Miss Mayhem (Rebel Belle #2)(51)
“Harper, I am so sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said, her hand squeezing my arm.
“It’s fine,” I said, but voice was shaking, and Bee sighed, stepping a little closer.
“It’s not, I know it’s not. But I promise, it hasn’t been going on for very long.”
For some reason, it hadn’t even occurred to me that it had happened before at all. Like I’d thought the kiss I’d seen had been their first or something, which was stupid. If they had already reached the “sneaking around” stage of things, this had obviously been going on for a little while.
“How long?” I asked, and Bee’s brown eyes slid away from mine. My stomach was still rolling, and I tried to tell myself it was the smell of the rec center, all furniture polish and industrial carpet cleaner, making me feel sick.
“The night at the fair,” she told me, and I remembered now that Ryan had dropped Bee off last.
“We were both kind of freaked out by everything that went down that night, and it . . .” Tears spilled over Bee’s lower lashes, and she scrubbed at them with the back of her hand. “It just happened. I didn’t mean for it to, and I swear to God, I never looked at Ryan like that while y’all were dating.”
The thing was, I believed her. Bee had always been loyal, the best best friend a girl could have. It wasn’t jealousy that was making me want to cry. Ryan and I were more than done, and while things with me and David were not all that simple right now, there was still no one else I’d rather be with. So it wasn’t the actual kissing bugging me, it was the secrecy of it all. Bee had always told me everything, but she’d been keeping this a secret from me. I got it, but I didn’t like it.
“If you want us not to see each other anymore, I’d totally understand,” Bee said, and then Ryan came up behind her, laying one hand on her shoulder.
“I wouldn’t,” he said, looking at me, but I was still staring at his fingers curled over her shoulder. Since the night of the fair, she’d said, but that had been just a week ago.
There was a lot of intimacy in the way Ryan’s hand lay there at the crook of her neck.
“Ryan,” Bee said, but he shook his head, a muscle working in his jaw.
“I was okay with Harper and David,” he said, “so Harper can be okay with me and you.”
“I am okay with you. Both of you,” I replied, but the words came out too fast. I thought of me asking David if we were okay, how quickly he’d answered me and how fake his answer had sounded. I guess I sounded every bit as fake, if the matching frowns on Bee’s and Ryan’s faces were anything to go by.
But for now, I didn’t care; I needed to get out of here.
“Seriously,” I told them as I turned to hurry back down the hall. “It’s fine. So super fine.”
Luckily, neither of them followed, and I managed to get to the dressing room, shucking off my leotard like it was on fire. I threw my clothes back on, and hurried out the back door of the rec center before anyone could see me. I’d e-mail Sara and tell her I’d gotten sick or something.
Getting into my car, I pushed my hair back with hands that were still trembling. I needed to talk to someone, but I sat there in the driver’s side, the air-conditioning raising goose bumps on my skin, and racked my brain for someone I could talk to. Not David; things were still tense with us, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to explain why Bee and Ryan were weirding me out so much without him thinking it was a jealousy thing. But if I couldn’t talk to David, and I couldn’t talk to Bee, who could I talk to?
When the answer came, I felt a wave of relief wash over me.
It only took a few minutes to drive to Aunt Jewel’s, and when I got there, she was outside watering her roses, dressed in a pretty light green top that seemed to have some kind of bird on it, and matching polyester slacks. As soon as I pulled up, she turned the hose off and waved me inside.
“Well, isn’t this a nice surprise?” Aunt Jewel led me into the living room, and I flopped on the flowered sofa while she went into the kitchen to get us something to drink.
I fiddled with the hem of my dress, and when Aunt Jewel came back in, I blurted out, “I have something to tell you.”
Aunt Jewel had leaned down to hand me a glass of iced tea, and she froze in place, the glass halfway to me. “Oh, Harper Jane,” she said on a sigh. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
I was, of course. In lots of trouble, and I almost said answered yes. But then I realized Aunt Jewel thought I was in that kind of trouble.
“No,” I said quickly, taking the tea before she spilled it. “No, no, no. Not even a little bit.”
Breathing a sigh of relief, Aunt Jewel pressed her hand to her chest, right over the painted hummingbird on her sweater. “Well, thank heaven for that at least.” She squinted at me, leaning a little closer, and I picked up the scent of Estée Lauder perfume and the slightest hint of baby powder. “But if you’re not in the family way, why do you look so sick?”
I didn’t know I did look sick, and when I pressed both hands to my cheeks, Aunt Jewel clucked, sitting next to me on the couch. “I’ve thought you looked peaked for a few weeks at least. You aren’t doing too much at school, are you?”
The tea was cold and sweet, and I gulped nearly half of the glass before setting it back on its coaster. “It’s not school, Aunt Jewel. Or it is, but not the way you’re thinking. Last year, during the fall, something . . . something happened to me.”