When I turned the water off, I heard their voices through the cardboard-thin door.
‘You’re losing him, Ray.’ There was a pause, and I held my breath. ‘You’re my friend, and I love you – and because I love you, I’m going to tell you the truth. You’ve fucked this up from the beginning.
‘Cindy begged you to get him into therapy, and you chose not to. We begged you not to take him away from his friends – away from us – and move him halfway across the country, but you didn’t listen. He was in a private prep school and now he’s … he’s letting everything go. The fight tonight wasn’t his first, was it? And the drugs – there must be drinking involved, too. He’s using every method of escape he can. Because you did.’
Dad murmured something.
‘I know. But it’s not enough. He needs a goal. He needs to see worth in himself.’ Another pause. I swallowed, my eyes stinging. Heller’s voice lowered, and I couldn’t hear what he said. I left the bathroom, towel round my waist, and didn’t look at them – seated at the kitchen table – before closing myself into my pantry room.
I pulled on a pair of athletic shorts, which took three times as long with the use of one hand. It meant something to know Charles Heller cared about me. Didn’t change anything, but it meant something.
A goal. He said I needed a goal. Maybe it was time I gave up on school – my jaw clenched at the thought of giving Ingram that satisfaction – to work on the boat. If I didn’t end up in prison for the assault. I knew enough about bail to know I was only out until I got a trial date.
Funny, that out of all the fights I’d been in, the one I had good reason for would be the one that caught me. If Amber refused to testify, I was screwed. The guy I’d nearly killed was a rich college kid. He’d flashed enough cash last night to make Thompson’s dick hard – buying stashes of whatever we had and handing it out to his friends like Halloween candy. Guys his age who dressed like he did and drove Range Rovers didn’t come by money like that alone.
You got your wish, Grandpa, I thought. The boat would be my saviour. My future. My way out. It was better than prison. I closed my eyes. Better than prison. Wow, that’s fucked up.
The second my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep.
LUCAS
I couldn’t resist catching Jacqueline’s eyes for just a moment when she entered the classroom.
Her smile was tentative, unsure, and after last night, I couldn’t blame her. When I woke to find her leaving, I walked her to her truck and kissed her goodbye. Watching those tail-lights recede, I knew I could give her what she wanted, once I was free of the restrictions of being her tutor. I would be what she needed, and then I would let her go.
Because I was in love with her.
At the end of class, the blonde who’d been interested in Kennedy Moore earlier in the semester was asking me about my review session. I couldn’t remember her name. ‘It’s Thursday, regular time,’ I answered, watching Jacqueline pack up. Talking to that Benjamin guy, who flicked a glance my way, she rolled her eyes and looked at me, too.
I got a definitive answer to how much he knew about what was going on between Jacqueline and me when he batted his lashes and said, ‘I’ll take Hot Tutors for two hundred, Alex,’ as he left their aisle. Jacqueline full-on blushed as he hummed the Jeopardy! theme song, climbing the steps towards the exit. He grinned at me before disappearing.
Neither of us spoke until we were outside.
‘Does he, um, does he know? About …?’ My teeth grazed over the ring as she told me that her classmate was how she found out.
‘He’d noticed us … looking at each other. And he asked me if I went to your tutoring sessions.’ She shrugged, as if she was beyond it.
I could imagine that conversation and how she must have felt, after Moore’s betrayal, to be lied to again. ‘God. I’m so sorry.’ But words couldn’t make up for those lies, and I knew it.
We walked towards her Spanish class, silent and hunched into our jackets. My old friends in Alexandria would laugh and say this sunny, late fall day was shorts weather.
‘I noticed you the first week,’ I said then. Like a flash flood after an unexpected summer storm, I confessed everything – watching her in class and cataloguing her mannerisms, from tucking her hair behind her left ear to her musical fingers. I told her about the rainy day – her thank you, her smile, and how those two things affected me. I told her about my jealousy of Moore, before she ever knew me.
‘And then, the Halloween party.’
She went very still. We’d never discussed what happened that night – my view of it.
I admitted that I’d watched her leave. That I’d watched Buck follow her. ‘I thought maybe … maybe you two had decided to leave early together, without everyone knowing. Meet outside or something.’ My heart thumped beneath my ribs, revealing this failure to her – the fact that I’d been standing inside, debating following her at all, while a predator wound through the parking lot behind her.
As I suspected, Buck was more than a guy she just knew by name. He was someone she’d seen as a friend. ‘He’s my roommate’s boyfriend’s best friend,’ she said, no condemnation for me or my too-slow reaction that night in her voice. From my childhood, I recalled the symbolic gesture of absolution from the priest, and I felt she’d just given it to me.
In the same moment, we realized we weren’t surrounded by masses of fellow students any more. It was past the hour – she was late to class. ‘I have an A. I don’t really need the review,’ she said. I had an hour before my next class. I stared at her cold-reddened lips, running headlong into inappropriate territory. I wanted to kiss her, right here in the middle of campus.
‘You never did sketch me again,’ she said. She licked her lips, a small brush from the tip of her tongue, and by some miracle, I jerked my eyes away instead of pushing her into the bushes and taking possession of that mouth.
‘Coffee,’ I said.
I seldom stopped by the student union Starbucks as a customer. There was a line, but Gwen and Ron were a well-oiled machine.
‘Lucas,’ Gwen smiled tightly, refusing to look directly at Jacqueline. She was unhappy that her wise words had fallen on deaf ears, no doubt.
‘Hey, Gwen. A couple of Americanos. And I don’t think you’ve met Jacqueline.’
Like an owl, Gwen swivelled her head to eye Jacqueline. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, her teeth clamped.
Jacqueline smiled back, as if my usually sweet coworker wasn’t bristling with frostiness. ‘Nice to meet you, Gwen. I love your manicure – so cute!’