Offside (22 page)

Ah, yes…I had a pretty good idea who would need such a loan, too.

“That’s a good one.”

“He’s also on heart medication—sounds like he had a mild heart attack last winter.”

“Okay—anything else?”

“That’s all I got for now. I’ll see what else I can find.”

“Good deal.”

I hung up and turned back around, searching. No time like the present.

“Hey, Crystal!” I yelled. She was walking back toward the school with Heather and Lisa. Mika and Jeremy were still near the stands, watching them walk away. “Get over here!”

She turned her head toward the other girls, who snickered, then tossed her hair over her shoulder and walked toward me.

“Ready to see some reason, Thomas?” she said with a sly little smile.

“Funny,” I replied with a hint of sarcasm, “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“It’s not my fault if she can’t handle the truth.” The snarky little bitch bobbed her head at me as she raised her eyebrows, challenging.

She was going to regret all of this.

“Come over here,” I said softly, and I took her arm and led her over to the side of the building and out of sight of anyone else wandering around. I leaned my head close to her and spoke sternly. “Let’s get something perfectly straight between us, and I am by no means talking about my cock. You aren’t coming near that.”

She snorted, and I gripped her arm a little harder.

“Ow!”

“Shut up.”

“What the fuck, Thomas?” she snapped at me. “Are you going to shove me in a locker, too?”

“No, I have much more interesting plans for you,” I informed her.

“You aren’t going to hit me,” she said with conviction. She narrowed her eyes at me. “You can’t do anything to me!”

I leaned into her, pushing her body back against the brick building. I tilted my head and placed my mouth right up to her cheek.

“You know what would be a damn shame?” I purred against the edge of her ear. “If your dad’s credit report ended up with a bankruptcy on it—and some really bad credit card debt to boot. I bet he’d have a hard time trying to pay for your college then, wouldn’t he?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Crystal pushed against the bricks, twisting her body and trying to get a little distance, but I wasn’t going to have any of that. She glared at me.

“I mean with one phone call and about ten minutes, I can fuck up your dad’s credit score so bad, he’ll never get the loan he wants. Never. It won’t ever go away, because even if he gets it cleared up as a mistake, which wouldn’t be until you’re twenty, I’ll just fuck it up again. You hear me? That little ‘get out of the small town’ dream of yours would be dead on arrival.”

Her face went a little pale.

“Not to mention how much it would suck if the pharmacist screwed up his heart pills.”

“What the hell?” she said in a breathless whisper.

“Don’t fuck with me, Lloyd,” I warned. “Consider yourself relegated – you no longer play in this league. If you try, you’ll lose, big time. And by don’t fuck with me, I mean don’t fuck with my girl. You stay the hell away from her because if she hears one more thing from your mouth—directly or indirectly—I’ll fucking destroy your family. Got it?”

Her body tensed, and she nodded. I released her arm and gave her a little push back toward the school entrance.

“Get the fuck away from me!” My nostrils flared as I glared at her.

She didn’t need to be told twice. I retrieved my bag and continued on my way.

Nicole had calmed down a little by the time I got back to the car. She was sitting with her feet up on the seat again, and I tried not to cringe. I remembered what her locker looked like and decided I was going to have to do something about it. I settled into the driver’s seat and turned the car on before I looked toward her.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Not really,” she replied. She stared out the window.

“What did she say?”

“I really don’t want to repeat it.”

“You said you would,” I reminded her.

“I didn’t agree to anything,” she snapped as she turned her head to look at me. “Besides, even your own conditions included you telling me what you were going to do. You go first.”

“Fine,” I said, grateful for the out. “Forget it, then. She won’t say anything else to you.”

I backed up and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. I still kept my speed at twenty-four miles per hour, crawling along and enjoying just being in the car with her. Nicole leaned her head back against the seat and sighed.

“You know, it’s bad enough just coming to a new school during your senior year,” she said. “Now I have to deal with all this shit, too? Seriously, Thomas—I don’t know if I can handle all of this.”

She held her hands over her face again, which I really, really hated. Aside from not being able to see her face—which I quite liked to look at—she was obviously upset, and I didn’t know what to do about it. She had taken care of me when I was a mess, but I didn’t know how to return the favor. All I could cook was mac and cheese. So I did the only thing I could think of, which was to try to convince her I would take care of it without actually giving her any details. I didn’t think she would care for the details.

“I’m going to work something out, okay?” I said, trying to reassure her. “Please, just let me work it out. It’s going to be okay, and you don’t have to worry about it. Tomorrow will be a thousand times better. I just didn’t know what to expect today, and I didn’t prepare so well. I’m fixing that now.”

At least she didn’t argue.

Nicole stayed silent the rest of the way to her house. I pulled up into her driveway and had a nice mental debate about whether or not I should turn off the car and walk her to her door, plan to stay awhile, or just leave her alone. I didn’t want to leave her, but I also hadn’t checked Dad’s schedule for this week.

For the chance to spend more time with her, I was willing to risk Dad’s beating me home. I turned off the car and came around to her side, but she had already opened the door and was starting to get out.

“I thought I was going to open your door for you,” I reminded her.

“We’re not at school, Thomas,” Nicole said. “There isn’t any reason to pretend here.”

I nodded, but I didn’t like it. I wanted to open her door for her even if there wasn’t anyone looking. I wanted to take care of her. I came up with an excuse instead.

“It’s good to stay in practice,” I said, hoping she would believe me. I had to move quickly to follow her up to the front door. “You know, so we don’t forget when there are other people around? This won’t work if it’s not convincing.”

“I think everyone is convinced,” Nicole said dryly.

“For now,” I said, but my mind was starting to spin a little bit with the other sorts of things people were going to expect. I mean, I would expect to end up with at least the threat of detention for PDA or something, not an actual detention—which no teacher in his or her right mind would give me—but at least the warning. The whole idea reminded me that I never did hear what Crystal’s exact transgression was.

“What did she say to you?” I asked.

Nicole didn’t respond for some time and then finally let out a long sigh.

“Are you going to tell me what you said to her?” Nicole asked.

“That conversation is not on my bucket list,” I admitted.

At least that got a bit of a snicker out of her.

“Let’s just leave it like that, okay?” she suggested.

“If you want,” I replied. I wasn’t really worried about it; I could always find out from someone else.

My pocket meowed.

“What the hell is that?”

“My new ringtone,” I said with a shrug. I checked the screen and saw a text from Jeremy but decided to ignore it for now.

“I’m going to finish my homework and get dinner ready,” Nicole said. She opened the front door and then turned to face me. “Thanks for driving me. See you tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, of course,” I said. I had kind of hoped she would ask me to stay, but I reminded myself that this was all pretend. There wasn’t anyone watching her now, so there was no reason for her to be around me. The façade could continue again tomorrow.

The phone meowed again, and I pulled up the message app.

Took care of the girls—Jeremy

Good I don’t want any more shit from them

I shoved the phone into my pocket, not feeling any better about any of it. My stomach felt like it was turning to stone as I walked back to my car by myself, started the engine, and headed for my house. All the way there, I tried to figure out why it was getting me down. Even after fucking girls, I never felt bad about leaving them in the dust afterwards, and I had hardly touched Nicole.

I kind of wanted to, though. Maybe that was the problem.

Dad had beaten me home, so I mentally prepared myself as I approached the house.

“Why are you fucking with Harry Lloyd?” Dad asked as soon as I walked in the door.

I had to play this cool, so I just shrugged.

“His daughter is being a bitch, and I’m sick of it,” I told him. “I needed something to shut her up. I’m pretty sure just the threat was enough.”

“Make sure you talk to me before you actually do anything,” Dad said. “I need some shit from him, and I don’t want you fucking him over until I get it.”

“No problem.”

I put my soccer stuff away and started digging around for dinner. Dad sat at the counter in the kitchen and watched me.

“Got any homework?”

Yeah…not falling for that one.

“Well, I have to pick up Nicole Skye on the way to school tomorrow so I can sign my name,” I said with a smirk. “Does that count?”

He laughed.

“Nice job.” He opened up his phone and started scrolling through the screen. “How was practice?”

“Good,” I said. “Cut a little short, but we’ll make it up before Friday’s game.”

“Hmm.” He obviously wasn’t really paying attention, so I got myself some food, finished it up, and headed up to my room without further conversation. Once I was up there, I locked the door and decided to quickly finish my homework. I was obviously going to have to make sure he didn’t catch me doing it, or there would be hell to pay.

As soon as I turned my eyes toward the room, I knew he had been in here.

There was a CD sticking out a little, and it definitely hadn’t been when I left. My pillow wasn’t straight on the bed, and the drawer to my nightstand was open just a tiny bit. My skin felt cold. Dad had obviously been in here, looking around—looking for
something
. What? What could he be looking to find? What did he suspect?

I went over to the nightstand and knelt down near the stack of
Goal
magazines. The one on the top was two months old. They were out of order, and they weren’t stacked up as high as they were before. I picked them up, started sorting them again, and discovered quickly what was wrong.

My sketchbook was gone.

I closed my eyes and tried to keep my breathing slow and steady. It didn’t work, though. I could feel the tension in my muscles and the quickening of my pulse throughout my body. My fingers were trembling, and I had to set the magazines down on the floor. I couldn’t stand that, though, so I quickly sorted them again and stacked them back on the nightstand shelf.

Maybe he only moved it.

I quickly scrutinized the room, looking for other changes. It was getting harder and harder to take a deep breath, and my chest hurt.

The bookshelf—I straightened out the six books that weren’t parallel anymore.

My dresser—two of the soccer trophies on it weren’t level with the others.

The leather couch up against the window—it was sticking out a little farther, and I could see the slight dent in the carpet from the legs. I moved it back into place.

What else? What else?

I couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t supposed to come in here, and he wasn’t supposed to touch anything. Everything was wrong now, and I just couldn’t handle the disorder. Nothing was right. Nothing.
Nothing.

I needed my sketchbook back.

I opened the door and headed back down the stairs, trying desperately to keep my calm. I couldn’t ask him for it—there was no way—so I just had to find it.

I failed.

There wasn’t any sign of it in any of the trashcans—inside the house or outside.

I went back to my room, but I couldn’t stand to be in there. It was just wrong now. There were too many things to fix. I moved the clock back into its position on top of the nightstand, noting that it was nearly ten-thirty. I didn’t realize so much time had passed.

What else was wrong? What else was missing or out of place?

I glanced around the room. I couldn’t focus. I needed to go to bed, but I wasn’t going to be able to sleep here. No fucking way.