I don’t know how to reply to him. Words rise in my throat, but I can’t speak. Instead, I take a deep breath, and when I finally form a reply, my tone is gentle and quiet, like we’re at risk of being overheard, even though we’re not. “Why am I a distraction?”
Tyler looks up then. He stares back at me with apprehension, his head tilting to the side as though he has to remind himself what the answer is. But eventually he parts his lips to speak and carefully murmurs, “Because you make things a little easier. Because I get to focus on you instead of everything else.”
I observe the curl of his lips as the words roll slowly off his tongue. They paralyze me, my body frozen in my spot by the shower, and it hits me just how real all of this is. “Then don’t stop,” I say with a slight tremble in my voice. I take a cautious step toward him, not quite sure where I’m going with this. It just feels right.
He’s still staring back at me, his eyes still locked with mine, but he’s blinking fast and breathing heavier and I know that he still wants one thing and one thing only. I reach up to touch his jaw, and his skin is burning hot as the fire in his eyes.
“Focus on me,” I whisper.
“Then distract me,” he orders. He lifts his hand, delicately reaches for my fingers on his jaw, and moves my hand away. I flinch at the coldness of his hands in contrast to the warmth of his face. Two complete opposites. Like him and me.
“We can talk,” I say. The atmosphere around us has shifted from tense to calm, loud to quiet, and I almost whisper for fear of breaking the comforting stillness. “We’ve never once just talked.”
“Okay. Let’s talk,” he says. Carefully stepping around me, he presses his back to the shower door and slides down to the floor. He extends his legs and heaves a sigh, his head hung low, eyes closed. I wonder what he’s thinking about. Me?
“Can we talk about Tiffani?” I ask this question with extreme caution, diving into the complicated topic as gently as I can. “Calmly this time.”
The mere mention of her name creates tension, and it forces Tyler to look at me, as though he’s trying to figure out if I seriously just brought her up. I see an odd flash in his eyes, but then he glances away. “Fine,” he says through gritted teeth.
I step over his legs and drop down onto the cold tiles, pressing my back against the door, pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging them to my body. “Why won’t you break up with her? You don’t even like her. You said so yourself.”
Tyler trains his eyes on me. They slowly fall to my lips, to my hands wrapped around my knees, and then return to mirror my gaze once more. I wonder if he’s considering whether to give me an honest answer or if he’s just trying to buy time while he invents a lie. “I can’t break up with her.”
“But why?” His reply only irritates me more. Unless she’s holding him at knifepoint, I see no reason he can’t just end the useless relationship that he clearly cares little to nothing about.
Tyler shakes his head and places a hand on his face, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger before groaning loudly. “Tiffani’s really good at acting like she’s the nicest girl around. But she’s not. The second you do something wrong to her, she turns into a psychopath. She knows too much about me. I can’t risk it. At least not right now.”
“Psychopath?” I lift my head and look at him, perplexed. “What does she know?”
“It’s…” His words taper off, and he looks uncomfortable, almost pained. He places his palms flat on the tiles by his side. “Okay. Example: back in January, she heard I’d been hanging out with this girl during lunch period every Tuesday, which I totally hadn’t, and she went crazy. I slaved over an essay for English lit for two weeks straight, because I had to get my grades up, and she told my teacher that she wrote it. My entire grade dropped, and I got suspended for cheating, which is so dumb. The same day she used her mom’s email to email my mom, telling her that she was concerned for my well-being because I was smoking joints in the school basement. That part is true, and Tiffani’s the only one who knew. Mom didn’t talk to me for almost a month. I would have dumped Tiffani back then, but she made it clear that I shouldn’t ever go there. So I never have. Breaking up isn’t an option. There are so many more things she can do, because she has the upper hand in all of this.”
There’s a brief silence, and then I ask, “What else does she know, Tyler?” I’m trying to absorb his words, attempting to make sense of them. I try to imagine Tiffani doing those things, and at first I can’t, but then I remember the look in her eyes this morning when she told me she knew I was lying. She terrified me. Somehow, I believe Tyler. She definitely has the potential to do those things.
Tyler isn’t quite meeting my eyes. “Do you remember the first day of summer?”