Under the Lights (3 page)

But he didn't give me butterflies back then. Not one. That was all apparently just for Brady. Figures I'd get butterflies over the good guy who would never accept me once he knew my past. The truth behind why I was back in Lawton. My nonna would make up some lie, and everyone would believe it. I'd have to go with it if I wanted to stay here.

“Willa Ames.” Gunner called out my name, and I smiled. It hadn't taken him long to figure it out.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw him walking toward me with a grin on his face that said everything I knew he was thinking. “Go wipe that girl's tears and be nice,” I replied, but I waited on him to catch up to me.

He rolled his eyes. “You have no idea the crazy that I was dealing with in there.”

Of course it wasn't his fault. Never was. Gunner always had a reason why he wasn't wrong. “So your penis accidentally fell into her vagina?” I asked in a mocking tone.

He chuckled. “No, that was completely on purpose. Damn you look good. When did you move back?”

He was over talking to the poor girl in the restroom. Maybe now she would be smarter in her next choice in a guy. Gunner wasn't a choice. He was a fun time. “Nonna picked me up at the bus station yesterday.”

“So you're living with Ms. Ames again? When were you planning on coming to say hello?”

I hadn't been. Nonna didn't want me at the big house. I knew that without her even saying it. So I shrugged. “It's been six years.” That wasn't a real answer, but it was all I had.

Gunner cocked one eyebrow. “And?” was his response.

“And I knew we would see each other at school. Wasn't sure how you had turned out, or if our childhood friendship would carry into our teen years.”

Gunner looked me up and down like he had in the restroom. “I'm a guy, Willa. We can be friends or something else. Just whatever you might be up for.”

It was my turn to roll my eyes. That was the silliest come-on I'd ever heard. And I'd heard a lot of them.

“I'm up for making it to my next class on time and staying out of trouble. It was good to see you again, Gunner. I'm sure we will run into each other again. Small town, small school and all,” I replied, then turned and left him standing there in that hallway. Encouraging anything between us was wrong and pointless.

I didn't make eye contact with anyone else as I made my way to room 143. I had to prove to Nonna I was worth it. I'd be the easiest teenage girl in the world to raise. I wasn't giving her any problems. Besides, I'd done enough already to last a lifetime. No more regrets. I had my fair share.

A tall guy with the clearest blue eyes I'd ever seen caught my attention before I heard Gunner's voice call out “Nash,” and his gaze left me. “Yeah,” he replied.

I didn't wait around for an introduction. Gunner was trouble. He had no regrets. I did. I just hoped he never
had regrets like mine, ones that were nearly unbearable to live with. We weren't invincible. I'd learned that a little too late.

•  •  •

High school was the same everywhere, or at least inside the United States. No one got real original. You had the same groups, same silliness, and same stupidity. The only difference here was no one knew me. The kids I'd gone to school with as a child had forgotten me, and the two boys who did remember me weren't telling everyone else who I was. In fact, Brady went as far as ignoring me in the one class we had together.

That in itself had been disheartening. He had sat beside a pretty brunette girl and a guy who she must be dating. They were very touchy. Brady made jokes with them and acted like I wasn't there until class was over and he nodded his head with a simple hello on his way out the door.

For a moment I wondered if he had somehow heard what I had done. Not that it mattered. I wasn't trying to get his attention. I had no time for butterflies and the like. My life would exist to make my nonna proud and to one day maybe get my brother to speak to me again. My mom could suck a lemon, and I never wanted to see my stepfather again.

So that was my life. I had made my bed, and now I
would have to lie in it. My nonna had said as much when she picked me up from the bus station.

“How was school?” Nonna asked, walking out of the small kitchen in her house while wiping her hands on an apron tied around her waist.

Replying
It sucked balls
probably wouldn't go over real well. So I went with “Good.” For her benefit only.

She didn't look convinced. “Put your book bag in your room and come help me with peeling the potatoes for the dinner at the big house tonight.”

Nonna usually did all the preparing of the food for the big house at the Lawtons' house. My being here had brought her home for the afternoon. To check on me. It felt good to be cared about. That wasn't something I was used to anymore.

“Yes, ma'am.” I would do whatever I needed to stay here. I never wanted to go home, even if my mother allowed it.

I left my book bag on my bed and slipped off my Converse before going back to the kitchen in my socked feet. Six nights a week Nonna made dinner for the Lawtons. Saturday night was normally a big night when she had to cook for the guests Mrs. Lawton would entertain. Many times it was a party, and Nonna had to hire in help. Sundays the Lawtons went to dinner at the country club in Franklin, Tennessee, that was an hour drive away. Although Gunner
used to not go and would stay with us after he had made his appearance at the Baptist church with his parents.

I was sure that had all changed. Gunner probably spent his Sundays with friends, going to the field parties we used to anticipate being involved in one day. In a small town like Lawton, there wasn't much to do on the weekends, so the field parties were the one place all the teens could go to have a good time. It was a tradition among the popular at Lawton High. After what I saw today, there was no question in my mind that Gunner and Brady were pack leaders in that elite group.

“Grab a peeler. I'll use the knife. Don't need you cutting a finger off,” Nonna said when I walked into the kitchen. There was a large tub of washed white potatoes to be peeled.

I did as I was told and began peeling a potato over the hand towel she had laid out for me.

“How was your classes?”

My mother had never once asked me about my classes. She didn't ask me much of anything. I had forgotten how much I missed knowing someone cared. Leaving Nonna had been the hardest thing I'd ever done.

“The truth? Boring.”

Nonna made a tsking sound. “Need school to make it in life.”

I understood that, but the classes were going over things I already knew. I had been in advanced classes before being sent to the correctional center. “I know. I'll make good grades,” I assured her.

She dropped a peeled potato in the bowl of water and reached for another. “Did you see Gunner or Brady?”

As if I wouldn't see them in that small high school. “Yes, ma'am. I have classes with both of them.”

“Did you speak to them?”

“Yes, ma'am. Not much though.” I knew she was worried about my being involved with either of them. She didn't trust me, and why should she? I had done nothing to earn anyone's trust.

“You'll make friends soon enough. Just pick good ones, though. You are who you spend time with. Guess you learned that lesson the hard way already.”

Yes, I had. A lesson I wish I'd never had to learn. I had spent hours, days, and weeks wishing I hadn't been there that night. That I had been smart. That I hadn't seen what I'd seen.

“Your momma ain't perfect—Lord knows that. But she tried to bring you into her home and be the mother she had failed at being the first part of your life. You can't go blaming her or anyone else for what you did. You made them mistakes and now you got to pick up and figure out life again.”

I didn't need to be told that I made my own mistakes. I lived with that daily. However, Nonna thought my mother tried to be a mom to me. She hadn't. Not really. I often wondered why she'd sent for me six years ago. I had never been able to make her happy. Now the one woman who had loved me thought I was a loser of the worst sort.

If I did anything else in this life, it would be making my nonna proud of me again. I didn't care if I ever saw my mother again though. When I had needed her most, she hadn't listened to me. She hadn't believed me. No one had.

BRADY

Maggie's bedroom door was open when I walked up the stairs. I knew her boyfriend, who was also one of my best friends, had gone with his mother to a counseling session after workouts today. Since his father's death a couple months ago, his mother had been in and out of town, going back to her parents' house. They weren't the same after losing his dad. His mom wasn't handling it well at all.

Maggie's dark hair hung over her shoulder, blocking her face as she looked down at the book she was reading in her hands. I cleared my throat, announcing my presence. She jerked her head up, and her expressive eyes went wide. Then she smiled. “Oh, hey, Brady.”

My cousin didn't speak at all when she'd first moved in with us. I had West to thank for her actually saying my name, or anything for that matter. When she had held his hand and been his strength while he watched his father die of cancer, he had given her a reason to speak again.

“What are you reading?” I asked, walking into her room, which had once been my room.

“
Voyage in the Dark
by Jean Rhys.”

I had no idea what that was. Figures Maggie wasn't reading something I had heard of. She wasn't a
Twilight
-reading kind of girl. I nodded like I knew what the hell she was talking about.

She smirked. “A young girl with a dead father and bitchy stepmother. But she's not Cinderella.”

“Ah, okay.”

She laughed at my response. “Are you bored? Why the visit?”

I rarely stopped by her room. But then she was rarely alone. West was either here, or she was there. Figured I'd get to the point. She wasn't one for chitchat. “Do you have any classes with the new girl?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Willa Ames? Yes, we both have a class with her, together.” Oh yeah . . . I'd forgotten she and West were even in the room. I'd been so busy watching Willa and not getting caught that I couldn't focus
on anything else. I had wanted Willa to speak to me, but she hadn't spoken to anyone.

“I mean any other classes with her?” I corrected my minor mistake.

Maggie set her book down and turned to fully look at me. “West told me she was really close to you and Gunner when y'all were kids. And you couldn't stop watching her in class. Do you like her? Is that what this is about? Because I'm fairly certain if you want her, you can turn on your charm and get her.”

She didn't know Willa very well, but then neither did I. Not anymore. She was different. Not just her looks, because like everyone else she'd grown up. She wasn't the little girl with pigtails and dirty knees from playing ball with us anymore. It was more than that. She was harder, withdrawn, and untouchable. The carefree, laughing girl I once knew was gone. Completely.

“She's changed. I'm curious.”

Maggie shrugged. “Call it whatever you want. But you're more than curious. It was entertaining to watch.”

This was a pointless conversation. “Whatever” was my annoyed response before I turned and walked back out the door. I loved my cousin, but she wasn't a normal girl either. She wasn't going to be much help in all this.

“She watched you, too, when you weren't looking,”
Maggie called out, and I paused. A smile slid over my lips that I couldn't control.

“Thanks,” I replied without turning around, then made my way to my attic bedroom.

Before Willa had moved away to live with her mother, things had gotten awkward with the three of us. Gunner and I both had become attracted to her. Days before we found out she was moving, he and I had made a pact that neither of us would ever ask her to be our girlfriend. We would always just be best friends. Nothing more.

It seemed silly now. Gunner and I competed for girls and on the field all the time. The days of us being friends first were long gone. Gunner was my friend, but he was also a spoiled jerk a good portion of the time. His parents sucked, but he did have every materialistic thing he so desired. That got annoying.

But back then he'd been one of the best friends I'd had, and I hadn't wanted to lose that. Not even over a girl. Neither had Gunner. We'd been determined to stay close no matter what. Things sure had changed.

Willa hadn't been our first big fight. Serena had when we were in the eighth grade. Before we figured out Serena would make her way through the whole football team before sophomore year.

I wondered how well that would have worked out if
Willa had stayed. Would she have been our first big fight? Would we have lost our friendship over her? Because even though we were kids, we both loved her. That much I knew was true. She wasn't that girl now though. The darkness in her eyes said things in her life had changed. She was different. And I wanted to know why.

“Brady!” Maggie's voice carried up the stairs leading to my room. I paused at the top step and turned to look down at her. She'd followed me.

“Yeah?”

Maggie bit her bottom lip nervously, then sighed before speaking again. I waited.

“I see something in her eyes that I recognize. There is hurt there. The deep kind of pain that changes you. The girl you once knew probably isn't there now. She's different. Something has happened to her. But she does watch you. She doesn't watch Gunner that way. She was in three of my classes today, and not one time did she pay attention to anyone the way she did you. Just . . .” She paused and gave me a sad smile. “Be careful with her.”