Aftershocks (25 page)

“Okay,” I said, hoping he could take my mind off of Connor.

I let him lead me away from the living room, wondering how many people would see us together that night.

***

Sunday afternoon I walked into work wearing what I caled ‘beachy with a twist of snow’. I’d paired a white turtleneck sweater with skinny jeans and my Uggs, adding a Roxy beanie at the last minute and put my hair in braids. Maybe I was pushing the dress code just a bit, but it was close to freezing outside. No one went to the beach when it was this cold, and if they did, they dressed like me. Besides, Jack and I were going to the movies later, so I had to dress for my date as wel as work.

Waking up that morning, Jack had been the first thing to pop into my mind. I was having fun with him, just as he’d predicted, and the best part was there was no pressure. I knew he didn’t want anything more than what I was offering, and I was enjoying our drama-free time.

After our make-out session on Friday night, I’d invited him over to play video games with Jordan and me on Saturday, and we’d had a blast. As we battled it out in
Call of Duty
and
Halo,
I felt myself let go for the first time in a year. I actualy gave myself permission not to care, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt like I wasn’t carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I was having fun, and Connor, at that point, could go screw himself. He’d missed out on his chance, and now I was busy with other guys – or guy since Jordan realy was just a friend. Unfortunately, that light-hearted mindset only lasted until I heard the ubiquitous ‘Surf’s Up’ when I walked in the door to work on Sunday.

I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw Connor standing behind the counter and my earlier resolve melted away.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, possibly a little harsher than I’d intended.

He held up the surfboard around his neck. “I work here,” he said brightly.

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Stop it. You do not.”

“He works here,” came Luke’s voice from the other side of the shop. “I hired him to work Sundays since Gretchen can’t work then.”

“Who’s Gretchen?” I asked, feeling more out of the loop than ever. I’d just worked on Thursday. How could so much have changed in four days?

“She’s the girl I hired yesterday to work Mondays and Wednesdays, but she can’t work Sundays, so my man came through and picked up the shift.”

He gestured to Connor behind the counter, and when I turned to look, mostly to make sure I’d seen correctly that it was realy him sitting back there, he smiled at me. I shot him a look of disgust.

“Luke, can I see you in the back please?” I asked, as nicely as I could.

“Sure,” Luke said. “Connor, can you hold down the fort out here?”

“I’ve got this,” Connor said, gesturing to the two customers who were browsing the ski hats.

I roled my eyes at his confidence. The job wasn’t exactly hard. He wasn’t going to get a medal for learning it in a day.

“I can’t work with him,” I said to Luke as soon as we were behind the stockroom curtain.

“Abby, I know you guys have had your differences and there was the incident, but–”

“You know about that!” I hissed, cutting him off.

Luke looked slightly rattled by my aggression. “Yeah, Connor told me. But this is business, and Larry put me in charge, and I take my job seriously, so either you figure out how to work with Connor one day a week or you quit. Take your pick.”

“How about you not schedule me on Sundays,” I countered.

He shook his head. “Forget it. I need you on Sundays. It’s al hands on deck on the weekends.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Luke, I thought we were friends,” I said, trying to be as non-threatening as possible.

“We are, and as your friend, I’m teling you to go out there and work things out with Connor. This has gone on too long. You guys need to just talk and get your shit out in the open. We’l al be much better for it if you do.”

With that he left me standing in the backroom, open-mouthed.

“Fine,” I grumbled to myself as I made my way back to the sales floor.

I saw that Connor was helping the customer and her daughter pick out gloves, so I went and sat on a stool behind the counter. A few minutes later, he walked back behind the counter to ring out the woman, and then we were left alone. It appeared Luke had stepped out of the store.

Awesome timing, Luke. Thanks for that. I knew he had left on purpose.

“Hey,” Connor said, breaking the ice first after a few incredibly long minutes of silence.

Surf’s Up!

“Welcome to South Shore,” I said, as three girls who were juniors at our school walked in. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Hey Connor,” they said in unison, ignoring me completely.

“Hey,” he said back, and I could tel he had no idea who they were. “Can I help you with anything?”

I roled my eyes. It was annoying that he was trying to be so professional.

“No, we’re good,” caled the girl with bright red curly hair. “We’l let you know if we need
anything
, though.”

What a flirt!

Connor turned to me then, and I crossed my arms in an effort to close myself off to him. I didn’t look at him, and instead kept my gaze on the rack of wet suits in front of the counter.

“How have you been?” he asked, coming to stand in front of me. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms in front of him mirroring me and blocking my view of the rack.

“Fine.” If he wanted to talk, I would talk, but he wasn’t going to get much out of me.

“Good,” he said. “I’ve been okay. Thanks for asking.”

“I didn’t,” I said, my anger growing by the minute.

“Aww, but you wanted to,” he said, reaching out to pul my arms apart.

“Don’t touch me,” I said, yanking away from his grip. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that al three girls glanced up, definitely curious about what was transpiring between us.

Connor put his hands up in surrender. “Fine, I won’t touch you.”

I watched the girl with short blond hair whisper something to the red-head who smirked in response.

A few minutes passed as we stood there in silence. I looked over Connor’s shoulder at the front door. I was wiling someone else to come in who I could actualy help. I’d never wanted to hear that door chime more in my life. The three girls were trying on scarves and hats in the corner, taking turns surreptitiously looking back at Connor to see if he was watching them. He wasn’t.

“You look realy pretty today,” he finaly said.

I threw my hands up in disbelief. “Seriously?!”

“What?” he asked, looking taken aback. “You do.”

“I have a date,” I finaly said.

I watched his eyebrows go up. “You do? With who?”

Did I sense a touch of jealously there? Or was it more of a territorial vibe? I couldn’t tel.

“Jack.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“Jack West?”

I nodded, smiling a smal triumphant smile.

“I didn’t know you were dating him.”

“I am,” I said haughtily.

Chew on that, Connor.

“Is that why you hooked up with him on Friday night?” he asked, and I wondered how knew.

“Wow, you’re quick on the uptake today,” I said, sarcasm bleeding into my tone.

“Abby,” he said, and I could hear the condescension in his voice. “Come on. What are you doing?”

I refused to look at him, so I focused on his green Cold War Kids t-shirt instead.

“Wel, I wasn’t going to sit around pining after you,” I said, clamping my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

He sucked in a breath, and I knew I’d hit a sore spot without meaning to.

“You had feelings for me, didn’t you?” he asked then, and I literaly had to hold back from punching him.

Have feelings. Have feelings, Connor. It’s not like they went away not matter how much I wanted them to. Are you that
freaking obtuse?!

I took a deep breath, blowing air out through my nostrils. I finaly brought my eyes up to meet his, wanting to look him in the eye when I confirmed what he believed. “You know I did.”

He just nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he said after few seconds of silence.

I hated how that was always his go-to response. I was realy getting sick of hearing him apologize.

“For what?” I asked, disbelief flooding my tone.

“For not being able to reciprocate the way you wanted me to,” he said, and I started to feel sick.

I thought I might start to cry, and I hated that feeling. I hadn’t cried since the morning Jack had come into the shop and asked me out. I hadn’t let myself shed one tear over Connor in weeks.

“I miss you,” he said, and I closed my eyes, wishing he hadn’t said that. “Jordan misses you too. He was asking me the other day why you couldn’t come over and play video games with him. He got the new
Call of Duty
a few weeks ago, and he keeps asking if he can invite you over. He said no one decimates the enemy like you.”

I smiled a smal smile at that, and was sort of satisfied by the fact that Connor had no idea I’d played video games with his brother just the day before.

“You miss me too, don’t you?” He took a step forward.

“Connor, I can’t be friends with you,” I said quietly.

“Why not?”

I looked at him incredulously. “You know why!”

“Because you like me?”

“No!” I said, lying in the moment to save face. “It was a crush. I don’t have feelings for you anymore.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay, then we can be friends.”

“Connor, it’s not that simple,” I sighed.

“What’s not that simple?”

“Wel, for starters, your girlfriend hates me, and I won’t go back down that road again.” He gave me a confused look. “The sneaking around behind Alexis’s back road. She and I might not be friends, but she deserves to know where you spend your time.”

He paused for a second before saying, “Agreed.”

I started to continue my rant but then realized what he’d said. “Wait, what do you agree with?”

“Everything. Alexis needs to know. If we’re going to be friends, then I’l tel her we’re friends and that we hang out and not just when we prep for physics labs.”

“You’l tel her everything? Like
everything
?” I asked, realizing that I’d just in a way committed to being friends again if he came clean to her.

He looked taken aback for a moment but then said, “Yes, I’l tel her everything.”

Holy shit. He was going to tel Alexis that he’d cheated on her. She would totaly break up with him.

“You wil?” I asked, shocked that he would do that.

“Wil we be friends again?” he asked, putting his own terms on the table.

I hesitated for a few moments, wondering if I realy wanted that and let him sweat it out while I debated. In the end I realized that my life was better with him in it, and I was happier when he was around. As much as I was fighting it, it was true.

“Yes, we’l be friends again,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t regret saying that.

“Okay, then I’l tel her.”

Connor and I spent the rest of our shift catching up with each other, in between helping the many customers that came in. It was a busy Sunday, but business died around seven, and we spent the last hour cleaning up the store, talking as we did.

Right before closing, Jack came into the store, looking sexy and smug as he approached me at the counter where I was counting the money in the register. His hands were tucked into the blue Michigan hooded sweatshirt he’d bought at the bookstore on campus and he didn’t remove them when his blond bangs fel over his eyes. He just jerked his head to flick his hair back but his bangs fel right back down over his brown eyes.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” I said, as I continued to taly the receipts from the day.

“I’ve got tickets for the Bruin’s game tomorrow. Do you want to go?” He said it so nonchalantly like if I didn’t want to go it was totaly cool, but he was asking just in case.

“Of course I want to go,” I said, smiling at him as I reached up to sweep his hair off his face.

“Abby, can you get me a size six in these?” Connor caled from across the shop, holding up a pair of snowboarding boots. He was helping a customer in the back of the store, and I found myself wondering when she’d walked in. Had I been that immersed in Jack that I didn’t realize the door had chimed?

I raised my eyebrows at him, wondering why on earth he was asking me to do something he was perfectly capable of, but he had already turned back to the customer, so I had no choice but to go into the back and locate the boots. I found them quickly enough, but when I turned to head back to the sales floor, I saw Jack lounging in the doorway to the backroom looking good enough to eat. As soon as I looked up, he smirked at me, his dimple popping.

“You’re not supposed to be back here,” I said, mock-chastising him.

Jack crossed the smal room in three steps, and suddenly it felt like we were in a movie. He put his hands on the sides of my face, bent down and kissed me. Before I knew what was happening, the boots had dropped from my hand, my arms were around Jack’s neck and we were ful-on making out.

I’m not sure how long that went on but it must have been a few minutes. Time sort of stood stil. Jack was that good of a kisser.

“Abby, did you find them?” Connor asked, bursting into the backroom.

I flew back from Jack like he was on fire, but it didn’t do any good. With his narrowed eyes, I could tel Connor knew what we’d been doing. Not that it mattered, but stil.

“Sure, right here,” I said, picking up the boots and handing them to him with my right hand, as I wiped my mouth with my left.

“Hey man,” Jack said, nonchalantly, like every day he hung out in storage rooms, kissing girls.

Okay, so that might be true for him. Given his recent track record, my assumption was entirely feasible.

“Hey,” Connor said, and I could see the discomfort on his face when he looked at his friend.

He immediately looked like Aaron did when we were at the mal and ran into Wes the day after I found out he liked me. Aaron said he could tel there was something going on between us, and I watched his big brother radar go up. It seemed Connor’s radar was doing something similar in that moment. He looked close to protective of me.