James Games (23 page)

“It’s my fault she had it out for you in the first place.” He groans and rubs his forehead. “I put you through that.”

“That’s not true, James. You know that.” I’m quiet for a minute. “You know what I need? A really fancy, really delicious dinner. If you play your cards right, I just might let you take me out for one.”

A half-smile tugs at his lips. “Where were you thinking?”

He takes me to Cosino’s, a yummy Italian place in Pacific Beach. I eat noodles and drink wine until Sigrid is completely out of my brain. We split a bowl of spaghetti and share the last noodle, Lady in the Tramp-style.

“I was starving,” I announce, letting out a huge burp. “Nothing like a fight with your mortal enemy to hone your appetite.”

He waves the waiter over for the check. “There’s one more place I wanted to take you.”

It’s almost sunset by the time he parks and opens my car door. It’s a park way out on the edge of San Diego, with a series of high steps set into a hill. I find myself panting when we’re halfway up, so he lifts me up on his shoulders and carries me.

“You’re like the world’s sexiest pack mule.” I take two handfuls of his hair and tug gently. “Mush.”

“That’s for sled dogs.” He bats my hands away. “And you’re about to get yourself thrown over the side of this hill.”

At the top, there’s a little flat grassy area with a bench and a single tree. He sets me down and covers my eyes. “Should be just a couple more minutes. Then I’ll let you look.”

I lean into him, breathing in his scent. “Am I going to see Godzilla rising on the horizon?”

“No.”

“An airplane trail spelling out the name of the Netflix movie you want to watch when we get home?”

“Not quite.”

“A spaceship getting ready to—”

“Fiona? Just enjoy the silence.”

“I’d rather enjoy you,” I purr, my fingers walking over his thigh.

He makes a noise in his throat. “You’re making it hard to keep my hand still.”

“I’ll rather make you hard in general.”

“There it is,” he says abruptly, and takes his hand away from my eyes.

The sun is setting. Brilliant gold and orange light sears the horizon, scattering across the dips and rises of the California horizon and turning the distant sea into molten gold. The sun is set into the center of it all, a blazing red jewel that looks so close, I could reach out and burn myself on it.

“It’s beautiful,” I sigh.

“It’s the pollution that makes it so beautiful.”

I punch him. “Just enjoy it with me.”

He puts his arm around my shoulders. “I brought you here, didn’t I?”

We stay there in silence together, watching the sky dye itself different colors until darkness slowly crawls over it all. I feel at peace with him. Like there’s nothing either of us are meant to do but be together.

“The fact that I left wasn’t the only reason the show got canceled,” he says quietly, after a while.

I blink. “The show that made you famous?”

He nods. Something intense is weighing on him. “Most people think I quit and that’s why it went off the air. But that’s not quite true. There were three of us who ended up quitting. Me and my two co-stars, a guy and a girl. Ben and Melanie.”

His voice is heavy with sadness, with unmistakable guilt. It goes straight to my heart and I can’t resist the impulse to cover his fingers with mine.

“Ben was my best friend. We went everywhere together. We had the same life—absent father, mother who pushed us into our careers. I was friends with Melanie as well, but I wasn’t nearly as close to her as I was to Ben. Still, we were like a little family, this close circle of people amid all the cameras and the producers and media.”

The stars are beginning to pop out in the sky overhead. For once, I don’t say anything—I just listen.

“One night, the three of us were working late by ourselves, practicing lines. Then Ben got fed up with it and brought out some alcohol. We were sheltered teenagers—it was the first time any of us had gotten drunk. It made me feel sick and sleepy, and so I left early. It was just the two of them.”

His face is stony and hard. I have a strong feeling that this story doesn’t end happily.

“Melanie didn’t come to rehearsal the next morning. Or the morning after. Ben was weird about it, saying she was sick and then that she was flaking out on us. But then Melanie called me and told me something.”

I squeeze his hand tighter.

“She said Ben had raped her that night.”

I flinch. His voice is dead. Still water.

“I confronted Ben. He was horrified. He admitted they’d hooked up, but said it’d been consensual. That Melanie had come on to him. That maybe she was regretting it and that’s why she’d said that to me. He seemed so confused and hurt, and he was my best friend. I told him I believed him.”

His voice is ripe with self-hatred now. He clears his throat and continues. “She wouldn’t come to practice. The show was put on hiatus. She went to her lawyer, but the show’s producers were desperate to keep everything quiet. They didn’t want this story leaking to the media. Eventually, she was paid off and had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. But before she signed it, she came to me. Said nobody would believe her and since I was the only other person there that night, I was her only shot at a witness. She asked if I’d support her if she took it public, took it to court.”

He takes a deep, cold breath. “Ben’s career would be ruined. And I didn’t want to be drawn into the media circus. I told her…I told her that maybe she hadn’t quite got it right. Maybe she was remembering wrong.”

“Oh,” I say softly.

“I’ll never forget the way she looked at me. Like I’d betrayed her worse than anyone ever had, just like Ben. And then she walked out of my life and the public eye. I never saw her again.”

“What made you realize…?”

“She died.” His words get even flatter. “She killed herself. That was when I realized she must have been telling the truth. Her family had tucked her away in a private home, and she was never popular on the show like Ben and I. By the time she passed away, she was so forgotten that her death was a footnote. It was never even reported as suicide. But I knew. Her mom told me.”

He tilts his head back, looking at the stars like he wants to disappear into them. “She died because of me.”

“No. No, no, no.” I grab his arm, holding on to it tightly. “What happened to her wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t anywhere near your fault. You have to understand that. Ben was the one who—”

“What I did was just as bad,” he says quietly. “I was the one she counted on to believe her. She took the buyout because of me.”

“That was why you quit acting.”

“Yeah. I didn’t want anyone staring at me anymore. I didn’t want them to see who  I really was.” His voice finally cracks, and it’s almost a relief. Listening to him talk in that voice of nothingness was worse than it would be to listen to him sob.

“It wasn’t your fault.” I press my head into his shoulder. “It was a mistake. You were young.”

“Those excuses don’t matter to Melanie now.”

I finally understand why he nearly lost his mind when Damien attacked me. “You’re different now. Okay? We all make mistakes. I know I’ve made a ton of them. But we change, and we can’t spend our entire lives punishing ourselves for the ways we screwed up when we were different people. That’s not going to help anybody. The only thing you can do is try to make up for your mistakes the best you can and then move on.”

“There’s nothing I can do to make up for that.”

“Yes, there is. And you already did it.” I turn his face toward me. “You saved me. You stuck up for me. If that doesn’t show that you’re a different person now, I don’t know what does. It was someone else who told Melanie he didn’t believe her. You’re not that kid anymore.”

“Someone else?” he repeats slowly.

“The new James would never do something like that.” I kiss him gently, as a reminder that I’m here with him. “So why punish him for it?”

“You don’t…” He struggles to find the words, his eyes searching mine. “You’re not…?”

“Did you think I was going to hear about all that and break up with you?” I laugh. “You’re underestimating how stubborn I am.”

His fingers brush my jawline. “I imagine a lot of people underestimate a lot of things about you.”

“You wouldn’t be wrong there. But listen to me, okay?” I cup his cheek. “Stop looking backward. You can’t build a life in the past. Promise me you’ll look forward from now on.”

Something pleading lives in his eyes as he nods at me. This time, when we kiss, it’s hungry and desperate and beautiful and a hundred other things, all at once.

~20~

“So—has anyone been bothering you about dating James?” says Brooklyn.

It’s Saturday night and I’m at Phi Delta Chi’s latest party. Brooklyn was determined that our parties retain the flavor they’re known for, even without the Games, so this one is animal-themed—we’re all supposed to dress up as our favorite animal. Which means there’s a hell of a lot of slinky black dresses and cat ears.

“Well, Sigrid did punch me at the beach. But that was one time.”

“She punched you?” Brooklyn’s fingers twitch on the stem of her trademark wine glass. “I’ve been trying to talk her through this since I kicked her out. I thought I was finally getting through to her. Apparently not.”

“I don’t think she planned it. It was more of a we-ran-into-each-other, happy-coincidence punch. And I haven’t seen her since. I think she might have gotten it out of her system!” I say, trying to be positive. There’s no way it’s out of her system. If you took anger and revenge out of Sigrid’s system, there wouldn’t be anything left.

“Either way, I’m going to talk to her.” She shakes her head and steps out of the way as a drunk cat and a drunker fox stumble past. “Physical violence is unacceptable.”

“Nah, just leave it be,” I say in a rush. “If she hears that I tattled on her, I’ll probably find my bed transformed into a medieval torture device by tomorrow.”

“Fiona!”

A girl stumbles up. It takes me a moment to recognize her, since she’s dressed in a super sexy bunny costume, but then I realize it’s Mags. I’ve never seen her show so much cleavage. Or leg. Or skin in general.

“I want you to meet Terrence,” she manages, shoving some boy’s arm at me. “Have you met Terrence?”

I recognize Batman from the Halloween party. “Right. I remember you. Hi, Terrence.”

“Hi,” he says shyly, and then leans over to whisper something in Mags’s ear. She giggles and her eyes light up. Then she drags him away to dance. I guess finding someone shyer than her was the one thing she needed to break out of her shell.

I turn to Brooklyn, who’s watching the two of them with a slight smile on her face. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.” She twirls her wine glass.

“How do you know James?” I ask. “He said that he owed you a favor.”

“I’m sorry, Fiona, I really can’t—”

“Does it have to do with Melanie?” I lower my voice. “Because he told me about that.”

“Ah. Then I suppose I can tell you after all. If you’re going to stay with James, you probably ought to know.” Her voice dips in sadness. “But you have to promise not to pass this on. Or I could get in a lot of trouble.”

“Of course. I swear.”

“I’m trusting you.”

“I swear,” I say as genuinely as I can.

She pulls me over to a secluded corner, next to an armoire filled with empty beer bottles. “You see…I was Melanie’s cousin.”

“I’m so sorry.” My stomach plummets.

“It’s okay. It’s been a long time.” She laughs softly. “I went to the set a few times, to watch them practice. I was friendly with all three of them. After what happened, I saw my cousin change so fast. It wasn’t what Ben did that killed her, you know. It was the fact that no one believed her.”

My chests twists up as I remember what James said.

“After she died, I was terrified that Ben would do it to someone else. My family’s very wealthy, so I had some resources at my disposal to get him off the streets. I ended up paying someone to plant hard drugs in his home and then have it discovered by the police. It was all over the news—you wouldn’t remember, obviously.”

“Right.” I smile. “We don’t watch a lot of news in the Amish community.”

“I expected him just to get in trouble for possession, but when they drug-tested him, lucky me, there were actual drugs in his system. He must have been using for a long time.”

“Did he go to jail?”

“No. His parents hired a good lawyer, and he’s in rehab now. But it’s the kind of rehab where they don’t let you out for a long, long time. We don’t have to worry about him attacking anyone else, for the time being at least.” She sighs, and I notice lines in her forehead that I’ve never seen before, premature lines that she must be so careful to cover up with makeup every day.

“James and I reconnected at UCSD. At first I was furious with him, but after confronting him, I realized my anger towards him couldn’t even touch his anger toward himself. He said he owed me a favor. And when my first college friend approached me with this idea for the sorority we’d just joined, a friend who made me feel like a normal college girl and not someone with a sordid past, I called in that favor.”

“So that’s why he agreed to take out the winners of the Games.” I nod.

“I suppose part of me felt bad for him. Back when we were freshman, he refused to talk to almost anyone. I thought that if I could make him take a girl out, and be nice to her, he might be able to open his heart. But it didn’t work.” She leans against the armoire and smiles. “Nothing worked until you came and opened his heart with a crowbar.”

“Thanks for telling me this, Brooklyn.” I squeeze her hand. “It means a lot to me.”

I spend the rest of the night sitting with Iris, laughing at a surprisingly drunk Mags. Back in September, I would have joined her, drawing all the attention to myself. Now I’m content just to sit back, sip beer, and think quietly about everything I’ve discovered in the past few days.

How lonely it must have been for James to carry that weight alone, all those years, closing himself off to everyone because he didn’t believe he deserved everyone’s trust. I think about him in his apartment tonight, cooking or reading. He’d asked if he should come with me to this party, but I’d told him he didn’t have to. Parties are more exhausting for him than I’d realized.