I do end the call then before they can say anything else. They might have made me laugh, just a little. I might even be smiling. But my heart hurts, and all I want to do is crawl under the covers and curl up in a ball. I miss him, so damn bad. But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m here, he’s there, and that’s not going to change. Even when I’m back on campus, we can’t be together, not really. I’m sure by now Beck’s realized how crazy it was for us to try to stay together in secret for another year. I did us both a favor by ending it now, before any more damage was done.
Chapter Five
Beck
“You look like shit. You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Griff hands me a beer before sitting on the couch across from me.
It’s three days before Christmas. One week since Jordan left. Three weeks until filming starts. I’m aware of the days changing, time moving forward, but I feel frozen. Stuck somewhere between finding Jordan in the ER and getting her text message she was flying home.
“Not now, Griff. Isn’t Moses dropping by any minute?” We’re at my mom’s house. Earlier, we saw Moses pulling in to Airwalk as we were headed out.
Griff leans forward. “She emailed me, you know. Said she doesn’t have a phone, it’s still with the cops. Why’d she leave it there anyway if they aren’t doing anything?”
“My guess is she needed a break from that thing after the messages she got.”
A break from me too.
“That’s what her email said. She wants out of social media, Brazen, competitions, all of it. Didn’t sound like a break she was proposing either.”
I take a long pull of my beer, trying to fight the persistent aching in my chest. It hasn’t gone away.
“Beckett!” The shrill voice of my sister comes from the second floor, and then the sound of feet pattering down the stairs. Her eyes are red like she’s been crying and I’m instantly out of my chair.
“What is it, Rugrat?”
“Jordan broke up with you? What the hell, Beck?” She shoves my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Jordan broke up with you?” Griff echoes.
Hearing those words is like a knife twisting in my gut.
“It’s more like a break, for now, while all this blows over,” I reason, knowing that’s more like wishful thinking.
Summer’s right behind Naomi and instead of shoving me she puts her arms out for a hug. I don’t know that I want a hug. That means this is all true. I thought I’d accepted it already, but as Summer squeezes me tight, a new wave of loss hits.
Pulling away before I break down in front of everyone, I ask the girls how they found out.
“We text with Lucy, Ellie and Zora sometimes. They finally got her on FaceTime and were worried about her. We’re worried too. Anyway, they said she seems depressed and it’s probably because she broke up with you. So then we got her mom’s number from Zora and called her and got the whole story.”
“The whole story? There’s not much of a story.” She ended things because the crap that came with being my girlfriend wasn’t worth it to her. Long distance wasn’t worth it.
The doorbell rings, and I move before anyone else can, needing to escape this room and everyone’s pity.
“Hey Moses, what’s up?”
“Thanks for having me. Man, you look like hell, you okay?”
I try to laugh, but it’s not very convincing. “Come on in. Want a beer?”
“Sure.”
I go straight for the kitchen while Moses greets the others. When I return with his beer a moment later, Moses still hasn’t sat down. “Is this a bad time? I can head out.”
“No, it’s fine, man. We just found out Beck and his girlfriend broke up.”
I freeze, glaring at Griff and daring him to look my way, which he doesn’t. Apparently my relationship with Jordan isn’t a secret anymore, now that it’s over. And who is he to decide that?
“Shit, I’m sorry, man,” Moses says. “Was it because of Shred Live?”
“I guess we’re talking about this,” I say as I make my way back to my chair. “I thought you coming over would save me from it, Moses.”
“You know I won’t tell anybody,” Moses promises, taking the other armchair.
Naomi takes the sofa by Griff, while Summer plops herself on the floor. “I went on her Instagram account this morning,” Summer admits. She glances at Moses. “I have access because I was helping her with it.”
Griff leans forward. “Summer, I told you not to read her messages. You read them, didn’t you?”
“Well, you guys were acting all shady, and then you said she flew home without her phone so we couldn’t call her. What did you expect us to do?”
Moses leans toward me and murmurs, “We’re talking about Jordan Slattery, right?”
I shoot him a suspicious look.
“I assumed you were together the night I met her.” He shrugs. “Saw the video of that crash, man. How is she?”
All I can do is shake my head, because I don’t really know.
Summer picks at the rug. “It makes sense. Why she went for the half pipe that day. She said she’d just read all those messages and her head was messed up.”
Moses doesn’t ask what the messages said, but he can make his guesses. If he’s online at all he’s seen the buzz speculating about which guy Jordan’s with.
“Yeah, but I still don’t understand why she had to break up with you, Beck!” Naomi nearly growls. “Things were so good between you guys. And she sounded all torn up and down about it. Why would she do that? Nothing about how you guys feel about each other has changed.”
“Because he’s leaving for filming for three months,” Summer reminds her. “Because the Shred Live contract says they have to stay a secret for a year.”
“Did you tell her you were gonna pull out of Shred Live?” Griffin asks.
“Yeah, she didn’t want me to,” I answer. Rehashing it with everyone isn’t exactly fun, but it’s weirdly therapeutic watching them process it.
Naomi’s eyes widen. “She didn’t want you to?”
I shake my head, confirming it. Emotion rises in my chest. “Said something about not being cut out for this, any of it, and not wanting me to have to make sacrifices because she can’t handle it.”
“She said that in the email to me too,” Griff says. “That she’s not cut out to be a pro skateboarder.”
Naomi looks confused and maybe a little dumbstruck. Summer is frowning and staring at the ground. My heart breaks a little for them too, because they look up to Jordan. From their perspective, it’s like she’s giving up, letting them down. Jordan might think she’s doing the noble thing here, making the mature decision that will leave me better off, but it sure doesn’t feel that way to the rest of us. Hell, it reminds me of how I was trying so hard to stay away from her and deny my feelings for her, thinking I was being the good guy.
Moses breaks the depressing silence. “She’s eighteen, right? Girl has been through a lot since she started college out here and met all of you. I read the Skate Wave article, I’ve heard the talk. No one knew who she was, and now she’s the talk of the skateboarding world. At first it was about her skateboarding, and looked like she was handling that attention just fine. But it shifted to her personal life real quick, and damn, girls got heated and mean.” Moses points a finger between Griff and me. “You two might not see it clearly because you’ve been in it awhile. But that kind of attention, good or bad, it’s a lot to take for anyone.”