Bitter End (7 page)

Cole stepped through the door. I could swear I saw his smile fade just a bit when he looked over at the couch.
God
, I thought, assessing the dusty room,
it’s still a disaster in
here.
But just as quickly his smile returned. “Hey,” he said in the general direction of the couch. “How’s it goin’?”

Celia twiddled her fingers in Cole’s direction without even looking up, but Zack got off the couch and walked over to us.

“Hey,” Zack said, stepping up to my side and leaning against me with his elbow on my shoulder, just like he always did. It
had never bothered me before, but when he did it this time I suddenly wanted to shove him away. It felt too much like… ownership.
Zack was my best friend, but sometimes he needed a reminder that I didn’t belong to him. “You’re in my weight lifting class.”

Cole’s eyes drifted to Zack’s elbow. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

I shimmied out from under Zack’s arm. “This is Zack,” I said. “He’s my next-door neighbor. We’ve been friends since we were
both in diapers,” I added, then felt myself blush after saying. God, who talks about diapers on their first date?

“Oh, so you’re sort of like a brother then?” Cole said.

Zack squinted at him, chomped on his toothpick for a moment, and then said, “I guess you could say something like that.” Something
in his voice was sharp enough to make Celia look over at us, curious.

I clenched my jaw and glared at Zack. He was acting like a jerk. But he didn’t see me. His eyes were locked with Cole’s, and
the air in the room suddenly turned very uncomfortable.

It was weird, really. Zack definitely had his opinions
about people, but he was the kind of guy who almost always liked everyone. I could tell he definitely didn’t like Cole, and
I wondered what had gone on between them in gym class.

I tried to give Zack the benefit of the doubt—maybe he was just in a bad mood—but it pissed me off that he couldn’t take his
mood out on someone else.

“Cool,” Cole said at last, and just like that the weird feeling in the room evaporated. Then he turned to me. “You ready to
go?”

“Yeah,” I said, grabbing my keys and my cell phone. “Definitely.”

We both turned toward the door, Cole’s hand on the small of my back, sending a shock of electricity all over my body.

“Hey, I thought we had plans tonight,” Zack said at our backs. “It’s Saturday.” Just like that the electric feeling was gone
and was replaced by annoyance. Whatever Zack’s deal was, this was completely uncool. He was making it sound like we had a
date or something.

“Nope,” I said. “Bethany already knows. I texted her this morning. She was supposed to call you. We’ll get together later.”

“Whatever,” Zack said. “But you know how she gets when you miss one of her Vacay Days. Tonight we were gonna work out, you
know, sleeping arrangements and stuff for the trip.” He got a cocky little grin when he said the words “sleeping arrangements,”
and I wanted to punch him for it. I was so going to make him regret this.

“Okay,” I said, through clenched teeth, looking back at him as I opened the door. “Later.”

Zack shrugged and pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. “Cool. Have fun, kids.”

Cole turned and flashed a look at Zack. “See you in the gym,” he said.

Zack lifted his chin slightly but didn’t answer, and Cole and I plunged outside and shut the door behind us.

“Whoa,” Cole said once we were on the front porch. “He always so protective?”

I thought it over and, you know, yeah, ever since I could remember, Zack had been so protective of me and Bethany it sometimes
bordered on irritating. And whatever that little standoff was with Cole in my living room just now went beyond irritating
and straight into obnoxious.

“Yeah,” I said, stepping off the porch. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to him. He’ll calm down.”

We walked toward Cole’s car. “He’s intense,” Cole said, pulling open the car door for me. “Your parents really letting you
go on a trip with him?”

All I could hear were the words “your parents,” and my face burned. I was definitely not ready to have the so-tell-me-about-your-parents
discussion with Cole yet. I could never just say “my mom died” and leave it at that. Everyone always wanted to know how, and
I hated answering that question. It was way too complicated. Usually I lied about what happened to her. But I didn’t want
to lie to Cole. I also didn’t want to tell him that my mom was “crazy as goose
house shit” on our first date together. I wanted this to be a fun night.

I forced a chuckle. “Actually, he’ll be fine,” I said. “Bethany and I wouldn’t dream of going without him.”

The idea that I wouldn’t take Zack with me on the trip seemed almost laughable. Zack had been there from day one. He knew
about the photos under my bed. He saw me cry when Bethany spent that Saturday shopping in St. Louis with her mom. He witnessed
the embarrassed look on my face when I had to sit with him and his mom at the fifth-grade Mother’s Day Tea. He backed me up
when I told people that my mom died of cancer, and never made me act as though she was anything other than perfect and amazing.
He understood how important this was to me. Plus, without Zack, we wouldn’t be the Terrible Three. And, for all his faults,
he did have a way of making things fun. “It’s kind of a special trip. For all three of us.”

“Well then,” Cole said as I sat down in the passenger seat. He placed his hands on the roof of the car and peered down at
me, his body blocking the whole doorframe, his face in shadows. “I’d apologize for keeping you from going to your friend’s
house tonight, but I guess I’m kind of selfish. I want you all to myself, Emily Dickinson.”

He paused, then squatted down next to me. At last I was able to see his face, which was soft, friendly, just like it was every
day in the tutor lab. I didn’t know what Zack’s problem with Cole was, but at the moment I didn’t really care. This may be
our first official date, but I’d been tutoring the
guy for weeks. I knew him better than Zack did. I knew how nice he was. Whatever had happened between the two of them, Zack
was wrong about him.

“I didn’t get to tell you,” Cole said, running his finger along my forearm. I got chills, but they felt warm and tingly. “You
look gorgeous.”

I smiled. “So do you.”

He gazed at me another long minute and then slowly got up and shut my door. Sitting in his car, which smelled like cologne
and leather, watching him walk around to the driver’s door, I couldn’t help but get an excited flutter in my stomach. Cole
was so amazing.

I was totally going to have to have a chat with Zack later. His personal problems with Cole were
not
going to screw this up for me.

Cole had asked me out for our second date before we were even finished with our first.

“Hey,” he’d said, sitting next to me on top of the shelter picnic table, both of us staring off into the dark woods that separated
the picnic area from the lake. We could hear the water off in the distance, every so often lapping up against the rocks on
the shore, just loud enough to drown out the rumbling car engines on the highway, which wound around behind us. He was leaning
back on his hands casually, his legs stretched out and crossed on the bench beneath us. I could feel his forearm against my
back if I leaned backward just the slightest bit. The sensation made me feel full of nervous energy, like I could jump up
and dash through the woods, dive right into the water on the other side, and swim for miles on one breath. “You hear about
the new
House of Horrors
movie?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It looks really scary. I’m dying to see
it.” I leaned back gently, felt his arm, then bent forward again, rubbing the goose bumps on my shins.

“Cold?” he asked. I nodded, and he took off his letter jacket and draped it over my shoulders.

I dipped my head, stealing secretive sniffs. It smelled like him—cologne, leather, something else kind of earthy and sweet—and
it was warm. The goose bumps on my legs rose up even farther.

“Did you see the second one?” I asked. “The one where that really nasty-looking dead girl comes out of the closet? Scared
the crap out of me.”

He laughed. “Yeah, that was awesome! And the guy with the machete in the barn?”

I nodded. “Totally gross.”

We both laughed, and once again I felt his hand snake behind me, only closer this time. I didn’t need to lean back to feel
his arm against me anymore. It was just there. Now the goose bumps had spread to my arms, even though I was warm under his
jacket.

“So you wanna go next weekend?” he’d asked, and when I nodded, he’d pulled his arm around me even closer.

“Just a warning, though. I may have my hands over my eyes the whole time,” I said.

He nudged me with his arm. “Chicken.”

We sat and listened to the water through the trees for a while, Cole telling me about Pine Gate and me griping about my sisters.
I slipped my arms into the sleeves of his jacket, looking at the patches.

“So you played football at Pine Gate, too?” I asked.

He nodded, dragging a leaf up the length of his thigh and back down again. “Yeah. And baseball. Pretty much every sport. Been
playing since I was six.”

“Six? Wow, you must be really athletic.”

He shrugged, tossed the leaf to the ground. “Okay, I guess. I’m sick of it. Don’t really want to play anymore.”

“Then why don’t you quit? Just not try out.”

He let out a bark of laughter and hopped off the table, bending and stretching his legs one at a time. My side, where he’d
just been sitting, felt drafty. “I’m just considering myself lucky that moving got me out of football this year. My dad would
kill me if I didn’t try out for basketball,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. “It’s your life. He can’t force you to play if you don’t want to.” I wondered what it must be like to have
parents who cared enough to force you to do things you didn’t want to do. Would I hate it? Or would I just be glad for the
attention?

Cole kicked at the foot of the table a few times, then all of a sudden brightened. “Hey, hang on,” he said. He jogged out
of the shelter to his car and rummaged around in the backseat. He jogged back to the shelter holding a worn football. “Think
fast,” he said, tossing it to me. I caught it just in time. “C’mon, I’ll show you a play,” he said, grabbing my free hand
and pulling me off the table.

I couldn’t help giggling. “I can’t play football,” I said, tripping after him into the grass.

“Sure you can,” Cole said. “Watch.” He grabbed my
shoulders and squared them up so that my back was facing him. “Okay, now you hike it to me on three, and then you run like
a bat out of hell that way. We’re gonna call the area past the water pump the end zone, so right before you get to the pump,
start looking back. I’ll throw it to you for the TD.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “I can’t do all that….”

He pushed my shoulders down toward the ground, leading me to a snap position. “Sure you can. Just do it.”

I bent over. Cole yelled, “Thirty-seven… ninety-two… three!”

I didn’t even look back. I shoved the ball backward between my legs and took off running through the grass, laughing the whole
way. The air, just a few minutes ago making me shiver, now slid across my skin, giving me energy. As soon as I got to the
water pump, I looked back. Cole pulled his arm back and launched the ball to me.

It was hard to see the ball in the dark, and I stumbled backward a little bit, squinting into the sky. In a flash, there it
was, coming right at my chest. I reached out with both arms, maybe even closed my eyes a little bit, and, miraculously, caught
it.

I squealed, pausing only long enough for it to register that I was holding the ball, and turned and ran past the water pump.
“Touchdown!” I yelled, then did a goofy little dance, spiking the ball, then pointing my fingers in the air above my head
and wiggling my hips. “She scores!”

Cole was practically doubled over, he was laughing so hard. “Throw it back,” he yelled.

I bent over and picked up the ball, then lobbed it as hard as I could toward Cole, trying to remember Coach Hennessee’s instructions
from freshman PE—fingers on laces, snap the wrist. The ball soared almost past Cole. He had to jump to catch it, pulling it
out of the night sky like a lightning bug.

“Hey!” His eyes lit up. “She’s gorgeous, writes poetry, and can throw a tight spiral. She’s perfect!”

I tossed my hair. “You should see me tackle,” I teased, then crouched in a sumo pose, flexing my arms out on each side menacingly.

“Oh yeah?” Cole asked.

“Bring it, Nancy,” I growled in a deep voice, cracking up.

“Let’s see you try, baby,” he said, and then started running toward me, narrating in a breathless commentator voice. “Cozen
finds a hole in the defense. He’s at the fifty, the forty, the thirty… looks like nobody will stop him now….”

I adopted my own commentator voice. “What’s this? A defender on the ten-yard line… there’s no way he’ll get through….”

I ran at him full-tilt, my arms outstretched, but a few feet before I reached him, Cole tossed the ball over his shoulder.
It bounced on the grass behind him. He took two long steps toward me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and pulled me down,
swiveling so we both landed on our sides, his shoulder absorbing the fall.

“Hey,” I squealed, “I was supposed to tackle you!”

“You never stood a chance,” he said.

We both rolled onto our backs, half-laughing, half-gasping for breath. One of his arms was still underneath me, feeling comfortable
under my waist.

After a while, he turned his head toward me, the grass poking shallow little indentations in his cheek. “You are full of surprises,”
he said.

I shrugged. “Trust me, I didn’t know I could throw a football like that. I didn’t even think I was going to pass PE freshman
year.”

He sat up, wiggling his arm out from under me and crossing his legs beneath himself. He pulled a blade of grass and fiddled
with it. “It’s not just that,” he said. “You write, you plan graduation trips, you make a mean cup of coffee, and you aren’t
afraid to stand in the way of someone who’s running at you full-tilt and could probably cream you. You’re really amazing.”