“Are you going to give me some big explanation as to why you kissed me and showed up here with Derrick?” he asks.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Derrick’s my boyfriend.”
“Semantics.”
“And besides, I didn’t kiss you—you kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Lyla.” He says my name as a statement, not a question, and there’s not even any annoyance behind it. It’s like he’s just saying, Come on, we were both there, let’s not play games. Which is confusing. If he doesn’t want to play games, then why does he act like such a game player?
“I have a boyfriend,” I say. “I shouldn’t have been on the beach with you this morning in the first place. And you shouldn’t have told Katie we kissed.”
“I told Katie we kissed because I wanted her to know that I’m not interested in her like that.” He reaches out and fingers one of the beads on my tigereye bracelet, the same way he did back at the hotel. His touch feels familiar and exciting all at once. My arms break out in goose bumps. “Did you mean what you said about how you shouldn’t have been on the beach with me this morning?”
“Yes,” I say. But my voice sounds tinny and weird and far away, almost like I’m in an echoey hallway or a movie with bad sound.
“Say it again.”
“What?”
“Look at me and tell me you want nothing to do with me.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I look away and down the alley toward the beach. If you look very closely, you can see a slip of ocean in between the buildings, can hear the sound of the waves crashing up against the shore.
“If it’s so ridiculous, then do it.” I feel him shift slightly forward on the curb, so that his elbows are on his knees. I know that if I look at him, his face is going to be right there, and I’m going to be reminded of kissing him and how amazing it felt. I’m here with Derrick, I tell myself. I wonder if I should get a rubber band to keep around my wrist. Then every time I saw Beckett I could snap it. Eventually, I would start to equate the pain with Beckett’s face, and I would start avoiding him. It’s called aversion therapy. We learned all about it in psychology.
“Why did you come here with Katie?” I blurt.
“Why did you come here with Derrick?”
“Derrick is my boyfriend.”
“So? You still showed up here with him, even after you kissed me this morning.”
I don’t say anything.
“You really see things in black and white, don’t you, Lyla?”
“What?”
“You think that because you have a boyfriend, it means kissing me was wrong. You think because I came here with Katie after kissing you, I must be a total jerk. You never stop to think about the whys, do you?”
I shake my head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Before graduation, I will . . . learn to trust. That stupid email pops into my head again. I feel like balling my fists up against my head and screaming. I smashed my phone. That email should be gone forever.
“What I’m talking about is that—”
And that’s the moment Derrick picks to walk outside and find me sitting there with Beckett.
“Lyla,” Derrick says when he sees me. “Are you okay? Where were you? I was getting worried.” Then he notices Beckett sitting next to me. “What is he doing here?”
“He was just leaving,” I say.
But Beckett doesn’t move.
“Oookaay,” Derrick says. “But what is he doing out here?”
“I’m right here, dude,” Beckett says, rolling his eyes. “You don’t have to talk through me.”
Derrick’s shoulders stiffen and his back gets straight. Uh-oh. “Fine,” he says. “What the fuck are you doing with my girlfriend?”
“Your girlfriend was out here all alone, and she cut her foot. So I was helping her,” Beckett says. He stands up. “And if you really gave a shit about her, you would have been out here, too.”
“I didn’t know where she was!” Derrick says. Then he turns to me. “What are you doing out here?”
Good question. What excuse could I possibly have for being out here in a back alley after telling him I was going to the bathroom? Telling him I ran out here because I saw Katie in the bathroom definitely isn’t going to go over well. “I got confused,” I say. “I opened the wrong door and then I dropped my phone.”
I point to where the remnants of my phone are still littering the sidewalk, sparkling under the moonlight that is now shining down into the alley. “And I cut myself,” I add.
“Are you okay?” Derrick rushes over and looks at my ankle.
“I’m fine.” I don’t like the three of us being out here together. It’s giving me all kinds of anxiety. Beckett is a complete loose cannon, and who knows if he’s going to say something about what really happened. “I just don’t really want to be here anymore,” I say. “I want to go home.”
I mean back to the hotel, or I guess the hotel Derrick got us. But now that I think about it, home home wouldn’t be that bad either. My room at home is nice—I have thousand-thread-count sheets that I bought with my own money, and a comfy bedspread and a soft chenille throw. I have a TV mounted on my wall and candles on my nightstand and my own bathroom with a huge (albeit outdated) tub. Suddenly I’m so homesick I almost can’t stand it.
“Can we please leave?” I ask Derrick. “Please?”
“Lyla—” Beckett starts.
“Beckett, please,” I say, shaking my head. “Please, just . . . just go.”
He stands there for a second, watching me.
“Please,” I say, looking him in the eye. “I mean it, just go.”
Something passes over his face, and then he nods slowly before turning and walking away.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that asshole,” Derrick says. “I can’t believe he would think it was okay to be out here alone with you like that.” He shakes his head. “He has no sense of boundaries.”
You have no idea. “Can we please go back to the hotel?” I plead.
“Of course. Do you still . . . . I mean, are we going back to the first hotel? Or the, you know, cuddle and bubble?”
“The second one.”
Derrick nods, looking excited. “Okay, good. Um, not that I want to pressure you or anything.”
He’s not pressuring me. But now that I’m sitting here, looking at him, the boy I’m about to lose my virginity to, the boy I’m supposedly in love with, it’s more clear than ever that I have to tell him the truth. Forget about whether Juliana is going to tell him. I can’t sleep with Derrick unless he knows about me and Beckett.
It’ll be fine, I’m sure. He’ll just . . . be okay with the whole thing. I mean, it was just one kiss. How can you be upset about one kiss? And if I tell him the truth—that Beckett kissed me—then Derrick should be fine with it. Won’t he? I mean, he probably won’t even be thinking about Beckett once he knows we’re definitely about to have sex.
“I hate that douche bag,” Derrick mumbles as we walk down the street. Well, he’s walking. I’m hobbling. My ankle is really hurting. Like, bad. I glance down at it and notice that the Band-Aid Beckett put on is starting to soak through. Great. Oh my god! I have an open wound! How am I supposed to get into a Jacuzzi that has . . . all kinds of bodily fluids in it with an open wound?
There’s probably a sign on the wall that tells you to shower before you get into the Jacuzzi, but honestly, who’s really going to do that? I know I wasn’t planning to. What would be the point? You know everyone else isn’t, so it would be a total waste of time to get yourself all clean and then hop into the gross Jacuzzi. Plus, I need my body’s own bacteria to fight off the stranger bacteria that are going to be floating around in there. I picture my immune system fighting off other people’s germs. My bacteria soldiers are dressed in pink, and the other ones are all gross, like little balls of gray fluf
f disgustingness. Like dryer lint.
Anyway. It doesn’t matter, because there’s no way I can get into a Jacuzzi when I have an open wound. That would just be irresponsible. No matter. I wasn’t looking forward to the Jacuzzi part anyway.
We can just use the room.
“So listen,” I say. “Something kind of . . . you know, weird happened earlier.”
“If I see him on the street, I’m going to knock him out.”
I frown. “You just saw him on the street.”
Derrick looks startled, like he somehow forgot I was there. “Obviously I wasn’t going to punch him in front of you,” he says. “You think I would get into a fight in front of my girlfriend? Besides, I would probably end up really hurting him. And it would be disturbing for you to see that kind of anger coming from me.”
“Yeah, because you’re not an angry person,” I say firmly.
“Yes, I am,” he says. “I’m an angry person tonight. I don’t like people messing with my girlfriend.”
Yikes. Well then. “Okay,” I say. I clear my throat and try again. “I think . . . I mean, I think we should probably maybe talk about something. I mean, I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.” Derrick turns around and looks at me. “What is it?” He must see the look on my face, because his eyes instantly soften. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Is it your leg?” He looks down at my leg and his eyes widen. “Oh, god,” he says. “What a mess.”
I look down at my ankle. A line of blood has snaked down my shin and pooled in the bottom of my shoe. A couple of girls walking by in matching sorority shirts look at me and wrinkle their noses, then keep a wide berth as they inch across the sidewalk.
“That doesn’t look good,” Derrick says. He bends down and gently pulls my Band-Aid off. He studies the wound. “It’s not closing,” he reports.
“I’m fine. I’m sure it will end up clotting once we get back to the room.” Now that I’ve already started to tell him, I want to get this show on the road. I just want the whole thing to be over with.
Derrick stands up. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to get there,” he says. “Every time you try to walk, you’re going to break it back open.”
“But when I sit down, I should be fine.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
“So what should I do?” I ask.
I’m not sure, but I think I see a look of annoyance pass briefly over his face. “You’re going to have to go to the hospital.”
“This looks like a sketchy part of town,” I say half an hour later as our taxi pulls up in front of the emergency room.
“This isn’t a sketchy party of town,” Derrick says. He reaches into his wallet and pulls out some money and hands it to the cabbie. I’m not sure, but for a second, I think I can see him giving me an eye roll. Why would he roll his eyes at me when I’m in a weakened state?
I look out the window of the cab. Okay, I guess Derrick’s right. This isn’t a bad part of town, it’s just a little more city-like. There were no hospitals on the island, so we had to take a taxi into the main part of Sarasota.
“Are you coming?” Derrick asks. He’s standing outside the cab, the door open, looking in at me like I’m being an idiot.
“Yes.” I take his outstretched hand and scooch forward on the seat, until my legs are hanging out the door. Then I stand up. There’s a weird ripping sensation coming from my ankle, and I look down, expecting to see a gaping wound. But it’s just my same wound, covered with a fresh Band-Aid that Derrick got for me at a drugstore while we waited for the taxi to show up. This one’s starting to bleed through now, too.
“Can you walk?” Derrick asks.
“Yes.” Well. I can hobble. We hobble toward the door. We hobble inside the lobby. We hobble up to the desk. We hobble over to the waiting room chairs with the forms the nurse gave us to fill out.
“They’re probably going to call my mom,” I say.
“So? You already spoke to her.”
“I know.” My mom happened to call me on my way over here. It was a relief to know that my phone was at least kind of working, even though the screen was still a complete mess. I told her I’d gotten the smallest cut ever and I was going to the doctor to get it looked at. She didn’t even freak out that much, even though I texted her a pic of the wound so she could see how bad it was. It was very hard, texting on my ruined phone. I had to be careful not to get any shards of glass in my fingers.
“So then who cares?”
I shrug and fill out the forms, thankful I have my license and my insurance card in my purse.
Derrick brings everything back up to the window, then sits back down, his leg jittering nervously.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yeah.” He glances at his watch. I can tell he’s annoyed we had to come here, but he’s trying not to show it. Actually, he might be kind of annoyed with me. We got into a little bit of an argument while we were waiting for the cab. Derrick wanted to call our class adviser, Mr. Beals, and tell him what happened. I thought it was a ridiculous idea. If we called the class adviser, then we’d have to wait for someone from the school to come meet us and take us to the hospital. We’d probably have to fill out an accident report for the school’s records, and then we’d be stuck going to the hospital with some stupid chaperone.
Derrick thought it was too dangerous to keep it from the teachers, like if they found out another way, we were going to get in trouble. And then I told him that if he was willing to take that chance to go to cuddle and bubble (yes, I said those words), then he should take that chance to take me to the hospital. And then I said if we got done at the hospital quick enough, that maybe we could still go to the hotel he’d picked out. It was actually a really annoying fight. What guy would risk having sex with his girlfriend just to tell a teacher what happened? It didn’t make sense.
Whatever. It doesn’t even really matter. Because looking around the waiting room, it seems like we might be here for a while. The place is packed. I start cataloging all the other patients in my head, wondering which ones might be worse off than me and therefore probably going to get called in first.
The guy in the corner, definitely. He’s sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt, and he’s hunched over, his head in his hands like he has a headache and can’t take the pain anymore. There’s a little boy in fire-truck pajamas curled up in his mom’s lap. His face looks feverish, and his eyes are glazed. Definitely a child should get in before me.
“I think we’re going to be here a while,” I say.
“Yeah, no shit.”
“You don’t have to give me attitude about it,” I say. “It’s not my fault I got hurt.”
He snorts. Well. It’s a half snort. The kind of snort he’s probably hoping I’m not going to hear.
“What?” I ask. “It is?”
“Well, you’re the one who dropped your phone.”
Good point. I wonder what he would say if he knew I actually threw it onto the pavement in a fit of rage. He would definitely think it was my fault then. “Whatever,” I grumble. “You don’t have to be mean to me.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” he says. He reaches out and takes my hand. “I’m just disappointed. This isn’t how I was expecting this night to go.”
“Me neither!” I say.
He looks me right in the eye, and I try not to be mad at him. I try to think about how when I first met him, he’d take me out for hamburgers after school, and I loved the way he would open my ketchup packets for me. My heart squeezes. I love him. Don’t I love him? How can I love someone and then kiss someone else? Am I too young to know what love even is? That’s what my mom is always telling me. Quinn used to say it, too. That love isn’t just your hormones running around all crazy, that you have to have a history, a life built with someone, before you can really love them.
But then wasn’t kissing Beckett just my hormones? I know it was. I don’t even know Beckett. Is that why
I’m too young for love? Because I can’t keep myself from kissing other people?
I feel tears starting at the back of my eyes, burning, and then before I know it, one slips down my cheek.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” Derrick says. “I really am. Don’t cry.”
I want to tell him not to be mean to me, but I don’t. How can I tell him not to be mean to me after what I’ve done?
His fingers squeeze harder around my hand. “I’ll do better. I promise.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t deserve it.” All of a sudden I can feel something building inside me—it’s what I was trying to let out when I smashed my phone. But it didn’t work. The tension didn’t go away—it just got worse. I have to tell Derrick. I have to tell him now or I’m going to explode. My head is going to burst all over the waiting room, right in front of the kid with the fire-truck pajamas. He’ll be scarred for life.
“What do you mean you don’t deserve it? That’s crazy. Of course you do.” Derrick brushes a piece of hair off my face. “I’m sorry I said that about it being your fault you got hurt. Of course it wasn’t your fault.”
“No, I . . .” I take a deep breath. It’s like standing on the edge of a cliff. I’m looking down at the water. I know I can’t turn back. I’ve climbed the mountain. And I can’t get down unless I jump. “Derrick, I smashed my phone.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean, I didn’t drop it. I smashed it on the pavement. On purpose.”
“You smashed your phone on purpose? Why?”
“Because I saw Katie Wells in the bathroom.”