The Debt 4 (6 page)

“Jake Novak.
 
He’s the guy that I’m…we’re spending
time together and that’s why I’ve been in the news lately.”
 
Even saying it felt silly and stupid and
unbelievable.

“Jake Novak…I think I’ve heard that name
before.”
 
Her mother hemmed and
hawed.
 
“Was he in that Disney film
about the young man that played football?”

“Yes, Mom, that’s the guy,” Raven said,
laughing a little.
 
“He’s been in a
few movies and he’s a musician too.”

“You’re seeing each other,” her mother
said softly.
 
“Well that sounds very
exciting.”

“He wants to meet you and Dad,” Raven
said, squinting, clutching the phone that much harder.
 

“Well we’d love to meet him.
 
Any friend of yours…absolutely.”

Raven sighed.
 
“I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know
when we’re getting into town.”

Her mother was getting happier, seemingly,
as she processed what was happening.
 
“You’re really coming back home to visit?
 
You’re sure,
Raven
?”

“I’m sure, Mom.”

As
long as it takes to get the footage and pictures we need to make it look real
.
 

It was sad, actually, because if this had
been a genuine relationship, she truly would have been excited to introduce
Jake to her mother and father.

Yeah,
but what girl wouldn’t be excited to introduce Jake Novak to their friends and
family?
 
Just be glad you can even
pretend you’re with him.
 
That’s a
lot better than most girls will ever get.

It was true, but it hurt
nonetheless.
 

She’d always fantasized about going back
to her hometown as someone successful, happy, showing off that she’d made it
despite everyone’s attempts to bring her down and believe the worst of her.

Only now that Raven was getting the
chance, all she could focus on was the fact that it was all based on a lie.

They got off the phone, Raven’s mother
finally showing some excitement about reuniting, and Raven was left with at
least a faint ray of hope that perhaps the whole trip might work out okay.

Then she hung up and sat there on the
couch, thinking back on everything that had caused her to flee Southbridge in
the first pace four years ago.
 

Instantly, she recalled Caleb’s face, his
light curly hair and blue eyes, the way he’d looked at her and told her things
she’d desperately wanted to believe at the time.
 
She was reminded of the love she’d felt
for him, and then the betrayal that had made her question whether anything he’d
ever told her had been true.

Flashes of the party that had started the
whole mess began to flicker across her inner vision, as if the phone call with
her mother had triggered a cascade of memories—Memories that had merely
been waiting all these years to be called to the surface of Raven’s mind.

She
was drinking shots and laughing with friends.
 
The room was hot and crowded and smelled
of stale beer, sweat and perfume.

Caleb’s
smile, his laugh as the music blared in the background.

The
feeling of danger, excitement, mixed with teenage bodies and alcohol and the
desire to be sexy and wanted.

Andre
appeared, fittingly, standing next to Caleb.
 
The two of them, like peanut butter and
jelly, always together, always a pair.

Caleb
and Andre, and the night of the party, when everything had gone so horribly,
desperately wrong for Raven.

She felt sick just thinking about all of it
and had to willfully pull herself out of the current of those old
memories.
 
It was like trying to
climb out of quicksand, and as she found herself back in the present, Raven was
terrified to realize that none of the old emotions had gone away.

I
thought I was past all of that.
 
I
thought I was
better,
that I was an adult, and I’d
created my new life.
 
But the sad
truth is, I haven’t done anything but run away, and now I’m going back there
and I don’t know if I can do it.

***

Lying in bed, Raven tried to let go but
was unable to sleep.

Raven was wearing nothing but a long
t-shirt from the clothes that had been in the suitcase Kurt had brought to her
room.

She was lying with no covers, feeling too
hot, but also too lethargic to get up and turn the AC on any higher.
 
Sweat was slick on her arms and legs and
plastering her bangs to her forehead, and she was tossing and turning.

I
can’t go back there.

Those words had been repeating over and
over again in her mind, a loop that simply wouldn’t stop.

I
can’t.

I
can’t go back.

I
can’t go back there
.

She closed her eyes, tried to take a few
deep breaths.
 
She sat up, her heart
racing once again, and she turned the television on, put the volume up
slightly.
 
Jimmy Fallon was doing
some kind of song and dance routine, dressed in a tuxedo, hat and cane.
 
Beneath him, the words to a song were
scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

Raven was hardly paying attention, until
she saw Jake’s name scrolling, as if it was actually part of the song.

And then she realized this was some kind
of parody song using Jake’s rant as lyrics to accompany Somewhere Over The
Rainbow.
 
Jimmy Fallon was singing
and dancing as he sang those horrible words, and the crowd was hysterically
laughing.

Oh
God
, Raven thought,
feeling slightly ill.
 
It was
getting worse and worse the longer Jake stayed silent and failed to respond to
his video.
 
He was becoming a joke,
and that was worse than being hated for nasty things you’d once said.

A knock on the door to the hotel room
interrupted her spiraling train of thought.

Raven was instantly unnerved and on
alert, because of how late it was.
 
She got out of bed as the knock came again.
 
She tiptoed towards the door.

“I can hear you creeping around in there,
Raven,” Jake’s voice came through the door.

“I didn’t know it was you,” she told him.
 

“Open up,” he said.

She wanted to see him, but she was afraid.
 
It had been a long, hard and difficult
day.
 
Tomorrow would likely be
worse, and Jake was already short of patience with her.

“Maybe we should just talk in the
morning, Jake.
 
We’re both
tired—“

“Speak for yourself.
 
I worked out and had coffee just an hour
ago, feel like I could climb a damn mountain.
 
Open up
,
Raven
.
 
Come on.”

She sighed.
 
“I’m not even dressed.”

“Like that’s anything new.”

She smiled a little, despite her
misgivings, and then she opened the door, feeling a little excited in
truth.
 
She wanted him to see her in
nothing but this t-shirt, to look at her bare legs, maybe to wonder what was
underneath it.

Nothing…
That
’s
what was beneath her shirt.

She backed away from the door as Jake
came inside and shut it behind him.
 
He was dressed in jeans and a plain t-shirt, but as usual, looked like
he’d just stepped out of a music video.

His eyes took her in greedily, and she
could tell he was charged up.

“What were you doing before I knocked?”
he asked, picking up the remote and turning on the TV in the living area.
 

“Trying to sleep,” she said.
 
“And failing miserably.”

“Yeah, sleep is overrated.”
 
He turned to Fallon, but the segment was
finished and now Jimmy was talking to Questlove.

She glanced at Jake’s face to see if he
was upset.
 
“Did you see it?” she
asked him.

He gave her a look.
 
“Did I see what?”

“Jimmy Fallon’s sketch about you.”

“Yeah, some of it.”
 
He didn’t say anything else.
 
His eyes looked her up and down, not
bothering to hide his intentions.

Raven sensed that Jake was boiling over
with pent up aggression, and she had some idea of what he wanted from her.
 
She was both bothered and turned on by
that knowledge.
 
She didn’t want to
just be his outlet, she wanted more than that.

But she was also excited by the idea of
him taking all of his frustration out on her, touching her, spanking, grabbing,
and maybe…maybe…doing more than that in the end.

She became a little unnerved by his
unapologetic stare and moved away from him, walking to the mini-bar and opening
it.
 
“Want anything?”

“What I want right now isn’t in that
refrigerator,” he said.

She knew what he meant, and it made her
nipples stiffen beneath her shirt.
 
She ignored his comment, grabbed herself a Diet Coke and then opened it,
drinking the cold, bubbling liquid.

“Listen, Jake, I wanted to apologize
about my attitude earlier,” she said, wiping her lips with the back of her
hand.

“I get it,” Jake said, watching her.
 
“Under these kinds of circumstances
we’re all going to have our testy moments.”

She smiled.
 
“Thanks for saying that.
 
For being understanding.”

“That doesn’t mean you should just get away
with it though,” he said, starting to move towards her.
 
His eyes were dark and intense and
needing of something—something that Raven knew all too well.
 

“Jake, you know we can’t keep doing
this,” she said, putting her hand out.

“Can’t keep doing what, Raven?” he
smiled, pretending not to know what she was talking about.

“You know what I mean,” she replied.

“We can do whatever we want.
 
Nobody’s here but you and me.”

“It’s confusing things.”

“I’m not confused,” he replied, still
moving forward.
 
“And I don’t think
you are either, actually.”

“I just wish I knew sometimes what was
really going on between us,” Raven told him.

Jake’s expression changed to something
resembling suspicion.
 
The eyebrow
with the scar arched a bit.
 
“I was
under the impression we both knew exactly what this is.”

“Are you saying it’s purely business?”

“Obviously not.”

“Then what?”

He shook his head slowly.
 
“You know what it is.”
 
He grit his teeth.
 
“Don’t make me say it, Raven.”

“Say what, Jake?”

He ran a hand through his perfectly
styled hair.
 
His bicep bulged as
his arm flexed.
 
“Don’t make me
define it.
 
I told you, I
can’t
be your boyfriend.
 
I can’t give you some term to put on
this and make it all neat and tidy.”

Hearing him say it again hurt badly.
 
She remembered the way he’d looked into
her eyes in bed, the way he’d touched her face, her hair.
 
The way he’d protected her from Club
Alpha, even fighting the CEO to put a stop to their tactics.
 

And yet here he was denying everything
right in front of her, like none of that meant a thing to him now.

“If all you want to do is use me to work
out your anger at Jimmy Fallon, you should just leave.”
 
She gripped the Diet Coke almost as
tightly as she’d held the phone earlier while on the phone with her mother.

Jake laughed, holding his stomach.
 
“Are you serious?
 
You think I’m here because of Jimmy
fucking Fallon?”
 
He laughed again,
his face reddening.

“It’s not funny,” she said.
 
But even she had to admit that it
sounded ridiculous when said out loud.

He kept laughing.
 
“I hate to break it to you, Raven, but
that’s not why I came here.”