“I like storms,” I heard her start, but I kept my eyes trained on the lines I drew. “Thunder, torrential rain, puddles, wet shoes. When the clouds roll in, I get filled with this giddy expectation.”
I pinched my eyebrows together. Tate loved the rain.
“Everything is more beautiful in the rain. Don’t ask me why.” She sounded light and natural, like she was speaking to a friend. “But it’s like this whole other realm of opportunity. I used to feel like a superhero, riding my bike over the dangerously slick roads, or maybe an Olympic athlete enduring rough trials to make it to the finish line.”
She paused, and I lifted my pen, realizing I’d been outlining the same box over and over again.
“On sunny days, as a girl, I could still wake up to that thrilled feeling. You made me giddy with expectation, just like a symphonic rainstorm. You were a tempest in the sun, the thunder in a boring, cloudless sky.”
Suspicion inched its way under my skin, and my breathing got shallow.
This wasn’t a monologue.
She continued, “I remember I’d shovel in my breakfast as fast as I could, so I could go knock on your door. We’d play all day, only coming home for food and sleep. We played hide and seek, you’d push me on the swing, or we’d climb trees.”
I couldn’t help it. My eyes snapped up to meet hers, and my f**king heart…it was like she was reaching out and squeezing it in her hand.
Tate.
Was she speaking to me?
“Being your sidekick gave me a sense of home again.” Her eyes were locked with mine. “You see, when I was ten, my mom died. She had cancer, and I lost her before I really knew her. My world felt so insecure, and I was scared. You were the person that turned things right again. With you, I became courageous and free. It was like the part of me that died with my mom came back when I met you, and I didn’t hurt anymore. Nothing hurt if I knew I had you.”
I couldn’t catch my f**king breath. Why was she doing this? I meant nothing to her.
“Then one day, out of the blue, I lost you, too. The hurt returned, and I felt sick when I saw you hating me. My rainstorm was gone, and you became cruel. There was no explanation. You were just gone. And my heart was ripped open. I missed you. I missed my mom.”
A tear fell down her cheek as I felt my own throat tighten.
She was looking at me like she used to, like I was everything.
Piles and piles of f**king shit swirled through my mind as I watched her.
All the crap I’d done to prove that I was strong. To prove that I didn’t need someone that didn’t want me. I swallowed, trying to calm the pounding in my chest.
Had she loved me?
No.
She was lying. She had to be.
“What was worse than losing you was when you started to hurt me. Your words and actions made me hate coming to school. They made me uncomfortable in my own home.”
Her eyes pooled with more tears, and I wanted to break shit.
She was hurting. I was f**king miserable. And for what?
“Everything still hurts, but I know none of it is my fault,” she continued and thinned out her lips in a hard line. “There are a lot of words that I could use to describe you, but the only one that includes sad, angry, miserable, and pitiful is “coward.” In a year, I’ll be gone, and you’ll be nothing but some washout whose height of existence was in high school.” Her eyes zoned in on me again, and her voice grew strong. “You were my tempest, my thunder cloud, my tree in the downpour. I loved all of those things, and I loved you. But now…you’re a f**king drought. I thought that all the a**holes drove German cars, but it turns out that pricks in Mustangs can still leave scars.”
My hands balled up, and I felt like I was crammed into a tight space, looking for a way out.
I barely registered the class clapping for her—no—cheering for her. Everyone thought her “performance” was great. I didn’t know what the hell to make of it.
She acted like she cared about me. Her words told me she remembered everything that used to be good between us. But the ending…it was like a goodbye.
She bowed, her hair falling around her with her dip, and she smiled a sad smile. Like she felt good but guilty that she felt good.
The distant cry of the school bell sounded, and I moved out of my seat, past her desk where she’d sat back down, and out of the room feeling like I was in a damn tunnel. People scurried around me, giving Tate congratulations on a job well done, and going about their business as if my world wasn’t crumbling.
Everything was white noise around me. The only sound that filled my ears was my own heartbeat as I walked in a daze into the hallway.
I pressed my forehead into the cool, tiled wall across from Penley’s classroom and closed my eyes.
What that hell had she just done to me in there?
I could barely breathe. I tried forcing air into my lungs.
No, no…
Fuck this.
She was lying. It was all an act.
All I’d wanted when I was fourteen was her. And she hadn’t been thinking about me when I was screaming for her. She didn’t miss me while I was at my father’s that summer. She didn’t want me then, and she didn’t want me now.
The day I got back, I’d needed her so goddamn much, and she hadn’t given me one f**king thought.
Goddammit, Tate. Don’t do this. Don’t f**k with my head.
Jesus, I didn’t know what I wanted to do anymore. I wanted to leave her alone. I wanted to forget her. But then I didn’t.
Maybe I just wanted to hold her and breathe her in until I could remember who I was.
But I couldn’t. I needed to hate Tate. I needed to hate her, because if I didn’t have a place to sink all of my energy, then I’d spin out again. My father would have me, and I wouldn’t have her to zone in on.
“See ya, Jared.”
I twisted around and blinked. Ben had called out to me, and she was with him.
She was looking at me like I was nothing. Like I wasn’t the focus of her life when she was the focus of everything in mine.
I stuck my fists into the pocket of my hoodie so they wouldn’t see me clenching them. It was kind of a natural thing for me to do now when I was in public. To keep my temper in check so that no one would notice what was boiling underneath.
My teeth ground together. She couldn’t hurt me.
But the air coming out of my nose was heating up as I watched them fade away down the hall.
She was leaving with him.
She’d just handed me my ass in that classroom.
She was surviving me.
And I clenched my fists tighter until the bones in my fingers ached.
“Give me a ride?”
My jaw instantly hardened as frustration threatened to boil over into rage.
I didn’t even have to turn around to know it was Piper.
She was the last thing on my mind these days, and I wished she’d take the hint and back off.
But then I remembered that she was good for one thing.
“Don’t talk.” I spun around and grabbed her hand without even looking at her and dragged her to the nearest bathroom. I needed to burn off frustration and Piper knew the score. She was like water. She assumed the shape of whatever container held her. She didn’t challenge me or make demands. She was just there for the taking.
It was after school. The place was empty as I barged into a stall, sat down on a seat and brought her down on top of me. She giggled I think, but to be honest, I didn’t f**king care who she was, where I was, or that anyone could walk in on us. I needed to dive deep. So deep into a cave that I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. That I couldn’t even see her blonde hair and blue eyes in my head.
Tate.
I ripped off Piper’s little pink cardigan and attacked her mouth. It didn’t feel good. It wasn’t meant to. This wasn’t about me getting off. It was about me getting even.
I grabbed the straps of her tank top and pulled them down her arms, her bra coming with it, until everything sat at her waist. Her chest was free for me, and I dived in as she moaned.
Nothing hurt if I knew I had you.
I was trying to run from Tate, but she was catching up with me. I pulled Piper harder against me and inhaled her skin, wanting her to be someone else.
I felt sick when I saw you hating me.
My heart still thumped like it no longer wanted a home in my body, and I couldn’t calm down. What the fuck?
Piper leaned back and started grinding on me, and my hands were everywhere, trying to find the escape. Trying to find my control.
And my heart was ripped open. I missed you.
I gripped Piper’s ass and attacked her neck. She moaned again and said some shit, but I couldn’t hear it. There was only one voice in my head that no amount of Piper or any other girl was going to drown out.
I loved all of those things, and I loved you.
And then I stopped.
All the air had left me.
Tate had loved me.
I didn’t know if it was the look in her tear-filled eyes or the tone of her voice, or maybe the fact that I knew her almost as good as anyone. But I knew she’d told the truth.
She had loved me.
“What’s the matter, baby?” Piper had her arms around my neck, but I couldn’t look at her. I just sat there, f**king breathing into her chest, trying to delude myself for even a few seconds that it was Tate I was holding.
“Jared. What’s with you? You’ve been acting weird ever since the school year started.” Her whiny-ass f**king voice. Why didn’t people ever know when to shut up?
I ran my hands over my face. “Just get up. I’ll take you home,” I bit out.
“I don’t want to go home. You’ve been ignoring me for a month. Over a month, actually!” She pulled her shirt and sweater back on, but she still wasn’t moving.
I took a deep breath and tried to swallow down the nerves exploding in my stomach.
“You want a ride or not?” I said, pinning her with a look that said ‘take it or leave it.’ Piper knew better than to ask questions. I didn’t tell Madoc shit, and I wasn’t going to start with this girl.
By the time I got home, my mood had gone from bad to worse. After dropping Piper off, I just drove. I needed to listen to some music, clear my head and try to get rid of this ache in my chest.
I wanted to blame Tate. Turn a blind eye like I always did when she was hurting.
But I couldn’t. Not this time.
There wasn’t going to be any running from the truth. No diving into a party or a girl to distract myself.
The truth was…I wish I could go back to that day in the park. Back to the fish pond when I’d first decided that she needed to hurt. I would’ve done it differently.
Instead of pushing her away, I would’ve buried my face in her hair and let her bring me back from wherever I’d gone. She wouldn’t have had to say or do anything. Just fill my world.
But my anger ran deeper than my love for her that day, and right now, I couldn’t face what I’d done. I couldn’t face that she hated me, that my mother barely wanted anything to do with me, and that my father spent every Saturday reminding me of what a loser I was.
Fuck it. Fuck them all.
I walked into my house, slammed the door and threw my keys across the room. The place was as quiet as a church, except for Madman’s paws scurrying across the floor.