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“Where did you get this stuff?” I asked, gathering the swag up in my arms.
“I had the day off, so I drove down there and pretty much cleaned out the bookstore,” my dad told us. “I’m so proud of you, kiddo.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I piled the many gifts back into the bag and gave him a hug.
“And I was thinking … maybe I could take you out to di
“Both of us?” my mom squeaked.
“Yes, it would be the three of us,” my father said, his voice just the slightest bit sarcastic. “Mel, I know you’ve moved on, and I’ve accepted that. At least, I’m working on accepting it. But something tells me that Ally might like it if the three of us could be alone together without a fight breaking out. I’m willing to give it a shot if you are.”
My pulse raced as I waited for my mom to answer, and I knew my face looked like a hopeful puppy’s. My dad was right. I would pretty much kill to spend some regular family-time with my parents, and with the wedding pla
“Please, Mom?” I said. “Gray’s not getting home till late anyway, right?”
“And Qui
She went to the closet to grab our coats, and my dad and I exchanged a grin. For the first time in a long time I wasn’t thinking about Jake or Chloe or the baby or anything else. I mean, I knew one di
ally
At school, things got bad for Chloe fast. Everyone was texting crap about her, giggling behind her back in the halls, whispering and snickering whenever she walked by. She tried to ignore it, but it seemed like there were unshed tears in her eyes every minute of the day. It had been bad enough when she was just pregnant, but now that she was onto her second baby daddy, the whole school was buzzing with amused disgust. Someone wrote the word SLUT on her locker in indelible marker. Her Facebook page got so bad she had to block almost everyone. And next to her picture in the hallway—the one a
If I didn’t hate my school before, I did now.
The deluge of crap she was dealing with made it that much harder to hold on to any residual anger and resentment I had toward her. Instead I felt sorry for her and indignant on her behalf. And now my rage was focused on everyone else.
One afternoon, Jake and I were hanging out by his locker, making plans to get me to his away swim meet, when Chloe and Will came walking down the center of the hall together. Will was the only bright spot I could see in the pregnancy fog. The two of them had been inseparable since that day he’d come to visit her at her house with the cookies, and nothing seemed to faze him. Not name-calling, not graffiti, not the fight with Hammond, nothing.
“Hey, Chloe. Are you sure it’s Will’s this time? ’Cause, you know, maybe it’s mine!” some jackass from the football team shouted after them as they neared Jake’s locker. “I know you were a little drunk that night, baby, but don’t you remember me?”
Will’s jaw clenched as his teammates cackled. So much for being unfazeable. I had a feeling he was about five seconds away from another throwdown.
“Just ignore them,” I said under my breath, but loud enough for Will and Chloe to hear. “Their heads are so far up their asses they can’t see daylight.”
Will managed a smirk, but Chloe was too busy staring at the floor. Or she would have been if her massive belly hadn’t been in the way. She lifted her eyes slowly and looked at Jake, who was busy shoving things in and out of his locker. Things he’d already shoved in and out.
“Hey, Jake,” she greeted him hopefully.
“I gotta get to the bus,” Jake said, slamming his locker door closed and tugging on my arm. “Let’s go.”
I felt prickly and sick as I shot an apologetic look at Chloe. As far as I knew, Jake hadn’t spoken a word to her since their fight, and it didn’t look like he was about to start today.
“I’ll call you later,” I said as I was tripped off down the hall. I let Jake have his way for about two yards before I wrenched my arm out of his grasp and stopped walking. “God! What’s the matter with you? I’d like to keep that attached to my body, please.”
Jake turned to me, an exasperated look on his face. “Why are you being nice to her? Did you space on what she did to me? Shouldn’t you hate her as much as I do?”
I took a deep breath for patience. Jake had been through a lot and I knew it was going to take him a while to get over it. But he’d been acting nonstop pissed off for, like, two weeks now, and being the person who spent more time with him than anyone, I was so beyond over it. My fantasy about things going back to normal in our relationship if he wasn’t the father? That was definitely not coming true.
In some ways, yes, he’d been the model boyfriend, sending me flowers for no reason, leaving little notes in my locker, texting to say I looked pretty or that he loved me or that he was thinking about me. But in other ways he was completely distant. He shut down whenever Chloe was in the room, and even after she left it was like he couldn’t get comfortable. Like something was eating him raw from the inside out.
“Jake, I know what Chloe did was huge, but she was terrified and … and hormonal,” I said under my breath, deciding not to feed him the gory details of her bodily functions and discomforts—details I was having nightmares over. “It’s over now. She told the truth. Your applications are in, you’re doing better in school…. Can’t you at least just be human to her?”
Jake looked at me as if he didn’t even know me. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”
“Jake,” I implored.
A few of his swimming buddies walked past toward the gym, and one of them reached out to slap his hand. He gave the guy a tight smile and our conversation was momentarily suspended.
“You know what? I don’t want to talk about this with you anymore,” he said finally. He sounded more resigned than angry. “I don’t want to talk about Chloe at all. Can’t we just … pretend she doesn’t exist?”
I wasn’t entirely sure how that was possible, but right then, I was sick of thinking and talking about it too. So, just to end the conversation, I said, “Sure. Fine. We’ll pretend she doesn’t exist.”
Jake smiled. “Thank you.”
He was just leaning in to kiss me when Hammond appeared from behind.
“Hey, hey, hey! You ready for the big meet?” He lifted his hand to slap Jake’s, and Jake’s grin widened.
“You know it!”
The two of them clasped hands and bumped shoulders. Crazy. Guys in general were certifiably crazy. Two months ago these two wanted nothing more than to beat the crap out of each other. Now they were suddenly best friends again, united in their anti–Will and Chloe front. The weirdest thing about it was, when Hammond found out about Chloe’s fling with Jake, he’d entirely blamed Jake and forgiven Chloe. But now that he knew she’d also flung with Will, he was pissed at Chloe and Jake was somehow forgiven. It was almost as if the fact that both Jake and Hammond now thought Chloe was a slut had somehow brought them together.
Just trying to figure it out gave me a headache.
“You going?” Jake asked. “’Cause Ally needs a ride.”
My jaw dropped. Like I wanted to spend half an hour alone in a car with Hammond?
“Oh, yeah? I can drive you, Ryan. Let’s go.”
“Cool. I better go before I miss the bus.” Jake gave me a kiss and a wave and was gone. Just like that, the boy passed me off to his former number one enemy—the guy he used to be so jealous of he hated picturing the two of us together. I looked at Hammond and wondered what he was thinking. Was he remembering how he’d kissed me over the summer at the old condo? How he’d confessed that he liked me? How I’d completely refused him?