Untouchable (Untouchables, 1)

I don’t always need to be comfortable, but I really hate feeling stupid, and if I give him another chance and he ends up cheating on me, there are not words for how unbelievably foolish I will feel.

“I don’t have anything new to offer you, Carter, I was just being honest,” I explain. “I like that you and I can always be honest with one another, even if the truth isn’t pretty. I like that we’re not afraid to talk about anything, no matter how messed up, and I feel like that’s a large part of what I lost. That’s why our relationship stopped working for me. Maybe you need sex more, but I need openness and an unshakeable mutual trust. I don’t need you to be that way with anyone else, but I do need you to trust me, and to know I can trust you. You never lost your supply, but I did. I stopped getting what I needed out of us, so… yeah, I still have conflicted feelings, and I still care about you, but that’s where we are. Nothing you’ve done since has given me back that feeling I had before, that… awe. I don’t want you to be with anyone else, I don’t want to watch you move on, but I don’t want to take another chance on you, either. That means it’s over, and at the end of the day, you will move on. Maybe then it will be easier for me to move past this.”

“Okay, that’s not entirely true. Most of it is,” he amends, before I get defensive. “I know I’m going to sound like an asshole saying this, but you claim my supply was never interrupted, that I got everything I needed from you, but…” He trails off, uncharacteristically hesitant.

I brace myself, knowing something unpleasant is coming my way.

“I didn’t know we were going to have sex that weekend, Zoey. When I went to her house, I had no idea where you and I were heading. Don’t get me wrong, I like the occasional blow job as much as the next guy, but I didn’t know I’d get you into bed so fast. You have the reputation for being a stuck-up virgin who spends her free time at church, for Christ’s sake. I figured it would take a little longer to wear you down, and I didn’t really want to go without while I was waiting. That’s the truth. It’s selfish and ugly, but yeah, I do have needs, Zoey. I’m not a slave to them, I wouldn’t have cheated on you once we were together, but we weren’t quite together yet. The timing was shit, and if I had known I could have you if I just waited another couple of days, obviously I would take it all back. I wouldn’t have gone to her house. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I should’ve been honest with you. I should’ve known that you could take it, and I’m really sorry I lied instead. I know better now.”

“Did you sleep with her?” I ask.

“No,” he answers, seriously.

“Did she go down on you? Or get you off another way? Any variation of sex acts between you two?”

“Nothing happened beyond kissing. I got a copy of the video, I can show you the proof if you want to finish watching it. Well, listening to it.”

I shake my head. “No, I never want to see that again.”

Grabbing my hand and interlocking our fingers, he says, “Nothing happened, Zoey.”

“She said she got you off,” I remind him.

“She was lying to rile you up. That part was not true. Even showing you the video was a calculated bluff, because if you had kept watching, you would have heard me come around to my senses and leave.”

I want to fire more questions at him while he’s being open again, but I don’t really know what to do with the answers. After the scene at lunch, Kasey filled in all the gaps in my knowledge. Apparently, someone confessed to the principal that they saw drugs in Erika’s locker when she had it open. An unannounced locker search—which Kasey sent me the picture of some part of—turned up a plastic bag filled with narcotics. Erika swore she was innocent, that she didn’t do drugs and had no idea where those had come from.

She was suspended from the cheer squad, pending a drug test. If it comes back clean, she will be reinstated. If it doesn’t, she will be kicked off the squad permanently, possibly suspended from school, and she could even face criminal charges.

“Did Erika do drugs?” I ask.

“Has she ever? Sure.”

I give him a droll look. “No, not has she ever. Are you responsible for what’s going on with her right now? The drugs in her locker? Getting kicked off the squad?”