Page 28 of Reckless Liar

“I'm a wonderful driver.” -Scarlett O'Keefe a few days before totaling her Toyota Tercel.

Whenwewereinhigh school, Scarlett got into a nasty car accident. In a bout of misguided impulses, she leaned across the passenger seat of her car to grab a CD and her wheel caught the gravel shoulder. She panicked and turned the wheel too far in the other direction, crossing into the other lane of traffic. When she realized she was in the wrong lane, she twisted the wheel back the other way, causing her to skid over the side of a high embankment. Her little convertible flew through the sky, falling thirty feet into the greenbelt. Her car landed upside down, her life saved by the seatbelt that kept her suspended upside down but still inside the car. She climbed out and had to fight her way up a cliff through blackberry bushes and poison ivy to get back to the street.

She flagged down a passing motorist, who stopped to help her. When Xander and I arrived at the hospital, she still had dirt caked in her nails and small burrs stuck in her hair. If she hadn’t been wearing her seat belt, she would have fallen out of the car and likely would have been rolled over. If it’d happened a few yards down the road, she would’ve hit the cement-lined drainage ditch. There were so many variables that could’ve stopped her from walking away from the accident with only a moderate case of whiplash, a sprained wrist, and some abrasions.

Years later, Scarlett would simplify the accident, saying she simply overcorrected, that a more seasoned driver would’ve reacted differently. But, at that moment her tire caught the edge of the rocks, she panicked.

My parents never fought in front of me and my brother, but they were rarely affectionate with each other. Their relationship seemed based on timid cordiality and a sense of duty to keep the family unit together. They acted like business partners, each with a role to play in creating a picturesque family life. My father worked hard at his practice. My mother volunteered for every PTA committee, she joined the gardening club, the local parade board, the board of directors for the library, and served as vice president of the local beauty pageant of which she was a former title holder. She was secretary for the Ridgewood Pearls, a local fundraising organization for various charities. She would have dinner on the table every night and kept the house running like a well-oiled machine.

Like every teen before, I swore I’d have something more than what my parents had in life. I would note their every flaw and never settle. I didn’t have to look far before I found the opposite of my parents in Max Constantine. Max was the only boy I ever slept with, my first and only actual boyfriend, the only boy I ever said those three words to. For more than half my life, Max was my entire world. I would’ve done anything for him to make him happy.

In Max I found passion, I found fun and frivolity. All the things I detested about my parents were missing from what we had. What I never considered were the things that kept them working as a team. I missed the way my father respected my mother’s work. He fostered her interests, allowing her to expand on them. My mother worked hard to make the house a welcoming place for him to come back to. Their mutual respect, the way they complimented each other. While their relationship may have seemed passionless, they were friends. They trusted each other, never doubting each other’s commitment.

Until the day I found Max on our bedroom floor, I didn’t fully understand what Scarlett meant about over overcorrecting. Our entire relationship was created in the panicked moments we careened across the street, trying to fix the wheel into the road, only to end up in the brambles. My affection for Max went too far. I placed too much trust in a man who would always, in the end, leave me. A man I could never save.

I spent years climbing through the bracken of everything Max had left for me. The other women, the debts, losing the man I thought I knew, finally accepting that I never truly knew him in the first place.

Lately, I’ve been feeling as if I’m almost out of the thicket, only to have a fresh fear come through me.What will I find in this new world? Who am I now, that I have emerged with skinned knees and tainted skin?

In the time that passed after Xander professed his feeling for me, I realized there might be something more—something Max or Xander never told me. I thought about that kiss often—the feel of his lips against mine, how my first instinct was to hold him closer, relishing the pull in my veins.

I spent long nights alone in my bed, reliving that moment standing in our kitchen. I tried to discern exactly how I felt in that moment when Xander leaned toward me, his body warm and his touch igniting feelings I’d buried long before. Everything I had said to him was true. I couldn’t believe he would try to kiss me like that. I didn’t believe he meant what he said. But in the dark of my mind, I felt doubt. I kissed him back. In that moment between us, where I had no thoughts clouding my true feelings, I wanted his touch. I craved his embrace.

I knew I didn’t want Xander with someone else. But what could I offer him? I was too bruised to love again.

Chapter twelve

“I don't get celebrity crushes.” -Ana, age sixteen.

Ithinkmyheartbroke a little when the first crocus broke through the ground, its bright purple head poking through the grass at the base of my parent’s plum tree. The first signs of spring brought the rains, the gray skies, and a freak snowstorm that incapacitated the town when they’d put away their snow tires weeks before. I was busy at the hospital with whiplash patients, stitches from falling on black ice, and one case of hypothermia when an extremely fortunate high school kid was found sleeping outside by his friends.

Scarlett and I set up a biweekly lunch date at The Cabin. I went out more and more. I had a quick coffee date with my high school friends. I met my college roommate, Chloe, in Belltown for dinner one night, even crashing in her spare bedroom overnight after I missed the last ferry. Xander and I had our weekly rituals. We’d go to the grocery store, alternating who paid for the total each week.

Over wasabi ahi salad and mini mahimahi tacos, Scarlett and I discussed our lives. She and Emma were serious now. Emma had asked Scarlett to move in with her. While she was fearful of the commitment, I urged her to consider it. Emma was an amazing woman, and I could see how happy she made Scarlett.

“Now, enough about my love life. Let’s talk about yours,” Scarlett said, squeezing a lime over her taco and bringing it to her mouth.

“What love life?” I laughed, nervously turning my water glass around on the table. “I can’t even imagine what one of those looks like.”

“So, there’s no one you’re interested in?” she asked, a devious flicker in her eye.

“Definitely not.”

“Nothing’s going on with you and Xander?”

I let out a strangled laugh. Did Xander say something about our kiss?

“What? No. Of course not. Like I told you, we’re just friends. Like you and I are friends. You like the ladies, but you don’t see me worrying about myself around you.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “First, rude. I am so hot. You should be so lucky. Second, you are not my type, and third...” She picked up her soda and brought the straw to her lips, confusion passing over her face. “Um, I don’t remember.”

“You were asking me if I was interested in anyone.”

“Right! If there’s no one you’re interested in, does that mean that I can set you up?”

Scarlett’s eyes lit up at the possibility of matchmaking and I stifled a groan. “Ugh, I don’t know. I mean, is it too...”

She put her hand up. “Don’t you dare ask if it’s too soon. It’s been over a year. When’s the last time you’ve been kissed? Year. Had sex? A year. It’s ridiculous.”

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