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“Then Coop covered foryou.” The last surprised me, but it shouldn’t have. “He told us you and your mom were fighting, which… honestly would be weird since you and your mom barely talk.”
“We talk,” I argued, defensiveness flaring.
“Uh huh. Asking about the weather and if the coffee is ready isn’t talking. Or how was it you put it? Your mom has her life, and you have yours, and somewhere along the way you became roommates instead of parent and child?”
Okay.Thatwas true, but… “Roommates fight.”
Jake snorted, but no mirth filled his eyes. “Why?”
“Why what?” Belatedly, I wondered if he meant why had Mom and I been fighting, not that we had. Fighting would imply caring. Momcared, but she didn’t reallycarelike other people’s parents. She did the best she could, and it worked for us. I was perfectly capable of looking after myself.
Jake closed his eyes, and I swore I could see him counting to ten, like a tangible thing or one of those cartoon blowouts. Of the four of them, Jake was the one who never let me get away with anything. Coop ignored my deflections, Archie would poke at them, and Bubba? Well, he just indulged me like it didn’t bother him in the slightest—part of why I’d gone to his birthday party, even when I’d told myself it was a terrible idea.
Seeing Rachel and Cheryl there had all but confirmed it for me. Though Cheryl, at least, had been sympathetic. She also thought their behavior was some kind of cute or how was it she put it?“It’s adorable, Frankie. They actuallycarewhat happens to you!”
Or what didn’t happen, apparently. It sucked when the people you thought were your friends turned out to be nothing more than sexist pigs, a kind of lurid joke on the high school experience where guys kept score based on how far they got with a girl or how…
Dammit. I wasn’t mad anymore.
Blowing out a breath, I twisted sideways in my seat and met his stare. “I didn’t know about Archie. I should have and I didn’t.”Thatwas on me. “I had things to do this summer. It wasn’t personal, Jake.”
“Bullshit,” he countered, his voice softening a fraction under that single word. “It’s pretty damn personal when one of your best friends just ghosts you for no damn reason.”
Oh.
There’d been areason.
But either I owned it and confronted them or I let it go. I’d let it go.
“I had to figure some things out,” I admitted. It wasn’t a lie. I did have a lot to figure out. More than just college and Mom dating, there’d been the reality of what did I want to face and more—whodid I want to be?
“Like what?” Instead of irritation or anger, elements of concern crept into his tone and that just fanned the flames of guilt a little higher.
“A lot of stuff,” I said, keeping it vague. “Some of it was girl stuff. Some of it life stuff. Some of it…”
“Stuff?” he offered.
Not really smiling, I shrugged. “Kind of.” Great. Now I’d become one of those twittering girls who impregnated every comment with layers of meaning in order to test the people around them.
Like Presley.
She’d done that for years. Always testing the people around her, dictating whether she would be your friend one day and then freeze you out the next. The politics if being a girl was what my mom had called it.
Girls sucked.
The dense silence grew heavy and oppressive. Did I crack? I wanted to—and if I wanted to, was that cracking?
“High school is almost over,” I found myself saying. “Sometimes—it feels like it already is.” Graduation pictures in June. First round of college applications due by the first of October. Early admission decided on by November. Then the holiday breaks and the final class rankings and the breakneck dash toward AP exams and graduation itself. Most of the guys would probably have parties—the rumors of past graduation bashes had begun in freshman year and Archie took it as a personal challenge.
Even if none of them had a party, he would throw one that would probably dazzle the entirety of our senior class.
“Kind of happens when you become a senior,” Jake said. “But we’re not done yet.”
“I know, but…” I wasn’t even sure how to phrase this. It was a gloomy damn thought. Gloomier than Coop liked to hear, and Bubba would just give me that charming smile and tell me life had a way of working it out. Damn Boy Scout also had an irritating habit of being right.
Archie might get it. Maybe. Depending on the day.
But Jake?
