“Wait.” Her fingers touch my sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”
My throat tightens. “You mean that you’re ashamed about us fucking?”
She glances around. “It’s not you I’m ashamed of. It’s about my own pride and self-respect. I told my friends about how you treated me, and now I’m hooking up with you? Can’t you see how that looks?”
“I’ve changed, though.” I swallow. “You said so yourself.”
“Does this really bother you that much?”
I hang my head. “I know you don’t want anything more serious with me.” I look up at her. “I get it. But yeah, it stings a little that your friends think I’m garbage.”
People flow around us as she bites her lip. We are rocks in a river, immovable. A whiff of cleaning product wafts over to us from a nearby machine.
“I’ll tell them you’re nicer now, if it means something to you.”
“Kendall.” I tilt her chin up with my finger. “I’m not concerned about my reputation in general. I care what the people close to you think of me. That’s all.”
She’s got that devastated look about her again, like my admissions are little thorns digging under her skin.
“You’re making this whole revenge plan of mine really difficult,” she says.
“If it makes you feel any better, you’ve already achieved it. The fact I want you so much and can’t ever have you is pretty good revenge.” We stare at each other. My raw honesty is a shard of glass, poised to cut both of us if we so much as breathe. She opens her mouth, then closes it again.
“I’m sorry, Grant.” She turns again and walks back over to her friend.
19
KENDALL
“Excuse me.” Maria waits for me next to the cardio equipment. Her arms are crossed over her chest. “What was that?” She points a blue-polished finger toward the locker rooms.
She follows me when I start to walk that direction myself. I glance at her.
“Can you keep a secret?”
She stops me with a hand on my arm. “Are you serious?” She almost looks disappointed in me, which sends an arrow of shame into my gut. “The guy who was so awful to you when you were teenagers? And to think I’ve been worried about you.”
I nod. “I know. He’s better now, though. I swear.”
She rolls her eyes, but then she smiles at me. “First Joan, now you. I’m going to start charging for these secrets.”
I just found out our friend Joan has had a secret thing going with her best guy friend, Lucas, and Maria knew about it early. She’s the best secret-keeper of all of us, though. I am admittedly the worst.
“I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a banana smoothie after this if you want?”
“Deal.”
We start walking again.
“He is cute, though,” she says. “And he looks at you like he wants to eat you. Or marry you. I can’t really tell which.”
I laugh, but my stomach churns. The idea of something serious with him still makes me twitchy.
Also, Maria and her long-term boyfriend, Jay, broke up a few months ago, and I thought they would get married. If they couldn’t make it work, what hope is there for me and my high schoolbully?
And can my justification really be that he’s been pleasant and he buys me stuff? I ponder this as we get ready to go.
Besides that, I feel like he might just want me because he can’t have me. It drives him crazy.
