The Unloved Read online

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NICK

  I wasn’t sure why I was going home with her; all I knew was that I wasn’t ready to have her out of my sight just yet. Tiffany and Emily chatted away in the front of the car, but here in the back with Jules, we were in our own little world.

  She continued to stare into my eyes as I held on to her hand and moved my thumb in slow motions across hers. I’d wanted to do that—hold her hand again—for so long now. Something in her eyes shifted, an emotion poured into those big green eyes of hers that I struggled to name. Before I could, she’d turned away from me and resumed staring out the window.

  “Do you care to get out here or do I need to back down the driveway and cut a left to your house, too?” Tiffany asked me with a mocking tone once we’d made it to Jules’ house.

  I chuckled. “Nah, I’ll walk.”

  “Good, because if you’d made me do that I’d never have let you live it down.” Tiffany winked.

  “I have no doubt,” I said as I opened the door and stepped out.

  “Sorry to cut your fun short tonight, you guys,” Jules said as she stood beside the car and picked at her fingernails.

  “Don’t say that. The look on Vincent’s face when he dropped to the ground was priceless,” Emily insisted.

  “God, I can’t believe I missed that!” Tiffany shouted, banging her palm against the steering wheel.

  Jules smiled, but I could tell it was forced. She was worried about something. Emily’s phone went off and drew my attention away from Jules.

  “It’s Blake; he’s heading to McDonald’s with Tom and wants us to meet him there, Tiff. You guys wanna come?”

  Jules shook her head. “I’m not hungry. Actually, I think I’m going to turn in for the night. I have to work tomorrow.”

  Jules glanced at me and I wondered if she hoped I would turn down the offer, too. Hope swelled within my chest with that one seemingly meaningless glance. “Nah, I’m cool. Thanks for the lift home, though.”

  Emily smirked. “All right, well, later you two.”

  “Not a problem,” Tiffany said as she began to back out.

  I watched the red glow of the taillights disappear at the end of the road and turned my attention back to Jules.

  “You okay?” I asked, taking a step toward her.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I wasn’t about to press the issue. We both knew when the other needed space still and right now I was getting the impression from her that that was what she needed. I glanced up at her house and noticed the blue glow from the TV in the living room.

  “Your brother home?” I wondered, remembering earlier what she’d said about how things had only gotten worse for her at home. I’d feel better if I knew she wasn’t going to be solely alone tonight.

  She glanced over her shoulder at her house. “Yep, looks like it.”

  “Good.” I shoved my hands into my front pockets. “Listen, I’m sorry for the way that jerk treated you tonight.” I wasn’t the best at saying what I felt, but that didn’t mean I lacked compassion. Jules hadn’t deserved to be treated like a piece of meat, and she didn’t deserve to have that guy out her personal business in front of people like that, regardless if they were her friends or not.

  I stared at her as she shuffled her sandaled foot around in the driveway, still avoiding my eyes. Was what he had said about her mother true, or was that just another dickhead joke about her mom’s chosen profession?

  “It wasn’t your fault.” She shrugged and I hated how nonchalant she was trying to seem.

  “Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to bash his face in for you,” I said, hoping to get even a slight grin out of her. I wanted to see her smile, even if it was a small one, before I had to leave her for the night.

  Her lips twisted into the hint of a smile and she darted her heavily lashed green eyes in my direction for a brief moment. My heart pounded at the sight of her and a smile stretched on my face. I’d gotten what I’d wanted and the night felt complete because of it.

  “So, do you really have to get to bed or were you just saying that?” My stomach twisted into knots as the words spewed from my lips. Rejection right now would burn like a mother.

  I watched as she reached up and tucked a stray strand of her reddish hair behind her ear. There was an uncertainty that creased her forehead and drew her eyebrows together. The tension-filled silence as I waited for her response was killing me.

  “If you don’t want to, it’s fine.” I rubbed the back of my neck with my hand and dropped my eyes. “Mom bought me this Wii today and Blake helped me hook it up before we left for the party. I figured maybe we could check out the games that came with it. Hang out…like old times, I mean.”

  I didn’t know why I added that last part. I didn’t want to hang out with her like old times, like when we were little kids, like the strictly friendship way we had before I left. I wanted more, but the indecision on her face made me nervous. It made me want to persuade her to not leave my sight just yet because I needed to figure out what that emotion in her eyes was—the emotion she was throwing up to block out the depth that I knew she felt for me. The depth that was mutual.

  “Like old times, huh?” She glanced at the night sky and then over her shoulder to her house. “I guess I could do that, for a while.” She smiled and started toward me.

  “All right.” I grinned.

  We walked side by side, my hands crammed into my pockets and her arms folded across her chest, toward my house.

  “My mom’s at work. Someone called in tonight so she offered to pick up their shift for them,” I said as I fumbled with the lock. I’d never been so nervous before around Jules and it was beginning to freak me out a little.

  I opened the front door and stepped aside so she could go in first. A whiff of her shampoo glided to my nose and I had to force myself to control my hormone-induced thoughts. She smelled so sweet. Not like strawberries or peaches or some funky flower like most girls, but like coconuts. Jules smelled like summer to me, the sweetness of summer. My mind instantly flashed to sunblock and bathing suites…bikinis…Jules in a bikini. Control. Control.

  I closed the front door behind her and cleared my throat, knowing I needed to push those thoughts away. And fast.

  “It still looks exactly like I remembered it,” she said, glancing around the living room. “Except for this, this is new.” She pointed to a picture of a sunset above the TV.

  “Yeah. Mom hung that up there the other day. She said that a sunset is the one thing beautiful you can always count on at the end of the day. That no matter how hard or trying your day has been, you can always end it with beauty if you watch the sunset,” I said, turning my gaze back to her.

  “I like that. I’ll have to remember it,” she said, without taking her eyes off the picture.

  “So, what game do you want to play?” I asked, bending down to look for the first time at what actually came with the thing. I had to shift my thoughts to something else again because if I didn’t I was liable to pull her into me and kiss her any moment.

  “Umm.” Jules sat down on the floor and glanced at the box. “I don’t know. What does it come with?”

  “Looks like just this one. It’s got bowling, baseball, tennis, and boxing. Which do you want to play?”

  “Bowling, definitely bowling.” She crinkled her nose and I laughed, remembering suddenly how much she hated sports. “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I just forgot how cute you are when you crinkled your nose because you hate something.”

  Jules rolled her eyes. “You say that like you remember so much about me.”

  Her words wounded me a little, but I kept smiling to mask it. She wasn’t the only one who had perfected the smile-through-your-pain trick. “I do.”

  My confidence in knowing her so well made creases appear once more in her forehead just above her perfect little eyebrows. She doubted me. It was writ
ten all over her face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  JULIE

  How could he possibly think he knows the person I am today? When he left I was just a few days shy of my fifteenth birthday. I’d changed a lot in two years. “Yeah? So tell me something about myself, since you think you still know me so well and all.”

  The smile fell from his face and I watched as his lips pressed into a thin line. This was something I remembered about him—the look he got when he was concentrating hard. My heart began to pound and I began to analyze why. Was it because I hoped that he didn’t know me anymore as well as he thought he did? If that was the case, then I might be able to allow myself to feel a little of what I’d been feeling regarding him without letting him in too close so I wouldn’t get trampled when he eventually decided to move on. Or was my heart pounding because this was Nick I was talking about, and I knew that he’d surprise me with all that he still knew about me? All that he remembered.

  Nick let out a breath and his eyes met mine. I wanted to look away; I should have looked away, but I couldn’t. I was trapped in those hazel eyes with as many flecks of green as gold.

  “Well…I remember summer was always your favorite season, even though it meant being out of school, your only escape. I remember the scar you got on your knee when we were nine from running on the gravel in front of the shed. I remember your favorite pastime used to be to lie in the backyard and make shapes out of the clouds. And I remember how hard you used to grip my hand in the dark on the way back to your house from mine, even though you claimed you weren’t afraid of the dark…but I always knew you were. Either that or you just really liked to hold my hand.” He winked and flashed me a grin that would have made my knees weak if I’d been standing.

  I stared at him for a moment, amazed by all the things from growing up with me that he did remember, but at the same time searching for a way to make this moment, whatever it was turning into, disappear. “Those aren’t things about me; those are memories of me.”

  I hated that I’d said that. I hated the look that entered his eyes then, like I’d crushed him because I hadn’t believed him at all, like I’d just been waiting to tear whatever he planned on saying apart from the beginning.

  “Okay, that’s fair,” he said. “You always shuffle your feet in the dirt or at the ground whenever you’re nervous about something when talking to someone. Either that or you pick at your cuticles. You like blueberry Poptarts; your favorite color is blue; you’re the only person I’ve ever met who likes it when it rains; you’re afraid of heights…and the dark, although you won’t admit it. You got your nose pierced like you’d always wanted; you have a fetish for baggy sweaters and hooded jackets; and you don’t smile nearly enough anymore. There, does that cover enough, the old you and the new?”

  I was speechless. How could he remember such little, mundane things about me? And so many so easily?

  “Oh, and one more thing.” He stood and walked into the kitchen. I could hear him rummaging around and the sound of a fridge opening. After a few minutes he came back holding two glasses—one filled with a brownish, bubbly drink and the other filled with milk—and a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies tucked under his arm. “You dunk your cookies in Pepsi,” he added with a smile.

  I laughed. I laughed so hard and it felt incredible. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed for real. Nick sat down on the floor beside me and leaned his back against the couch.

  “There’s no coffee table so be careful not to spill your soda. Mom will kill me.” He gestured to the stained carpet and rolled his eyes. I wondered how much of it was blood from beatings his dad had given to him and his mom. “So, how about that game of bowling? We’ll have to share a remote.”

  “I don’t mind sharing,” I said, dipping a cookie in my Pepsi.

  “I still think that’s freaking strange,” he said, nodding to my cup and shaking his head.

  “Milk is gross.”

  “So is that,” he muttered with a grimace, pointing.

  “Just put in the damn game, Nick.” I smiled.

  I dunked my cookie again and took another Pepsi-soaked bite. Hanging out with Nick might not have been such a bad idea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  NICK

  I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath, then walked through the door to the Ingles three streets away from my house. It was the only place hiring besides a used bookstore and the ice cream shop Jules worked at, and I couldn’t picture myself working at either of those places. So Ingles it was.

  I stepped on the sensor in front of the automatic door and felt the cold air flow out and across my face. Didn’t these people know that summer was over now? It was the end of September for crying out loud. They could turn off the air conditioner now. Or at least turn it down.

  The application I’d picked up on the way home from school yesterday shook in my hand as I started toward the Customer Service area. I’d never had a job before; hell, I’d never even applied for a job before. This had been the first application I’d ever filled out. But it was time I got one. I felt like less of a man every time Jules said that she couldn’t hang out or had to get up early because she had to work.

  Hopefully that feeling was about to go away, for good.

  I held the application with both hands in front of my chest and drummed my fingers against the paper while I waited for the lady behind the counter to acknowledge me as she wrote something down.

  “Can I help you?” she asked in a monotone voice, glancing over the edge of her glasses at me with a glare.

  I swallowed hard. “I’d like to turn in this application I got yesterday.”

  She took it from my shaking fingers and I noticed her name tag said Betty. “What position are you looking for?”

  “I heard you had a stocking position available.”

  “Are you still in school?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered.

  “Can you lift crates?” she asked and then glanced at my arms.

  “I sure can.”

  “When can you start?”

  My heart soared. “Right now, if you need me.”

  “How about tomorrow at four?” She wrote something on my paper.

  “I’ll be here,” I said, smiling, my heart pounding in my throat.

  “You’ll be given a white Ingles shirt upon arrival tomorrow. Wear some khaki pants and tennis shoes.”

  “Okay, that’s fine. Thank you.” I beamed. “I’ll come dressed and ready at four.”

  And that was it. I was dismissed with a wave of Betty’s hand. I walked back out the automatic door with an ear-to-ear grin on my face and nervous butterflies fluttering around in my stomach.

  I thought about what Jules would say to me once she found out I’d gotten a job on my way home. I thought about how much money I would make and how I’d save every red cent for a car. My smile never wavered from my face until I started down our street and my house came into view. Dad’s beat up car sat in the driveway right beside mom’s. My feet faltered and my heart dropped to my stomach like a rock.

  I wondered what the hell he was doing back and began walking again. I was nearly at our house when I heard yelling coming from inside. So. Much. Yelling. I bolted up the three front steps and through the front door so quickly I didn’t have time to think about what I was going to do once inside or what I would find.

  Mom lay sprawled out on the living room floor, her palms pushing her off the ground, the right side of her face swollen, her nose trickling blood. Dad hovered over her, continuing to yell. To insult her. To demean her. He’d obviously hit her more than once, one of which must have been just seconds before I’d walked through the door. She was now attempting to scramble back to her feet. I saw dad’s hand reach out for her and I lost it.

  I charged after him without thinking and knocked him to the ground. Losing my footing too, I tumbled to the floor with him and struggled to gain the upper hand. Dad was a big man and alcohol made him think he was superm
an. It didn’t take much for him to end up on top of me, pounding my face with a closed fist.

  “Stop it, Robert! Stop!” mom screamed, her words echoing through my skull like thunder.

  I saw her delicate hands gripping his wide bicep as she attempted to pull him off me. Dad stopped long enough to backhand her and I saw her fall backward and into the sofa. At that moment, using the distraction of my mother to my advantage, I pummeled dad in the jaw as hard as I could. He fell sideways on me and I didn’t hesitate to slip out from beneath him. His hand flew out and gripped my ankle, jerking me back down to the floor so hard all the breath left my lungs.

  “You son of a bitch!” dad shouted as his fist met with the side of my head, again.

  His fist drew back to hit me once more and I winced and closed my eyes, using my arms to block his blow…but it never came. Instead he slumped forward, his forehead colliding with mine.

  “Are you okay, Nick?” mom asked as she tugged him off me.

  “What happened?” I wondered, out of breath.

  Mom held up a cast iron skillet and smiled, cracking open her busted lip even more.

  We spent the rest of my Saturday afternoon at the police station, pressing charges against my dad. And for the first time in my mother’s life she actually filed for a restraining order against him. I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud of her before.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  JULIE

  I walked home from work around six. It was nice out, not too chilly and not too warm. The sky had turned a meek gray, promising rain at any moment, and I hoped it waited until I at least reached my driveway.

  I crammed my hands into the back pockets of my jeans and allowed my mind to wander. Things between Nick and I had been good. Real good. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d missed him until recently. I’d been able to keep our friendship light, but every time he got that look in his eyes lately—the look of desire, the yearn to step over the invisible line I’d drawn in the sand between us and kiss me—I found it was becoming harder for me to remain still. To remain on the friendship side. To not allow him to press his perfect lips to mine. I wondered how much longer it would be before I was straddling that line, nearly falling on the other side and into his arms.