Complete Nothing (13 page)

What the hell was wrong with me? Couldn’t I even do some paperwork without running back to my ex? Maybe she was right about me. Maybe I was pathetic.

I dropped the phone, and it clattered off the edge of my desk and smacked against the wall. The back popped off, and I was staring at the battery.

“Dammit.”

I got up, grabbed the phone pieces, and lay back on my bed, trying to breathe. Coach was on my case about these two applications as well, because their scouts were coming to the game this weekend. College of New Jersey and Rutgers. I wasn’t good enough to play at Rutgers, and I knew it. But I could maybe play, like, second string at CNJ. A couple of guys from last year’s squad were playing there now. It seemed like it might actually be possible. It had to be. I didn’t even want to go to college if I couldn’t play football. I’d been doing it every fall since I was seven. I couldn’t imagine life without it. If I had to go somewhere, maybe CNJ wouldn’t be that bad. I could come home on the weekends easily. And if Claudia went to Princeton . . .

“Oh my God, you loser!
You
broke up with
her
!” I said through my teeth.

And it wasn’t like she’d come begging me to take her back or anything. She was trolling for dates for homecoming right now, a thought that hurt like hell every time it popped into my mind, which was about every fifteen seconds.

I wanted to call her. I wanted to call her so bad. Which really pissed me off.

I sat up again and grabbed my Xbox controller. Eff it. Half an hour. I’d give myself half an hour to play. The applications weren’t going anywhere.

I turned on the TV and muted it so my mom wouldn’t hear the game. With her at the desk in her bedroom working on her blog and Michelle in her room reading her speech for her middle school council elections, the house was totally silent. Which was probably why I heard the car pull up outside and the doors pop. My friends’ voices were insanely loud, and I realized my window was open. I went over to it and leaned my arms on the sill. Gavin, Mitchell, and
Lester were cutting across the lawn, which I really had to mow this weekend before it got completely out of hand.

“What are you losers doing here?” I whispered.

They stopped and looked up. “Kidnapping you!”

“Shh!” I said, glancing toward my mom’s window. I hoped she was blasting Bon Jovi through her headphones like she did sometimes while she worked. “Where?”

“We’re going to the diner to meet up with some cheerleaders,” Lester whispered. “Josie’s gonna be there!” He did a stupid dance, thrusting out his chest and butt like he was a girl. It just made him look more like a chicken.

But still, certain parts of me stirred at the sound of Josie’s name. I glanced over my shoulder at the applications, then down at my busted phone. Suddenly there was nothing I wanted to do more than get the hell out of there.

“I’ll be right down.”

I grabbed my varsity jacket, tiptoed into the hall, and closed my door as quietly as possible. In five seconds I was out the front door and peeling out in Mitchell’s car. The future could wait.

*  *  *

“So you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up?” Josie teased.

I’d just told the table about the declaring-a-major question. Josie pouted her bottom lip as she tucked my hair behind my ear. She smelled like strawberry bubble gum and vanilla, and there was glitter dusted across her chest. Actual glitter. Like she was going clubbing in the city and not half sitting on my lap at the damn diner. It made not staring at her chest that much harder, but looking in her eyes was no picnic either. I kept expecting them to be green, not brown. Expecting to see the outlines of contacts in them.
For the last year and a half the only eyes I’d looked into this closely were Claudia’s.

“I know what I want to be,” Lester said, chewing with his mouth open. “A video game tester.”

“A what now?” Gavin asked as he sucked down his second chocolate milkshake.

“That’s not a real job,” Josie’s friend Jessa protested. She reached for one of Lester’s fries and munched on it. Yes, Josie and Jessa. Their other two best friends, who thankfully couldn’t make it, were named Jennifer and Jillian. Not confusing at all.

“It is so!” Lester replied, sitting up straight in his seat. “They hire people to test out the games and find the bugs. You don’t even have to leave your house.”

“I just got a flash-forward of you at forty years old sitting in your mother’s basement playing Madden 2040 on a cracked big screen,” Mitchell joked.

Everyone laughed.

“I got no problem with that,” Lester said. “My mom makes a mean pot pie.”

“You should be a writer,” Jessa declared, gesturing at Mitchell with a french fry.

“I should?” Mitchell sat up straight.

“Why not? You’re hilarious,” she replied. “And that description was, like, so vivid.”

Mitchell frowned. “Huh.”

“So you’re the only one without a thing,” Lester pointed out.

“Thanks, man. That’s real helpful,” I replied flatly.

“Whatever. You’re a superstar,” Josie said, messing with my hair. “Whatever you do, you’ll be a superstar.”

I squirmed uncomfortably. Her fingers were too jabby, and I
felt hot everywhere and not in a good way. Maybe I was the shit this year at Lake Carmody High—emphasis on
this year
, because someone else would be next year—but I wasn’t a superstar. I was the only loser at the table who had zero interests and zero talent. I mean, I could hurl a football, but so could ten million other dudes in America. What the hell was I going to do with my life?

The familiar pressure squeezed its way to life inside my chest. I cleared my throat and stole a fry off Jessa’s plate, trying to ignore the feeling. I wished, suddenly, that Claudia were here. She probably would have changed the subject. Or come up with fifteen careers that I’d never thought of that I could totally do.

Why had I broken up with her again?

The door behind Lester, Mitchell, and Jessa opened and my heart completely stopped. It was Claudia. Her hair was up in a tight bun and she wore blue sweat shorts over her pink ballet tights. A gray sweatshirt with the collar cut out hung off one of her shoulders. She didn’t see us. She was busy reading something on her phone. I moved closer to the window, as far away from Josie as I could manage. Which wasn’t far.

“Hey, Claudia,” Gavin said, when she was almost past our table.

She stopped. I shot him a look. She started to smile at him, but then she saw me. And Josie. And she went white.

“Hi, Gavin,” she replied tightly. Then she looked me in the eye. “Peter.” And around the table. “Other people.”

Okay. She was definitely pissed. Claudia was the politest person I knew. She didn’t say snotty stuff like that. She turned and walked up to the counter.

“Takeout for Catalfo?” she said to the waitress.

The silence at our table was bordering on painful. We heard
Claudia’s phone beep, and she laughed as she read the text. The sound of that laugh sent chills right through me.

“I should probably go talk to her, right?” I said.

“Why?” Josie and Lester replied at the same time.

“Yeah. It’s weird if you don’t,” Gavin said, sliding out of the booth.

I looked at Josie. She heaved a sigh before very slowly getting out so I could move. I shot her what I hoped was an apologetic glance and wiped my hands on my thighs. Even though I didn’t know why I had to apologize. It wasn’t like we were together. I barely even knew her. And I didn’t want to get into a relationship two seconds after getting out of one. Plus, she was the one always throwing herself at me, not the other way around. Not that I minded. Technically.

I cleared my throat and slowly shuffled toward Claudia.

“Hey,” I said to her profile. “What’s up?”

She sent a text and looked at me, but for, like, a second. Then she stared straight ahead toward the kitchen. “Nothing.”

Another text came in. She read it, giggled, and blushed. My chest felt like the entire team had just stomped on it with their cleats.

“Who’re you texting?” I sounded mad, even though I hadn’t meant to.

She texted back before answering me. “Oh, just this guy I met today before rehearsal,” she replied. The waitress put her bag on the table and she took it, pocketing the phone.

She’d met
another
guy today? Where were these dudes coming from?

“What guy?” Definitely mad.

For a second it looked like she was going to answer, but then her mouth clamped shut.

“No one you know,” she said with a tight smile, looking me in the eye for the first time. “Have fun with your cheerleader!”

Then she breezed right past me and out the door. Through the window, I saw her read another text and laugh again. I felt like I was gonna hyperventilate. So it was true, what people were saying. Claudia really was on the hunt, or whatever. We’d only broken up twenty-four hours ago. Practically. What the eff?

“Dude! What’re you doing? Get over here!” Lester crowed. “Gavin just told us he wants to be an astronaut!”

“That’s not what I said,” Gavin grumbled. “I just think I’m gonna focus on science, that’s it.”

Outside, Claudia got into her white Prius and pulled out of the parking lot. Probably headed home to keep texting this tool while she ate her usual salad. I looked at Josie. She was putting on lipstick and made a kiss toward her pocket mirror, then smiled at me in the reflection.

Fine. If Claudia was already flirting with random guys, texting some other dude, and throwing it in my face, then fine. I wasn’t going to feel guilty about moving on either. I shouldn’t feel guilty. I was a senior. I was the star of the football team. I was out with my friends and two of the hottest girls in school.

Who cared if I didn’t have a career mapped out or a major to declare or any applications done?

It was well past time to have some fun.

I had been at work for about an hour when Hephaestus wheeled through the door. Instantly I tensed and started straightening the pretty, handwritten cards in the display case, bearing the names of each of the cupcakes. He rolled his chair to the counter and stopped directly in front of me. He was wearing an aqua-blue T-shirt under a brown leather jacket with the collar turned up, and he caught more than one admiring glance from our patrons. More than ten, actually.

“So that went well,” he said.

“What did?”

“The thing at the physical therapist’s office,” he replied. “The guy thought I was insane, going off about tingling in my toes, but I kept him away from your girl for at least fifteen minutes. If she couldn’t close the deal in that time, she’s never gonna close it.”

“Yeah. Great,” I said, closing the case with a bang. “I’m actually kind of busy, so . . .”

“I don’t get a thank-you?” Hephaestus joked lightly. “Why am I even helping you?”

“That’s a good question,
Heath
,” I said, glancing at the line of
customers growing at the register. My coworker Torin was helping them, but it was only a matter of time before he asked me to jump in. “Why
are
you helping me, exactly?”

Hephaestus blinked, surprised. “You know why. Because Harmonia asked me to.”

“Harmonia. Right.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Let’s talk about you and Harmonia for a second. Are you two a couple or what? Are you in love? How did you two even become friends?” I asked, trying to push his buttons—trying to elicit a reaction. “When I think about it, I realize that Harmonia never really told me. It was just suddenly one day, there you were. There you
always
were.”

Just tell me the truth. Tell me the truth and I’ll know I can trust you again,
I willed him silently.

Hephaestus wheeled himself to the end of the pink counter, far from prying ears, and I followed. He leaned toward me, his jaw clenched.

“It’s a tad difficult to be in a couple with someone when the two of you live on different planes of existence,” he snapped. “What’s with you lately? Why are you so damn tense?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, throwing up my palms. “Because the love of my life, the very person I’ve been banished to this hellhole for, has no clue I exist? Because my two worst enemies are doing everything in their considerable power to get sent here so they can rip me limb from limb? Because I am no closer to forming my second couple than I was two days ago?”

Because I have no idea who I can and can’t trust,
I added silently. If only he’d told me about him and my mother from the beginning. Or, better yet, if only he’d told me and Harmonia back in the day. But he hadn’t, and now I didn’t know if he was a friend or yet another insidious foe.

The door opened, letting out its signature tinkle of bells, and Claudia traipsed in. She was still dressed in her ballet gear and holding a brown bag that looked like takeout. Her eyes lit up when she saw us.

“True! You’re here!”

“Hi, Claudia,” I said, trying to smile.

“Oh my gosh, you’re never going to believe what just happened,” she said, popping up onto her toes. “I was texting with Keegan and I bumped into Peter. It was totally perfect. I’m ninety-nine percent sure he was jealous. Of course he was out with that awful balloon-lipped girl, and I was kind of rude to her and her friends, which I feel
sort of
bad about . . . but . . . anyway, he was definitely angry that I’d met someone else. That’s good, right?”

“That’s very good,” I said, my heart expanding ever so slightly. Maybe I was closer to my second successful couple than I thought.

“Lauren’s kinda freaked out, though. She said one of her sister’s friends went out with Keegan last year and he’s kind of a player.” She pulled a concerned face.

“Yeah, well, that’s not a big deal, right?” I said. “It’s not like you want a long-term thing with him. You just want Peter to see you guys together.”

“Well, that’s true. I’ll tell her that.” Claudia’s face lit up again. “Anyway, thank you so much.” She looked at Hephaestus. “And you, too. Heath, right?”

“Yep. Nice to meet you,” Hephaestus said.