CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR PRESENT DAY
I balk, checking over my shoulder to make sure I haven’t hallucinated the last forty seconds. What does Jesse think he’s doing? Even if Jesse is taller, Alex has at least twenty pounds on him, and he trains religiously.
Jesse grabs the chain link and jumps the fence in one swift move. A few of Alex’s teammates stop running as Jesse crosses the track.
The fog of shock finally lifts. “Jesse!” I shout. The wind whips my voice away. I sprint for the fence. By the time I reach the chains, the last patch of dry clothing on my body has succumbed to the downpour. Ahead, Jesse reaches Alex, who breaks away from Diane with a scowl.
I grab the nearest player. “Greg, help me up!”
Greg raises his hands instantly. “Uh—”
I channel some of Rainie’s ferocious command. “Don’t just stand there! Pick me up!”
Alex’s teammate grabs my upper arms and swings me over the fence. My shoes land in soft mud, and I suppress a howl. Jesse is so dead.
To my shock, Jesse knots his fist in Alex’s jersey and slams him into a bleacher. Diane covers her mouth. She flees for the admin building, and I push my legs harder. If a staff member catches Jesse accosting another student, he can kiss walking at graduation goodbye.
With a flying leap, I throw myself onto Jesse’s back hard enough to dislodge his grip on Alex’s shirt.
My arms wind around his neck, my legs sticking out on either side of his waist. “Stop!” I pant against his ear, not even caring how gross my labored breathing must sound.
He deserves it for making me run in the rain.
Alex straightens, getting right up in Jesse’s face. Blood smears his bottom lip. “What the hell is your problem?”
“Taken too many basketballs to the brain, kiddo?” Jesse bites out. “Give it a guess.”
“You scared Diane!”
Neither acknowledge my very real presence on Jesse’s back. I climb higher, hooking my chin on Jesse’s shoulder. “Hello!” I shout.
Nothing. Not even a glance.
Jesse bites down on his knuckles with mock concern. “Oh no, I scared Diane? Do you think she’ll ever recover?”
When I start to slip for the third time, Jesse finally grabs my elbows and hauls me upward in one powerful motion.
I squeak, barely remembering to grab onto the front of his jacket.
He winds his arms under my knees, giving my legs an anchor.
I’m plastered to his back like a five-foot-two koala, arms welded around his shoulders and neck.
I ignore how nice his hair feels against my cheek, even damp and rumpled from the rain.
“Did you forget you have a girlfriend?” Jesse spits. “Or did you lose that inconvenient tidbit behind Diane’s tonsils?”
Alex’s mouth opens, speechless, and I use the opportunity to shout directly into Jesse’s ear. “I don’t care about Diane!”
Unfortunately, I’m successful in grabbing Jesse’s attention just as I notice the red stain spreading over my pant leg. I must’ve reopened my wound while I was running.
Uh-oh.
Dizziness slackens my muscles. I slide off Jesse and crumple to the foam blacktop. Alex exclaims my name. Jesse shoulders him aside, crouching at my side.
“Why is she bleeding?”
Jesse ignores him, gently palpating the bruise on my thigh.
“It’s barely bleeding,” he mutters. “Not nearly enough to cause disorientation.”
“She faints at the sight of blood, douchebag,” Alex snaps. He wipes the blood from his mouth with the edge of his sleeve.
I close my eyes, tuning them out in favor of counting the raindrops falling onto my cheeks. My stomach settles. Without moving, I say, “I could’ve been asleep under six blankets right now.”
A thumb sweeps away the water lingering in the hollow under my eye. “How do you feel?” Jesse asks.
“How do I feel?” I swat his hand away. “How do I feel?”
The boys glance at each other, momentarily forgetting their antipathy in favor of shared confusion.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” I push myself onto my elbows, carefully avoiding the red patch on my thigh.
“In about fifteen seconds, I’m going to get up and start walking.
If either of you so much as twitches in the other’s direction, I’ll ask Greg if I can climb onto his shoulders and use him as a human battering ram.
I think I could make a solid case to a judge that my actions were a public service.
Jesse, do you think if Alex was cheating on me, Rainie, Aida, and Lucia would have let it slide?
Do you think I would have let it slide?” I move my glare to Alex.
“Can you finally start telling everyone we broke up? People are going to accuse Diane of being a homewrecker, and she doesn’t deserve that. ”
Slapping away their efforts to help, I pull myself to my feet. Diane emerges from the admin building, the school secretary on her heels. “Alex,” I grind out. “Get your girlfriend away from here.”
“She’s not—”
“Alex!”
He leaps into motion, heading straight for Diane. Jesse and I rush in the opposite direction, around the theater building and behind the teacher’s parking lot. I don’t let myself relax until we’ve cleared the gym.
My chest heaves with exertion. Alex better have used his good boy charm to explain away Diane’s accusation. I can’t stand the idea of Jesse getting in any more trouble, even if he deserves it. What was he thinking?
At the student parking lot, I veer from Jesse, giving him my back as I stomp toward the crosswalk.
Jesse follows. “You can’t walk home with a bleeding leg and a concussion.”
I ignore him. I walked here just fine this morning. I’ll just sit on the curb if I start to get woozy.
Jesse tries again. “Mansour.”
I press the yellow crosswalk button. The stop sign changes to a small white figure.
“Why are you upset? I thought the ball jockey was cheating on you. Turns out I was wrong. No harm done.”
I whirl around. “No harm done? You could’ve gotten suspended!”
“I thought he was cheating on you in front of the entire school,” Jesse repeats curtly.
“Why do you care?” I yell. My frustration echoes in the empty parking lot.
“You could’ve, I don’t know, asked me before you stormed off.
God, don’t you get tired of being angry all the time?
You don’t even try to change. Anger burns, Jesse, and you’re so distracted by the smoke that you don’t realize it’s eating away everything good inside you! ”
A vein pounds in Jesse’s forehead. “You’re assuming there was anything good inside me to begin with.”
I throw my hands up. “Unbelievable. You are so dramatic, do you know that? Oooh, I’m dark and damaged, world beware. I am literally descended from a family of killers, but I still pour my cereal before my milk like everyone else.”
Jesse’s face does a complicated dance, like he can’t decide whether to laugh or trip me into a puddle.
What he eventually settles on looks a lot like remorse.
“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out, and I’m well aware your friends would have torn the guy to shreds if he was actually disrespecting you.
I just …” He studies the sky, seeking answers behind the gray veil permanently cloaking Ward.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with this. ”
“With …”
He lowers his eyes to mine. They’re pained, clearly struggling against some revelation. “Caring about someone. I don’t think I’m doing it right.”
The pause that follows lasts a century. Holding on to my anger becomes impossible, and it settles into a warm and familiar exasperation.
I’ve already seen countless examples of how Jesse acts when he cares about something.
Dedication doesn’t do it justice. Up until now, most of what he cared about revolved around curses, home improvement projects, plants, and a bird feeder.
I sigh. “You can just ask next time.”
Relief loosens the tension in Jesse’s shoulders, and he gestures at his car. “Let me give you a ride. Please.”
I pull at my soaked clothes. “Sure. Say goodbye to your seats.”
“They’ll survive.”
The truck door opens with a whine of metal. Jesse arranges me on the leather seat, buckling me in as I begin to shiver in earnest. I’m still holding my coat balled up in my lap.
As soon as he hops into the driver’s seat, he twists a dial on the dashboard. Hot air coughs out of the vent. The engine turns, and my back hits the seat as Jesse peels out of the parking lot.
The rhythmic fwip-fwip of the windshield wipers joins the pattering rain. Trees blur past the window. Ward lies empty and silent around us.
“You’ve given up.”
I go still at Jesse’s softly uttered accusation. He stares at the rivers of water sluicing down the windshield.
“I’ve had to listen to you rehearsing your graduation speech thirty times. Suddenly you don’t care? And your bonehead shacks up with someone else and it rolls right off you.”
“Diane is sweet.”
“Admit it. You don’t think you’re gonna make it.”
“What if I just don’t want Alex anymore?” The words fall free before I can stop them. “What if I want someone else?”
If I had several years of my life to spare, Jesse’s silence would have shaved them right off. His face smooths into a terrifying blankness.
“Don’t mess with me, Mansour. I’m not some puppy you can lead around by the nose if you bat your eyes and promise them a dance at the ball.”
My jaw hangs open. “I’m not—I wouldn’t—I’m not messing with you. I haven’t thought about Alex since … you know. Since the train.”
Jesse doesn’t respond. Why did I expect anything else? He cares about me—okay, great. But acting on his feelings? Bridging the gap between longing and having?
There’s a reason I lived next to Jesse for four years without knowing a thing about him. A reason everyone at school trades rumors and theories about the Talbots like daily horoscope readings.
We’ve been trying to pull Jesse into our world, but Jesse Talbot has always existed in the shadows. The way I feel—the way I could swear he feels, in those moments when his gaze settles on me and lingers—demands light.