BLACKMAIL

“GIVE ME FIVE MINUTES TO EXPLAIN, please,” Caleb said.

I crossed my arms, shivering when a gust of chilled wind blew through the bridge from Aimée’s backyard and past Caleb, carrying with it the sounds of the party going on without me. “You have three.”

“Oh, a minute for each year you pretended I didn’t exist. How fitting,” Caleb quipped back.

I scowled at him. “That’s not fair and you know it.”

“Sorry. Forget I said that.” He dropped his head. “I had a ton of stuff planned out to say, but now I’m screwing it up. I don’t want you to go back to hating me.”

“I never hated you, Caleb, but I didn’t know what to say to you or how to act. You were so sad back then and I didn’t know how to help you. Things are different now, but that doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about us.”

“Do I at least get a chance to bribe you with more chocolate?” he joked weakly.

I offered him a small smile that got lost in the shadows between the bridge walls. “Chocolate’s what got us into this mess.”

“Actually, the letter b is patient zero in our little epidemic,” he said. I stepped closer so he could see my questioning look. “In kindergarten I used to mix up my b’s and d’s, so the teacher sat me next to you because you were an expert speller. I never did thank you for the help,” he explained.

I laughed a little remembering five-year-old me helping five-year-old Caleb with his alphabet. “Well, I never would have learned how to draw a tree with finger branches if it weren’t for you, so we can call it even.”

“Not yet we can’t. I owe you an explanation for showing up here tonight.”

“I don’t need an explanation but, Caleb, not to be a jerk, I need you to leave.”

“Maybe you don’t need an explanation, but I need to give you one.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back slightly, breathing out puffs of hot breath, before starting. “Looking at you reminds me of who I used to be, the good I had in me that I’ve smoked out over the past few years. But being with you”—he smiled to himself—“it makes me feel like the good’s still in me, like I have a shot at turning my life around.”

“You do have a shot, Caleb, but you don’t need me to take it.”

He lifted his hand to my cheek and met my eyes; his looked like glistening black marbles in the moonlight. I placed my hand on top of his and held it there for a moment. Then I curled my fingers in and moved his hand away.

“You can’t have me, Caleb.”

He looked down at his empty hand. “I know,” he said in a soft, dejected tone. “Was worth a try anyway though, right?” When he took my hand, pulling me close, I didn’t lean away because I knew this last kiss was a goodbye.

I eased away from Caleb’s kiss and watched as he walked out of my life and into the trees beyond the bridge in the park. A strange sense of foreboding, not the relief I had expected, filled me. The bridge was so dark it felt like I was in another world, another life. Separate from my mistakes and lies. I leaned my elbows on the railing and looked down at the moonlight reflecting off the river. Sparse patches of ice stirred ripples in the thaw, disturbing the shape of the reflections, distorting the memory of Ethan’s face next to mine.

I heaved a long sigh and flinched, catching my breath mid-exhale, when someone said, “You look like you could use a drink.”

I straightened with a jolt to see Mica standing at the end of the bridge, illuminated by the spotlight. “What are you doing here?” My voice was harsher than it should have been, but I had no idea how long he’d been standing there, what he’d seen, and I couldn’t ask without stirring up suspicion.

I brushed the snow from the railing off my sleeves and buried my wet hands in my coat pockets, nervously shifting my feet through the basic ballet positions: first, second, third …

“I could ask you the same thing. E know you’re out here?”

A sinking feeling opened a pit in my stomach. “Why? Is he asking for me?” I craned my neck to see past Mica to the house, but I couldn’t see a thing through the shadows cast by the bridge’s roof.

As he walked toward me, he waved his hand, revealing the bottle of peach schnapps he was holding. “Relax. He went inside a while ago. Probably getting a refill.”

“He wasn’t drinking.” My voice was a distant whisper. Ethan was waiting for me with Madison, and I was out here freezing my toes off for my lies that she was probably gleefully divulging to him this very minute. What was I thinking leaving him alone with her? I needed to tell him the truth and apologize before he heard a skewed version of it from someone else—especially Madison. I started for the house, but Mica stepped in front of me.

He cocked his head and tapped the bottle against his leg. “You feelin’ okay? You look a little wasted, and not in the good way.”

I raised a hand to my forehead. “Yeah—no. I came out here to … sorta clear my head.” More like clear my conscience. Again, I wondered how long he’d been standing at the entrance to the bridge before he spoke up.

“Have a drink with me then. Your head will be swiped clear in no time.”

I looked past him, watching shapes emerge and fade in the shadows. “That’s not really what I had in mind. I have to get back to Ethan.”

“Y’know I’ve known you longer than E has?”

I shuffled my feet restlessly. Every second I spent here with Mica was another opportunity for Madison to tell Ethan her version of the truth. “What are you talking about?”

He ignored my tone and smiled at me with dizzy eyes. “We had Scarsoonie’s class together in seventh grade, remember?”

I did remember. Something about a gangly seventh-grade Mica Torrez who wore basketball shorts to school every day, even in winter, stirred a giggle in my stomach. Mica knocked my knee with the bottle. It hurt more than I expected because I was so friggin’ cold. I bent down to rub my knee, and Mica squatted in front of me with the bottle raised between us.

His tone softened. “Come on. E’s not goin’ anywhere. Stay. Have a drink with me. I feel like chattin’.” He nudged me with the bottle and a smile.

I straightened, hesitating for a second, but I was so cold and nervous about talking to Ethan that I’d have done basically anything to calm my shivers. Plus, drinking more meant liquid courage that I would definitely need if I had any shot at being honest with Ethan tonight. I took one last glance at the bridge’s entrance. Caleb would be halfway across Dover Park by now if he’d kept walking, or at the very least passed out on a bench. He wouldn’t come back, not after saying goodbye.

That rush of relief I was waiting for finally kicked in. So I took the bottle from Mica and drank.

Mica started reminiscing about how Mr. Scarsoonie used to whistle his s’s. He laid his arm across my shoulders. My head buzzed with warmth as the old, innocent memories pushed the new, destructive ones back. I looked over the railing at the river below as he said something about green pens and “contrast ratio.” Oh god, that’s funny. This was good. The alcohol was definitely taking effect.

He offered me the bottle again, but I shook my head and slid out from under his arm. “I’m good. Seriously, no more.”

He guzzled the rest of the bottle and chucked it off the bridge. I looked over the railing to see where it had landed and told him he’d have to pick up the bottle before Aimée’s parents saw. He gave me this sly look that made goose bumps form on my arms.

“I should get back to the party. Birthday girl and everything. Why don’t we walk and talk?” My voice shook, shattering the casual veneer I was trying to put on.

As I started toward the house, he said, “I don’t think you want to have this conversation in front of everyone.”

I stopped, rubbing my chilled arms. “What?”

“The party’s here.” He pulled a flask from the pocket of his letterman jacket and sloshed it around.

“That’s not what you said.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “Everyone says I’m a loose drunk.” He snickered at some unspoken joke I didn’t bother trying to get. “Wouldn’t want to let something you’d regret slip out.”

Without thinking I said, “There’s a lot I regret.” My heartbeat raced up my neck to my ears. I peered skeptically at him. “What did you say you wanted to talk about?”

“I didn’t.” He took a swig from his flask, and something inside me knew, right then, before he told me. I knew what he wanted. His teeth looked glaringly white in the shade of the covered bridge. I looked away from the shine for a moment and when I turned around, he was practically on top of me.

“Hey, bubble space much?” I forced out a short laugh, trying to downplay my nervousness. I shoved him away.

Mica licked his lips and pulled up a crooked grin the way he always did when someone complimented him after a hockey game or mentioned how he was Top Teen Athlete in the local newspaper for the millionth time. Then he leaned forward and smashed his mouth into mine. Except he was so drunk that he missed, smearing my lip gloss with his chin.

“Ew!” He leaned in for another go. “Stop it!” I turned my head away, threw both my hands onto his chest, and pushed him as hard as I could. The momentum from the effort rocked me backward and the heel of my Mary Jane rolled as I stumbled into the railing. Pain shot up my right ankle.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand and looked at him with incredulous eyes. “What are you doing?”

“What,” Mica slurred, “I’m not your type?”

“My type? Are you that drunk? Remember Ethan—your best friend and my boyfriend?”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I thought about when Drew told me. What about E?” His words crawled across the shadows masking the bridge and wrapped tight around my neck like slimy tentacles.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the tentacles tightened their grip. I swallowed hard, fighting the constriction. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t be modest, Cassidy. You and that stoner prick put on quite a show. Good thing I came back to recycle that bottle of mine or I’d have missed out on the action.”

“Mica, please, you don’t know what you saw. I ended it. That’s why we were on the bridge.” I swallowed again. “Please don’t tell Ethan.”

Mica bowed his head so we were eye to eye and met me with a look that didn’t suit his round baby face. “Who said anything about telling?”

I took a step away, ignoring the pain in my ankle as I did. “We should go back,” I said in a shaky voice.

His lazy smile warped. “What’s the matter, Cassidy? Afraid E will think you’re with your little stoner boyfriend? And your friends too? Do they know what those lips of yours have been up to?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I could help you cover this up, even get Drew on board or … I could make it worse.”

“You can’t blackmail me. You are the one who tried to kiss me.”

“Hmm, not sure that’s how E will see it.”

I hated that he had this thing to threaten me with. I tried putting weight on my ankle again; the pain was less, but still sharp. I stumbled toward the park side of the bridge and the heels of my Mary Janes hit the railing again.

An overwhelming urge to run as fast as I could to Aimée and tell her everything so we could come up with a solution together, like we always did when anything was wrong, filled me. I tried to push past Mica, but he grabbed my shoulders and held me against the railing.

I squirmed under his strong hands. “I have to get back.”

He nodded, leaning closer, swaying drunkenly. “Right, we should go. Tell the truth. Crush E’s little heart.”

“Yes.” I shook my head. “I mean, no. I don’t—you know I—I,” I stammered. “We should go back.”

“Or we could work out a deal and make this trouble go away.”

“Deal?” The word felt sticky on my tongue, but Mica could help me keep Drew quiet if I agreed.

The adrenaline running through me made my throat dry. Of course I didn’t want to hurt Ethan, but the lies I’d told him were stabbing at my insides. I had to get rid of them. Am I really going to tell Ethan? “Yes,” I answered my own question.

“Yes?” Mica perked up and leaned toward me again. He brushed his fingers along my jawline.

I looked away from him as I thought about how Ethan would react if he found out I’d been lying about where I was for three weeks so I could sneak off to be with Caleb.

The only thing Caleb and I did was kiss, I rationalized. They were only kisses and so could this be … meaningless kisses—a kiss. One kiss and I’d swear Mica to secrecy and this would be over. I could go back to normal with Ethan—only Ethan. Forever.

That was all I had to do. One kiss to end everything.