Page 85 of Playing with the Heartbreaker

“I’m going to go…get snacks,” Candace announces, popping up and clapping her hands once. A large pile of unopened bags of chips and cookies teeters on the side table. It looks like they’ve already emptied an entire machine. “Anyone want anything?”

“No, thanks,” Rhoads says.

“I’m fine,” I say, still trying to process.

When Candace has shut the door behind her, I finally met Rhoads’s eyes.

He continues, “The day we were studying, and I got those texts from Candace, she was asking if I wanted to meet her here to visit Jenson or if you and I were having too much fun. Then things got weird with us when you left my house, but I didn’t know why. I was worried Jenson was taking a bad turn, and that you hated me and my brain just said, ‘Get breakfast,’ and my body drove me and Candace to Peggy’s. I remembered feeling safe there. I wanted that feeling. Needed it.”

He sighs. Blue light from the muted TV flashes across his face. “But I didn’t get any kind of relief until I saw you, and the moment you looked at me, it disappeared. I realized then it wasn’t the pancakes or the hash browns that gave me comfort.” A sad smile turns the corners of his lips. “Candace isn’t the only one with bad timing, I guess. There hasn’t ever been anything romantic between me and her. I need you to know that. She’s got a very cool girlfriend she met at college, and even if she didn’t, it’s never been like that with us. I should have told you that sooner.”

I shake my head, fighting the tears again. His best friend is recovering from a traumatic injury, and I’ve been complaining that he might like another girl. Way to go and make everything about you, Chloe.

“Why didn’t you?” I whisper.

“I wasn’t sure if it mattered or not. And I was afraid. I kept hoping and wishing that everything would go back to normal. That I could introduce you to my best friend over pizza and bad jokes. Not like this. Not with stale vending machine chips and ‘90s sitcom reruns. He’s getting better, but it’s a long, slow road.”

“How did it happen?” My voice cracks under the weight of the words. “Jenson, I mean.”

Rhoads sinks onto the sofa. He swallows hard. “Bike accident right before school started. He got hit by a drunk driver.”

My mind flashes to the Halloween party and Rhoads’s serious insistence that he’d never drive under the influence.

And Piper mentioned he took one of the football player’s keys at the bonfire.

Bike accident.

Another memory.

Three small bikes suspended in clear liquid, floating. With each new shake, the possibility they’ll all land upright, like a kid shaking a Magic 8 ball until she gets the result she wants.

Cheating the system, sort of.

Or just refusing to give up hope that things might turn out okay in the end after all.

“Was that the first snow globe you made? The one with the bikes?”

Rhoads nods. “I think my therapist was afraid I might punch someone if my hands were idle. I wouldn’t have, but I was angry.”

He bumps my shoulder with his. “Candace and I were both there when it happened. We’d ridden ahead, racing. Just this stupid game the three of us always played on that country road. Jenson’s bike wheel got tripped up by a rock, so he fell behind, and then...

“I had to fight with the paramedics to convince them not to cut off his jacket. He loves it more than anything. I’ve had it ever since. Keeping it safe.”

“I’m so sorry.” About your friend. For not being here. For being shallow and selfish.

He looks at his hands and shakes his head. “I should have stopped it somehow, protected him.”

“Rhoads, it wasn’t your fault.”

“If I’d been back there with him, maybe I would have seen the car in time. Maybe I could have, I don’t know, pushed him out of the way or something.”

“You probably would be in a bed next to him right now.” The thought sends a shiver up my spine. I’ve never seen him like this, so unsure of himself.

“Maybe.”

I wish that I could shake this moment like a snow globe and make the pieces land differently, make him understand this is in no way his fault.

“I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea about me and Candace.”