Page 88 of The Midseason Fakeout

He checks his phone. “Nope.” He reaches for mine and scans my screen, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you expected.”

My stomach falls. “Darrin, are you kidding me?”

“No!” His voice is like an explosion, and I take a few steps back. He takes his headphones from around his neck and throws them onto the table next to him. “You’ve been living in la-la land, Bailey. We’re not staying here, and this morning, your boyfriend answered your phone. What did you think would happen?”

“Oh, I don’t know. To be treated like an adult. You didn’t get texts, Darrin. You didn’t get an early morning phone call saying you had to go to some important luncheon that you were just then hearing about.”

His face twists in confusion. “That’s why she called you?”

It’s my turn to explode. “Yes! For fuck’s sake, it’s always something. I’m expected to follow along with whatever she does. I thought I would be safe for a while. We live a couple of hours away now!”

“And you didn’t know about the lunch?”

“Are you new here?”

“Bails…”

“Don’tBailsme.” I turn in a circle, nearly pulling my hair out. “Did you know she gave me shit because she saw us on TV at Aidan’s game? My clothes weren’t right. I had paint on my face. I shouldn’t have been acting like that.

“Mom wants the daughter who sits quietly next to her at those stupid luncheons with all of her fake-ass friends. Someone who only smiles and nods, and who’ll eventually push out a couple of well-polished kids. Possibly daughters like me. Except mine will most likely disappoint her because they won’t just stand there with their mouths shut and look pretty.”

Darrin reaches for me, but I pull away.

“Don’t be like that,” he says. “I know Mom is tough on you.”

Tears threaten to spill over. “I can’t be who she wants me to be anymore.”

“Because of Aidan?”

I groan in frustration, my hands turning to fists. “Because it never should’ve been that way in the first place. I’m my own person. What if I don’t want to wear pantsuits in the middle of summer and use a gallon of hairspray just so I can wear my hair curly?”

“Are you even talking in English anymore?”

“You had it so much better than I did,” I growl out.

“Me?” He stands from his chair, scowling. “Bullshit. I couldn’t do anything or be anything without it having to mean something. I couldn’t just enjoy football because if I was good at it, I had to be the best. I couldn’t just be a good student in class, I had to be the best.”

“At least you had friends.”

“I had to fucking plead with them every year to let Aidan spend a couple weeks with us! Every fucking year. And you know what? For weeks after, Dad would sit me down and we would go over why Aidan was such a better player than me. Yeah, it was a great fucking time.”

I suck in a breath. “But they like Aidan.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “Are you kidding me? Do you know how I got them to let me invite Aidan over? I told them we would practice. They never agreed until I pushed them to see what a benefit it was. If Aidan wasn’t good at football, Mom and Dad never would’ve let him stay. He didn’t go to a fancy-ass private school like all my other friends.”

“Well, that’s fucked up!” I snap, furious. I’d been wondering what the look was between Mom and Dad, and now I know.

Darrin lets out a breath. We stand there, breathing heavily. They put us both in a box, held down by restraints, and neither one of us saw it in the other. “It always looked like you were having so much fun,” I tell him. “Everyone at school liked you.”

Tears well up in his eyes. “Bails, do you remember the weeks I spent in the hospital when I was a freshman?”

“Yeah, you hurt yourself at football.”

“No.” A single tear tracks down his face. “I tried to— Fuck, I took too many pills. On purpose.”

The world pauses for a moment, and when it starts up again, it’s tilted. Like nothing is right. “What?” I rasp. “Why didn’t— You didn’t—”

“Mom and Dad didn’t want you to know.”

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