Tru Love (First Love Book 1) Page 18

  Genny sits in her French class, staring at Serena’s empty desk. It’s nearly eleven o’clock. She thought her friend would be back by now. She taps her pencil against her notebook, staring at and keeping time with the second hand on the wall clock, until Mr. Langier calls her name. Again.

  “Sorry,” she mumbles. She sits up in her chair and makes a show of attending to the assignment on the board, but it isn’t enough. Langier is rising from his desk. He stuffs his hands in his pockets as he strides down the aisle toward her. In a low voice he asks, “Everything OK, Genny?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Fine.”

  “You’re crying,” he says. “Something has to be troubling you.”

  Genny rubs her hands across her face. When she pulls them away her palms are damp. She didn’t know she was crying. “I’m OK,” she insists.

  The bell rescues her. Genny gathers her things and smiles into Mr. Langier’s frown, trying to reassure him. “I’ll get this done tonight,” she promises, stuffing her notebook into her back pack.

  In the hall, Genny allows herself to be pulled into the stream of kids heading toward the cafeteria. She usually meets Truman and then they head to the lunch line together, but she decides to go outside, to find their bench, and wait for him. And to call her mother before he arrives with their lunch.

  She isn’t looking where she’s going—her feet know the way without her conscious navigation—so she nearly bumps into Hunter before she sees him.

  They stop and stand wordlessly in front of each other. Genny waits a beat or two, staring into his face and thinking about the Hunter who was her friend, and briefly a little more than that. If she were in Serena’s predicament and Hunter was the father, would Genny tell him? Would she have a shoulder to lean on?

  Definitely not. Hunter would break Olympic records making himself scarce.

  “Looking for me?” he asks, and his sunny, lopsided grin slowly emerges.

  “Hardly,” Genny says, and steps around him.

  “Ouch,” he complains.

  He follows her. Genny can hear his footsteps and feel his presence looming behind her. “OK. I deserved that. I’m a jerk. And a sore loser,” he admits in a placating tone.

  Genny pushes through the double doors and into the crisp spring air. Some of the benches are already taken, but not hers and Truman’s. She cuts across the grass and settles onto the stone, still damp from the morning’s rain.

  Hunter stops in front of her.

  “I’m not in the mood right now, Hunter.”

  He nods. “I mean it, though. I get it now. I understood even then.” He ducks his head as he thinks through his next words. “I guess I always knew we were friends, but I wanted it to be more. It didn’t feel right, but I still wanted it.”

  “Yeah. Same here.”

  “And I hated it, that you called it. That you hooked up so fast with. . .someone else.”

  “That’s the real problem,” she insists.

  “It would bug you, too,” he says, “if I hooked up with another girl the next day.”

  “It wasn’t the next day,” she murmurs. ”But you’re right. It would have hurt.”

  “My pride more than anything else.”

  “Yeah. Exactly.” Her lips twist sourly.

  “I miss talking to you,” Hunter admits. “And jamming with you.”

  She laughs at his outrageous lie. “Hardly jamming. I know two notes.”

  “You play those two notes better than anyone else.”

  She smiles, reaching for the olive branch.

  “I wrote my best song yet,” he tells her. “The best break up song ever.”

  “Great,” she says, but she’s OK with it. “I still have a chance at the Hard Rock Hall of Fame.”

  “Definitely.”

  Genny can see the doors from where she’s sitting and catches a glimpse of Truman’s mahogany colored hair and the strong angles of his profile through the glass before he breaks into the open.

  “So where does that leave us?” she asks. “Are we friends, Hunter?”

  Hunter shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Not like before.”

  “Pride.”

  “Yeah. I don’t like him. It’s impossible to change that.”

  “Not while he lives as the villain in your songs.”

  “Exactly. I need that,” he admits. “Not just for the writing, but to—“

  “Save face?”

  He nods but the color in his cheeks is high. “Yeah. Stupid, huh?”

  “No. I understand that.”

  Genny watches Truman’s progress across the grass but can still see exactly when Hunter notices the change in her. It’s automatic, the way her smile takes over her face and her skin warms. She hears Hunter groan just a second before Truman says, “Genny,” like she’s recovered treasure.

  “Hunter,” Truman greets him and places their tray of food on the bench. “Joining us for lunch?”

  Truman’s voice is pleasant on the surface, but Genny can hear the tension beneath it. It’s anything but inviting.

  Hunter backs off, taking several steps before turning and calling over his shoulder, “No, thanks, man.”

  Truman is smiling when he says, “I know how to clear a room.”

  “And you like that, don’t you?”

  He nods. “Yes. Definitely.”

  “And you don’t like him.”

  “It’s a natural animosity.”

  “Rivals.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “I hope not.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do. I just need a little reassurance every once in a while.”

  Genny takes his hand and pulls him down beside her on the bench.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” she promises.

  “Even now?” He sits back and pulls her to his side. “You’ve been keeping your distance.”

  “It’s Serena,” she says. “Not us.” Not really.

  He considers that. “Serena, yes. And whatever it is it’s got something to do with us, too, you just don’t want to tell me yet.”

  She nods reluctantly. “You’re right. I just need to get it straight in my head, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know. Right now I’m in the dark.”

  She nods and manages to hold his gaze.

  “But later,” he prompts. “You’ll tell me everything later, after you talked to Serena?”

  She wants to tell him now. She wants him to look into the future and find out if Serena is pregnant, if her life turns out OK. But Truman’s gift doesn’t work that way—it’s not like tuning into a TV station—and, anyway, she promised Serena that she would not breathe a word of it to anyone, Truman included.

  “Yes.” She thinks about that and knows they’ll need to talk. “Everything.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Serena doesn’t make it to school and Truman drives Genny home in silence. Their hands are clasped together on the seat between them and when Genny sighs he gives her a reassuring squeeze. Serena is waiting for her, tucked away in Genny’s bedroom and eating from a carton of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. That was the first and last text Genny received from her today. Her mom is equally nonresponsive. She returned Genny’s call, but wouldn’t say more than, “There’s nothing more personal than a woman’s body”—Genny knows another girl talk is in her future—and that, “Serena will speak for herself.”

  So Genny spent the afternoon losing her optimism as a balloon loses air. By the time she climbed into Truman’s truck she felt deflated and defeated.

  Serena’s situation doesn’t have to happen to me, Genny reminds herself.

  Making her equally sad is the life Serena is losing.

  College, marriage and then the baby carriage. It’s stupid,

  something they chanted as kids, but it makes so much sense now that Genny wants to cry. It shouldn’t be a fairytale.

  It doesn’t have to be a fairytale, Genny argues silently.

  But then i
t didn’t happen that way for her mother, either. Genny wonders how much her mother regrets not giving her father a chance. The morning they put together Genny’s scrapbook, her mother clutched that last letter from her father. She read it over several times before folding it and laying it aside.

  Her mother had a fairytale life—super model, living in Europe, dating actors and athletes—then she got pregnant with Genny. It didn’t slow her down. Her mother didn’t stop modeling until Genny was six years old. They didn’t come back to America, permanently, until Genny was seven.

  Truman turns the truck onto Genny’s street. He slips his hand from hers, steers to the side of the road, then kills the engine. Genny can feel him staring at her. His eyes are like magnets, she thinks, once she turns, once she’s caught in their spell, she’ll soften and allow herself to be pulled in.

  “Genny,” he says. He runs his fingers down her arm, turns her palm over and traces her lifeline. “Definitely a long life,” he says. “I see a lot of happiness.”

  “Really?” she challenges. “Do you see me a year from now? Are we still together, Truman? Are we happy? Am I getting ready to go to college or to have a baby?”

  The words slip out, and once they take on the weight of air they become much more than a taunting fear. They become possible. More possible than when they were living inside her head.

  “Pregnant?” he says, his smooth voice low, comforting even full of question and light. “That’s it?” he asks. “Serena’s trouble?”

  Genny pulls away from him, opens her door and hops out. The sidewalk feels like butter under her feet and she waits a moment until the world takes on greater substance. Of course, by that time, Truman is standing in front of her. His hands settle warmly on her hips, under the hem of her jacket.

  “Serena is pregnant?”

  Genny stares over his shoulder, determined not to meet his thought-absorbing gaze. “I don’t know what Serena is. I won’t know until I get inside.”

  “But it’s possible,” he insists. “It all makes sense now.”

  He nods and the sun catches in the fiery strands of his hair. She loves that. Truman is so full of life. “Genny, we had this conversation,” he reminds her. “We set up our own rules.”

  “Rules are broken all the time,” she says. Her hands clench, her nails curling into his sweater. “I break the rules all the time.”

  That smile, so full of confidence, that’s kept her afloat for weeks, surfaces. “I’ll keep you in check,” he promises.

  But it only makes her feel more lost, drifting toward the inevitable. She can’t rely on Truman’s self-control. She has to trust herself. Only she doesn’t.

  “Have you ever made a promise you couldn’t keep?” she asks and watches the darkness spread over his face. Too late, she remembers the train trellis and the sister he lost.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. Her eyes burn. She wants to cry, for the pain she inflicted upon Truman, for the pain Serena is enduring, for the fear she has of ruining her own life in a single heated moment.

  “I haven’t failed to keep a promise since,” he says.

  She nods. “I believe you. And I believe that you want to keep your promise.”

  “But that I won’t?”

  “But that life throws curve balls and we never know when one is going to hit us.”

  “So we live in fear, waiting to get clocked?”

  He makes that sound crazy. And it probably is. Right now, Genny’s emotions are in control. She knows it but can’t find her way to stable ground.

  “I’m going inside. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She would walk past him, but he grabs her hand and then he moves so that he’s blocking her path again.

  “Tonight,” he says. “We need to talk about this, Genny. After you’ve talked to Serena. After you’ve had a chance to decide if you believe in me.” He lets that settle and then says, “Don’t go free running tonight, OK?”

  It sounds like a warning; feels like an omen.

  “You go when you’re emotionally charged,” he continues. “It’s not a good idea. Not tonight.”

  She lets that sink in and then asks the question that’s been burning on her tongue for weeks. “Have you ever seen anyone else. . .die?”

  “You mean, other than you and Siobhan?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Then why me?”

  “Maybe you’re my second chance,” he says. “Maybe I can get it right this time.”

  “Absolution,” the thought whispers past her lips. Will he spend his whole life looking for it?

  “Only Siobhan can give me that and she’s dead.”

  He kisses her lightly on the cheek then turns away. She feels his absence as the cool air swirls around her and settles on her skin. She listens to the truck engine turn over, while her thoughts tumble inside her head. Maybe he’ll never make peace with his sister’s death. Maybe Genny is his only chance now to get it right—would she withhold that?

  No.

  And then she delves deeper, into her own insecurities, for another undeniable truth: It’s not Truman she doesn’t believe in—he was wrong about that—it’s herself. She is the great rule-breaker. The one more likely to act on impulse, to be carried away by her emotions. She doesn’t trust herself.

  She walks into the house, aware of two things at once. The volume on the TV is turned up so loud, Genny identifies the game show Serena is watching before she even makes it to the staircase. And Genny hates it that Truman left without making things right. Without really kissing her. His kisses always ground her. Make her feel a part of something bigger than herself. Something better.

  Serena is propped up on three pillows, her head listing to the side and her eyes closed. Genny doesn’t know how she can sleep with the TV blasting. She picks up the remote and presses mute then rights the carton of ice cream, which is melted and oozing onto the sheets.

  “Hey, BFF.” Serena smiles, but it’s sleepy and her eyes are only half open.

  “Hey.” Genny sits down on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Great.” Serena’s smile takes on the brilliance of sunshine.

  “How great?” Genny asks, cautiously.

  “Not pregnant great.”

  Genny picks up a pillow and clobbers Serena over the head with it. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “Because there’s got to be a reason I’m late, you know?” she reasons, and her smile fades a little. “Your period doesn’t just stop.”

  “What’s the reason?” Genny’s immediate sense of relief fades. She pulls the pillow to her chest and rests her chin on it as she stares at her friend.

  “Fibroids,” she says. “Two big, fuzzy fibroids. One on each ovary. I was born with them and they’ve just been sitting there all these years, like ticking time bombs.”

  “So what do you do?”

  “Sometimes surgery. Sometimes not.” She throws back the covers and slips out of bed. She’s in her underwear and a t-shirt—one of Genny’s—and she walks to the chair, sits down and pulls on her jeans. “Your mom called mine. She was really good about it. She didn’t tell her about me maybe being pregnant.” She stands up and zips her jeans. “I have to go home, though, and face the music.”

  She sits down on the bed. “The possibility made me do a lot of thinking. The truth is I’m not ready for a baby. None of us are. Not at seventeen. I’d have done the right thing, but I cried about it. A lot.”

  “I did, too,” Genny says. “I’ve been thinking a lot too. About Truman and where we could end up.”

  “And it’s scary. I’m thinking now, since I’m not ready for a baby, maybe I’m not ready for sex.” Her nose wrinkles as she says the word. “It’s more than sex with me and Victor. I know it. I feel it. But we’re definitely slowing down.”

  Serena’s cell phone rings and she rummages among the covers for it. “That’ll be Victor. He’s picking me up. My mama gets off work at four today and I�
��m going to sit down with her, probably tell her the whole truth.”

  She finds her cell, looks at the screen, then slips it in her pocket. “You going to be OK?” she asks. “Your lips look like hamburger.”

  “I’ve been worried,” Genny says.

  “And you’re still worried,” Serena counters. “Truman’s a good guy. He knows you’re not ready for more than what you have right now.”

  “I haven’t always made the best decisions,” Genny says.

  “Let him lead the way. Relationships are like that. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow. Most of the time you’re walking hand-in-hand.”

  She grabs her sweatshirt and shrugs into it. “You’re a great friend. Thanks, mija.” Serena kisses Genny on the cheek then hustles out the door.

  Genny takes a running leap and for a long moment she’s airborne, suspended in a draft one hundred and sixty feet above street level. The alley below her is populated by trash dumpsters and cartwheeling paper, but the streets beyond it are buzzing with traffic. Genny needed to get out of the house. The walls were so tight they turned her sideways.

  Her mother isn’t due home until eleven, possibly midnight, because she didn’t get into work until mid-afternoon. And Truman isn’t coming over until after dinner. Which is right about now.

  She stayed up here longer than she thought she would and has no plans of returning. Yet.

  She lands on the roof of the next building, a four foot span but an eight foot drop. Her ankles absorb the impact easily. She stops, bends over and pulls in a deep breath of air. She’s heard that birds sometimes die from a ruptured heart. That they fly too far, too fast, usually trying to escape a predator, and their hearts burst in their chests.

  That’s how she feels tonight. She’s run miles already, trying to escape herself.

  She’s not afraid of Truman or even of her feelings for him. It’s her history of making bad decisions that’s getting to her. Even now, as she prepares to launch herself into the inky sky, to brush the stars with her fingertips, she could be triggering a series of events that bring fatal consequences—another ticket and her parents’ disappointment. Or even her death—if she slips, if she doesn’t calculate the distance correctly and plummets to the ground. One hundred and sixty feet—she wouldn’t survive that.