In This Moment(20)

Daniel never talks about his little sister. All I know are the scraps of information that I found online about her high school swimming career and the articles about her death. And, of course, I know that he gave up his track and field scholarship at Michigan State to transfer here so that he could be closer to his grieving parents.

He keeps talking. “It’s hard to explain the way things went down with her and my mom after the accident. It was bad. My parents were losing their minds and in this unreal pain, so when the police couldn’t figure much out, they just… My mom needed something or someone to focus the blame on. Unfortunately, that someone turned out to be Aimee.”

My chest constricts. I think of Aimee and how crazy sad and fragile she seems. I don’t know why I can’t get this girl out of my head, but it’s like her face, with that faraway look on it, is pinned to my skull like a nail in hardened concrete. Shit. I need to rein myself in.

I shift on my seat and hook my wrists over the slippery steering wheel. “You should talk to her.”

Daniel looks away, his breath fogging up the window glass. “Yeah, I know that I should. I should do a lot of things, Cole.”





CHAPTER FOUR





Cole



I don’t expect her to come.

She has a hundred reasons to stay away and none to show up, so I don’t really think that she’ll walk through the door. Still, I find myself checking the time on my phone more often than normal. By eleven, I’m beyond pissed for no solid reason and pretty much everyone at the fucking party has started to ignore me. Quentin was the last person to talk to me and all he did was ask if I was on my period.

Fucking fine. This is my wake up call.

It’s the much-needed reminder that I need. This is why I don’t date. Flowers and romance and feelings are not my thing for a very good reason. That bullshit always leads to disappointment in the end. Fuck that.

I’ve seen it happen too many times to one of my dickhead friends. They get some chick that doesn’t give a fuck about them stuck in their system and they’re gone—can’t see straight, can’t think right. Why? No one is worth all of that crap. Not when there are plenty of chicks with sweet bodies and low morals ready to step in and fill the void at any time.

Of course, that isn’t the line that people want you to feed them. People want to believe in love and monogamous relationships and things that don’t exist in real life.

Last year when Nate was losing it for that girl we met at Stubby’s, I warned him that he was being fucktastically stupid. He told me that I was heartless and bitter and would wind up sad and alone. A month later when he was crying his eyes out and too fucked in the head to win races, I was banging her best friend and in the middle of the best winning streak of my life. Life lesson: heartless and bitter might not be so bad.

My dad is the ultimate sucker. He romanced my mother for twenty years and the whole time that they were married he actively ignored the fact that she didn’t give two shits about him or her own kids. He clung to this idea that we were the perfect American family, complete with the two-story house and white wrap-around fence. He went along, humming and whistling and refusing to acknowledge all of the telltale signs that it was one big fat lie.

He gave my mother his soul, and one day she woke up and decided that she didn’t want it anymore so she left. And it wasn’t like the movies. There was no note or teary explanation in the pouring rain. The only thing that she left behind was an old bathrobe and a collection of dog-eared paperback romance novels.

That woman raked her own family over the coals and never looked back. And now my dad is just a broken shell. He goes through the motions but he stopped living three years ago. Now he just exists.

That shit is not for me. No fucking way.

I take a sip of stale beer from the red plastic cup in my hand and close my eyes. It’s so loud in here. I should probably get up and go outside for some air or put myself out of misery and go to bed. I might even wake up the first time my alarm goes off instead of hitting the snooze button three times. Coach will piss himself if I make it to the field on time on a Saturday morning. Just the idea of it makes me smile.

“What has you looking so happy, Cole?”

I blink my eyes open. There’s a cute girl next to me with her arm slung over the back of the couch and one knee tucked up under her butt. She’s got pretty soft grey eyes and short blonde hair. I know her from someplace. Shit. I think I hooked up with her last year after a party. Melanie or Melissa or something. I’m pretty sure that she’s in Zeta. Or maybe it was Theta.

“Huh?”

Her plastered-on smile wavers a little. “You were smiling and looking happy. I was just curious about it.”