I groan. “Please no. I thought we were doing something chill for once.”
“If I have to be around your miserable, mopey ass all night, at least let me watch a parade of girls shake their tits in my face.”
“Like you couldn’t get that in the privacy of your own bedroom? I’m not spending money I don’t have on strippers.”
“I’ll spot you,” Cash offers. “You can pay me back next year when you’re wiping your ass with hundreds.”
At nine,we pile into a car: me, Cam, Lorenzo, and Cash. Cam and Lorenzo hate strip clubs but are keeping their lips zipped and pretending to be okay with the plan, which shows how desperate my buddies are to pull me out of this personal hell I’m in.
The club smells like flowery perfume, stale cigarettes, and old carpet. I never thought a stripper would make me think of Jade, but that’s what happens as soon as we sit down in front of the topless chick gyrating on stage. My brain is flooded with memories of Jade’s body. For weeks, I knew every inch of it, where to touch her to draw a soft, shuddery breath out of her, how to strokeher to make her lose her mind. It can’t be real that I’ll never touch her again. To know I’ll never run my hands through her soft hair or pull her to my chest seems impossible, but it’s not. Already I forget what her mouth tastes like. I feel it with a bone-deep sense of loss.
I don’t know what to do with these feelings. You spend your whole life hearing about heartbreak in songs and movies and from people who have lived real lives, but nothing prepared me for this gutted feeling. It’s shocking pain and numbness at once, something words are useless for.
I take the beer our half-naked server hands me, realizing belatedly she’s smiling at me, but I turn away. I never knew how smart my old approach to girls was. Maybe jumping from one jersey chaser to the next did get boring, but I’d take boredom over this misery any day.
Did I do it to myself? I talked Jade into taking a chance on me, and then I talked myself out of being honest with her when it mattered. Maybe if I’d told her how much I wanted a future with her, we wouldn’t be here. I hate myself for that. I hate that my honesty came too late, but at least I was honest. Was Jade ever once completely honest about what she felt for me? No, she hid her feelings. Either that or she never really gave a shit about me in the first place. I swallow down what’s left of my beer, but it tastes bitter.
“Someone smells a baller,” Lorenzo says into my ear, nodding at the blonde dancing on stage a foot from us. She’s staring at me openly, her “fuck me” eyes watching me from under her fake, fluttery lashes. But I feel nothing. No interest, no attraction, not even a little high at thinking she might have mistaken me for someone with money to burn. She only makes me hate this place more.
“I’m outta here,” I tell my friends, standing up. “Catch up with you later.” I’m moving toward the door before they canrespond, but Cam is already on my heels, like he’s been expecting this escape attempt.
“Hang out a little longer,” he yells over the music. “I’m done after this drink too.”
Lorenzo and Cash have caught up to us, and both look like they’ve had enough of my shit. I feel a pang of guilt—I hate being this guy. “Stay,” I tell them without stopping. “Enjoy the show. The smell in here is giving me a headache.”
“Are you really pulling this bullshit on us?” Lorenzo demands, but I don’t stop. We spill out into the cold night air, and he keeps bitching. “We haven’t even been here an hour.”
“Like you want to be here any more than I do, Lorenzo?”
He grabs me to stop me, irritation flashing in his dark eyes. “We’re here to show you a good time. Can you fucking relax and enjoy it?”
“I told you I didn’t want to be here. You want to have a good time, then don’t invite me somewhere I don’t want to be. I didn’t ask anyone to try to cheer me up.”
Cash nudges Lorenzo out of the way, stepping up like he wants to get in my face. “Come on, man, enough of this sad-sack shit. Sorry you’re hurting, but we’ve all been there. It sucks. Now get over it.”
I huff out a laugh. “You’ve been there, Cash? With who, the chick you dated for a record-breaking three weeks?” He doesn’t know this feeling. None of them do. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
“Okay, you got burned and you’re bitter about it, but nobody wants to be around that. Ain’t no excuse to turn into a crybaby bitch.”
Lorenzo and Cam knock into each other in their hurry to step between us, but it’s the old Reeve they’re afraid is about to drop the gloves. I don’t even have it in me to get angry. “Yeah, Iknow, you only want to be around me when I’m laughing and joking and being your cheerleader, right?”
“Oh, fuck that,” Cash spits. “How about just showing up for your team, Reeve? Or did you forget about the other ninety of us? Two games left. Fucking show up already.”
I stare back at him, waiting for Cam to say something in my defense; he’s never not had my back. But no one says anything, and a deep sense of shame slowly unfurls inside me. I take a step back and look at Cam, needing him to say something.
He shakes his head slowly. “Wake up, brother.”
FORTY-THREE
jade
I’ve never been busier.
I bust my ass at work; I have a new Spanish tutor, Luis, whom I see three times a week; and I’m up late every night planning Spain to death: filling out applications, looking at housing, researching towns, and budgeting every cent I’ll earn between now and the day I fly out of here. Senioritis? Not Jade Kelly. I look like I’m crushing fall semester. It’s great because it leaves me no time to cry about Reeve. Except maybe in the bathroom between classes. And the middle of the night when I wake up from another dream about him. And Saturdays when I watch his games on TV and think about how badly I wish I was the one he was going home to all bruised and tired and happy afterward.
It had to end. Circumstances would never let me and Reeve have the relationship we want, and the longer we would’ve gone on—the more pieces of my heart I handed to him—the more it would’ve hurt. But the way it ended feels sickeningly wrong. The memory of all hope draining from his eyes haunts me day and night.
A gentle knock sounds at my bedroom door, and Lenni pokes her head in. “Morning, sweetie.”
