Chapter 10 #3
“We shouldn’t’ve gone to the club the other day, and you shouldn’t’ve gone home alone tonight. You should’ve come to my house like I told you to. But instead you always want to do things your own fucking way. Always.”
His serious tone confused me. He really seemed worried.
“For once you were right, Hunter. What do you want, a gold medal? I’m already scared, don’t you start now too.”
“Did they hurt you?” he asked, pointing at my lightly scraped arm.
“No. I kicked that guy Tom in the balls.”
James sneered. “That dick is Tom Austin, Ethan’s brother. You could’ve pulled out your secret weapon with him.”
“That would be?”
“The bread knife, right?”
I burst out laughing. “Nice. Says the person who came over here empty-handed.”
I stared as his full parted lips turned up in a mischievous smirk. “If you knew what I was doing when you called me, you wouldn’t talk to me like that. I left all that fun just to come here. To your house.”
I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I kept my mouth shut at that millionth innuendo.
“Are you still scared?” His question took me by surprise.
“No. You?”
“I’ve never been afraid,” he affirmed, his head held high.
I saw him put on a mask for the first time, one of self-confidence. He was lying.
As much as he didn’t show any signs of fear on his face, I’d seen him shaking when he’d faced those two.
“Don’t you have anything to put on?” I asked when I saw him throw my robe onto the easy chair wearing only his boxers.
He shook his head, so I took off his hoodie.
“Here.”
He put it on without saying a word, then got up. I let my eyes drift along on his long legs, down to his sculpted thighs, then had to avert my gaze.
James turned around and looked at me curiously.
“Is that your brother?”
I saw him with his nose in the air, looking at my living room wall. There was a photo, the only one my mom let me hang up.
“You told Taylor what I told you?” It was way too sore of a subject.
James turned around and shot me a sharp glare.
“I didn’t tell her shit.”
“And why should I believe you?”
“Fine, don’t believe me, but I didn’t tell anyone.” I saw him bend his head back, almost like he was embarrassed. “I didn’t even tell Will,” he admitted in a whisper.
James didn’t seem like someone who liked to keep secrets from his best friend and if he didn’t even tell Will, maybe he wasn’t lying.
“Yeah. It’s him.”
James paused attentively, scrutinizing the photo of me and August in the snow.
“He looks like you.”
“A lot.”
He used the present tense, as if he was still here. A lump formed in my throat, and James seemed to notice because his cavalier, insolent expression changed.
“I shouldn’t have brought them here.”
I cleared my throat to banish that feeling of powerlessness.
“You couldn’t have known, it’s not your fault,” I answered, without even having to think about it.
I saw him sit back on the couch next to me, and the more I watched him, the less I understood how James had ended up here with me.
He was none other than the school meathead, and here he was in his underwear, drinking chamomile tea on my couch.
“It’s a lot more my fault than you think, White,” he whispered.
“Maybe the others are the ones who make you think that.”
He frowned. “Do you really think so?”
“Yeah.”
I sipped the tea slowly. Silence fell between us, until I saw him smile.
“It’s not fucking fair,” he said looking around curiously.
“What?”
“You had quite a laugh when you saw me as a little kid—now I wanna see what you looked like.”
Oh no. I stalled a little bit because I was embarrassed.
“It certainly can’t be worse than what you look like now,” he teased.
“Go fuck yourself.”
I went to the wall unit and took out a photo album. The only ones surviving. My mom suffered from the opposite of hoarding. She wanted to get rid of everything, especially objects and memories, so most of our photos had been lost in the numerous moves and new starts.
I sat back down with the album on my lap. When I opened it, I immediately recognized my picture from kindergarten.
James ripped it from my hands with impressive speed.
“You liked your cookies, huh.”
“Yes, okay, I was a chunky country kid, so what? For your information, I still like them.” I looked at him cantankerously.
“I bet that you were bossy. Look at you.”
He pointed at my chubby cheeks and my angry expression surrounded by a clump of blond hair.
Yeah, I looked like an extra in the movie The Boss Baby.
“I was. If you and I met in kindergarten, we’d have been pulling each other’s hair out.” I smiled.
“Not that it’s that different now,” he murmured, as his sharp eyes drifted along the hair falling down my shoulders. Our eyes met.
I gulped loudly. Having him so close made me feel weird.
Why did he make me feel so, especially when he looked at me like that? It was James. Will and Amelia’s words ricocheted in my head.
He turned the page, and a picture from Halloween showed up in front of us. I really was little. I didn’t even remember it.
“We can stop if you don’t want to look anymore,” he said when we found a picture of my brother.
“My mom never wants to look at them. Especially these from when he was younger.”
As I pointed at the picture, I inadvertently brushed his hand. James lifted his arm abruptly, scared of the contact.
“You’re really strong,” he said at some point. “Stronger than I thought. I wouldn’t be able to handle it. If something happened to Jasper.”
I caught a glimpse of innocence in his midnight-blue eyes that I’d never seen before.
“When we found out he was sick, it was so shocking that I couldn’t even cry. At least not initially. I couldn’t react because the anger was stronger than the pain. I don’t know why, but that’s what happened to me.”
James nodded as if he perfectly understood my mood.
“Everyone reacts to trauma differently,” he added, continuing to leaf through the album.
“He was in chemo here.”
I pointed at a photo. Seeing it brought up memories and sensations that made me shiver.
“It’s crazy. Everything changed when he started treatment. They did nothing but make him tired and weak, but he started smiling again. Like he knew things weren’t working, and that those would be his last smiles.”
I saw James curve his lips up at my brother’s amused expression on the hospital bed.
“He said he smiled because someone in our family had to. At that point neither I nor my parents could anymore. And I started to seriously regret it toward the last few days when I understood there was nothing more to do. We were selfish because he would’ve wanted to see those smiles, but we couldn’t do it. ”
I bit my tongue repeatedly, as if that was enough to hold the tears back. I didn’t want to cry in front of James.
“Maybe deep down you think holding everything in doesn’t just make you seem stronger but also makes the pain go away,” he said.
I shrugged it off. “I don’t know, it’s hard for me to externalize what I’m feeling,” I admitted, my voice cracking.
“What we show others is never what we’re really feeling.”
His comment stirred something in me. I was lost in my thoughts and didn’t realize that my leg accidentally grazed against his. James stood up abruptly and looked down at me.
He was so unpredictable. How could I trust him? I’d just confided in him about my pain. And what if he did tell Taylor? Deep down, I didn’t know him that well.
“Can I trust you?” he asked. I was floored. I nodded with my lips sealed.
“Even after what you heard and saw tonight, White?” He looked at me attentively. I took a big gulp of air before answering.
“Yeah. I won’t say anything to anyone. Can I trust you?” I asked back.
“You’d have to earn it.”
“So you and Taylor don’t tell each other everything?”
“Why, you and William do?” he shot back. “We don’t. Taylor and I aren’t friends.”
“You’re not friends, and the other day you said she’s not your girlfriend.”
“We fuck. Is that so hard to understand?”
I was irritated. I couldn’t stand how crass he was.
“And besides, why did you confide in me and not Will?” James was too direct. But it wasn’t that bad of a thing to hear.
“The opportunity never came up. And Will always has something to tell me.”
“Such as?” He furrowed his brows. I stayed quiet for a long moment, holding his gaze.
“He told me about the swim coach.”
“Fuck, I knew it. I knew it.”
I watched him run both hands through his hair, barely pushing it back.
“What happened to him?”
“Shut your damn mouth.”
“James, calm down.”
“Why don’t you ask Amelia or Brian, huh? Ask them. I wanna see what they have the guts to tell you.”
He got so irritated that his pupils dilated.
Everything was going fine until five seconds ago. What was going on?
“Do you have anything to sleep?”
His question startled me. I couldn’t pretend to not see how quick his temper was.
“What do you mean?”
“Your mom doesn’t take anything to sleep?”
“I think so, but not—”
“Where does she keep her medicine?”
I stood up, ready to throw him out if he dared to look through my mom’s stuff.
“James, don’t joke about that. Do you think you’re at CVS?”
“I gotta roll a joint,” he mumbled, heading into the kitchen to grab the supplies on the table.
“So you can’t sleep otherwise?” I tried to tease him, but when I saw his serious expression, I understood that there was nothing to joke about.
“No. Not unless I turn off my brain first.”
After flinging the front door open, he leaned on one side against the doorjamb and started filling the paper. I saw him watch the dark street in front of my house.
“I better stay out here for a little bit. You never know.”
“You can’t spend the night out here, you know that, right?” How was he not cold? I was freezing. James didn’t answer. I cautiously drew nearer to him.
“James, there’s still one thing I don’t understand.”
“What.”
“Should Austin be afraid of you, or the other way around?”
“Depends on how you put it.”
“I’d put it like you broke two of Brian’s ribs last year.”