Chapter 25

twenty-five

LOLA

The red neon light of the liquor store reflected off the laminate of the crappy fake ID in my hand.I didn't really have the money to waste on cheap booze, but I couldn't handle another sleepless nightmare fest on Kyle's couch. I was ready to spend the weekend knee-deep in vodka.

The word "whore" had played on a loop through my head last night, opening up a can of flesh-eating worms that preyed on every horrible memory I'd tried to bury.

Johan had called me a whore. My mom was a whore. Hendrix's mom… He could have called me anything else, but he'd said that to hurt me as much as possible. The way I'd hurt him. So, I wasn't surprised when he'd turned up to school this morning with a huge bruise on his face.

Hendrix didn't get hit. Unless he wanted it. Like when his mom had died and he had wanted the physical pain to override the emotional.

I just wanted to stop thinking about it all, to feel nothing.

A tap sounded on the window of the pawnshop next door, catching my attention. The worker adjusted the acoustic guitar that had half fallen forward. I shifted away from the liquor store. Haphazard carvings covered the wooden body. I couldn't see them clearly, but I didn't need to. I knew the album names and artists, the song lyrics scratched into it because I'd watched Hendrix carve most of them. I guessed, at some point in the last two years, he'd had to pawn one of the few things he valued.

The hurt side of me said, good, and I started to walk off, but then the memories of him playing it surfaced. The way his eyes lit up when he showed it to me after he'd gotten it. How proud he was when he realized he could actually play it.

I took a few steps back, staring at "Lola Cola," scratched into the wood between two hearts.

He had hurt me the other day. But God, if the situation were reversed, I'd hurt me, too. He didn't know the truth. He couldn't know the truth. Neither of us deserved the hurt we'd endured.

I glanced down at the twenty bucks clasped in my fist that I'd fully intended to spend on a bottle of vodka. It probably wouldn't be enough, but I couldn't walk away without at least trying. People in Dayton didn't have much, but the things we did have, we treasured. And that guitar meant everything to Hendrix. It once had meant everything to me. I had to at least try…

My weekend drinking plans had gone to shit.

Chad had invited Kyle and me to the lake house today, and that was probably a good thing. I needed the distraction. Plus, I loved spending any time with Gracie.

The morning sun blinded me when Kyle pulled into Hendrix's drive.

For a moment, I stared at the front of the house, steeling myself to actually go inside and grab some clothes. I'd come early because I didn't want him to confront me again, and maybe that was selfish. As long as we didn't speak about it, I could almost pretend the last two years had never happened. That Hendrix and I weren't completely broken, that we could be friends, even if we could never again be more.

I glanced into the back seat at the beaten-up guitar. I'd gotten it because I couldn't not. My being there last night felt an awful lot like fate, and I hoped it would serve as a peace offering.

"Be right back, Kyle," I said, leaning over and grabbing the instrument before I got out.

Nerves fluttered in my stomach as I unlocked the front door. The electronic noise of a war game drifted into the entranceway, and I froze. I hadn't expected him to be up, and the prospect of leaving this with a note was so much more appealing than seeing him in person.

I walked into the living room and wordlessly placed the guitar against the edge of the worn couch.

Hendrix's gaze drifted away from the screen, landing first on the guitar, then on me. Holding my gaze, he paused the game, plunging the room into a tense silence. "Where did you find that?"

"The pawnshop over by the liquor store."

He picked it up, lovingly cradling it under his arm as he plucked out the tune of "Glycerine."

My heart stumbled at the sound of the familiar chords. He used to play that song for me all the time, saying the lyrics were how he felt about me.

Notes filled the room, reminding me of all those sweet times between us. All the "I love yous" and promises of forever.

As if catching himself, he suddenly stopped, slamming his palm over the strings to cut off the sound. "I'm having a party tonight."

"Okay…"

Blue eyes met mine, the softness of moments ago now gone. "You probably don't want to be here."

It was a punch in the gut. There was only one reason I "wouldn't want to be here."

"I'm not here tonight, anyway." I took a few steps back, but it might as well have been a hundred for the distance that lingered between us like a gaping chasm.

He'd confronted me about the past. I hadn't been able to give him the answers he wanted, and now he hated me even more than before.

Two years of resentment had built and built, and this was the climax.

The nail in our coffin.

I was just his "whore" ex-girlfriend now. "You know I can move back in with Kyle..."

"All I said was, you probably wouldn't want to be here. I'm trying to be nice."

No, he wasn't. He was letting me know that he was going to fuck girls until I was as inconsequential as every other whore. "Is that what we are now? Courteous roomies?"

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

No, but what I wanted was the impossible. I couldn't screw him without loving him, so I wouldn't. But I didn't want anyone else to, either. It was irrational, but more than anything, it was unfair. On him and me. "I wanted us to be friends."

"You want to listen to my headboard bang the wall? Whatever." He set the guitar to the side, swiping his finger over my name carved by the neck. "But we aren't friends."

His words were a knife to my heart, but still, a flicker of possessive rage rose. As hard as I tried to wrestle it down, I just couldn't quite quell it. "Remember, Hendrix, what's good for you is good for me."

"And I expect the same opportunity not to be here to hear it," he said, looking straight at me.

He was really doing this. He was prepared to let me be with a random guy. And that hurt far more than anything he might do with anyone else. Whatever Hendrix and I had been to each other, whatever I had done, he'd always seen me as his. I felt like a beloved pet dog whose owner had just driven it onto some back road, kicked it out, and driven off.

"Okay." I nodded and tried to breathe through my tightening chest. "We're not friends, Hendrix. We're nothing."

"Just like we've been for the past two years…"

"Yeah." I turned and walked out of the room, not giving him a chance to see my tears fall.

Kyle only asked me what was wrong once during the hour drive to the Lancasters' lake house. He knew when I said, "Nothing," he should let it go.

Everything was wrong. The same way it always felt whenever Hendrix and I weren't together. As though he were the center of my world, and the second he was gone, I just fell into chaos.

My mood remained bleak, even when we stepped onto the huge porch of the cabin-style house and Chad answered the door, an easy smile on his face.

I'd just introduced Kyle before a blur of pink barrelled between Chad's legs and Gracie collided with my thighs.

"Lola! Lola!"

My little sister was the only thing that could make me forget about Hendrix Hunt. I scooped her into my arms with a dramatic huff. The glitter on her pink dress sparkled in the sunshine, her pigtails framing her cute little face.

"You're so heavy now. Who let you get so big?" I teased.

She wrapped her arms around my neck, and her soft giggles rustled past my ear. "I eat all my vegetables."

"Well, that must be it."

She glanced over my shoulder. "Kyle came to visit me, too?" She looked past the both of us, searching. "Where's King Buttmunch?"

Being a dick. "He couldn't come, Jellybean."

She shook her head. "It's not nice to leave people out."

"He's not left out. He's just busy." Planning to get drunk. Planning to screw girls. Hating me. "Are you going to show me your new house?" I asked to distract her.

With an eager nod, she wiggled out of my arms, then took my hand, dragging me inside the fancy home. It looked like someone had taken a mansion and asked for a chic hunting cabin.

Antler chandeliers and sheepskin rugs dotted the hallways. Gracie pointed at the chandelier. "Mr. David said they aren't real because he doesn't like to kill animals. I like it. Do you like it?"

Before I could answer, she dragged me into a game room. "I'm going to ask Mr. David and Miss Emma if you can come live with us, too."

A lump formed in my throat at that.

"They buy ice cream all the time and let you have bubble baths every night until your toes look like raisins."

Forcing a smile, I picked up an eight ball and rolled it over the green felt of the table. "Careful. Your toes will drop off."

She giggled, and I picked her up and tickled her feet until she squealed.

"We should go find everyone," I said. "Miss Emma will think I've stolen you."

"You are stealing me."

I trudged out of the room and through a massive dining room with the biggest table I'd ever seen outside of a magazine, then onto the back deck overlooking the lake.

Kyle, Chad, and Emma sat at a food-covered table while David tended a barbeque grill a few feet away.

I put Gracie down and sank into the chair beside Kyle. Gracie's bare feet slapped over the wooden deck as she made a beeline to David. Smiling, he lifted her up to let her flip a burger.

I tried to focus on the conversation over lunch, but it was hard. Every time David or Chad did anything with Gracie, all I saw was Hendrix doing the same thing with her. They were a family the same way we used to be. They doted on her, loved her…I was both grateful she had that and sad she wasn't getting it from me every day.

A crayon drawing of three people landed in front of me, the words "I miss you the most. Luv, Gracie," scrawled across the bottom. "Can you give it to King Buttmunch?"

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. "Of course."