Chapter Five #3
There must be some logical explanation for everything that has happened over the last week. Starting with the breakup, ending with the ring. I just have to find it.
Once I’m inside Jason’s room, I’m hit with it.
That musky old-man cologne. I’ve never loved it, but Jason picked his signature smell before we got together.
Apparently, fancy signature scents are a rich-people thing.
I breathe it in and I miss him. I realize I haven’t smelled that exact scent in the week he’s been in hospital.
I miss the solid feel of Jason beside me.
I miss that untouchable warmth he has that feels like comfort, like home. Jason always made me feel safe.
I touch his quilt, his pillow. And then I drop down on my knees and start looking, rummaging inside his bed frame and inside the shoebox under his bed. Both contain things I hope his mother never finds, because—
I shriek as the door of Jason’s room opens and closes. Marcus hurries in and claps his hand over my mouth before I can shriek even louder. He smells clean in a different way to Jason’s room. Woodsy and fresh.
I bite Marcus’s hand before I can do something humiliating like sniff him, and he lets go.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“What are you?” I say, enraged to be caught on all fours searching through Jason’s unmentionables.
“I wouldn’t look in there if I were you,” Marcus says.
“Thanks for the warning. On time as always,” I say with an eye roll, as I shove the box deeper under Jason’s bed. I’m surprised that Marcus knows what’s in there.
Marcus and Jason have always had a complicated relationship, just like their fathers.
Jason’s father, Rhett, is the older brother, the businessman, the former soccer pro.
Marcus’s father, Tommy, wanted to build a life without their father’s money, which made things significantly harder for him, but he opened a car repair shop when he moved back to Sterlingwood last year.
He has had to raise Marcus and Joey alone since his wife left soon after Joey was born.
Sometimes they get along great, but most of the time Marcus and Jason want to kill each other.
I used to think it all came down to competition—being in the same sport, jockeying for positions and team captain and game time and all those things, but Marcus doesn’t seem to actually care about having any of that.
Maybe it’s just the principle of the thing; no one wants to feel like they are a dimmer version of the sun.
Marcus is watching me, considering, his eyes narrowed. “So. Was it planted by you or planted by someone else? How did you do it?”
“How did I do what?”
“The ring,” he says. “How did you get it in the car?”
I’m practically beaming. “I didn’t,” I say. “Clearly, Jason meant to give it to me all along and only broke up with me to…to…throw me off. And obviously it worked.”
I pull myself up into a standing position, trying to hide my wince as a wave of nausea rushes over me.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Marcus says.
“Consider the fact,” I hiss, taking a step closer to him, “that you don’t know everything, Marcus.”
“I didn’t say I do.”
“Jason loves me.” I am so supremely full of confidence that I feel light as air.
I take off the ring, hold it in my palm.
The truth is that it feels strange on me.
Too big, yes, but wrong in a multitude of ways.
I don’t normally wear rings, and it’s a promise ring, and the whole thing feels weirder than I thought it would.
So old-fashioned and slightly child bride–ish. “It all makes sense now.”
“Except that it doesn’t,” Marcus says, eyeing the ring. “He could have surprised you without dumping you.”
The word dumping makes me flinch.
“Let me see it,” Marcus says.
“See what?” I ask, even though I know what he wants is in my palm. I take a step closer to him, stopping because he’s blocking the door.
“The ring.”
“Have you ever heard of the word please?” I taunt. But I’m standing too close, and I’m the one who pays for it. I am aware of him. His gaze, the warmth radiating off him, the head’s difference between us. He must feel it too, this restless vibration. The feeling that we’re both standing too close.
Suddenly, I’m thrown back to last July, to loud music and a summer dress, my then-favorite lipstick and warm, thick evening air. He swallows as he looks down at me, and I can’t tear my eyes from the way his throat bobs.
In just that one moment of distraction, Marcus snatches the ring from my palm. I am furious. I swipe for it, but he raises it over my head, holding it up against the light.
“It doesn’t look fake,” he says.
“Marcus, give it back!” I say as he easily moves it out to the side, away from me again.
I lunge right. He holds it out left. I spin out to the left.
He holds it up over his head. All out of options, I jump as high as I possibly can, knocking into his chest. He is so caught off guard that the movement sends us tumbling backward.
Marcus hits the ground with a loud oomph, and I fall onto him.
And then the world fades.