The Things You Kiss Goodbye (19 page)

HarperCollins Publishers

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T
HE WEEK BEFORE THE FIRST SCRIMMAGE
,
THE COACH
gave the White Tigers the night off and, of all the crazy things, I felt my heart sink. Brady had the car and he took me up to one of the state college branch campuses about an hour from home. A former Tiger teammate of his was a student there—Spooner, the guy I’d met once or twice back when Brady and I were brand-new. He’d teased me about the way I dressed but I always thought he’d been warmer to me than anyone else. We met Spooner on campus, then drove out to an old farmhouse from there. It was just a few turns from campus, and it felt like the middle of nowhere.

All the people at the party were older, and not just
college-older either. They were adults, but not like the ones I knew. The property was full of motorcycles and farm animals. The few kids our age, well, they were probably crashers like us. But nobody cared, and nobody seemed worried about cops or any sort of trouble. They drank their beer and smoked their dope. A big guy with long hair and a bushy beard pumped a couple of beers out of a keg for us the second we walked onto the porch. I asked him for just half and he nodded and smiled when he handed it to me. The place was run-down, old, and beautiful. Inside, the walls were one big collage—a wallpaper-stripping project—that counted off the decades. A woodstove burned. Music played.

I sipped my beer and took it all in while Brady and Spooner shared odds on how their seasons would go. Eventually, Spooner drifted into another room. Brady nuzzled me and motioned for me to follow him up a sagging stairway. We found an empty bedroom where I lay underneath Brady, worrying just a little about fleas. We left most of our clothes on in case we had to get out in a hurry. But in that warm and drafty, music-filled house I relaxed—swept up in a surreal feeling. I gripped Brady’s solid body, pressed the bridge of my nose into his shoulder, and let out a throaty release.

“Jesus,” he whispered in my ear, and we both laughed.

Afterward, we sat sipping our beers. I started to tell him about a poster design I’d been working in art class. He
mocked me in a singsong: “Bettina’s an art fairy.”

“Fairies are awesome,” I said. “Wouldn’t you love a set of wings?”

“Only if they get me up to the hoop,” he said. He rolled off the creaky bed and pulled his pants up without closing them. “I gotta take a piss.”

Twenty minutes is one long pee. I straightened my clothes and the bedcovers and wandered out into the hall with the little bit of beer left in my cup. I passed the open bathroom door. No Brady. I started down the stairs. There he was, face-to-face with a girl. He gave her a lively grin. That was his “just-met-you” smile, I thought. Then damned if he didn’t give that girl a “just-met-you” kiss. Well, holy shit! I didn’t even know he had one of those. Then he saw me. He came quickly, met me at the bottom of the stairs, and hustled me into the next room.

“That chick, she was just being friendly,” he told me. He leaned down and kissed me on my neck. A little stone dropped through my throat to my gut.
He does cheat
, I thought. Wow. How long? Maybe he doesn’t do
everything
but he does what I just saw; he samples other girls. I thought about the girls in our school—there was that sophomore with big doe eyes—Courtney something. She had baked him brownies . . . and what about the Not-So-Cheerleaders? I wondered about all of it. But what amazed me most of all was that I wasn’t
devastated, not mad. I actually felt sort of quiet inside.

Looking around that party, I wasn’t sure what to want—except Cowboy. I could imagine him walking in—almost
expected
him to come around a corner. But that would
not
be good, not with Brady Cullen here. There was still great music playing and people were dancing. I liked the old farmhouse with its yeast-scented walls.

“You want another beer?” Brady asked, giving me a one-armed hug. He was caught and he was nervous. I twisted the corner of my mouth at him. I showed him my cup. I still had a few swallows of beer left. We hung together for a while. He stood next to me, shifting his weight and craning his neck like he was late for an appointment. “I’m gonna go get you that refill,” he insisted, and he left me alone again.

I dodged eye contact with a guy for a while. He had a head full of beautiful dreadlocks and a smile made of large, perfect teeth—not unlike mine, I thought. He crossed the room and greeted me. He seemed sober and he was polite.

“Dance?” he offered.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m here with someone.”

“I don’t see
someone
.” The guy looked all around us, and I had to smile.

“Really. Thanks anyway,” I said.

“My loss.” He nodded but he did not leave. He leaned against the same wall as me, his hand dangling very close to
mine. I didn’t own the wall. He could stand there if he felt like it. I drained my beer and closed my eyes. The music was good, the words and rhythm hot and slow. The singer crooned about love and hunger. Being the hungriest girl in the room, I was moved, and I began to move, just rocking, just a little. Music did that to me. Sometimes it was hard not to dance. My elbow brushed a loose curl of wallpaper. I felt the guy’s fingertips, lightly under mine.

“It’s just a dance,” he said.

Yeah. It’s just a dance.

I dropped my empty cup and let him lead me away from the wall.

I kept my eyes closed and stayed pretty much in one spot. I wasn’t dancing
with
him—not really. In fact, he let go of my hands after he got me out to the floor. I suppose he was still near. I rolled with the music, danced myself in the swirls of humid, wallpaper-scented air. When the music faded away, I was sorry—same as when morning ends a good Saturday sleep.

I opened my eyes and saw Brady. And boy, was he pissed.

He strode over, wrapped a hand around my elbow, then closed tightly on it. In my ear, he said, “What are you doing? Huh?”

I felt dazed, slow. Beyond Brady, I could see the dreadlock guy watching me. He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up.

“You trying to get back at me? For that kiss? Huh, P’teen-uh?”

“No, no . . .” I almost blurted that I didn’t care about that. Brady pulled me out of the room, back past the keg and into the yard where the scent of wood smoke hung in the cold, cloudy air.

“No more dancing, Goddamn it!” Brady punched his fist into his hand. “Why do you do that? You know I don’t like it! Those guys in there wanted to jump you!”

“Oh, bull!” I said. I tried not to shout. This wasn’t our peace to disturb. “It wasn’t like that,” I insisted.

“Everybody was watching you!” Brady spread his arms, palms up. “And
you
put on a show!”

“Brady! You make it sound like I was standing on a table, dropping my clothes. I wasn’t the only one dancing. . . .”

“Listen,” he put his finger in my face, “you’re smarter than me at school stuff, okay? But I’m smarter at this stuff.”

I took a breath, trying to calm the both of us. “Hey, maybe you should go say goodbye to Spooner,” I said. “We’ll take this somewhere else, huh?”

“Are you hearing me? I’m telling you,
I know guys
.”

“Brady. Take me home,” I said. I turned toward the yard.

“P’teen-uh!” Brady reached for me. I jerked away. I stormed off toward the car, and Brady stormed after me, closing the gap with each step.

“I will, I will take you home and then I’ll go out by myself and—”

My toe hit something with a thud. I fell forward.
Bam!
Pain shot through my cheek just below my eye. I was on the ground between two cars.

The dreadlocked dancing guy must have followed us because he was suddenly there, saying, “Oh, no! She went right over that landscape tie. I think she hit something on the way down.” He was asking was I hurt and saying he’d get help. More people surrounded us. Brady was downplaying, telling everyone I was fine while he tried to yank me to my feet. Something warm and wet was running down my cheek.

“I think I hit the door handle,” I mumbled. But I’m not sure anyone understood.

Spooner arrived and I think he was the one who walked Brady away from me. I heard him talking in a low voice. “Cullen, man. What is this fighting-with-your-girlfriend shit? This is
not
cool.” Then he called, “Hey, is she really all right?”

My God, it was almost worth landing my face on that car just to hear someone take Brady to task—even just a little bit.

A woman wearing a flowy tunic brought ice. She examined the cut under my eye, while someone else lit my face with a phone. I kept apologizing to them. My cheek started to numb out. “Hey, honey, I’m a nurse,” she said. “I really think this needs a few stitches.” Her voice was soft and
sweet. I wilted from the inside out. I wished she would take me inside, sit me near that wood fire. Surely, she could knock me out with some herbs and sew me up herself.

Brady finally took me to the hospital; the people at the party insisted on it. They even helped me make a call to Bampas before we left. He arrived at the hospital shortly after I was triaged. He made sure that a plastic surgeon—the very best—was called. Then my father handed Brady Cullen a twenty and sent him home saying, “Thank you for taking care of my daughter.”

Brady had lied smoothly—made up something about being at the branch campus for a pep rally. I didn’t hear his version of how I had smacked my eye. We were lucky no one had Breathalyzed either of us, and lucky we smelled more like wood smoke than pot.

The plastic surgeon was a businesslike woman. I lay still while she stitched me. My father watched at first, but then settled into a corner of the room with his phone. I let a slow, steadying breath through my lips as I felt the tug of each suture. The surgeon said that I was a very good patient.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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A
T FIRST
, C
OWBOY SEEMED TO BE LOOKING THROUGH
me. Couldn’t he see the bandaging, my hellacious black eye? He blinked, then strode over and took my chin in his hand. His touch took my breath. He tilted my face for a little more light. Then he shuddered—I felt it through his hand. He swore, and asked, “Did
he
do this?”

“No,” I said, and I ducked out.

“Goddamn it, Beta!”

“No!” I repeated. “I fell. In the dark. I was mad. I was stomping. It was dumb.”

“But he was there?”

“Yes.”

“What’s under the bandage?”

“A few stitches. But they did a real nice job. I’ll just look real rugged until the color fades.” I smiled a little.

Cowboy shook his head. “That’s the trouble with you, Beta; you think you’re tough.” He turned and ducked under the hood of the Chevy like he was going to work on the engine.

Tough. That echoed. Regina Colletti had told me I was “tough” the last time I’d seen her. She had remembered me taking a digger in her garden when I was small. “A rambunctious dog took you out—topsy-turvy, you went off the steps,” she had recalled. “Bloody legs, a knock on the chin—oh, my! But you didn’t cry. I couldn’t believe it,” she’d said.

I looked at Cowboy now. He was not working on the engine. He was leaning on the car with his hands for support, his arms straight, his back rounded. It was a ruminating sort of pose, and I’d seen him do it before. “Cowboy,” I said. “Tell me what happened to you.”

I listened to him exhale.

“How did you get the scars?” I asked. “The ones on your back.”

He let out an irritated huff. “I
know
the scars you’re talking about.”

I waited. He turned around, sat back against the car. He looked through me, like he was putting himself somewhere
where he could talk about it.

“My family,” he spoke slowly, “was not very . . .
healthy
. Hmm. Actually, my dad is a sweetheart. My ma had problems.”

“Problems?”

“Anger,” he said.

“So
she
did that? She hurt you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, God. Cowboy!” I had not expected to hear that. I took a step toward him but the look in his eyes seemed to push me back. “And that’s why the cops know you. . . .” I began to sort it out. “You said you took responsibility. But you didn’t do wrong.”

“There was an incident. Not the first one. She was already in trouble. I just protected her.”

“But why? And you still live with her? I don’t get it.”

“My dad moved out, left her because of the things she did. We were all nearly grown by then. My brothers cut her off too. Ma had nobody.”

“Well, yeah! For God’s sake! Why don’t you leave, too?”

He locked gray-green eyes on me. “Why don’t
you
?” he said.

“Leave what? You mean Brady? That’s completely different! Come on!” I threw my arms open. “It’s your mother. You’re a grown-up. You can leave.”

“It’s not that easy. There’s something about being smacked around as a kid that makes it hard to move on.”

“No. You’re saying that because someone else said it. That’s like . . . I don’t know . . . it’s what the pamphlet says.”

He didn’t even blink. The next silent seconds seemed to grind into both of us. My face felt hot. He looked like stone.

“Get out of here, Beta,” he said.

I opened my mouth but he didn’t let me speak.

“Get out,” he said again.

I shouldered my pack and split.

I burned all the way back to school. I was mad at Cowboy. But by the time I reached the building, my heart ached for him. I felt like I’d said all the wrong things. I hid my face in my open locker and fought back tears. I touched my bruised cheek.
Don’t get the bandage wet
, I remembered. I sucked it up. There was something awful and heavy settling over me—something hard to name, and it swam in my head for hours. Later, I knew, though I could barely acknowledge it; I felt a loss of respect for Cowboy. I was mad because someone had hurt him. And I was mad because he had stayed with the person who had done it.