Just You

By Rebecca Phillips

Just You

By Rebecca Phillips

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Rebecca Phillips

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form without written permission from the author,
except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review
purposes.

The characters and events portrayed
in this book are fictitious. Any similarities to real people,
living or dead, are coincidental and not intended by the
author.

Cover Image: Copyright 2010
feferoni

Used under license from
depositphotos.com

Cover Design by Jason Phillips and
Shannon Steele

Chapter
1

When Ashley called me that Sunday evening
three weeks after school started to give me the news, I probably
should have been angry, or at least surprised. But all I felt,
really, was tired.

“Oh,” I said flatly.

“
Oh
?” Her screech reminded me of the
sound our neighbor’s old Corvette made every morning at 5 a.m.,
when he hit the gas a little too hard in his rush to make it to
work on time. “I tell you your boyfriend was seen with his tongue
down Kara Neilson’s throat and all you can say is ‘
Oh’
?”

“What would you like me to say, Ash?”

“Taylor,” she said in the tone she used
whenever I was being unreasonable. Which, according to her, was way
too often these days. “This isn’t just another silly rumor, if
that’s what you’re thinking. I have it on good authority. Heather
does not lie. She and Lindsay
both
saw them kissing on the
library steps this afternoon. In front of the whole
street
.
I mean, he obviously wanted you to find out.”

I wasn’t sure what she expected from me.
Ashley was my oldest friend—we went way back to preschool—and she
knew what made me tick, knew my various idiosyncrasies and accepted
them as such. But my indifference to this monumental piece of
information obviously had her stumped.

“Kara has always been after him,” I reminded
her.

“Well, yeah,” Ashley said, as if this were
the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was, I guess.
Everyone knew Kara liked Brian. Especially Brian. “And now she
finally caught him, and you don’t even seem to care. How can you,
of all people, be so calm about your boyfriend
cheating
on
you?”

“I do care,” I said. And I did, a little. It
bothered me that Kara Neilson would be bold enough to break the
Universal Girl Rule—stay away from other girls’ boyfriends. It also
bothered me that Brian finally fell for it. But it didn’t surprise
me. Just like I hadn’t been surprised when I got my first period,
or my first zit, or my first broken heart. All inevitable events in
life, sure things, and sure things didn’t exactly count as
surprises. And Brian cheating on me had been a sure thing.

“It seems like, I don’t know…you expected it
or something,” Ashley said. She’d always been good at seeing
through my bullshit.

“Can you blame me?”

“Oh, Taylor,” she said, as if my cynicism
made her sad. “What are you gonna do?”

“What
can
I do?”

“Break up with him, of course.”

A patch of clouds passed over the sun,
cloaking my room in shadows. I reached over to flick on my lamp and
then squinted as my room and all my familiar possessions came
sharply into focus. In the corner, next to my bookshelf, stood the
ratty old corduroy chair I’d acquired a few years ago when my
mother bought all new living room furniture. The chair, as usual,
was bogged down with dirty clothes, CDs, and school books.
Currently, it also served as a resting place for something else—the
stuffed swan Brian had given me for our two-month “anniversary”
last month. My eyes zeroed in on it.

Years ago, when I was seven or eight, I’d
been fascinated with swans. My father would take me to Crawford
Park so I could see the mute swan that lived in one of the ponds
there. I’d lean over the railing and watch it swim, back and forth
and back again, for as long as Dad would let me. I even had a name
for it: Millie. Brian knew all this, which was why he’d forsaken
the traditional teddy bears and puppies in exchange for a keepsake
that would actually mean something to me.

Now, as I looked at that stuffed swan, its
fluffy white body half-covered by a pair of dirty jeans and an old
math test, I recalled something I had read way back in my
swan-obsession phase. And the irony of it almost made me laugh out
loud.

Swans, I had learned, mated for life.

“Well,” I said, shifting my attention back
to Ashley, “he’s already broken up with
me
, wouldn’t you
say?”

Ashley was quiet for a moment, contemplating
this. I could almost see her twirling a lock of her shoulder-length
brown hair around her finger, like she did when she was thinking
hard. “I’m sorry, Taylor.” Her tone oozed warmth and support, like
a verbal hug. A hug I didn’t even need. “Men are scum.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.”

Men are scum
. This, I already knew.
And much like the mating habits of swans, it was something I had
learned at a very young age. The only difference was, everything I
knew about swans had come from books and all those hours studying
them at the park with my dad. But everything I knew about men and
boys had come directly from my mother.

****

After successfully avoiding him for most of
the week at school, Brian managed to corner me on Thursday
afternoon as I scurried toward the less-traveled exit I’d been
using all week.

“We need to talk,” he said, appearing at the
bottom of the stairs like an apparition.

“No, we don’t.” I descended the stairs and
tried to brush past him, but he clutched my forearm, stopping
me.

“Yes,” he said, “we do.”

I shook free from his grasp. “No. We really
don’t.”

“Come on, Taylor. Let me explain.
Please.”

I stopped at the door and then slowly
swiveled, leveling my eyes with his. He returned my gaze for a few
seconds before lowering his head in shame. The last time I’d seen
him look like that, we were ten and he’d just gotten in trouble
with Mrs. Kramer, our fifth grade teacher, for throwing Silly Putty
in my hair. It was a joke, of course, but I wasn’t laughing as I
stood at the washroom sink for a half hour, scraping slimy goo from
my long, thick locks. Brian had felt remorseful then too, only to
trick me again two weeks later by sneaking an extremely lifelike
rubber spider into my lunch bag, causing me to shriek so loud that
the girl next to me spilled an entire Thermos of soup into her lap
in surprise. He’d had the same hang-dog look after that one too.
He’d never been one to think about consequences.

I’d known Brian about as long as I’d known
Ashley—we’d gone to school together our whole lives—but it wasn’t
until the end of ninth grade that we’d shown any interest in each
other beyond friendship and collective memories. It started this
past June when my friend Erin started going out with his friend
Mitchell. In our crowd, dates usually took place in a group
setting, so Brian and I were thrown together a lot. Everyone
thought we were dating even though we weren’t, and then all of a
sudden we really were. I liked him, but it was awkward a lot of the
time. This was
Brian
, the kid I’d witnessed blowing
spitballs through a straw at lunchtime and participating in burping
contests with his equally gross friends. Not someone I really
wanted to kiss. He was still a
boy
to me. But all my other
friends were getting boyfriends and dating, so I figured what the
hell and kissed him one night in Erin’s family room during a
particularly dull movie. That I kissed him purely out of boredom
should have been my first clue.

Now here we were, three months later, at a
stand-off in a school stairwell, and I knew our relationship
and
our lifelong friendship were both about to come to a
very abrupt end.

“About Kara,” Brian said, hitching his
backpack up on his shoulder. “I’m sorry you found out that
way.”

“Sure.”

“I was going to tell you—.”

I held up a hand to stop him. “Save it. It
doesn’t matter.”

“That’s just it,” he said, his words
exploding into the tiny space. Two girls who were standing at the
top of the stairs leaned over the railing to stare at us. Brian
took my elbow and led me through the doors to an empty corridor,
stopping near a recycling bin. “That’s just it,” he repeated,
quieter this time. “It doesn’t matter to you.
I
don’t matter
to you.”

“What makes you say that?” I honestly wanted
to know. What was it about me that made me such a bad
girlfriend?

Brian sighed, as if he didn’t have the time
or the patience to list reasons for me. “When we were just friends,
everything was fine between us. But the second we started dating,
it was like you didn’t give a shit anymore. You were never into it,
not like I was. I thought maybe you regretted getting involved with
me and didn’t want to admit it, but it was more than that. Remember
the end-of-summer bonfire?”

I cringed, knowing where he was going with
this.

“I told you I loved you, and you said
nothing.”

“I know,” I said, remembering that night.
We’d been sitting together, the two of us, on the edge of a rickety
old wharf. We started making out, and Brian had gotten caught up in
the moment and whispered it in my ear. But instead of saying “I
love you too”, like most sane people would have done, I said
nothing. Because I didn’t. Love him, I mean. Not like that. In the
awkward silence that followed his declaration, he’d made some
excuse and then we got up and left. And we hadn’t talked about it
since. Until today.

“With Kara,” Brian said, his expression
softening now, “I know how she feels about me. I know where I
stand. With you I never did.”

Did
. Past tense. I tilted my head
back to look at him. Brian, the kid I’d known since our swing set
days, all grown-up now with facial hair and broad shoulders and a
deep, manly voice. When we were twelve, I’d towered over him. Now
he towered over me.

I gave a lighthearted shrug. “It’s good
you’re moving on to better things, Brian. I’m sorry you wasted
three months of your life with me.”

“That’s now how I feel. At all. It’s just
really hard to get close to someone who’s scared to death to show
any emotion, you know? I understand why you’re all jaded or
whatever but God, not everyone is out to screw you over.”

“You were, obviously,” I said, and then
watched his face turn a pleasing shade of pink.

“Taylor…”

I backed up, away from him. “It’s okay. It’s
better this way. We never should have started going out in the
first place. It was a mistake.”

“I’m sorry for not being straight with you
from the beginning,” he said, giving me his hang-dog face again.
“And for being such a coward.”

I shrugged again, my way of covering up the
sting of rejection. There were many things I could’ve said to him
then, like how disappointed I felt—in him for turning out just like
I expected he would, and in myself for letting my guard down, even
for a second.

But I didn’t say any of this to Brian.
Instead, I said the only words I could squeeze past my throat at
the moment: “I’m sorry too.”

Leaving it at that, I turned and bolted for
the exit. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Chapter 2

By the time I arrived at my dad’s house on
Friday evening for a weekend visit, I’d gone from being pissed at
one person to feeling mad at the world. My exchange with Brian the
previous afternoon still weighed on me, and to make matters worse,
my little sister Emma had taken the last frozen waffle at
breakfast. My day just kept rolling downhill from there.

“How was your week, sweet pea?” my father
asked when I found him in the kitchen.

“Fine,” I said, giving him a tight
smile.

“It’s just you and me and the kids tonight.”
He returned to the counter, where he’d been busy shelling
pistachios. Leo, my stepbrother Jamie’s golden retriever, let out a
whimper from the gated laundry room, where he was sent whenever he
got on people’s nerves. “No, I didn’t forget you,” Dad told Leo,
who then put his front paws on the top of the gate and let out a
bark.