He’d shake his head, and I’d turn right back to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“A friend’s.” I’d already be shutting the door as I answered. Only I never went to a friend’s house. I would have gone to Jessalyn’s, but now that things were open with her and Nick, she was more than happy to pick up extra shifts at the café with him. And even though Nick and I had had our first non-excruciatingly-painful Biology class in weeks, he was still a little uncomfortable around me, though from lingering embarrassment rather than unrequited love. It was better, though, and each day I saw more and more of the sweet friend returning. I had gotten the chance to tell both him and Jess what had happened with my family, but they could do even less to help than I could, and that was nothing.
Mom was hours away at her sister’s. She called every day, asking me if I was okay and assuring me that she loved me. I couldn’t blame her for staying away, but I’d always ask, “When are you coming home?” And her answer was always a variation of the same: “I don’t know, Dana.”
I presumed she talked to Selena too, but if that door had been shut before, it was bolted and chained now. I even tried calling Gavin, but he said only that he’d tell Selena I’d called and then, in a quieter voice that made me think Selena was nearby, said he was sure that if I just gave her some time, she’d reach out to me on her own.
And Brandon. I’d made my promise to him that he’d never have to see me again, and I had to keep it even if it killed me, even if I thought about him every time I looked at Dad or talked to Mom or my calls went unanswered by Selena. And when I thought about Brandon, I also thought about Chase.
So that’s where I was four days after Dad’s birthday, parked under a massive mesquite tree at dusk, waiting for a glimpse of the person who had the most reason to detest me. I really did just want to look at him. I’d had no intention of getting out of my car and calling out to him as he was getting into his, or walking right up to him until he was forced to look at me. But that’s what I did the second I saw him leave his house.
“Chase?” I didn’t call out loudly, but he heard me. His head turned in my direction. The expression on his face should have sent me back to my car, but my legs were intent on bringing me closer until we stood just a few feet away from each other.
“Dana.” He half lowered his head, shaking it. “You can’t come here anymore.” He held my gaze with his, not in anger, but resigned and unmoving. As if he shouldn’t have needed to say it. That was the only hint of reproof in his voice.
“I know,” I said. Because I did know, I did. “I’m so sorry.”
“Okay,” he said, but not like he was accepting my apology, just acknowledging that I’d said it and dismissing it as easily. He was so distant, and I was crumbling more and more by the second.
“I just want you to know that I—”
“Hey, Dana?” He cut me off without any vehemence or even needing to raise his voice. Like the rest of him, it was steady and aloof. “You don’t have to say anything.”
Something fluttered in my chest. “I don’t?” I took a step closer, needing to be nearer to him and to let that flutter grow.
“Not to me.”
The flutter weakened, slowed and stopped, halting my heart along with it. I didn’t need to say anything, because there was nothing I could say. That was what he meant. Not that my words to him were unnecessary, but that they were impotent.
“You should go home or wherever, but don’t come here, okay?” He still didn’t yell or sneer. Nothing in what he said or how he said it held anger in it, just indifference, and it hurt so much more for the lack. Anger I could meet head-on, but I wasn’t even worth his antipathy.
It shouldn’t have hurt that much. I shouldn’t have had any room left for hurt over him on top of Dad and Brandon, Mom and Selena. But I did, and the pain was no less sharp for the company.
I’d crossed a line with Chase from the very beginning. Whatever evolving rationale I’d used to keep seeing him felt so flimsy in hindsight. It had never been okay to fall for him, and worse, let him fall even a little for me.
Chase waited for me to say okay or nod or show some sign of acquiescence to his request that I go. I don’t know which I gave him, but I must have done something, because he got in his car. He looked at me one last time before driving off. The look was less guarded, less controlled. I’d hurt him, badly, maybe even more than I’d hurt myself. And as I watched him leave, even the shreds of my heart shriveled into dust and blew away.
CHAPTER 43
Ihad another softball game, our last before a weeklong break and then the state finals—if we won. Mom came. I saw her in the stands, but she looked awful, half–dead inside. I already knew I wouldn’t play well, a fact that more than a few of my teammates commented on during warm-ups.
“Dana, you okay?”
“Are you sick?”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
I felt slow and sluggish, like I was playing underwater. I was more aware of my parents, separated by dozens of people and a dugout yet closer than they’d been in days, than I was of anything happening on the field. My coach’s comments to me were perfunctory. He was watching Mom too.
“At least she came, right?” Jessalyn nudged me with her shoulder as we made our way back to the dugout before the game started. She’d been awesome since I unloaded my family situation on her; Nick too. Neither one of them let me mope, but they were there, they understood. Whenever I fell silent for too long at school, one of them would shake me out of it. Sometimes literally, in Jessalyn’s case.
“Yeah,” I said, but my funk lingered throughout the game. I started with a pathetic dribbler to the pitcher and didn’t get much better. I wouldn’t have been nearly as kind to me as some of my teammates were, Jessalyn especially.
She clapped a hand on my shoulder, saying, “We all suck out sometimes. Shake it off.”
Only I couldn’t, not until the last inning. We were down by two runs with runners on first and second. Fortunately for our team, I wasn’t up; Ivy was.
