She shrugs. “It’s kinda funny.”
“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” I admit.
For once, I don’t want to tell her the whole truth. Meghan doesn’t get lovesick. She’ll think I’m pathetic. She’ll tease me for falling in love with a guy I barely know, for the way my heart leaps into my throat when I walk into a class I share with him. She won’t understand if I tell her about the hot surge of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety that almost knocks the breath out of me, or the way my heart bursts when I remember how he touched my nose and said, “You’re pretty pretty.”
Meghan says she understands, but she doesn’t do crushes. She says she’s had them, but she’s not as crazy. And maybe she’s right. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe she doesn’t feel high just thinking of a guy touching her, but also ridiculous that he can affect her that way. She doesn’t know how, without his larger-than-life presence, a whole class can feel empty, like the whole point of being there is gone.
“So, are you going to tell me who this mystery man is?” she asks, sliding a cigarette from her pack. “Even if he was a freshman last year, if he plays football, I probably know who he is.”
“His name is Chase,” I say, tucking my hands under my knees and kicking my feet back and forth in the water. “Chase London.”
She pinches her cigarette between her lips, tilting her head to light it. Torturing me another moment, she takes a slow drag and exhales before speaking. “Huh.”
“Seriously?” I say, crossing my arms and leaning sideways to glare at her. “That’s all you’re going to say?”
“No.” She gives me a bit of side-eye. “Be careful.”
“What does that mean?”
She squints out at the pond and drags on her cigarette a few times before answering. “I mean, the boy is hot, no doubt. From what I’ve heard, he’s not a bad guy. I didn’t know him, but I knew who he was. Everyone knows who he is. His dad owns every car dealership in the county.”
“But?”
“I just don’t know if you’re ready for all that,” she says.
I feel like she’s holding back, like there’s something she’s not telling me, which is unlike Meghan. She keeps watching me like she’s waiting for something.
“Did you sleep with him?” I ask, deciding to go for blunt. Meghan is not particularly, well,particularabout her hook-ups. She would totally sleep with a guy she didn’t know.
“Nah,” she says, rolling the cherry of her cigarette along the edge of the dock. “As far as I knew, he was always dating that Darling chick. Not that I paid super close attention to the breakups of freshman and sophomores when I was a senior.”
Lindsey. Shit. I knew they looked close. What I don’t know is how close.
“So, he might have ex-girlfriend drama? Is that it?”
She heaves a giant sigh. “His mom died last summer.”
I suck in a breath, aware of Meghan’s concerned, watchful gaze.
“When?” I ask, clenching my jaw against the dread building inside me like a stone.
Meghan hesitates, then grinds out her cigarette. “July.”
“Before or after the party?”
She closes her eyes. “Before.”
It all makes sense. Why he gets away with so much at school. It isn’t just that he’s a football star. He’s one whose mom just died. Why Lindsey is so nice to him. Why he skips class, and the teachers seem to always excuse him. Why he looks at me like I hold his secret, and it makes him nervous.
I was there that night. The desperation in his kiss, in the way he touched me, it all makes sense now. It wasn’t about how much he wanted me. It was about how much he needed someone, anyone, to get lost in. For that night, I was enough.
It could have been anything, though. It wasn’t about me at all. I could have been one more bottle of beer, or some belligerent bastard who threw a punch, or another girl. I get it. I do. But it still hurts. He told me things, but he didn’t tell me that. I told him things about my family, and he didn’t say he knew how it felt. I opened my heart, shared myself.
He didn’t share himself.
It didn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing happened.