Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
jade
I’m not going to apologize to Reeve.
Not because I wasn’t wrong—I’m cringing at what a bitch I was—but because it’s a waste of time.
This entire school worships at Reeve Dalton’s feet.
Why would one minor insult make so much as a dent in his thick shell of arrogance?
And if it did, good. He needs to hear the other perspective once in a while.
Besides, I don’t stand for being psychoanalyzed by someone who doesn’t know or respect me. Right or wrong, he had no right to speculate about my emotional state or what the breakup with Sam did to my heart. He doesn’t deserve to know any of that.
I focus my attention on my laptop screen and the blinking cursor in front of me.
I’m three hard-fought sentences into a one-page essay in Spanish that’s due in a couple of days, and I’m stuck.
I swear I’ll never understand the difference between the verbs ser and estar; every time I think I’ve got them straight, one of them throws me a curveball.
I wonder how forgiving Spaniards are about mix-ups like that.
Suddenly Reeve’s offer to help me with Spanish seems pretty tempting. Too bad I freaked out on him.
I hear his words again: There was something between us that night.
For the first time since I told him off, I let myself replay the kiss.
That feeling of being swept away from everything that existed around us was unreal.
Reeve was completely right: There was something powerful in that kiss, and I flat out denied it.
Is that cruel? Somehow it seems even meaner than telling him he’s a clueless moron.
I scrape together another four sentences of my essay, trying to push away thoughts of Reeve. It’s too quiet in my bedroom, though, and I can’t think. I need a distraction.
I walk down to the dive bar on the corner to throw some darts.
Even though it’s a Thursday and the sun is still high in the sky, the weathered men glued to the sticky red vinyl barstools are the same ones I regularly see at closing time on weekends.
It’s a shitty bar, and not in a cool, ironic kind of way, but it’s good for cheap drinks and a little distraction when I’m not in the mood for the college bars.
Plus it never fails that I can win a ten-dollar bet by beating the older tough-guy types in darts.
“Hey, honey,” Candace says as I approach the bar, my boots squeaking on the beer-sticky floor. Candace is my favorite bartender. She looks like she’s been doing this since she was twelve, and she doesn’t take a single word of shit from anyone. “You drinking alone?”
“You know it. Just one beer, please.”
“No one in here has just one beer, love.”
“This is my thirty-minute break, and then I’m due back at home to finish writing a Spanish essay.”
“Spanish, huh? You ever had a Spanish lover? I did, and let me tell you: He ruined me for all other men.” An old guy down the bar turns to look at her. “He was worth it, though,” Candace tells the room.
See, this is exactly what I come in here for.
I gather up the darts and start throwing them at the old, cracked board on the wall, thinking about Spanish men.
A foreign lover isn’t exactly what I’m going to Spain for, but I wouldn’t complain if it ends up being the highlight of my, ahem, studies.
I let my mind wander to thoughts of sunny Spanish beaches and warm nights, men with accents—never mind that I’ll be the foreigner with the thick accent; men with deep, sexy voices, strong shoulders, and piercing blue eyes.
Oh god. I snap out of my daydream and realize that I’m picturing Reeve. What the hell?
I direct my attention to the dartboard and the smooth feeling of each dart leaving my hand, but the darts are landing wildly off target.
And I hardly care, because now my last interaction with Reeve is playing through my head like a movie, completely out of my control.
I feel it all again, less intense this time, but it’s there: the surprise—and was that satisfaction?
—at hearing him say he felt something when we kissed, then the annoyance when he claimed to know why I was denying a connection between us .
. . and then the fear when I realized he might not be wrong.
The injured look on his face flashes across my mind. My stomach feels heavy with guilt. I hurt him.
I take a long drink of the beer Candace poured me. I have to stand firm; I will not apologize to that man. But I can’t exactly do nothing and still call myself a good person, can I?
That evening I stop by Somerset to pick up my check because even though I work in two days, my bank account needs a deposit before then. Cecily is at her desk, scribbling something in her planner book so hard I’m waiting for the paper to rip.
“Hi,” I say. “Just came by to pick up my check.”
“You know where to find it.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, Jade. Let me ask you something: If—and I mean if—I needed you to temporarily pick up some extra hours in the next week or two, could you do it?”
“Yeah, of course. At your service.”
“Great,” she says like it’s anything but.
“Did something happen?”
“Not yet, but if young Mr. Dalton doesn’t start using his brain around here, something will happen to him.”
A bitter taste hits the back of my throat. “What did he do?” If Cecily was on her game, she’d snap at me to mind my own business, but luckily she’s too pissy for propriety.
“You know that British couple that comes in every week? They’re in here tonight and I go to say hello and they start recounting a story to me about Reeve fishing a broken cork out of their wineglass with a freaking spoon!
They’re chuckling away, and meanwhile I’m mortified to find out I’ve hired a moron. ”
“Hey,” I snap, but Cecily’s not listening.
“Can you imagine if he’d done that in front of a guest who doesn’t have such a sense of humor? We can’t afford to lose bottles of wine, and we can’t afford moronic servers.”
“Hey!” I say again, and this time she looks up at me. “Are you seriously calling one of your employees a moron?”
“Oh, stop it. I don’t have time for a lecture, all right?”
“Reeve’s not stupid,” I spit out, painfully aware of my hypocrisy.
“His actions were.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make him stupid. And in fact—” I know I’m making trouble for myself, but I keep going. “He only fished the cork out like that because I told him to.”
She looks at me. “You? Why the hell—”
“We couldn’t find the little sieve and I panicked and, well, like you said, that couple has a sense of humor.”
Cecily blinks at me in disbelief.
I nod. “I even handed him the spoon,” I say defiantly.
She snorts and shakes her head. “Well, Jade, you’d have been better off keeping that to yourself, but I’m glad to know. From now on, don’t offer assistance when you have no idea what you’re doing, okay? Christ.”
“I won’t,” I say through gritted teeth. I get the feeling that if I stay any longer, I’ll be the target of a series of muttered-under-her-breath insults, so I grab my check and turn for the door.
I try to slow my breathing so Cecily won’t hear how worked up I am.
Why am I so worked up? Cecily’s a bitch to everyone.
No sense getting enraged on behalf of someone who could use a little humbling anyway.
But that doesn’t stop my mind from racing with all the things I know about Reeve that would prove her wrong.
He’s not stupid, and I knew that even when I said it.
His ability to charm everyone, to adapt to any situation and come out of it on top, to smile at a roomful of people and make every person think he’s smiling just for them?
His ability to see the invisible scars around my heart and that yes, no matter how much I deny it to myself, I am afraid of deepening those scars?
That’s a type of intelligence I could only wish for.
No, Reeve is smart and charming and so far beyond the superficial facade he presents.
I wonder if he’s also forgiving.