“Oh, man,” he says. “I’m beat, Eve.”
His attempts to get out of sex are becoming more and more uncreative. Next, he will be telling me he has a migraine. “It’s fine,” I say. “Go to bed—you’re off the hook.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Off the hook?”
“I just mean we don’t need to have sex tonight.”
Nate looks taken aback. “If you want to have sex…”
The last thing I want is to get into a big, emotional argument with my husband on my birthday. So I just shake my head. “I’m tired too. I’ll meet you upstairs.”
And that’s what I will do on my first day of being thirty years old. I will turn in for the night at a record 9:30 in the evening.
While Nate heads upstairs, I hear a buzzing sound from inside my purse. When I retrieve my phone from my purse, I see a new message on Snapflash. There’s only one man who messages me on Snapflash, and at the beginning of the night, I had vowed to end things with that man.
I left a present for you at the door.
I smile down at the message for the sixty seconds until it disappears. I look up the stairwell to make sure Nate has disappeared into the bedroom. Then I creep over to our front door and crack it open.
There’s a shoebox at our door.
I snatch the shoebox off the front porch before anyone can see it. Jay must’ve slipped over to drop it off while we were at dinner, because the box definitely wasn’t here when we left.
I pull the lid off the box, and I can’t help but let out a gasp.
It’s a pair of Sam Edelman sling pumps in a glossy red color. I had been admiring them a couple of weeks ago in the store, and I was disappointed when the last pair disappeared, because they were just barely within my price range.
And now I realize where the pumps disappeared to. Even though money is tight for him, Jay used his minimal funds to buy me a birthday present he knew I would love.
Another message pops up on my phone:
Did you get it?
I love them. Thank you so much.
I knew you would.
My eyes tear up. Life is so incredibly unfair. I am stuck in what I am increasingly realizing is a loveless marriage, and meanwhile, I have no chance of being with the man who I really love.
I’m about to try on my new pair of shoes when I hear a noise outside the door. My heart leaps. I don’t even care if the neighbors see—I want more than anything for Jay to be standing outside my door.
I yank open the front door, ready to greet him with a big sloppy kiss. Except when I look out the front door, there’s nobody there. Aside from the porch lights, everything is dark.
“Hello?” I call out.
No answer.
More quietly this time, I say, “Jay?”
There’s no reply.
That’s so strange. I was sure I heard a noise that sounded like it was coming from right outside the door. I’m shocked that there isn’t somebody standing there. But it seems like I must have imagined it.
After all, there isn’t anyone out there.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ADDIE
WHEN I GET to my locker at the end of the day, the lock has been cut.
I stare at it for a moment, my eyes bugging out. The lock is still hanging exactly where it was the last time I came to my locker, but the metal bar has been sliced by a lock cutter. I’ve heard the staff will sometimes do it if they think there are drugs in your locker, but I don’t know why anyone would think that about me.
But then when I open my locker, I know exactly who did this.
My locker is completely filled with shaving cream.
I gasp at the sheer quantity of shaving cream filling the locker. There are probably books and papers in there, and also my coat, but right now, it basically looks like a locker of shaving cream. If there’s anything I want in my locker, I’m going to have to stick my hands in and sift through what looks like three gallons worth of foam.
Several students have witnessed this spectacle, and based on the number of giggles, it’s apparently hilarious. I don’t have to guess why this was done to me. Kenzie has made enough snide comments in gym about shaving my legs, even though I’ve been diligently running a razor over my legs twice a week.
“Oh wow.” Before I even turn around, I know who the voice behind me belongs to. “I bet all that shaving cream will come in handy. Someone did you a huge favor.”
I blink the tears from my eyes before I turn around to look at Kenzie. She and Bella are watching me at my locker, drawing closer than any other student dares to get. How long have they been standing here and waiting for me to witness this disaster? I should feel sorry for them that their lives are so small, but I don’t. I mostly just feel sorry for myself.
Why is Kenzie doing this to me? Is she jealous because she thinks Hudson likes me better than her? That’s clearly not the case. He’s dating her. If he has any lingering feelings for me, even as a friend, that would be a big surprise to me. He won’t even speak to me.
A crowd has gathered around me now. Everyone is watching to see what I’ll do next. Really, they’re watching and feeling glad that they aren’t the ones with a locker filled with shaving cream. Nobody wants to be on Kenzie Montgomery’s bad side. Yet here I am, and I don’t even know what I did to get here.
“Excuse me!” an adult voice rings out from the periphery of the crowd. Oh, thank God. “Will you please let me through right now?”
My momentary relief that there would finally be an adult who could help me deal with the situation vanishes when I see who has pushed her way through the crowd. It’s Mrs. Bennett—the worst possible person. And when she sees the contents of my locker, she looks decidedly pissed. Then again, I’ve never seen her not look pissed, so it’s hard to tell the difference.
“Addie!” she says sharply. “What is going on here?”
Kenzie hasn’t budged. You might think she has a lot of nerve, but really, she knows I’m not going to rat her out. That would be social suicide, especially if I did it in front of everyone else. If I have any chance of coming back from something like this, it will vanish if I tell on her now. And anyway, she’ll just deny it, and everyone will believe her instead of me.
Besides, I’ve got her house keys. I can get my revenge.
Mrs. Bennett folds her arms across her chest, waiting for my answer. “Addie…”
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I guess someone put shaving cream in my locker.”
“Who?” she presses me.
I shrug.
She tilts her head. “Really? You don’t have any idea whatsoever who might have broken into your locker and filled it with shaving cream?”
I shake my head slowly.
Mrs. Bennett looks around at the crowd of kids who have become an audience to my humiliation. “All of you. Go home.” Her beady eyes zero back in on me—a stark contrast from her husband’s kind brown eyes. “And you. Clean this up, Addie.”
Seriously, what is her problem? She is so harsh. And she is married to a freaking poet—the nicest teacher in the whole school. Why is she like this? Why is she always so mean?
But at least she gets the kids to stop gawking at me, so that’s something. Although Kenzie and her friends linger at the end of the row of lockers, still watching. I can hear their giggles as I contemplate my situation. Like, what am I supposed to do now that my locker is filled with shaving cream? I don’t even know how to begin to clean all this up. Not to mention the fact that my books are wrecked.
I guess I could scoop it up. I wish I could just take a hose to the entire thing. And also, I don’t have anything to clean it up with. If I were home, it would be easier, but what am I supposed to do to clean up a bunch of shaving cream in the middle of the hallway at my high school?
“What are you waiting for?” Kenzie calls out. “Do you need us to get you a razor?”
Bella laughs at that. “Don’t give her a razor. She would probably slit her wrists!”
Kenzie says something to Bella, and I can’t quite make it out, but it kind of sounds like she said, “So what?”