Chapter 23
NOEL
I don’t actually have to go too far to find Jordan. He’s not upstairs, it turns out, or down. He’s not somewhere in the backyard, or in the hot tub. And he certainly hasn’t left.
No, he’s in the kitchen alone. It’s a complete mess of red plastic cups and half-empty liquor bottles, and the counters are littered with open chip bags and room temperature ranch dip.
The window above the sink is large and affords a view of the expansive patio, the amount of people back there who have decided to build a bonfire, of all things.
The orange, flickering light paints Jordan’s profile with an eerie glow as he prepares what looks like two vodka sodas.
And my mouth is dry at the sight of him and my stomach’s all knotted up and I wish like hell I hadn’t told Luca to split up, not when Jordan turned out to be so close after all, and why the fuck had I done that anyway?
I don’t want to do this alone. I don’t. Never wanted to see him or talk to him again.
It felt okay having him blocked, and he didn’t try to bother me beyond that one time he called on his friend’s phone.
He’d gotten the message. Or gotten his own message across, I guess.
Enough that he didn’t feel the need to keep dogging me.
Asshole.
Like that, I am more angry than anxious, or at least the anger overrides the anxiety. Enough that I can step inside the doorway and say, “Hi.”
He spooks like a high-strung horse and whips around. One of the cups goes spilling into the sink. “Fuck me,” he gasps. “You scared me shitless.”
I don’t say anything. I just watch him from a good five feet away, nails biting into my palms. He’s the same smug asshole as ever, identical to how he looked at the club in June.
His beard has come in more, I guess, but it still looks like shit.
What did I ever see in him in the first place?
Why did I ever love him? Why was I so desperate for his attention, once?
“Oh. Noel.” He’s realized who I am at last, quite belatedly; he’s drunk or high or maybe rolling on his mom’s narcolepsy meds or all of the above, who fucking knows. “How long have you been here? I didn’t even know you were invited. I mean, uh, not that I’m complaining.”
“Where’s Jamil?” I say.
“I don’t know.” The lie pops out of his mouth so quickly. “Why would I know? He’s your friend, not mine.”
“Not what it looked like online.”
“Oh—” He rolls his giant wet blue eyes in a fashion so exaggerated that he’d lose credibility for that maneuver alone, if I couldn’t already tell he was lying. “He’s wicked fucked up, hanging all over me. Crying about how lonely he is now that his ex dumped him. And I was like bro, join the club.”
“Which one left you lonely?” I mutter.
“Huh?” Jordan’s turned back to the sink, plucking the spilled cup from its depths and examining it glumly. He swears under his breath and picks up a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka.
“Never mind.” I raise my chin. “Who’s the other drink for, then?”
“Not you,” he’s quick to say. “I’ve seen how you get when you’re drunk. Maybe you shouldn’t be drinking on whatever pills you’re on, you know? I’ve heard that shit can give you weird ass side effects.”
My fists are balled so tightly that they’ve gone numb at this point.
I make small steps toward him, quiet as I can in rubber-soled boots on a sticky tile floor, and I don’t know what I’m going to do when I actually get to him.
Seize him by his scrawny neck and choke him out?
Grab the back of his head and bang his forehead against the fancy, shiny faucet?
That sounds like a good idea, actually, just fucking clock him right in his thick skull with one of the many bottles lying around.
No. Can’t hurt him. Can’t do something that will get me in trouble.
Can’t be the aggressor, the bad guy, give people a reason to doubt me—and I falter on that thought, winding up somewhere in the middle of the massive kitchen, not close enough to touch him and not nearly far enough away.
Once again I wish Luca was here, or anyone, or that I could just make Jordan fucking disappear with a snap, a thought, concentrate all my ill fury into him until he explodes.
Once upon a time I didn’t care about consequences, really. A week ago I nearly glassed a stranger for the crime of triggering me just so. Alone, my bravado caves in. So when I speak, it’s little more than a whisper, thin as a weak breeze: “You hurt me.”
“Huh?” He turns to face me once more, annoyed. “Oh, god. Not this shit again.”
“You did.” Louder, Simon says be brave, well, here goes nothing. “Jordan, you literally spiked my drink. I know you did. It’s on Anathema’s cameras. You can’t bullshit your way out of this.”
This lands, at least. He actually blanches, a frisson of fear animating his face as the blood drains from it all at once. “Wait, what?”
“I could go to the police with it. Ruin your life forever.”
We’re in a momentary stand-off. We both stare at each other, and he’s furiously chewing at the inside of his mouth while I watch.
My heart’s fluttering against my ribs like something small and furred and trapped, desperate to escape, and my lizard brain is pumping me with the just the amount of adrenaline required to flee from this threat because fighting seems unthinkable.
Yet here I am, unmoving, pale as he is and sick at heart, and my throat burns with bile.
“Okay,” he says. “So what? Is that what you came here to tell me, that you’re gonna go to the cops about it? Weeks after the fact?”
And again I’m silent because that isn’t what I’m saying, is it?
I can’t go to the cops, of course I can’t.
I never intended to go to the cops. I can’t be the one and why did I say that, anyway, gave him the easiest bluff in the world to call because he dated me for a year and lived with me almost that long and he knows me, for better or worse.
What I will or won’t do. He doesn’t know my past, precisely, but he knows my aversion to authority well enough.
“Didn’t think so.” He advances on me and I put my hands up, try to keep him at arm’s length before he grabs my shoulders.
“You know, this is the absolute worst fucking part about you. You latch onto shit and don’t let it the fuck go until you blow up into pieces about it.
And it’s all entirely self-inflicted. It’s so incredibly annoying. ”
He’s sort of shaking me as I talk and adrenaline be damned, I can’t seem to make him let go. Can’t shove him off me and can’t pry his fingers off my shirt. Can’t worm away and bolt the way I want to. I seem to be rooted to this spot.
“Look.” Jordan sounds oh-so-reasonable. “I get it. You’re like, weirdly stunted or whatever because your mom’s whacked out, but adults can do substances recreationally.
It’s not a big deal. Do you know how high seventy-five percent of the people here are right now?
And on how much shit? Weed, pills, whatever. ”
My temper catches up and flares. I shove him, hard, and he has the audacity to yelp like I’ve wounded him. “I didn’t agree to having my drink spiked!” I snarl at him. “I told you no, Jordan. What happened to no being a complete sentence, huh? And you went and fucking did it anyway! Why?”
“I didn’t think it would turn you catatonic!” he rages back. “How the fuck was I supposed to know you were on a cocktail of pills, huh?”
“If someone tells you no—”
He ignores me. “Noel, it doesn’t fucking matter. I’ve already said this a million times: nothing happened to you. You tripped out for a while and then you got better. I didn’t even touch you and honestly, who would want to? You’re more trouble than you’re worth, per fucking usual.”
The worst part is that he’s right. Everything he just said is right.
Nothing happened to me, he didn’t touch me, and I am more trouble than I’m worth.
Factual statements, all three. What the fuck am I doing?
Here? Playing vigilante? Saving my friend who probably doesn’t even want to be saved, if there’s even anything to save him from?
Maybe it’s just me that’s the problem. Maybe everyone else is fine and I’m the only one who isn’t—no, that’s not true. Luca thinks it’s wrong. Danika does too. All three of us can’t be wrong. Right?
“The bottom line is, unless you plan on doing anything with that footage, it’s just your word against mine.”
“I want to know why.” I will myself to sound steady but I don’t. I sound small. I sound like a bitch, kicked and tossed aside. I sound absolutely pathetic.
“Why?” Jordan’s almost taken aback by the question. “Why what?”
“Why you did it, you fucking jackass.”
He shrugs and the gesture alone inflames me.
Like drugging me is a fucking afterthought.
Like hurting me is just something he tripped and accidentally fell into.
“Because, I don’t know, I could. You were being such a snotty bitch that night and I wanted to take you down a peg.
It might’ve been fun, if it worked out. If there’s anything I look back fondly on, it was fucking you. ”
Where he hardly got me off and on the odd occasion he did, it would be filed away to be used against me for later, exchanged for favors with interest. But I guess that would seem ideal to him, how pathetic I was and so desperate to please, presenting myself like a self-sufficient fuck toy so I could feel loved and wanted for a little while.
“So we’re done? You got that out of your system?
” He’s over me and this, the scene I’ve created in the kitchen.
Not a fucking worry in the world. He’s never been scared of me, even at my absolute worst, only annoyed, and I wonder if I have some responsibility here, too, making him the way he is.
Was he always so entitled? Weren’t we good at first? I don’t know, I don’t remember anymore.