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During the day, I go about pretending I don’t care if I never see Jarett again. I busy myself with homework and play Final Fantasy with Merc, help my mom bake cakes and text with Sydney.
I’m sort of avoiding meeting her face to face too, truth be told, as she has a knack for getting me to admit things I don’t want to admit to anyone, even to myself.
But during the night, it’s different. When the darkness falls, I lie in my bed and wish, and want.
I want Jarett with every fiber of my being. I want to touch him, and hold him, and kiss him, and understand him. I want him to tell me about himself, to open up, to show me the affection I feel for him. For him to be my mirror in this twisted tangle of emotions I have for him.
I want him to want me like I want him. To care for me, like I’m starting to care for him.
Which is stupid. He never came after me. I’m the one always going after him, seeking him out, following him around, talking to fill in his silences. Struggling to understand his shifting moods when he rarely if ever explains them.
But he did explain, my traitorous mind says in the silence of the night. He said he was feeling off because his adopted mom was acting weird, and something about the death anniversary of someone he used to know.
Information I had to drag out of him kicking and screaming, where I had to fill in the blanks, where he kept saying he was fine, and that it was nothing, and like, missing a week of school was a non-issue.
This is the guy I’m so hung on. A guy who spends more time smoking behind the school than inside the classroom. Who rarely answers my questions, or asks about me. In fact, he never asks, does he? How I am. What I need.
He has his moments, though, moments when I think he can feel, too, he can be worried—about me.
And he’s so cute.
Okay, that’s a lie. He’s a panty-melting god, and even though I try, I can’t help wondering how it would be with him. If he were here with me, would he roll me
under him, cage me with his body? Would he kiss me hard, or softly?
Would he press himself between my legs, so that I could feel every inch of his long, muscular body on mine? Would he let me trace the hard lines of his chest, the ink on his arms?
Oh boy... I’ve got it bad, and it has to stop.
I just don’t know how.
Chapter Seven
Jarett
Gigi has vanished.
Not from the town, or the world, but from my life. She doesn’t look for me during school break. She doesn’t follow me after we get off the bus. She doesn’t hang out at the Lowes’ garden as I mow the lawn and doesn’t check me out as I rake the leaves.
She’s not around.
Her absence is a hole in my goddamn chest. And I do my fucking best not to think about it, to ignore it, to ignore everything—the darkness waiting for me at night when I sit at the window smoking, knowing I can’t sleep anyway, the worry over the Lowes who took me in without knowing what they were doing and who keep fighting.
Is it over me? Did they realize what a fuck-up I am?
Today Mr. Lowe spent like an hour yelling at his wife over something she said, no idea what, and that’s not like him.
Today Mrs. Lowe forgot my name, when she came up to my room. She started to ask me how my day was, and then just stopped and stared at me like she didn’t know me. It freaked me out, but I guess she was so stressed over her husband’s behavior, she lost it.
Right? I mean, what else can it be?
And all the while, Sebastian doesn’t seem to notice a thing, anything outside of himself. He’s locked up in his room when he’s at home, smoking weed and playing videogames, but mostly he’s out and about, coming back in the early hours reeking of booze and chemicals.
Sometimes I wish I could be him. Not to care. Not to bother. Not to lie awake at night or wake up from nightmares.
Or maybe to care and yet to allow myself to get lost in a chemical haze, forgetting about the goddamn world around me, about the past and the future and everything in between. About who I was, who I am, and what the hell that matters.
Why should I care anyway? The Lowes are foster parents, just like others I’ve had before. They get money to host me, and they don’t have to give a damn about me.
