One Small Thing(24)
God, why aren’t I afraid of him? He mowed someone down with his car! I should be afraid, dammit.
“Beth,” he says again. “Look at me.”
Miserably, I lift my head. “This is embarrassing enough, Chas—Charlie,” I correct.
“Chase,” he says, and it reminds me of how adamant I am about people calling me Beth. We’re more alike than he realizes, I think. “I go by Chase now.”
“Why?”
“It’s a nickname I got when—” He stops abruptly, shaking his head. “No, we’re getting off track. I need to know if...” He raises a hand and lets it hover near my cheek, as if he wants to stroke me. Then his hand drops to his side.
I quickly look around to make sure no one saw him almost touch me, but the hallway is still empty. Class started a while ago.
“Were you a virgin?” he finally asks, unhappiness swimming in his blue eyes.
I draw a slow breath and then exhale in an even slower rush. “Does it really matter?” I answer sadly.
I don’t look back as I walk away, but I can feel his gaze on me the entire time.
11
At lunch, I sit with Scarlett and the girls. Jeff joins us halfway through, which I find weird, but everyone, especially Scar, looks happy to see him. I want to ask him why he’s not sitting with his friends, but then I realize... He doesn’t have any. Everyone from his grade graduated already. Like Chase, he’s a nineteen-year-old senior.
I don’t contribute much to the conversation. As usual, my thoughts are muddled. I can’t erase Chase’s expression from my mind, the one he got when it occurred to him that I was a virgin. It hadn’t been horror, per se, but concern, maybe? Shock, definitely. And yeah, I think horror did play a small part.
Trust me, Chase, nobody’s as horrified as I am.
I almost wish I hadn’t walked away from him earlier. We could’ve talked more about it. The sex, that is. I need to talk to someone. The secret is eating me up inside, but who can I confide in?
Scarlett? She’d be horrified, too. And even if she believed that I didn’t know who Chase was beforehand, she’d probably still be a bit disgusted with me for sleeping with a stranger. Scar lost her V-card to Matty Wesser, a boy she dated seriously for two years. The only reason they’re not still together is because his dad was transferred to Denver for work and Matty’s family had to move away halfway through junior year.
Macy and Yvonne? They’d absolutely judge me for what I did.
My parents? They’d lock me in the basement for the next thirty years if they knew what happened between me and Chase.
Everyone else at school, I’m not close with, and it’s not like I can confide in Sandy at the animal shelter. She’s in her midtwenties and would probably offer some really good advice, but she was also my sort of boss, even if I wasn’t paid for the work I did.
That leaves Chase. But he doesn’t want to talk to me, and I walked away from him when the opportunity arose. I regret that now.
“...Kav’s place. His parents are out of town.”
I swear, Troy Kendall has the loudest voice in the world. No matter where I am, I always seem to overhear some BS he’s rumbling about.
“And they just got a new hot tub,” Landon Rhodes, another football player, says gleefully. “A ten-person one.”
“Sweet.”
“I know, right.”
“Yo, Yvonne!” Troy calls over to our table. “You coming to Kav’s tonight?”
Yvonne rolls her big gray eyes at our resident loudmouth. “Who the fuck is Kav?” she calls back.
“Greg Kavill? Kav? Kavi? Kav-ster?”
“Saying it in a hundred different ways isn’t going to make me know who he is,” Yvonne says haughtily, and everyone laughs, even me.
“Quarterback over at Lincoln Public,” Landon says helpfully. “He’s having a thing at his place tonight. Open invite.”
Troy glances in my direction, then Scar’s and Macy’s. “You girls are welcome, too, obvs.”
Yvonne shrugs. “Text me the deets. We’ll decide later.”
“Word,” Troy says before he and Landon turn back to their friends.
The moment the football players are occupied again, Jeff speaks in a low, displeased voice. “You shouldn’t go to that,” he warns us.
That gets my attention. I’d actually been considering going to this thing. If I can’t spend the evening with the dogs at the clinic, a party in Lincoln could be fun—
I almost burst out laughing. Fun? Elizabeth, I chastise myself, do we not remember what happened the last time you went to a party in a different town?
“Why not?” Macy asks Jeff.
“First of all, it’s a school night—”
The girls burst out laughing. “We’re seniors,” Yvonne tells him, still giggling. “We’re all allowed to go out on school nights.”
“Fine. Well, that’s not a good crowd. I’ve heard bad rumors about Kav and his buddies.”
“They can’t be all bad if Troy and Lan are friends with them,” Yvonne points out. “Besides, football parties are usually lit.”
“I’m in, then,” Macy chirps.
“There isn’t going to be anyone there but the Lincoln crowd and maybe a few Darling kids,” Scarlett says scornfully. “And the Lincoln crowd is so trashy.”