He's So Not Worth It

All night I couldn’t stop thinking about that guy Ally was with. His cocky face. That toolbox hair. He’d had his hands on her back, right above her waistband. That was the thing that kept coming back to me, and it made me feel sick every time it did. He didn’t get to touch her like that. No one got to touch her like that.I knew I had to get home and deal with the fallout. My mom had called me forty-two times the night before. Finally, once the party was over, she’d gotten through to Hammond’s mom, who’d come into Ham’s room still holding the phone at, like, one a.m. She’d told me my mom was too angry to talk to me, but that she didn’t want me driving home in the middle of the night. I was supposed to be back at my house by ten this morning. It was already nine fifteen as I walked down the beach toward Dr. Nathanson’s house. So yeah. That wasn’t going to happen.I stopped on the sand and flexed my hand, wincing as it throbbed through the gauze Faith had wrapped around my knuckles. Clenching my teeth, I looked up at the house. Ally was in there somewhere, probably still sleeping. I knew what Hammond would say if he saw me.Why was I going back for round two? How far up my ass was my head?But I knew why. It was that thing Ally had said about how I never explained. It had been driving me nuts all night. Because she was right. That day outside Jump, I avoided it. I had hoped we’d never have to go there, that we could just pretend like nothing had happened. And she’d called me on it. She’d called me on my bullshit. So now I had to explain. Just to prove to her that I wasn’t the jackass she thought I was.And there was something else, too. I could’ve sworn, when she’d first seen me, for just a second, she was happy I was there. There was a split second, when my hand was pulsating and my blood was rushing in my ears, that I thought she was going to throw her arms around me. I hadn’t imagined it. It was real. I just had to get her to look at me like that again.I blew out a breath and walked slowly up the stairs to the deck. I was halfway there, when a sliding glass door opened overhead. Ally stepped out onto a smaller deck. She was wearing her Orchard Hill High soccer T-shirt. The one she got for being a backslapper—my backslapper. Was that a good sign?“What are you doing here?” she snapped.Okay. Maybe not a good sign.“Can I talk to you?”She glanced over her shoulder and groaned. “I’ll be right down.”She was gone for about thirty seconds. I didn’t understand how she could make it seem like it was such a chore just to fucking talk to me, when all I wanted to do was talk to her. Then the door to the big deck opened and she came out. I walked up the last few steps. She looked tired, but it didn’t matter. She was still beautiful. Maybe I should say that. Maybe then she wouldn’t hate me.I opened my mouth to talk.“So, you ditched out on my dad last night, huh?”My tongue turned to dust. “What?”“He called this morning looking for you,” she said.Fuck. “What did you tell him?”She rolled her eyes. Already this was not going as pla

Fuck her. No seriously. Fuck. Her. After all that crap . . . all that sneaking around . . . the fact that I came to warn her that night at the pool and got my ass thrown in detention, the awesome frickin’ birthday present I got her, losing my best freaking friend over her . . . None of that mattered? What the hell does that even mean, “You’re not the person I thought you were?” Screw you. Maybe you’re not the person I thought you were, hooking up with random local losers after what? Like, a week of being away.Fuck. Her.I pulled into my driveway at top speed. Had to slam on the brakes to keep from taking out my mother’s beloved lawn jockey. Another fucking reminder of Ally Ryan and all the bullshit I did for her. I gave the Jeep door a good slam and started for the house. Three hours on the road and I was still fuming. I needed to punch something. Again.My mother came out the front door. Her hand was stretched out flat, palm up. Her eyes were so wide it was like someone was pulling the lids back with little strings.“Keys.”“What?”“Keys!” she said. “Now, Jake. Give me your keys.”I stopped. I would’ve cursed, but she probably would’ve taken some gardening tool to my tires. I dropped the keys in her hand.“That’s it. For the rest of the summer, you are not leaving this house unless it’s to go to work or to class,” she spat.She turned on her gold heel and walked over to the door. Then she stood next to it and waited for me to go inside. I wanted to bail. To walk to Sha