I uncrossed my arms but didn’t straighten from where I was leaning against the driver’s side door. “For what?”
“To talk to you,” she said as if I were daft.
Perhaps I was. She hadn’t given me the slightest fucking inclination that she’d wanted anything to do with me for over a week. We’d broken up before, but this had been the longest stretch of time between patching things back up.
“Then I find you sucking face with the only girl in school who still wears braces.”
She didn’t have braces. At least, she didn’t have them anymore. For a moment, I remembered how it felt to drag my tongue over every crevice of her sweet-tasting mouth—definitely no hint of metal. The red-haired beauty was strawberry yogurt and wasted innocence.
I kept those thoughts to myself, of course.
“I’ve called you,” I said unnecessarily. The chick was glued to her phone. She saw every incoming and missed call, not to mention the few texts I’d sent that’d gone unanswered.
She nodded, dragging the toe of her black high heel over the gravel. “I wasn’t ready.”
“But now you are,” I said more than asked.
Marnie lifted a petite shoulder, then pursed those plump lips. Lips I’d missed having wrapped around the shaft of my cock. Lips I longed to see rise into a smile at something stupid I’d said.
A heart-shaped red bow, Red had thinner lips but no less juicy.
I shook my head and straightened with a sigh. “Kay, well, as riveting as this is, I have places to be.”
“Yeah?” Marnie asked. “Like where?”
“Like none of your business.”
She laughed, and my chest clenched. “Jude, I just caught you making out with another girl, and you’re not even going to say you’re sorry? Or explain yourself?”
“It’s pretty self-explanatory,” I clipped without thinking, then hurried to needlessly remind her, “You broke up with me.”
“Because you’ve changed.” Her voice softened then. “You don’t talk. You hardly smile, and when you do, it’s insincere and always snide or mocking.”
“I talk plenty.”
“Not about whatever happened.”
I swallowed and fished my Ray-Bans from my shirt. “Nothing happened.”
“Really, Jude?” She groaned. “See? This is exactly what I mean.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I meandered to my car.
She followed. “But there is. All those meetings and your mom…”
I whirled on her. “She left.”
Her eyes, wet with unshed tears, studied me as though she couldn’t understand.
“Happy?” I said, knowing she wasn’t.
She confirmed it when she stepped back, and said, “No, Jude. No, I’m not happy. Moms don’t just leave, and neither do happy boyfriends. If you can’t open up to me, then you clearly don’t trust me.” I was about to call bullshit when she added, “The worst part is, you don’t care enough about me to even try.”
Glancing around to the gathering masses heading to their cars, I gritted, “I’ve been trying.”
She scoffed. “Kissing someone else is trying?”
I could say nothing to that. I had no idea why I’d even humored the girl. Typically, chicks that desperate didn’t interest me in the slightest. But Red—fuck knows what her real name was—didn’t seem desperate.
No, she didn’t seem anything other than hungry. She was, and made no secret of it, fucking starving.
I watched Marnie round her car with my heart slowing. “Wait.”
“For what? An apology that isn’t coming?”
Frustrated, I blurted, “I’m failing to see why you even wanted to talk to me in the first place.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.”
I walked closer, feeling my chest heat with fear as I dared to ask, “Do you want me back or not?”
Chewing her lip, she eyed my mouth. “I thought I did. Until I saw you with her.”
There was nothing I could do to fix that. All I could do was watch her climb inside her car and leave.
I checked my phone again for the tenth time since practice had ended.
Nothing.
“You keep staring at that thing as if it’s going to grow wings, and it just might.”
I grunted, pocketing my phone when what I really felt like doing was tossing it onto the rapidly fading asphalt.
Maybe then I’d stop fucking caring so much.
Though Marnie would argue that was the problem—that I didn’t give a shit about anything.
She was right, and she was so very fucking wrong.
I’d tried to call her all night, but as predicted, she didn’t deem me worthy of her precious time.
The dirt was soft from the burst of rain that’d left as fast as it had arrived. Storms and bipolar weather were just some of the wondrous benefits of living on the island.
Silas kept pace with me, heading to his car and smacking the key fob. “Coffee?”
I peered down at my shoes, then at my car, and headed to his.
I’d rather dirty his interior than my own. “Drop me back after.”
He chuckled as if he knew, and yeah, he’d known me long enough to pick up on what my father thought was an odious obsessive-compulsive trait when it came to cleanliness.
The way he’d watch me and remark on things in that toneless way of his made it clear he was concerned about who it was I might take after.
Too bad his opinion, of which once meant everything to me, now meant sweet fuck all.
I’d fucked it all up in more ways than one.
And that crazy redheaded chick was the reason I might never be able to fix part of it.
Ray’s Little Pot of Sunshine wasn’t our usual haunt, but Starbucks was closed until the weekend thanks to their machine undergoing maintenance.
“The coffee at Ray’s is better anyway,” Silas said, pulling away from the closed drive-thru and back out onto the road.
I didn’t believe him until we’d found a booth inside the small boutique. It was more bookstore than café with mismatched mahogany and white shelves slotted between tables and lining the far wall underneath the fading golden business name.
“The walls are bright blue,” I said, blinking at them.
Silas shrugged and thanked the waitress for the coffee and three giant donuts she set down. “So?”
I tugged my coffee closer, then lifted the spotted mug to my lips and sniffed it.
Silas laughed. “You’ve lived here for how long, and you’ve never been here?”
“Pretty sure my mom used to bring Henry here,” I said, just now remembering. “Storytime.”
Silas stared at his mug for a moment, then nodded. “How’s he doing?”
“Much the same,” I admitted. “And Elijah gives not one fuck.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” I raised my brows, and Silas sipped his coffee. “He knows now, right?”
Both members of Nightingale, or Chess Club when mentioned at school, Silas’s parents had made sure he was aware of what was expected of him. He knew what was to come, but just like me, he wouldn’t know exactly what it would cost him until it was time—and too late.