“Oh, sweet, they do curbside now?” Maggie asks. “Tell him I just need one minute.” She then proceeds to empty half the contents of her purse into her lap.
I don’t answer her; instead I take a fortifying breath and open my door. Mark steps back to let me stand, but not nearly enough to be polite. As I shut the door behind me I’m praying Maggie stays in the car long enough for me to get rid of him.
“I just came to get a custard,” I say, keeping my gaze on a spot just over his shoulder. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”
Hands in his pockets, he leans forward. “Hi, Brooke. It’s nice to see you too. Me? I’m good, thanks for asking.”
I shift to meet his eyes. I used to think they were the perfect shade of chocolate against his lightly tanned skin, warm and flecked so slightly with gold that you had to be only inches away to notice it. Seeing them now, I feel nothing save for a desire not to. I try to move to the side but his hand shoots out to block me. A second later I hear Maggie’s door open and then she’s bending down to retrieve some of the items that spilled from her purse.
“Don’t say anything,” I whisper, clutching his wrist.
Mark flicks his gaze to Maggie before returning it to me. “What am I not supposed to say?” he asks, not bothering to lower his voice. “’Cause it’s always whatyouwant, right?”
“If you ever cared about me, you’ll leave now. Please.” I have to force the last word through my teeth.
“If I cared about you?If?You’re the one who ended things, not me.”
My hand flinches at my side, the urge to slap him almost overwhelming me. “What you did to me was unforgivable.”
“But I thought you were big on forgiveness—or is that only for certain people?”
I blanch, and he drops his hand and softens his voice.
“I said I was sorry, Brooke.” His hand shifts to brush my forearm. “When is it gonna be enough for you, huh?”
I yank my arm away from his touch, my eyes boring into his, and lean into his space. “I trusted you. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You know what, whatever.” He pushes off from the side of the car and stalks to his SUV.
I’m still shaking when Maggie appears at my side.
“You okay?”
I nod. He’s gone, so I am. “He’s—he was my boyfriend a while ago. We had a bad breakup.”
“No kidding,” Maggie says, flinching along with me when his tires squeal as he tears out of the parking lot.
“What’s wrong with him?” Maggie asks.
“A lot,” I say, hoping Maggie won’t press me for details. He did care about me, I know that. Otherwise seeing me wouldn’t affect him the way it just did. He did his best, at first, to support me when everything happened with Jason. I should have ended things after he tried to show me that leaked crime scene report, but he was so convincing when he said he didn’t care about Jason’s crime as long as I still loved him.
I can’t believe how stupid I was.
“It’s a small town,” I tell Maggie, swallowing a bit of guilt for the half story I give her. “And people tend to hold grudges when you break the heart of Ann Keller’s grandson.”
“Ann Keller as in...” She points to the Keller’s Creamery sign.
I nod. “It’s fine though.” Through the window I see a small group of girls. I recognize a couple from my chemistry class last year, including my former best friend, Tara Hudson. They all look harmless, the type to introduce themselves to, say, a stranger their own age if they happened to spot them alone. I know Tara would. I glance at Maggie and shift in front of her, blocking her view of the girls and, more important, their view of her. “You know, I’m suddenly not in the mood for custard at all. What if we just go back to your house and make Coke floats. You have vanilla ice cream, right?”
Maggie gives a longing look at the store, but then notices the girls I spotted, and her expression softens. “You know, I’ve seen people looking at you kind of weird. I didn’t understand it.” She shakes her head. “I don’t have to ask if you did anything cruel to your ex-boyfriend. I know you didn’t, so why should you be the one to hide? If people want to suck, then I’ll be right there next you. Maybe a few’ll even surprise you and not suck a little. My mom would be happy if I made a few more friends—not best friends, that’s all you, but just, you know, people I could sit with at lunch when school starts, since you won’t be there. We could try...”
But I had tried. After Jason confessed, I made the mistake of trying to reconcile with Mark, mostly because I’d never felt so alone in my life. I let him in through my window one night just to hold me while I cried.
The next day, cell phone pictures of pages from my diary showed up on an online news site.
My chest feels tight and panicky at the memory, the private, broken words I’d let pour out of the deepest recesses of my heart that were stolen from me and dissected for the whole world to see. Maggie feels like the only person who hasn’t seen them, who doesn’t know.
“Brooke?”
