Tell (26 page)

“No.  The Camaro’s engine is too loud.  I rode my bike.”

“Shane, it’s a mile and a half.”

“Cadie, I run farther than that at practice every day.”

“Shane, there are no street lights.”

“Cadie—I lied, I rode Felicia’s bike.  She has a light.”

“Shane—Felicia’s bike also has pink ribbons on the handlebars.”

“Cadie, then I guess it’s a good thing there are no street lights and nobody saw me.”  He smirked at her.

She rubbed her arms anxiously with her hands.

He nodded at her house.  “Go inside and grab a sweatshirt.  I’ll wait,” he said, correctly interpreting her gesture as a sign that she was cold.

Cadie looked up at him.  For a second she might have believed everything in the last week had not happened, and they were still standing in Amanda’s darkened bathroom.  He was looking at her the same way.  Then reality came crashing back over her, and she remembered that they had not even spoken to each other in days—and probably should not be speaking to each other now.

Cadie made another quick decision, perhaps against her better judgment.  She glanced back at the house, then tapped him on the arm.  “Come on,” she said, heading toward the sliding glass door.

Shane did not move.  “I’m not going in there,” he responded.  “Your dad’s bigger than me.”

“He’s asleep.”

“Maybe he was before, but I just spent twenty minutes throwing rocks at his window.”

“Melody and I set off bottle rockets on the Fourth of July and he slept through that.  And he was sleeping in the hammock right next to us.”

Shane reluctantly followed her through the sliding glass door into the house.  Cadie had a sense of déjà-vu as the two of them crept stealthily downstairs; she had done this with Tom on more than one occasion.

“So… I guess I never asked you what you were actually doing here,” Cadie said when they reached the den.  She switched on the lamp that was next to the doorway; the room did not have an overhead light.  “And what was so important that it couldn’t wait until daylight.”

“I fell asleep right after practice for a couple hours.  Then I couldn’t sleep when it was actually time to sleep.”  He sat on the couch.  “And I wanted to talk to you.”

Cadie stayed standing by the lamp.  “Okay… about what?”

“I know you talked to Felicia yesterday,” Shane said.  “I talked to her too.  She told me that she was okay with the two of us dating.”

Cadie looked at her feet.  “Yeah, she told me the same thing.”

“And I told her that I could never do anything to upset her, so there’s no way that we would start dating.”

She felt as if she had been stabbed with something very, very sharp.  “I told her the same thing,” she said coolly.

“So I just wanted to come here and tell you that,” he said smoothly.  “You know, that we can’t see each other.  Because of Felicia.”

“So you came here to—what?  Break up with me?”  Cadie folded her arms across her chest.

“Of course not.  Just to make sure we’re on the same page.”

“We are definitely on the same page,” Cadie agreed.

“Good.”  Shane stood.  “I guess I’ll just leave you to it, then.”  He started to walk toward the door but stopped when he reached Cadie, who was still standing beside the lamp.  “So, we’re not going to start dating.”

Cadie nodded without looking at him.  “It looks that way.”

“That’s too bad, because—I brought you this.”  From the back of his jeans, he extracted a folded blue shirt.  Cadie knew without seeing the front that it would be identical to the one that Stacy wore every week to support Will.

She narrowed her eyes at him.  “If you came here to tell me that we couldn’t see each other, why did you bring me the girlfriend shirt?”

“To be honest, I was hoping you’d disagree with me,” he admitted.  He held the shirt out to her.  “Here.”

She took a step back.  “You rode your bike here with that thing in your pants.  I’m not touching it.  That’s disgusting.”

He tossed it at her head.  She let out a little shriek and sidestepped the shirt to avoid letting it touch her face.  Shane had pulled her to him and kissed her before the shirt even touched the floor.

They made out for awhile, standing silhouetted against the dim lamp light.  Cadie was not sure how much time had passed when she finally pulled away.  “You should go,” she said, a little breathlessly.  “You can’t stay here.”

“I know,” he murmured.

They heard a soft rumbling sound in the distance and broke apart.  As they listened, they could hear rain drops pattering against the tiny window on the other side of the den.

Shane’s shoulders sagged visibly.  “Great.”

They climbed the stairs silently and Cadie stood just inside as Shane slipped back out through the sliding glass door into the night.  It was raining harder now, rain drops leaving fat spots on the cement patio.

“I have a rain coat if you want it,” Cadie offered.  “It’s purple.”

“That’s okay, I’m riding home on a bike with pink ribbons.  I don’t think I can take any more testosterone for the evening.”  He pointed at her.  “You’ll wear the shirt tomorrow?”

“You mean your nasty pants shirt?  I doubt it.”

“That’s why God invented Febreze.”  He ran off to the side of the house to retrieve
Felicia’s bike before Cadie could think of a retort.  Lightning flashed in the distance.

Twenty-one

The rain did not let up through the next day.  There was talk that the football game might be postponed—or, worse yet, cancelled—if the weather did not cooperate, but it was only talk.  When school let out that afternoon, the game, and the rain, were both still on.

The treacherous weather had made attending the game that evening a less than delightful experience.  The band had performed pre-game, but the rain had started to collect on the astro-turf, and Mr. Bell had made the last minute decision that they would not march the show; instead, they had played standing in a half-circle on the track.  The band members had practically drowned, not only in the downpour but in the massive rain coats they wore to protect their uniforms.

The cheerleaders had abandoned their cute skirts in favor of wind pants underneath clear plastic rain jackets.  Their pom-poms had been cast aside in a pile on the track, covered by a spare rain jacket for protection.  Most of the girls had not let the weather deter their peppiness, but Susan looked about as cheerful as she might if someone had tied a drowned rat to her head.  Cadie thought that her sopping wet hair also lent to the appearance of literally having a drowned rat tied to her head.

And to top it all off, the team had lost, 27-17.  It was their first loss of the season.  As Cadie approached the front door of Adam’s house, where the festivities for the evening were to take place, she expected to walk into an extremely dejected and moderately damp atmosphere.

On the contrary, there was very little difference between the ambiance at this party and the two she had attended previously.  Actually, she found it to be a little more friendly and welcoming, since more people greeted her when she walked through the door.  Her hair was wet and her bangs were matted to her forehead as she followed the hallway to the kitchen, where she found Shane by the keg.  His hair was completely dry, though it was sticking straight out of his head, as if he had stuck his head under an automatic hand dryer in the guys’ locker room after the game.  Cadie suspected this was exactly what he had done.

He gave her the once-over as she approached.  “Your hair is crazy,” he pointed out unnecessarily.

“Look who’s talking,” she responded.

They kissed.  Shane smacked his lips together a few times after they drew apart.  He raised an eyebrow at her.  “Orange?” he guessed.

“Yeah.  I can’t find my raspberry one.”

“So, guess who decided to come to this party,” Shane said, taking her by the hand and leading her into the living room off the kitchen.

“Who?”

They entered the living room.  Felicia and Elliot were standing by the fireplace.  They waved in greeting as Shane and Cadie crossed the room toward them.  Out of the corner of her eye, Cadie saw Lauren Andrews staring at Felicia and Elliot with an expression on her face that might have been jealousy.

“What are you guys doing here?” Cadie asked.  “You didn’t even come to the game.”

“I can’t believe you
went
to that game,” Felicia shot back.  “I’m all for trying on the supportive sister hat, but I have my limits.”

“Since when have you worn a supportive sister hat?” Shane asked incredulously.

“Since today,” Felicia answered moodily.

“Well, I kind of had to go to the game.  I was wearing the supportive girlfriend hat,” Cadie pointed out.

“It’s a shirt, isn’t it?” Elliot replied.

“And technically,” Cadie continued, “Melody was at the game too, so I was also obligated to wear the supportive sister hat.  I kind of had my foot in both camps.”

“But
technically
, your sister performed pre-game, so after you’d done your supportive sister duty, you wouldn’t need to be in that camp anymore.”

“Okay, there are too many metaphors in this room,” Shane cut in.

“For real,” Elliot agreed.  “I need to get the hell out of here.”

“Quarter,” Felicia announced.

“Are you seriously still doing that?” Elliot asked.

“It’s still vulgar.  So yes.”

“I don’t think you want people charging you every time you do something they think is vulgar.  Otherwise you and I would both have a bunch of irate conservatives knocking down our doors demanding a lot more than a quarter.”

Everyone was saved from a response when Will and Stacy approached them.  “Hey, man,” Will said to Shane as Stacy hugged Cadie and kissed her on the cheek, “we’re setting up a poker game in the dining room, without Zack and Ryan, of course.  Are you in?”

Shane glanced at Cadie, then shrugged.  “Why not?”

As the six of them headed toward the dining room, Cadie caught sight of Melody coming through the front door with Lucas.  She raised her arm at them and beckoned them to come over, while the others made their way into the dining room.  “I didn’t think you guys would be here tonight,” she commented.  Cadie noticed that Melody had a giant grin on her face.  “What are you so happy about?”

“I talked to Susan,” Melody announced.

Cadie raised her eyebrows.  “You’re that happy because of a conversation with
Susan
?”

“She apologized.  And she told me that she and Andy didn’t have sex.”

“You shouldn’t care about that, remember?”  Cadie glanced pointedly at Lucas.

Melody tapped Lucas a few times on the arm with the back of her hand.  “Tell Cadie why that makes me so happy.”

Lucas looked at Cadie.  “Susan said that Andy couldn’t get it up.”

Cadie laughed, then composed herself.  “Susan could have just made that up to save face,” she reasoned.

“She certainly could have.  But that won’t stop me from telling everyone about it.”

Cadie shook her head and clucked her tongue.  “I don’t know, Melody.  He’s had kind of a rough week.”

“We figure this might actually help him out,” Lucas spoke up.  “Better to have ED than VD, isn’t it?”

Shane poked his head through the doorway from the dining room.  His hair arrived about thirty seconds before his face did.  “Cadie, are you coming?  I might need your help.”

“Excuse me, who said I was helping you?” she shot back, walking over.  “I’d like the opportunity to win some cash without having to share it with you.”

“You’ll never beat Will,” Shane answered.  “You said yourself he was too hard to read.”

“Maybe I was just telling you that,” Cadie said smoothly, crossing the threshold into the dining room.

“I might even play,” Elliot said, sitting down at the large dining table next to Adam, who was beside Tyson.  Felicia stayed standing in the corner next to an ornate wooden china cabinet.  “I think I can at least weasel some money out of Shane.”

Shane threw up his hands helplessly.  “Why is everybody ganging up on me?”

“Well, I know that you can’t lie to save your life.”

“How would you even know that?” Shane retorted.  “We’ve never played poker together.”

“Watch this,” Elliot said to Cadie.  She turned back to Shane.  “Shane, have you ever nicknamed your penis?”

Shane’s jaw dropped and the blood rushed to his face as he averted his eyes.  Everyone in the dining room laughed openly.

Stacy put a hand on Shane’s wrist.  “It’s okay,” she said soothingly.  “Will’s is the Godfather.”

“Stace!” Will erupted, blushing himself, as the laughter of the room increased.

Cadie sat down at the table next to Elliot.  Shane looked completely stricken.  “So, you’re really playing against me?” he asked, sounding hurt.

She looked around the table, then looked down at herself and nodded.  “It appears that way,” she said to Shane.

“I get it.  The girlfriend shirt comes off when it’s time to play poker.”

Adam, Tyson, and Will leaned forward over the table, peering at Cadie with interest.

“I’m not taking my shirt off!” Cadie snapped.

“Damn straight,” said Shane, punching Will lightly on the shoulder and pushing him back in his chair.

Will rubbed his shoulder and gave Shane a dirty look.

“Fifty cents,” spoke up Felicia.

“How is that fifty cents?” Shane protested.  “It wasn’t the f-word.”

“It’s a quarter for ‘damn’ and a quarter for your improper use of the word ‘straight,’ ” Felicia answered snootily.  She winked at Elliot, who nodded her approval.