Wicked Restless (Harper Boys #2) (13 page)

Are you making it to mom’s and Dwayne’s for dinner Sunday?

He sent it only a few minutes ago, so I respond.

Yeah. I’ll be there.

I don’t want to go. But I don’t want to hear the mountain of shit I’ll get for not going more. He writes back a minute later.

Good. Mom’s really freaking out because Kens and I are going to Germany. Try not to be an asshole, K?

Yep.

I lean my head forward into my hand, my arm rested on my knee. Owen and his girlfriend are spending a year in Germany thanks to some offer my brother got to play basketball there. His girlfriend Kensi plays…like…a dozen instruments or something. She got into some master’s program over there to study with the national symphony. They’ve lived together in the city since graduation—Owen coaches at some prep school and Kens plays in an orchestra. I think they’ll probably end up getting married, which is good because I like Kensi; she’s good to my brother and my mom. Better than I am.

Kensi visited me at Lake Crest. I can’t even count how many times she came to see me—sometimes with Owen, sometimes on her own. When I got in my first fight there, she was the one I called. I was beaten by a guy twice my size and two years older than me. He was in Lake Crest for committing armed robbery; he drove the getaway car. When he asked me to write his term paper for recent American history, I said
no
. So he fucked me up when I rounded the corner after my shower in gym. My eye was swollen shut, and he cut me on my cheek and arm with a knife he wasn’t supposed to have, but no one dared take away from him. I called Kensi so she’d come up with an excuse to keep my mom away for an extra week. She did.

Kensi made a lot of excuses for me.

That right there—that small thing that the girl, who will probably marry my brother, did for me, no questions asked—is
the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.
Kensi wrote to me, too. She sent me clips from the college paper on Owen’s games, and she took pictures and printed them out to make collages of things I missed—my car, my old house, the rink.

I gave up a year and a future, and Emma Burke couldn’t be bothered to stamp a goddamned envelope.

Pulling my phone from my pocket, I scroll to the string of texts between Lindsey and me, and I send her one more.

Can’t wait for Friday. Can I see you tomorrow? I’ll come over. Oh, and don’t tell your roommate, but her cookies made me sick. Had to throw them out.

Standing from the bench, I push my phone back into my pocket and stuff my hands into my jacket, walking back to my apartment feeling entitled to lots of things. First on that list is Emma Burke’s roommate.

And I intend to have her.

I didn’t sleep.

Lindsey did.

She slept right through the sound of her phone buzzing on the bed between us. She’d brought it in with her, never stopping in her happiness to leave things in the kitchen or her room. She came to take care of me, then left her phone there as she fell asleep. I know she didn’t do it on purpose; she doesn’t have a clue about any of it at all, about who Drew
really
is. But it still all feels so carefully played, as if she’s working with him to make sure just the right everything finds my ears and eyes and insides.

…her cookies made me sick.

My body ached reading those words. They weren’t for me, but yet…they have to be for me. I lay there and thought about the way he looked at me—and the way he looked.

I let Lindsey stay asleep in my bed. Sneaking out of my room to the shower, I slip into my workout clothes so I could head to the gym before my morning class. I packed a bag with everything I thought I’d need, the plan to stay away until I heard from Lindsey about a date—that he’d come, and they’d both be gone.

But that text never came. Not a word. Nothing—not even an excited text from my friend about how he wants to see her now, because he just can’t wait.

I fought the urge to text her leading questions that would prompt answers about Andrew. We only shared labs on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I was on my own today, which made it harder to stretch things like lunch and studying into taking longer than they really needed to. By the time the sun was down, I was exhausted, running on maybe an hour of sleep in total. If they were going out, they’d be gone by now, and Lindsey would have let me know.

My backpack loaded down, I drag my tired legs to our apartment building, through the lobby, and to the elevator where I’m so exhausted I drop my bag from my shoulders during the ride and drag it along the floor as I exit and walk to our door.

It’s a weird season here now—not quite the snowy winter I’ve grown to love, but not warm enough to wear single layers. Every hallway and classroom is pumped with heat, though, which makes me sticky and uncomfortable by the end of the day. I’ve hit my limit for today.

I listen before putting my key in the lock. It’s quiet, which makes me think that maybe Lindsey left without telling me. My mind runs away with this thought, jumping to the conclusion that Andrew mentioned how he knows me—and my friend didn’t want to hurt my feelings, so of course now they’re off somewhere both talking about how they need to keep this a secret from me. I let these thoughts dance in my head until I open the door and see the both of them laughing, throwing strings of pasta at each other in our kitchen. Confronted with what’s real, I actually wish the daydream in my head from seconds before were the truth. At least then, I wouldn’t
really
know and see it all.

I’m too noisy, and they both turn to look at me, my clothes disheveled from being stuffed in my bag for the morning, my hair limp and stringy from my rushed shower, my back sweaty from carrying my heavy bag all day. Lindsey covers her mouth, hiding her giggle from whatever they were doing before—whatever was funny—but finally lets it go, laughing without abandon as she walks closer to me.

Andrew isn’t laughing at all. She doesn’t notice he’s stopped. He’s behind her, and all he’s doing is staring.

“There you are!” she says, rushing at me with a spoon. “Here! Oh my god, taste this.”

There’s a red sauce in her spoon, but I look at it as if it’s poison, my eyes flitting to Andrew for a second, but looking back to the spoon because he’s still looking at me, not smiling, and if it is poison, I think it’s still my better option.

“What…is it?” I ask, pulling my bag back up to my shoulder and adjusting the weight of it.

“It’s marinara. Drew made it, and it’s so freakin’ good. You have to try.” She holds the spoon to my lips, and I lean forward, letting her feed me like a child, my eyes glancing to Andrew—
Drew—
as I taste it. His mouth tugs up on one corner into a smirk, and I can’t help but hear his voice in my head.

Her cookies made me sick.

“It’s good,” I say, my eyes on him the entire time. It’s delicious, but
good
is polite. It won’t make me sick, and it won’t make me well. It’s just a taste that somehow feels very much like the boy I knew…know.

“Made it from scratch,” he smirks. Lindsey joins him in the kitchen again, and he takes the spoon back from her, but his gaze lingers on me. “Dinner’s served in ten minutes,” he adds, waiting for me to react. My stomach sinks.

I was gone the entire day. My body hurts, and all I want is a hot shower. I wanted to miss this, yet somehow, I timed it just right.

“Oh…it’s okay, I’m not that hungry,” I say, looking down to my feet. His stare—it hurts. And he won’t stop.

“You sure? We made plenty. We didn’t want to leave you out,” he adds, turning back to tend to the stove. Lindsey’s looking up at him with stars, hearts, and probably rainbow unicorns in her eyes; it makes my breath feel heavy.

“I’m sure, but…thank you,” I say. His arm stops moving, no longer stirring the noodles in the water. Lindsey steps away, carrying a pile of bowls and plates to the small kitchen table by our window, and the second she leaves the room, he turns to face me, the mask gone.

“You’re welcome, Emma,” he says, his mouth a hard, flat line and his eyes cloudy with what I’m pretty sure is regret.

We stand in our little pocket of silence with our eyes locked for a few seconds, and it’s like he’s memorizing parts of me he’s forgotten while I’m counting how many parts of him have changed—nearly all of him has as far as I can tell.

“Please join us,” Lindsey startles me, her hands wrapping around my bicep. I jump, and she laughs. “Sorry. Really, though, I was about to text you to tell you he was here, and we made dinner. It’ll be fun. We usually eat sandwiches or microwave meals, Drew. This is a big night out for Em and me. Ha…and we didn’t even go out.”

I manage to keep my attention on her, even though I can see Andrew standing in the same place behind her, his eyes never once leaving their hold on me.

“Please?” she begs, making tiny jumps on her toes as she slides her grip down to my fingertips. This is how a toddler begs for a toy. It’s effective.

I breathe in slowly through my nose and nod a few times.

“Sure. I just need a minute,” I say. I need several minutes. I need hours, maybe days. But minutes are better than nothing.

I carry my bag to my room and fall into my bed, crawling up to the pillow and pushing my face into the folds of the material. All I want is to stay here. I indulge in the coolness of my bed for a full minute, breathing in and out until I convince myself my anxiety isn’t going anywhere.

I sit up and look at my reflection in the mirror above my dresser, my hair now knotted in twists and tufts around my head. Leaning forward, I grab my brush, holding my hair near the base of my head and tugging it through the long strands until I look a little less wild.

I kick off my old clothes, putting on a clean pair of jeans and the purple sweatshirt slung over the end of my bed—throwing it over my head without even thinking until I step back out into the living room and Andrew’s eyes fall on me, registering the familiar shirt. His expression tells me he recalls the memory that goes along with it. I usually think of it, too. And I don’t know why I didn’t tonight. Maybe, my mind wanted to fool me into wearing it just to spite me, my subconscious in cahoots with the boy who built up the memory in the first place. I wore this sweatshirt when Andrew taught me how to ice-skate. It was new then, and I’ve thought about throwing it away or donating it so many times since. I could never seem to part with it, though.

“You look nice in purple,” he says, stepping closer to me on his way to the dining area, his voice low enough Lindsey doesn’t hear as she finishes setting the table for our awkward dinner-for-three. He doesn’t linger, and he doesn’t look at me, not directly anyhow. His eyes hover along my shoulder, tracing a line down to my fingertips, to my hand—the one he held when I was sixteen and unsteady on my feet.

When we were young, and nothing bad had happened.

My fingers tingle as a short burst of adrenaline runs through my body, and I flex my hand wanting to force the feeling away. I remind myself to breathe, repeating a mini version of my useless calming exercise from earlier, and I follow Andrew to the table, noticing his hand down along his side, flexing just as mine did.

Our table is a circle, a small one, the space not made for anything large, meaning we’re all technically sitting next to one another. I wish it were bigger. If it was, there would be more too look at. I hyper-focus on my spoonful of noodles, on the sauce I drizzle from the hot pan over them, on the salad I put in the bowl—I spend as many minutes as I can making my plate perfect, ignoring the laughter and banter between Lindsey and Andrew.

“Here, you didn’t get enough,” Andrew says to me after everyone’s plate is full. He stands, and my eyes catch the frame of his body, the tight gray shirt he’s wearing, how it clings to his waist, his stomach and the expanse of his chest underneath the thin fabric. I look up to see him watch me take him in, and his cheek dimples as he raises the corner of his lips, careful to keep his attention on my plate the rest of the time.

“Thank you,” I say, and he chuckles.

“You’re still welcome,” he says, this time a little bite to his tone.

I drag my fork through the noodles, wrapping them around the prongs and lean forward to take my bites, doing my best to become small. I’m taking mental measurements of the amount of food on my plate, cross-referencing it with the amount of time it’s taking me to swallow each and every forkful, and I grow discouraged. I feel like a child with a bowl of broccoli—no dog to feed it to.

“Oh, you missed it earlier, Em. I was telling Andrew about how we met—me and you?” I choke when Lindsey speaks, reaching for my glass of water while I wave them both off that I’m fine.

I’m fine—only that I met Lindsey in perhaps the worst way possible for this very moment. We met at driving school. It was the summer before our freshman year. I had run a red light near campus, trying to make it to the admissions office before a deadline. When the officer pulled me over, I had a panic attack—to the point that he had to help me lie down on the side of the road so I didn’t collapse and crack open my head. He still gave me a ticket. Just the flash of his lights brought so many feelings back, but I never told Lindsey that. And I don’t think Andrew’s interested in that part now.

Lindsey was in my class for blowing a stop sign. We were the only two people in the class under fifty, and when we both found out we were going to Tech and would be freshmen pre-med, we decided to room together.

“Lemons out of lemonade,” Lindsey said at the time.

It goes down like venom now.

“Yeah, Linds tells me you’re quite the speed demon,” Andrew says through a mouthful of food. He’s remaining aloof, but I know better. I can see the truth in his eyes.

I open my mouth, partly to defend myself, and partly to explain, but the way he pauses—leaning with one arm along the back of his chair and his body to the side, so he can hold me hostage with the look on his face—makes me forget the words to say. Not that I had the right words ready. I don’t. I never have.

“Hey, I didn’t say that,” Lindsey says, the laughter escaping her teasingly and sweet as she swats at his thigh with her hand. He catches it and holds it, his lips curling into a grin as he brings her hand up to his face so he can kiss the knuckles, his gaze shifting to me as he lowers her hand back down, never letting go.