It bugged me every time a girl came stumbling out of that room, but I refused to acknowledge it, so I held up nine fingers and played along just like I was supposed to.
“She had a seven thanks to the missing bra and inside-out shirt, but after calling you a bitch and stuffing her underwear in her back pocket, she moved up.”
Cora burst into boisterous laughter and grabbed her sides. She was cackling so loud I was worried all the noise was going to bring Jet back out of his room.
“Crap, I totally missed the panties. You know he’s right; one day he’s going to have a ten, a girl so thoroughly worked over that it won’t even be fun anymore, because we’re going to know she got the best stuff.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from scowling at her. “I can’t wait.”
I didn’t fool Cora for a minute. “Sure you can’t.”
Frustrated with the conversation and the morning in general, I shut the laptop down and got to my feet.
“I’m gonna go run before I have to leave for class.” I announced this to no one in particular, because Cora was messing around on her phone and Jet had not reappeared. I changed into clothes that were warm enough for a February in Denver and put on my well-worn running shoes.
I loved to run. It helped me clear my head, and since I lived in one of the most health-conscious states in the union, I was always just one of a hundred other people out for a little exercise when I took to the pavement. I put in earbuds and listened to what Jet called “that god-awful pop-country,” as loud as it would go. I liked music that I didn’t have to think about, and most country songs spelled it right out for the listener. The girl was mad because the guy cheated, the guy was mad his pickup got trashed, everyone was sad the dog died, and Taylor Swift had about as much luck with men as I did.
I knew Jet preferred stuff that was loud and heavy, but in reality the guy was a music snob, and after knowing him for more than a year, fighting about what was good and what wasn’t ceased to faze me.
The cold air burned against my face as I found a steady rhythm and headed toward Washington Park on my usual route. When I ran I liked to block everything out, to shut the constant buzz of all the things hounding me, and just feel the ground under my feet and the brisk air on my face. But it wasn’t working so great for me today.
I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was pretty much living a lie. There was Ayden Cross, nobody, from Woodward, Kentucky, and Ayden Cross, chemistry major, from Denver, Colorado. They were two parts of the whole and at times I thought one was going to smother the other and there would be nothing left but ash and bad memories.
Woodward wasn’t a bad town, but it was small, really small, and everyone knew everyone. When your family was the family in town that everyone the same age as you gossiped about, that everyone older than you talked about, that everyone coming and going told stories about, life wasn’t exactly easy.
My mom wasn’t a bad lady, just nowhere near equipped to handle being a mother at sixteen, and way less ready to be a mom to a hard-to-handle daughter and to a son who was born looking for trouble. My older brother, Asa, had never met a crime he didn’t want to commit or a law he didn’t want to break. Since neither one of our dads had stuck around, Mom was left alone with us running wild and trying to keep the damage down to a minimum. I learned the hard way that if you heard you were one thing enough times, eventually you had no option but to start believing it.
Even though I knew better, I fell in with the kind of crowd that could destroy a perfectly good future, led there by the hand of a big brother looking out for only himself and his current scam. We were trash; we were never going to amount to anything, and with all the trouble and drama Asa created, it was a wonder any of us was still breathing.
If it hadn’t been for a well-meaning and overly perceptive science teacher in my high school, I would have more than likely ended up just like Mom, knocked up and forever living under the judgmental eye of everyone else in Woodward.
But I applied myself at school, got scholarships, and worked my ass off day in and day out to make sure I never ended up back there. I was never going to give anyone a reason to think I was easy, stupid, and worth nothing ever again. I was going to take care of myself, build a future that was rock solid, and, Lord willing, pull my mother out of that tiny town. I was going to show her there was more to life than a case of Miller High Life, a pack of smokes, and whatever truck driver she had hooked up with for the month. As far as I was concerned, Asa was a lost cause, and the last I had heard was doing time—but I was the first to admit that I drifted in and out of the Woodward gossip mill, so I didn’t really know for sure, and I was way past the point of always wanting to save my brother from himself.
I had made plenty of mistakes and done plenty of things wrong, but I was on the right track now. I figured my reward for living my life the right way, finally, was getting good grades in school, keeping friendships with good people who loved me no matter what, and, never having to worry about waking up with nothing, ever again.
If that meant I had to bury the attraction and choking lust I felt for Jet, then that was just the way it was going to have to be. If he wanted to treat me like a Catholic schoolgirl who was never allowed past the gates, then all the better for making me act properly. There was no reason for me to let him know that not only was he misguided, but that I could probably give any of those girls he brought home for one night a decent run for their money when it came to being the type of girl that knew all about the price of admission.
I rounded the corner of the park, and started to slow down as I got into a heavier flow of people out walking their dogs and playing with their kids.
When Cora had initially asked about letting Jet rent out Shaw’s old room, I had wanted to say no. After the incident in the car last winter, I’d had a really hard time being around him at all without reliving every mortifying detail in slow motion. I thanked God every day I hadn’t actually made a move. I doubted there was any way I would ever be able to face myself after that, but when I considered the horrific experience Shaw had gone through with her ex, the idea of letting a stranger stay with us was too scary, so I reluctantly relented.
I thought brutal, in-my-face exposure might do something to kill the persistent crush I had on him. After all, he was sarcastic and pushy at times. Only the opposite had happened: I liked him. I mean, I still wanted to do really naughty things to him on a regular basis, but I liked him as a person now, too.