off for starters. Then I wanted to beat the shit out of anyone who passed those pictures around. I wanted to destroy every copy in existence and tell her everything was okay now—that I would take care of it for her. I wanted to take care of her.

I had a lot of influence in our home state because of my dad, but that didn't really extend past our area. If it had happened here, I could have fixed it, but there was nothing I could do for her now.

“Going to school tomorrow is going to suck,” she said quietly. “I thought I left all this shit behind me.”

Wait a minute. Maybe there was something I could do…

“What if…” I sat up a little straighter, trying to form the right words in my mind before I said them. “What if I could take care of that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if I could keep it from happening again?” I asked. “What if I could make sure no one said shit to you, and no one bothered you at all?”

“How would you do that?” she asked warily.

“What if…” I took a deep breath. “What if you were…my girlfriend?”

“I told you, Thomas—I'm not dating anyone. Maybe ever again. I might become a nun.”

I knew she was joking…at least I hoped she was.

“I understand that,” I said, trying to reassure her, “but no one else needs to know that, do they? If they all think you're mine, the guys will leave you alone. No one will think you're a…a…”

“A slut?”

“Um…yeah,” I stammered. “No one will think of you that way if you're just with me, right?”

“They already think I slept with you,” she said.

“I know…but it wouldn't matter so much if we were together, right?” The more I thought about it, the more the idea appealed to me. “No one would dare bother you. No one is going to touch you if you're mine.”

“
Yours
?” she snorted.

“Well…um…as far as anyone else knows…”

“So what, we pretend to be dating?”

“Yeah.”

“But we wouldn't be.”

“Right.”

“That's fucked up, Malone,” she said with a humorless laugh.

I felt my stomach drop.

“But it beats the alternative,” she said.

“Beats the alternative,” I repeated, trying to make sure I got her meaning correct. “That’s a yes, isn’t it?”

Her hands went back to her face and she rubbed at her eyes.

“We can give it a try,” she said. She turned toward me with an expression on her face I had not seen before. She looked wary, distant, and frightened.

“I didn’t try anything when we were in bed together,” I reminded her as I tried to understand the meaning in her look. “I still won’t.”

She nodded and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Do you want to go home?” I asked.

“Yeah, I do,” she said.

I put the car in gear and headed out to the street.

“So how is this going to work?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll pick you up for school tomorrow?”

“My car is fine now,” she said.

“Yeah, but then we’d arrive at school together, you know?”

“I guess.” She seemed to think about it for a minute.

“You don’t have to,” I said quietly, sounding defeated.

“It’s all right,” she replied. “I just need to get my head wrapped around this. And Dad is going to flip.”

“What are you going to tell him?”

“I’m going to tell him the truth,” she said succinctly. “I don’t lie to him. I don’t lie, period. I may refrain from saying something. I may even twist my words around, but I don’t lie. That’s one of the reasons this isn’t going to be too easy for me.”

“What about that shit in front of the goal?”

“That was totally different,” she said. “Besides, I never lied.”

“You acted like you didn’t know where to put the ball for a PK!”

“But I never said I didn’t know, did I? I placed it at the top of the box, and you corrected me like I knew you would.”

I smashed my lips together to keep from smiling. My mind quickly whirled through everything she had said, and I couldn’t argue with her point—she hadn’t ever lied about it. Even when she said she had never tried, she could have meant she had never tried getting a PK past
me
. Twisting her words. This
was
going to be interesting.

“So, I have to be able to give you things you can say that will be true, right?”

“I guess that would help,” she agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, if I took you out for dinner, you could say we were dating, couldn’t you?”

She eyed me again.

“I need to get dinner for Dad,” she said.

“Fries and Cokes at Mickey D’s, then?”

She sighed.

“Fine.”

I turned the car around and headed back toward the center of town. I hoped Dad’s work schedule was back on track now, and I was right that he wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours. I was pretty sure about it, but he hadn’t said a lot to me in the past couple of days, so I wasn’t positive.

I pulled into the fast-food place, glad to see it wasn’t very busy. Nicole seemed glad of that as well. We entered, grabbed fries and drinks, and then took a booth over in the back corner so we could talk privately.

“So, you’re going to drive me to school?”

“Yeah,” I said, “if that’s okay?”

“It’s okay,” Nicole said with a sigh. “What else?”

“Well…um…” I racked my brain for any romantic comedy movies I had ever seen, but there weren’t that many, so I wasn’t really sure what to do. “I’ll open the car door for you?”

Nicole laughed.

“Thomas Malone? Turning into a gentleman? No one will believe it!”

“Well, I could give it a try,” I said. I rubbed my chin with my hand and tried to think of what else I could do to make it look like I was her boyfriend.

I sipped at my Coke and pondered.

“I’ll walk you to your classes,” I told her.

“You really are going all out, huh? How many girlfriends have you had?”

“Um…none,” I admitted.

“I kind of thought so,” she replied with a nod and a harsh look.

“I’m playing this by ear,” I told her. “How about a little help?”

“I should probably plan on doing my homework while you’re practicing.”

“You’d come watch me practice, then?” I couldn’t help my grin.

I grabbed a handful of fries and chowed down.

“You really like that, don’t you?” she accused.

“The fries?”

“The idea of me watching you practice.”

I shrugged.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d be watching me,” I said.

“You want me to watch you?”

“I want everyone to watch me,” I replied. “It kind of goes with the territory.”

“So you are an attention whore?”

“Pretty much.” I shoveled more fries into my mouth—they were damn good—and wiped my lips with a napkin. Nicole ate hers in little bites, tearing each one in half before dunking it in ketchup.

“At least you admit it,” Nicole said as she sat back and gulped down the rest of her drink. “Okay, if this actually counts—we’ve been on a date now. I guess that means we’re dating.”

“Yes, we are,” I said with a smile, “and tomorrow everyone will know you’re mine.”

Nicole rolled her eyes.

“I belong to
me
, you jerk.” She shook her head, but she was smiling, too.

Perhaps Shakespeare would have considered us “woo'd in haste,” but at least we had something of a plan together. Somehow, I thought it would be easy to convince the student body of our high school to see us as a couple.