Believe in Us (Jett #2) (13 page)

Okay. My first day of the five day suspension should be a glorious, school-free, vacation of wonderfulness. It should be butterflies and rainbows and fast food and watching TV all day. For the most part, it is, but I’m missing her bad. I hate that she’s at school without me, that she’s probably feeling awkward around my friends.

I kick up my feet on my futon and lounge back, mindlessly watching television. I texted Keanna earlier, when she would have been walking to third period. She hasn’t written back, but I guess she didn’t have time or maybe her third period teacher is strict about phones.

My stomach starts begging me for lunch. I reach for my phone to check the time, but at the same time I get a text from Keanna.

Keanna:
What are you doing?

Me:
Nothin. How’s school?

Keanna:
Come get me please.

I glance toward my window but it’s not like I can see her driveway from here. I type back quickly.

Me:
Didn’t you drive to school today?

Keanna:
Yes, just please come meet me.

Me:
Be there in ten.

I throw on shoes and a clean T-shirt and head out the door. Mom says something about staying out of the public eye since being suspended means I’m supposed to stay home. But she’s too busy pouring over baby shower ideas on Pinterest to really care, so I slip past her and haul ass to the school.

It’s a beautiful September day, the kind where it finally stops being so ungodly hot outside and starts to feel a little bit like fall. I roll down the windows while I drive, the scent of a bonfire in the distance making it feel even more like fall. I hope everything is okay with her. Anxiety over whatever’s wrong will only get me killed, so I focus on the road instead and soon I’m pulling into the parking lot.

Her Mustang is parked in my usual spot and she’s sitting inside, hands on the steering wheel and her gaze off in the distance. I walk up to her window and tap on it. She opens the door, climbs out, and throws her arms around me.

I twist to peer down at her, but she’s not crying. Her eyes are closed, her expression blissful. She breathes in deeply.

“I missed your smell.”

“What’s going on?” I ask, rubbing her back. “You still have four more days without me here so this isn’t a good start.

She laughs. “Tell me about it.”

“Did something happen?”

She nods. “Will you take me somewhere?”

I scratch my neck. Ditching class on Keanna’s second week of school could get us in a lot of trouble.

Her eyes flutter up at me and she pokes her lip out just the slightest bit. “Please?”

I reach into my pocket for my keys. “Sure thing. Where are we going?”

She shrugs and tosses her backpack in the backseat of my truck. “I don’t care, but I am hungry.”

We drive to Jack-in-the-Box since it seems the least busy out of all the fast food places along our town’s main highway. I think about what Mom said but I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing. It’s not like police officers will be searching around to see if a suspended student is out having fun.

We take our food to a booth in the back of the restaurant. Keanna frowns when her straw refuses to break through the slot in the stop of her milkshake lid. I take it and do it for her. Her shoulders fall and she breathes a heavy sigh. “Thanks. This is a crap day.”

“So what happened?” I ask, ripping off the tops of several ranch packets. This place has the best tacos if you dunk them in ranch. It makes the curly fries better, too. I give Keanna a playful grin. “Do I need to kick someone’s ass again?”

She steals one of my curly fries. “Not unless you want to take on Mrs. Albright.”

“Who?”

“The school
counselor
,” she says, making air quotes around the last word. She screws up her face and sticks out her tongue. “It was a freakin’ nightmare. She called me down to her office and made me talk for three and a half freaking hours.”

“What?” My soda cup clanks to the table. “Is she allowed to do that?”

Keanna shrugs. “Apparently my new mom told her about my adoption and my hard life growing up so Mrs. Albright decided to make me talk about it. She wants to have
weekly
sessions . . . are you
kidding
me?”

Now my expression matches her disgusted one. “Can she actually do that? Force you to talk when you don’t want counseling?”

“I guess so. I mean, she did.” Keanna follows my lead and dunks her fries into the ranch. “I feel like I should be all happy that I got to skip four classes for this shit, but I am so
not
all about spilling my guts to a stranger. She kept looking at me with all this pity, like I’m some orphaned kid no one wanted. My life wasn’t bad, okay?”

Her voice rises as she talks and I nod. “I know, babe. You don’t have to convince me.”

Her eyes meet mine and she seems to snap back to reality. “It was just so stupid. She obviously has no idea how a normal teenage girl should act or feel. Her kid is some cheerleader so I’m sure her world is the complete opposite of mine, ya know?”

“Ah, Albright,” I say, nodding. “We do have a cheerleader with that last name.”

“Let me guess,” Keanna says, rolling her eyes. “You’ve hooked up with her.”

I almost choke on my taco. I shake my head in a furious and adamant no. “No. I don’t even know her. I just recognize the name.”

Keanna doesn’t seem to care though. She’s too busy staring at her food as if it’s the source of her gloomy mood.

We eat in silence for a while. Keanna sighs. “Sorry, Jett. You didn’t deserve that.”

I lift my shoulders. “Yeah, I did. I have a past. A . . . sordid one.”

She looks up at me, her lips wrapped around her milkshake straw. “Is that what’s been bothering you lately?”

“Hmm?”
Shit, are we really getting into this now?
I know we need to, but I’ve been happy ignoring it.

She meets my gaze and gives me this
don’t play dumb with me look
. “You’re feeling shitty that I know about how many girls you’ve dated, right? Since I’ve been subjected to an onslaught of that information ever since school started.”

My throat is suddenly dryer than the dirt bike track in the middle of summer. “I, uh—”

She reaches across the table and grabs my hand. “I have a past, too. I have shit that I’m not proud of and I’d be mortified if someone told you all about it.” She blinks and shakes her head. “No, I’d be
dead
. I would straight up drop dead if you had to endure people talking about my past.”

Funny, because that kind of thing should bother me. It doesn’t, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

I glance to the right but we’re all alone back here. My heart races but I figure we’ve made it this far. Might as well lay it all out on the table. I lean forward on my elbows. “How many guys?”

“Sex?” she asks.

I make this noncommittal gesture that’s supposed to mean yes. Do I want to know? Do I even have a right to dive that deep into her personal life?

Her dark eyes peer up at me, honest and open. “Two.”

I swallow. I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it.

She releases her grip on my hand. “Your turn.”

I take a deep breath. “I’m a bad person.”

She rolls her eyes. “Having sex doesn’t make you a bad person.”

I take a sip of soda and blurt out the real answer, no matter how much I wish I didn’t have to. “Five.”

She smirks, but it might just be to cover up whatever real emotion she has. “Okay, Adams. That’s not too bad.” She laces her fingers together and flexes them in front of her, popping her knuckles. “Should we reveal hookups as well? Because I’m not so angelic on that one.”

“Please,” I say quickly. “Anything to make me feel like less of a man slut.”

She scoffs. “Man slut is such a derogatory term. Saying
man
first implies that the word slut is for women only and that’s just stupid.” She rolls her eyes. “Anyone can be a slut, you know? It’s not even a bad thing, necessarily. Some people are really proud to be a slut.” She reaches for a fry and shrugs. “It’s only a bad thing if you’ve done it for the wrong reasons. Or, if you’re like me, slutting it up just to
feel
something.” Her lip curls while she stares at the fry between her fingers. “I can’t even tell you my hook up number, Jett.”

“You can tell me anything,” I say, almost automatically. But I really do mean it.

She shakes her head, her brown hair falling in her face. After pushing it back behind her ears, she looks up at me with solemn eyes. “I can’t tell you because I don’t even know the number. Probably twenty, or more.”

“Same here. Probably twenty-ish.” I gnaw on the inside of my lip. “But none of them mattered and it’s all over now and in the past, so who cares?”

Her eyes light up. “You really mean that?”

“I do.”

“Good, because I hate judging myself over most of those guys in my past. I didn’t even want to do anything with them,” she mutters, going back to eating.

“Then why would you?” I ask. That isn’t something I can claim—my teenage hormones have gotten the best of me more than once. I’ve always been happy to make out with someone in the backseat of a car. My dad says that’s just how guys are wired—that we’re massive horn dogs who want one thing. And for the most part, he was right. It wasn’t until I met Keanna that my entire way of thinking changed. Now the idea of randomly swapping spit with some peppy girl who wants to be a motocross groupie gives me the chills. Ugh.

Keanna shrugs. “Well, you know how it is for girls.”

“No, I don’t. What are you talking about?”

She brushes her hair behind her ears, but it’s already back there so the movement is pointless. “You know . . . guys force themselves onto you. They guilt trip you for oral sex—just the usual crap.”

A foul taste in my mouth makes me drop my food onto the tray. The lump that had been in my throat earlier is now a hard pit in my stomach. “Are you serious?”

“Jett, chill. It’s not a big deal.”

“It
is
a big deal,” I say, trying hard to keep from yelling. White hot rage takes over every inch of my body. All I can think about is beating the hell out of any guy who ever took advantage of her.

“That is
not
normal and it’s not okay. You need to know that.” I stare into her eyes, refusing to let her look away. “I’ve
never
treated girls like that ever. If they didn’t want to do something, they didn’t have to.”

She shrugs. “Babe, seriously. Calm down. It’s over and in the past.” When I open my mouth again, she gives me a glare that makes me flinch. “Drop it.”

My jaw aches from clenching my teeth but I shrug and try to obey her wishes. Still, my hands are fists and I can’t seem to eat or drink anything anymore. I want to single-handedly track down every guy who’s ever forced her into something she didn’t want. I ache to kick their asses. It’s all I can think about until Keanna slides into the booth next to me, taking my arm in her hands and wrapping herself around me, leaning her cheek on my shoulder.

“Please don’t be mad. My life is staring over, remember? I’m with you and you’re with me, and we can pretend that’s all there ever was, okay?”

“I’m not mad at you, Key.” I kiss the top of her head. “I love you.”

She snuggles into me more, the scent of her shampoo drifting up and sending warm fuzzies through my chest. “I love you, too,” she says, and suddenly it hits me.

I finally said it. I didn’t even mean to—it just fell out of me like it was meant to be here all along.

And she said it back.

And just like that, all of the anger and rage and twisted darkened feelings inside of me are gone. I smile and let out a slow, relaxing sigh.

I guess love really is as powerful as all those old country songs say it is. “Come on,” I say, taking her hand. “Let’s go do something fun.”