Spiral (30 page)

W
hen I pull in to the driveway, it’s nearly one in the morning. I do my best to sneak in to the casita undetected.

Cherie’s waiting for me, sitting on my bed, looking tear-stained and washed with relief as I enter.

“Oh, thank God – ”

“Get out,” I interrupt immediately, pointing to the house.

“Jack – ”

“No, I’m not kidding. Get out.”

“Jack, I’m really sorry – ”

“I don’t care,” I state firmly. “Leave me alone.”

She looks stricken with grief. I see tears welling in her eyes, but it doesn’t have the same effect on me this time.

“Look, either you get out, or I’m calling Mom and Jim in here right now and telling them everything,” I threaten.

She’s unfazed, her lips pouting in that way that makes me forget stuff, like what I’m mad at. I can’t let her do that to me this time. I’m done with her, and I have to stand my ground.

“Jack, can I just say one thing?”

“No – nothing!” I crow, slicing the air with my bruised hand. “I am done talking to you. I am done being your stupid security blanket. Go call Caz and cry on his shoulder.”

“You don’t mean that,” she whispers, and I hate her for knowing that little bit of truth. She adds, “And I didn’t mean what I said before.” I can’t keep listening to her because she’s going to make me believe her. I have to lock myself in the bathroom and tune her out until she shuts up or leaves, preferably both. I reach for its door, and she jumps from the bed to stop me, grabbing my forearm.

“Oh, no! Your hand!” she murmurs. I look down at it, realizing that it looks more swollen and purple than it feels.

I hide it behind my back. “Whatever; don’t act like you give a shit.”

“Please just listen to me,” she pleads. For the first time in a long time, she is stone-sober. I notice the absence of alcohol-scented breath and see her eyes are not clouded over. They’re wide and green and pleading for forgiveness.

But I’m just too raw this time. “No, you listen. I’ve never let anyone in the way I let you in, Cherie. I told you everything out there today, and you threw it back in my face the first chance you got. You would think someone who claims to feel so alone in this world would have a little empathy for a guy like me, but no, that’s not the case.”

I feel my eyes burning with tears now, and there’s not much I can do to hold them back. “Because you don’t really know what it’s like. Your parents didn’t just leave. They didn’t walk out and forget you existed. That’s something I have to wake up and face every day. That’s what I get to think about at night, in between worrying whether you’ll come home in one piece and why you are keeping me a big secret.”

Her eyes water, too. “Jack, I – ” She’s speechless and looks down.

“You know what’s really scary? What’s really scary is that you have the power to make me feel as low and worthless as my dad did. You, who doesn’t want anyone to know that you sneak in here at night, you who treats me like garbage in front of everyone else but then climbs in my bed later. And I’m the asshole who takes it, who lets you walk in and out of my room, who knows you go out with other guys; I say nothing just so you can keep living a lie.”

I take a step back from her. “You don’t know what it’s like to be really abandoned by someone, but you’re about to find out, Cherie. Because I’m the only person who really gives a damn about you for you and not what you can do for them, and I’m done taking your bullshit.”

Her meek voice squeaks, “You’re right.”

“What?” I demand gruffly.

“You – you’re right, okay?” she stammers, pulling me toward her. I resist and shake my arm from her grip. She looks down.

“About what?”

“You deserve so much better than me, Jack,” she murmurs. “I am so, so very sorry. For your hand, for being such a bitch, for what I said – that was – it was a terrible thing to say.”

It was worse than any smack you could have given me
, I think bitterly. I almost wish she had smacked me instead. Now I don’t even want her to touch me.

She shrugs. “And I shouldn’t have done all of that in front of you tonight. I – I had no idea you had those kinds of feelings for me. I mean, I wanted you to notice me, but I didn’t think you really cared what I did.”

So she
was
trying to turn me into a panting mess. “It’s sad that you need so much attention all the time.” I’m shocked by my own cutting words, but I don’t take it back. I don’t even feel badly being cruel to her.

She swallows hard, injured. “I know,” she admits, hanging her head. “But I don’t just need attention. I – I need you.” She looks at me then, all somber and heartbroken, and I have to wonder if it’s more for dramatic effect.

I decide she’s just acting again. “Give it a rest,” I groan. “Please just hear me out?”

I shake my head. “You don’t need me, Cherie. I don’t matter one bit in your big Hollywood world.”

She’s on the verge of tears now. Crocodile tears in my book. “But you do! I’ve been pretending that you don’t matter to me because you’re not supposed to. But the truth is I’m never happy until I come here. I feel safe in here, with you. I feel like I can be scared and sad. I can be me.”

I shift uncomfortably, hating how her words are melting my resolve. I’m supposed to be furious right now, steadfast in hating her and refusing to let her get close to me ever again.

“I really care about you, Jack,” she whispers.

“I don’t believe you.”

She looks at the floor, her eyes still glistening. “I guess it’s hard to believe someone who’s treated you like I have.”

“Interesting how you have these mature revelations in the middle of acting like a stupid little girl every five minutes,” I snipe. “Why do you mess with my head if you like me so much?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Because you let me, I suppose?” She looks forlorn. “Because I love you, and I always treat the people I love like crap?”

I don’t think I’ve heard her correctly. I retreat backward a step and catch myself against the wall. “What?”

She smiles, but it’s a bittersweet smile. “Yep. I’ve been in love with you since that day in the parking lot. Hard to believe, huh?”

I nod dumbly. I don’t believe her. Love is huge. It’s the biggest step someone can take, the strongest word you can use when you tell someone how you feel. I don’t know if I love her. Do I? How would I even know? How does she know?

I can’t believe she loves me already. But I want to.

Cherie shakes her head back and forth and looks up wistfully. “You were so calm, so strong; the way you took care of Britney, and me, all of it. I’d never felt so safe in my life. I was like, ‘God, this guy is incredible.’ Chloe and Claudia – they made it sound like you were cold and messed up because of your dad, but I told myself, ‘No, no way. That guy is the sweetest, most caring guy in the world. He’d take care of me.’ And I really, really needed that more than anything else in the world. I needed someone I could trust, someone who would be there for me and keep me safe.

“But then you said all that stuff to Eva and Jim, and it hurt me so much. It crushed me.”

“I know,” I whisper, and it’s all I can say because I’m still stunned by these secrets she is suddenly divulging.

“I tried so hard to hate you. I did everything I could to make you hate me back so that you wouldn’t catch on to how I really felt. But no matter what, I couldn’t stay away from you. I couldn’t just pretend that there wasn’t another Jack I had seen that whole first week we spent together, and I wanted him back. I wanted you to protect me again. With my whole world so upside down, I just wanted to feel safe with someone. I still do, but not with just anyone. With you.”

I can’t tear my eyes from hers, struggling just to breathe. She turns and walks back toward my bed. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. It doesn’t matter how we feel about each other anyway. We’re supposed to be family, and we can’t be more than that.”

She sits down on the edge of the bed and stares at the floor. I feel like I’m being broken up with, but without the fun of ever actually dating.

I muster the voice to say, “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

Her eyes perk up. “What way?”

“I – ” I can’t bring myself to say what I really want to say. “I could never pretend you’re just another person in this family.”

She meets my gaze, and there are a thousand things said by her eyes in that one fleeting moment. It all comes down to the words only she can manage to say: “We’re already more than that, huh?”

“Yes.”

She stands up and paces. “I tried to pretend these feelings weren’t there. I convinced myself that this was all plutonic – that you were just Jack and that sleeping in a bed together didn’t mean anything. But the truth is I don’t just come out here every night because I hate sleeping in that house.”

My heart beats triple time. I think I know what she means, but I need to hear her say it. “Why then?”

Her lips tuck together like she’s trying to hold the reason in. Like once it’s out there, she’ll never be able to take it back. She looks me dead in the eye, and I gulp under the intensity of her stare.

She says, “I come out here because I want to sleep next to you. Because I love you, and I want to be with you, and it’s the only time we can be together without anyone else knowing.”

A huge weight suddenly drops onto my shoulders and grounds me from the high she’d given me earlier.
Without anyone else knowing
. I will never be more than a dirty secret to her.

“So why can’t we just tell them?” I ask softly, glancing toward the window then the floor, doing anything to avoid her gaze as the silence hangs heavy in the air.

“Well, we can’t date each other, Jack. That would be weird – we live together, and we’re family by marriage, at least –”

“So?”

She tilts her head. “Jack, be reasonable. Think about what they’ll say. We’re teenagers; we live together, and you’re supposed to be my cousin in a way…”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say quickly, doing my best to mask my disappointment. She’s right; who am I kidding? I couldn’t make her my girlfriend under any of these circumstances.

“I just – I saw how much I hurt you tonight, and I needed you to know how I really felt about you. I needed you to know that I never wanted to hurt you. I didn’t know you even cared.

“But now that I do, I can’t keep coming in here. It’s not fair to drag your feelings through this, too.”

My heart drops into my stomach. That will take some getting used to, especially when it means I won’t know what she’s up to or if she’s safe at night.

But it’s not supposed to matter to me, I remind myself. She can’t be my girlfriend, so I can’t keep tabs on her.

“Okay. So, I guess that’s it,” she whispers. I avoid her stare, which I feel resting on my face. “I’ll stay in my corner, and you stay in yours. Just like we said a few weeks ago.”

I nod stiffly. To think only a mere week ago we were trying to keep ourselves from strangling each other. Now, we must do everything in our power to keep our hands to ourselves for different reasons.

“Well this sucks,” I grunt. It’s the only thought I can come up with at this moment. That’s all I’m thinking, and I’m pretty sure she’s thinking it, too, when she comes toward me with her mouth turned down sadly.

“It’s better this way, before we do something we regret,” she says, her voice lacking conviction. She rests a hand on my arm, and my skin prickles. “Before we do something we can’t take back.”

I raise my gaze to hers for the first time in what feels like forever, and I see a wistful set of green eyes staring back at me. “Like what?”

“You know…” Words escape her. She can’t finish her sentence and pouts. “I’m happy to know you like me, too.”

I swallow hard. “What would make you think I didn’t?”

Her mouth twists to the side and she hides suddenly shy eyes. “We never…did anything. Like, we never kissed. I thought it would happen a dozen times, but you didn’t try – not once. I’ve been sleeping next to you since Sunday, but you didn’t even touch me. I assumed I was just another annoying little sister to you.”

My jaw falls slightly slack. My mind draws up all of those intense, fleeting moments, where her eyes went dark and our mouths came too close.
She wanted me to kiss her?

“What?” she asks, noticing my disbelief.

I shake my head at her. “You have no idea how much restraint that took.” “Really?” she murmurs with a smile.

I nod.

“Even now?” she says, and now all I can think about is kissing her.

My stomach muscles tighten, “Yes.”

“Well, why didn’t you ever kiss me?”

I shrug helplessly. “Why would I? You’re…well, you’re Cherie Belle. And gorgeous.” She beams and looks away shyly. “You are. You know you are. You can have any guy you want. I’m just me – the kid you’ve hated for the last five weeks. I thought if I even looked at you funny, you’d slug me. I never in a million years thought I had a chance with you.”

I look down at my feet, shuffling them against the carpet. “And it doesn’t matter. I still don’t. Tomorrow, you’ll go right back to being you, and I’ll be the guy you’re pretending to hate so that no one catches on to the truth.”

She nods her head once and then cocks it to the side. “There’s still tonight.” Her fingers slide further up on my arm, leaving a blaze in their wake, and her other hand creeps up to my cheek.

“Tonight?” I repeat dumbly, staring at her, my voice strained and hushed. It’s hard to breathe again. Is she giving me permission to do what I’ve been trying not to do for two months? I think Cherie actually wants me to kiss her, right here, right now.

She closes the space between us another step, stroking my jawline. “Maybe…just this once…before we go back to forgetting each other exists – ”

My lips are on hers before she can finish, and my arm swings behind her back to pull her close. She moans against my mouth and kisses me back, digging her nails into my hair. We’re locked in a rough embrace that shakes my core, and I’m vaguely aware I just started something that I might not be able to stop.

She senses my urgency, too. “Jack, wait!” she gasps suddenly, pulling back. I release her and stumble away until my spine meets the wall. My nerve endings are bellowing and my body demands for a need to finally be met, but I withdraw and try to think of anything but her lips, her hands, or her body.