Crash

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” I hollered over at Damon.

  Peeking his head out, he looked at me purposefully. “Yeah, it is.”

  I would have gone back and forth a few more rounds with him, but when Jude breezed by me without so much as a hello, I knew my fight was needed elsewhere.

  “Hey, Jude,” I said, walking a few steps towards where his back was to me, inspecting the tire.

  Shoving into a stand, he walked by me, lips sealed shut and eyes dead ahead. He popped the trunk open and pulled the spare free.

  “You’ve really got this whole silent thing down,” I called after him. “Good for you, you’ve proved your point that you absolutely disdain me,”—disdain might have been a tad generous for the way Jude ignored me—“but you’re really not going to say hi?”

  Pausing at the end of a bay, he grabbed a lever. “Hi,” he said with no inflection. “Now scoot the hell back so I can get your tire fixed and you can be on your way.”

  Wow. It was worse than I thought. Jude didn’t disdain me—he hated me. However, I didn’t hate him and I wasn’t going to pretend I did.

  “I heard you got a full ride to just about any university of your choice,” I said, hollering over the lift as the Mazda went up.

  Watching the car, he responded with a shrug.

  “I even heard Coach A mention a few NFL teams are interested.”

  Another shrug, this time with the other shoulder.

  “The NFL, Jude. Wouldn’t you be, like, one of the first guys to ever be drafted straight out of high school?”

  The lift shuddered to a stop, and Jude marched for the flat tire. He glanced over at me where I was leaning against the wall and looked away about as fast. “I’m sure those are just rumors or sensationalized. Besides, even if I did get picked up, I’d wind up on the bench or getting injured playing with guys a hundred pounds larger.”

  I couldn’t stop the smile that surfaced. Jude was talking to me again. “Was that just a full sentence directed at me?” I asked, tipping my ear.

  Hoisting a tool off a bench, he began ratcheting off the lug nuts. “Actually, that was two.”

  “And what have I done to deserve two complete sentences from you?” I didn’t care.

  “You’re talking to my good side,” he said, looking over at me and giving me just barely, but enough of a smile.

  I never imagined I’d be thankful for a flat tire, but I added it to the list. “I didn’t think you had one.”

  “I don’t,” he said, removing the last lug nut. “But damn if one doesn’t try to emerge every blue moon.” Hoisting what was left of the tire and wheel from the axel, he hefted it on the ground.

  Damn if he wasn’t the sexiest thing I’d seen in a long time. Maybe ever.

  “How have you been?”

  “There’s a loaded question,” he said, cocking a brow at me. “How’s Diamond?” he asked as non-emotionally as Jude was capable when he talked about Sawyer.

  “Did you just answer a question with a question?”

  Rolling the spare around the side, he glanced up at me again. This time for a whole second longer. “I just cancelled out your question with one of my own. You don’t want to answer my question any more than I want to answer yours,” he said. “So we’re square now.”

  The man had the most messed up sense of fair and square.

  And, because I was the idiot I was, I breeched a topic that I already knew wasn’t going to fly well with him. “Jude,” I began, looking at my hands, “I’m sorry for everything I said and did.”

  His body was already tensed as he lifted the spare onto the axel, but it flexed at least fifty percent more. “Can you be any more vague?”

  I wasn’t going to get defensive. I wasn’t going to get defensive. “Was that a request or a jab?” I got defensive.

  “If you’re thinking about bringing up certain topics,” he began, tightening a lug nut like it had done him a world of wrong, “then it was both.”

  Swallow pride. Apologize. My internal dialogue was having to guide me through this. “I’m sorry I followed you that night to Holly’s,” I swallowed, something about that name just didn’t feel right to say, “and I’m sorry I went off on you the next morning.”

  “I don’t care about any of that,” he said, clenching his jaw.

  “You don’t?” I crossed my arms. “Then why are you still so damn pissed at me you’re about to blow your lid?” Being someone prone to bouts of temper overload, I could spot another’s ticks from ten paces.

  Jude exhaled, leaning his forehead into the tire. “Damn it all to hell,” he muttered, banging his socket wrench on the metal cart behind him. “Because,” he began, shifting his eyes over at me, “because you took his word over mine.”

  That rendered me speechless. In all my midnight over analyzations, I’d never arrived at this conclusion. “And I was wrong to?” I said slowly. “Because it turned out Sawyer was right.”

  “He was right about what?” Jude said in a tone that was scarily controlled.

  “You and Holly.” Man, I hated saying that name. I was done. She would now be referred to as the tramp that shall not be named.

  “Me and Holly, eh?” He fastened another lug nut into place. “So you didn’t think to ask me about her before you decided to stage a stake out? You didn’t choose to trust me over him?”

  “Jude,” I sighed in frustration. He wasn’t getting it, or I wasn’t getting it. One of us was definitely not getting it and neither of us was speaking the same language. “It turns out I had no reason to trust you.”

  “And you know this for a fact because?” he asked, fastening the last nut into place. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye; being near him and arguing was better than passing by him and being ignored.

  “Because I saw you, Jude,” I said, wondering how much I needed to spell out for him to get it. “I saw you with Holly and . . .” I swallowed, “and the baby. I saw it all.”

  “You saw me with Holly and the baby,” he repeated, nodding his head with each word. “And that’s why you can’t trust me?”

  This should be more obvious than it was to him. Unless cheating behind one’s back had become a morally accepted practice recently. “I think that pretty much sums it up,” I said, wondering if I was missing something. Something so obvious I was overlooking it.

  “Well, there you have it,” he said, striding to the opposite wall. “We’re at an impasse again. Neither one of us trusts the other.” Pressing the lever, the Mazda lowered to the ground.

  I didn’t want to go, I wanted to figure out what the hell was going on between us. What gaps we’d been remiss to fill in. “I get you’re still pissed at me and I’m still a little pissed with you too,” I said, following him around the back. “But do you think we can get over it and be friends again?”

  He laughed one low note, heaving the flat tire into the trunk.

  “I miss you, Jude. I miss having one friend that actually has my back and isn’t throwing daggers at it when I turn around.”

  He stopped, keeping his back at me. “Sorry, Lucy. You and I can’t be friends.” Shouldering by me, he went around to the driver’s door and opened it.

  “Since when do you call me Lucy?” I asked, feeling a new depth of heartbreak.

  “Since we stopped being friends.” He craned his neck to the side, motioning me into the car.

  I wouldn’t be herded. I planted my feet and crossed my arms. “You can’t make that choice for the both of us,” I said, glaring at him. “You don’t want to be my friend, fine, that’s real big of you. But you can’t tell me I can’t be your friend. So go screw yourself and deal with it.” Hello, temper, nice to see you raising your ugly head again.

  His face didn’t even soften like it used to when I went off on him. “People like you and me cannot be friends, Luce,” he said, staring at me like he used to, “and you know it too.”

  “What do I know?” I asked, waiting. And waiting. “Come on,” I said, marching towards him. “What
do I know?” Because, for the umpteenth time, I didn’t have a clue.

  His lips tightened as he tried to slide aside. I didn’t let him. I blocked his path, shoving him back. “Come on, Ryder. What the hell do I know?”

  His eyes blazed, meeting mine. “You can’t be friends with the person you were meant to spend your life with,” he said, his eyes darkening. “So get on with your life and live mine the hell alone.” Nudging by me, he jogged out of the garage and kept going.

  And what I regretted most, more than anything I’d screwed up along Jude’s and my journey together, was that I didn’t go after him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Every day of the rest of the school year, I regretted letting him go that day at the garage. I regretted not chasing after him and holding him captive until he explained exactly what the hell he was trying to say. In concise, detailed sentences a woman could decipher.

  The months that followed our cryptic conversation left me wishing the silent treatment back because now when Jude passed me in the hall, he was no longer intentionally ignoring me. It was as if I didn’t exist.

  I’d gone from something he despised to something he didn’t notice in the space of one conversation that only gave light to more questions.

  I turned eighteen last month and was going to graduate next week, and in the fall, I would be a freshman at Juilliard. It was a time to celebrate, to let down my once again long hair and look back at the past with nostalgia and forward to the future with hope.

  I was having a tough time implementing that idea and, although I would never allow myself to openly admit the reason why I felt like some lost ship in the night, at the very core of me where things like right and wrong, truth and love existed, I knew why.

  “I’m calling time out on your zoning out bouts tonight, Lucy,” Taylor shouted at me over the stereo blasting some song about summer and friends and partying. It was really a terribly cliche song, but I suppose it set the mood for the night. “Tonight is about nothing but having a killer time and being in the moment.”

  Sage words coming from a girl that mainly talked about her bright future. “And by that you mean getting smashed and making out with the first piece of ass you see, in the moment?”

  Taylor groaned. “And I thought I was a cynic.”

  Turning the volume down, I pulled the top of the dress Taylor had stuffed me in up and the bottom of it down. There, now it covered half of my boobs and most of my ass. “Sorry. It just comes so natural when you’ve dressed me like a cheap hooker on her way to work.”

  “You’re wearing pearl earrings, for crap’s sake, Lucy,” she said. “Last time I checked, hookers didn’t wear pearls.”

  “Fine,” I said, checking my reflection in the mirror for the third time. Could she have added another coat of mascara before my eyelashes snapped in half? “A hooker on her way to church.”

  Taylor laughed, staring over at me when we hit a red light. “Jewelry, huh?” she gave me a scandalous look. “Somebody must have been very good, or very naaauw-tie, to get a pair of pearl earrings for a graduation gift.”

  “Your depravity never ceases to astound me,” I said, sticking my tongue out. “And the earrings were a graduation gift from my parents, not Sawyer.”

  Thank god he hadn’t given me any jewelry yet because I was about three commitment levels below jewelry.

  The light flashed green and Taylor gunned her little Volkswagen off the line. “You only have yourself to blame for that. Guys get jewelry for girls as a reward for putting out. It’s a simple fact of life.”

  “Again, you are depraved,” I said, rolling down the window. Where I really wanted to be was at the studio, preparing for the next four years of dancing with and against the best. I didn’t want to be crammed in a small car with a high school drama vixen, heading to a graduation party where alcohol would be in endless supply and inhibitions would be in no supply, suctioned into a dress that made a Holly socialite look like a prude.

  “Since I’m seeing no diamond pendants or gold bracelets on you, I’m taking it you’re still cock blocking Sawyer into a coma?” The shit this girl came up with. It might have been funny if it wasn’t so sad.

  “None of your business.”

  “So, no,” she assumed, whipping the car down a gravel road.

  “So, hell no,” I edited, since she was going to draw conclusions whether I validated them or not.

  “Why not?” she asked as we bumped over the potholes. “You guys have been ‘seeing each other’ since Sadie’s and an official item since Winter Formal. Are you guys taking it slow or some stupid shit like that?”

  “I’m taking it slow,” I said as the party grounds came into view. I was familiar with the place, the mansion down on the lake. Sawyer’s parents were out of town at some auto auction, so he decided to throw the most epic graduation party that would go down in the books. His words, not mine. From the end of the road, the Diamonds’ place looked like it was crawling with ants. Drunk ants.

  “And Sawyer?” Taylor asked with pointed inflection.

  “Sawyer’s a guy. Since when have any of them been for taking things slow in that department?”

  “Since never,” she said, answering perhaps the most rhetorical question known to woman.

  Finding a vacant spot on the grass, Taylor cut the ignition and dabbed on another coat of lip gloss. The satellites were going to be able to pinpoint those lips if she added another glob of that sparkly, shiny goop.

  “Taylor, I’m not really feeling this right now,” I said, grabbing her arm. “Let’s get in and get out. There’s going to be nothing but wasted wannabes in there looking to get laid.”

  Peaking her brows at me, she smacked her lips. “Exactly.”

  “I feel this is the time I should discuss the correlation between girls with low self-esteem and guys who use this to their advantage,” I said, shoving out of the car and jacking my dress down. The more I pulled it down, the more of my boobs that came popping over the top.

  “What’s your point, Debbie Downer?” Taylor said, weaving her elbow through mine.

  “Don’t be a statistic,” I said, flashing an overdone smile at her.

  “And let me discuss the ramifications between girls who don’t put out for their fine, rich boyfriends heading to college in Southern California in the fall,” she said, pulling me towards the house that rumbled with music.

  “This ought to be good,” I muttered.

  “They wind up dried up, bitter, old hags with a herd of cats and nothing but cobwebs between their legs.”

  Hanging my head back, I groaned. “Add twisted to depraved and I think we’ve got Taylor Donovan pigeon holed.”

  We weren’t even on the front lawn and already a cacophony of cat calls and whistles were fog-horning at us. “One hour,” I said, feeling generous, “and we’re out of here.”

  “Three hours,” Taylor countered, giving some guy draped over the front stairs a smile that made me blush. “And don’t forget you’re my DD tonight, so no skipping out.”

  I was all for playing chaperone and DD for my friends to make sure they made it through the night safe and in one piece, but I wished I had pawned Taylor off on someone else tonight because getting through three hours of everyone partying while I felt like the anti-party was going to mean bloodshed.

  “It’s about time the party showed up,” Morrison shouted over the music at us, running his eyes down the two of us like he was using his hands.

  “It’s officially started now,” Taylor replied, feeling like the belle of the ball from the looks we were getting. I suppose when you showed up to a party with inebriated guys rocking a scrap of fabric and a heap of makeup, oogling was par for the course.

  “What’s your poison, ladies?” Morrison asked, weaving towards the bar area set up on Sawyer’s mom’s Italian buffet. She would bust something if she saw what was littered on it right now.

  “Make it a screwdriver,” Taylor yelled over at him.

  Morri
son’s mouth curved up. “I believe I can accommodate that request.”

  And I still had to put up with two hours and fifty nine minutes of this hedonism. Looked like someone was going to spend their time down on the hopefully vacant beach.

  “Lucy?” Morrison called.

  I was smart enough to know you didn’t take an open drink from a guy, most of all someone like Luke Morrison.

  “I’m good,” I said, shooting him a thumbs up. Leaning into Taylor, I said, “Be good and call me if anyone tries something. I’m getting some fresh air.”

  “Somebody better try something on me,” she replied, putting on a smile as Morrison made his way back to us with a drink in hand.

  “Statistics,” I said, heading for the back door. “Don’t become one.”

  “Don’t become a cobweb growing old hag!” she shouted after me.

  Winding my way through the maze of students in the kitchen, I shoved a couple making out to the side so I could open the refrigerator. One can of pop was stuffed behind all the beer, and that’s what the designated driver snatched.

  “Hot dress, Lucy!” someone yelled from somewhere in the kitchen. I didn’t validate it with a response.

  “Sawyer’s looking for you. Something tells me he’s going to be a happy man when he finds you!”

  I couldn’t get down to the beach fast enough. It was quiet and almost vacant save for a couple doing the nasty in Mrs. Diamond’s lounger. The night was warm and the water was so still it almost seemed like I could walk out on it without falling beneath the surface.

  I slipped out of Taylor’s nude peep-toes and walked out to the end of the dock. I was going to have my own little party right here. Just me and Mr. Lemon Lime. I cracked open the can and took a sip. What the hell was wrong with me? When had the girl who used to love being the life of the party become the girl who found a quiet little corner to sulk?

  Like most the questions I posed to myself these days, it always came down to the same answer. The same name.

  “Not really my scene either.”

  I jumped so hard I managed to spill a quarter of lemon lime soda all over Taylor’s very inappropriate dress. It would be the last time she’d lend me something from her wardrobe and that made me rather happy.