Chapter 33

thirty-three

LOLA

Fucking homecoming week.

I dodged the group of color guard exiting the restroom in their sparkly outfits. I never understood the entire theatrics of football. Cheerleaders. Dance team. Band… Just to watch a bunch of guys in helmets and pads ram into each other. The whole thing put me in a bad mood.

"I hate these stupid pep rallies," I mumbled.

Kyle and I followed the crowd of students through the side exit that led onto the football field. The blistering heat nuking me into a sweat. It was October. Oc-fucking-tober. Why the hell was it still hot?

"At least we get out of class," Kyle said.

"Kyle, there are many things I'd rather do. Including class…and shoving rusty nails in my eyes."

Music pumped through crappy speakers as we filed past the concession stand.

The cheerleaders stood on the other side of the gate, shouting dumb cheers. When I passed by Jessica, I flipped her off. Just because.

I hoped she fell from the top of the pyramid.

The heavy beat of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" pumped through the stadium while Kyle and I climbed the bleachers, finding an empty spot. As soon as the screech of the electric guitar cut in, Wolf strutted onto the field, carting a folding chair. A group of girls screamed when the music silenced. Someone shouted they'd suck his dick.

Smiling, he took a microphone from one of the cheerleaders. "Homecoming week is about to get a lot better. I've got a teacher challenge for you that's gonna be fun." A mischievous smirk cut over his face as he set the chair on the turf. "Let's give it up for our fearless leader—Principal Brown."

Oh, he was up to something awful.

He explained the rules—the teachers had to taste test items and try to guess what they were—while one of the cheerleaders escorted a blindfolded Brown to the chair. Had the man learned nothing? I would not let Wolf blindfold me for shit.

"What if they make him eat something gross like peanut butter?" Kyle said.

I snorted. "They aren't making him eat peanut butter, Kyle." I could see where this was going. Dog shit, maybe. Vomit…

The tension mounted with the first three items. Vanilla yogurt. Canned Cheese. Spam. Because there was no way that was it, and everyone knew something awful was coming.

Brown was in the middle of contemplating the fourth item when I caught Hendrix climbing over the chain-link fence surrounding the field.

Hushed snickers trickled through the stands while Wolf put a hand over his mouth, trying not to laugh as Hendrix sauntered up to him all crazy Captain Jack Sparrow style.

Wolf frantically waved the growing laughter down, pressing a finger to his lips.

A hush fell over the stadium, and I glanced around, looking for the teachers. Weaver and Smith were over by the concession stand, passing her thermos back and forth, completely oblivious to whatever was about to unfold.

"All right, Mr. Brown. You're four for four," Wolf said, his shoulders silently shaking with suppressed laughter. "This next one is gonna be really hard. Some say it's a delicacy."

I almost didn't want to look as Hendrix tugged his jeans down, followed by his boxers, and pulled his ass cheeks apart. Oh. My. God.

Brown leaned forward just as Hendrix shuffled back.

His tongue met Hendrix's crack, and the bleachers erupted in laughter. Even I laughed. Hendrix was ridiculous. And awful. The ultimate reprobate bad boy making the principal kiss the ring. Literally.

Brown stilled, then ripped the blindfold off, finding himself two inches from Hendrix's asshole.

"Run, Forest, Run!" Wolf cackled into the microphone.

Brown's face turned an unhealthy shade of red before he stalked after my rebel ex, but he didn't stand a chance. Hendrix was like a rat up a pipe. He hopped the fence and booked it across the parking lot to a roar of applause.

"It's that dickhead's birthday this weekend," Wolf shouted into the mic. "Everyone's invited."

Of course, Hendrix would be having a big party. It would be carnage. Beer, weed, girls… Yeah, I was fine with hating Hendrix, but even I knew my limits, and I'd be avoiding the house like the plague this weekend.

After school, I rode with Kyle to Bullseye so he could grab a poster board for his science project.

We walked inside the "red monstrosity," as Hendrix liked to call it, then made our way to the craft aisle.

I drifted to the thread section, my fingertips trailing over the blues and purples.

Hendrix's birthday was this weekend, and—aside from the last two years—I'd never not made him a bracelet. But now, I didn't know whether I should.

Maybe it would be best to let that tradition die right along with our relationship. But then I imagined how I would feel if he ignored my birthday, and I felt like an asshole.

No, I wasn't the asshole. He had killed Sid!

Huffing, I snatched a bundle of brown thread.

If I made one, it would be shit brown.

Kyle chose his poster board and then followed me to the front where the birthday cards were. Cats in party hats, cows with balloons, dogs in wrapped boxes. Then my gaze landed on the card with a sloth on the front, my anger at him reigniting once more. I picked it up. Have a Sloth-tastic day! I was going to write beneath that line, " Because Sid fucking won't."

I shoved the card and matching envelope down the back of my shorts, pocketing the shit-stain-brown thread, and walked out the door to wait for Kyle to pay for his poster board. Because Kyle was good and his mom had some money.

As soon as I walked in the front door, I heard the notes of Hendrix's guitar drift down the stairs.

I went to my room, kicked the door shut, and dropped the card and thread onto my dresser before noticing Sid sitting on the pillow. What the hell?

Tears welled in my eyes at the sight of the Frankenstein stitches holding his head to his little body.

I scooped up my beloved stuffed animal and took a seat on the edge of the bed. It was like reuniting with an old friend, the only one I'd had at times.

I had regretted throwing him into the trash almost as soon as I'd done it, but Sid was a representation of Hendrix and me. At the time, I'd wanted to throw that away. The same way Hendrix had wanted to kill it.

Only he'd saved Sid, kept him this entire time, then stitched him back together when I knew he didn't know how to sew. So, what did that mean?

I swept a hand over Sid's fur before lovingly placing him back on the pillow, then opening my door.

Music poured from beneath Hendrix's closed door as I crossed the hall.

The strum of the guitar stopped when I knocked. "Yeah?"

I pushed into his room, my gaze shifting from the tarp-covered ceiling to Hendrix reclining against his headboard. My heart stumbled at the sight of his tattooed, bare chest, the worn guitar resting across his lap. "You fixed Sid," I choked.

I didn't know why it meant so much. It was just a stuffed animal, but we both knew Sid was so much more. And I needed to know why he'd done it. Why he'd bothered to fix something that could have stayed broken.

"Tried to." His gaze met mine, the hatred that I'd seen in his eyes more often than not lately now absent. "I shouldn't have beheaded him." His attention went back to the guitar, and a few more notes of that familiar song filled the room. "I'm sorry."

I almost wished he wasn't. I fought the part of me that desperately wanted us to be okay again, that needed us to be.

"I never told you thank you for saving this." His fingers plucked over the strings, the tattoos and ratty bracelets shifting with each delicate stroke.

I dropped to the edge of the mattress. The tune flooding my mind with a hundred memories. Every kiss, every touch, every sweet word. Nights in the treehouse, in this room… We'd spent our entire lives together. How was a person supposed to really let that go?

His soft gaze met mine. "It means a lot."

How did I get over that? Over him?

"Y ou mean a lot," I breathed, a quiet confession. One I shouldn't have made.

His dark brows creased before the music cut off, and a ragged sigh left his lips. Silence fell between us, one where I felt every jolting beat in my chest.Hendrix tapped over the wood of his guitar.

"Then give me some fucking answers, Lola. Please."

I couldn't, but I had to give him something because we couldn't keep doing this. Couldn't be friends, couldn't be nothing, couldn't just be while we were in each other's lives… But if there was one thing I knew, it was that I needed Hendrix in my life. That I owed him some kind of peace.

"I can try." Half-truths and omissions.

"Did I do something to make you unhappy? Is that why you did it?"

That was what he thought…

"No, Hendrix." Tears stung my eyes. I never thought he would blame himself, and it made me hate myself a little more. "You're perfect. You've always made me happy." He still did.

"I just need a reason why you did it."

I swiped at my tears, trying to think of something, anything I could tell him that would straddle the line of truth and lie.

"I have regretted that moment every second of every day for two years, Hendrix. Maybe it was stupidity. Or naivety…" I was stupid for letting Johan through the front door. Na?ve in thinking a man who paid for sex would have any boundaries about who he got it from so long as there was cash involved.

"Just know, I'm sorry," I whispered, fighting the anger and hatred that rose up at the injustice of it all. I'd done nothing wrong. He'd done nothing wrong. Yet, we were the ones paying the price. "That no one has ever loved anyone more…" Than I still loved him. But I couldn't tell him that. It wasn't fair.

His fingers swept over the strings. "When Jessica told me you were pregnant…" Another solemn note. "I took this down to the pawn shop and traded it for a ring."

His gaze lifted to mine. And God, did it hurt. That guitar was the only thing he had, and then I'd told him the baby wasn't his. I had lied and said I'd cheated on him, as though he meant nothing.

"You giving it back to me was just…" He swallowed. "It fucking hurt."

Tears tracked down my cheeks. I was so close to blurting the truth, just to put Hendrix out of his misery. I'd have done anything to keep him out of jail, but seeing him like this, hearing this, felt akin to a slow, painful death. One that was killing us both.

"Hendrix…" My chest burned, and ugly sobs threatened to break free. The tears wouldn't stop. The pain wouldn't stop. The guilt would–not–stop. I threw my arms around his neck, unsure whether I was trying to console him or myself. "I'm so sorry."

He shifted the guitar out of his lap and wrapped his arms around me tight, comforting me, holding me together when I didn't deserve it.

Seconds passed, moments where he held me so close while I pretended everything could be fixed.

"I don't like us like this." He pulled back, cupping my face in his hands while his thumbs swiped at my tears. "I actually really fucking hate it," he whispered.

The broken, confused look on his face was almost too much to take.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, I wrapped my fingers around his wrists. "Me too."

"Me three, you sick fucks."

I glanced over my shoulder at Zepp, lingering in the open doorway, an unamused look on his face.

His attention shifted to Hendrix. "You still coming to Wolf's or what?"

"Yeah." Hendrix let go of my face, eyes searching mine before he frowned. "I'm coming."

Then, without another word, he got up and grabbed his shoes, leaving me alone on his bed.

The front door closed a few seconds later, and I should have gotten up and gone back to my room, but I couldn't. So, I lay on his bed, surrounded by his scent, and cried for everything we'd both lost.

He was going to ask me to marry him.

He had pawned his guitar…

The tears came harder.

I'd gone two years without Hendrix, and it had been awful. I didn't know how I was supposed to survive a lifetime without him.

I'd told myself I couldn't be with him, kept us apart, and for what? So, he wouldn't do something that would get him sent to jail and taken away from me.

He was already away from me. I was keeping him away from me. And it wasn't helping anything.

He still cared. I still cared. And he'd still kill Johan if he found out.

The only thing that stopped me from running after him and begging him to forgive me and be with me right then and there was the thought of looking at him five, ten, twenty years from now and knowing I'd lied. Knowing he would always think I once had betrayed him. There was no way that wouldn't change things, wouldn't burrow into his brain and taint the way he saw me. No way to erase the hurt and distrust I'd just seen in his eyes.

He was angry, but more than that, he was broken.

My phone pinged with a message.

Satan: Friends?

After all the times I'd told him I wanted to be friends, that one word shouldn't have struck such a deep blow.

Hendrix was finally over me, just as I'd realized I would never get over him.

Me: Friends