Chapter 31
GEMMA
Someone dumped what had to be a full bottle of Pepto into Emily’s locker.
It’s right next to mine—I can see the thick, pink ooze of it, seeping through the bottom of the door from down the hall.
It’s after school. The halls are deserted, save for a few stragglers, rushing off to baseball practice or to take a make-up test. Giving me a wobbly smile, Emily shrugs. “It’s just Pepto. It could be worse.”
“Don’t do that,” I hiss at her while people hurry past us, pretending not to stare while they whisper to each other from behind their hands. “Don’t pretend like this shit is okay, because it’s not. It’s?—”
“I don’t know what else to do,” she whispers while we stand, side-by-side, in front of her locker. “I told him I don’t want to talk to him anymore. I told him to stay away from me. To stop coming to my house. That we can’t be friends.”
Him is Cade.
Emily is careful not to say his name out loud, like giving it air will summon Cam’s wrath.
“Is he listening?” I ask quietly. She doesn’t have to tell me. I already know the answer. It’s dripping peppermint pink sludge down the front of her locker.
She may have told Cade to stay away but he isn’t listening.
Emily shakes her head miserably. “He leaves for college in a few months. Maybe she’ll stop after he leaves.
” She looks at me with hope in her eyes.
We only have a few weeks of school left before summer break.
Cade is a senior and he’s fielding offers to play baseball for just about every D1 college in the country.
“Maybe once he’s gone, we can all be friends again. ”
“Yeah.” I nod my head in agreement because I’m supposed to. Let her hope that once Cade is gone, everything will go back to normal, because it’s what she wants to hear. “Maybe.”
I’m not a very good liar and neither is she.
“I’m going to go find the janitor and ask him for some supplies to clean up this mess,” Emily says while adjusting her backpack on her shoulders.
“I’ll go find a trash can,” I tell her with a nod. “We can?—”
“You’ve got to go,” she reminds me, brow furrowed. “You have a shift at June’s. You can’t be late—she’s going to let you run the counter, remember?”
I’ve been begging June for a chance to waitress for weeks now and she finally relented. It’s just the lunch counter but if I do well, she said she’d let me work my own station tomorrow night. “It’s fine,” I say, giving her a shrug. “I can always?—”
“No.” Emily shakes her head firmly. “I want you to go. This is my mess—I’ll clean it up.”
She’s not talking about the textbooks and gym clothes floating around in a sea of pink sludge inside her locker.
She’s talking about Cameron. She’s talk about Cade.
Even though I want to argue with her—tell her that neither of those assholes are her responsibility—I don’t.
Emily is almost as stubborn as I am. I could talk until I’m blue in the face. She won’t hear a word I say.
“Okay.” Giving her a head bob, I offer up a weak smile. “Come by the diner tonight if you get bored. I’ll sneak you some fries.”
Returning my weak smile, Emily starts off down the hall, in the direction of the maintenance office. “I will,” she calls out over her shoulder. She won’t. She does everything she can to avoid Cam these days, which means she stays home. Stays small.
Thinking about it makes me angry.
So angry, that by the time I make it to the student parking lot and I spot Cameron and Sera hanging out with a bunch of other Barrett kids under a tree in front of a line of parked cars, it’s more than I can take.
Dropping my backpack in the dirt, I rush forward, no one really noticing me until it’s too late.
“Cam.”
When I say her name, she turns, her baby blues widening slightly when she realizes it’s me who’s calling her out. Mouth open, she starts to say something but I don’t give her the chance. Lifting my arms, I plant my hands on her chest and shove, hard enough to put her on her ass.
“What the fuck is your problem, Gemma,” she yells up at me from where I dropped her in the dirt.
“You.” I jab a finger at her face, my own contorted into a snarl. “You’re my fucking problem.”
Cheeks stained red with embarrassment, she shoots a quick look at the crowd gathered around us before she lands it on my face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Ignoring her attempt at feigning ignorance, I shake my head.
“You’re pathetic.” Flicking a quick look into the crowd, I spot Sera.
Colt’s got her by the arm, holding her back but the look on her face is telling me it won’t be for long.
Looking back at Cam, I feel a vague sort of disgust. “All of this over a guy who doesn’t even want you. ”
Glaring up at me, Cam shakes her head. “Cade’s my boyfriend. He chose me. It’s not my fault she doesn’t understand that.”
“Did he?” I let out a scoff. “Did he choose you? Or did she just not give him a choice?”
“Fuck you, creeker,” she hisses up at me because she knows I’m right. She knows she didn’t win. That Cade is with her by default.
“All the shit you’ve done to her, and she’s never hit you back—not one time, Cam—because she’s still hoping this will all go away when he leaves.
She actually believes that we can all still be friends.
She wants it more than anything.” I shake my head because I know as well she does that Emily is delusional if she really thinks we can all just go back to the way things were.
I lift my gaze again and find Cade standing a few feet away, face still.
Looking right at me. “Just leave her alone,” I tell him quietly.
“She deserves better than this. She deserves better than you.” Shooting a quick look around the crowd, I spot Riggs, watching from the fringes, his girlfriend clinging to him, looking at me the way Cam looks at Emily. Like I’m the fox in the henhouse.
Looking back down at Cam, I shake my head on a tired sigh. “Emily was your friend. She would’ve done anything for you. She still would—can you say the same about him?”
“Cade loves me,” Cam declares but there’s something in her tone that says she knows the truth.
“No, he doesn’t.” Reaching down, I snag the shoulder strap of my backpack before I turn around and walk away.
I expected it.
The whole night, I worked the counter at June’s, pouring coffee and serving blue plate specials to single diners or small groups in too much of a hurry to wait for a table, I knew someone was going to come for me.
I dumped Cameron Wheeler—the most popular girl in school—on her ass and told the whole world what a pathetic pick-me she really is.
I kicked the hornet’s nest. There’s no way I’m not going to pay for it.
I expected Sera. The look on her face, aimed at me while I walked away, was murderous. She’s as protective of Cam as I am of Emily. This might not be our fight, but we’re both ready to square up, just the same.
Or maybe Cade. I outed him just as hard as I outed Cameron.
He’s never even looked at Emily during school hours.
His mother and her new husband bought the house next door to Emily.
That’s how this whole thing started. If his mother hadn’t married a creeker, Cade never would’ve moved in next door to her and he never would’ve given Emily a second look. None of this would be happening.
It isn’t Sera who showed up and it isn’t Cade.
It isn’t even Riggs.
It’s Colt.
When I see him, leaned up against the side of the building, standing in the circle of light thrown down from a streetlamp, hands dug into my pockets like he’s been there awhile, I feel my stomach drop like it’s full of lead.
Because despite the fact that he’s a Montgomery, I’ve always liked him. He’s never called me a creeker or gotten involved in the growing feud between his sister and me. He’s always been nice and the thought that he won’t be any more is suddenly more than I can take.
Saying a quick goodbye to June while she locks up, I square my shoulders and start to make my way down the sidewalk, heading straight for him. When he sees me coming, Colt pushes himself out of his lean and falls into step beside me as I walk past him.
We walk in silence for several minutes before I finally snap.
“Whatever it is you all have planned, can you just get it over with?” I ask, gaze aimed straight ahead.
“I need to get home—I have a shift in the morning.” Despite the fact that I was on edge all night, I ran the lunch counter like a champ.
I did so well, June is going to give me my own section for tomorrow’s breakfast shift.
“Alright...” Still walking, Colt shoots me a quick, sideways laugh. “You want to go to prom with me?”
Stopping on the sidewalk, I finally look at him. “What?”
“I mean…” Stopping alongside me, Colt shakes his head. “I heard Russ Tompkins backed out on you, last minute, so I know you already have a dress, right?”
That’s not what happened. Even though he’d look me in my face and deny it if I asked, I’m almost positive my prom date didn’t back out. He was forced out.
By Riggs.
“Right.” Instead of telling Colt that, I nod my head on a sigh. “But?—”
“This isn’t a trick,” Colt assures me, practically reading my mind. “There’s no set-up. I’m asking you to prom, Gemma. That’s all it is.”
I think about last summer. All the disgusting things Ethan said about me.
The rumors. The lies. Thinking that Colt might believe them is almost as bad as believing he’s asking me to prom because he’s in on the revenge I’m sure Cam’s plotting.
“I won’t have sex with you,” I blurt it out because the thought that Colt is here because he wants to get laid is even more stomach churning than the thought that he’s here with Cam and his sister to set me up.
Laughing again, Colt shakes his head. “That’s not the plan either.”
“Then what is the plan?” Looking around, I suddenly get the feeling we’re being watched.
I feel that way sometimes while I’m walking home.
I haven’t taken the river walk in months.
Not since the last time Riggs walked me home.
These days, I walk through town, rushing from streetlamp to streetlamp while I tell myself to stop being such a baby.
“The plan is to go to prom—” Colt leans in, dropping his tone like he’s telling me a secret.
“together.” Leaning back, he shakes his head.
“My stepdad said I can drive one of his fancy cars. I’ll pick you up—with a color coordinated corsage.
We’ll have dinner somewhere that’s stupidly expensive.
We’ll go to prom. Dance and take cheesy pictures, and when you’re ready to go home, I’ll take you there, give you a hearty handshake and say goodnight. ”
In spite of everything that’s happened today, I laugh. “A hearty handshake?”
“Or a fist bump.” He shrugs before giving me another grin. “I’m playing that part by ear.”
“Why?” This is the part I don’t understand.
If not because he wants to get in my pants or because it’s all a part of some elaborate plot to get back at me for what I did today, I don’t understand why Colt Montgomery—someone who’s always been nice but never seemed particularly interested in me, one way or another—would ask me out.
“Because I don’t like bullies.” His answer is simple enough, given with a shrug, but something tells me he isn’t talking about his sister and Cam. He knows what Riggs did and he doesn’t like it.
“I don’t know…” Shaking my head, I let out a small, tired sigh. “I think Emily’s got the right idea. I think maybe staying home is the smart thing to do.”
“Fuck that.” Colt shakes his head. “Look—do you want to go to prom, or not?”
“Yes.” Taken aback by the frustration I hear in his tone, I give him a nod. “I want to go, but?—”
“But nothing.” Reaching for my hand, Colt gives it a squeeze.
It doesn’t feel romantic. Doesn’t stir up the nest full of worms that squirm around in my belly like Riggs does.
It feels like reassurance. Like a promise.
“Nothing will happen to you, Gemma. I swear—I won’t let anything happen. I’ll keep you safe.”
It might make me stupid but I believe him.
“Okay, you win, Colt.” Bobbing my head, I give him a smile. “I’ll go to prom with you.”