Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BOB SEGER, “SHAKEDOWN”
Eve
“What happened?” Gabby asked, poking her head out of her room just as I stepped into the bathroom.
Our parents were in bed, but I knew my mom had her alarm clock set for midnight to see if I was home. It was only eleven.
I narrowed my eyes and whispered, “What are you talking about?”
With a sly grin, she slid into the bathroom with me and shut the door. “Where were you tonight?”
“Why?”
She sat on the toilet seat. “Michelle and Vicky came over, and they missed our drive, so they turned around at the end of Mr. Collins’ drive, and they saw your car parked there. Were you babysitting? Mom and Dad said you were with your friends at the movies. Why was your car there? What movie did you see?”
Kyle’s drive was the second to the last on our dead-end gravel road. My parents always turned right when leaving our house. They never had a reason to turn left, which meant they turned into our drive on their way home before reaching Kyle’s. That’s why my car was safe by the trees at the end of his drive.
I never thought my sister’s idiot friends would miss our drive and have to turn around in his.
“Well?” she prodded.
I had nothing. No good excuse. Lies usually came easy to me, but that was because I anticipated needing to lie and planned accordingly.
When I was Gabby’s age, my older sister, Sarah, confided in me about personal things that could have landed her in trouble. Eventually, everything did blow up on her, but not because of me. I kept her secret. And it made us closer than we had ever been before that.
Could Gabby be my friend and not just my sister? Having someone on the inside, helping me cover my tracks, seemed like a good thing. But I didn’t know if Gabby could keep a secret of that magnitude. She struggled to keep my last boyfriend a secret, and it wasn’t a big deal in comparison.
“Can you keep a secret?” I asked.
“Duh.”
“No. Not duh . This isn’t about me hiding alcohol by the creek or going steady with someone and not telling Mom and Dad. This is much bigger. Sarah level of big.”
Gabby’s eyes grew into saucers.
“You can’t tell anyone .”
Yes, I understood the irony in saying that to her after Kyle lectured me over telling Erin.
“You can’t tell Ben. You can’t tell Michelle or Vicky or Erica. You can’t squirm at the dinner table or make funny faces like it’s killing you to keep a secret. You have to guard this with your life. Can you do that?”
She gulped and nodded.
Just hours earlier, I made fun of her for having a crush on her math teacher. Oh the irony.
“I’ve met someone who I really like. And I was with him tonight. But he’s older, and as we know, Mom and Dad don’t like when their daughters fall for older guys.”
Had I fallen for Kyle? Yes. A thousand times yes.
Was a month long enough to fall in love? I didn’t know. I hadn’t been in love before.
Yet, he was determined to keep me at arm’s length while he decided if I was more than a casual date, a one-night stand. But dang, when he kissed me and told me to go be mad, I lost a part of my heart, left it on the ground by his boots. No one had ever let me be myself without fearing punishment, harsh judgment, or disappointment, until Kyle.
“How old?” Gabby asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
“What?!”
“Shh!”
She slapped her hand over her mouth.
I frowned. She was already proving to be too young to handle my secret.
“You made fun of me for calling Mr. Collins sexy, and you’re seeing someone his age?”
Oh, Gabby …
“I’m sorry.” I wrinkled my nose. “That was wrong of me. You were right.”
“What do you mean I was right?”
“Mr. Collins is hot.”
“Pfft. Duh.” And then the lightbulb came on. It started with her whole body freezing for several seconds.
The wheels were turning to keep the light on.
Then her eyes swelled to saucers again as her jaw dropped.
A blush crawled up my neck to my face, and I bit back my grin.
She shot off the toilet seat and grabbed my shoulders, shaking me. “You are totally joking. Right? Right? Right? ”
I slowly shook my head.
Something in my sister died. She released a breath that seemed reminiscent of someone being stabbed in the gut. Even her torso buckled a fraction as she stepped away from me. “Why does this keep happening?” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“You and Sarah take the best ones. I liked him first.”
“Oh, Gabby.” I hugged her. “You’re his student.”
“But now I can’t dream about him because he’s yours. And Mom and Dad are going to be so mad, and I’ll have to live through the Sarah incident all over again.”
“Oh, no, Gabbs …” I rubbed her back. “Sarah had something much more tragic happen; I hope you don’t have to go through that with me. And”—I released her and grabbed her hand, squeezing it—“I don’t know if he’s truly mine or ever will be. But even if that happens, you can still dream about him because he is dreamy.”
And stubborn.
Infuriating.
Sexy.
Overly analytical.
And I was mad at him for saying so many nice things to me and making me feel like a beautiful woman without needing to change a thing, and in the next breath, reminding me that we might not ever be anything more than temporary.
Gabby laughed a little. “Have you kissed him?”
My younger sister was a lover and dreamer. She wrote poems in her Bible during church and knew the words to every 80s ballad. Gabby would lose her virginity on her wedding night, not just because that’s how she was raised. She’d do it because she liked things to follow a specific order.
A flirty look.
Holding hands.
A chaste kiss.
Months of wooing with flowers and love notes.
A grand proposal after asking our father for her hand in marriage.
Church wedding.
Wedding night jitters.
Baby nine months later.
Sarah and I were nothing like her. We rode the reckless high of raging hormones and the adrenaline rush of rolling in the sheets with bad boys who felt so good .
I wasn’t sure Kyle was a bad boy—until he got into the preacher’s daughter’s pants.
“We’ve kissed.” I smiled.
Gabby sucked in a breath and smiled. “How was it?”
“Amazing.”
“Was there tongue?” She blushed.
I nodded with a tight smile.
She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you have that look?”
“What look?”
“It’s the look you give me when you think I’m young and stupid.”
“What? No. I don’t think that, and I don’t have a look either.”
“You do. It’s your uncomfortable look. You think I don’t have a poker face, but neither do you.”
“Shh … it’s late. You need to go to bed. And I need to shower.” I removed my shirt and jeans, so she’d give up and leave.
“Um, Eve?”
I turned on the shower. “Huh?”
“Your underwear is inside out.”
I looked down. “Oh. Oops.”
“Oops? You didn’t know you put your underwear on—” She slapped her hand over her mouth again and then slid it to her waist. “You did it, you did it, you did IT,” she hissed. Her jaw dropped like a brick from a ten-story building.
“I didn’t.”
“Nobody puts their underwear on inside out unless they’re doing it quickly and in the dark!”
“Shh!” I put one hand on the back of her head and my other over her mouth. “Why don’t you wake up the whole town? I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”
She wriggled out of my hold. “I hope you get pregnant.” She scowled at me before jerking open the door.