Chapter 44 #2
I liked Will, but his attitude only pushed me away.
James I didn’t like it at all, but his behavior pulled me in like a magnet.
It shouldn’t have. He was the typical guy who made fun of me in front of everyone; in fact, he did it, too, when we were alone, but I hadn’t had enough experience to realize it.
Come to think about it, he did it in Jackson’s car and did it again yesterday at him.
Was I too na?ve or too skeptical?
Falling into a guy like James Hunter’s trap would’ve been easy—too easy. A guy that hot and popular had never paid attention to me before.
To be honest, a guy like that had never even talked to me.
But on the other hand, I felt like I had a connection with Will, and I didn’t want to write that off.
If only he didn’t flip-flop so much.
I started smiling with my headphones in. “Drivers License” came on, and even though Olivia Rodrigo was kind of a premature choice because Will and I weren’t even a real couple, I thought of him. I felt my backpack vibrate. It was my phone.
I kept pedaling, disregarding the fact that I was dying to know what Will had to say.
What if he needed a friend, and I was turning my back on him like a selfish bitch? What if he wanted to tell me something important?
After biking a few blocks, I decided to head to William’s house.
When I rang the doorbell and the door opened, my breath almost stopped.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” There he was.
“Will called me. What the hell are you doing here, Hunter?” I swallowed, trying to hold his gaze, but I already knew that would be a herculean feat. He was shirtless, and the afternoon sun cast shadows on his rock-hard chest. He looked like he’d just jumped out of his Instagram post.
He took it upon himself to put my fantasies to an end. With a smirk, he slammed the door in my face. Offended, I rang the bell again like a crazy person. James opened it again, this time laughing as two dimples appeared on his cheeks.
“Are you an idiot? You’re gonna slam the door in my face like that?”
“Do you know any other way to get a pain in the ass like you to get lost?”
My eyes fell on his warm cheek, as if I wanted to take aim and slap it. But his smooth cheek evoked the sensation of touching my lips to his skin. For a moment I thought it’d left a mark, like a brand.
“Did you not hear me? Go home and don’t give me shit.” I held back the insult that was jumping off the tip of my tongue, then I talked again more calmly.
“Will called me.”
But my insistence didn’t make him move. Instead, he leaned on the doorjamb preventing me from coming in. “Why are you spewing bullshit? What’re you doing here?”
“Can you cut it out? And get dressed? Thanks.” I glanced furtively at him without looking down.
“I’ll be shirtless whenever the fuck I want, Snow White.”
Jesus what a meathead.
They say you see a person’s flaws better up close, but James was the total opposite. He had a perfect body. It was so enviable that it made me feel awkward.
“What the fuck do you want?” He lowered his head in my direction, forcing me to respond with an exasperated look.
“From you, nothing. Move, please.”
Obviously he didn’t move an inch. He continued to gaze at me contemptuously.
More persistent than ever before, I put my hands on his sweaty chest to push him, but it was useless.
“Ew.” I groaned as I felt my hands slide down his chest.
James leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Yeah, sure, eww. Why don’t you give me another little kiss since you’re already here?” he whispered, as his cologne intoxicated me.
“Because you’re a dickhead.”
“Fucking bitch.”
“June? You really came?”
Finally, William’s silhouette appeared like a celestial vision behind James’s shoulders.
“James, let her in,” Will ordered, seeing that I was still at the door.
“What on earth were you doing?” I asked perplexed, when I noticed that Will was also sweating bullets with his soaking T-shirt and messy hair.
“We were training,” he explained, as James bolted to the kitchen. William wiped his face with a towel, staying a safe distance away. “I’m gonna take a shower, then I’ll be right with you, okay?”
I nodded, unconvinced, then crouched down on the first step of the staircase.
I wanted to talk; I felt like I wanted to tell him that we couldn’t continue like this, that my thoughts went up in flames.
James stood in front of me with his hand in his tracksuit pant pocket and an apple juice in the other.
“I did it because my brain was foggy,” I said to justify myself. But James didn’t consider the important subject.
“Jasper was looking for you this afternoon,” he said, looking down at me.
“I couldn’t come.” I looked down at the parquet flooring because the sight of his lips on the straw bothered me. “Shouldn’t you be at home with him?”
James looked at me with arrogant disregard. “You want some?” he asked, pointing to the juice.
“No.”
And for god’s sake, get dressed.
“Do you live here now, Hunter?”
“I come here sometimes, White,” he said, leaning his shoulder against the wall.
I remembered what Jordan told my mom, that James almost never slept at home.
“Why are you sleeping here?”
His blue eyes stared at me sharply beneath his messy hair.
“None of your fucking business, but it’s useless to remind you of that because you can’t help yourself. You always have to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
I sulked. “Why can’t you ever be civil toward me?” He tilted his head like he wanted to study me from another angle to understand if I was really interested in what I’d asked him.
“Sometimes I come here more often than usual. That’s all,” he disclosed concisely.
“Why? Your dad seems like an okay guy.”
His eyes got darker, and he sat next to me on the step.
“Look, if your dad’s an asshole, you have to tell me because he works with my mom and they’re dating.”
I heard him breathe a heavy sigh before starting to talk.
“It has nothing to do with my dad. I did it because hiding here is a habit I’ve had since I was a kid.
And there are times when his parents are never here.
Will’s always alone.” James inadvertently piqued my curiosity about something else.
Why’d he have to hide here since he was little?
“My parents are separated too.” I shrugged, lacing my fingers between my knees like I wanted to stop the agitation I felt whenever I was around him from getting the best of me.
“But yours separated because they couldn’t get past a really hard time.”
James’s statement brought me right back to the past. “What about yours?”
“If my parents are separated it’s only because my mom didn’t think twice about cheating on him repeatedly.”
“Did that happen a long time ago?”
James clenched his jaw.
“I was in elementary school. My dad was always working. He was never home. So she slept with every Tom, Dick, and Harry, end of sob story.”
I jumped.
James clenched his jaw, and when my leg accidentally brushed up against his, he pulled it away like it burned. He stood up, went to the kitchen, and rolled a joint.
“Five minutes is too long to go without smoking,” I said sarcastically.
“I sweat out too many toxins during my workout.”
He maneuvered a rolling paper between his fingers, and I decided to pick up where we’d left off.
“But if your dad just got custody of Jasper less than a year ago, he didn’t raise you guys, did he?”
His deep eyes darted to my face.
“No,” he answered curtly.
At first I was interested in finding out what kind of guy Jordan was, but now that the Jordan’s a bad guy variable was eliminated, I wanted to know more about their family.
I’d guessed a long time ago that James was just putting on an act, but what was he hiding?
I saw him bite his lip nervously, and I couldn’t hold back.
“James, if you need to talk . . .”
Maybe I didn’t have the right to say that, maybe it wasn’t the right time, but now I’d said it.
He furrowed his brows and looked confused.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Steps from upstairs replaced the silence.
“June.”
Five seconds, and both of us shied away from that visual contact. I turned around and saw William looking at us. He’d changed and was staring at me.
“What were you two talking about?”
“Nothing. Just shooting the breeze.” I brushed it off, standing up.
James didn’t look up, but he kept crushing weed in the palm of his hand. Should I tell Will? Not tell him? Why was I getting into a situation where I had secrets with the best friend of the guy I liked?
I looked at James and his fidgety fingers that slid expertly across the rolling paper when William spoke.
“I’ve known you for almost a month, June. There’s no point in beating around the bush when you’ll find out anyway. James is right.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on.”
I glanced at James one more time, who stuck his tongue out theatrically at the bottom of his stairs and made a gagging motion with two fingers.
I shook my head and followed William to his bedroom. His room, right—how could I forget such an unsettling place.
We both sat at the edge of the bed, and he pointed first at the right wall then the left.
“See these two walls?” One white and one black.
“Yeah.”
“Imagine this is my life, June.”
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
“The times I’m like this, how you see me now, are rare.”
I watched him fiddle with the ends of his hair.
“How?”
Will tried to moisten his dry lips.
“How I feel now. Balanced.”
I inadvertently furrowed my brows.
“But I feel like I’m about to go in another direction.” He pointed at the black wall to our left.
“Please, explain, Will.”
“The good times are always followed by the bad.”
Those seemingly innocuous words conveyed a deep anguish. I instinctively took his hand, stopping his nervous gestures.
I started feeling afraid, maybe because I was starting to notice his fear. I pressed his back with my palm and Will finally started talking again.