Page 81 of No Saint
Why the fuck are you watching the news?
Dad still refuses to pay for cable. It’s this or Married With Children.
For as long as I could remember, Jade’s house only had five channels on the TV. My dad wasn’t rich, but we’d even had cable.
I typed outHow’s your dad, deleted it, typed it out again, then made myself press send.
He’s okay. How is the party?
Okay never meant okay. I knew that, but I took the hint. She didn’t want to talk about it.
Boring as fuck.
Hendrix hasn’t serenaded you and forever ruined a childhood song yet?
Thankfully, no.
Tell him I said he’s losing his touch.
I stared at that thread, ignoring the party on the porch and warring with myself long enough to finish my beer. We’d both avoided each other for the past few days, which was probably why the ride to Dayton felt tense. We’d driven most of the way in silence, every once in a while Jade commenting on my “crap taste” in music. The more I’d thought about it, the more guilty I felt for stopping her the other night. Not because I shouldn’t have, but because I knew her well enough to know I’d hurt her feelings. I figured she’d taken it as some kind of rejection. That whole drive, I’d tried to find some way to bring it up but failed.
I worried that if I let it, this would be the thing that irreversibly fucked up any possibility of… Of what? I didn’t even know what I wanted. What I needed. That was a lie; I’d needed Jade since the first time I’d kissed her.
Want to get out for a bit?
Bubbles danced across the screen, then stopped, then started again.
Thanks, but I’m about to go to bed.
Or maybe she wasn’t upset that I’d stopped her. Maybe she was upset that anything had happened to begin with. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a shadow approaching.
“Hey, Wolf.” Nora stepped into the light coming from the house behind Hendrix’s. Her dark hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and she had on the same yellow sundress she wore to most parties back in high school.
I hadn’t seen her in months, but laying eyes on her didn’t stir a damn thing inside of me. Not like it did every time I looked at Jade.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming into town.” She stopped in front of the trampoline, clutching a Solo cup to her chest.
We still talked. We’d been friends before we dated, and when I’d ended things with her, it wasn’t a fight. Wasn’t full of fuck yous or hatred. I told her the truth—that I wasn’t in a place to give her what she wanted or deserved. It wasn’t her fault that I’d tried to use her to get over Jade, and it didn’t seem right to cut her off.
“Yeah. Last-minute decision.”
She handed her beer to me, then climbed onto the trampoline beside me. “How’s school been?”
“All right. How’s work?”
“It’s work.” She shrugged. “Boring.” She stared at me through the dark for a second. “Why aren’t you at the game?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” She sat in silence for a moment, swinging her feet over the edge. “You know, ever since I’ve started work, I don’t really talk to anyone anymore.”
“What about Frank?”
“Fred? We broke up.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
She sniffed a few times. “It’s okay. He wasn’t good for me anyway. At least that’s what Dad said.”
