Chapter Ten #2
‘Like… there was nobody else like me. Nobody who spoke like I did. I sounded ridiculous. And your brother and his friends didn’t exactly make it easy for me to settle in.’
‘Why not?’
This whole journey I’ve been staring at the embroidered skull on the back of AJ’s leather jacket, and I feel the base of my neck warm at some of the things I pictured last night while lying in bed. ‘They would prank me.’
‘AJ would?’
‘Mainly Chase Brennan. But all those guys Chase hung out with.’
In the back seat, Noah snorts. ‘Chase is a total a-hole. Always has been. What sort of shit they pull?’
The list is long. Some of the more minor stuff I’ve forgotten about. It’s the big things that stick in my mind.
‘Once they filled my locker with condoms. Not just the packets. They removed them from the packets, unravelled them, then made them look like they’d been… uh… Anyway, I guess it was shampoo or something. So, when I opened my locker…’
Noah screws up his face. ‘Gross.’
‘Then, there was the time they photoshopped my face onto a porn star’s naked body then plastered the images all around the school.’
Noah laughs, then thinks better of it. ‘That’s got Chase’s name written all over it.’
‘They put fake blood on my chair in English class, distracted me so that I sat down in it, so then I was walking around like I’d had my period. It took me an hour to realize that people were pointing and laughing at me.’
‘Wow, that’s—’
‘Stupid stuff. I got invited to a house party. They purposefully gave me the wrong address, then they sent someone to film when I arrived and there was no one there. Chase sent the video to my whole senior class.’
‘AJ was in on all of it?’
I swallow. AJ was always standoffish in high school. Like he was too cool for any of it. ‘I don’t know. He and Chase were friends. And Balthazar. Moses Mariano. And Nicole Escribano.’
Noah goes quiet for a moment. ‘Nicole still lives in Rapture,’ he says. ‘Has her own traveling salon. She and Balthazar used to hook up for a while. AJ told me that. Balthazar’s always been a clown. And Mo Mariano…’
‘AJ told me this morning,’ I interrupt him. ‘I had no idea.’
‘That whole thing really fucked AJ up.’
I feel like I didn’t get the whole story from AJ in the diner this morning. Asking Noah behind his back doesn’t sit well with me, but I need to know. I lock eyes with his reflection in the rearview mirror. ‘In what way?’
Noah blows out his cheeks. ‘I mean, I don’t know all the details, only that he would turn up at our house real late at night and my mom would sit with him.
I’d hear him crying. He’d go out on these long rides and not come back for days.
Then Echo got involved. He had AJ move into the room above Scotch & Smoke so he could keep an eye on him.
Said if he didn’t get his act together, he would end up in an early grave, just like Mo. ’
In a matter of seconds, my heart is back in control of my head. Listening to Noah talk about AJ like that gives AJ a vulnerability I didn’t know he had, and the knowledge changes my view of him, yet again.
I look up ahead at AJ on his bike. It just goes to show that you can never really know a person. Even if he is your long-standing high school crush.
I shake my head. I need a break from driving.
‘I’m sorry they weren’t so nice to you,’ Noah says.
‘It’s fine. I’m over it. Guess I was an easy target.’
I try to be over it. For the most part, I believe in forgiveness, and there’s no point dwelling on the past, but ugly memories have always muddied the waters for me, meaning some things are harder to move on from.
Up ahead, on the highway, AJ holds out his arm and points to a sign.
‘Truck stop, hell yeah, baby!’ Noah crows.
A few minutes later, I park up outside a modern, glass-fronted building. To Noah’s delight, there’s a McDonald’s.
His desire for chicken nuggets is soon scuppered by AJ.
‘You can take a leak, that’s it,’ he says, just as Noah exits the back of the car. ‘Put your hat on, keep your eyes down.’
‘I’m starving, man! I want chicken!’
‘I’ll get you something to eat, all right,’ AJ reassures him.
Once they’ve used the restrooms, AJ makes Noah wait in the back of the car. When AJ turns his back, Noah presses his hands together in prayer and gives me a pleading look. I give him a wink in return.
I walk behind AJ as we weave our way through the other parked cars, back toward the building.
‘Noah been chewing your ear off the whole way?’ he asks me as we enter, holding the door open for me.
‘He’s been asleep for most of it,’ I say, and I’m suddenly conscious that it’s just the two of us, walking side by side.
‘Oh. Least you ain’t had to listen to him yabberin’ on about one thing or another,’ AJ says.
My skin prickles, because talking about my past has brought it all back. The unkind tricks and pranks played on me, that AJ was – directly or indirectly – witness to. I’m reminded that he’s done nothing to earn my help today. Or my trust.
We come to a halt.
‘I appreciate you riding out all this way,’ AJ says when I say nothing.
I want to tell him what I told Noah in the car, almost to see his reaction. To see what he would admit to, if anything.
I think better of it, and instead I say, ‘It’s all right. I’m going to use the bathroom. Will you get Noah something to eat?’
‘Sure. You want anything?’
‘I can get it myself. See you by the car?’
‘Uh. Sure.’
I turn my back on him. Seek out the restroom. Afterward, I linger beside the mirror for a moment, giving AJ time to get out of the way.
On the one hand, I get a buzz from being in his presence. The boy who barely said a word to me in high school, but who I worshipped from afar. Along with every other girl.
On the other hand, Noah is right. They were unkind. In high school, I never knew when the next prank would crop up, and though I’ve never believed he was the mastermind, there is no doubt in my mind that AJ was guilty by association.
Back then, by the end of senior year, despite my crush, I’d convinced myself that I hated him.
Until the moment Amber Bradshaw pushed me into her parents’ walk-in closet with him at the graduation party, I was still mostly convinced.
That is, until a blindfolded AJ pressed his lips to mine, and all my ire evaporated when I kissed him back.
Watching him blatantly French kissing Amber Bradshaw afterward, in front of everyone, it hurt.
I didn’t have the confidence to walk over and tap him on the shoulder and ask if he knew it wasn’t Amber he’d been kissing before she’d declared to her party guests that it was.
Yet afterward, I’d asked myself whether it was Amber he’d been wanting to kiss all along.
That one kiss may have been mind-blowing for me but run-of-the-mill for him.
The following day, I flew back to England.
Until three nights ago, that was the last time I saw AJ.
Nothing has fundamentally changed since that night. Other than he still doesn’t know it was me he kissed. It almost feels too late to tell him now. Like a moot point. A footnote that nobody reads.
Nobody hangs on to their high school crush. Literally no one.
So why can’t I seem to get rid of mine?
I leave the restroom. Pay for some snacks and drinks, and an extra bag of chicken nuggets for Noah, then head back outside.
As I approach, I spy AJ, leaning on the hood of my car. His legs crossed at his ankles, the zipper on his leather jacket hanging open, he’s eating a burger. I find myself looking away, because watching him gives me butterflies. The same feelings I’ve always had are still there.
Ugh.
But being in his constant presence, those same old feelings are becoming impossible to ignore.