Page 111 of Even After Sunset

I don’t explain it to her, because I want toshow her.I want to prove to her over time that the moody guy from the summer is not who I really am. I’m not innately a total asshole.

“Of course I wanted to see you,” I tell her instead. “I missed you… A lot.”

Her eyes do that saucer-round thing, and she leans back to take in my face.

“You did?”

Does she really not get how much I like her? I don’t get close toanyone.Ever. And I got close to her.

At least I got one thing right: I picked the right girl to get close to. Because Jackie Delaney… she’s something else. She’s one in a million.

She always has been.

“I’m so glad you forgave me,” Jax says. “For telling Richard… and going to rehab and everything.”

This girl. She’s killing me.

“Yeah, about that…” I say, looking down at the floor, where my pride has probably slipped and shrivelled up into a ball. “I’m sorry that I made you feel bad. I was the one with the problem. Not you. I just…”

My words trail off as I struggle to find the right way to say this. I’m not even sure thereisa right way to apologize for something like that.

“I just needed someone else to blame. All I cared about was getting my next drink… and you were making it really hard. Then you cut me off completely as soon as you told Richard. And in that moment, I couldn’t see beyond that. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than that.”

“It must have been really hard,” she says. “Rehab, I mean.”

“Meh. Piece of cake,” I shrug. And we both laugh.

“You two doing alright out here?” Richard’s voice calls from down the hall. He steps out of the kitchen and I can tell he’s trying to be relaxed about the situation, but his eyes take everything in, scrutinizing how close we’re standing.

I take a step back, because I’ve got a lot of respect for this guy. I never thought I’d say that, but I didn’t realize it until recently. The way he went out on a limb for me over the past few months, several times—when I probably didn’t deserveit. Hell, he even tried looking out for me when I was a kid, when he really had no reason to.

“We’re good,” Jax calls, practically beaming. “We’ll be out in a sec!”

Richard nods. His eyes meet mine and he smiles. He’s trying really hard to trust that I am not an asshole. I don’t think he’s the kind of guy who would just stand back and shrug it off if an asshole was standing this close to his pride and joy. He’s not the push-over I thought he was.

I smile back and shove my hands into my pockets for good measure, and he disappears back into the kitchen. We hear the screen door open and then close again.

“Come meet my friends,” Jax says, placing her hand against my chest.

It’s just her hand. On my chest. But man… it makes it really hard to concentrate on what she’s saying.

“I already met your friends,” I manage to say. I’m not smiling anymore though, because I’m not exactly excited about having to become buddy-buddy with a bunch of dudes who had me up against a wall and physically threw me out of some girl’s house just a few months ago.

Oh yeah, and that girl, the one whose house I was thrown out of… with the two-hundred-thousand-dollar lump of glass I broke—she must be one of Jackie’s friends, too. So that’s another fun meet-and-greet in my future.

But I’ll do it. For Jax.

And I have to assume that a girl like her wouldn’t be hanging out with these people if they were really a bunch of douche bags. I need to be open to the idea that not all preppy rich kids are necessarily douche-bags.

It’s possible. Not likely—but still, possible.

“I hate to burst your bubble,” I tell her. “But your friends are gonna hate me.”

“My friends don’t know you.”

“Pretty sure that scene I made at the party was enough for them to form an opinion.”

Jackie rolls her eyes. “That doesn’t count. And anyway, they’ve probably forgotten about that whole thing.”

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