I Swear

15. BETH

After my deposition, Patrick walked me to the empty front lobby.

“Is your mom picking you up?” he asked.

“No. She’s hosting Bible study tonight,” I said. “Why?”

“Just wanted to touch base with her. Where are you off to now?”

“The gym.” I laughed a little bitterly. “Nothing’s as good for your floor routine as a deposition.”

Patrick plopped down on the couch by the door and rubbed his temples. “Have a good practice,” he said.

I stood there waiting for him to move, but he didn’t.

“That’s it?” I asked quietly.

He looked up at me. “What?” he asked.

I threw my bag down. “That’s it? Just ‘have a good practice’? We aren’t going to discuss what just happened in there?”

Suddenly he was sitting up, his forearms on his knees, leaning toward me. “I don’t know, Beth. Are we?” he shot back. “Let me explain something to you. The only thing I’m interested in discussing is the truth here. Your parents are potentially on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars here—and that’s if this thing settles out of court. If we go to trial, the number goes up.”

I stared at the floor.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

“For what?” I asked.

“Look, you want to discuss what just happened in there, I’m all ears. But I don’t have time to dick around unless you’re going to tell me the truth. You all but perjured yourself in there just now, and even though you didn’t technically lie, you gave Dirkson exactly what he wanted—you on the ropes, covering up God knows what for God knows who. So, go ahead, have a great practice. Nail that dismount tonight. Because when this thing winds up in court, you’re gonna be walking a balance beam you’ve never trained for. And the only way I can help you is if you get real and tell me what the hell is going on here.”

“I’m late for practice,” I said, picking up my bag.

“Beth.” The way he said my name stopped me in my tracks. “Look at me.”

I turned and faced him.

“I know that this wasn’t all you. I know that you were actually Leslie’s friend at some point. What happened?” He was begging me to tell him the truth.

“What could possibly be so horrible that you’d have to keep it a secret?”

“I have to go,” I said, and I pushed through the office doors and outside.

By the time I got to the gym, Coach Stevens had already started practice. When he saw me come out of the locker room, he shouted some instructions at an assistant coach and headed toward me.

“Had your deposition today?”

I nodded.

“How’d it go, Beth?”

“Fine,” I said, wrapping my left wrist.

“I don’t know how this started, Beth,” Coach Stevens said quietly. “I wish I knew.” Then he walked me over to the uneven parallel bars and gave me a lift.

• • •

It all started after the cookout at Coach Stevens’s place. After we met at her uncle’s place, Leslie and I started spending a lot of time together. One Saturday before school started, she insisted that I come with her to Jake’s for guitar lessons.

“C’mon.” She smiled as we rolled our bikes out of her garage. “It’ll be good for you to know somebody besides me on the first day.”

“Well, yeah,” I said, “but . . . isn’t this sort of like your once-a-week guitar date?” I giggled. “I don’t want to be a third wheel.”

Leslie rolled her eyes. “This is not a date. We’re just . . .”

“Making beautiful music together?” I smirked.

“Enough. Ride.”

And we did. And she was right. I’d never met anybody like Jake. He was so good-looking and so nice at the same time. No one could feel like a third wheel around him. When he smiled, you felt like you belonged.

“Where’s Jillian?” Leslie asked when we got there.

“Pro’ly at Macie’s,” Jake said.

“Who’s Macie?” I asked them.

“You may remember her from such election-night coverage as last year’s race for the state senate and the previous race for the mayor’s mansion,” Jake quipped.

Leslie giggled and playfully punched him in the shoulder. “Be nice!”

“You mean Macie . . . Merrick?” I asked. “She goes to school with you guys?”

“Oh, yes,” sighed Jake. “We’re truly blessed. She and Jillian are planning a wholesale takeover of student government even as we speak, one class presidency at a time.”

“Really?” asked Leslie through her laughter.

“They’ve turned the study at the Merrick mansion into a war room,” Jake said.

“Shut up,” I said, giggling. “Really? That’s hilarious.”

“Oh, it’s no laughing matter,” Jake said. “Serious as flesh-eating bacteria. Wait till you meet her at the Frosh Bash.”

“The what?” Leslie and I said it at the same time.

Jake laughed. “Two weeks. Sunday afternoon, Labor Day weekend. Brad Wyst’s place. His older brother, Derek, is a senior this year. He’s inviting everybody who’s anybody. My mom will drive. I’ll pick you two up.”

• • •

When we got back to Leslie’s house after her guitar lesson with Jake, she bent over to hoist her bike up onto the hook in her garage, and the necklace she’d shown me the first time we met fell out of her tank top, the tiny silver anchor dangling over her chest. I stared at it for a moment, swinging there, and when she glanced up, I looked away a moment too late. I felt myself blush. Hard.

“Ugh.” She laughed. “I know. I had to go buy all new sports bras for volleyball with my mom last week. It’s like I’ve got grapefruits slamming me in the chin now when I run.”

I laughed nervously. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. Your necklace fell out, and then I . . . noticed.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Leslie rolled her eyes. “The busboys at Marv’s have suddenly realized I’m alive. Guys are so stupid like that.”

“Jake doesn’t seem so stupid,” I said.

“Yeah.” She smiled. “He’s nice. And he really liked you, I could tell.”

“So, have you kissed him since the beach?” I asked.

“No!” Leslie laughed. She said it like we were in fourth grade and boys had cooties. She shook her head with a little shiver. “It’s not like that with us.”

“What do you mean?” I asked her. “He seems pretty smitten.”

“We were at a beach in the moonlight on vacation,” she said matter-of-factly. “He’s like my brother.”

“He doesn’t look at you like you’re his sister,” I said. “And you guys have those necklaces.”

“We all got one,” Leslie said, tucking the anchor back into her tank top and adjusting her straps. I followed the curve of her shoulder and felt a twinge in my chest—my much smaller chest. “Jillian’s has a ship’s wheel. Jake’s has a sailboat. We got them at this little tourist shop on the shore.”

“Well, you’re lucky that you’ll have something to show off at that pool party,” I said.

She frowned. “My . . . necklace?”

“No, silly. Those great big boobs!” I lunged at her and tickled her. She shrieked and spun around, trying to wiggle away from my hands. We tangled up against her mom’s Audi and stopped when she was finally able to grab my wrists. Leslie’s back was up against the car.

How did I get so out of breath from trying to tickle her?

“All I know is that if you sprouted those things on the gymnastics team, you’d have to retrain on all the apparatus,” I said. “Gymnasts have tiny racks for a reason. It’s a blessing and a curse.”

“Whatever, Beth.” Leslie laughed. “You’re perfect.”

It was suddenly very quiet. Her lips were close enough to my face that I could smell her coconut lip balm. I felt the warmth of her body, the nearness to mine.

I wanted to be closer to her. All at once, I felt a rush in my heart and my chest, and I leaned in and touched my lips to hers.

“Whoa! Beth—wait. What are you doing?” Leslie giggled and spun away from the car, away from my kiss.

Away from me.

I felt my cheeks flush a deep crimson, and the back of my neck felt hot. I stared at the floor, frozen. My heart was racing and I felt dizzy, like I needed to sit down before I fell down. I slowly sank down onto the concrete floor of the garage, overwhelmed by the twist of fear in my stomach.

“Beth.”

It was Leslie. She was slowly kneeling next to me on the garage floor.

“Beth?”

I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t look at her.

“Beth, it’s okay.”

It’s not okay. You were never supposed to see that part of me.

We sat in silence. I stared at the floor. I made a list. A list of the people who could never know about this moment. I would never reach the end.

“Beth, are you a lesbian?”

She asked it quietly, and like it was no big deal, but when she said that word, something in me snapped.

“Don’t say that word,” I hissed.

I leaped to my feet. She tried to stop me and I pushed her away. I ran toward the door that led into the house. I wanted to get my things and keep running as far away as I could. All the hope I had felt since that night at Coach Stevens’s cookout, when I lay next to Leslie on the hood of her dad’s truck and looked at the stars, vanished.

I was so sure.

Leslie followed me to the front door. “Beth? It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone about this. I swear.”

My eyes narrowed. “You’d better not.”

“Call me later?”

I pushed out the front door with a single word:

“No.”

• • •

After Jake’s mom picked up Leslie for the Frosh Bash, she drove by my place to get me. Jake jumped out of the passenger seat in the Range Rover and held the door for me to climb in. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to sit in the back next to Leslie. I could feel her eyes on me as we drove into the Wysts’ circular drive.

I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been to kiss her. I hated her for not wanting me, and now she knew something about me that no one else could know. How could I be seen with her when I met all the kids I’d be attending school with? I would never be able to trust her.

Ever.

As we stepped out of the car in front of Brad’s house, I thought I might throw up.

“Oh. My. God,” Leslie said, staring up the house.

“I know. Ridic, right?” Jake said as he bounded up the porch stairs. “Bradley’s dad developed the whole subdivision. Get in here—I’ll give you the grand tour.”

The house was staggering. The subdivision was called Medina, something I learned from the framed plat map that took up an entire wall of Mr. Wyst’s study on the second floor. Of course, that was after we’d seen the media room, five bedrooms, and the giant kitchen filled with warm hardwoods and rough-hewn marble countertops. Two silver dishwashers matched a gleaming stainless range that had enough oven space for an entire pig, and a refrigerator the size of my bedroom.

Brad had asked Jake to come over early to help him set up, and when we stepped into the hot August sun at the pool, Brad was on the far side with a skimmer, talking on his cell phone. He smiled and waved at us, then turned away to finish his call.

“Shh,” said Jake with a finger to his lips. Then he kicked off his flip-flops and started running toward the end of the pool, whipping off his baseball cap and tank top along the way. When he reached the diving board, he took a huge bounce, followed by an arching gainer that he landed in a cannonball, sending a wave of water perfectly aimed to nail Brad with optimum splash.

“Dude.”

It was all Brad said, in a perfect understatement, standing there drenched from head to toe. He flicked the water off his phone, then spoke into it again.

“I gotta go. Jake just got here with a couple of total babes.”

Brad was grinning at us when he said this—only, not leering, smiling. It was a nice smile—almost shy. He tossed his phone onto a stack of towels and peeled off his wet T-shirt, then dove directly at Jake’s head in the deep end. While they wrestled each other under the water for the next three minutes, I stood next to Leslie, watching her laugh at the antics in the pool. She looked fantastic.

Better than I did.

At that instant, I saw two girls coming out the back door. One had Jake’s beautiful eyes, and long, wavy chestnut locks.

That must be Jillian.

The girl she was with I recognized from the news coverage of election nights past. Macie Merrick had arrived. I made a beeline for them. I didn’t know what I would say, but I knew one thing for certain.

I was going to get to them before Leslie did.