Always Something There to Remind Me (15 page)

Too often lately her moods had been getting the better of her. She was restless and unhappy with everything. Unfortunately, Nate was the easiest target.

She saw it, she just couldn’t stop it.

“What do you mean, I’m being mean?” Nate asked, exasperated. The conversation had been going on like this for about fifteen minutes now. “What did
I
do?”

She didn’t really have a good answer for that. What
had
he done, besides not sensing her foul mood and coddling her? She’d started by saying she was depressed, and when he didn’t pick up on that she immediately found herself going all-out with little jabs to prod him into a response.

She knew this was unfair, that she was being petulant and spoiled. It was absurd, even she could see that. She wanted so badly for him to take her in his arms and erase this dark mood, but all she could do was push him away. It made no sense. To either of them.

And these cramps weren’t helping matters any either.

“You know what you did,” she said, and tilted her chin up. “You’re doing it right now.”

He sighed heavily in the dark car. “This is ridiculous.”

“So now I’m ridiculous?”

“I didn’t say
you
were ridiculous,” he began, then threw his hands up. “Fuck it. Do what you want.” He got out of the car, slammed the door, and huffed into Theresa’s house, where a bunch of people were already there and halfway drunk.

She watched him go and waited for the tears to come. She wanted to cry. She
needed
to cry. She needed this horrible mood to erupt somehow and dissipate before it took her over and strangled her.

Instead she just sat, upset, wrong, and so wound up she didn’t know what to do. Her heart pounded. She wanted to go in, but it would be humiliating now to follow him there, tail between her legs.

It would be like admitting she was wrong.

Even though she was.

And for reasons she couldn’t fully define for herself, she just couldn’t bear to do that.

A knock at the window next to her startled her.

It was Todd.

She took a quick breath and tried to normalize herself, or at least her appearance, then opened the door.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked.

Pouting.
“Nothing.”

“Then come into the party.”

“I will. In a minute.”

“Now.” He reached for her and grabbed her arm, pulling her out of the car. “Come
on.
You can’t just sit there all night.”

This was what she needed. Nate should have done this, just ignored her mood, ignored her whining, and just told her to get her ass into Theresa’s party and socialize. It was probably the best way to get out of her own head.

And her own head was
not
a fun place to be right now.

She and Todd walked to the house in silence, but it wasn’t tense silence like it had been with Nate. Apparently Todd didn’t wonder what her problem was or he didn’t care. He was black-and-white, and sitting in the car alone like a freak was black and going into the party was white.

He opened the door for her and she walked in. The smell of cigarettes and pot hung in the air already and her Tretorn sneakers stuck to the foyer floor in a way that suggested beer had already been spilled on the slate.

Theresa’s mother would freak if they didn’t get this cleaned up before she got back in town. But she and Theresa’s stepfather were gone for another week, in Hawaii or Tahiti or somewhere, so there was time to put the house back in order.

They went to the stairs of the split-level and Erin assessed the crowd. She didn’t know most of them, but Theresa had mentioned that a bunch of her brother’s friends from the Walter Johnson football team would be there, so that was probably who they were. The only people Erin knew were Theresa, David, Todd, Nate, and Todd’s friend Kenny.

Nate was at the top of the short flight of stairs, and she approached him with some shame at her behavior. She kind of wanted to run away, but, with Todd at her back, she had to keep going.

The crowd was thick at the top of the stairs and she stopped to wait for people to move. A guy she didn’t know, with tawny skin, dark auburn hair, and mean little rodentlike eyes, stood leaning against the wall, blocking the way.

She made momentary eye contact with him and was shocked when he said, “Get the fuck out of the way.”

Her jaw dropped. That was
all
she needed! After the night she’d had, the emotional roller coaster she’d been on, all she needed was a stranger to get in her face and cuss at her.

She met Nate’s questioning eyes for one panicked moment, then felt a tap on her shoulder and Todd’s breath at her ear.

“What did he say to you?” Todd asked, his voice low and tense.

“He told me to get the fuck out of his way,” she told him, anger driving her to feed a fire she knew she shouldn’t feed.

That was enough for him. Todd reached over her shoulder and grabbed the guy’s neck. “You don’t fucking talk to her that way—”

He didn’t finish before someone else punched him in the side of the face.

That person had the misfortune to be standing in front of Nate at the time, and Nate’s reaction was lightning-fast and brutal—he pounded him in the face and the guy went down.

Erin dodged out of the way as Todd, undaunted by the blow, surged forward for the guy who’d insulted her.

What followed was unlike anything she’d ever seen in her life. Even movies didn’t get this dramatic when it came to fight scenes. David disappeared like the mouse in
Goodnight Moon
and suddenly it was Todd, Kenny, and Nate against what looked like the entire Walter Johnson football team. There were at least twelve of them. Maybe fifteen. It was hard to say because everyone kept moving.

The noise was thunderous—the sounds of blows and impacts and grunts, and breaking knickknacks.

Erin watched in horror as everyone piled on and a group of them rolled down the stairs, Todd in the middle of the fray. There was a sickening thud, and she saw that one guy’s head had hit the drywall and knocked a head-sized hole in it. Then Nate jumped over all of them and landed in the hall, pounding his fist against the guy who had started it all.

“Don’t
ever
disrespect my girlfriend,” she heard him say.

Something like pride nudged her heart, followed quickly by guilt for getting any satisfaction from this scene at all.

Todd plowed up the steps and halfway into the room, throwing punches at anyone who got in his way. Nate moved next to Todd, blocking the many people who seemed to be attacking now from all sides.

Soon it was just a tangle of bodies locked together, struggling against each other until they crashed into the lattice door to the kitchen and smashed it into pieces.

Erin stood, transfixed. Everything had happened so fast. One minute she was just going up the stairs, in her own little bad mood, and the next there was this huge brouhaha, ironically playing out her anger and frustration on life’s real stage.

Theresa was screaming like a whistle, and crying. That got Erin’s attention and she went to her and put her arm around her.

“It’s okay,” she said stupidly.

“No, it’s not!” Theresa was wide-eyed. “Look what they’re doing to the house!”

The destruction was amazing. And Erin had barely a moment to take it in before she heard Kenny shout, “I’m gonna
kill
you, motherfucker!” and saw him slam a guy twice his size down on the glass-top coffee table, smashing it in pieces.

“Ohh!” Theresa covered her face with her hands.

Erin scanned the room, looking for Nate.

She found him, back to back with Todd, taking on more people than it looked like they should be able to handle.

He caught her eye. “Call the police!”

She nodded quickly, and asked Theresa, “Where’s the phone?”

“I—I—don’t—”

Erin grabbed her shoulders. “
Theresa!
Where’s the
phone
?”

“There.” She pointed vaguely toward a bookshelf full of cookbooks.

Erin hurried to it, found a portable phone, and dialed 911.

“It will be okay,” she said to Theresa while she waited for the operator to answer.

“No, it won’t,” Theresa said angrily. “This is all because of Nate and his stupid fucking friends!”

Erin’s objection had to wait because the dispatcher came on and asked what the emergency was. She reported that a party had gotten out of hand and gave the address, then hung up and said to Theresa, “This is not Nate’s fault.”

“He and his friends are
animals
,” Theresa said on a sob. “They didn’t need to attack!”

“They
didn’t
attack! Some guy said something to me, and Todd was telling him to shut up when one of those other guys punched him in the face!”

“And Nate just
pummeled
him! There was no need for that!”

Erin’s heart filled with inexplicable pride. “I guess he didn’t like seeing his friend attacked.”

Theresa shook her head at Erin. Her eyes were smeared with mascara and shadow. “I can’t believe you’re defending this.”

She couldn’t either, actually. But she was. And more than that, she was really proud of Nate, Todd, and Kenny, because their opposition, she noticed, had dwindled to just a few, and her guys were still going strong.

Go team!

“It’s your fault too,” Theresa added sharply.

“
Mine?
How do you figure that?”

“Nate was pissed off when he came in here. Obviously you guys were arguing
again.
Now he’s taking it out on my
house
! Why don’t you two just break up and get it over with?” She dissolved into tears again and when Erin tried to put an arm around her shoulder, she shook it off. “Just leave me alone!”

Was it true?
Was
this Erin’s fault? She heard a dull thud and saw someone fall to the floor. It wasn’t Nate, but it could have been. Had she put him in danger by making him so frustrated that this was the only way he could take it out?

Finally there were sirens, which made a bunch of people panic and leave through the back door, taking with them their pot and whatever other substances they didn’t want to be caught holding. The fighting stopped too, dwindling down to a last few weak punches.

The police came to the door and Erin, who fortunately hadn’t had so much as one drink, stopped them there, assuring them that the party had broken up.

Clearly glad not to have to deal with too many details of a teenage party gone wrong, the police left, and Erin took a moment to assess the damage.

It was bad.

The house was a mess; there didn’t appear to be one square inch that didn’t need some sort of cleanup. Nate, Todd, and Kenny were the only ones who remained, a bit worse for wear too, except Nate, for some reason. She guessed it had probably been to his advantage that he was running on emotions ignited before the fight. He was red-faced from the adrenaline high but otherwise unscathed.

Todd, on the other hand, had a bloody lip and eyebrow from the sucker punch he’d taken right off the bat.

Erin laid her hand to Todd’s cheek and said, “Thanks for defending me.”

He gave a sly smile. “Anytime.” And she knew he had accepted her as one of them now. She was Nate’s, so she was all of theirs.

And, for the first time, she could see how that wasn’t a really bad thing. As tired as she was of hanging out with all of Nate’s friends, it meant a lot that they looked out for her.

At least most of them did.

“What happened?” David wandered into the room, looking a little too self-consciously dazed for belief.

“What do you mean,
what happened
?” Todd snapped. “Where the hell were you?”

“I’ve been upstairs. It looks like a bomb went off in here.”

“It must have sounded like it too,” Nate pointed out knowingly. “You didn’t hear?”

“Fuckin’ Hiroshima,” Todd added, swiping blood off his lip with the back of his hand.

David’s face colored and everyone knew he’d heard and known exactly what was happening.

Erin felt pity for him. He must have been terrified. It would suck to be expected to fight if you weren’t any good at it.

“Let’s get this place cleaned up,” she said, going to Theresa, who was just shaking and mute, and hooking her arm through hers. “We’ve got a few days, right?”

Theresa nodded numbly.

“Nate—” Erin began.

“I can fix the drywall,” he said, as if reading her mind.

“Just go now,” Theresa said, then turned hard blue eyes on Erin. “Really.”

Erin felt her face grow warm. “Okay. Well, how about if we come back tomorrow and start tackling all this?”

Theresa nodded. “Fine.”

Erin was relieved to have at least some agreement from Theresa. “Your parents will never know anything happened. It will be just like in
Risky Business
.”

Theresa rolled her eyes. “I seriously doubt that.”

“You’ll see.”

“I’m really sorry about this, Theresa,” Nate added.

She leveled a gaze on him. “You’re an asshole.”

Erin felt like she’d been slapped. “Theresa!”

“Forget it,” Nate said, putting a hand to Erin’s waist. “She’s got every right to be pissed.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Erin said to Nate.

But he just shushed her, and led her out with a promise to Theresa that they’d be back in the morning to clean it up.

*   *   *

“I’m sorry,” Erin whispered forty-five minutes later, as Nate pulled her jeans down off her hips. “I don’t know what was wrong with me tonight.”

They were on her bed, under the crocheted canopy, illuminated only by the old night-light she still had on the shelf by the door.

“Forget it,” he said, trailing his mouth down her stomach.

Her breath caught in her throat. “But—”

“It’s okay,” he murmured, then fixed his hands on her thighs and lifted her to his mouth.

“It’s just that,” she breathed, “I was in this terrible … mood … and…” She stopped.

Nate’s mouth worked her expertly. She clutched the pillow behind her head and bit down on her lower lip, arching against him.