Summer Apart (4 page)

Work is hell the next day. It’s a Saturday, which is always our busiest day but on top that, not five minutes after I arrive, I remember that we have four birthday parties scheduled for today. Lawson is a pretty boring town and there isn’t much to do around here, so of course the indoor BMX track where I work is the number one choice for most kids.

Each party lasts two hours and I’m the one who has to set up the party room with whatever decorations the parents have selected, and then I serve ice cream and cake and put on my happy face for the kids. One party is bad enough but today I have to endure four of them? What could I have possibly done to deserve this?

Yeah, I’d rather not answer that question.

My boss Ollie brings me a donut and a coffee when he comes back from his morning trip to the bank and donut shop to get breakfast. I frown at the glazed donut in his hand. “I know, I know,” he says, shoving the donut at me. “They were all out of donut holes, dear. I’m sorry.”

I stare at the pastry in disgust and then take a big bite out of it anyway. “It figures that they’d be out of donut holes today,” I mumble through a mouthful of food.

Ollie removes his black framed glasses and cleans them on the hem of his t-shirt. “Why’s that?”

I shrug and take another bite. “Because today is a bad luck day for me. There’s four birthday parties. Four!”

“Oh come on, you love birthday parties.”

“No, I don’t. I complain about them every weekend.”

Ollie logs into the computer at the front desk and checks the schedule. “I know, but if I keep saying it, maybe you’ll start to believe it.”

I roll my eyes and finish my donut, saving my coffee for last. Now that Braedon doesn’t work here anymore, I’ve taken over the front counter, making it my own. With Ollie’s permission, I’ve allowed local bands to tape up fliers of upcoming gigs on the front part of the counter. On the wall near the entryway is now a photo board where people are free to post BMX related pictures. I rest my elbows on the counter and stare at the photo wall.

Memories flood into my mind. My brain tries to shut them down but they won’t stop, and soon I’m thinking back to the day I first showed Park the new photo wall. There were only about ten pictures taped on it, but all of the regular riders had liked the idea and promised that they’d bring in photos.

“I like this one,” I had said, pointing to a photo of a guy named Max who would stop by the track every few months. He was lightning fast on a bike and he could dive into the half pipe and soar at least twice as high as even the most advanced regular riders. This photo was one I had taken of him last summer, while he was upside down and in mid-air on the half pipe. It’s almost as if he knew I was taking the picture because he looked right at the camera.

Instead of admiring the photo, Park had said, “So it’s like social media but in real life and not on a computer.” He made a thumbs up sign with his hand and punched it to the photo. In a robot voice, he said, “I like this. Becca likes it, too. Two people like this photo.”

“Oh my god, you are so stupid,” I said. What he did next is the reason the memory is so clear in my mind. He took my hand and spun me around until my back was pressed against the photo wall. Then, so quickly I didn’t have time to object even though we were in a public place and I was technically on the clock, Park pressed his lips into mine, wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close to his chest, kissing me harder than he ever had.

When he kiss ended, he left me dizzy and desperate for more. His forehead leaned down and touched mine. “I’m going to miss you like crazy when I leave,” he had whispered.

At that moment, the sliding glass doors burst open for two new customers and Park and I scattered away from each other to avoid making me look unprofessional at work. The new arrivals were two older guys who had never visited C&C BMX Park before, so I had to endure the grueling task of signing up a new member and then listing all of the rules and showing them around the place. All while my body ached for more of Park and my skin tingled where he had grasped me.

It was hell.

I swallow and pull my gaze away from the photo wall. That picture of Max is still there, surrounded by dozens of new additions. The photo wall has morphed into a massive mural of various personal BMX achievements and people always love looking at it and adding more to it. But right now, the memory of Park is the last freaking thing I need when I have to face a full day of work ahead of me.

My fists clench together and I think seriously about stalking over to that stupid wall and tearing down every single photo on it. Then, for good measure, I could knock the damn wall down and let it be an open hole to the outside, where nothing remains to remind me of Park.

Of course, then I’d just remember that the massive hole in the wall was created because of my heartache over Park so that would never work. Also, my boss would murder me if I destroyed the building. So it looks like I’ll have to deal with my heartache the old fashioned way—by shoving it deep down into the depths of my heart and pretending it doesn’t exist.

I punch out of work at nine and even though most of the down is dead by now, I’m still wide awake. Something about having a heart that won’t stop aching for someone you know who can’t date, will do that to you. Yeah, trust me I know it’s pathetic to pine after Park so much but I just can’t help it. He was so perfect in every possible way except one – his address.

And, well, his self-proclaimed reputation for being a player. But that’s a part of Park I like to pretend doesn’t exist. I glance at my reflection in the rear-view mirror of my car and I’m all day-old makeup and messy pony tail and it’s gross, it truly is. I am nothing like the blonde girl in a tight dress and the sad thing is that I never will be. I’m just Becca, a small-town girl from Texas, who made the fatal mistake of falling for a Californian celebrity.

Really, the fault is all mine.

I call Bayleigh from the parking lot and put the car in drive before she answers. When she picks up the phone and sounds cheerful, I know I haven’t woken her up. Not that she would be sleeping at only nine at night, but with a baby, you just never know.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Just watching TV while the boys sleep. Jace played with Jett this morning so I got to sleep in until like, noon so I’m not tired at all.”

“Wow, that’s nice,” I say, pulling onto the highway. Subconsciously, I know I shouldn’t be turning this way. I normally take the back roads to go home. But I keep driving and ask Bayleigh about her son’s diaper problem. “So is Jett still taking off his diaper every chance he gets?”

She groans into the phone. “Oh my God, yes. I have no idea why he does that. I bought him a bigger size thinking maybe they were too small, but it doesn’t matter. He rips them off no matter what.”

I laugh. “He’s a little exhibitionist.”

“Tell me about it.”

We chat a little while and it’s mostly just me telling her about how much work sucked today and how a kid came this freaking close to throwing up cookies and cream ice cream all over me. She laughs when I tell her about my mad dive across the room to avoid getting puke all over me.

“Becca, something’s wrong,” she says, her voice serious.

“What is it?” I ask, still driving on the highway, headed farther away from home with each passing mile marker.

“No, it’s not me. It’s you.”

“Nothing is wrong with me,” I say, probably a little too quickly. I know that on the other end of the phone, Bayleigh is lifting one eyebrow at me, giving me her signature look of disbelief.

“Something is wrong. I can tell it in your voice.”

“No…” I say, unable to think of any kind of legitimate excuse.

“Yes. And I’ll prove it to you.”

Now I’m the one lifting my eyebrow in disbelief. “How exactly will you prove to me that you think something is wrong with me when it so isn’t?”

She snorts into the phone. “For one, you’re still driving. You should have gotten home like ten minutes ago. So where exactly are you headed?”

Eyes wide, I look at the clock on my dashboard. It’s nine-fifteen and I’m driving west on the highway. “Wow,” I murmur. “I guess my brain forgot what it’s doing.”

“Are you headed my way?” Bayleigh asks, but her voice tells me she already knows the answer.

“Looks like it,” I say with a sigh.

“Good,” she says. “Your brain knows exactly what it’s doing. I need my best friend to hang out with me and it looks like you need me, too.”

I smile as I hang up the phone, promising her I’ll see her in an hour. For the first time tonight, I’m not dwelling on Park. Instead, a quote from my bedroom of inspirational words comes back to me, reminding me that I have the best friend in the whole world.

Friends are connected heart to heart. Distance and time can’t break them apart.

It’s a little after ten o’clock when I arrive at Bayleigh’s apartment. The complex is set up to where the residents park up front near their apartment and all visitors have to park way in the back in the creepy dimly-lit visitor spots. I make Bayleigh meet me outside so I won’t be kidnapped.

She laughs when I call her to tell her this. “You’re way too old to be kidnapped, you know.” I hear her voice from across the parking lot as she steps out onto her porch and descends the stairs to meet me. “You’re more likely to get mugged or have someone ask if they can buy drugs from you.”

“You know what I mean,” I say, pressing the lock button on my car keys twice for good measure. “It’s scary out here.”

“How are you ever going to live on your own if you’re too scared of the dark?” she asks as we approach each other in the darkness. We’re still holding our phones to our ears but we’re within talking distance now.

“I guess I’m stuck with my parents forever,” I say, taking the phone away from my ear as Bayleigh crushes me with a hug.

“Don’t say that! You’ll totally move out on your own one day. But it does help if someone else is paying your bills.” She laughs at her own little joke but I know that deep down she’s not very happy with her arrangement. Jace is happy to pay for them but she hates it. She wants to contribute and she always gets annoyed when Jace tells her that taking care of their baby is way harder than Jace’s day job.

“So how’s my godson?” I ask as I follow her back to her apartment. So far, I haven’t seen any drug dealers or people who look like they’d want to kidnap us. That’s probably because Jace and Bayleigh live in a good part of town and I’m just overly paranoid.

“He’s learning to crawl and he’s decided that he wants to eat everything in the world, even if it’s not an actual food.”

“Ew.”

“Tell me about it. Yesterday he grabbed Jace’s dirty ass motocross glove and put it in his mouth! I about killed Jace for leaving it on the counter like that.”

When we reach the top of the stairs that lead to her balcony porch, I stop and hold up my phone. “I’m going to call Mom and let her know I’m hanging out with you,” I say. “You go in, and I’ll talk to her out here.” I’m taking precautions just in case Mom starts yelling at me for driving all the way to Mixon without asking her first. But I am nineteen freaking years old now and Dad has said I don’t need a curfew anymore.

“I wanted to hang outside anyway,” Bayleigh says. “That way we can talk as loud as we want without waking up the boys. Do you mind if I leave the porch light off? It attracts all kinds of bugs if I turn it on.”

“Fine with me,” I say with a shrug. We’re up a flight of stairs so that should give us time to see if a murderer is coming.” I start to call my mom and then Bayleigh puts a hand on my arm.

“You’re staying the night, right?” She asks, lifting an eyebrow in concern. “You can’t just hang out and then go home. I haven’t seen you in years.”

“You haven’t seen me in a few
days
,” I say, emphasizing the last word. “But yeah, I’ll stay. The things I need to talk to you about will take way longer than just tonight.”

Her eyes light up as if the idea of listening to my drama is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to her. “Awesome! I’ll go get us some drinks.” She slips into her front door, tiptoeing into the living room.

Mom is surprisingly cool with me staying at Bayleigh’s house and for some reason, it’s a little annoying. I had planned an awesome argument and everything, but I didn’t need it so now it feels weird just telling her I love her and then hanging up the phone. I guess that’s one of the benefits of growing up.

Bayleigh returns with two orange sodas and a bag of Cheetos. “Is it orange snack food day or something?” I ask her. She rolls her eyes and shoves the Cheetos bag into my lap.

We take a seat on the plastic chairs on her balcony. She cracks open her drink can and says, “So tell me the drama, lady!”

I sigh. “I’ll give you one guess as to what the drama is about.”

She puts a finger to her lips and looks up, pretending to think about it for a second. “Is it about that boy who can’t stop hanging around you even though you’ve given him the boot?”

“Ding, ding, ding!” I say with an eye roll. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Bay. I’m a complete love-sick idiot and I kind of think I hate him right now, so how is that even possible?”

Her eyebrows draw together. “Why do you hate him? He’s been nothing but awesome to you. Jace told me about the shipping boxes thing. That’s super adorable, by the way.”

I sigh because there are so many words flying through my mind and I have no idea which ones I should say first. “Clearly you only heard about the nice thing he did today,” I say, “And you apparently don’t subscribe to the motocross news emails.”

“Yes I do!” she says guiltily. “I just don’t, you know, ever check my email because I’m too busy watching TV and playing with Jett. Why? What’s up with the professional motocross world?”

I bite my lip. It sounds so stupid in my head. I broke things off with Park so why the hell am I obsessing about that stupid blonde girl? STOP BEING AN IDIOT, BECCA.

When I do find my voice, I have to look down at the floor because I’m too embarrassed to look into my best friend’s eyes. “Remember that time when you got onto Facebook and saw all those photos of Jace at some famous people party and there were girls all over him?”

She makes a grumpy face. “Yeah.”

“The same thing has happened to me,” I say, playing with the silver ring on my index finger. “Only it was one girl, and they were on a date instead of at a party.”

I’m expecting a slur of curse words to fall out of her mouth because my best friend is always one to take up arms and declare brutal bloody murder upon anyone who hurts me. But instead, she thinks about it for a moment and takes a sip of her drink.

“I don’t think that’s the whole story,” she says finally.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs. “I just don’t think Park is capable of dating someone else right now. He likes you way too much.”

“I’m not so sensitive that I’ll just drop dead if you give me the truth, you know.”

She sits up straighter. “I am giving you the truth! You should hear the things he says about you.”

“Well you should hear the way he talked to me. How he said he’s the type of guy who dates around and shouldn’t be trusted—how—” My declaration of Park’s shady behavior is cut off abruptly when the front door of Bayleigh’s apartment opens. Heat rushes to my face because Jace is probably coming out here to complain that our talking was too loud and woke him up. Or maybe Jett is awake and needs his mom to give him a bottle and put him back to sleep. Whatever the case, I’m almost glad for the interruption because had I kept talking about Park, I would have surely either started screaming or crying. The boy gets way too much emotions out of me and he doesn’t even try.

The shadowy figure that steps outside of the apartment is wearing a jacket with the hood up. He doesn’t look over in our direction, instead choosing to step forward to where the stairway juts out from under the balcony. He rests one hand on the metal railing and the other one is at his ear. He’s on the phone. I glance at Bayleigh, wondering if she thinks it’s weird that her husband has walked outside to make a phone call this late at night. Her eyes are just as wide as mine are, but she doesn’t look upset.

My cell phone bursts to life, ringing as loud as it possibly can since I had it set to loud in the car. I jump, grabbing the phone the moment someone says, “What the hell?”

The person calling me is the same person standing on the porch just a few feet away.

Nolan Park.

“Park!” I say as I gasp for breath. I’m not sure if I meant to say his name aloud. I stare at my phone in my hand, which is still ringing and then up at the man himself, as he watches Bayleigh and I with a shocked expression on his face.

“Becca?”

He steps forward, pulling his hood down around his shoulders. My phone still rings but I don’t dare press the ignore button out of fear that my racing heartbeat will somehow be louder than the phone. “What are you doing here?” he asks, sliding his phone back into his pocket. The ringing on my end stops and I lower the phone into my lap, face down. The last thing I need is for him to see how red my cheeks are in the glowing of the phone light.

“Wh—what are you doing here?” is all I can manage to say in these tense seconds of awkwardness.

“I’m crashing with Jace. You knew that, right?”

I nod, like the dumb, idiot that I am. Freaking duh. Where else does he stay when he’s in town? It’s always with Jace. I’m a complete brainless moron. Now he probably thinks I came over late at night just to see him and pretend like I wasn’t here for him. God. Why can’t the earth just open up right now and swallow me whole?

Bayleigh jumps to my rescue. “She came over after work because I begged her to. I’m so bored and I needed my best friend.”

“Cool,” he says, but he doesn’t look entirely convinced.

“So anyway, Becca I’ll go get your bed set up on the air mattress and you two can talk.”

“We don’t need to talk.” I spit the words out so fast they barely make sense. “We’re good. You can stay.”

She stands and makes her way toward the front door, ruffling the top of my hair as if I were her child instead of friend and peer. “Of course you do. Don’t worry, I’ll be awake a while so just meet up with me later.”