The Space in Between (35 page)

I feel woozy.

Right now, I really wish it was because I was drunk. Maybe if that was the case I’d be able to pretend the last few days haven’t happened. That it was all just a nightmare created because of all the pressure I’ve been putting on myself. My mom isn’t dating Christian’s dad and everything is the way it should be.

We’re all happy.

Oh, who am I kidding? It’s never going to be like that. Whatever shot at happiness I thought I was due was just a mirage. A figment of my imagination.

“You know,” I say, lifting my head and acknowledging Johnny at his place in the doorway. “I never noticed before, but pancakes when they’ve been partially digested look like popcorn chicken.”

“Pretty sure I won’t be eating pancakes anytime soon.”

“Sorry.” I whisper, meaning it. It’s not his fault that my mind is so trashed that I’ve taken up talking nonsense.

“Nah, it’s cool. I’m a waffle guy anyway.” Looking from me to the toilet, his eyes soften and he sighs. “You feeling better?”

“Not feeling much of anything at all, JD. So yeah, I guess.”

Moving from his place against the door, he leans down to one knee and holding out his hand, lifts me up when I take it. His arms immediately come around me once I’m up and the dizzy feeling passes, guiding me slowly out of the bathroom and into the hall.

What’s wrong with me? I mean, really? For two years out of the four that we’ve been friends, Johnny pursued me. Becoming my best friend first and then falling for me, in that order. He has always been my safety net. The one I trust with everything, even things I’m pretty sure he wishes he didn’t know. He’s done nothing but treat me like a princess the entire time and I’ve been nothing but a piece of crap to him in return.

I shoved his feelings back at him, especially last year, and yet here he is now.

Why couldn’t Johnny be the one that I gave everything to?

History’s already proven that he wouldn’t have hurt me. We might have even been happy.

Instead, I’m standing here with a gigantic portion of my heart ripped away and my eyes flooding over with so many tears that I’m pretty sure they’re never going to dry up.

Why couldn’t I fall in love with Johnny instead?

The answer, one I already know and wish I didn’t, wastes no time coming.

Because it was always meant to be Christian. 

Johnny is the vision through the lens. Christian, what comes after the picture’s been developed.

Ushering me through the door to my room, he brings his body down on my bed and pulls me with him. Breaking away long enough to slide back until his back is resting against my wall, he brings his hands out and pulls me back until I’m fitted in between his legs and wrapped up in the security blanket that is my best friend.

“I don’t know what to say to make this better, Ems. I’ve been trying, I swear, but I can’t take this away. Tell me what to do. Who to hurt. I’ll do whatever you want me to.”

He means every word.

Last year, when one of the guys on the soccer team called me a freak bitch because I wouldn’t give him the time of day, Johnny found out and kicked the crap out of him when he left school.

He would do anything for me and not think twice about the trouble it would cause later.

It’s just his way, which means that no matter how hurt I am or how completely destroyed I feel, and wish Christian could feel it too, I can’t tell him that.

If Johnny is capable of doing that to some random guy, there’s no telling what he’ll do to someone I actually love.

Loved.
Past tense. It
has
to be past tense.

Oh God. I think I’m gonna be sick again.

“Tell me a story.” I say softly. “I need a distraction.”

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” he picks up immediately, playing along. “Once upon a time, there was this boy.”

“Thank you.” I whisper just loud enough for him to be able to hear, but not completely interrupt.

“He lived in this big glass house with two parents that spent more time out of it, than in it, with a brother that was so deep into drugs that half the time he didn’t know what was real and what was fake.”

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I wanted the distraction, but not when it comes at the price of him talking about his life.

“All this boy wanted to do was carve out his own path. Do his own thing and find his place separate from what everyone else wanted. But no matter how much he distanced himself from everyone, he always seemed to find himself being dragged back in until he became nothing more than a designated courier to his parents and driver for his brother.”

“Johnny, you don’t—”

“Shhh Ems, I’m not done yet.” He admonishes before picking up again. “Despite having the money to put him into any private school in the country or ship him off to parts unknown, forgetting about him altogether, they decide public school is best and he ends up at Greenville High for freshman year.”

Oh gross.
I know where he’s going next. Sweater vests, dress shirts and plaid skirts. My mom’s attempt at making me look presentable the first day of grade nine and failing miserably. Yuck.

But if I’m ready to upchuck over fashion choices, I’m not focusing on my problems, so maybe this little walk down memory lane story isn’t such a bad idea after all.

At least it’s not until I hear what he comes up with next.

“Scared out of his mind and wishing he could be anywhere but where he ends up, this boy’s not prepared at all for the girl that skips up to him in the hall that first day. The one that despite his every attempt at getting her to screw off and leave him alone, keeps persisting. Rambling off about needing his picture for the yearbook and not taking no for an answer, even after I got physical with her. Little did I know that the midget girl that kneed me in the balls that day would end up becoming my dream come true.”

“Johnny—”

Meeting his eyes, it’s not concern I see there anymore. No, this is something else entirely. A look that I haven’t seen cross his features since the day he dropped a dozen roses on me in class and declared his feelings.

“A dream come true who looked a whole lot like she walked out of a private school brochure.” I snort, studying his face as I do and hoping that the look I see there doesn’t manifest itself in a way that’s going to end with me having to hurt him.

“You’re right. That only works in porno’s.” he jokes. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I do, and its sweet, JD. Thanks.”

I mean every word. I understood what he wanted to do, telling the story he did, even if some parts of it were harder to swallow than others, and it means the world to me.

Johnny Davenport deserves to have a girl that will give all of herself to him without reservations or feelings for another guy.

Someone that’s the complete opposite of me.

Admitting that, though, it makes the pain I’m already feeling worse, because if I can’t summon up the feelings needed to be with someone I consider my best friend, I’m never going to be able to do it with anyone else either. Which can only mean one thing.

I’m going to be in love with Christian Cayne forever.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Christian

After spending the weekend completely alone with no texts, calls or even smoke signals from Emery to let me know she was okay, the last thing I’m in the mood for is the shove from behind I get when I finally make it to my locker, or the angry, hateful shouting that follows it Monday morning.

“You worthless piece of shit!”

Catching and righting myself, I turn to face the very last voice I wanted to hear, and before I can so much as take a breath to get a word in edgewise, his fist makes contact with the side of my face and I’m staggering again.

“How could you do that to her, huh? Make her fall in love with you, let her make you her entire fucking world and then rip it all away?”

“I—I didn’t.” I manage to spit out, my tongue feeling the looseness of my bottom teeth from the impact and praying he didn’t knock any of them free.

I should have seen this coming knowing how close the two of them are. Johnny being here now and standing up for Emery when I’m pretty sure he’s got all the facts wrong, makes sense, and despite wanting nothing to do with it or him right now—only here at all because of my need to see Emery—I deserve what he’s dishing out.

If I wasn’t already knocked six ways from Sunday, I would ask him to lay into me again.

Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like someone had reached straight into me, ripped my heart out of my chest cavity and squeezed it until it was just a puddle of blood spattered parts on the floor.

Everything I experienced with her was real. Meeting her and spending time together, opening myself up in ways I haven’t been able to do with anyone since I lost my mom, eventually getting to be with her and making love for the first time; none of it was a game to me.

When I said that I loved her, me breaking down in the middle because the words were so heavy and meaningful that it physically pained and pleased me to admit them, I meant it.

All of it.

Emery may have been this force that came into my life by accident and a silly little idea planted by my grandfather about signs may have been what brought us together, but love, the real kind, even if it’s also the first kind, kept us together.

Being without her, missing her like crazy, and not knowing if she’s okay or as torn up and broken as I am, makes me feel dead inside.

Suddenly its four years ago and I’m right back in that damn hospital room on that last day staring into my dying mother’s eyes, screaming for her to wake up and come back to me.  To us. Me and my dad. The life that had drained away from her, doing the same to me, leaving me completely devoid of what one needs to keep fighting.

Exactly what Emery gave me back when she said she loved me too.

“Bullshit, you didn’t.” Johnny finally speaks as he moves in closer, completely ignoring the sea of people starting to file in around us and continuing to unload. “You’ve been doing it for weeks.”

If there was any question to how much Emery told him, I had my answer now. He knows everything.

“You don’t understand…”

“That’s where you’re wrong, dickhead. I understand it perfectly. You knew for weeks that your parents were dating and you let her fall in love with you anyway.” Moving in and crouching down as close as possible, he speaks again but this time lower. “You let her sleep with you while you kept the truth hidden. Which in case you’re not keeping up, makes you a whole new level of douchebag.”

There’s no point even trying to argue my position. Even if he wasn’t pissed, he’s already got his mind made up. It’s not like the two of us were ever really friends anyway. The only reason we hung out was Emery.

I don’t owe him anything, but because he’s my only damn tie to her, it makes me feel like I owe him everything.

Shifting over until my back is against the lockers, I drop the short distance to the ground until I’m leaning against it.

“Three weeks ago, I came home early from her house and saw her mom in the kitchen with my dad. It all came out. I should have said something about it then, but I didn’t. I stayed silent because honestly at first, I was blown away. Then they asked me to keep it quiet, leaving it up to her mom to tell her the truth. You remember me back then, right? I wasn’t okay. Finding out about them and then keeping their secret seriously messed with my head.”

“So you thought it would be a good idea to continue going on like it never happened?”

“No. I’ll tell you the same damn thing I told her when it all came out. I didn’t want to lose her. Knowing how hard it was getting together with her in the first place, and knowing how she feels about her mom, I knew I would. Lose her, I mean. She would have found out and bailed because to her, it’s the right thing to do.”

“You don’t know her at all, do you? All those months dating, with as serious as you two were, and you really thought she would just give up?”

Shoving his own body down beside me, growling at the few bystanders there to get in their lockers and scaring them off, he leans back with a sigh.

“She’s in love with you, man. As much as I hate admitting that because I would give anything to have her look at me the way she does you, I can’t deny it anymore. It’s always been you. But she wouldn’t have walked away the way you think. She does the right thing by everyone, that’s true, but only when it doesn’t hurt her to do it. Turning her back on you and making her mom happy instead of herself, Christian, it
would
have destroyed her.”

He’s not telling me anything I didn’t already learn with Emery the night she found out. Being so afraid to lose her twisted me up so bad that I made the wrong choice.

I took away her ability to choose.

A choice that Emery and now Johnny are telling me would have been me.

I don’t even need him to be disgusted with me. I’m already disgusted enough with myself.

 “How is she, JD?”

“A mess. She didn’t come out of her room all weekend and she’s not talking to anyone, other than the bit she gave me. Her mom’s all messed up over it.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s not just me she’s not talking to, but I’d much rather none of this be happening at all.”

“This entire thing is bullshit, but ya know, I think you could have figured it all out if you just told her everything when you found out. You could have processed it together.”

Annnd we’re back to me keeping it from her again.
Great.
Like I don’t already know how badly I screwed up.

“Don’t you think I know that? That I haven’t spent the entire weekend telling myself that exact same thing?”

“Why do you think I’m sitting with you instead of kicking your teeth down your throat the way I wanted to when I got here?”

Laughing awkwardly, the irony of the entire situation finally reaching its peak, I fill him in before he can accuse me of losing my mind more than I already have.