For This Life Only (2 page)

But we weren't regular, unfortunately.

For the grades, my parents got me a tutor, and for the lack of involvement, they stuck me in the joint internship with Eli. But for the curfew violations and the party, my dad had enlisted me in community service at the Riverwoods food pantry for months. Part of that whole “being a good example” thing. I'd just finished paying for my last infraction. And with baseball practice starting up again in a couple of months, I did not want another session.

In a year and a half, I'd be done, out of here. On a baseball scholarship, I hoped, to somewhere else, where I wouldn't have to worry about anybody but me.

“Jace will be fine,” Eli said with a confident nod at my dad, and I felt a rush of gratitude toward my brother, for extending his good credit over me. Whatever had been bugging him earlier seemed to be gone now. “Don't worry.”

As always, Eli's casual word was more convincing than
my most earnest promises. Not that I bothered to make them very often anymore.

“Home by ten thirty,” my dad said, pointing the remote at me. “Not a second later. You need to be at early service at least fifteen minutes before the prelude.”

“Of course,” I said quickly. Although at that point, I would have agreed to anything to get out.

TWO HOURS LATER, THE
front half of me was sweating by the bonfire, while my back half was freezing, the raggedy barn on Zach's family's back forty not doing nearly enough to block the wind. And my beer was mostly foam.

It was the most relaxed I'd felt in days.

I tipped my cup and poured the excess head to the dirt-packed ground before the fire.

“Too much for you, PK?” Caleb asked with a snort.

I flipped my middle finger at him, which never failed to elicit an “oooh” of pretend shock from our shortstop. He loved to make a big deal out of me being a “preacher's kid.”

“So listen. I heard Randle is out,” Derek said from his position on a log deemed too large for firewood. His girlfriend, Lacey, shivered next to him, despite the multiple blankets over her shoulders. It was warmer than it
had been for days, right at freezing, but that wasn't saying much.

I stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“Yep, grades. He's failing calculus. My cousin goes to school with him.”

“Parkland will never make it without him,” Caleb said, a huge shit-eating grin spreading across his face. “State is ours.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Derek said, but I could hear the carefully contained excitement in our captain's voice. “Depends on if we can keep it together this year.” He narrowed his eyes at us.

A trip to state might mean more scouts, better scholarships. As a left-handed pitcher, I had some interest already, but last year had screwed us up. Two of our seniors had been benched for the final four games of the season, which killed our record.

“Man, that wasn't us.” Matt, our first baseman, chucked his cup into the fire, where it immediately sent up spirals of black, toxic-smelling smoke.

“Doug and Aaron were just messing around. It's not our fault that Thera chick can't take a joke,” Caleb insisted.

“She probably made it up for the attention,” I said. “Or to be a pain in the ass.” Thera Catoulus's mom was Psychic Mary, the one and only fortune-teller in town. They lived in one of those crappy little houses, with a neon hand in
the window and walk-in pricing listed by the front door.

The house happened to be right across from Riverwoods' original church building, where we held traditional early morning services on Sunday and the smaller services during the year.

Overgrown lawn, shitty piles of old tires dumped by the porch, and that blinking neon sign in the window advertising “occult services”—all just fifty feet away from Riverwoods' pristine stone steps.

It drove my dad crazy, which meant we had to hear about it. All the time. Plus, there was a superconservative contingent within Riverwoods—some of them, like Leah's dad, were even on the council—and they kicked up a congregation-wide tantrum every once in a while about satanism and the devil literally being on our doorstep.

My dad had tried to buy Psychic Mary out when Riverwoods built the new building, the auditorium, but she had refused.

So the auditorium was actually a block and a half from the original sanctuary, which made parking a bitch. And every time a parishioner complained, my dad would come home in a superpissy mood. That was fun.

“I don't know,” Lacey said quietly.

Everyone stared at her.

“You believe her?” Caleb asked with a sneer.

“No . . . I don't know,” Lacey said, curling deeper into
her blankets. “I just don't think that your coach would have benched them for nothing. I mean—”

“It doesn't matter,” Derek said. “We need to focus on this season. That means keeping our noses clean and staying away from trouble. Any kind of trouble.” He tipped his cup in my direction.

“Yeah,” I muttered. My dad's strictness and punishments were legendary. And he wouldn't care if I missed practices or if the team was hurt by my absence. That counted as “something you should have thought of before.”

My dad didn't have time to go to most of my games. It wasn't only me, though. He missed Eli's debate team events too sometimes, and Sarah's piano recitals. The church always came first.

Whatever. It's not like it mattered. Okay, maybe a little. But only because maybe if he saw what it meant to me, if he saw that I
belonged
on the field, then maybe he wouldn't have been so quick to try to take it away.

When I was on the mound, I felt whole in a way I didn't in any other place. It was in the smell of the grass and the dirt, the warmth of the sun on my back in those late afternoon practices, how it felt when the ball left my hand just right and I could tell it was going straight to the catcher. Like there was a magnet between the ball and his mitt. Destiny.

My dad was proud of me, of all of us, but it was like in
this general, generic way. He didn't know my stats or that I struggled with my circle changeup and was contemplating switching to the Vulcan. With too many competing Riverwoods priorities, he didn't have space in his brain for that kind of information.

Movement on the other side of the fire caught my attention. Kylie approached the outer edge of the light, her puffy white coat bright in the surrounding dimness. Her dark hair was mostly stuffed under a blue-and-gray beanie, the one I'd given her for her birthday last year. We were friends first. Her brother, Scott, was our center fielder, so she'd been hanging around team events for years.

That only made it worse when she dumped my ass last month at a party after telling me “it's not working.” But lately, for some reason, she kept wanting to talk to me, to explain. To try to make things better. How exactly was talking going to make it better? Especially when she was with that dude from St. Luke's? She'd brought him tonight. I could see him talking to Scott behind her.

No thanks.

Kylie gave a tentative wave in my direction, her red cup clutched in her other hand.

I turned away and took three big swallows to finish my beer. “I should probably be getting home,” I said to Derek, chucking my cup into the fire.

“Pussy,” Caleb coughed into his fist.

I ignored him. “Anyone seen Zach?”

Lacey pointed to a dim corner of the barn, where I could barely make out two figures, arguing quietly with wild hand gestures and wobbly balance. A glass bottle of some kind of liquor was on the ground nearby, the side of it flickering with the reflection of firelight. “Um, he and Audrey are . . .”

Damn it.
My best friend was always DD because he didn't drink. Except when he and his on-again, off-again girlfriend were fighting.

“I can take you home,” Kylie offered, her voice carrying a little too loud across the fire. “I haven't touched my beer yet, and Dylan has his car—”

“I've got it,” I muttered. I'd get Zach's keys and borrow his car. I'd only had a couple, and not even full cups because Caleb didn't know how to fucking pour.

Turning on my heel, I moved away from the fire and headed into the barn.

“Zach,” I shouted, giving plenty of advance warning in case there was some deeply personal shit going on. I'd been present for their fights before, and Audrey didn't filter much when she was pissed. I'd heard plenty about their sex life. And I didn't need to know that much about either one of them. “Keys, bro.”

Audrey gave an exaggerated huff at the interruption.

“One sec,” Zach said to her before turning to me, half stumbling with movement. “You've been drinking.”

I rolled my eyes. “Less than you,” I pointed out. “I'm fine.”

He squinted at me blearily. “Are you sure? You could stay here. Everyone else is.”

Everyone including Kylie and her boyfriend? Hell, no.

I didn't feel the same way about her anymore. It would be hard to after getting my heart stomped on with such force and precision, but that didn't mean I wanted to hang out with her or, worse yet, try to dodge her various “we need to talk” attempts through the whole night.

Why couldn't she do the normal thing and pretend we never knew each other?

“I have to get home. Now,” I said to Zach. “Church tomorrow, remember?” It would be difficult enough to explain why I had Zach's car; I didn't want to be late too.

He nodded after a second, a delayed reaction, and then pulled his keys from his pocket and tossed them to me. “Your mouthwash is in the glove box from last time.”

I caught his sloppy toss one-handed, snatching the keys out of the air and turning to . . .

. . . charge smack into Kylie, who'd evidently followed me.

On impact, her red plastic cup, caught between us, gave a loud crack and I felt the cold slop of liquid against my chest.

A quick look down revealed beer in a large, spreading
stain on my red T-shirt and sprayed across the left side of my coat.

“Oh, my God, Jace, I'm so sorry.” She wiped her hand on her jacket and tried to reach for me.

I moved out of her reach, holding my dripping shirt away from me before trying to wring it out. Beer dribbled out from between my fingers and onto the ground, but not enough. I could feel it soaking the long-sleeved shirt I had underneath as well. Even if I took off my coat and managed to get dry, the smell would still be too strong.

A voice in the back of my head began to chant
shit, shit, shit
with an ever-increasing degree of panic.

“I wanted to make sure you—” Kylie began.

“It's fine,” I said sharply. “I'm fine. Just stop.”

Hurt flickered across her face before she turned and stalked away, but I ignored her in favor of bigger problems.

I was screwed.

It was risky enough to drive after a couple of beers when I was four years from legal, but getting behind the wheel smelling like the Wrigley bleachers after a particularly disheartening Cubs loss was a monumentally bad idea. And even if I made it home without getting pulled over, there was no way I was getting past my parents.

Not without help. That only left me with one option.

Fuck.

•  •  •

The rumble of the deteriorating muffler on our Jeep Cherokee was distinctive enough that I heard Eli coming a mile away and was reaching for the door handle before he came to a complete stop.

“What took you so long?” I asked, my teeth chattering. “Did Mom and Dad give you crap about coming to get me?” The outer shell of my coat was stiff in patches where the beer had soaked in and then frozen. I had no idea what temperature beer froze at, but away from the shelter of the barn and the bonfire, I'd found it.

“I think the standard response is actually ‘thank you,' ” Eli said.

I slid in and yanked the door shut after me, cutting off the distant sounds of the party behind me.

“Right. Sorry, thanks.” Not bothering with my seat belt, I stripped out of my jacket, shivering despite the heat blasting out of the vents in the ancient Jeep.

Eli nodded, a tight movement that told me he was a little exasperated with me. It was exhausting being the good and responsible one all the time. Or so I assumed.

“Did you bring me a shirt?” I asked.

He pointed toward the backseat.

“Thanks.” I twisted in my seat and grabbed for the neatly folded clothing. “Seriously?” I asked, holding up his debate team sweatshirt.
BIG TALK, BIG WALK
was emblazoned
across the front in embarrassingly huge letters. It was almost as bad as his church camp T-shirt.

“It's all I had with me.”

I pulled my beer-soaked shirts over my head and dropped them to the plastic floor mat next to my jacket. I'd have to find a way to slip them all into the laundry later. “Dude, my room is right—”

“I wasn't at home,” he said.

That surprised me. I paused with his sweatshirt halfway over my head. I was usually the one cutting it close to curfew. Eli was always home in plenty of time. “Where were you?” No way he was still at Leah's this late. Her curfew was even earlier than ours.

He didn't answer right away, concentrating on the shiny black ribbon of road and driving exactly three miles an hour below the speed limit, and I finished pulling on the sweatshirt.

“How do you know the right thing to do?” he asked finally, his fingers fidgeting on the wheel. “When both options mean hurting people, I mean.”

I stared at him. His shoulders were slumped forward, making him almost hunched over the wheel. “Are you cheating on Leah?” I asked.

“No! Just forget it.” Eli accelerated slightly, as if by speeding he could leave the conversation behind.

I'd never seen him like this before. “No, no, wait.” I
held up my hand. “What's going on? Is this what was bugging you earlier?”