Authors: Monica Alexander
I
t
was three days before I saw
Zack again, but I c
ouldn’t get him out of my head.
I looked for him wherever I went, but he s
eemed to be missing in action.
I even asked Molly about him, but she said he was just staying in.
I thought a lot about what he’d said a
bout
finding other ways to deal with my issues and
being impulsive and not thinking.
I even considered what that would mean
in the grand scheme of things even though I guess that defeated the purpose of being spo
ntaneous. I couldn’t help it.
Not thinking about consequences
just
wasn’t in my nature
. And even though I knew where he lived, and it would be incredibly spontaneous, I couldn’t bring myself to impulsively stop by and
see him
.
And i
t would have been wrong
anyway
, because I had a boyfriend.
I sighed.
Ben.
I talked to him every night
but found that when I should
be thinking of him I wasn’t.
I was thinking a
bout the sad guy with dark hair and
light brown
eyes
who I’d kissed
a few
days earlier
.
I was wondering
what it
would be like to kiss him
again
.
I was a bad girlfriend, but I couldn’t
help it.
I
just
couldn’t
stop thinking about Zack.
The day
after the party, Chase and
I had gone down to the beach.
I’d been inside my head all
morning
and needed some perspective
.
It was still overcast, but it
at least it
wasn’t raining.
“How wrong is cheating,” I aske
d him
, studying his face as he thought about what I said.
“
Cheating on a test or on a person,” he asked, clarifying my question
, as
his hand absently raked through
the wet sand in a hypnotic pattern
.
“A person.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Did you cheat on that d-bag boyfriend of yours?”
I shot him a dirty look. “He’s not a d-bag,
and
I didn’t really cheat on him. I just kissed someone else.
I
t
was nothing
.”
Chase
offered me a cigarette
,
as he was pulling one out for himself, but I shook my head. Maybe if
it had been one of Zack’s clove
cigarettes I’d have taken him up on his offer, but I wasn’t a big fan of the regular kind.
“That dude walks a
round like he’s King Shit, still basking in his glory days when he was a high school football star
.
He’s a j
erk to pretty much everyone
, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was cheating on you.
I mean for real, not just being attacked by Ashleigh Ballast at a party.
”
“He’s not cheating on me,” I said calmly, k
nowing Ben would never do that.
“Bes
ides, he’s amazing at football.
He should get to show off for it.”
“Okay,” Chase said.
“We’re going to agree to disagree on that one
, so let’s just drop it
. W
ho’d you kiss
?”
I shrugged.
“
Molly’s cousin, Zack
. Y
ou know the guy who’
s always playing his guitar by the bonfire
.
We were talking
last night out
on
the deck at that party
, and I kissed him
.
Now I can’t stop thinking about him.
”
“
I’ve met him
,” Chase said. “
He’s a cool guy. I
’d
say go for it.
Who cares?
You’re young.”
“Would you cheat on Amy?
” I asked.
“Amy?” Chase
asked, as if it was the strangest notion in world. “No way.
“Then why are you telling me
it’s okay
to cheat!” I asked, incredulously.
“Because, the only person y
ou’ve ev
er dated is D
-bag Ben. I have had many girlfriends.
You
need
to expand your horizons.
Besides, no one will ever know.”
“I guess,” I said, not entirely convinced that what he was saying was true.
“Don’t gue
ss,” he said, taking a deep drag off his cigarette.
“Just do.”
How ironic that he was giving me the same advice as Zack.
“Yeah, I think I’ve heard that before.”
But i
t was easier said t
han done.
Onc
e I cheated, that would be it.
Ben and I would be over. I would have to tell h
im, have to break up with him.
He wou
ldn’t be my boyfriend anymore
, and we certainly wouldn’t be getting engaged after graduation
.
How did I feel about that?
“It’s good advice,” Chase said, stubbing his cigarette out in the sand and burying the butt.
Pushing the
unsavory
thought from my mind, I change
d
the subject.
“You’ve really had ton
s of girlfriends?” I asked
, wondering
how
it was that I knew so little about
someone I shared DNA with
.
Of course we had lived in different cities for three years, but still, I saw him at holidays. I would have thought he’d have mentioned something to the family at some point.
“
Sure
,
” he said, as he piled a mound of sand over his buried cigarette.
“
How come you’ve never talked about these girlfriends
?”
“I did, you just never chose to listen.”
“That’s not true,” I said, slightly offended by his dig.
“Emily, before this summer
you wer
e incredibly self-absorbed.
You never bothered to look
past your own personal drama
to see what was going on around you
.
You
wrote me off,
labeled me as an asshole and left it at that.”
“You were an asshole!” I said, my vo
ice r
a
ising an octave
.
“
No,
I’ve
always been the same person
. Y
ou just never took the time to step out
of who you’d become to see it.
I’m not like you and your friend
s, and I have no desire to be.
I’m okay with not being popular or even well-liked, but
for
you, it’s like a crutch
, and it
’s been that way since you hit high school.
You define yoursel
f by how other people view
you.
You’re terrified of anyone seeing you as less than perfect, so you walk around trying to please everyone
and always do
the right thing.
It’s
actually
made you a pretty hateful person.”
“I’
m not hateful,” I interjected.
“I’m the
nice girl. Everyone knows it.
Rachel’s the sarcastic, bad girl, and I’m the sweet, nice girl.”
Chase raised his eyebrows.
“Is that what you think?”
“Yeah,” I said, suddenly losing my confidence.
“You can keep telling yourself that, but I don’t think you’re as sweet as you think you are
.
You’re
pretty
good at being a bitch when you want to be.”
“That’s just you’re opinion, because you and I have never gotten along
.”
“Maybe so, but I wouldn’t be so sure.
Did I mention that in addition to being hateful that you’re also pretty hated?
”
M
y head was spinning at his words. What he was saying couldn’t be true? I wasn’t hated. Sure maybe people were jealous of me, but they didn’t hate me.
Okay, so maybe I hadn’t kept in touch with my high school friends as much as I should have, but is that
really a reason to hate a person
?
“Who hates me?”
I demanded.
Chase just laughed, got up and dusted
the sand off of his black cargo shorts, shaking his head as he walked away.
“Don’t worry about it,” he called over his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, Em.”
“Chase! Who hates me,” I called a
fter him, but he didn’t respond.
***
It was rainin
g again, and I sat on the
swing on the front porch watching the rain soak the lawn as I rocked back and forth, hugging my knees to my chest and wishing Rachel was there with me. Keely had gone to a movie with Keg Boy, and Chase
and Molly had
left for Raleigh that afternoon. They were spending three days at some music festival, so Molly could scout bands.
Even though she was on the island for the
summer, she still
had to work on o
ccasion, which mostly meant listening to prospective bands
when they played nearby
. Her boss was
really laid back
, so he let her work
when she could. Since there was some sort of showcase happening, she’d decided to take advantage of the opportunity and see as many bands as possible. Chase had agreed to go with her, and I half-wondered if something might happen between them while they were away together.
With all my friends gone for the night,
I was left to either hang out with my mom who I still wasn’t getting along great with or sit and stew
alone
with my issues. I chose to stew, so of course what Chase had said was eating away at me.
I was irritated that I was
n’t
able to let go of what
he’d
said, and truthfully, it had been bugging me all
day
.
I decided to call Rachel to see what she was up to.
“I think Chase is going to sleep with Molly,” I blurted out five minutes into the conversation.
“Seriously?!” Rachel said with more emotion than was probably necessary.
“Yeah, they went away together for a few days, and they’re sharing a hotel room, so it’s pretty inevitable. Sucks for Amy.”
“I can’t believe he’s going to cheat on his girlfriend,” she said
, suddenly much quieter
. “I thought he really liked her.”
“I’m sure he did, but she’s not here, so I guess he’s fulfilling his guy needs or something. Sucks to be her. Whatever, I’m sort of pissed at him anyway.”
There was silence on her Rachel’s end
, so I assumed she was processing what I
’d
said
about being pissed at Chase
.
“Rachel?”
I asked when she didn’t respond after at least a minute.
“What?”
she
asked
,
the irritation apparent in her voice
.
Something was definitely distracting her.
Maybe she was fearful that Michael would follow Chase’s lead and cheat on her. After all, they were in similar long distance situation that summer. I hoped he wouldn’t do that, because I might have to kick his ass.
“Do people hate me?”
I asked, choosing a different tactic and hoping I could distract her the same time.
“
What?
Which people?”
“I don’t know, people in general,” I said in exasperation.
“Probably,” she said nonchalantly, like it was no big deal. “Where is this coming from?”
“Chase,” I said through gritted teeth.
Now she would know why I was pissed at him.
Rachel sighed. “I’m going to
kill
that boy when I see him next,” she finally said
, which I thought was a little extreme, but I appreciated her solidarity
. “What did he say?”