"Okay, everyone just shut-up," Briggs says, pacing again. "Someone's obviously trying to fuck with us. We just need to find out who. Parker, where are you right now?"
"Home. Why?"
"I need you to come over here. Call Finn and tell him you're picking him up on the way. We need to meet and figure out who's behind this. I'm guessing it's someone at school, but I don't know who. Just get over here and we'll figure it out." He ends the call and blows out a breath. "It's gotta be a prank. I just don't know why they'd say that shit if they didn't know the truth. Could that really be a coincidence?"
"Maybe." I chew on my lip, my stomach knotting up at the thought that someone might have seen us that night. But how? It was dark, and there was nobody around.
"Let's go," Briggs says, heading to the house.
As we're walking in, I see a chair on its side and pieces of broken glass all over the floor. I follow the trail of glass to the hall where I see what's left of a vase.
"What happened in here?" I ask.
Briggs picks up the chair. "The cleaning lady must've dropped a vase."
"And didn't clean it up?"
"Just forget it. I'll clean it. Go wait in the living room." Briggs goes down the hall to the kitchen. I remain in the foyer, staring down at the shards of glass.
There's no way the cleaning lady would leave a chair on its side and glass all over the floor. Something happened, and I'm guessing it's related to the cut by Briggs' mouth. Was he fighting with someone?
Briggs returns with a broom. "Get out of here." He sweeps up the glass. "Go wait in the living room."
I walk up to him. "What happened? Did you get in a fight with your dad?"
He stops sweeping and glares at me, his jaw tight. "I said go wait in the living room."
"Since when do I listen to you?" I reach up to touch the cut by his mouth.
He cringes but doesn't back away. "Stop. Just go."
I leave my hand on his face and softly ask, "Did your dad do this?"
Briggs turns away from me and starts sweeping again.
I get in front of him. "Briggs answer me. Did your dad throw the vase at you? Because there's no way the maid did this and didn't clean it up. She would've at least—"
"We got in a fight," he says, continuing to sweep. "I threw the chair and he threw the vase. He didn't mean to hit me. He just threw it and I didn't get out of the way fast enough.”
I decide not to push him to tell me more. I've found that with Briggs it's best to let him tell me stuff when he's ready. I feel like he wants to tell me what happened tonight, but he's not ready to, or maybe he doesn't want to.
He finishes sweeping the glass, leaving it in a pile by the wall. "The maid will do the rest." He takes the broom back to the kitchen as I go to the living room.
Moments later Briggs shows up, taking a seat in the brown leather chair in front of the couch where I'm sitting. "That stays between us. You don't tell Parker and Finn that shit. Understood?"
"You mean about your fight with your dad?"
"About any of it. Anything I tell you stays between us." He rubs the side of his mouth, then checks his hand. "Fuck."
"It's still bleeding." I get up. "Let's clean it up before they get here."
"I don't need to clean it. I just need it to stop bleeding."
"It'll stop if we clean it and put something on it." I stand in front of him. "C'mon. Hurry up."
"What's the rush?" He gets up. "Those two will take forever to get here. Parker's probably still at home."
"We need to clean up that cut before it gets infected. Do you have any first aid stuff?"
"In my bathroom." He goes past me and I follow him up the stairs to his room.
The last time we were in here, we did stuff I haven't been able to forget. My mind keeps going back there, wondering what would've happened if Parker and Finn hadn't shown up. I wanted to do more, but how far would I have let it go?
"You coming?" Briggs asks, standing at the door to the bathroom.
"Yeah," I say, looking away from the bed. I hope he didn't notice I was staring at it, but I'm pretty sure he did.
I meet him in the bathroom and he opens a drawer under the counter. "I've got bandages, but I don't want one on my face."
"We don't need one. We just need to clean it up and hold something on it until it stops bleeding. You have a washcloth?"
He walks to the end of the huge bathroom and opens a long cabinet next to the walk-in shower. He pulls out a dark gray hand towel and brings it back to me. "Will this work?"
"As long as you're okay with getting blood on it."
"I don't care."
"Sit down," I tell him, motioning him to the tile edge that surrounds the sunken bathtub. I would love to have a tub like that. It even has jets all along the sides.
"Stop bossing me around," Briggs says with a slight smile as he sits down.
"I'm trying to hurry up. Parker might show up on time again.”
"The one time he actually shows up on time..." Briggs doesn't finish the thought but I know he too is wondering what would've happened if we hadn't been interrupted.
I wet the hand towel at the sink, then return to Briggs and dab the towel over his cut. "What if he hadn't?"
"Hadn't what?"
I feel Briggs' eyes on me but remain focused on the towel as I clean the dried blood from his face. "If he hadn't gotten here on time...what would've happened?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
Briggs takes my hand off his face and waits for me to look at him. "On how far you would've let me take it."
I walk back to the sink to wet the towel, then return to Briggs and continue to clean the blood off his face. "Assuming I let you, how far would you have taken it?"
He half smiles. "I'm a guy. What do you think?"
I stop and look at him. "I thought you didn't like me that way."
"If I didn't, I wouldn't have touched you."
I go back to cleaning his face. "Then why do you always act repulsed by me at school?"
"Because that's how it works with us. I pretend to hate you and you pretend to hate me."
I stop again, eyeing him. "You're pretending? Meaning you actually do like me?"
He shrugs. "I don't hate you."
"But do you like me?"
"I don't really know you."
"You do now. We've been spending all this time together. By now, you should at least know me a little."
"Ella, why are we talking about this? Finish up so we can go."
"Just tell me. Has getting to know me changed how you feel about me?"
"I don't even know what you're asking. We met up to do some assignments. That's it. That's not enough for me to say I know you."
"We've done more than assignments. We've talked. We've spent time together. We've..." I look down. "Kissed."