The skinny kid handed Lucas the bag with his food, giving them both a searching look. The kid bugged her. He was always watching.
“Whatever, if that’s how you want to play it,” she said, trying not to sound too annoyed. But she was annoyed. From the start, Kate had been attracted to Lucas’s moodiness—the clouds in his eyes, the disappearing act he pulled when she wanted him most. Add the jocky looks and townie pedigree, and Lucas was her dreamboat small-town hunk. Most guys bored her fast, but Lucas stayed interesting. She hoped he wasn’t about to turn needy and draining. She had enough of that from crazy Aubrey, who was a basket case these days.
“Look, it’s not just Carlisle getting me down,” Lucas said. “Ever since I’ve been with you, I’m doing too many drugs. I’m losing my grip.”
Kate sighed irritably. “So don’t get high. It’s your choice. Don’t put it on me.”
“I need a break, Kate.”
“A break? Wait a minute, are you breaking up with me?” she asked in astonishment. The skinny kid, who’d been mopping the counter next to them with a limp rag, turned and stared.
“Mind your business,” she hissed at him. “Why are you so obsessed with me? You’re like a goddamn Peeping Tom.”
“Leave Timmy out of this. Let’s go somewhere we can talk,” Lucas said.
“Fine! I hate this fucking place.”
“Give me a minute.”
The skinny kid had gone back to the cash register to take an order from some Omega Chi girls Kate knew. They were dressed to the nines, on the way to some party, stinking up the place with their clouds of perfume. They waved at Kate and she waved back, flashing a smile so fake it was like a death grimace. Kate reached into her pocket and pulled out the baggie she’d scored the night before from Rudy down the hall, who was from Corona and had mad connections. Lucas was acting weird and stressing her out. A little bump would smooth things over. She snorted it off her pinkie fingernail, sniffed hard, and relished the rush.
Lucas walked over and had a brief conversation with the skinny kid, who reached into his pocket and handed Lucas his car keys.
The Omega Chi girls made whooping noises as Kate walked out with Lucas.
“Who’s the hottie, Eastman?” one of them yelled.
“I recognize him. He’s a hockey player,” another one said.
Kate let the door slam behind her. She saw the disgusted look on Lucas’s face. “Oh, please, I’m not like them,” she said.
An old rusted-out Subaru was parked in the alley behind the restaurant. Lucas unlocked the passenger door and opened it for Kate. Wadded-up Sheckyburger wrappers littered the floor. The backseat was piled high with schoolbooks and sports equipment. The engine started with a whine that didn’t sound good, and Lucas pulled out of the alley onto Palliser Street, which ran parallel to College. He took a back route Kate was not familiar with. She didn’t know where they were going, and she didn’t care. She was pissed. Who the hell did this townie fucking nobody think he was, breaking up with Kate Eastman? She’d blown off Griff Rothenberg for this guy—Griff, with his house in St. Bart’s and his private jet, easy on the eyes to boot—and now Lucas had the audacity to dump her? No way. No fucking way. The coke made her feel like she could arrange the world how she wanted, and she wanted Lucas. She wasn’t done with him yet. Nope, not done with his mouth, his eyes, his body. She was hung up on the boy, and she was keeping him till she got tired of him. End of story.
“Lucas, listen,” she said, soothingly. “You’re freaked out about not playing hockey. I get it. But this has nothing to do with me or what drugs I do. There’s no need to break up over this.”
“I need to get my head straight, okay? I’m taking next year off. I’m gonna live at home and work for my uncle’s construction business. He needs somebody to help out with landscaping, and I need time away from this place, before it kills me.”
“Wait, you’re taking a year off from Carlisle?”
“Yes.”
“To mow lawns?”
“Yes, okay? So I’m beneath you, we can agree on that. I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“Stop with the victim routine. If I don’t understand, then explain it to me.”
“You either get it or you don’t.”
“Would you just try, for Chrissakes. This isn’t fair.”
“I need time, okay? I’m in a bad place mentally, and I need to figure out why. Am I just messed up because of losing hockey? Is it this place? I mean, we can agree—we have agreed—that Carlisle sucks shit.”
“Yes and no,” Kate allowed.
“Okay, but then there’s this other possibility. Maybe—just maybe—you’re too much for me to handle. When I’m around you, I lose myself. I do things I wouldn’t normally do.”
He glanced at her. She saw need and fear in his eyes, and she liked it. She put her hand on his thigh—it was hard and solid and alive—and felt him shiver.
“Come on, babe, admit it,” she said, her voice full of come-hither promise. “You love what we do. You love every second. It’s not my fault that you’re obsessed with me.”
She inched her hand further up his leg, and he leaned back, opening himself to her touch. When she got where she was going, he nearly ran off the road.
“Stop it, I’ll crash,” he said, shaking her hand off as he righted the car.
“Serve you right.”
They retreated to their corners and took deep breaths.
“Hey,” she said, “can we just forget all this angsty bullshit and go somewhere and screw? You don’t have to get high if you don’t want to. I won’t, even.”
She didn’t need to, because she already was. The coke made her see things very clearly. Lucas could be managed, with words and with sex, like any man. They were speeding down the river road, fat bugs splatting on the windshield. The road looked familiar. She realized they’d been here before, in a different season.
“Huh,” Kate said, grinning. “What do you know? This is the place we went to that night, right? When we listened to the ice on the river.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, all right.”
Their crazy fling had started here. They would return to that deserted parking lot, and she would do things to him that would change his mind. Simple.
But when they pulled into the gravel parking lot by the river, it was crowded. Kate shouldn’t have been surprised. Back then it had been pitch dark and below zero; now it was a sultry late-spring evening. Still, she was pissed off that strangers had invaded their special place. Kids ran around the parking lot screaming with excitement. A couple of teenagers pulled a canoe from the bed of a pickup truck. One of them waved to Lucas.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
“A bud from high school,” Lucas said.
“So much for private. It’s a goddamn zoo.”
“I know where we can go to be alone, but it’s kind of a walk,” Lucas said.
“Fine. I have feet.”