Chapter 8

We drive to my mom’s apartment—vacant while she visits her friends in San Francisco—because even though Harris for sure got the worse end of the stick, Maddie doesn’t want Gabe to see me until the swelling at my cheekbone goes down a little.

I let us in with my key, and she raids the freezer and fills a zip-close baggie with ice. She finds a clean dish towel, wraps it around the bag, and presses the bundle to my cheek.

I flinch, but she doesn’t ease up.

She’s pissed at me. She spent most of the car ride here telling me what a colossal dick I am. She told me I’ll be lucky if Harris doesn’t send the cops after me. She said she’s never listening to anything I say again, because I lied to her when I said I wouldn’t get into it with him.

But despite all that, I’m feeling like I ran a marathon and saved a city and whatever clichés of heroism and super-heroism you can think of, because let’s face it: Maddie’s putting an ice pack on my face. Everyone knows the winner of the fight gets the woman with the cool hands and the first aid kit. And even though she only stopped yelling at me about thirty seconds ago, I think she’s secretly pleased that I punched him. I’m sure she wanted to.

“Sit,” she says, pulling out a kitchen chair. She’s shorter than I am and it’s awkward for her to hold the ice on my face. So I sit, and she stands next to me and leans in to examine the damage. Which isn’t much, because Harris is a wuss.

Okay, that’s a lie. Harris landed a decent punch. It hurt a lot, but it was worth it, because I heard Maddie gasp when Harris’s fist made contact. I’m pretty sure she didn’t gasp when my fist hit Harris’s face.

Taking the punch was definitely worth it. Maddie leans closer, her breath brushing my forehead. Her teeth nibble at that incredibly sexy, full lower lip. My face is an inch from the swell of her breasts, maybe less. She’s wearing a pale pink long-sleeved T-shirt made of a soft fabric that clings to her curves and leaves very little to the imagination. Definitely not the fact that her bra is made of lace. Or that her nipples are hard under the lace.

So I do what any guy would do in this situation, amped up on adrenaline and enjoying the spoils of battle: I lean forward so I can tease my lips across the tight peaks of her nipples. And when she groans, I tangle my fingers in her hair and pull her mouth down to mine so I can fully taste my victory.

She makes a small whimpering sound that burrows itself straight into my groin, and just like that, I’m hard. Harder when her mouth opens and her tongue strokes mine, harder still when she makes that noise again.

And then it’s over. She pulls back and straightens up.

Her lips are already swollen, her face is flushed, and it makes me imagine how the rest of her body is responding: nipples tightening, pussy plump like her lips, the moisture pooling, ready for my touch. I reach for her again but she backs away, shaking her head.

“Jack, no.”

“Maddie, yes.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Tell me you don’t want it. Tell me I imagined that sexy little moan. Tell me you’re not wet right now.”

I apparently didn’t imagine it, because she moans again. But then she takes another step away from me and says, “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

She takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to try to deny that I want it.”

“Good. Because I know you do.”

Her mouth softens, just enough for me to see. “Jack, you’re making it worse.”

“I think your ‘making it worse’ is my ‘cutting the bullshit.’ ”

“Jack, I’m a mess. My life is a mess. My boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend. I just moved out. I have no place to go. I’m feeling incredibly lucky to have somewhere I can crash and someone who’s in my corner. You may not want the title, but at this point you’re basically my only friend in the world. And there’s no way I’m going to risk that over sex.”

She finishes and crosses her arms, hiding further temptation from my view.

I’m honestly speechless. I was totally prepared to run roughshod over any of her objections. And—maybe because socking Harris made me stupid and cocky—I was pretty sure I was going to win this one. I was pretty sure I’d have her kissing me again inside of five minutes, one of those tight nipples bare and caught between my fingers inside of ten.

It’s that thing she does. Call it whatever you want, but she can turn me upside down faster than anyone. In this case, it was what she said about being her friend. It shouldn’t have come off as anything other than pathetic. But instead it sobers me up, and it makes me remember.

It was a rainy Saturday in early December. We were, I don’t know, eleven or twelve, and Maddie and I were playing Wiffle ball in the street with some neighborhood kids, not giving a shit that our clothes were slowly becoming soaked. There were probably eight of us, mostly boys, but there were a couple of other neighborhood girls besides Maddie who were game for Wiffle ball or touch football, and they were probably there. To be honest, I don’t remember.

I was pitching. Maddie was catching. I had just thrown a mean third strike past a boy named Jared when I saw my father coming up the street toward us. He was obviously looking for me, which was a bad sign. Having my father’s attention turned on me was never a good thing. I tried whenever possible to stay under the radar.

It was different for Sienna. He wasn’t as hard on Sienna. He sometimes even praised her. But when my father turned his sights on me, my first instinct was to run—or burrow into the ground.

“Jack!” he bellowed. “Jack, get your ass over here.”

He was a big guy, almost two hundred pounds, barrel-chested, a little bowlegged. He was wearing a Seahawks sweatshirt and jeans. He needed a haircut and a shave.

The other kids mostly looked at the ground or at the sky—the ones who’d never heard anyone talk to them that way—or winced sympathetically—the ones who got talked to the way my dad talked to me.

I tossed the ball to the first baseman and made my way slowly over to my father. I could see he was riled up. He was breathing hard and the color was high in his face, his eyes hard and small. He grabbed my arm, too tight.

“They just delivered the wreaths for the baseball fundraiser. And you fucked up the order. Jesus, Jack, how hard is it? All you had to do was copy the orders from the order sheets to the master sheet. Couldn’t you even do that right? And now we’re out sixty bucks for someone else’s fucking Christmas wreaths.”

“I—”

“No excuses,” he said, voice hard, fingers digging into my arm. “No excuses. No apologies. You’ll pay me back the sixty, and you’ll call the families and explain. That you’re a fucking idiot and can’t transcribe numbers from one sheet of paper to another. Jesus. You are so fucking stupid.”

He dropped my arm as if disgusted with it and with me, turned around, and walked back toward the house.

My face was hot. My whole body was hot, and shaking. I recognized the feeling as rage and humiliation. It was familiar. The whole scene was familiar.

The Wiffle ball game had started up again during his tirade. I think the other kids wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening. Someone else was pitching now. If I’d gone back and reclaimed my spot, I’m sure they would have given it back to me, but I couldn’t. I started walking away. Slowly at first, then faster, speeding up to a trot. I wanted to get far away.

I’m going to run away.

From home, I meant, but the truth was, I wanted to run away from myself, and the fact that I knew that wasn’t possible made me even angrier.

“Jack.”

I ignored her at first.

“Jack! Wait up.”

I slowed down and let Maddie catch up. She fell in alongside me. It was like we were jogging together, only with no particular destination. We ran for a long time, the rain getting heavier, soaking our hair, rolling down our faces.

The rage softened and washed away. I was left with a numb hurt. We slowed down to a walk.

“You’re not stupid.”

She was fierce. She was almost as fierce as my father. I felt like I was caught between them, suspended between the way my father saw me and the way Maddie saw me. I teetered there.

“Yeah, well, I fucked up the order.”

“People make mistakes.”

I’m sure it was something her parents had said to her. It was something good parents said to their kids.

“I make a lot of mistakes. I don’t make anything except mistakes.”

“That’s not true, Jack. You do the right thing a lot.”

“Like when?”

We stopped and faced each other. She thought about it hard. I watched water drip off the end of her nose, which was red from the cold. She wasn’t pretty yet. She was just Maddie, brown-haired and scrappy and the person I most wanted to be near.

“Do you remember the time during the lightning storm when you held my hand?”

I did. She’d been so scared she couldn’t catch her breath. She’d looked like she was going to crack into a million pieces, and I’d put my hand out without thinking about it. I just did. And when her breathing had slowed and her face had unfrozen, I’d felt like I’d won the lottery.

It had never happened again and neither of us had ever mentioned it. Until now.

I nodded.

“Not all boys would do that. They would be awkward or whatever. But you knew I was scared, and you did the right thing. So see? You do.”

She said it with so much authority that I didn’t know how to argue with her. And anyway, I didn’t want to argue anymore.

I wanted to be who she thought I was.