Page 93 of Paper Hearts

“I miss her,” I whine, trying to get my phone back.

“I do too, but I also know your vagina is going to grow cobwebs if you don’t have sex soon.”

I scrunch my nose up. I haven’t even thought about sex with anyone but Ender. “Gross. I don’t want to.”

She slaps me… across the face. Not hard, but enough to shock me. “Knock it off. You can’t live your life in fear or wondering what could have happened with Ender. He left. You need to move on.”

She’s right, I do, but doing that isn’t exactly easy for me.

So the plan? She takes me tailgating before a football game. I don’t remember any of it because, well, Fireball is involved and before I know it, I run into Carter Wells. Do you remember him? Oh, I bet you do. Lake… Ender’s friend. Arya’s first time…. That’s him.

I have so many questions for him, but I’m so shit-faced by the time we run into him, it’s useless. I don’t make any sense. Or at least I don’t think I do.

Outside a truck while he’s sitting on a tailgate, baseball hat backwards, smirk on his lips and trying his hardest to get me to sit next to him, I grab him by his hoodie and pull his face to mine. “Do you know where he is?”

Carter shakes his head. “Nobody does. Last I heard was he joined the military.”

“He didn’t call you after he left the lake?”

“No, he didn’t.” His eyes lock on mine and I can sense his sincerity. “I haven’t heard from him since our senior year.”

“Ugh.” I drop my hands from his hoodie and reach for my red cup. I take a drink, then another, and set it down next to him. “I can’t believe he’d disappear like this and fall off the face of the earth.”

“You can’t?” Carter snorts, lifting his own beer in hand to his lips. “Really? His old man was a piece of shit to him. No wonder he wanted to leave so bad.”

The problem is that last year with him I thought his plan to leave included me. And it didn’t, for reasons he didn’t give me.

Carter reaches forward and yanks on the strings of my sweatshirt. “He loved you.”

“Not enough to stay.” My words hold a sadness I can’t bury deep enough. It’s probably all over my face.

Carter sets his drink down between his legs and scratches his scruffy jaw. “He loved you enough to leave.”

I meet his eyes. “What the fuck does that mean?”

Sighing, he drops his head forward. “The Ender you knew… that’s not the guy most got.”

Suddenly I’m interested in anything Carter has to say. “What was he like then?”

“Angry. Destructive. I only ever saw him smiling around you.”

“Not Kamila?”

Carter laughs. “Fuck no. Besides every guy on our team fucked around with her, but Ender wasn’t… I don’t know how to explain it.” He pauses and runs his hand over his jaw. “I don’t know if you want to hear this, but you know, he fucked her sometimes, but she was someone to give him what he wanted or needed. Sex. A moment in time when he wasn’t inside his own head. But then he met you and I think it was different for him. You were young, innocent, and I think he forgot what that felt like. You reminded him. He wasn’t allowed to be young and carefree. Theo wouldn’t let him. And outside of the lake, you wouldn’t have wanted to know Ender, and he wouldn’t let you. He didn’t have girlfriends. Hell, he barely had any damn friends.”

“That’s because of fucking Theo.” I take a seat next to Carter on the tailgate, looking over at him. It’s loud around us, everyone screaming, smoke from the Traeger in the parking lot filtering between us, but through all that, I realize this is the first glimpse into Ender’s life outside of the lake I got. Arya always kept everything so secret. Maybe for her family’s sake, I don’t know. Even Lana doesn’t talk about it.

“Theo was hard on him.”

“Hard on him?” I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Do you know how many times he showed up with bruises and cuts on his face because of Theo?”

Carter tips his head, his lips in a flat line. “Probably as many times as he showed up at my place shit-faced, needing stitches, a place to crash, or worse, the time Theo broke his hand two days before state championships and Ender still caught for three games straight in hundred-degree weather. He had five broken bones in his catching hand but wouldn’t let on. He wouldn’t give Theo the gratification of knowing he hurt him.”

Tears roll down my cheeks. “How long have you known him?”

Carter chews on his lip. “Since we started playing together in Little League. So like seven or eight.”

“Was he the same back then or did Theo do this to him?”

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