You and Everything After (13 page)

Chapter 14

Ty

Her call comes when I least expect it—on my way to the gym, to run Cass through her workouts. It’s a special day. I lined up a visit with the McConnell women’s coach—nothing formal, just a quick meet-and-greet. I still feel like Cass is on the fence about trying out, so I thought this might be just the nudge she needs.

Of course, now my focus is shot to shit.

The last time Kelly called, I sent her a text a few hours later. I didn’t hear back from her again…until now. My phone is vibrating in my hand, and I’m tempted to pretend I don’t feel it—to tuck it back in my pocket until I can lock it away in the gym—and continue to put off whatever is waiting on the other line. But I’m also desperate to know.

So I answer.

“Hey,” I say. We’ve been playing phone tag for weeks; formalities seem forced at this point.

“Hey,” she says back. She sounds tired, and not at all like the person she was pretending to be when she left me those messages.

“Hey,” I say again, finding a shaded area a few yards away from the gym entrance, away from the busy path of students. That old, familiar smile falling into place.

“You said that already,” she laughs. It comes out soft, her voice a little raspy, almost like she’s fighting a cold.

“I know. It’s just weird…talking to you,” I admit. My heart feels heavy. This is why I never called before. I knew it would make me feel bad, would make me…miss her.

“I know whatcha mean,” she says back, so much about the way she speaks is familiar. I miss her.
I really fucking miss her.
 

“How’s Jackson?” I ask, hoping her son is okay, hoping
that’s
not her big secret. I breathe in relief when she giggles lightly at my question.

“He’s so good,” she says, her pride shining through. I always knew she would be a good mother. She’s made for this.

“Good. I…I can’t wait to meet him,” I say, trying to find a way to broach the topic about Thanksgiving—me visiting, and why she
wants
me to visit.

“Me, too,” she says, the sudden distance in her voice spurring me to react.

“What’s going on, Kel?” I finally ask, unprepared for the tears that I hear my question trigger. She’s hundreds of miles away and crying, and I can’t help. It hurts that I can’t. She’s trying to muffle the sound, to hold it in. But she just can’t. “Oh, Kel bear…what’s wrong?”

Kelly was my whole entire heart for so long—it’s almost like muscle memory. The need to care for her when she’s hurting—I don’t think that will ever go away.

“It’s Jared,” she says, and I feel my muscles flex, ready to go to war over whatever she says next. “Ty, he used to—”

“Did that son of a bitch hurt you, Kel?” my other hand fisted at my mouth, my teeth biting my knuckles, trying to keep my temper in check.

“No, no…nothing like that. I promise, Ty,” she says.

“Then what is it?” I ask, still suspicious, my mind traveling a million miles per second to all of the worst possibilities—each one ending with my fist in Jared’s face.

“I think he might be using again,” she says, and everything about this conversation takes a U-turn.
Using? What the fuck?

“What do you mean?” I ask. I don’t know Jared well. Kelly met him in college. I wasn’t around to get to know him. And maybe that makes it unfair for me to judge him quickly. But I have a feeling my hunch—the one that
Jared is an asshole—
is about to be confirmed.

“He’s been clean for a long time, since
way
before I met him. He did drugs when he was in high school. But lately…I don’t know. He seems weird. He doesn’t come home on time, by…like…hours. And there are so many things that seem…I don’t know. Not right? Weird phone calls, strange amounts of money missing from our checking account from cash withdrawals…” she sounds frantic, and I can hear Jackson starting to cry in the background.

“Does he act…like…high or anything?” I ask.

“No. Maybe? I don’t know. He’s jumpy, and just weird. And he gets a temper—it just comes out of nowhere,” she says, stopping to hum something to Jackson, to calm him. Even her humming sounds stressed and sad.

“What was he on…before?” I know so very little about drugs. I’ve never liked them—not even the prescription kind. My mother begged me to take something for my depression, but I refused. I don’t like the idea of chemically changing my mind. It just seems dangerous.

“He took a lot of things. Pills, mostly. But at his worst, he tried meth,” she says, and I react poorly.

“Fuck, Kel? Meth? Jesus…and you married him?” I feel bad the second I finish talking, because I can hear her tears picking up again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just don’t like that he’s making you feel this way—for whatever reason.”

“I know,” she sniffles.

“Can I talk to him?” I ask, seriously considering buying a ticket to fly home tonight so I can choke the fucker.

“No! No…he, he would just get angry that I’m talking to you about any of this,” she says. “Ty, I never said anything, but Jared…he doesn’t care for you. It’s not personal, it’s just our history.”

“Yeah, well, that goes both ways.” I’m hot now, and I don’t care to spare Jared’s feelings. “Sorry,” I throw in at the end, but only for Kelly.

“No you’re not,” she says, her voice evening out a little.

“You’re right,” I smirk. “I’m not.”

Silence starts to fill our time, and I can hear the sounds of her house in the background—the water running in the sink, her working a bottle together, getting it in her son’s mouth, and the soft sounds of a music box starting up behind her.

“I think I just needed to talk to someone, honestly. Maybe…maybe if I feel like there’s more to this—or if he starts acting weird again, more often…I don’t know. Is it okay if I call? I don’t want my parents to get involved. Not yet,” I can’t believe she’s even asking.

“Kel, it’s
always
okay for you to call,” I say, wishing I could just hug her and make this okay.

“Thanks,” she says after a few more seconds. “Listen, I have to get Jack down for his nap. But Ty? Thank you so much…for listening. I think—” she pauses to laugh lightly. “I think I might just sleep tonight.”

“Anytime, Kel. Anytime,” I say, and I wait for her to hang up.

I’m fifteen minutes late for my appointment with Cass. I didn’t want to bring the anger and sinking feeling from my phone call into anything with her. But I’m not sure that’s possible, because she’s started her workouts, and all I can seem to do is sit here in the corner and bark orders at her—hoping I can pull my shit together by the time the coach shows up to surprise her.

Cass

“Faster. You can go faster!”

Ty’s been…he’s been a little tough today. I like tough in a trainer. I can take tough. I
thrive
off of tough. It’s what made me good in the first place. But there’s an extra edge to everything, too. And I
don’t
like that edge in a boyfriend.

I push the speed up on the treadmill and go faster anyway, because I also like to win. And if he thinks I can go faster, I’m going to go twice as fast just to prove to him that I’m better than he thinks.
Run, legs! I promise, we’ll rest later.

I barely notice the next two minutes of sprints that pass—mostly because I keep stealing glances to the side where Ty is talking to Coach Pennington. I recognize him from the pictures I’ve indulged in of the soccer team’s website.

McConnell was never one of the schools I dreamt about when I had fantasies of playing soccer in college. I always thought I’d go Pac-12. But that was all before I gave up on myself and spiraled into self-pity and degrading behavior—before my mom cried that I was pushing myself too hard and going to ruin my parents’ marriage.

I’m dreaming of playing for McConnell now—dreaming stronger and harder than I have for anything in months. I tick the treadmill up one more level for the final sprint, just to show off how badly I want this.

When I’m done, I spend five minutes walking a lap or two on the indoor track. My body feels alive, my veins pumping blood faster than my muscles can burn it off. It’s adrenaline—I’m sure from knowing the coach is here…waiting for me.

“Listen, legs—we’re almost done. And tomorrow, I promise—rest. I won’t push you as hard,” I say to myself, chugging the last bits of my water and walking over to Ty, who’s waiting with arms crossed, a cocky sense of pride worn on his face. I definitely like
that
in my boyfriend.

“Those are some fast sprints you were doing there,” coach says, reaching out his hand to shake mine. “I’m Matt Pennington. My son works out with Tyson here, and he said you were thinking of coming out for our squad.”

Of course Ty has a connection. I glance his way, and he smiles quickly and winks.

“Cassidy Owens, nice to meet you,” I say, still a little out of
breath
. “And yes, I have been thinking about it.”

“I remember you,” coach says, looking at me sideways. “Your team took state in California, am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Striker. You had a mean penalty kick,” he says, pointing a finger out to punctuate the fact that he’s sold on me. I’m actually a little surprised. While the rest of my team put out recruitment feelers, I disappeared. I figured nobody would remember my name—let alone my stats.

“Thank you,” I say, not sure what else to add.

“Well, I’d sure like to see what you can do, see if you can do any of
that…”
he says, nodding toward the treadmill I just lit up, “out on the field. We have some friendlies, non-mandatory, this weekend. Maybe you’d be up for coming out for a workout tomorrow and sticking around Saturday for a game? Inter-squad.”

“I’d like that,” I answer, and the speed at which I do surprises me. Yeah, I want this. I REALLY want this.

“All right, well, I’ll get Ty the info, he can pass it along. We’ll see ya there,” he says, giving me one more shake, sealing the deal.

When the weight-room doors close behind him, I feel Ty’s hands at my waist, and soon I’m trapped on his lap.

“You were amazing today,” he says, his lips close enough to my ear that his breath sends shivers down my neck and spine, my skin finally cooling off from my sprints.

“Yeah, well, my trainer was a little pushy today,” I squint at him.

“I was,” he says, his eyes caught on mine, his mouth in a firm line. “I’m sorry. I sort of brought some baggage from earlier in here with you. That’s not fair, and I shouldn’t have done that.”

He nuzzles his nose against my arm and kisses my skin lightly before looking back up at me. “Wanna talk about it?” I ask, sensing that whatever it is that’s resting behind his eyes is weighing on him even more than he’s letting on. He takes a long deep breath and our eyes remain locked for several seconds before his lip finally curls into that familiar Preeter smile.

“Nah, it’s okay. Just some stuff with Nate, personal—ya know,” he says with a shrug, and I almost believe him.

Almost.

Ty

I lied to her. I don’t even know why I did it. I don’t lie. I’m a truth-teller—even when the truth is fucking brutal and will hurt someone’s feelings. I. Don’t. Lie.

But I just did.

I sat there, looking into her eyes, my mind conjuring up a thousand images of Cass, everything about her that makes me smile, and then crisscrossing it with the absolute heartbreak I heard in Kelly’s voice just an hour before. I couldn’t get the two to parallel—Cass making me happy, and Kelly making me sad.

But instead of just telling Cass about Kelly, instead of sharing a little bit of my past—I wrapped it up quickly, cloaked it in a lie, and buried it under a fake smile.

 
I don’t know why I did it, and I’m not proud. I want to fix it, take it back, have a redo…but I replay the scenario over and over in my mind—and it always comes out the same. And I don’t know what that means.

Chapter 15

Cass

Rowe and Nate seem to still be fighting. When I ask her about him, she just shrugs, says he’s been busy. But I kinda think it’s bigger than that. She’s been going to dinner in the cafeteria with Ty and me, and I can tell she feels awkward.
We
feel awkward. Rowe just seems sad, like she had this brightness that was really coming alive, and then it suddenly started slipping away after their fight.

I asked her about the fight the other night. One of my moments of absolute eloquence…I just blurted out, “What’s wrong with you two?” She couldn’t really put it into words, saying something about how her old boyfriend—the one barely alive back home—made it impossible to move forward, and how it was probably for the best. She was giving up. Quitting. And I suck, because I didn’t know what to say to get her back into battle. But Ty did. And I love that he feels compelled to take her in. I can tell he’s trying to fix whatever went wrong between her and Nate.

Last night was the first one in a few that I went over to his room alone, without Rowe. Nate was at workouts, like he usually is at that time, and their relationship was
literally
all we talked about. And that’s when I started to get the strange feeling that Ty might be focusing so much on his brother’s problems to avoid something else—something like
me
…and
us.

This is how one negative thought burns a hole in my chest. It plants a seed, settling in and festering like a wound, an ulcer trying to interrupt my heart’s rhythm. There’s a cloud over me today. It’s black. And I blame the seed. My cloud started to form when I woke up with a little bit of numbness in my toes. It faded, but instead of victory, I waited for the next sign of something
wrong.
My waiting was rewarded when the numbness was replaced by panic after I realized I completely failed to study for my physics test. Now, I’ll have to spend the morning before I compete with the women’s squad retaking a failed exam in the tutoring lab. And all of it is weighing me down mentally now, making me slow at workouts…where I’m supposed to impress Coach Pennington, and convince him to add me to his roster in the spring.

My cloud—born from that tiny seed—gains power every time Ty doesn’t look at me. And it might all just be crazy shit I’ve cooked up in my head; in fact, the rational side of my brain
knows
this to be true. But it’s also so damned real, so tangible, that I feel sick running my heart out on this field while he sits on the sidelines watching. My black cloud tells me it’s just a matter of time before he cuts me loose, moves on from his project.

Stupid seed of doubt and black cloud.

I take my break on the opposite side of the field, and Coach Pennington jogs over, slapping my shoulder with approval and a smile. “Looking good, Owens. Keep this up, I think there’s more in your tank,” he says, reenergizing my tired body and wiping my slate clean of clouds for a few brief seconds. The storm comes again, though, when I feel the scowls of the three girls standing by the cooler next to me.

“Owens. You played for Tech,” the girl closest to me says. Her hair is jet black, long, and pulled into a ponytail. She looks strong—fast, too. And she’s the only one of the three who doesn’t look like she resents me being here.

“I did,” I say, my guard still up, albeit a little less.

“Right. My cousin’s Tab Snyder. I thought I recognized you,” she says. Tabitha Snyder was our goalie in high school—she ended up playing for UCLA, where I would have played if I stayed on the path I was on before my diagnosis.

“How is Tab?” I ask, excited to be starting a conversation with one of the girls. There’s almost a sense of relief, but it’s quickly extinguished when she doesn’t answer my question, and instead pretends not to have heard me at all. She tosses her paper cup into the trash and eyes me one last time over her shoulder while she slithers back up with her friends.

The whistle could not have come at a more perfect moment.

I was done.

Life is a series of choices. My mom is always talking about free will, and how we are like marbles, rolling around through life, our paths constantly shifting based on whatever choices we make. Funny, though—no matter how many times I choose to leave my old life behind, it still manages to find me.

I shouldn’t be listening. I should just walk out of the locker room, slamming the door behind me to let them know how close they were to getting caught. But my weaker side forces me to hold my breath, not to zip my bag closed completely, and to lift my feet from the bench and make myself small so I can capture every single cruel word coming from their lips.

“I heard she slept with her coach,” one of the girls says, her whisper not really much of a whisper at all.

“No, it wasn’t her coach,” another girl says. It sounds like the girl I spoke to, Tabitha’s cousin. “It was a teacher. She’s a total homewrecker. The guy was married.”

“Oh my god, do you think that’s why she’s out here now? Would coach really put her on the team just because she slept with him?” the first girl says.

“Probably. I mean, Coach P. is lonely,” Tabitha’s cousin says, and the sound of her locker shutting follows, blended with arrogance and laughter.

My vision is clouding, but it isn’t from the MS—it’s from the sting of tears I’m fighting desperately to keep from falling. It’s been months since I’ve heard the whispers. My father made sure that the whispering back home stopped. It’s amazing what a well-written letter from one of California’s top law firms can do to gossip. But that letter seems only to have power back home—there are new rules here.

“What a bitch! I mean who does that, sleeps with someone’s husband? That’s low. She must have no self-respect,” the voice says.

Of everything said, this is the one statement that hits the hardest. Yes, there are times when I have had no self-respect. But I have a shitload now. And if you’re going to shame me, sum me up with a few rumored whispers swapped in a steamy locker room, then you might as well get the chance to say it to my face.

I zip my bag and stand on the bench on the other side of the lockers, making enough noise to make the other girls nervous. They can see the top of my head as I walk along the bench. I jump from the seat with enough force to cause my shoes to slap the concrete hard, the sound echoing. By the time I round the corner to face them, my chest is full of swagger.

“Oh,
hi
, ladies. I didn’t know you were still here,” I say, my smile caught somewhere between the words
fuck off
and
bitches.
“Since you are, I thought I’d take this time to maybe clear a few things up.”

Their eyes are wide and their hands are limp at their sides—even the beautiful, confident one who started all this in the first place. This vision is priceless, and it makes the pulsating sick feeling in my stomach completely worth it.

“Yes,” I say, my lips falling into a comfortable smile, my mouth closed tightly while I wait for one of them to take my bait. The skinny blonde on the end does me the favor.

“Yes, what?” she says, flipping her hair over her shoulder while her eyes roam up and down my body as if she can size me up—everything about me—with this one look.

“Yes, I slept with my coach in high school. And
yes
, I slept with my teacher. Slept with the principal at our school, too. I get around—collect other girls’ husbands and boyfriends. I don’t know why they always fall for me…” I keep up the false, flippant voice as I talk. “Maybe their women just can’t keep them satisfied. I’m so good that after a man sleeps with me, he gives me anything I want. You like being first team?”

When I say this, I turn my head to the girl with jet-black hair, because she’s the one I want to hurt the most.

“What? No response for me? Are you afraid I’ll spread my legs and fuck my way into your position? I mean, why wouldn’t I, right? It’s what I do. I don’t earn anything myself. Those sprint times that are better than yours, my California scoring records, the goddamned trophy I hoisted up on my shoulders when our team won state—all lies. It’s really about the blowjobs I give behind closed doors—to recruiters, to whomever I need to, so I can get ahead. Because, yeah…that makes
way
more sense than the idea that maybe I’m just really fucking good, and maybe I could help your team win nationals, and maybe…just maybe…my skills are threatening to you,” I snap my head to the third girl, sitting in the back, her breath held this entire time. “Or you.” I revel a little inside when she makes a chirping noise, scooting back in fear. She’s afraid of me. Good.

“I underestimated you girls. You’re too smart for me. Guess I’ll just have to earn my way into the captain’s job by showing your
asses
up out on the field instead of fucking some fifty-year-old married man off campus. Damn, this way is going to be so much harder. Why’d you have to ruin my plan?”

I have left them speechless, each of their mouths opened, but unable to breathe. A year ago, I would have waited for them to leave, would have run home and cried in my closet, my whimpers muffled by my giant teddy bear, and then I would have fixed it all by putting out to some boy who didn’t love me, but who I could pretend did—at least for the night.

That was the old Cass. This Cass? She loves herself, or at least she’s working on it. She is more than her MS. And she has a boyfriend—who isn’t married, and isn’t her teacher, or just using her for a few hours and bragging rights.

And these bitches have just lost their starting positions on the team, because tomorrow I am going to humiliate them on that field. I don’t care if it kills me.

I slide away from them in my socks and sandals, my gear slung in my bag over my shoulder. I pop my gum once because my hands are both too full to give them the finger.

“See you ladies tomorrow. Hope you’re ready for me.” I bite down once and force a final smile before I turn and let the door slam behind me.

My chest is thumping wildly with adrenaline. This is the first time…perhaps ever…that I have stood my ground, stuck up for myself, squashed rumors before they got out of control. I feel like I could run a hundred more sprints, or climb a mountain. By the time I get to Ty, who is still waiting for me at the front of the field gate, I leap onto his lap and kiss him—completely forgetting all of the doubt that’s been keeping me awake the last two nights.

I’m amazing, and Ty is lucky to have me. And for a few moments, I honestly believe that’s true.