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“You could go on a date with Lincoln,” he says, shoving clothes from his dresser into a backpack. “Or call Ash and spend all night on the phone like you used to.”
“No more talking about Ash,” I say, my voice firm enough to make him look up at me. “I know you’re joking most of the time but just—don’t do it anymore. His name is no longer allowed around here.”
“My lips are sealed.” He grabs his phone and then unplugs the charger and shoves both of them in the backpack before zipping it shut. “But just so you know, I don’t think he’s over you.”
I ruffle his hair as he walks back to the stairs, although the gesture is vastly underwhelming when the little brother is as tall as I am. “What makes you think that?” I ask, following him down to the kitchen.
He shakes his head. “I’m not allowed to say the A-word,” he says, giving me this evil little look that makes me love him and also kind of want to punch him. “Maybe if you change your mind later, I’ll tell you.”
“Excuse you,” Molly says, peering over the back of the couch at us. “Teig is not allowed to say the A-word or any bad word for that matter.”
“We weren’t talking about curse words,” I say after we bid him farewell, telling him to have fun at his fri
end’s house. Dad’s driving him to Lawrence’s and as I sit next to Molly on the couch for the second time today, I kind of wish I would have driven him if only for something to do.
When Dad returns, we all sit around the table and have dinner together. Molly pours me a glass of wine and we hang out for a while. The irony of how pathetic I’ve become is not lost on me. It’s when the following Friday rolls around and I find myself in the exact same place, same chair at the same table, eating another one of Molly’s half-way healthy but still delicious dinners, I know I have a problem. I should be out doing something, not just sitting here. I could crash Shelby’s date. It’s not like I’d walk in on them doing anything dirty since Shelby’s all about waiting until marriage. I could hop in the truck and drive four hours to see my old friend Felicia, who still lives next to my mom’s house.
But neither of these sound like any fun. After dinner, I end up in my bedroom, endlessly surfing through the show options on Netflix, only to end up staring at the screen for half an hour, lost in thought.
Teig and I hadn’t mentioned the A-word since last week. No one’s mentioned it. Not even Shelby, when she met me for frozen yogurt after work last Tuesday. I can almost pretend he never existed at all.
Against my better judgement, I walk over to my desk and power up my laptop. Maybe I’ll send him an email—something friendly and maybe talking about the track’s summer events or something stupid. It’s less personal than a text and it’d let me hear from him. We’re supposed to be friends, after all.
Only, I bypass my inbox and go straight to social media. A feeling of hesitation claws at my insides, as if my brain knows I probably shouldn’t be doing this. But if anything, that only makes me more curious. I haven’t seen Ash’s Facebook page in a while. Normally, those parts of my brain that know better do their job and make me stay away. Tonight, they’re on vacation.
The first thing on his page is a post from a men’s fitness magazine that tagged him in it. The link on the article doesn’t have a picture, but the title is all I need to see to make my stomach clench up.
Supercross superstar Ash Carter’s washboard abs—and how you can get them!
When Ash was my boyfriend he never had “washboard” abs. They were good abs, no doubt, but you couldn’t exactly wash an article of clothing on them. Skeptical, I click the link, even though deep in my core I know I probably shouldn’t.
And there he is, in all of his laundry-cleansing glory. My boyfriend, well ex-boyfriend, sitting on a weight bench wearing black shorts and Nikes, his glistening rock-hard abs the focal point of the entire shot. His dreads are short in the picture, a change I’m not used to seeing yet, even though I was the one who cut them a while back. They’re pulled back so that the angular features of his jaw make his causal smile look even more enticing. His blue eyes are looking off into the distance, at another girl for all I know, because the look on his face is pure serenity. Innocence and Bad Boy somehow all wrapped up into one. His skin is darker and his forearms are veiny from a recent workout.
He is drop dead gorgeous. He’s modeling for magazines now. He’s the recipient of three hundred and ninety-three comments at the bottom of a website article that I know better than to read. And he’s no longer mine.
We’d said the breakup was mutual. But it wasn’t.
Chapter 7
The next week home passes almost exactly like the rest of them had. Work, home, sleep, work, home, sleep. Occasional talking to Shelby at the track. We even got one lunch on Monday where Jake was on the track riding with a trainer and she was free to hang out with me for a whole forty-five minutes. I made the mistake of telling her about Lincoln after he walked by us on the bleachers and called out, “Hey, Hana!” as if we were friends or something.
Shelby seemed to think that being friends with Lincoln was a good idea, so maybe she also thinks Ash has moved on. I shut that down quickly by changing the subject to the first thing I can think of: how annoying it is when your bra underwire starts poking out of the fabric at the end.
Now that I’m stuck back at home for the summer, I find myself longing for school more than anything else. There was a time shortly after my breakup with Ash when I thought that I’d go crazy if I had to spend one more night in my dorm room with its insane asylum white walls and the chill in the air at night that never seemed to go away. Funny how now when I’m in my own bedroom, with its calming gray walls and beautiful Paris décor and a functioning air conditioning unit that keeps the temperature nice at all hours of the day, I still feel like I might go insane.
Maybe I am insane.
I need a freaking hobby.
When I clock out of work around five in the afternoon, I rush home and shower quickly. Then I make the executive best friend decision to call Shelby instead of texting her. This is important, dammit, and a text won’t do.
“Oh my gosh, are you dying?” Shelby answers, saying the words in one breath. “You never call.”
“I am dying,” I say, keeping a straight face as I apply mascara in front of my vanity. “I am dying of boredom and malnourishment for lack of best friend time.”
She laughs. “Well you’re in luck. I was just about to text you.”
“Mmhmm, sure,” I say, rolling my eyes. Then I curse silently because the stupid gesture made me mess up my eye makeup and now I have to start all over again. “Can you maybe ditch Jakey-poo for a couple of hours, please?”
