Not Your Fault (7 page)

The scoreboard lights up above our games, displaying in big neon numbers that I’ve beaten him by over fifty thousand points. He shakes his head and removes the long strand of tickets from my machine, and then the measly strand from his. “It’s been a long time,” he says, almost under his breath but definitely loud enough for me to hear.

My drunken smile falters. I don’t know what to say. I glance around and find a whack-a-mole machine and swipe my card through it as a distraction. Kris takes one mallet and I take the other.

“So,” he says, dragging out the word like talking to me is the hardest thing in the world. I feel like telling him that no one freaking asked him to talk to me. After his pause lasts about ten seconds longer than any pause should, I slam my mallet over an unruly mole and look over at him.

“What?” I ask, but it sounds more like a pissed off mother having heard “Hey mom!” too many times in a row.

“Whoa,” he says, lifting his mallet in surrender. “I was just trying to make small talk.”

“Well I’m a little too drunk for that,” I say, allowing my words to slur naturally because I’ve depleted all of my
pretend to be less drunk than I am
energy.

He smiles. But it’s not a normal smile or even a snort or a laugh. It’s a Kris Payne smile. Which means his eyes squint up on the sides and kind of twinkle in the way that only light brown eyes can do, and his lips don’t form a crescent-shaped smile, they kind of lift up on one side and press down on the other. And his head tilts ever so slightly to the left.

That
is a Kris Payne smile.

“I guess that makes me a cool boss,” he says, lightly tapping a mole on the head. I slam the moles on my side of the game, the alcohol in my veins making me uncoordinated and rougher than usual.

“I guess,” I say as if I don’t believe him at all. And I don’t.

“So, anyway,” he says that word again, this time scratching his elbow. I wonder if he’s this awkward when talking to his supermodel girlfriends.

“So, what?” I ask, daring to look at him again just to see if the knots still twist in my stomach. They do.

“So,” he begins again, saying the words with a deliberate slowness, “Do you have a significant other?”

The question sobers me in a heartbeat. The toy mallet almost drops out of my hand as I stare at him, ignoring the bobbing moles on the game in front of us. I actually have to think about his question, replay the words over in my mind a second and third time, because I just can’t fathom why he would be asking me what I think he just asked me.

He lifts an eyebrow waiting for a response. A tiny bit of guilt flows into me as I smile innocently. “Oh you know,” I say, my voice light and mysterious. “They come and they go.”

He nods, pressing his lips together. “Same here.”

Of course
, I think with sarcasm that feels like bile in my stomach.
Of course your significant others come and go. You can’t be that gorgeous and date just one super model. They’re like Pokémon. You have to date them all.

I don’t say any of that aloud, even though I want to. I seem to hold back a lot of thoughts around him. I may be stupid for thinking the thoughts, but I’m not stupid enough to let him know that. After whack-a-mole, we play various games until we’ve used up all one hundred tokens on the card. Kris’s back pockets are full of tickets and I enjoy how it makes him look slightly less cool and laid back and more like some kind of man-child hoarding tickets to cash in for prizes.

I still have no idea why Kris and I are perusing through a child-packed room of arcade games, taking turns playing for paper tickets, making pointless small talk and acting as if we don’t have a fucked up past together. If this is his way of making up for what he did, he’s failing. I’m not even sure why I’m still here. I should have called Cat to come rescue me an hour ago. He doesn’t deserve to hang out with me. He doesn’t deserve to be my friend. And he sure as hell doesn’t deserve to look so freaking hot tonight.

We stop in front of another set of ATM-looking machines, only these count the tickets through some slot that sucks them up like the Cookie Monster. Kris grabs all the tickets from his pockets, handing half of them to me.

“If only we were kids right now,” I say, as I stare at our pile of a few hundred tickets.

“Good idea,” he says, taking the tickets from my hands and folding them into one massive stack.

“I had an idea?” I ask.

He smiles and glances around the room, his eyes landing on a young boy with beat up shoes and jeans that are a couple inches too short. The boy’s guardian, an elderly man, stands next to him as he plays a game of Skeeball. Kris takes off toward them and I follow lamely, wondering if he’s going to do what I think he might do.

“Excuse me,” he says, getting the boys attention. He squats down so that he’s eye level with the child and holds out our stack of tickets. “My friend and I are a little too old for tickets so we were wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking them for us?”

The boy’s eyes almost burst out of his skull and he takes the tickets before Kris has a chance to change his mind. “Thank you!” he squeaks, beaming from ear to ear.

Kris winks at him and stands back up. My heart turns to goo at the little boy’s excitement. The older man with him pats Kris on the back in a proud grandfatherly way.

“That was cool of you,” I say as we walk back toward the adult section. My eyes linger on his now empty back pockets and they cling to his ass so tightly it’s a miracle so many tickets ever fit in there in the first place.

Kris stops suddenly and I stop too, only not before slamming into his backside. “Shit,” he mumbles under his breath, spinning on his heel and grabbing my elbows in his hands. “Go,” he says, pushing me as his toes press my feet backward. “Go, go go.”

“What? Why?” I ask as I trip over myself in our retreat.

“Just act casual,” he says. He shoves me behind a massive spin the wheel game, pressing me into the wall. He’s so close I can smell the beer on his breath. I stare at his chest, my heart racing as he looks over his shoulder and into the crowd of innocent people. He’s acting as if a masked shooter just barged in the place, but I don’t hear anyone freaking out.

Plus, if a shooter really was on the loose, I doubt Kris would take a bullet for me, so pushing me into a corner makes no sense.

Until I hear her voice.

“Bringing new girls to our old hangout, huh?” I hear a snort, and then, “That’s romantic.”

Kris rolls his eyes and lets go of my arms, slowly turning around to face the woman. “I’m here with my employees, so you can move the hell along and leave us alone, thanks.”

Kris’s ex-girlfriend is here, and she sounds like a total bitch. This is my luck. I bet she would look a thousand times better in my little black dress than I would after a week of fasting and Insanity workouts. Now that the alcohol has worn off, I am out of liquid courage but I venture to peek around Kris’s shoulder anyway. I already know she’s a super model, so I can’t possibly lose too much self-esteem getting a look at her.

My jaw drops. The woman in front of us, with her hands on her hips as she and Kris say less than nice things to each other, is not a super model. She’s short and a little chunky around the midsection. She wears white cut off jean shorts that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination and a faded grey tank top. A tattoo of a dragon starts at her foot and snakes up her entire leg, disappearing behind the pockets of her shorts. A few dozen wavy-lined and faded tattoos litter her other leg.

On the positive side, she has massive boobs.

“Uh, boss?” I say, poking my head into their conversation. “I’m gonna head back to the group.” As fascinating as it is seeing him get a verbal lashing from a girl who looks like she’s been around the block a few times, I am so over being around Kris Payne. Plus I have to pee. And maybe cry a little.

“Your employee, huh?” the woman says, shoving him in the arm. “Do all your employees dress like a slut? You own a strip club or something?”

“Whoa,” I say when Kris doesn’t say anything to stick up for me. “I’m not a part of this little drama fest you have going on, so I’ll thank you not to insult me as if you aren’t a piece of white trash yourself.”

In the shocked silence that follows, I grab my shoes from him and begin to walk away. The woman’s annoying voice lashes out again and this time I can’t ignore it.

“Where’s her brother, Kris?”

My chest goes cold as I turn to face her, my knees going wobbly even without wearing my heels. What does this woman know about my brother? She eyes me and I hate that my face just showed emotion. She continues, motioning with her hands to the vast room around us. “Well where is he? Did you steal her brother too?”

I glance at Kris, hoping for some kind of explanation but a pained expression is all he flashes at me before holding up his hand to her. “Shut the hell up, Lucy.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Kristofer Payne! You don’t get to tell me that anymore.”

“Don’t act like I was the monster here,” he says as he leans closer to her, his voice seething and raw. Now I can’t walk away. Now I have to know what they’re talking about.

“How do you know about my brother?” The last word threatens to make me crack, but I stay strong. She gives me this open-mouthed stare of ignorance, lifting her eyebrows at what she obviously considers a stupid question.

I look to my right. “Kris?”

Our eyes meet and he looks just as sad as I feel. “She doesn’t know about your brother, Delaney.”

Confusion grips me as I stand on weary legs, my heart hurting more than it’s hurt all year.

Kris’s annoying ex-girlfriend gives me a dismissive glance. “I don’t know shit about your brother unless he tried to steal him like he stole mine.” She points her finger at our ex-boyfriend. “You stay away from my brother. No more hanging out. No more taking him to get ice cream. You fucking stay away!”

Kris starts in on how he’s just trying to be a positive influence in the boy’s life and how that has nothing to do with her. But I’ve heard enough. The mention of my brother was a false alarm and this isn’t my business anymore.

This time I really do walk away, leaving them to their hateful argument. My head hurts and it’s not from the alcohol. I don’t know what’s going on; I just know that I want to be away from here.

Chapter 11

My front door swings open the moment I step on the porch. Cat greets me from inside my house, a frown so pitiful on her face, it almost makes
me
want to comfort
her
. I had called her the moment I left Fun Max House, running barefoot across the parking lot to my car. I couldn’t leave that place fast enough. Now, Cat reaches out and takes my kicked-off heels from my hand, opening the door wider to let me in.

“It’s going to be okay,” she says, even though she has no idea what’s wrong. From what I remember of our brief conversation, I was crying and blubbering about how much I hate Kris Payne while fumbling through my purse looking for my keys. She told me to calm down and drive safely and that she’d meet me at my house. Now that I’m here, with my baby sister treating me like I’m the younger one, I’m not sure I want to tell her everything going on in my head. It’s all just a bunch of pointless embarrassing crap that I’d rather bury deep at the bottom of my subconscious brain, never to remember again.

Cat shoves me into my bedroom where I rip off my dress while she finds a pair of pajamas in my closet and tosses them to me. I slip into the soft clothing, even though I’d really like to shower first to wash off the residue of this terrible night. When I’m dressed, Cat appears in front of me with a warm washcloth and a bottle of face wash.

“Clean off your makeup and meet me in the living room when you’re done,” she says, squishing her lips to the side. “You did a really great job on your winged eyeliner, by the way.”

After doing what she says, I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, preparing to meet my sister in the living room and listen to her pry all of my secrets out of me. When I step into the living room, my breath catches in my throat.

The main lights are turned off; the only light in the room coming from a strand of clear Christmas lights that are draped over the curtains, around the back of the couch and up the entertainment center. Two purple aromatherapy candles sit on the coffee table, their flames burning the soothing scent of lavender. Between them on the table are two pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, their lids removed and a spoon shoved into the deliciousness underneath.

The television is on and the DVD player is paused on the opening credits of my favorite movie—Pretty Woman.

“What is this?” I ask, trying not to burst into tears again.

Cat sets a box of freshly baked cookies from Nancy’s Bakery on the coffee table and hands me one of the two wine glasses in her hand. She fills my glass all the way to the top from a bottle of Moscoto and then clinks hers to mine in a toast. “This is to help you forget about whatever that asshole did to make you cry.”

When the credits roll and my stomach begs me not to stuff another cookie down my throat, I push the bakery box away and sit back on the couch. Cat picks up the bottle of wine and wiggles it, showing less than an inch remaining, sloshing around the once-full bottle. “We sure know how to put it away,” she says, tossing her head back and chugging the last of the wine, then overdramatically wiping her mouth with the back of her hand like a drunken sailor.

I laugh and my phone beeps from the arm of the couch. I lean over and see Nathan’s name light up on the screen, but I don’t click the message to see what it says.

“Is that Nathan again?” Cat asks from her spot on the other side of the couch. She rolls toward me on her knees, trying to get a peek at my screen. I nod and roll my eyes. She’s so close now, I can smell her wine breath, so I playfully shove her back on her side of the couch. “He’s been texting you all night. What is he saying?”

I sigh. “He’s asking what I’m doing with Mom, and why my texts are so short and what’s wrong because he can
tell when something’s wrong
.” I make air quotes when I say the last part.