In Plain Sight (16 page)

You know that saying,
it’s too good to be true?
That’s exactly what dating Maddie was like. She was beautiful, smart, funny. She was also an M. A Shady Heights girl.

The simple fact that a Shady Heights girl both: A) wanted to date me, and B) didn’t expect me to spend tons of money on her, was too good to be true.

Yet I was the dumbass who went and believed it.

So I guess my broken heart is just a product of my own fault. I should have known better. True love doesn’t happen in high school.

True love doesn’t happen for me.

In the days that follow, Mindy distances herself, choosing to eat lunch alone, or with someone else. I don’t know. All I know is she isn’t currently talking to Maria, who has taken the opportunity to dive straight back into my life, flirting endlessly as if her own life depended on it.

I ignore her for two days straight, simply choosing to focus my attention on Bryce and Josh and pretend she wasn’t sitting next to me. By the third day, when she walks into the cafeteria with her Diet Coke and basket of powdered donuts that she eats for lunch, I push my backpack onto the seat next to me.

She lifts an eyebrow. “Uh, excuse you?”

“Excuse you,” I say, keeping my hand protectively on my backpack. “This seat is reserved for my girlfriend.”

Maria narrows her eyes. “It doesn’t seem like you have a girlfriend right now, plus I’ve been sitting here for two days.”

“It’s always a great day to find a new place to sit. So why don’t you try it out?” I reply with equal venom. Her nostrils flare, but she doesn’t say anything else before turning on her heel and stomping away.

“Dude,” Bryce says, shaking his head as he takes another bite of his pizza. I guess that’s all he plans on saying because all of his attention goes back to his food.

Josh’s eyes flit over to me. “You talk to her yet?”

I shake my head. Stare at my food.

“You probably should.”

I know he’s right. But I don’t say anything. I’m too hurt, pissed off, betrayed—hell, I don’t even know what I am. Just that I’m not okay. After Maria’s dramatic little exposé on my girlfriend, the whole truth of Maddie’s existence came out like a tidal wave of betrayal.

She’d been a student here for months. She lied about it all when she moved to Shady Heights.

Those are the facts.

The question I still don’t have answered though, is why?

Was this some made-for-TV movie scheme where someone bet her she couldn’t infiltrate the M’s and make a football player fall in love with her? Is she off laughing about it somewhere with her real friends? Was I the butt of some awful joke?

This thought cuts me to the core. I’d given my heart to this girl, meant every single thing I ever told her. And her contribution to our relationship? It was all a lie.

How could I have been so stupid?

After lunch, Josh finds me on my way to athletics, even though he’s almost always late to class.

“Hey man,” he says, falling into step with me.

The tone of his voice tells me there’s more he has to say, so I just look over and wait for him to say it.

“You need to talk to her,” he says, his normally happy-go-lucky expression now serious. “You can’t just give up on her. Hear her out.”

“She hasn’t called me,” I say, staring at the tiles on the floor. I’ve checked my phone more times than I care to admit.

“So call her.”

A moment of silence passes and Josh clears his throat. “Look, I’m no expert or anything, but you can’t just go on ignoring each other. I know you really liked this girl and Maria ambushed her, so it wasn’t even a fair fight. Just talk to her and see what she says. Maybe you can get closure or something.”

Coach stands in the doorway of the locker room, looking right at us, so I’m not about to say anything too revealing when a teacher is around. I look over at Josh, and I lie to him. “Yeah, maybe I’ll do that.”

My reflection looks back at me. It’s clearly disappointed. It’s wondering how I can be wearing such a beautiful dress and still look like a horrible person. Maybe because this is just a normal dress, not some magical bad-decision-erasing dress from a mysterious and far away land.

Nope, I am in the real world. And I’m a terrible person.

In one hour, my mom will marry Landon and this will be the happiest day of her life. So I stare at my reflection in the tall mirror in my room and tell it to smile, stand tall, and look happy. So what if it’s all for show?

This is Mom’s night, not mine. I have the rest of my life to wallow in the self-pity of having ruined my shot at love with the greatest guy ever.

Mindy thinks I should talk to him. After a very painful talk that lasted for three hours, where I told her absolutely everything, she decided to forgive me. I told her about that day I tried applying for a job at the ice cream shop and she was there with the other M’s and didn’t even see me. I told her about how I feel when Colby enters a room, and how great it felt to have a boy care about me for the first time. After revealing every lie and every cover up—I even told her about the date with Jacoby—she’d agreed that she might have done the same thing in my positon. Then she made fun of me, saying she should have known I wasn’t raised with money by the way I acted. I think that’s what makes her like me. Underneath it all, I’m just a normal person.

The good news is that Mindy still wants to be friends. The bad news is that Colby still hasn’t called me. Mindy thinks I should just give him time. I think I should give him the entire planet while I move away to Mars and never come back again.

Pam comes in the room, my sisters holding each of her hands. They’re both dressed like tiny little flower girls, their hair all curled and styled with a tiara.

I lean forward and put my hands on my knees. “Girls! You both look so pretty!”

They grin, and Emma shows me her basket of white rose petals. “We get to throw them on the ground and we don’t even have to pick them up,” she says, grinning mischievously like the idea of leaving a mess on the floor is getting away with something truly evil.

“That’s just one of the reasons weddings are fun,” I say. “Are we ready to go downstairs?”

In the back yard, the guests mingle and drink wine. I’ve already met all of Landon’s family members over the previous days, and my Aunt is too busy chowing down on appetizers to bother trying to talk to me, which is a good thing because I’m not in the mood for small talk.

I leave the girls with Pam and then head inside to find my mom in her dressing room, which is really just one of the spare guest rooms. The makeup artist and hair stylist are working hard on her, transforming her into a princess for this special night.

“Honey,” Mom says, looking at me through the mirror in front of her because she can’t turn her head while it’s being styled. “You look beautiful.”

“Not as beautiful as you,” I say, sitting on an ottoman near her feet. “Are you excited?”

Mom grins. “Very.”

When the stylists are finally done, I walk with Mom down to where the wedding guests are all waiting to see her. We stop just inside the double doors that lead to the back yard where Mom will make her entrance. Well, we
both
will. She’s asked me to walk her down the aisle.

My sisters ooh and ahh over Mom’s pretty dress, and Mom kisses them both on the tops of their heads.

“Thirty seconds and the flower girls will go out,” our wedding planner says. She’s a tall thin woman with her hair always pulled back in a severe bun. She winks at my mom as she walks past.

I hold out my elbow, and Mom loops her arm into mine. The doors open and my sisters step out, reveling in the attention and the beauty of the night. Our backyard has been transformed into an outdoor ballroom, the pool sparkling like a chandelier.

“I take it you didn’t invite Colby?”

Hearing his name sends a stab of pain through my heart. I shake my head.

Mom frowns. “Well, I hope you two find a way to work things out.”

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” I say, staring at the doors in front of us. In the distance, wedding music plays, and all of our family is out there waiting on Mom and Landon to tie the knot. Talking about Colby is the last thing on my mind right now.

“Honey,” Mom says as the wedding planner ushers us forward to make our debut on the makeshift wedding aisle. “I am living proof that real love will find you someday, even if you don’t think it ever will. If what you had with Colby was real, don’t fret. He’ll find his way back to you.”

I give her a sad smile and the doors open. Everyone turns to look at us, and they even stand from their chairs. “Thanks, Mom,” I say as we step forward. “I love you.”

She squeezes my hand as she prepares to become a wife. “I love you, too, honey.”

I blow off my friends on Friday. They’re going to the Getaway with the sole purpose of picking up girls, and that couldn’t be more unappealing to me right now.

My parents don’t ask why I’m staying in tonight. I haven’t told them about Maddie, but it’d be obvious even to the most absent of parents. When it comes to breakups, my parents prefer to leave me alone and let me work it out myself. I guess that’s better than having some heartfelt family meeting over it.

Mindy calls me around seven, and I let it go to voicemail. She’s been nearly as MIA as Maddie lately, eating lunch alone and going dark on social media. At least she didn’t delete her account like Maddie did. Of course, I can’t ever picture Mindy doing something like that. She lives for the attention of internet likes.

A few seconds after the ringing stops, it starts again. With a sigh, I answer Mindy’s second call.

“Yeah?”

“Douche bag,” she says by way of greeting. “I’m coming over.”

“No, you’re not, Mindy. I don’t need company.”

“I’m here. Come let me in.”

“No,” I say, standing up and peering out of my window. “Go home.”

“Not happening, Jensen.”

I know she won’t give up; that’s just not the Mindy way. I hang up on her and walk to the front door, where she meets me on the doorstep, staring at her nails like she’s bored.

“You gonna invite me in?” she says.

I step back and open the door wider. “Don’t bother asking for a drink because you won’t be here long.”

She makes this little scoffing sound and moves around me, heading toward my room. Luckily my parents aren’t here or they’d stop her and chat because she’s another Shady Heights girl and my parents are all about having friends in high places.

In my room, I close the door, turn around and fold my arms across my chest. “Why are you here?”

She sits on the edge of my bed, facing the window. “We need to talk about Maddie.”

“Did she send you here?” I ask, sitting next to her. Just hearing her name makes my heart pound.

“She did not. But I came here because you two are both my friends and I care about you.”

“Caring about us doesn’t make everything all right, Carmichael.”

Mindy throws her hair over her shoulder and turns to look at me. Most guys cower under her calculated gaze, but I don’t. I’ve known her too long.

“I had a talk with our girl yesterday. Now that I learned the truth about her, I decided to forgive her for lying to me.”

Okay, that’s not at all what I’d expected her to say. My shoulders loosen a little. “You’re not really the forgiving type,” I say.

Mindy shrugs. “I understood where she was coming from. I think maybe that’s why I like Maddie so much—she’s real. She got that way by living a really hard life, and now she’s living the high life with us but she’s still grounded as a person. I can respect that.”

The cracks in my broken heart feel like they’re breaking apart all over again. “Yeah, but she lied to us. To me. I loved her and she lied to me.”

“I don’t blame her one bit. Look at you! You never noticed her before she was rich.” She turns to look at me, a surprising lack of sarcasm on her face. “Listen up, Jensen. I’m going to tell you everything I know, and you’re going to pay very close attention. Then I’m leaving, and you can do what you want with the information. If you ruin this then that’s your own fault, but I’m doing my part, okay? So listen well.”

#

I take a deep breath. My body feels weird in this suit. A little sweaty even though I just showered. Itchy even though the fabric is soft. I guess it’s my nerves.

Maddie Sinclair is the perfect girl for me, and she’s been here the whole time. My angel, my perfect girl, was hiding in plain sight.

I never even saw her before. I had four months to discover this girl and make her mine, but I only saw what I wanted to see. The popular crowd. I failed her and I failed myself.

So now I’m going to a wedding in the best suit I own.

I take a deep breath and run the comb through my hair, tugging it into place at the back of my neck. My stomach is so jumbled up with nerves that I may never eat again, and I’m sweating through three layers of deodorant.

I draw in a deep breath and head down to my car, driving straight to Maddie’s house before I lose my nerve. There are half a dozen cars in the driveway, and I pull in behind the last one. I can hear the soft thump of music playing from the back yard as I walk up to the pristine white steps in front of her house.

I ring the doorbell and wait.

An older woman dressed in a blue gown answers the door. “Hello there,” she says with a pleasant twang in her voice. “May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Maddie,” I say, my throat feeling dry. “I know you’re having a wedding tonight, so maybe she could just meet me out here?”

“Nonsense,” the woman says, waving at me to come in. “Wait, you are Colby, right?”

I nod. Who is this woman and how does she know my name? Surely, that’s a good sign.

“The wedding is over and everyone is enjoying the reception now,” she says, leading me through a marble foyer. “You’re just in time for the fun.”

I try to smile, but it probably makes me look like an idiot. I’m taken through the house and to the back yard, where the patio has been turned into a sparkling white, flower-decorated wedding reception. A live band plays in the corner, and well-dressed people are dancing and having fun.

“There she is,” the woman says, pointing on the dance floor. I see Maddie looking like a princess in a purple dress that goes down to the floor. She’s dancing while holding the hands of a little girl around five years old. Her smile sparkles under the twinkling lights, and she looks so happy I immediately regret coming here. I regret everything, all of it.

And then she looks at me.