Crushed (8 page)

“
How are things with Ethan
?” Reece asked. His expre
ssion was completely blank.
She
had no idea if he was asking because he was actually wondering…Well
, not wondering, exactly. Just…
she
didn’t know what.
“Well, how is he?” he demanded. He sounded
irritated this time when
she
took too long trying to decipher his original question.

She
shrugged. “G
ood.
He’s good.
” It was a perfectly neutral ans
wer. “How’s Mia?”
Ugh
,
she
had not wanted to ask t
ha
t. It had just popped right out. She
wondered if that’s
what had happened wi
th Reece. She
was pretty damn sure he did not actually care how Ethan was.

He smirked
and her stomach worked itself into that
painful knot
again
. “Mia’s awesome.”

Reece
had called her
every day over the
first week of break. She
didn’t blame him
.
She
also ha
dn’t answer
ed
a single one of those calls. She
would’ve done the same thing
—
called
, that is
. He wanted an
explanation. A
better one than
she
had given him.
She
didn
’t have a better one. Not that she
could share, anyway.

She couldn’t even remember what she
had said to him that day. Word
s just started falling out of her mouth and she
’d just gone with it. Trying to
say what needed saying while her
head and heart were rebelling.

But now, Reece looked pretty happy with Mia
. At least it looked that way
to her when she’d
had the misfortune of turning a corner just in time to see them locked up in a kiss
before the bell rang
. A
s much as
she
hated it, it was for the best. It
was safer that way; safer for
her
resolve if he was unavailable.

“You make a really cute couple.” The lie
tumbled
out of
her
mouth before
she
could stop it.
Reece
looked at
her
like
she
had
ju
st thrown ice water in his face
. Then his jaw clenched and his head swiveled to the front of the room.

***

Was that supposed to be a
compliment?
Reece wondered.
If it was?
He thought i
t
felt kind of cruel.

But then
he
glanced over
.
Cleo
was
looking down at her
notebook. Biting her lip. And
he
thought maybe she was lying. Maybe.

He
hated the sight of
her so uncomfortable next to
him. He knew it shouldn’t be that way. He
should be whispering things in her ear right now. Things that w
o
uld make her blush and smack him across the chest as she
was biting back a smile
. L
ik
e
last year in Chemistry when they
sat at a table, side by side, instead of desks. Or in Geometry when she would blow
on
his
neck and
then whisper
in
his
ear
. B
e
c
ause she was directly behind him, there was nothing he
could do to retaliate no matter how…intense things got. That’s how it should’ve been.
Not this…tension.

“I forgot the handouts in the teacher
s
’
lounge,” Mr. Jessen announced as he slapped
his thigh. “Fee
l free to discuss what you’
re hoping to get out of this class. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

He left and the classroom erupted in conversation.
Reece
took advantage of the background noise
. A
nd
of
being close to Cleo for the first ti
me since she had walked away from him
last spring.
He
did realize it probably wasn’t the ideal time or place
. B
ut it was the only chance
he
’d had to make her talk. The only time in three months and
he
was done waiting.

Memories of
then
and thoughts of how things
should be now
were colliding in his
brain when she finally looked over at
him and caught him
staring.

“Are you ever going to tell me why you
really
broke up with me?”

“Reece,” she said his
name
quietly as her eyes darted
over
his
face. “This really isn’t a good time.”

“Really? Because it also wasn’t a good time when I wanted to talk right after the
fact. Or the dozens of times I tried to call you. Or—”

“I told you already,” she said as her face paled. “I thought we should see other
people.”

“There has to be more to it than that,”
he
insisted. “For it to be so out of the blue like it was.”

She shook her head but
she wasn’t really looking at
him
. H
er gaze seemed to be far away.
“Maybe it wasn’t out of the blue. Maybe I’d been thinking about it for a while
. A
nd just didn’t have the guts to do it until the day before summer vacation.”

He
was silent for a minute because that explanation really hadn’t occurred to
him
. That she’d been unhappy with
him
for a long time. But Cleo was an expert at hiding
her feelings
so maybe…yeah…maybe that made sense. It really sucked to realize
that
maybe
he ha
d been an idiot for…what? Weeks?
Months
? But it made sense.

“What else were you keeping from me? Were you already seeing Ethan?”
His
heart slammed around and
his
body zinged—
maybe from fear
of her answer
?—when he
managed to force those words out.
He ha
d
wondered because that, too, had come
from nowhere. But if she was feeling lik
e she needed to break up with him
for a while, that would help explain why.

“I know I didn’t handle it the best,” she began.
Reece
let out an irritated sound and
made a face that let her know he
agreed. “But no, I was not already seeing Ethan. I wouldn’t do that
to you,” she said as she gave him a
miserable
look.

He
w
asn’t sure if she was
miserable because
he had
asked th
e
question
,
or just
miserable because
she was being forced to deal with him
.

He
wasn’t even so sure that
he
believed her
. B
ecause there was a
whole
lot he
didn’t think she’d do to him. Reach inside of his chest and twist out his
heart, for one thing.

Her eyes actually softened a
s she noted the expression on his face. He wasn’t real sure what expression he wore
because he
was too dumbfounded to really give it much thought.

“Look,” sh
e said as she put her hand on his
wrist.
Her
thumb made circles on his skin. His
fingers twitched,
wanting to take her hand in his. He
fought it. She sighed and leaned
toward him
.
“This was a good thing. You’ve been with
Mia
all summer. T
hings
must be going well.”

She gave him a small smile and nodded at him like she was encouraging him to agree.
She squeezed his
wrist before pulling her
hand away. Even after she did, he
could still feel her touch.

Pathetic, he
kne
w.

“Yeah, things with
Mia
are great,”
he
lied, giving her the answer she seemed to want.

She held her smile and blinked a few too many times. “See. It
was
for the best. Now you can go to parties, football games, just…
out
. ”

“What do you mean by that?”
he asked, disgusted by the pitch to his voice.

“You’re not stuck at my house with me and Luci. You can actually do things.
Normal
things people our age should be doing. Not sitting around my house doing dinner dishes
and babysitting. You should be
relieved
.”

“Don’t tell me how I should feel,”
he
fumed. “You have no idea how I feel!”

He
couldn’t blame Cleo for not wanting to leave Luci alone. She did sometimes but Luci
was only eleven. Cleo never left her home alone after dark. After their mom died in
that house, Cleo wasn’t the only one that had an aversion to staying there
alone.
Paul was gone more often than he was
home. When Paul was home,
they
ha
d go
ne
out. A lot of times he or Luci would end up calling to ask
them
—or at least Cleo—to come back.
Or sometimes Cleo would insist Reece
go to things without her so
he
would.

It took a moment for her comment to wedge itself into his brain.
“So you think you were doing me a
favor
by dumping me?”
he
grated out in disbelief.

“Yes,” she said as she crossed her arms tightly
over
her chest.

“Well that’s the
suckiest
thing anyone has ever done for me!”

She opened her mouth to argue but
he
cut her off. “I
never
complained about spending
time with Luci!”
he
reminded her.
His
voice
was
full of frustration.

“I know you didn’t but it shouldn’t have had to be that way!” she said back, just
as frustrated.

“I didn’t mind. Not at all,”
he
said forcefully. Sure, there were times that
he had wished they
cou
ld just go out. Lots of times. He
knew
that
Cleo felt the same but she was in a crappy situation t
hat was out of her control. So he had thought they’d
just made the best of it. Luci was always in bed by nine
.  T
hen they
’d
have the house to them
selves
so it wasn’t all bad. In fact, he
kind of liked the trade off.

“Reece, sweetie, you had to have been bored!” she insisted. “We were like an old married
couple
sitting at home
all the time!”

“
Since when did you become anti-marriage?
”
he
sarcastically wondered.

“Reece—”

“Did I ever even know you at all?” His voice had become hard and accusatory. “Because
I’m starting to think I didn’t.” He realized belatedly how much his volume had
ratcheted
up.

Mr. Jessen shot back into the room at that moment
. H
e stopped so abruptly that the thick black soles of his old man shoes squealed across
the tile. He looked around, which caused
Reece
to look around. The whole class was staring
at him
and Cleo like they’d just had a front row seat to their favorite reality show.