Such a Bad Influence: A Novel, page 15
I stretched and rolled over, finding Wade flat on his back, snoring softly. I’d thought we’d be awkward—ridiculous, even—when we had sex. With him being so experienced and me being, well . . . me. I’d anticipated our bodies going in different directions, never quite syncing enough to find a rhythm.
Somehow the opposite had happened. We hadn’t needed to find a rhythm, because we had it from the moment we started kissing. He’d kissed me roughly, holding me close, but was surprisingly gentle with his touch. His hands had glided along my skin like they’d traced the same route a thousand times before. And I’d fit into place beside him, my hands pulling him closer than I could possibly hold him. I’d nearly drowned in sensations, the rest of the world forgotten while our pulses melded together.
It would’ve been easy to go back to sleep. To curl up beside him, close my eyes, and let the morning light wake us in a few hours. I was already matching my breaths to his faint snores.
But that hadn’t been the plan. Even as the mattress threatened to swallow me, begging me to stay, I tossed the sheet back and slipped off the bed. Our clothing was scattered on the floor. With no light, I used my sense of touch to find my underwear and jeans.
As I pulled on my pants, I lost my balance and knocked into the dresser. My hip bone caught the corner. “Ow!”
Wade stirred, reaching his hand across the mattress. “What are you doing? Come back to bed,” he mumbled.
I searched for my bra, finding it on the other side of the room. I clasped it behind my back as Wade opened his eyes. He wore a lazy smile. “The clothing is going to make it harder to have sex again.” Then he waved his hand in my direction as if no longer concerned. “Never mind. I’ll make it work.”
“I’m sure you would have.”
He yawned like a lion. “Where are you going?”
“My place.”
“It’s late, just stay here. I’m tired, and I don’t want to walk you home.”
What a gentleman. “I think I can manage the fifty feet from your door to mine.”
Catching my tone, he sat up and leaned on his elbow. He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it more. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you sneaking off in the middle of the night like a teenager?”
I found my shirt under his pants. How had it ended up near the bathroom door? “I’m not ‘sneaking off.’ I’m going home and going to bed.”
There was a pause. “What are you doing Wednesday?”
I didn’t answer. Just pulled my shirt over my head.
Wade continued, no longer sounding tired, “I work tomorrow and Tuesday, but I thought we could grab dinner.”
“Why?”
“’Cause dinner’s typically what happens on a date.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Why not?” There was an edge to his voice. “I want to take you on a date. What’s the big deal?”
“Have you ever been on a date, Wade? I don’t think you’d like it.”
“Of course I’ve been on a date, just not with you—which is why I’m asking. I don’t want to mess this up.”
“There’s nothing to mess up. We’re fine.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
“Because I’m tired and I want to get to bed. It’s not rocket science.”
“Felicity,” he said, sitting up to get a better look at me, “what’s going on? You don’t sound like yourself.”
“I told you once that you didn’t know me very well.”
“I know you’re not the kind of girl who has one-night stands.”
“Well, you’re wrong, Wade, because that’s all this is.” I headed toward the bedroom door. “I’ll see you around.”
“Wait.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him leap out of bed. He chased after me into the hallway, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t look back. “Felicity, wait! What did I do?”
I grabbed my shoes and ran outside barefoot. The door slammed behind me with a frightening bang. The sound hit me so hard that I fell to my knees in the grass. The cool air swept through my hair. Fortunately, I didn’t see the navy truck. Apparently, Rodney had trusted that I’d be staying in for the rest of the night.
I rushed to my feet, wishing I could move my house closer. I stepped onto the porch, forgetting about the broken first step. “Ahhh!” I cried out as my bare foot fell straight through the wood, slicing the skin in several spots. I hopped, pulling my foot free, and launched myself onto the porch before I could make any more noise and wake Alex. I tiptoed upstairs, not worried about my dirty feet as I crawled into bed. Sheets could be washed. The scrapes would heal. But memories could haunt a person forever.
Exhaustion became my only advantage.
I stared at the ceiling, fighting to keep the feeling in my gut—the one screaming that I’d made a huge mistake—from taking over.
A loud banging noise floated upstairs. I rolled over. The alarm clock showed that it was 7:00 a.m. I groaned. What was Alex doing? Normally, I couldn’t get her up and moving before ten.
“Alex, stop it!” I shouted and rolled back over. I was in no mood for this. Whatever she was doing could wait a few hours. The banging continued. The whole house seemed to be shaking. “Alex!”
Half asleep, I grabbed my robe from behind the door and went downstairs to stop the madness. I gingerly stepped around the couch and toward the front door, where the sound grew louder.
Wade knelt near the bottom porch step, toolbox by his side, as he hammered the wood into place.
“What are you doing?” I covered my ears as he hit the step again. If he whacked any harder, the house was going to collapse.
He wiped the sweat from his forehead but didn’t look at me. “Fixing your step.”
“I can see that, but maybe you could come back at a normal hour.” Like at one in the afternoon. How was he not tired? I’d left his house only a few hours ago.
He didn’t acknowledge my words beyond continuing to assault the porch. Each bang made my eardrums hurt. I wanted to go back inside and sleep for a few more days.
“I think you’ve got it nailed in there.”
He stopped and glanced up at me. His dark look made me take a step back.
“Wade—” I started, but he interrupted me.
“We had a deal, Felicity.” He stood. “I gave you the tape for your prank against Cheryl, and you left me alone. That was the agreement.” He pointed at the ground for added emphasis. “We had a deal.”
“I remember.”
“Then how do you explain last night?” He shook his head in disgust, like he didn’t want to look at me. “I lay awake thinking that I’d done something wrong, until I realized that last night was nothing more for you than an opportunity to get back at me for what happened in high school.”
“Don’t you dare bring that up,” I hissed, taking a step closer to him as if I were going to fight him. He should know better. It was our unspoken rule that we’d never speak of that incident. That was how we’d kept relative peace between us for the past four years.
His voice rose, and if we had neighbors, I’d be concerned about waking them. “I’m not that bright, but it took about an hour after you left to connect the dots. You should feel proud of yourself. You got me. You knew I liked you so you had sex with me, then tossed me out like trash. Well done, Felicity.”
“Perhaps now you know how every woman in town feels after you sleep with them and ditch them the next morning.”
“You don’t give a damn about the other women in town. This is about you. It’s about what I did to you when we were teenagers.”
“What you did deserved far worse than what you got.”
“So you were trying to hurt me.”
“Get off my porch, Wade.” I turned to go back inside. I wouldn’t feel guilty. I had told myself that a hundred times last night. I wouldn’t feel any remorse for what I did.
He called after me, “It was one night like, ten years ago. I really would’ve thought you’d be over it by now.”
“Is that what you thought?” I spun around to face him. “You had, what, one bad hour where you thought a woman wasn’t interested in you? I had four miserable years of high school because of you. I didn’t go to prom because of you. I didn’t go to homecoming or school events because the girls mocked me mercilessly. It might’ve been better if you’d left town, but of course you stuck around because you had nowhere else to go. Then you moved in next door and made everything worse!”
He had the good sense to look repentant as I shouted, but then he muttered, “I was seventeen. I did stupid things. We all did.”
“I didn’t. Not like that.”
“Well, we can’t all be perfect like you, Felicity. Some of us are trying to have interesting lives, and with that comes a few mistakes.”
“It wasn’t a mistake. You did it intentionally!”
“I was a teenager. What’s your excuse? You’re twenty-seven years old and running around town vandalizing stores and stealing cars.” He paused, eyes meeting mine. “Is this something your mom would be proud of?”
There was nothing else to say except, “Fuck you, Wade.”
He’d gone too far by bringing my dead mother into the conversation. “Don’t you ever speak about my mom. And as for what I did to you, she wouldn’t have cared. She hated you, because that’s what mothers do when their daughters come home in tears and can’t get out of bed for a week. If she were here, she’d be applauding.”
He grabbed his toolbox from the ground. “The step is fixed. Have a great life, Felicity.”
“I didn’t need you to fix it, Wade. And I certainly didn’t ask you to.”
I walked inside and slammed the door. My chest rose, and I put my hand over my heart to steady it. I had never been so angry in my life. I felt as though the ground were shaking and the paintings and photographs would fall from the walls any second.
Alex stood by the couch in my baggy pajamas. She’d heard everything. There was no way she could’ve slept through that.
“You had sex with Wade?”
“Alex, not now.” I didn’t want to have this discussion. Not now, and not with her. She wouldn’t understand. Nobody would understand.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“But you said you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t.”
“Then how could you do that if you weren’t serious about him? You know he’s practically in love with you.”
I snorted. Not anymore. “It’s complicated, which is why I don’t want to date him.”
“But you wanted to sleep with him and kick him to the curb the next morning?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly. I dug my fingernails into my palms to keep from feeling guilty. “And he deserved it. I’m not going to feel bad because Wade can’t handle his feelings.”
Her eyes widened like she’d never seen me before. Which maybe she hadn’t. At least, not this side of me.
“But he comes over all the time. He lets you borrow his truck, he fixes everything we break, he helped dig up the sprinkler system when we had a leak two weeks ago. You can’t do this to him.”
I understood how the situation looked to her. It killed me that she thought I’d done something wrong. “He . . . he only does those things because he feels guilty. It’s not about him liking me; it’s about him not liking himself.”
“And you handled it by hurting him? How is that fair?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you. Or Wade. Or anyone in this town. I’m done acting like it’s okay for everyone to treat me like crap and ignore me when I complain. Why can’t I do what I want? Everyone else seems to be able to.”
“But it’s Wade,” she said. “He’s not like everyone else.”
“He’s exactly like everyone else! You can’t see it because you’re eighteen and he’s attractive and has that bad-boy attitude. You’re not the first person to fall for his act.”
“What if it wasn’t an act?”
I held up my hands. Tears brimmed in my eyes, threatening to spill over, and I didn’t want her to see them. “I don’t want to fight about this. I had a long night, and I’m going to back bed.”
“Felicity!” Alex called out as I ran up the stairs. “Felicity!”
Twenty-Three
High school had been an excruciating time. My experience wasn’t unique. It was expected that those four years would be bumpy and awkward, and everyone had to get through them.
But not everyone had to endure four years with their mother as an algebra teacher, who was universally considered by the male student population to be “hot.” It didn’t help matters that I was decidedly less than attractive—or, in the eloquent words of Danielle Herbert, “Why is your mother so pretty and you’re so ugly?” I wished I had an answer for her. All I could glean from my frizzy hair, short frame, and pudgy waistline was that the gods had hated me.
And on a rainy Thursday my sophomore year—September 28, to be exact—I found out how deeply that hatred ran . . .
The bell rang for sixth period, and I hustled to my locker. A red homecoming banner covered the wall above it, a constant reminder that once again I would not be attending the dance that Saturday. Oh well, I thought, swapping my biology textbook out for my geometry workbook. I already had Saturday’s movie picked out anyway. There was nothing that my couch, television, and popcorn couldn’t fix.
As was my routine, I put on lip gloss between fifth and sixth period, smacking my lips together as I headed to Mrs. Byrne’s classroom. As per school policies, I couldn’t be taught by my mother, which was unfortunate because Mrs. Byrne wasn’t nearly as good of a math teacher. She was strict and a hard grader. Showing your work didn’t count unless the answer was completely correct—the bane of every math student.
But unlike everyone else who justifiably felt their spirits drop the moment they entered the classroom, sixth period was my favorite hour of the day. First, I had an undiscovered knack for geometry. Second, I had been assigned a seat in the back row of the classroom, where I could hide and avoid everyone unless called upon. Third, and most important, a seventeen-year-old named Wade Londergan occupied the seat directly in front of me.
I was already seated when the senior quarterback walked into the room just before the second bell. He let his gym bag slide down his arm before he crashed into the chair. He smiled casually at Shelby Glensen, whom he’d dated for a week last year before moving on to Wendy Stells, the current captain of the cheerleading squad. That relationship had lasted for a record-breaking five weeks for Wade, but he’d broken up with her during the summer, as he didn’t want to be tied down during his upcoming senior football season.
Staring at the back of his head for the first three weeks of school hadn’t been our only interaction. No, no, no. On August 29, the fourth day of school, he had turned around in his seat and asked, “Do you have a pen?”
“Uh . . .” I’d sputtered, seeing only his bright-blue eyes. I hadn’t answered quickly enough before three other people offered him several choices. Drat! He’d turned around without a second glance, but the interaction was significant enough to merit an entire page in my journal that night. I’d cursed my slow brain while noting that he’d chosen the blue pen over the black and green options. Blue like his eyes.
Then, on another occasion—September 6, the day after Labor Day—he’d said, “Hey, Felicia,” to me before sitting down. I didn’t even mind that he’d messed up my name. Close enough. I couldn’t expect more from the guy who routinely bragged about having a 2.6 GPA. Ohio regulations stated that students must maintain a 2.5 GPA to be eligible for participation in after-school activities.
Mrs. Byrne spoke at the chalkboard, drawing a myriad of shapes and angles. I took diligent notes as Wade tapped his fingers on his desk, looking like he wanted to be doing anything else. A note was passed to him from Evan, one of Wade’s friends who followed him everywhere. Wade chuckled under his breath and put the note in his pocket. Several people had turned in their seats to look at him, excitement etched across their faces.
Mrs. Byrne noticed the distraction. “And what, in the equation, is C squared, Mr. Londergan?”
Wade straightened in his chair. I could tell he had no clue.
“Sixty-four,” I whispered from behind him. I didn’t know what had come over me. I’d never really spoken to him before, much less given him the answer to a question when he hadn’t asked. But it didn’t take a genius to realize he was going to get it wrong. Often he threw out the number 4, his football-jersey number, and didn’t worry about being incorrect.
“Sixty-four,” Wade said, sounding as confident as ever.
Mrs. Byrne’s lips pushed together, but she moved on without a follow-up.
“Nice,” Shelby whispered, twirling her hair with her finger. I was surprised that the entire room didn’t break out in applause. He’d never answered correctly before.
Wade shrugged like he was naturally a genius but didn’t want any attention for it.
I ducked down, hoping to go unnoticed for the rest of the class.
When the bell rang, I collected my books, ready to move quickly to the gymnasium. I had exactly four minutes to make it all the way to the locker room so I could change for the one class I was in danger of getting a B in.
As was my custom, I said a silent prayer that we were not playing dodgeball in gym that day.
“Felicity,” Wade said, standing beside my desk. I shouldn’t have known his voice so well. I paused, arms full of books, and looked up at him. I wasn’t sure he knew my actual name until that moment. My heart soared with nervousness, especially as his friends, the ones who usually waited for him so they could follow him around, were all standing by the classroom door. They were huddled in a group, heads together and whispering. Shelby laughed, then someone shushed her. Their eyes were on Wade, who for some reason was only looking at me.
“Yes?” I was encouraged by his smile. His perfect all-American smile that had never been reserved for me. I pushed my glasses farther up my nose.
