Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (17 page)

“
Deck, I’m...nervous. And I’m just gonna go
out and tell you why. Things are suddenly so intense between me and
you. Out of
nowhere
, and I’m
trying to find reasons why they shouldn’t be. I’m trying to fit it
all into logic. I’m trying to fit it into the perspective of what
my mom always used to say, you know. ‘Take it slow. Get to know a
boy first.’ But with you, it’s none of that. I...” Her lip
trembles. She clears her throat. “...Hell, Declan, it’s a freaking
rocket ride. And it hit me out of nowhere. And...you said you know
so little about me, and yet you feel like you know all there is to
know. And, like, that just doesn’t make sense.”

“
Why doesn’t it? Maybe it does. Maybe
it’s...
this
”—I point
outside—“that tells us otherwise. ‘Society’ or whatever. I know
this is gonna sound crazy but, that look across a room full of
people...”

“
Yeah!” Her eyes are wide, as excited as
mine.

“
...Who’s to say there
isn’t
some force, some element? Hell, maybe it’s
scientific. I don’t know.”

“
Listen to us. We sound like
teenagers.
Young
teenagers!”

“
And there you go again. Do you see
that?”

“
What?”

“
Looking for some reason why it can’t be.
You’re looking for the piano that’s about to drop.”

“
This is so intense. I keep getting the
feeling it’s all gonna topple over sometime. It’s just too fast.
The...the feelings. They’re...
fast.
”

“
Well, it’s fast for me too. So if we fall,
we fall together.”

“
You definitely read too many
books
, Declan Cox. Don’t
think I didn’t see that romance collection in your
e-reader.”

I shrug, trying to play it cool. “Don’t
think I didn’t see your own collection at home,
neither.”

“
Not a
ll romances have a happy ending. In fact, some of them have
a downright
shitty
ending.”

“
But the middle is always good, and so is
the beginning. That’s always the best part. That’s when it’s hot.
That’s when there’s hope and sparks in the air; chests bared boldly
to the raging forces of the universe, ready to take them all
on.”

Her hand trembles
under mine. “It’s not the beginning and
the middle I’m worried about. It’s the end. When the universe wins
because of a fatal character flaw or something.”

“Romeo and Juliet?”

“
And others. All the timeless classics end
without a Happily Ever After—
Casablanca
,
Tristan and Isolde
,
Titanic
? You
think Leo DiCaprio woulda been so famous if he’d gotten Winslet in
the end? Or was it that endless holding onto hope, him on that
plank of wood, drowning, and hoping, forever hoping—right to
the
very
last whimpering breath!
—that keeps that story with us forever? Look at Nicholas
Sparks. And people talk about his stories forever.
The
Notebook?
”

I can’t
answer.

Because she’s right.

Too right.

And
I’m scared shitless because of it.

Scared out of my fucking mind.

I don’t realize I’m holding her hand until
I get in the gym with her. Trev’s on the bench and Skate’s spotting
him. Or, supposed to be. Because what he’s really doing is staring
open-mouthed at mine and
Blaze’s interlaced fingers.

He shifts the woolen bea
nie on his head, swallows hard, convincing
himself that what he’s seeing is no illusion, and then gets back to
spotting the barbell after Trevor groans, “MOTHERFUCKER GRAB THIS
GODDAMNED WEIGHT BEFORE IT CRUSHES MY HEAD!”

Skate steps into action quickly,
helping Trev up on his last
rep, then hooks the barbell on its stand.

Trev sits up, flushed, downs water from a
bottle. He smiles when he sees Blaze. “Waddup, Ms. Ryleigh? I
assume you’re the reason this boy here is
late
for training! You know we’re trying to get him
into the NFL, don’t you?”

Trev looks so serious that Blaze starts to
feel like she’s done something bad. “Uhm, no, I didn’t know that...
I—”

“
He’s screwing with you,” I tell
her.

“
Am not!” He stands, moves closer to me.
“Antonio Gates. Ray Seales. Darren Bennett. The list goes on. None
of those boys played college football.”

She says,
“I’m sorry—”

Now Trev grins his wide grin. “Blaze, it’s
cool. Whereas I do believe Mr. Colorful Arm here
could
play for the NFL if he tried
out, being ten minutes late for a workout is not what’s going to
get him there. It’s changing the attitude in
this
”—he
thwacks
me upside the head!—“piece of machinery up
here!”

I jump him and we start tackling right
there in the gym! Skate shouts, “Dudes, the weights. The weights!”
We almost make a whole stack of them fall and break
toes.

Almost.

We stop our shenanigans and
touch fists, bump
shoulders.

Trev looks at Blaze
and me. “You two make a good couple by the
way.” He says it with all the honesty in the world. And I stretch
my hand out behind me absently for her to touch it, which she does,
gently. Just a light caress. “So, lazy-ass, you’re up. And because
you’re late, you’re skipping the first warm-up set. A
hundred-and-sixty. Do it in front of your new
girlfriend.”

“
I’m not that desperate to impress her,
bro. I’m gonna do some warm-ups with the dumbbells over there while
you two monsters finish it off up here.”

“
Hey, Blaze,” says Trev, “why don’t you
spot him?”

“
I’m sorry, what?”

“
Spot. It means to help him lift the
weights if he can’t. It’s really easier than it looks. You just
need to push up gently under his elbows on the sticky spots. Go on.
You can do it.”

And she does. I confess that it
embarrasses me a little, and I don’t know why. I even try and
reduce the groans on each lift. But mostly it just distracts me.
Looking up at her one-sided hair, eyes so green they look like
clubbing laser lights. O-shaped lips. A gently beaked nose
like
the head singer
of
Lorde
. I manage
little more than seven or eight reps on my first set. A
ridiculously
low number. But I do get warmed
up. Eventually.

While us three
gorillas edge each other on with the benchpress,
trying to see who can out-ape whom (or maybe it’s who can out-groan
whom—Trev won), Blaze hangs back and just watches, fat-ass headset
on her ears. On occasion, while we slap each other and punch each
other, she laughs.

Skate edges her on to try some of the
exercises. She takes the headset off, shakes her head and says,
“I’ve never exercised in my whole life.”

He insists. Soon he has her on the
circuit-trainers, showing her how the different machines work. She
laughs as he does it. After three machines, she’s hung over the bar
on the lat-pulldowns machine. But Skate coaxes her on
still.

I think to myself that life could not be
more perfect. My two greatest friends in the world, a girl who
makes me think I’ve been chasing all the wrong things in my life. A
girl with a laugh so catching I find myself smiling and ogling her
absently, while
I’m
supposed to
be spotting Trev!

He stands beside me, puts an
arm around my shoulders. “You
gotta go see your dad, bro. He’s your father. Asshole as he is,
that’s still the truth of it. You know, there’s this thing called
Karma. Something this good”—he looks at Blaze—“doesn’t fall into
your lap without wreaking havoc in your past and throwing it all up
in your face again. If you wanna keep her, you better make sure
your slate is clean, homes.”

“
I know, bro. I been thinkin on that myself
since I met her. It’s almost like someone—
something
—threw her in my way, just to show me what I could
have if I got my shit together.”

“
C’mon, Deck, it’s not like you’re wasting
your life. Things are going well for you. So you gotta make good on
this one thing. So what? I only mention that Karma shit because I
see it in your eyes, homes. There’s something there that doesn’t
sit right with
you
, you know?
About your pops. I mean, if I didn’t see it in your eyes every time
you speak about him, I wouldn’t push it.”

“
I hear you. But there’s something else—on
this ‘Karma’ shit or whatever—that has me a little more
concerned.”

Trev’s lips tighten. He knows damn well
what
—or
whom
—I’m talking
about...

He
says nothing at first, then: “Well, Deck, you know my
position on that. Gina Moretti was a big girl when she met you. And
she knew damn well what she was doing with you, and with herself.
Drugs don’t take themselves, you know?”

I know that. But she did
it
because
of me.
“None of us were big boys or
girls. We were all fucking kids. And some of those kids followed me
into the scene.”

“
Bullshit! I dropped because I wanted to.
Just like I stopped because I wanted to. Kids or not, people
can
think
. And, FYI,
seventeen ain’t no kid anymore. Kids grow up fast these days. And
you can’t tell me a fucking seventeen year old doesn’t know what A
is. She knew damn well what that shit was when she took it. Just
like you and I never took it for the same reason.”

I don’t comment. It’s a never-ending point
of contention between
me
and Trev.
And me and Clarissa
.

I get on the inclined bench, under the
bar, and put my hands around it. Trev gets behind me, ready to
spot. I lift the bar, groan. It’s been a long day. My delts are
feeling the weight more than
usual.

I try and focus on
the two hundred pound weight. Every
negative rep thrusts Gina’s gaunt face into my mind; every positive
one—the upward motion—brings a sting of pain—her brother’s
fists—into my ribs and chest.

I took a beating on that one. I hardly
fought back. I had kind of hoped it would work like a type of
spiritua
l flogging. A
kind of cleansing. But it didn’t. All it did was leave me with blue
ribs and a broken nose.

I sit up on the bench. Trev looks at me
with concerned eyes.
“So
what’s your game plan?”

“
Dunno, I might go see her. Clarissa said
she’s ‘getting worse.’”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

I shrug to show I don’t know. I look over
at Skate pushing an exhausted and shoulder-slumped (but absolutely
gorgeous) Blaze around the circuit machines. I look at the mirror
on my right, flex my bi once.

Trev sighs. “I thought you weren’t allowed to
see her.”

“
Clarissa said the doc figured it might
help her. Like I’m the last link she has to reality or something.
Maybe her parents have taken me off the blacklist—“

“
You shoulda never been on that fucking
list in the first place. You didn’t force the damn A down her
fucking throat—”

“
Trev, chill. I hear you.” Like I said,
point of contention
.

“
And what about Dino
. Dude damn near killed you last
time.”

“
I let him. And, besides, I don’t want it
to come to that. He had his reasons.”

“
Sometimes fixing the past just isn’t
possible, Deck. Sometimes, the only way to fix it is to let it go,
acknowledge it was crazy and screwed up. And then
move
on
.”

“
I hear you, homes. And I’ll do that if I
have to. But I think I screwed up a lot of people’s lives back
then, just by not realizing that maybe I had some influence over
them. And I ain’t trying to come across as conceited or anything,
it’s just...a fact. I think I’m only realizing that
now.”

“
Deck,
you were the only one who never realized you were every
pussy’s wet dream at school. If you hadn’t been too stupid to see
it, you might’ve hooked up a lot more in high school!”

“
I hooked up plenty
!”

“
More
, I said. You could’ve hooked up
more
!”

“
Maybe. But it’s not hooking up I’m talking
about.
And
Gina...well...she meant something to me. Even if it was only a
little. Acquaintances is one thing. But people you’re close
to—well, you can’t just let em slide down the chute and not go
after them.”