So Over It (27 page)

I reached to tap him on the shoulder, my cold, clammy hand pausing midway, then finally making contact. I retracted it as quickly as I could.

Aaron smiled at me, looking a little surprised, a little wary. His bruise had healed since I last saw him almost a month before. “Oh, hey. It’s you. Do you know Brent somehow?”

“Heather,” I managed.

“Huh. Small world, I guess.”

The bartender handed Aaron what looked like a glass of soda and another glass of something clear and fizzy. Then he gave me an inquisitive glance. “For you, miss?”

“Dr Pepper.”

“I gotta get this to my mom.” Aaron nodded the other direction. “Maybe I’ll see you a little later.”

He retreated a few steps.

I swallowed, then blurted, “I want to know what happened that night.”

He froze and turned to me. “What night?”

I choked on the oatmeal-like lumps that kept forming in my throat. “At Jodi’s party.”

“Whose?”

“The one where we met. The one where—” Another lump that refused to go down.

Aaron glanced at the bartender, who fussed with the ice and various cans of soda, as if not wanting to hear our conversation. Heck,
I
didn’t want to hear our conversation. “Let me give this to my mother.” Aaron’s voice sounded spookily even. “Meet me outside the ballroom and we’ll talk.”

I nodded, then watched him walk away.

The bartender cleared his throat. “Your drink.”

“Thank you.” My hands shook as I reached for it. “Sorry you had to hear that.”

“I’ve heard much worse in my profession.” He nodded in the direction Aaron had retreated. “Don’t let him get away with a thing.”

I dropped a dollar in the tip jar, then moved one foot in front of the other back to my table.

“What’s going on?” Connor asked.

I handed him my drink but kept walking toward the doorway, where Aaron waited.

“Where are you going?” Eli asked, but I ignored him.

I made a conscious effort to keep my back straight, my head held high, as I neared Aaron. No matter what this conversation revealed, I wouldn’t allow him to make me feel defeated. I’d been forgiven, and nothing could take that away from me.

Aaron smoothed his curls off his forehead as we walked the long corridor of the Sheraton, away from the reception hall and bustle of the other guests. “So what’s the deal?”

I stopped and crossed my arms. “Did you roofie my drink?”

His jaw dropped. I didn’t know that actually happened outside of cartoons. “Did I
what
?”

“You heard me,” I said. “My drink was doctored at that party, and you did it.”

“No I didn’t. I’d have never done something like that.”

“Oh yeah? It’s not like you had a moral issue with taking me up to the Starrs’ guest bedroom.”

His face turned to stone. “You didn’t seem to have any problem going up there with me.”

“I was drugged! You think I’d go up to a bedroom with some guy I’d just met? I’d
never
have agreed to that.”

He shrugged. “Alexis says your sixteen-year-old sister just had a baby, so maybe being loose is a family trait or something.”

Through gritted teeth, I said, “Don’t you
dare
mention my little sister ever again.”

Aaron shrugged and fixed me with a hard look. Apparently being accused of attempted rape didn’t settle well with him.

“I was drugged,” I insisted, remembering how the room had gone fuzzy, how my mouth felt full of sand, how my head burned the next morning. It’d been different from other headaches.

“Well, not by me. Maybe by that psychotic blond guy who attacked me a few weeks ago. Roofies seem like something that’d be up his alley.”

I stamped my foot. “Why would Eli roofie me and then give
you
a black eye?”

“Maybe to make it look like he didn’t.” Aaron shrugged again. Careless. Annoying.

“You listen to me.” When I came at him, he scrambled backward and pressed against the wall. “You’ve got no idea what that night did to me. What it cost me.
No
idea.”

Aaron slinked to the right, creating space between us. “God knows what you’ve built that night into, but I don’t know how else to tell you that you’ve got the wrong guy. I didn’t put anything in your drink.”

His first words echoed in my ear—“God knows.”

God knew how I’d ached. God knew how I’d both appreciated everything that night gave me—him, inner strength, relationships—and yet sobbed for what it stole. Safety. Trust.

Aaron didn’t know. I could never change that. No matter how long I held him hostage out here, he wouldn’t understand, but God still would. God knew what had happened that night, and that would have to be enough.

“Your friends had roofies that night, didn’t they?” The question bubbled out of me before I could stop it. My voice sounded different, gentler, even though my insides were still tumultuous.

Aaron blinked, probably confused by the transformation. “I don’t know. I don’t, like, track their every move or anything.”

“My friend saw them with roofies. He said Sarah’s boyfriend—Nate, I think—had them.”

Aaron shrugged yet again. Did he ever express himself any other way? “It’s possible. So Nate had them. What does that have to do with me? I mean, maybe your friend saw them because he was buying them. Ever think of that?”

I shook the question away. It couldn’t be Eli. It just couldn’t. But if it wasn’t Eli, and Aaron was being honest, who did that leave?

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to walk through those early moments with Aaron. When he’d left to get me a drink, Jodi came to talk to me. She looked over at Aaron and said—

I snapped my eyes open. “You were talking to Sarah Humphrey. In the kitchen. When you were getting my drink.”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“No, I saw you.”

“I talk to Sarah a lot. She’s Nate’s girl.”

“Did she give you the roofie?”

Aaron sighed. “No, okay? I’ve told you, like, a thousand times I’ve got nothing to do with this.”

“Do you remember
anything
you talked about with her that night?” I could hear the desperation in my voice. I wanted answers so badly.

“I go to lots of parties, okay? I don’t remember a specific one from a whole year ago.” He looked ready to return to the reception, but I got in his way. I couldn’t give up yet.

“Do you remember why you were there?” I asked. “Sarah and my friend don’t get along.” I remembered what Jodi had said to me that day at Panera when we ran into Sarah. “Jodi heard Sarah came just to get back at her, but nothing happened.”

Something seemed to click in Aaron’s mind. “
That
party . . .” He loosened his tie again. “Yeah, I remember now. After you made your dramatic exit, I went downstairs and all my friends had bailed.”

“Was Sarah getting back at me too?” I asked, thinking of how I’d handed Jodi the scissors. How over the last couple years, Sarah’s angry glare went first to Jodi and then skittered to me. “Is that why she helped you drug me?”

“For the last time, I didn’t drug you.” Aaron’s hand ran through his hair. “Okay, that night . . . that night . . . you said you wanted a drink, so I went to get you one. Right?”

I nodded.

“When I went to get you a drink, Sarah came to talk to me. And . . .” He blinked at me several times. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Jodi.”

“Jodi,” Aaron repeated. “I think that’s right. Okay, I remember what happened. Sarah gave me a cup. She said it was Jodi’s and asked me to give it to her. That’s it. That’s all that happened.”

I leaned against the wall as the pieces came together. Sarah watching for the perfect opportunity to pay us back, like she’d come there to do. Then fleeing the scene before anything unfolded.

“Did she ever touch my cup?”

Aaron blinked. “What?”

“My cup! Did she ever touch my cup?”

He blinked even more. “I don’t know. I maybe handed it to her for a second while I refilled mine, but—”

“Did Sarah ever say anything to you about Jodi and me? About”—I swallowed—“getting her hair cut off at a party?”

His eyes narrowed. “That was you?”

I nodded. “And she got us back, didn’t she? She encouraged you to come talk to me, and then she fixed up our drinks when you weren’t paying attention.”

“I . . .” Aaron swallowed. “I mean, Sarah’s got kind of a vengeful streak. I guess I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she’d done something like that, but I never
saw
anything.”

I took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. “You can go now.”

He lingered. “Look, you’re not gonna press charges or—”

“Just go away!”

He hesitated only a second longer, then scurried back to the reception.

I closed my eyes and slid along the wall to the ground. What did I do with this now? Did it mean anything? So Aaron hadn’t drugged me. So what? He hadn’t felt reservations about taking me upstairs. And he still might have done something had Eli not interrupted.

And what about Jodi? She’d said at Sheridan’s that she passed out before Aaron and I even went upstairs. What had happened to her when I wasn’t watching?

“What happened?”

I opened my eyes to find Connor squatting on the floor in front of me. Eli and Jodi hovered behind him. All three watched with big, concerned eyes.

I released a shaky breath. “Aaron says he didn’t do it. And from what he said, I think . . .” I looked at Jodi. “I think it was Sarah. I think she put something in both our drinks.”

Jodi’s eyes grew wider and her legs trembled. She sat, her raspberry-colored dress flaring around her. “Of course. That makes so much sense. All year Sarah kept saying this really weird stuff to me.
Strange
stuff, like . . . well, I shouldn’t repeat it now that I’m a Christian. But . . .” She grabbed my hands. “Oh, Skylar, I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault this happened to you. If I hadn’t been so set on revenge with her, this never would’ve happened, and—” Jodi dissolved into tears and I hugged her close.

“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m worried about
you
. About what might have happened.”

She pulled away, shaking her head. “Nothing happened. I woke up in my room the morning after.”

“How did you get up there?”

When she didn’t answer right away, I swallowed hard.

Jodi blinked rapidly. “I don’t know.”

Eli cleared his throat. “I carried you up there.”

We turned to him and his face reddened. “I thought you’d just drunk too much. I didn’t want to leave you in the living room, so . . .” He shrugged, then looked at me. “That’s when I found you and Aaron. I heard you crying.”

Jodi pressed trembling fingers to her mouth. “And that’s my fault.” She turned her big, teary eyes to me. “Oh, Skylar, if only I hadn’t done that thing to Sarah. If only I’d let those rumors about her and Trent slide, then she wouldn’t have retaliated and—”

“And nothing would have changed,” I said. “None of this would’ve happened. None of the good stuff.”

Jodi bit her lower lip. “I keep picturing all these things that could’ve happened to you—”

“But they didn’t. I’m fine, Jodi.
We’re
fine.”

She knit her fingers in her lap. “I’ll never be able to forgive myself for this. For what I caused.”

“You will,” I said, “because I’ve finally forgiven myself for what happened. I’m 100 percent, truly, totally over it.”

29

Pastor Greg smiled at the few of us seated in the sanctuary. “We’re gathered here today because Teri and Paul Hoyt have requested to renew their wedding vows in front of their family and close friends.”

Mom looked away from Greg for a second to wink at me. I winked back.

“It’ll be a simple service,” Mom had said back in August when she and Dad told Abbie and me. “Dr. Prentice thinks it’s a good idea. It’ll be just you girls, Grammy, and the Rosses. We’ll all have dinner together afterward. Very casual, very low-key. Just a . . .”

“A celebration,” Dad finished for her.

“Right.” Mom smiled. “Of our renewed commitment to each other.”

“Right,” Dad said, and they beamed at each other like newlyweds. Which would have gagged me had I not felt so relieved.

And now a month later, Connor’s fingers entwined with mine as we watched Mom and Dad take communion together.

My cell buzzed on my lap. “It’s from Jodi,” I whispered to Connor. It read,
What am I missing?
I grinned and tucked my phone away. There’d be time later to text her back.

Jodi had been at Vanderbilt for a few weeks, and it sounded like she’d settled in okay. She liked her roommate and she’d already been asked out a couple times. Typical Jodi. Something I couldn’t say about her too often anymore.

“Paul Hoyt, do you agree to renew your commitment to love and cherish Teri . . .”

I smiled as Greg read the traditional vows, the same ones my parents had pledged to each other almost twenty years ago. A wedding where I’d also been present. Although to this one they’d invited me.

We cheered loudly when Greg presented my newly recommitted parents. Until Dad drew Mom into a long kiss, then Abbie and I both groaned a good-natured, “Ew!” which made Owen giggle. At six and a half months old, he thought everything was funny.

As we all filed down the aisle, Abbie murmured in my ear, “I’ve gotta go change his diaper.”

“Now?” I asked, gesturing to the important moment going on.

“I know, I know, but he went
as
Mom walked down the aisle. I can’t just let him sit in it.”

Connor made a face. “That’s enough describing, okay, Abbie?”

“I’ll be back as soon as possible,” she said and headed across the sanctuary toward the bathrooms.

“How’s she doing?” Connor asked.

“Better. She’s gone back to totally freaking out when things go wrong. I never thought I’d be grateful for that, but I really am. I think she’s done punishing herself for Owen. She’s decided it’s okay to be upset when”—I glanced at Chris, who stood oblivious across the room—“things don’t go her way.”

Connor rested his hand on the nape of my neck, squeezing in a way that made me tingle. “You’re a good sister.”

“I wasn’t always.”

“You are now.” He pulled me close and kissed me. “That’s what matters.”