Chapter 23

When I wake up again,the room is still dark. I climb out of bed as gently as I can so as not to wake Carter, then walk around to his side of the bed and retrieve my clothes from off the floor.
When I slipped out last night to go to the bathroom, I didn’t bother getting fully dressed, I just slipped on Carter’s T-shirt on the off chance someone saw me. No one did, and I climbed back into bed in only my bra and panties.
Dressed in my wrinkled clothes from yesterday, I slip out of the bedroom and head for the bathroom. When I get to the top of the basement stairs, I come across a man in the kitchen. He’s older, looks enough like Cartwright that I assume it’s his dad. He pauses in pouring his coffee to glance at me, but it must not be too rare an occasion to have random girls in his house, because he doesn’t look in the least bit stunned.
“Good morning,” he offers amiably.
“Good morning,” I murmur, tucking a chunk of hair behind my ear and looking down a tad awkwardly.
Indicating the coffee pot, he says, “I made coffee, if you want some.”
“I’m okay, thank you.” I pause, then glance toward the bathroom. “I’m just gonna…” I point in that direction.
“Oh, sure, don’t mind me,” he says, going back to fixing his coffee.
What an odd thing to be so comfortable with strangers in your house.
Even though it’s hopeless, I do my best in the bathroom to make myself look presentable. My long blonde hair is a tangled mess, so I finger comb it, but it doesn’t look much better than when I began. There’s a tube of toothpaste on the edge of the sink. Since I don’t have a toothbrush but I also don’t want to greet Carter with morning breath, I squeeze some out onto my fingertip and rub it around my teeth and tongue. I run some water into a plastic-coated paper cup to rinse, then hold my hand up to my mouth, trying to test my own breath. Not as thorough a job as I would like, but depending on what time it is, hopefully I’ll have time to shower and brush my teeth the right way before school.
That reminds me that I have no idea what time it is and school could start anytime, so I hustle back to the kitchen to look for my purse. I find it, but after rummaging through it, my phone is nowhere to be found.
The clock on the stove says I have a little over an hour before I need to be on my way to school, so I slide my purse strap onto my shoulder and head back to the basement.
I must have woken Carter on my way up, because when I come back down, he’s dressed and sitting on the sectional with Brianna and Cartwright. This morning they look nothing like a couple again, just two friends, if that.
Carter looks up at me when I come into view. His dark hair is mussed and he looks a little sleepy. Tenderness rushes over me before I can remember my hesitance to entirely accept what happened as real. I guess I’ll find out today. Until then, what’s the harm in hoping it is?
Even if it is real, it’s incredibly temporary. We have a few months together, then he’ll go off to New York, and I’ll struggle to pay tuition, even though it’s 10% the cost of his—which he will undoubtedly never have to pay for, anyway.
Gonna try really hard not to be jealous about that, but probably going to be unsuccessful in that endeavor.
As I come closer, Carter stands up. “I should probably get you home so you can get dressed,” he tells me.
“Probably,” I agree. Since it wasn’t in my purse, I ask, “Have you by chance seen my phone?”
Carter reaches into his own pocket and walks over to hand it to me.
I cock a questioning eyebrow.
Shrugging his shoulders, he says, “You left it out on the counter last night. I grabbed it before we came down.”
“Funny, I could swear I had it in my purse,” I tell him.
“And I could swear you were white girl wasted, so you probably shouldn’t trust your own account of events.”
I shake my head at him. “You didn’t seem to think I was too white girl wasted for rational thought last night, as I recall.”
Carter loops and arm around my waist and pulls me in, gazing down at me rather fondly, given the topic of discussion. “You know who I am, princess. You knew what you signed up for.”
I can’t exactly argue that in this case, so I don’t try to. I glance past him at his friends and offer loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I’m ready when you guys are.”
We all head upstairs. Carter bullshits with Cartwright’s dad for a few minutes and listens to his advice about tonight’s game with a polite nod. Cartwright is less polite since it’s his own father, rolling his eyes and telling him they know how to play the damn game.
Brianna nods at me and places a guiding hand on my back, so I follow her to the refrigerator where she opens it and grabs a bottle of water.
“You okay?” she asks quietly.
I nod my head, my gaze darting to hers. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just seemed really drunk last night. I tried to keep you away from Carter, but obviously it didn’t hold.”
Cracking a smile, I tell her, “I appreciate the attempt.”
She grabs my hand and inspects my bare nails. “We never did paint your nails. I’ll do it in the car on the way back to your house if you trust me to paint you in a moving vehicle while slightly hungover.”
“I do like to live dangerously,” I tell her.
Carter and Cartwright come walking over, their male gazes on our touching hands. “You two over here gettin’ friendly? Shit, invite us to watch next time.”
Brianna rolls her eyes. “In your dreams.”
“In many of my dreams,” Cartwright agrees. “You’re mud-wrestlin’ in bikinis, too. Damndest thing.”
“Ugh,” Brianna mutters, uncapping her water and taking a sip. Regarding Carter, she says, “I need a shower, can you drop me off first?”
Carter nods. “I was planning to anyway.”
Cartwright and Brianna don’t kiss or even hug goodbye. I try to reconcile that with the knowledge that they had sex last night, but there are no social cues indicating it happened. I wonder if that’s what it was like between her and Carter—just some extremely casual thing? It didn’t seem to bother Carter at all that someone he had been intimate with was being intimate with someone else.
My head hurts too much to ponder Carter’s sex life at the present moment. I slide into the backseat with Brianna so she can paint my nails on the way to her house, but when we drop her off, I climb back up front with Carter.
Silence falls and I can’t tell who’s initiating it. I stop myself a few times from stealing glances over at him in the driver’s seat, but ultimately give in to the temptation. He still looks tired, his hand on top of the wheel. He’s wearing his letter jacket. It’s not cold out, but it is still that grayish hue of morning, before the sun fully lights up the sky.
Carter feels me looking at him and his dark eyes snap to mine.
Finally, he asks, “How do you feel this morning?”
“Tired,” I tell him.
He nods his agreement. “I’ll stop and grab us a couple coffees on the way to your house.”
That’s probably a bad idea. If anyone sees us there this early in what are clearly yesterday’s clothes, they’ll know we spent the night together. Then if by chance Carter fucks me over today, people will run their mouths even faster about what a ho I am.
Oh well. I’m probably going to need to some coffee if I want to make it through this morning without falling asleep at my desk.
Carter and I stop at Grace’s favorite coffee shop. He buys me an iced coffee, himself a black coffee, and we both get muffins—chocolate chip for me, banana nut for him. Not that we actually have the time, but Carter leads us over to a table so we can eat here before he takes me home.
I check my phone real quick. Apparently noticing, he asks, “Your mom?”
I glance up at him and shake my head. “No, I was just checking the time. I’m going to have to take the quickest shower of all time.”
Instead of asking if I’d even wanted to sit for breakfast, he smirks. “That’s all right, I kinda like knowing I’ll still be on you when I see you later today.”
I widen my eyes at him. “That’s… I don’t know how to respond to that.”
Breaking off a piece of his muffin, he asks, “You’re coming to the game tonight, right?”
I still have no desire to go to a football game, but I guess if I’m going to be his girlfriend, I should do the supportive thing and show up. At least, I think I’m his girlfriend. We definitely discussed it prior to his decision to remove the obstacle of my virginity, and I think that’s where we landed.
My fears got the best of me while I slept, though. In my dreams, I was standing at my locker getting out my books for class, and Carter came up behind me. He held up a bouquet of Longhorn blue flowers and said, “For my beautiful girlfriend.” Flushing with pleasure, I naturally assumed he meant me, but when I went to take them, Erika appeared out of nowhere and grabbed them away, saying, “You wish, freak.” Then they both laughed at me. His arm slid around her waist, she leaned into him and smelled her flowers. With a sinking stomach, I realized it had all been an incredibly cruel joke, that they were just playing me, and there was no limit to the levels of their corruption.
“Where’d you go?”
My gaze jerks back to Carter. “Hm?”
He’s watching me get lost in the memory of that awful dream, so I shake it off and take a drink of my coffee.
Since I can’t tell him what I was thinking about, I ask, “Are Brianna and Cartwright a thing?”
Carter shakes his head, taking a sip of his coffee. “Not really. Only when they’re bored or lonely. Sometimes when they’re both single, they hook up.”
“Was that how it was when you guys…?”
“More or less.” He smiles faintly. “We’re not as sexually reserved as you are.”
“Yes, I noticed,” I agree.
“Does that bother you?” he asks.
“No. It’s just not what I’m used to, that’s all.”

My mom should probably bemad when I return home. I had a half dozen texts from her when I got my phone back, wanting to know if I was okay, so by the time I show up at the front door, she already knows I’m alive.
She isn’t mad, though. She knows I spent the night with Carter since he’s the one who dropped me off, and she’s still hung up on the idea of him being our redemption. I don’t tell her anything. There’s no time, even if I wanted to. Coffee with Carter has me running seriously late, and I barely have time to shower and get dressed before I’m on my way out the door again.
My mind is foggy all morning. Carter doesn’t show up with flowers or Erika at my locker; in fact, I don’t see him at all until history class.
I’m still pretty fogged when Mr. Hassenfeld approaches with his stack of graded papers, slides mine across the surface of my desk, and says, “Stay for a minute when class lets out.”
My heart slides into my stomach. I’m confused, but I nod my head anyway. As soon as he walks past, I peel back the sheet to see my grade.
C-
Tightness in my chest makes it harder to breathe. I’ve never seen a C grade on one of my own papers before, let alone with a minus attached. I don’t even know how to process it.
The fog clears, but alarm sets in. I tell myself it’s just one test, just one grade, that my overall grade in this class is strong enough to survive a single C, but my face is hot with adrenaline and embarrassment.
Sitting through the rest of class is like sitting on a bed of nails and trying not to move. I struggle from one moment to the next, one second paying extra attention to the teacher, the next searching my textbook for the right answer to a question I missed. The problem is, I can’t even remember reading this chapter. I know I did, but I also know when, and I couldn’t concentrate.
When class finally ends, everyone files toward the door except me. I approach Mr. Hassenfeld’s desk. Carter frowns at me questioningly as he passes by, but I ignore him.
This is really his fault.
The teacher waits until the last student has cleared out, then he leans back in his chair, crosses his arms, and nods at the sheet of paper clutched tightly in my fist. “What happened, Zoey?”
I shake my head, feeling my face heat up again. “This was a fluke,” I assure him. “I was havin’ some personal problems. I couldn’t get my head straight. I did study for this test. I know you can’t tell, but I did. The problem is, my memory… it just wouldn’t work. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t retain anything. I was…”
“Distracted,” he offers, kindly, but knowingly.
Distraction is the closest approximation of an explanation I can offer, so I nod my head. My throat is clogged with all the reasons I can’t give, but none of them matter now.
“Look, Zoey, I know you’re a bright girl with a good head on your shoulders, but I’ve seen a lot of bright girls make massive mistakes around this point in their lives, and I really hope you won’t be one of them. I know things haven’t been easy for you lately, that other kids don’t like that Jake got suspended from the team because you spoke up for yourself. But this is only high school. There’s a whole world out there after this, and you are going to accomplish great things. It won’t even matter to you how a bunch of jocks acted your senior year of high school. Jake Parsons is gonna be doin’ oil changes down at the Lube Stop and you’ll be settin’ the world on fire. Don’t lose sight of your goals, Zoey. Don’t let them distract you and drag you off the right path.”
I swallow, unable to formulate a response. I never really thought Mr. Hassenfeld noticed me, so I’m surprised to hear such a passionate plea for my future from him.
Without waiting for me respond, he leans forward and opens a manila folder on his desk. “Take this. It’s extra credit. I’m not going to keep giving you chances if you choose to screw up your future,” he warns me. “But everyone messes up once in a while, and I know you were out sick for a couple days right before, so I want to help you get back some credit you lost on the test.”
Taking the paper with a sigh of relief, I tell him, “It won’t happen again. Thank you so much.”
Mr. Hassenfeld spends another minute going over the assignment with me, then I’m finally free to go to lunch. I feel terrible as I leave the classroom, like Hester Prynne walking through town with a scarlet letter on her chest. There’s no one even around to witness my shame, but I see it, and that’s what matters. It burns inside me, picking out the worst of Mr. Hassenfeld’s insights. All the mistakes I’m making. Potentially screwing up my future over stupid shit in high school. Getting a single C on a single test might not be the end of the world, but it’s far from the only bad decision I’ve made lately. Last night I got drunk at a near-stranger’s house with Carter Mahoney. That very same troublemaker took my virginity and didn’t even bother to wear a condom.
I don’t care what my classmates think about me, but thinking of the disappointment on Mr. Hassenfeld’s face if I showed up to class pregnant makes me feel wretched.
Such a shame. She had such a bright future ahead of her.
I pull my phone out of my pocket with unsteady hands. I need to make an appointment to get birth control. I need to never sleep with Carter again. I need to—
“Zoey.”
Carter.
I look up and see him walking in this direction from the cafeteria.
Frowning with mild concern, he asks, “What was that all about?”
“Oh, nothin’ major. Mr. Hassenfeld just wanted to remind me not to be a dumbass and ruin my own life.”
Carter cocks an eyebrow, clearly not sure if I’m serious. “Did he offer specific instructions on how to avoid that dour fate?”
I hold up the crinkled paper so he can see the test, a lump in my throat. “It’s the test we took right after…” I shake my head, swallowing the words down. “I couldn’t concentrate. I thought I did okay, but I bombed it.”
“It’s just a C,” Carter offers, his gaze drifting from the test back to my face. “I mean, it’s not great, but it’s not the end of the world, either. He pulled you aside for that?”
“This is my first C. Ever. In the entire history of my education, I have never…”
His dark eyes widen. “Seriously? Not once?”
“You didn’t use a condom,” I toss out, a little wildly. “You can’t have sex with me if you’re not gonna use a condom. It doesn’t matter to you, you won’t be stuck with the consequences, but I will. You’ll ruin my life and then go off to Columbia and never think of me again; you’ll graduate and get a wife, have a family who will never know about me, and I’ll be stuck here all by myself, working two jobs and too exhausted to study for my community college courses with my stingy little Carter clone undoubtedly demanding all my time and attention.”
“Whoa,” Carter says, glancing around the halls, then settling an arm around my shoulders and hauling me toward the doors out of the school. “I was going to say you should sit with us today, but after that speech, I think you need to get some air. These are isolated incidents, Zoey. One shitty grade, one fuck without a condom. I’m not going to ruin your life. You’re overreacting a little, don’t you think?”
“Has telling someone ‘you’re overreacting’ ever stopped someone from overreacting?” I ask him. “In my experience, it only makes it worse.”
Nodding casually as he pushes open the door and ushers me through it, he says, “You’re right, this is a perfectly adequate response to one mediocre grade. I don’t know what I was thinking before.”
“It’s not just the grade,” I tell him, as we stop on the cement pad in front of the school. “You and I are completely different people. You have all these privileges so maybe it doesn’t seem like such a big deal to you, but there’s no one there to catch me if I fall. There’s no cushion; I’ll just hit the ground. I don’t have the luxury of fucking up, because it could cost me the only chance I have to get out of here. I have a 4.5 GPA, Carter. Do you think it’s because I derive pleasure from studyin’ my ass off? It’s not. It’s because scholarships are the only chance I have of getting the hell out of this godforsaken town. I don’t have a golden ticket to one of the best schools in the country, I don’t have rich parents to pay for it even if I did—the world is not my fuckin’ oyster. I cannot afford to blow everything I’ve worked so hard for over a guy.”
Given the blistering unkindness of my rant and Carter’s penchant for turning defensive when he feels attacked, I do not expect this to end well. In fact, I expect him to break up with me, making this less-than-12-hour-long relationship possibly the shortest in the history of relationships. I dread that I gave away my virginity to something so disposable, but that’s nothing compared to what I’ll feel a year from now if I give up even more for him.
It’s time to cut my losses, not sink more energy into this just because I’ve already invested more than I intended.
Calmly, he asks, “Are you done?”
A bit deflated, I nod and look at the ground. “Yeah. I’m done.”
“Okay.” Carter misses a beat, then says, “Why don’t we go get some lunch?”
I look back up at him blankly. “Lunch?”
“You’re hangry. You need food. Come on,” he says, nodding toward his car, then taking off in that direction, confident I’ll follow.
My feet remain planted to the cement pad. “I’m not gonna ditch classes.”
“I’ll have you back when lunch is over,” he calls back.
Since he hasn’t missed a step, I take off a little faster to catch up to him. He opens his passenger door, gestures for me to get in, then walks around to the driver’s side.