Out of Nowhere (24 page)

“What?” I said to my mother, who still had that big fake smile plastered to her face. Like this was good news, something to celebrate. “What do you mean, you’re selling our house?”

She dropped my hand and sighed. The smile faded. “Riley, it’s time.”

“Time to what? Fuck up my life even more?”

“Well,” Jeff said, slipping around us. “I’m just going to, uh…go somewhere else.”

Neither one of us even acknowledged him. “Language,” Mom warned.

“Who cares? We’re all adults here.” Luckily my brother was with our grandparents for the night, far away from me and my ‘language’. Not that I cared who heard me at the moment. “This is our
house
, Mom. I grew up here. You said you’d never sell it.”

“I know, but things have changed. Our family has grown, Jeff and I are getting married…” She glanced around for Jeff, but he’d wisely disappeared. “And there are so many things wrong with this house. It’s old, it’s small, it’s drafty, it’s going to need a new roof soon…the list is endless. We need a bigger house, Riley. We need more room. We need more than one bathroom.”

She seemed so sure about this, so set, that I knew her mind was made up. It had been made up a long time ago. “Why didn’t you discuss this with me before?”

“Because…” She looked away, smoothed some hair behind her ear. “I’m always worried about how you’re going to react to these things. You get so anxious about changes and this is such a big one. I know what this house means to you, babe. There are so many memories tied to this house, memories of your dad…”

A pressure started building in my chest. It felt like a steel band had been wrapped tightly around me, making it almost impossible to do the deep breathing exercises that sometimes kept my panic at bay. I looked past my mother to the kitchen, my gaze falling as if by habit to the spot in front of the microwave. Then my gaze rose higher, to the molding around the basement doorway, where my height had been recorded each year on my birthday. The small, penciled lines stopped at age eleven, because the person who did the measuring was no longer here to do it.

These memories, this house…it was all I had left of him.

“When?” I said. Unable to meet her eyes, I focused instead on her necklace, a simple gold circle on a chain that Jeff had given her on her last birthday.

“When what?”

“When are we moving?”

She was silent for a few seconds, probably shocked I hadn’t put up more of a fight. “It depends on when the house sells. Shawn says the market is pretty good right now, so we should definitely be out of here before winter.” She put a finger under my chin, lifting my face until it was level with hers. “Don’t worry, we’re not going far. You’ll still be in the same school district. I’d never uproot you in your senior year.”

“Thanks so much for thinking of me,” I said, my voice flat. Not wanting to see the hope evaporate from her face, I brushed past her and locked myself in the bathroom. As usual, Jeff had left it a mess—water on the floor, wet towels strewn everywhere, toilet seat in an upright position. But for once, I didn’t care. I just walked through the puddles like they didn’t exist.

* * *

Two hours later, I was sitting outside on the front porch, waiting for Cole. He wasn’t even going to come over tonight—he’d made plans to hang out with his friends, something he rarely had time to do anymore because of work and me. But when he called earlier, he could tell I was upset even though I’d tried to hide it. Then, when I finally told him everything, he insisted on coming over. In a way I was glad, because even though I’d convinced Mom I was fine and they should go ahead with their movie plans, I really didn’t want to be alone. I felt strange, like a heavy cloud of doom was hovering over me. And nothing—not even the four Advil I’d downed—was helping this unrelenting throbbing in my chest.

Cole arrived just as it was starting to get dark. He parked his Camaro along the curb and walked toward me, his face etched with that same look of concern he’d had last week during my anxiety attack in his room.

“You okay?” he asked, sitting beside me on the steps.

I nodded, wrapping my arms around my knees. “You didn’t have to come over.”

“I know. I wanted to.” When I didn’t respond, he said, “I can leave, if you want. I mean, if you’d rather be alone.”

He didn’t seem offended by my unenthusiastic welcome, but I could sense something else between us, a strange awkwardness. Was this becoming too much for him? Too heavy? He was a positive, high-spirited person with a low tolerance for drama and I was…well, I wasn’t. How long before I became more than he bargained for? A liability?

I couldn’t lose him now, only months before we’d have to say good-bye for good.

“No,” I said, tucking my hand into his. “Stay. Please.”

We sat there for a while, not talking. The stifling humidity had broken somewhat and the smell of rain permeated the air. The weather guy on the news was predicting a tropical storm. The wind was picking up now, cool and dry for the first time in days. It felt good on my clammy skin.

“I can’t go to Kinsley next year,” I said, stretching my legs out in front of me. “I don’t care about getting a scholarship anymore. I have to go away.”

Cole glanced at me. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Why?”

“Well, are you going because you really want to, or because your mom is marrying Jeff and selling the house?” He slapped a mosquito off his arm. “I just think if you’re going to leave, it should be for the right reasons.”

“What are
your
reasons?” I countered.

He shrugged. “I have to do something with my life so it may as well be something totally different.”

This was another thing I envied and admired about him: his ability to just dive into new situations without any thought to how they might turn out. I knew even if he failed out there in California—or drowned at Mavericks—he’d still think it was worth the trip. He had the power to build a fulfilling life wherever he went. “I’ll probably never see you again,” I said. My eyes, still swollen from all the crying I’d done in the past few hours, started burning again.

“Sure, you will.” He disentangled his hand from mine and wrapped his arm around me, drawing me closer. “I’ll fly home on holidays and we’ll keep in touch on the phone and computer. It’s not like I’ll be gone forever.”

But it was exactly like that. Once he was out there, free from parents and responsibilities and long, harsh winters, he’d probably never want to come back. And if something went wrong at Mavericks…

“Maybe I’ll go with you,” I said. The words surprised even me, but once they were out there, floating in the air between us, I thought
well, why not
? Maybe Lucas was on to something. Maybe it
could
work. I looked over at Cole to gauge his reaction and found him watching me, eyebrows cocked.

“Go with me?” he said, like he couldn’t quite grasp the meaning of these three simple words. “Riley, you can’t go to California with me.”

“Sure, I can.” The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I could even help with the driving. Cole had offered to take me driving more than once, but I always declined because his car had a stick shift and I didn’t want to wreck his transmission or something. But I’d let him teach me now, if it meant making the trip a little easier. “Someone has to keep an eye on you,” I added, trying to smile.

He pulled away, his arm dropping from my shoulders. “I don’t need you to keep an eye on me,” he snapped. Then, realizing how harsh he sounded, he took a deep breath and reached for my hand again. “Listen. You have your whole future planned out. You’re going to college and you’re going to become a doctor. It’s your dream. It’s been your dream for years, long before you met me. I’m sorry, but I won’t be the guy who messes that up.”

“I can go to college and become a doctor in California. I’ll research it. There has to be a way.”

Cole sighed, a sound I rarely heard emanating from his mouth. He’d probably never sighed before I came along. “Riley,” he said, and I could see him struggling for patience, for the right words. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, but this is something I have to do on my own. You understand that, right?”

I averted my gaze to the chipping paint on stairs below me. Sure, I understood. I understood that he had his own plans, his own dreams, and none of them included me. I understood that my time with him was fleeting, dwindling more each day. And there was nothing I could do to fix any of it.

Suddenly, I was overcome with a feeling of desperation so strong that my hands started to shake. To still them, I clutched the bottom of Cole’s T-shirt and stared hard at his face. “Let’s go inside,” I said, making sure my eyes conveyed my exact meaning.

He stared back at me. “What?”

“Mom and Jeff won’t be back for another couple of hours. I just…I want us to go inside.” I could hear the neediness in my voice and I hated it. I hated feeling so vulnerable.

“Uh,” he said. He looked down at my hands, still twisted in his shirt like anchors, preventing him from drifting away. “Let’s just stay out here and talk, okay?”

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” I said, verging on hysteria. My entire body ached to be closer to him, as close as humanly possible, and for once I wasn’t trying to restrain it. I let go of his shirt and stood up. “I want us to go inside.”

He didn’t move from the steps. “No,” he said, as if I’d just asked him if he wanted to go get a coffee.

“Excuse me?”

“No. I’m not going inside with you right now.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Why not?”

He just shook his head.

“I have condoms,” I said, in case he had any doubts about what exactly I was offering here. Mom had given me a box when I was dating Adam and they were still in the back of my underwear drawer, unopened. I’d never used them with Adam, but I knew if I had, he never would have left me behind so easily.

“You’re upset,” Cole said evenly. He looked up at me, squinting in the glow of the porch light. “You’re not thinking straight. If we do this now, I’d feel like I was taking advantage of you. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.”

This didn’t make any sense. I didn’t know much about guys, but I knew most of them wanted sex. I knew Cole was attracted to me. Making out with him was always intense. The two of us had chemistry, or so I’d thought.

I sat back down, still shocked by his rejection and unwilling to accept it. “Let me get this straight. I choose
you
for my very first time ever, and you don’t
want
me?”

He put his hand on the back of my neck and looked directly into my eyes. “I do want you. Believe me, I want you. It’s taking every ounce of willpower I have not to go in there with you right now. But I don’t think you want this, not really. You’d end up regretting it.”

All the hurt and fear and anger I’d been accumulating over the past few weeks suddenly rose up, joined forces, and closed in on me. I pushed Cole’s hand away. “Don’t tell me what I want or what I’ll regret. What the hell is wrong with you? What kind of guy says ‘no thanks’ when his girlfriend throws herself at him? Am I that undesirable, or are you just stupid?”

Even as I said the words I was thinking about how nasty they sounded, but that was exactly what I was aiming for. I wanted to get a reaction out of him, make him mad, punish him for rejecting me. But instead of yelling back and hurling insults and calling me names like I deserved, he just sat there, still as a statue, and took it. His face was completely blank.

“Yeah, that’s exactly it, Riley,” he said. I’d never seen Cole lose his cool, but I would have much preferred screaming and cursing over the icy, detached tone he was using right now. His voice chilled me right through. “You’re way too smart for me.”

I felt a prickle of guilt. I’d gone too far. “Cole…”

He held up a hand to stop me, then stood up and walked down the steps. When he reached the walkway at the bottom, he turned to face me again. Now he looked angry. Hurt. I’d fazed him, finally. Just like I’d wanted. “You know,” he said, “I think we worked better when we were just friends. We’re just way too different.”

Before I could respond, he was gone, down the walkway and into his car with his usual graceful speed. This time, though, there was no exuberance in his step. It was more like he was escaping from me. Like he couldn’t get away fast enough. And I just sat there, helpless to do anything except watch him go.

Chapter Nineteen

Lucy and Alice both came running when I stepped into the house a few minutes later. They circled around my legs, crying for dinner. My body on auto-pilot, I dumped some dry food into their bowls and gave them fresh water. Then I grabbed my cell phone and some cash from my wallet and headed back outside. It was fully dark now, but I didn’t care. I started walking.

A girl shouldn’t walk alone in the city after dark. I knew this. She also shouldn’t ride the bus alone at night. I knew this too. But there I was, walking toward the bus stop at the end of my street, my cell phone clutched in my hand like a weapon.
What did you think you could do
, I heard my mother’s exasperated voice in my head.
Text someone to death?
She would kill me if she found out what I was doing. I hadn’t even left a note. If someone decided to murder me, no one would know where I was.
Such a smart girl
,
too,
everyone would say when my mangled body was found in a dumpster.
What was she thinking?

Actually, I wasn’t thinking at all. I felt eerily calm, even on a bus at ten o’clock at night with three young guys who were obviously very drunk or high sitting just a few feet away from me. My body still hadn’t switched back from auto-pilot and I was beginning to enjoy this distant, zoned-out sensation.

At one point, I glanced out the window and noticed that my stop was next.
Please let him be home
, I thought. I knew Lucas wasn’t working tonight because we’d had the same shift today, and Eva and Sydney were both out on dates. So unless he had some secret friends I didn’t know about, or a secret boyfriend, he was most likely around. Still, I probably should have called first.