Dare You to Hate Me, page 20
Sitting up, I lean against the headboard and remain silent while she stares at her twisted hands that fidget on her lap. “Do you remember that one time I knocked on your window and you had to help me in because I was crying so bad I couldn’t climb in myself?”
The memory hits me hard. Her tear-stained face and shaking hands struggled to grip the windowpane and she was trying to swallow her sobs so my parents wouldn’t hear as I helped her inside. “I remember,” I grit out, jaw ticking over the path of memory lane I still struggle with revisiting. “I asked what happened and you could barely say a word. We—”
“Ended up falling asleep on your bed once I calmed down and never talked about it,” she finishes for me, nodding slowly. “You told me as long as I came to you, I didn’t have to say anything. All that mattered was that we had each other like we promised we would.”
I swallow down the rise of emotion that tries working its way up my throat.
“I’m not asking you give me that out all the time, Aiden, just on the things I already struggle with. I’m sorry for walking away and ignoring you when you were trying to help, but I’m not used to you being so demanding. Before you were a lot…” Cocking my head, I wait for her to finish enlightening me on who I was back then. “Er, softer isn’t the right word but more…patient. And I get that it’s probably because we went from seeing each other every day to being apart for years but—”
“That’s not why,” I cut her off.
Her face scrunches. “It’s not?”
Dropping the ball onto the mattress beside me, I cross my arms over my chest. “I may have been patient back then, but it didn’t mean I wanted to be. Every time you’d come into my room and didn’t tell me what happened, it drove me fucking nuts. But I knew if I asked you’d probably brush it off like it was nothing and that would have made me angrier. I took your silence, but I never accepted it.”
She blinks at me. “Oh.”
My lips flatten into a grim line at her response. “The reason why I want to know things now is because we’re older, we’re away from the place that made you crawl into my bed crying, and we have a chance to fix it. I’m not saying you can talk it out and forget all the reasons that made you want to leave home. I’ll never understand that because I’ve never been in your shoes. I may have heard your parents fight. Hell, the whole neighborhood did.” She winces at the fact. “But pretending like that part of you doesn’t exist means you can’t move on from it. Holding onto the shame you feel for not swallowing your pride and going home when you knew you couldn’t do it by yourself isn’t going to get you anywhere. Trust me, the only way to stop letting shit take over your life is to face it head on. That’s when you can find more than a scrap of the control you need.”
She squirms on the bed, drawing her legs up to cross under her. “Like your game on Friday? People say it’ll be an interesting one. Are you going to face them head on?”
I scoff. “I’m sure people have said that, especially if you’ve been talking to Caleb again. The Raiders had every right to kick me off their team. It’s just a game.” The last bit is a lie, and she sees through it.
“Doesn’t mean it can’t hurt.” Her refute doesn’t soak in, so she tries a new method that has my chest tightening. “You wouldn’t like it if I said the guys had a right to treat me like shit just because I stepped into their homes.”
“Don’t,” I warn.
“So,” she presses, “you can’t say what happened there doesn’t hurt you. I know they’re a good school. Elena babbles about the pro players that have come from there. You used to talk about Wilson Reed when we were younger. Even if you’re making a future right where you are, it’s okay to admit you care about how you got here. I know how much getting into that school would have meant to you and I’m sorry I couldn’t celebrate when you got the acceptance letter or comfort you when everything happened.”
“I couldn’t care less about them,” I insist, trying to drill it into her stubborn head. “Our situations don’t compare. Don’t you get it by now? If they made an exception for me, if I put up a fight like my parents wanted me to, I wouldn’t have come here. We never would have seen each other again.”
Her eyes go back to her lap. “You don’t know that for sure.”
“At risk of you being pissed off and walking out again—” She doesn’t hide the slight flinch from me. “—I know it’s true. How else would we have seen each other? You wouldn’t go back home on your own, you admitted that already. I tried looking you up online but you said you had a fake name so nobody could find you. Tell me how else we would have met up? Because I’ve got nothing.”
“I…” Her voice fades before she clears it and picks her head up to look at me. “I would have found you. It would be hard not to with your name plastered everywhere as a big hot shot football player.”
Her attempt to lighten the mood only sours mine more. “It would have taken me going pro for you to come out of the woodwork?”
Ivy’s eyes round as they snap up to meet mine. “What? No. I mean, yes, but only because it would have been easier to get in touch. You’ve talked about going to the NFL since you first tried out for youth football. It isn’t like whatever this is between us is based on what your future holds.”
I blow out a frustrated breath. “I’ve had people reach out once they heard my chances at going pro and it never gets any easier to deal with. It’s a big reason why I keep to myself. I can’t get in trouble or risk my shot at what I’ve worked so hard for, and nobody can use me.”
She frowns. “I bet that’s difficult.”
All I do is shake my head.
“If it makes you feel any better, I would have still found a way. Even if you weren’t on billboards or in Dorito commercials wearing some famous team’s jersey.”
A small grin cracks on my face. “You remember.”
She nudges me with her leg, a matching smile teasing her lips. “That we used to make up random commercials for Doritos and pretend you were their newest poster boy? Yeah. I remember that well.”
We both get a laugh over the old memories of us perching ourselves in front of my mother’s video camera and acting out a scene. Ivy always told me to keep it under sixty seconds and would make me do it again if I went over.
Once the nostalgia rubs off, the reality sinks back in. We lose the smiles and watch each other with wariness.
It’s me who says, “I may be a demanding prick these days, but it’s because I want what’s best for you. Is that so bad?”
She bites her bottom lip and slowly shakes her head. “I guess not.”
“Then why do you fight me?”
“A lot of reasons. Do I really deserve you treating me with respect? Sometimes it feels like I should have a worse life than I already do for making the choices I have. It’s fight or flight for me, Aiden. It always has been.”
“You don’t have to do either here.”
I can tell she wants to argue but something in her mind tells her not to. Instead, she says, “The day you had to help me into your room was the first day I’d ever thought about hurting myself. I heard Mom telling somebody on the phone that she thought about packing up and leaving. I don’t know who she was talking to, but she said something about not being sure if she’d take us. When she found out I overheard she tried telling me it was because she’d have to find a job and get her own money before she could support Porter and me. But there was something in her eyes that made me feel like she was lying. I’d felt like a burden before whenever she’d say how much she wished she weren’t stuck at home with us or married or how much she wished she’d gotten an education to have a different life for herself.
“I guess I thought if I hurt myself maybe she would feel differently. Be motherly. Feel bad about all the times she wanted a different life because she was stuck with two kids. It wasn’t like she was cold to me my whole life. She’d take care of me when I was sick, make my favorite food for my birthdays if they had the money, and buy me things whenever she could. But the moments her and Dad were at each other’s throats it was like she was a different person. I remember her telling me once that love changes people and I never understood why she let it. There are so many things that could have made them better. They could have sold the store or split up or something. I mean, no kid wants to see their parents get divorced but it’s better than them constantly being visited by the cops when their fights get too loud, and making their kids feel like part of the problem.”
The first time the lights from the cop car lit up my house after the Underwoods moved in next door, I’d asked Mom if everything was okay with Ivy. We hadn’t known each other long at that point, but I knew cops showing up usually wasn’t a good sign. Mom was holding the phone to her chest with a frown on her face as she looked out the window, her eyes focused on the large bay window that lined up with their living room. When she glanced down at me, she rubbed my shoulder and told me to go back to bed after saying, “Ivy is fine, sweetie. Her parents just need a little guidance, that’s all.”
And I believed her.
Until it happened again.
And again.
And again, until I saw her father being put into the back of one of the cop cars.
When I made the pact with Ivy, I wanted her to know she could always come to me whenever she needed someone. It took one more fight between her parents for her to tap on my window after dark and make a spot for herself in my closet.
I promised her I’d never speak a word to either Mom or Dad about her frequent sleepovers, but I think they knew. Mom would give me extra food and a knowing look or leave one or two more blankets on my bed. But we never discussed it, so I kept the charade up.
“I didn’t hurt myself until after I left.” Her voice breaks me from the red and blue memories, dissolving them until her face comes back into view. “That day was a wakeup call for me. I could find another way. I thought it’d be better if I left. There were…things that were said to me out of anger, things that couldn’t be taken back. Sometimes Mom would apologize but most times she pretended it never happened or acted like she wasn’t serious. Those sorts of things build and build and build, collecting under your skin and in your soul until you can’t take it anymore. Sometimes the emotions won’t come out on their own and you need to do something about it. It started with my thighs for me. A tiny cut here and there. Then got worse with each day that went by after leaving that letter and realizing there was no looking back.”
My fists clench until there’s a bite of pain in the center of my palms from where my fingernails dig in. “You always had a home with us. If you didn’t want to go back to your parents, I could have convinced my parents to find a space for you at my place.”
“Don’t do that,” she tells me gravely. “I already told you that you can’t wish for things to be different. None of us get a re-do button in life. I used to stay up at night wondering what would happen if I went home and begged for forgiveness, but nothing would have changed. They’d be angry, maybe angrier, and they’d fight and make me feel worthless all over again. If I wasn’t a burden then, leaving and causing a scene like that would have made me a big one if I’d gone back. I’d be the chaos in their lives like they said I was.”
My lips part. “What?”
Her tongue dips out for a moment in contemplation before nodding. “Mom was on edge about everything and I kept asking for money and attention. Things Porter seemed to get so easily from them. And I’ll always remember Mom saying, ‘I don’t need all this extra chaos right now, Ivy. And that’s all you are.’ And that wasn’t the first time she’d indicated I was the chaos in her life. She’d said it when I was little and would do something stupid like draw on the walls or accidently knock something over when I was playing. She’d be upset with Dad and say things to me that I remember to this day.”
When she sees my face, she frowns but manages to reason with me. “The thing is, I sort of get it. When our emotions run high, we say things we don’t mean. I like to be by myself when I’m upset because I’ve seen firsthand what our emotions can do to us if we’re not careful.
“Either way, it started feeling like I was the chaos she said I was, even if all I wanted was for everyone to get along. I stopped remembering what it felt like to hear them talking instead of fighting. I wasn’t able to remember when Dad would come home. Sometimes he’d just be there, and the only reason I’d know is because they’d find something to argue about. He avoided her when she’d suggest selling the store, she’d get upset when he ignored her, I’d fail at making it better, and it’d start all over another day. It’s why I don’t like being called Chaos. I tried making a joke out of it, like I could embrace what I was, but it stopped being funny when I realized Mom might be right.”
Even though I shake my head in disagreement, there aren’t words to tell her that isn’t true. She’ll always believe her version of things, and nobody will convince her otherwise.
I remember Mom and Dad coming back home after I told them Ivy ran away. Mom’s eyes were red, but she tried hiding them from me, and Dad patted my back and shook his head when Mom disappeared into their room as if to tell me to leave her alone. When he went in after her, I heard them talking, Mom’s wavering voice asking Dad, “How can they just send her away, John? She has a life and friends here and they act like they don’t care.”
I never understood what they meant. Ivy told me she was getting on a bus and finding something better for herself.
Come with me.
Three words that haunt me still.
But not as much as the two I replied with.
I can’t.
“I’m always going to be screwed up because of the decisions I made, Aiden. There’s no getting rid of what I’ve done. There’s no forgetting the nightmares I wake up from, or the memories I get trapped in. The feelings deep inside me are engraved in my soul. I’ll never fully be better. This is…it’s a lifetime of battles ahead of me, and I don’t want to make anyone suffer by watching me figure out if I want to live or die when it all becomes too much. Even if I never want to remember my choices, I don’t necessarily regret them because I wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t experience what I did. Does that mean I’m proud of succumbing to my weakness? To my thoughts? No. But I have to remind myself that I want to live more than I want to die—that I have reasons to now when I didn’t before.”
Clicking my tongue, I rub the back of my neck and heft out a sigh. “Damn, Ivy. That’s… You make it hard to be pissed at you.”
When I glance back at her, she’s trying not to grin, and I’m glad the thick tension has dissipated slightly. “You used to tell me that all the time.”
I grumble, “Some shit never changes.”
Unwinding her legs, she stretches them out beside mine. “About the game this weekend… If I wanted to attend, who do I need to blow to get a ride?”
My face shadows over. “Not funny.”
She cracks a grin. “I think so.” Before I counter her, she’s moving forward and tracing the elastic waistband of my basketball shorts with one of her fingers. “I find myself free and interested in seeing how bad these Raiders are compared to the Dragons now that we have you. I’m sure they’ll be kicking themselves for letting you go.”
All it takes is her pulling down my shorts and blowing on the tip of my engorged cock for me to groan, “I’ll drive us.”
And the only response I get back is her lips wrapping around me until words no longer matter.
The cloud of flour comes out of nowhere as I’m stirring the dough, pausing to blink at the mess covering me. “Did you just…?”
I look over at Aiden—who’s sporting the I love to rub my meat apron that DJ got him after he, Caleb, and Justin all saw their tight end helping me cook dinner—and see an unconvincing look of innocence on his face.
When he asked where I was going earlier, I told him I wanted to make some cookies. It was a way to procrastinate from doing homework, which still sits untouched in my backpack on the couch downstairs. I didn’t think he’d follow, much less tie the apron around himself, but he’s been letting me guide him through the recipe like his mom used to do for me.
“I’m not cleaning that up,” I tell him, fighting a smile when I put the bowl down and wipe off the flour remnants from my shirt. It’s impossible to look clean considering it’s pure black with a mostly faded logo on it from some old soda corporation. It was a cheap thrift store find, already broken in with holes, so I guess a little flour won’t kill it.
“We’ll make DJ do it.”
From the other room where said boy is studying with a few of the guys for some sports class they take together, we hear, “No, you won’t, Betty Crocker.”
I laugh and return back to the thick dough, pulling some out with the spoon and grinning at Aiden. “Remember when we used to get into fights about who’d get to lick the spoon?”
He steals the spoon from me and brings it to his mouth. “Don’t act like it was any competition. My mom always let you have it. I think she loved you more than me.”
I grab the wooden utensil back. “Don’t put it in your mouth! I still need to use it to stir in the chocolate chips.”
Another remark comes from the peanut gallery perched in the other room in the form of a “that’s what she said” joke that spawns a fit of laughter among the guys.
I roll my eyes but grin as Aiden snorts at his roommate’s cliché quip. It’s not too far off considering where my mouth usually is every morning if Aiden hasn’t already left for the gym. Seeing his face contort with pleasure as I suck him off is one of my favorite ways to start the day, and it always gets better when he flips me around, spreads my legs and shows me the same kind of attention.
I turn toward the kitchen door. “None of you are getting these cookies if you don’t shut up and study.”
I feel a set of eyes on me. “Isn’t that a little hypocritical considering you’re doing anything in your power not to do schoolwork?”
