He frowns, trying to take a step forward, but I only take one back. “I—let me explain. My mom … she’s crazy. She has a lot of problems.”
“Clearly,” I retort through chattering teeth. I’m freezing. It’s so cold out here and my hair is still wet. “Is it true?”
Owen frowns. “Is what true?”
“That you smoke pot with your mom. That you give her—marijuana and money?”
He sighs and hangs his head, runs a hand over his hair. I feel his despair. See it clinging to him like thick tendrils of smoke, wrapping all around his body, choking him. I ache to comfort him. To take him in my arms and tell him everything’s going to be all right, but I don’t. I can’t.
His earlier denial sliced my heart in two.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me. About my mom,” he says, keeping his head downcast.
“I know. Because you never tell me what’s going on. I’m completely in the dark here, Owen.”
“Really? You feel that way? Because you don’t tell me shit either, Chels. I know nothing about you. Nothing. Beyond you being some sort of child prodigy and graduating high school when you were sixteen—that’s all I got. And that’s not enough,” he says, his angry words flowing out of him like a dammed river that’s finally been let free.
“So you’re saying I’m not enough. That’s why you told your mother that you don’t have a girlfriend.” I wrap my arms around my waist and rub my hands on my arms, but there’s nothing I can do to ease the shaking, or the cold, dark ache that’s consumed my chest, the weight so heavy I can hardly breathe.
“Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.”
“I heard you say it. ‘I don’t have a girlfriend.’ Those words came out of your mouth. Oh, and my favorite, ‘She’s nothing.’ That sentence hurt the most, Owen. Can you deny you said them?” I approach him, stretch my arms out so I can shove at his chest. He goes stumbling backward, his expression one of total shock, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. None of it does. I’m hurting too much. “No, you can’t. So guess what? You don’t have a girlfriend? And I’m nothing? Then you’re right. You don’t have me.”
“I had to say it. I had to tell her that.” His voice is ragged, his expression full of anguish. His eyes are dark and full of so much … too much emotion. I can hardly stand to look at him it’s so painful. “If she knows we’re really together, she’ll try and talk to you. Ruin you. Use you. She uses everyone. It’s what she does best.”
“She hates me.” I pause because I’m finding it hard to breathe. “She doesn’t even kn-know m-me.” My teeth are chattering and I will them to stop. I refuse to fall apart in front of him. He shouldn’t matter so much.
But he does.
“She hates me, too.” He exhales roughly and hangs his head. “And I don’t think she really knows me either,” he mumbles.
I stare at him, dumbfounded. I wonder if I really know him. Did I ever? I believed I did. Only a few minutes ago, I thought I did. “Where’s Fable?”
“Back at my house, chasing our mom out of there.” His expression crumples and I swear, he looks close to crying. My already broken heart threatens to crack deeper and I take a sharp breath, trying to keep everything together. “I should’ve told her Mom was back,” he says. “I’ve kept it from her for months.”
“You should’ve told the both of us. You should’ve been honest with me, Owen.” I turn on my heel and start to walk but he doesn’t chase after me. Not that I expected him to, but … well. Fine.
I did expect him to.
Turning, I look at him. He’s still standing in the same place I left him, in front of someone’s house, standing next to a white picket fence and staring at me as if he can’t believe I would leave him.
But he leaves me no choice.
“So you’re a drug addict, too,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around myself.
He winces. “I smoke pot sometimes. It’s no big deal.”
“You smoke pot more than I think you let on.” I pause. “Is it a problem for you?”
He says nothing, which is answer enough. We both remain quiet and I want to walk away, but I can’t.
I’m not strong enough. Not yet.
“You haven’t been honest with me either and you know it.” His voice is so cold. “You have your secrets. Just like I have mine.”
I say nothing because he’s right. I do have my secrets. But he wouldn’t understand. Not now. If I confessed everything to him about Dad, he’d think what he did for his mom was okay. He’d think I understand because of my no-good father. That I’d have no problem with Owen for enabling her. Giving his mom drugs, giving her money, keeping their relationship from Fable, from everyone. It wouldn’t be fair.
My secret will remain my secret.
“You can’t walk away from me like this, Chels,” he says. “Give me another chance.”
“I don’t want to be with someone who gets high all the time,” I murmur. “You’re just trying to escape your reality. And that makes me feel like you’re trying to escape me.”
“Never,” he whispers. “So I get high. So what? It’s no big deal, right? I can quit whenever I want. I haven’t smoked much this past week.”
Only a week. I just … I don’t even know what to think.
“You’re not who I thought you were, Owen Maguire. Not at all,” I say.
“Neither are you.”
I flinch. Those three words lash at my heart. Tear at my soul. I waver, my knees threatening to buckle, and I press my lips together to stifle my cry.
And with that, I turn and run. Escaping my troubles, my problems, the boy I love.
Same difference.
Owen
“It’s been a week, man.” Wade’s voice reaches deep within me, grabbing at my insides and trying to wake me up. “You need to get the f**k out of bed and start living again.”
No. Hell, no. That sounds like a nightmare. I’d rather stay in bed and sleep. Or wake up and drink. Smoke a little. Get high. Forget the pain. Forget Mom is mad at me. That Fable’s mad at me and won’t talk to me. Forget that Chelsea hates me.
“Where’s Des?” I croak, reaching toward my bedside table and knocking over the half-empty beer bottle that was sitting there, the golden liquid spilling all over the carpet. “Shit.”