Chapter Eight

I push the door open and slide into the world of urinals and general male restroom ickyness.

“You really don’t take a hint, do you?” he asks, leaning back against the sink with his arms crossed. How anyone can look this hot in a polyester button-down with Peachy Kleen! emblazoned across the pocket is beyond me, but he’s managing it.

He’s more than managing it.

“I didn’t mean that,” I say. “I didn’t think.”

Well, technically I didn’t know, but it’s not like I can say that.

“Yeah, you’ve been doing a lot of that lately. Not thinking.”

I take a step toward him. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, but I’m not sure I can stop myself either. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not fine. And I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that,” he says, and then his brow furrows. “So is that it?”

I blink at him, stunned into silence.

He lifts his hands briefly, latex gloves stretched over his palms. “Apology received, Chloe. Consider your conscience clear.”

I open my mouth, and God, why is it like this with him? I’m completely defective with Blake, but I swear the whole room hums when I look at Adam’s eyes.

He suddenly walks forward, coming close enough to steal the breath right out of me. Words continue to evade me, which is probably for the best. Nothing’s coming out right anyway. And frankly, I’d rather stand here in silence than have him tell me to leave.

Adam clenches his fists at his sides and takes a sharp breath. His voice is low, with a pleading edge that doesn’t match his hard expression. “I have work to do, Chloe.”

“Adam, please.” I reach for him instinctively, my fingers wrapping around the bare flesh of his wrist.

The memory rocks through me like a shock wave. Quick and powerful.

I see leaves. A red-gold carpet of them litters my lawn. My rake pushes them into piles, baring trails of green grass and the crisp, unmistakable smell of autumn in the air.

Beside me, Adam looks up from his own rake. “I can’t believe you talked me into this.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re the one who kept me up until three in the morning for, what was it? Eight Halo rematches last night? Remind me again how many of those you won?”

Instead of replying, Adam tosses his rake and lunges for me.

I feel his hands on my waist and laughter bubbling out of me as he hauls me into the air and then tosses me into the pile. Leaves crunch beneath me as I laugh, pulling at his feet and knees until I bring him down beside me.

I smell the sweetness of October all around me as we lie there side by side, laughing until my cheeks ache with it. Adam rolls on his side to face me. His eyes are so blue I feel myself getting lost in them. I know I’m staring and I know it’s obvious, and somehow it’s so ridiculous that it only makes me laugh more.

My shoulders are shaking and I should stop, but it’s just so crazy. Then Adam reaches for my face, and there’s nothing funny about it.

His eyes go soft, and my insides curl like ribbons on a gift. I feel the ghost of his fingers on my hair. It only leaves me aching for more.

“I shouldn’t even be here, you know,” he says softly.

“I know,” I say. But when he moves to leave, I take his hand. And he lets me.

“What’s going on, Chloe?”

I jump away from Adam at the sound of Blake’s voice. And there we are, Blake staring at me, Adam staring at Blake, and me staring at the wall, cheeks burning like someone lit them on fire.

“Chloe?” Blake prompts again.

“I called her a bitch,” Adam says, with a shrug that says I’m making a big deal out of nothing.

Blake and I both look at him—me in shock, Blake with disbelief. Adam just crosses his long arms across his middle again and tries to look bored.

“You called her a bitch,” Blake says.

Okay, I’m not sure what Blake’s trying for, but if it’s anger, he’s missing the mark. Like way missing it, because if anything, he sounds amused. And maybe he is. I don’t even care. All I care about is getting out of here. Like, now.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Blake says, giving an exaggerated shrug. “Why would you say that?”

“She was spitting out your Goody Two-shoes crap. And God knows she can’t let it go,” Adam says, gesturing at me with something that I think is supposed to look like disgust.

Okay, everyone in this room needs acting lessons. None of us are buying any of this, but I don’t see anything else for sale.

I cringe, desperate to break the awkward silence. “I wasn’t—”

Blake turns toward me, face expectant.

“You weren’t being a self-righteous bitch?” Adam asks, his snarly tone a complete contradiction to his tense expression. “Sure you weren’t.”

“Whatever. Can we just go now, Blake?”

Blake cuts his eyes to the urinal. “Well, if you’re done here, I’d still like to use the restroom.”

If I blush any harder at this point, I’ll actually become a tomato. I cover my face, shaking my head. “Sorry. Here, I’ll take your stuff and wait for you.”

Blake gives me one more look and then hands me his binder and phone. I’m shooting for the door before he’s even fully let go.

Once outside, I hear Blake speak again, his voice muffled by the door. “Don’t forget yourself, big guy. Boyfriend is my job, not yours.”

I stop short, somehow frozen by his words. Or maybe his tone. I mean, I know I’m his girlfriend. Even if I can’t remember anything, I have about two hundred pictures to prove it. But there was something about his tone. Almost like he was joking.

Like us being together is a joke.

Stop it.

I shake my head because that kind of thinking really is crazy. Paranoid and neurotic and a thousand other things I should be medicated for. Blake doesn’t have a malevolent bone in his body. Adam on the other hand…

But I can’t think about all of his evil. I’m pretty fixated on the feel of his hand on my hair, the memory enough to make me shiver now. Yeah, if anybody’s the bad guy in this relationship, it’s not Blake. It’s me.

As if on cue, Blake’s phone buzzes in my hand. I glance at it and think about him slouched in the study room, texting under the table. Like texting a lot.

I chew the inside of my bottom lip, glancing at the lit screen out of the corner of my eye. It’s absolutely wrong. An invasion of privacy and a breach of trust, not to mention how much of a stalker it makes me.

And, hell, I’m going to do it anyway.

The message is from a number I don’t recognize.

Do your job and she won’t figure anything out.

***

Riding home with a fake boyfriend sucks under normal circumstances. But now, said boyfriend isn’t just fake. He’s also hiding something from me. And it’s not an early Christmas present.

I’m so relieved when he pulls up to the curb beside my house that I nearly fling my door open and leap onto the curb.

“Whoa, you in a rush?”

I offer the smile I’ve been flashing the entire ride home. So wide I’m probably showing molars and so fake it should come with a disclaimer.

“Sorry. I’ve got an appointment. I don’t want to be late.”

“An appointment?”

“Dentist.”

“On a Saturday?”

“They’re booked up because he’s taking time off for Thanksgiving.”

Of course they’re not booked up and I’m not going to the dentist. But I can’t tell him I’m going to my therapist. Where I’m going to proceed to tell even more lies. Seriously, I may want to ditch this whole psychology thing and go with a future as a con artist.

“See you Monday?” I ask, and then I force myself to lean in and kiss him. His lips are warm and soft, but I feel cold and hard all over.

Blake pulls back with a frown. “Why do I feel like you’re giving me the brush-off?”

“I’m not,” I say too quickly.

He looks at me, eyes sad. “That feels a little hard to believe. First I find you in the bathroom with Adam—”

“That was nothing, Blake. He was just being a jerk and I…I overreacted.”

“C’mon, would you believe that if you caught me in the bathroom with Abbey? Or maybe Madison?”

The truth is, I’d pretty much expect to find Blake in the bathroom with either of those girls. They’re bouncy in all the right places, and they probably know all the important lacrosse rules. They are his kind. And yeah, maybe I dreamed about being in this position for years, but the truth is, I don’t belong here. There just isn’t a bit of sense in it.

“Ever since that night you hit your head, you’ve been strange,” he says, looking down. “I feel like you’re hiding something from me.”

I can’t hold back my snort. “I’m hiding something? Okay. Sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just forget it.” I turn, but his hand closes around my arm.

“What the hell, Chloe?” When I turn back, he doesn’t look like a villain. He looks handsome and sweet and terribly hurt. “What did I do to make you so mad? Why won’t you just tell me?”

I bite my lip, weighing my options. I’ve been over that text a thousand times, and I can’t imagine it being anything but sinister. But it’s not like I’m the poster child for objectivity here.

“Are you going to say anything?” he asks, and he doesn’t look suspicious. He looks like a guy who deserves better than this. Hell, stray dogs probably deserve better than this.

“I saw something on your phone,” I say.

He throws up his hands, clearly baffled. “My phone?”

“I didn’t mean to. You have to believe that. It was a complete accident, but I saw a text on your phone.”

Blake’s hands come down into his lap slowly. For one second, his face looks fractured, like there’s something cold and angry simmering just beneath his puzzled expression. When I blink, it’s gone, and he’s just an ordinary guy trying to calm down his obviously paranoid girlfriend.

“What text?” he asks. His voice is too low. Too quiet.

I look down at my hands in my lap, humiliated. “It buzzed while you were in the bathroom.”

He cocks his head at that. “After you’d been with Adam, right?” His tone says it all.

Ouch. And he’s totally right. He found me in the men’s bathroom with my hand on another guy’s arm, and I’m getting bent out of shape over a totally vague text message that I had no business looking at in the first place. Hello, Kettle, my name is Pot.

“Blake, I know what that probably looked like, but that wasn’t what it was.”

“And neither is this. What did the text say, Chloe?”

I feel my cheeks growing warm. “It said, ‘Do your job and she won’t figure anything out.’”

“That’s all you read?” he says.

I nod, even though it seems like an odd thing to say. Was there something worse I could have read? Ugh, why can’t I just stop?

“That’s it?” he repeats, obviously waiting for me to say something.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s all.”

He laughs then, like he thinks I’m completely ridiculous. And I have a bad feeling I’m about to agree with him. “Chloe, it’s about Christmas. Dad bought Mom a bracelet for Christmas. He’s keeping it in my room in case she goes snooping in his usual hiding spots.”

My cheeks go hotter, and I look down again. “Oh. Well, I…”

There isn’t a thing I can say that will make this better, so I trail into silence. God, what is wrong with me? I finally get the guy of my dreams, and I’m going to lose him because I’m a neurotic whack job. Terrific.

Blake laughs again, which makes me flinch because I feel like I’m going to cry.

“Chloe, look at me,” he says.

I feel his hand on my face, cooler than is exactly comfortable, but it is November I guess. I look at him, holding back my tears.

“I’m really sorry,” I say. “I guess I was just feeling insecure.”

“It’s cute that you’re jealous,” he says, looking a little smug.

“No, it’s not. It’s obnoxious. I really wasn’t trying to invade your privacy.”

“I know that. We both have enough respect for each other not to do that.”

I sigh in relief, and this time, when he leans into kiss me, I try to savor it. It’s still harder than it should be. I don’t remember kissing being a difficult thing before. Hell, maybe it’s just one more thing I forgot.

When he pulls away, I zip my coat and ease open the passenger door.

“So I’ll see you Monday?”

He grins, checking his collar in the rearview mirror. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

Blake’s engine rumbles as he pulls away, and the front door creaks open behind me. I hear the hum of the vacuum cleaner before Dad closes it again. He’s got a paper under his arm and keys in his hand.

“Back from tutoring?” he asks.

“Yeah, but I have an appointment with Dr. Kirkpatrick.”

“I know. I, uh…I thought I could drive you.”

Read: Mom wants me to drive you so I can try to figure out how nuts you are.

I take a breath, but to my credit, I don’t sigh. It takes everything in me to hold it in. I can’t blame him though. I know better than anybody that with my mother, sometimes it’s easier to just give in.

“I’m hitting Rowdy’s anyway,” he says, and I smile.

Rowdy’s Roasters. Otherwise known as the best coffee along the coast of Lake Erie. A steamy café mocha sounds amazing. Or it does until I think about the way my stomach turned itself inside out at one whiff of the pot the other day.

But this is Rowdy’s. I can stomach that, right?

“Maybe you could grab me a mocha?”

He heads for the garage, eyeing me over his shoulder. “Thought you gave up the good stuff.”

“Call it a relapse.”

We climb into Dad’s pickup, settling into an easy silence. The hum of talk radio and rumble of the engine keep the quiet comfortable as we cut our way through town. It’s only a ten-minute drive to the office. If he doesn’t get on it, he’s not going to have any dirt for my mom.

Unless maybe this isn’t about me at all.

“You and mom aren’t fighting are you?” I ask.

He lifts his fingers from the steering wheel, halfheartedly waving that off. “No, Mom’s deep cleaning. I’m looking for excuses.”

He’s still a bad liar, but I didn’t expect anything about him would be different. It took him a year to get used to the idea of a weeping cherry tree in the front flower bed. The guy’s not big on change. He’s kind of like a glacier with hair. The steady, unflappable presence that keeps Mom from exploding and me from floating away on a whim.

He sighs, and I know he’s going to confess. “All right, she wanted me to talk to you.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“She’s just scared, that’s all. Scared that you’re not telling us everything. Some of your stories don’t match up.”

I glance out the window, watch the town passing by in a blur of old houses and storefronts that need sprucing.

“Mom thinks maybe you’re afraid to talk to us,” he says.

“I’m not,” I say.

“Because you can tell us what’s going on. Even if you don’t think we’ll like it, we want to hear it.”

I turn to the window again. This time, the tears in my eyes blur the images I see. “I’m not crazy, Dad.”

Suddenly, I need him to believe it.

“Never thought you were.”

“But, Mom…”

“Mom worries, Chlo. It’s what she does.”

I laugh. “Yeah, she worries that I’ll let her down.”

“She wants you to be happy.”

“She wants me to make her proud, Dad. That’s not the same.”

He makes a face, and I think it’s because he wants to defend her. In the end, he doesn’t. He pulls up to the curb by my doctor’s office and puts the car in park. “I want you to be happy.”

I lean across the seat between us, squeezing him in a hug. I want to hold enough strength from his broad shoulders to make me believe things will work out fine, but when I pull back, it disappears. Steam vanishing into nothing.