Seven
The first day of Carter’s suspension came after a weekend. I was walking to the bus stop early morning and found him there, sitting on the bench, looking down at his hands. While my heart did its usual squeeze, I frowned. I hadn’t spoken to him since the incident. In fact, I was purposely dodging him. It wasn’t just because of Russell.
He looked up as I neared, and immediately his flat face turned serious as he haughtily said, “You haven’t been at my window, Leah.”
I stopped beside him, not bothering to sit down even though there was enough space to fill two more people. I just shrugged and neared the bus sign, looking out into the streets.
“Why are you mad at me?” he demanded suddenly. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Why are you here?” I returned with instead. “You’re suspended from school.”
“Who says I’m going to school?”
I looked over my shoulder and at his sudden mischievous grin. “Where are you going?”
“How about you skip class and come see?”
“I don’t want to.”
He stood up and walked to me. I looked back at the street and hoped to see a bus come bounding down it ASAP. I felt his front against my back, and I swallowed hard. It wasn’t fair he could make me feel like this. I’d turn it off if I could. I wished I could look at him like I looked at all the other guys.
“What is it?” he asked, worriedly. “Tell me, Leah. Please.”
I moved away from him, trying to gain distance so I could think straight. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” he pressed. “Just tell me what the hell is wrong! You haven’t said a word to me since I fucking tore that dick to pieces for you—”
“I never asked you to do that!” I cut in angrily, facing him.
His face fell. “What the hell? Are you angry I helped you?”
“You didn’t help me!”
“Like hell I didn’t! He was threatening your life—”
“I’ve been threatened with a lot worse than my life, Carter, and I’ve managed just fine!”
His nose flared, and his mouth twisted as he retorted, “Stop dealing with these pricks on your own! You’re a fucking girl , and these are guys trying to bring you down!”
“Then let them try. I’m tough. I can handle it on my own, and I had without you bursting into the scene and getting suspended for it! Now I look even weaker! Like I need help, or for someone to rescue me—”
“There’s nothing wrong with needing help,” he cut in, stepping closer to me. I could feel the anger rolling off him. “You stood up for yourself, I get it. You brought him to his knees after you grabbed at his balls, and I admire that. Really, I do, Leah, but fuck, you can’t expect that to have scared them away. They would have come at you harder later on! I’ve seen it happen. It fucking kills me when they treat you like that.” His voice broke at the end, and he looked at me with his walls down, letting me see his pain.
I blinked hard, feeling moisture in my eyes. What the hell was wrong with me? Was I seriously on the verge of tears? No, no, that couldn’t be right. Yet the lump in my throat, hard and round and impossible to swallow away, told me that I really was fighting back tears.
“I just don’t want to burden you with my crap,” I whispered, because talking louder would have given away my emotion.
“You expect me to just watch?” he whispered back in shock. “Fuck no, Leah. I’m not going to be like fucking Rome, sitting there because I was told to shut up. No way. I’m not going to watch someone I care about get bullied like that. You’ll never convince me otherwise, so you’re just going to have to deal with it.”
I stared at him for a long moment, taking in that look of conviction.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said, feeling a tear fall. “You really don’t, Carter.”
He moved closer to me then and wiped the tear with his thumb. His blue eyes shined with emotion as he quietly replied, “Yeah, I do.”
I took the hand he used to wipe my tear and held it tight. Whatever connection we had at that point only grew stronger. He pulled me in for a hug and I shut my eyes, face against his chest, breathing all of him in. It felt so right to be held by him. We just… clicked .
“It’ll be alright,” he reassured me. “I won’t let anything happen to you. They’ll all die before they set a finger on you again.”
When he pulled away, we both sat down on the bench and watched the cars go. I felt lighter than I’d felt in days. He kept me by his side, his arm around me, comforting me.
“What happened to your cheek?” he suddenly asked.
“Nothing,” I answered, turning my face away from him so he couldn’t see the light bruise there. Under the sun, it was inescapable, I knew. I hadn’t even thought of a good enough lie for how I got it if someone had asked.
His finger wrapped around my chin, and he forced me to him. I couldn’t meet his eye, but I knew he was staring at it hard.
“Did Russell do this to you?” he demanded.
“I back-chatted him,” I grumbled.
He clenched his jaw and let go of my face. He fisted his hands together and looked away from me. “He tell you not to see me?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you going to listen to him?”
“No. I’ll just need to be more careful.”
He exhaled and shook his head. “I wanna hurt him.”
“It’s fine,” I told him, grabbing hold of his arm. “It was the first time he ever touched me. I’ll be good and he won’t do it again. Don’t do anything stupid, Carter. If you do, you’ll make it worse for me.”
He didn’t reply, but he managed a stiff nod. I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“Promise,” I urged.
He shrugged, swiftly replying, “I promise.”
I studied him, trying to sense his mood but he disappeared inside that shell of his, and now it was impossible to know.
Finally, in the distance, I saw the bus turn a corner and stop at a red light.
“You gonna skip with me?” he asked.
“We have a field trip today,” I replied. “They’re taking the gym class to an ice rink to play Curling.”
He swallowed a laugh. “ Curling ?”
I gave him a dry look. “It’s a sport, Carter.”
He looked amused. “Are you going to be curling with everyone, Leah?”
“Maybe.”
“No, you’re not.”
“How would you know?” I challenged. “I could be really good at it—”
“You’re going to be hanging back at the library, I think,” he cut in, smiling broadly now. “Because there’s no way in hell you paid for that shit.”
I bit my lip to stop from laughing and continued to appear solemn. “You don’t know everything, Carter.”
Now he stared at me, his blue eyes looking deeply into my own. I felt my skin tingle when he replied, “When it comes to you, Leah, I do.”
I looked down and swiped at some invisible fluff on my leg. I said nothing as he continued to watch me.
Bumping his shoulder against mine, he asked once more in that spine tingling voice, “Are you going to skip, Leah?”
Why was he doing this?
Why did he have to make me answer him?
He knew the hold he had on me. I was…powerless.
“You already know,” I finally whispered, and strangely, I was surprised by how sad my tone sounded to my ears.
As expected, I skipped class and spent the day with him.
*
During his two weeks of suspension, Carter would intercept me on my way to school and plead for me to skip class. I did whatever he wanted because he was my fucking hero and I loved him like crazy.
We usually stopped by the gas station on the way to the bus stop and buy some ice cream and energy drinks. Then we’d catch a couple buses to Castle Fun Park, an amusement park that was usually packed with kids over the weekend. The arcade was mostly dead during the schooldays, and so he bought fifteen-dollar cards and we played the cheap 60 cent retro games until we ran out of money.
Those days always stood out to me the most in our early years. I was sure he was giving me all this attention because he wanted me to be strong and not think about what James had said. My image was tarnished, would always be, and he was keeping me sane by treating me like a friend and not a whore’s niece.
“You figure out what you’re gonna be yet?” he asked me once on our walk back home after a very busy day being a truant student; this shit was tough work.
He was asking only because I’d been wracking my brain over my future lately. Teachers kept talking about colleges and making sure we had considered what path we wanted to take. It usually did my head in with stress. It might not have looked like it since I was skipping that many days of class for him, but I was a very serious student, and I worked very hard to get great marks.
“No,” I answered, kicking a rock. “As long as I’m out of Russell’s place, I don’t think I’ll care.”
“Yeah, me too,” he muttered. “My dad’s a piece of shit. I’ll give him a good punch across the face when I walk out of there.”
I smiled. “You have some serious aggression issues, Carter. But on that note, you’re going to be a famous singer. I know it.”
He just chuckled. “Yeah, the day I become a famous singer will be the day I crawl on my hands and knees and kiss your feet. That shit doesn’t happen in the real world.”
“It will with you.”
He looked at me, his blue eyes soft and mesmerizing. Softly, he remarked, “I don’t think anyone’s ever had as much confidence in me like you do.”
“That’s why I’m your best friend,” I reminded him, nudging him with my shoulder.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” he replied, wrapping an arm around me.
“Sing to me at the creek?”
“Sure.”
I sighed internally, closing my eyes for a short second to inhale his scent and drown in the warmth of him. Would I forever pine for this guy? Time had proved it wouldn’t lessen. It never would.
This was why I kept my distance at times.
When you have feelings for your best friend who does not share those same feelings back, you learn to endure. Eventually, I did have eyes for other guys, and dates did happen every now and again. I learned to be outgoing, and sometimes, I did listen to Rome when he wanted to drag me to a party. Forcing that distance from Carter, I learned to have fun without him.
But there were still those times… Times where he’d be wrapped up in a girl physically, but he’d be staring at me from across the room. His attention would solely be focused on me, and I’d see something brimming in his magnificent eyes that was far from friendly.
He would never act on it, though. Our friendship was important to him in a way he would never divulge with me.
I was simply a boundary he would not trespass.
I did my best to forget my first kiss with him, did my best to move on from him, and when it got hard some nights, I drowned in a sea of literature to dull the ache.