Wicked Games (14 page)

His chest wouldn’t stop throbbing. It felt like it was going to burst, a feeling like people describe when they
talk about heartbreak, but Carter’s heart wasn’t breaking. It just hurt. He’d started feeling this way that night with Lilah at Harpoon Haven, and in the four days since, the feeling had intensified. It was constant, a mixture of anger and resentment and worry and fear that congealed into a dark image of Lilah in his head. A pressure so extreme that he could hardly concentrate on anything else.

Carter forced himself to stay in his chair, becoming more and more frustrated with himself. He’d already played thirty-six games of Spider Solitaire—the only thing he could bring himself to concentrate on—and he knew if he kept this up, he’d end up still staring cross-eyed at the screen at three a.m., winning nothing but a few digitized fireworks and the promise of a bleary day at school tomorrow.

What he needed was Jules. Just to talk to her. Just to be in her presence for a while.

He sent her a text to remind her he existed, but she didn’t respond.

Ten more games of Solitaire and still no response.

He yearned to tell her she haunted him each and every day. To tell her he’d been wrong. He’d made the wrong choice. But he knew he couldn’t do that. Not while he was still caught up in this mess with Lilah.

He sent her another text.

Nothing.

He couldn’t stand it anymore. If he’d broken up with Lilah way back in March, after that perfect “nondate” with Jules, maybe Jules wouldn’t have forgotten him already. There was no way he was going to be able to save Lilah, anyway. He was just making himself miserable trying.

He had to move. He had to fix his life.

He sped through the backstreets toward Lilah’s neighborhood. It was just ten. Her parents would be nodding off to the evening news. She’d be upstairs in her bedroom, avoiding them.

When Lilah’s mom answered the door in her pink flowered pajamas and her fuzzy white slippers, she gave a pinched little sigh. “Oh, Carter, we weren’t expecting you,” she whispered. “We’re all in bed right now.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll be just a second. I’ve, uh, got something I forgot to give her earlier. A book, uh . . .” He was winging it. Making it up as he went along.
“The Grapes of Wrath.”

He wondered what she saw as she gazed at him with her sleep-weary eyes—the quiet, gentlemanly guy who answered her daughter’s every beck and call, or the rabid dog that he felt like tonight, burning with pent-up rage. Did she see the sweat beading on his forehead? The spite flashing behind his smile?

She nodded and stepped away to let him into the house.

Avoiding eye contact, he squeezed past her and tiptoed upstairs. He knocked softly and then pushed open the door to Lilah’s room.

Lilah, who had been sitting at her computer, but not really working, saw him in the mirror above her makeup table—so awkward there in the doorway, his hands patting at his waist like they didn’t know where to go, his whole body tense. She could tell just by looking at him that he wasn’t here to say sorry for his behavior at Harpoon Haven.

“Hey,” he said.

It took her a long time to respond. She had to wait until all her shields were in place. She didn’t want to surrender to her tears all at once. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing that.

Once she was composed enough to enter the battle, she turned slowly, slowly away from her computer.

“Hey,” she said.

And so there they were. A warm relief swept through Carter’s body. He was finally doing what he should have done months ago.

“Think you might have a minute to talk?”

She tipped her head ambivalently. She was going to make this as hard as she could for him.

“Should we go outside?” he said. “Maybe sit out front?”

“Sure.”

They took the long walk down the hallway, down the steps through the darkened foyer to the crystal-inlaid front door. There was no touching, no eye contact, no discussion as they marched. They wandered past the rosebushes and the azaleas and all the other nonnative flowers displayed on Lilah’s family’s artificially lush, landscaped lawn, and found two spots, not quite next to each other, on the white concrete curb.

The time had come. Lilah braced herself. She felt dead inside, cold as stone.

Carter adjusted his position so he was facing her. “I’ve been thinking and thinking about this,” he said, “and you’re right. There’s . . . everything’s screwed up.”

Each fumbled word out of Carter’s mouth hit Lilah like a separate punch in the gut.

“And after what happened on Friday . . . it’s just . . . it’s not going to work. It’s never going to work.”

She knew he’d been thinking this for a long time, but hearing him say it out loud still stunned her. Her heart had no room in it for these words from him. Yes, things had been hard; things had been pretty horrible. But that other thing that had sustained them throughout the previous three years still existed. It had to exist. She could still remember it, so it must exist.

“I really tried. I can’t tell you how hard . . .”

But it didn’t exist. The new reality was sinking in. She excised her hands from his with a snap.

He said it again. “I’m sorry.” That’s all he could say. Like saying
I’m sorry
did anyone any good.

She’d tried so hard. She’d put up with so much. And she’d managed the Jules situation so carefully. How dare he? This wasn’t allowed to happen to her.

“Did you?” she said. “Did you really try? Is that what you call fucking that bitch Jules Turnbull behind my back while I’m
vomiting my guts out at home
?” She was losing control. She didn’t care. “’Cause that’s what you did, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

Carter didn’t respond. He refused to make eye contact with her.

“You thought I didn’t know about it, didn’t you? You thought,
Lilah, she’s just a naïve little girl. I can get away with any shit I want to with her.
But guess what? I’m not as stupid as you think.”

The way his eyes bulged at this revelation told her that she’d scored a point on him.

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” he mumbled.

“What, then? You obviously thought you could get away with it.”

Carter ran his hand through his floppy, sandy hair. “Does it really matter?” he said. “I was trying . . . What was I supposed to do, Lilah? I was afraid of what you might do if I broke up with you.”

The way he was spinning his guilt, denying nothing, but implying that this was all somehow her fault,
disgusted her. And still, she was desperate to get a confession from him. “So it’s true. Just admit it. We both know it’s true. You’ve been screwing that skank behind my back all this time.”

Warring with him was better than nothing. Better this than the howling winds of loneliness that would sweep through her once he left.

Carter looked Lilah dead in the eye. Whatever compassion he’d been feeling before, whatever instinct he’d had to protect her emotions, was gone.

“She’s not a skank,” he said.

There was a beat, a delayed reaction, then Lilah felt everything inside her turn to liquid. She was seeing spots, surging with adrenaline, no longer aware of anything in the world except his taunting presence there in front of her. Her ability to think had been flushed away.

She shoved him, and when he didn’t tip over she shoved him again harder, slapped at his shoulder, his chest.

“Fuck you!” she hissed. Then she shouted it. “Fuck you!”

She leaned back and kicked at him with her heels.

He just sat there, watching her, so dispassionate, his face so empty of emotion. She felt a hatred beyond anything she’d ever felt before.

“You lied to me,” she said. “YOU LIED TO ME! And I loved you.” She wasn’t sure if she was pleading
with him to change his mind, or accusing him, or what. “Say something, you asshole,” she said. “Don’t just—say something!”

But he didn’t say anything. He just kept on watching.

She hated his face and his stupid preppy clothes and his high-tops and the way he seemed to have so much pity for her.

She leaped up and stormed away—three, four steps—then the rage broke in her again and she turned and ran back to him. She slapped and shoved at him again. She kicked him. She was howling. “Why?” she said. “Why? What does she have that I don’t?”

“Lilah,” he said. He was so above it all.

“I’m not your Lilah anymore. You said it, not me. You . . .” Coherent speech was beyond her. She was uncontrolled emotion.

“Lilah, stop it. Calm down.”

“No. You don’t get to decide when I calm down.” Another surge of rage and she went at him with all the strength she contained. When he held her off with a stiff arm, she clamped her fingers into his arm and dug into his skin with her nails. He’d hurt her; why shouldn’t she hurt him back?

The answer was: because she couldn’t. Now that he’d told her and it was all over, she’d lost her power over him. This final lashing out just made clear to him how right his decision to leave her had been.

Finally, exhausted, totally emptied out, Lilah dropped to the curb and imploded into sobs.

She’d hate him forever, and maybe he deserved this.

He stood up. He took her in one last time: sprawled, half-coiled on the curb, her face flushed and streaked with mascara and tears. He felt bad for her and he wished he could comfort her, but he knew he couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really, truly sorry about everything.”

And he was gone, leaving her there in front of her parents’ house with nothing but her jealous rage to console her.

Carter took the
steps up to the porch at Jules’s house three at a time and he had to check himself in order not to pound on the front door like a crazy person. His heart beat like thunder in his chest. He felt like everything—his whole life—depended on this moment.

Why was nobody answering? The lights were on. There was someone home.

It was a little after eleven. He hoped he wasn’t being rude or something.

Finally, the faded curtain drawn across the window in the door shifted a little and he saw an eye peering out at him. Then the door opened a crack and Jules’s
mother slipped out onto the porch. She pulled the door shut tight behind her.

“Can I help you?” she said.

Carter knew from Jules that her mother was a bit of a blissed-out hippie, and she definitely looked the type, with the colorful frayed sarong tied around her waist and the bright-yellow bikini top and long, flowing, sandy-blond hair, but something in the set of her jaw intimidated him.

“Yeah, hi, I’m—hi!” Carter knew he was speaking breathlessly fast, but he couldn’t slow himself down. His thoughts were exploding at an unrelenting pace. “You’re Jules’s mother, right? It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Carter. One of Jules’s friends. I was hoping I could maybe talk to her for a second.”

“I know who you are, Carter,” she said. “Jules can’t come to the door right now.” For a second, she gazed at the aloe plant mounted on the porch railing. Then she went on. “She’s not here.”

“She’s—oh. Can you tell me where she is? It’s sort of important that I talk to her.”

She was sizing him up. She had a quiet groundedness about her, a sense of something tough and strong underneath her spiritual exterior, and he could feel her hardening as she considered what to say next. “Don’t you think you’ve said enough to Jules already?”

There was something not right about this
conversation. Carter scratched his head. He was confused. “I . . . er . . .” he said.

“Aren’t you a least a little ashamed to be showing up here like this?” Her tone of voice remained gentle and calm despite the harshness of her words.

“I don’t—” he said, but the woman cut him off.

“Of course. You don’t know what I’m talking about. Okay.” She patted Carter on the shoulder. “I’ve seen guys like you before. You never know what us girls are talking about.”

“But I don’t—”

“Believe it or not, Jules has a certain amount of self-respect.”

“I—I’m confused.”

“I could show you the texts you sent her. Refresh your memory.”

“Texts?” He searched his thoughts for what she might be talking about. Had he crossed some line he didn’t know existed? Maybe he should have stopped bothering her when she hadn’t responded to the messages, but they hadn’t been mean or anything like that. They’d been goofy stuff, just normal hellos and things. Sweet. He’d meant them to be sweet. “I’m really sorry if something I wrote to Jules upset her somehow. I mean—”

“Uh—no. Try that on some other girl. You knew exactly what you were doing.”

“Look, can I just talk to her, like, for a second? I’m
having a sort of a crisis here and she . . .” He paused and tried to pull himself together. “Jules is the only one who knows what I’m going through.”

Jules’s mother ran her hand through her long wheatlike hair. She crossed her arms pointedly across her chest and began tapping her finger against her elbow. She wanted him to leave. That was obvious.

“There’s some misunderstanding, I think,” he said. “Can I see what you’re talking about? You said you’d show me the texts. I can explain, I think, if I see them.”

Jules’s mom shook her head. It was beyond a no. It was a cosmic disappointment. She was disgusted by him. “You know,” she said, “Jules had high hopes for you. She told me you were one of the good ones. I guess not. It’s a shame.”

He stood there, baffled, fighting the urge to defend himself. But there was no use. He could tell. There was nothing he could say. She was going to stand there and stare him down like a lioness no matter what he said. And protesting any further would just make it worse. He had the sense that she could eat him alive if she wanted to.

“You should go now, don’t you think?” said Jules’s mom.

As he made his way down the wooden staircase to the street, Jules’s mother stood guard, watching him, waiting for him to be gone.

Back in his car, he couldn’t bring himself to put the key into the ignition. To turn the car on and roll away would be to say good-bye to Jules forever.

He sat there for a long time, staring up at the lights coming through her window, wishing there was some way to let her know how completely he’d fallen in love with her.