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I can’t get the nagging thought to go the fuck away. I was so eager to have Chloe, to ruin her, to make sure she’d remember me forever, that I didn’t stop to consider the possibility I’d be her first.
If I had known, I would have done it differently. She’d have a better memory of her first time.
I should have fucking known.
Drew dated her for a month when I was away, up north with Romano. He told me he was lying about the rumors of her sucking him off behind the school, but at the time, I wasn’t sure if he was telling me the truth or not because I was slamming his face into the cement. I thought he took her first. The day I heard what he was telling other people, I thought he’d taken her V-card.
Her only other boyfriend was Jared Santack.
They went to semi formals together and I saw him kiss her. I know they went home together that night. It was the night I came home from my first stint in jail. I remember thinking for a split second how she deserved someone like Jared, then I planned how I’d fuck up his car the next day, just because he needed to have something of his broken too.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Carter asks me from across the dining room.
My gaze shifts to him and I try to fix the pissed off look I know is on my face, but I can’t. Last night fucked me up in a way I can’t explain. I run my hand down my face and try to shrug it all off. The chair legs scratch on the floor as I get up from the table and go to the window. Carter’s family’s house is on the outskirts of the city and backs up to the woods. It’s dark and there’s not much to look at out there, but I stare outside anyway, trying to get my shit together.
My knuckles rap on the worn-out buffet table in front of the window as he asks me, “She getting to you?”
Is Chloe Rose getting to me?
She’salwaysgotten to me.
I don’t answer him, instead, I try to make up a lie, but it doesn’t occur to me that the lie is a truth until the words are spoken. “Being here just reminds me of family,” I tell him. My spine stiffens and a chill runs through me.
“Shit, man,” Carter tells me, “I’m sorry.” As if it’s his fault. As if he has anything at all to be sorry about.
I shake it off, hating that tonight of all nights I’m making this about me. That I can’t focus and be there for my only friend.
“How did the treatment go?” I ask him. And the look on his face instantly changes. The sympathy morphs into anguish.
He doesn’t say anything, although he tries. Instead, he looks me in the eyes and shakes his head.
My heart drops down to the pit of my stomach. “Fuck.” It’s all I can give him and then we’re both looking out the window.
“Tell me something good.”
His request catches me off guard and I consider him for a moment.
Something good. It takes me longer than it should to think of something. All thoughts lead back to Chloe Rose.
“I fucked Chlo last night,” I tell him. “I was her first.”
“Shit, really?” he asks. “She’s twenty?” I nod, waiting for him to say something else. For him to understand what it meant to me. But I don’t think he will. No one will. They don’t get it. I don’t even understand it.
Ever since I laid eyes on her, she was mine. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want anyone, because I didn’t have a choice. She was mine. Fate picked her for me, and vice versa. Last night was meant to happen. I know it.
The sound of the door opening distracts us both, drawing our attention to the front door we can’t see.
Carter grabs the edge of the buffet tighter at the sound of his dad calling out for him. “Back here,” he replies and steels himself, staring straight ahead and trying to relax his posture.
I fucking hate it. I hate how he’s scared of his own father. He tells me it’s the way it is and that it’s no different from how his father was raised, but that doesn’t make it right.
I expect his father to be drunk and angry, like the last few times I’ve seen him. He pissed himself the one night he was so hammered, we had to drag him home.
His steps get louder and then the old man is right in front of us, his hands slipping into his pockets as he leans against the doorway. “You two eat already?” he asks us and gives me a short nod before pulling out a smoke.
He lights up as we answer him. I can feel the aggression rolling off of me, my expression getting tighter, but I know that’s no good for Carter. He doesn’t want a war, he just wants to do what’s right by his mom.
Mr. Cross walks to the dining room table, sifting through the bills and puffing on his cigarette.
