They Wish They Were Us(49)

Henry peels out of the driveway but the air grows stale and my stomach drops. My mouth is dry when I open it to speak. “I don’t regret it.”

Henry furrows his brow but keeps his eyes on the road. His blond hair is still dark at the roots, damp from a shower. “Of course you do, babe. You can’t quit the Players.” He moves to grab my hand in the console between us, but I keep my fingers limp. His skin is waxy to the touch.

I shake my head. “I don’t regret it. If this is the Players, I’m out. I can’t watch this happen to Jared. I can’t trust . . .”

Henry moves his hand back to the steering wheel, clocking in at ten and two. “Is this about what you said about Graham the other night? Do you actually think he’s telling the truth? Come on.”

I want so badly to tell him about what Rachel told me, about the blood. But I think back to his reaction when I asked at intro night, the way he recoiled from the article in the Gazette. He wouldn’t understand. He wants this to go away, just like the others. “No,” I whisper. “It’s about everything else.”

Henry sighs and makes a left turn. “You’ll come around.”

“You’re not listening to me.” My voice is shaky but I have to get the words out. I know what I have to do and I brace myself for yet another tie I’m about to sever. “We have to break up.”

“What?” A sedan stops short in front of us and Henry slams his foot down on the brake. We’re only a block away from the Gold Coast parking lot, but I don’t know if I can stay in his presence much longer. I don’t know if I can watch him crumble, if I can handle his rage when I have to tend to my own. “You don’t mean this, Jill.”

I swallow hard. “I do. I don’t want to be a Player anymore. And you think you can change my mind. If that’s true, you don’t know me at all. It’s better we just end this now.”

Henry turns swiftly into the senior lot and throws Bruce into park in one quick move. He stares straight forward, totally unreadable.

“Henry?” I ask.

He looks back at me with those gorgeous eyes, now glossy and wet. His top lip begins to quiver. I already hate myself for hurting him like this. But then his future flashes in front of me again. The finance job he doesn’t want. A closet full of designer suits. A mansion out east. We never would have worked. If it wasn’t my quitting the Players, it would be something else.

I blink and when I open my eyes, Henry is slumped over the steering wheel, his shoulders heaving up and down.

“Jill, please,” he says, his voice almost a whisper.

Something tugs inside my chest, but I lean back farther in my seat, away from him. Why don’t I want to salvage this? It would be so much easier if I did. Everything would be simple.

“I’m sorry.”

A gurgle erupts from Henry’s throat and his breathing becomes labored. “But I love you,” he says. It’s the first time he’s said it. Words I’ve dreamed of hearing. Words I couldn’t wait to be said to me. But my hands are clammy and I fight the urge to bolt out of the car. I don’t feel anything. And I realize I never wanted to hear those words from Henry. I wanted them from someone else.

“I have to go,” I say.

“Wait.” Henry lifts his body off the steering wheel and turns to me, his eyes red and his cheeks puffy.

But I can’t. It’s too much to see him like this. Too awkward. Too grotesque. I shake my head and push myself out, leaving Henry alone in Bruce. I slam the door behind me and don’t look back. The parking lot buzzes with chatter and muffled sharp words. I force myself to breathe in, then out, to swallow the screams I so desperately want to unleash. I hear Shaila’s voice in my head, the line she repeated when we needed it the most. Don’t let them see you hurt.

The bell rings and I know that nowhere will be safe today. So I keep going, my head down, my skin on fire, and dash through the front door, past the senior lounge, and into AP Physics.

When I get there, my usual place next to Nikki is already taken. Amos Ritter, a pimply-faced junior on the baseball team, leans back in the swivel lab chair and makes himself at home, pulling out two binders and a graphing calculator. He’s not a Player, but he’s well-liked enough that he gets invitations to parties, slaps on the back when he chugs a beer fast enough. He’s a warm body to keep the party going. Nikki only knows him because she made out with him after Spring Fling last year.

I try to make eye contact with her but her dark hair blocks her face from my view. Her skin looks perfect from afar. I wonder if the blackhead she was freaking out about last week is still there. When I take the only empty seat—it must be Amos’s usual place—I flip open my notebook and try to focus, recording everything Dr. Jarvis says, even though it just doesn’t matter.

For fifty-two excruciating minutes I imagine all the things that Nikki is thinking about me, all of the horrible, cruel things she must believe, that I’m a loser, a traitor, that I’m not a friend worth keeping.

I imagine her screaming at me, saying the worst things I think about myself out loud, and press my pencil into my palm, nearly breaking flesh. Her unwillingness to even look at me stings more than if she were to stand up and say, “I hate you.”

I already lost one best friend. I can’t stomach the fact that I’ve lost another.