Seventeen

Ashton

I wasn’t really into zombie shows, but The Walking Dead had a post-Christmas marathon playing and watching season after season of zombies in Georgia was the best way to avoid most of my family. Chris watched a couple episodes with Will and me, but for the most part, it was the two of us, me resting my head against Will’s chest and Serephina curled up in my lap. There were worse ways to spend three days. And I wasn’t ever going to complain about Will keeping his arm wrapped around my shoulders.

Every now and then light from the TV screen flickered across my bracelet and I couldn’t help but smile. Will loved me. He’d given me his heart. And I loved him. It was hard to believe that I’d hated him so much when we’d left Wheston that morning that felt like a million years ago.

Will’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he scooted away from me to answer it. He frowned as he looked at the screen. “My mom.”

I paused the TV as he answered the phone. Then he gestured toward the stairs and I figured he meant he was headed to his room or someplace he could talk to her in private. So I leaned back against the sectional and waited for him to come back, and after a while, I pulled my own phone from my pocket. I hadn’t been on Facebook in forever. Probably time to check in with the world.

I opened up the app and the first thing I saw in my feed was a post from Brynne. A giant diamond ring and the words I said yes!! With 187 likes. Looking again, it might not have been a giant diamond ring, but the picture was a close up and made it look giant. Either way I was stunned. Brynne and Nate were engaged? Wow. That was crazy.

I liked the image and scrolled through some of the congratulations comments. All of the Wheston baseball team, a bunch of girls from the dorms, and a ton of people I didn’t know. Probably friends of theirs from before Wheston.

I popped out of Facebook and opened my contacts and tapped Brynne’s number. She answered on the second ring.

“You saw, huh?”

“It’s gorgeous,” I gushed.

“Thanks.”

“I’m so happy for you. I mean, you’re happy, right?” I asked.

“Beyond happy,” she said. “It’s been crazy ever since Christmas.”

“So he asked you on Christmas?”

“Christmas Eve. Best Christmas present ever,” she giggled. “But Nate’s been a wreck ‘cause Phil doesn’t really like him.”

Yeah. Dad didn’t really like Will either. “I think they’re not supposed to like the guys we like. If they do, there’s something wrong with them or something.”

“Does that mean your dad doesn’t like Braden?”

Shit. Braden. My heart twisted. I’d forgotten all about the fact that Braden was supposed to come home with me and we were supposed to breakup over the holiday. That was the plan we’d agreed to, right? The plan that would keep me from being known as the frigid bitch for the rest of my collegiate days. “No one likes Braden,” I began, sticking to our plan. “He was horrible to my mom Christmas Eve and we broke up.”

Brynne blew out a breath. “I’m sorry, Ashton.”

I was sorry too. I didn’t really want to lie to my friend, but I didn’t really have a choice. Neither Braden nor I had asked to be made laughing stocks at school. “Thanks.”

Will stepped into the game room and I smiled at him.

“So how did Nate propose? Tell me every detail.”

Will’s brow went up at that, then he crossed the room and dropped onto the sectional beside me.

“He strung up Christmas lights against the wall in my room that spelled out Will You Marry Me? And the little ring box was lying inside a catcher’s mitt on my pillow.”

“Aww,” I said as Will draped his arm around me again. “That’s so sweet.”

“And then he was in the doorway and was down on one knee and…” The happiness in her voice made me smile. “Well, clearly, I said yes.”

“Oh, I’m so happy for both of you!”

“We’re pretty happy too.”

“Have you guys set a date, or…?”

“Mom is pretty freaked. She’s always been very adamant about me finishing school first.”

But it wasn’t really her mother’s decision. “So what does that mean?”

“We’re thinking maybe next Christmas. Nate’ll only have a semester left then. Hopefully he’ll get drafted, and…I don’t know. Everything’s kind of up in the air.”

“Just do whatever works best for you guys.”

“That’s the plan.” And then she sounded confused all of a sudden. “Hey, is Will Parke with you? Chase’s friend?”

“What?” I breathed out.

“Nate said something about Will being with you for Christmas. I told him he had to have that wrong. I mean, you brought Braden home.”

Shit. I looked up at Will and shrugged. “Well, Will drove me home after my flight was cancelled. But he didn’t stay.”

Will tensed beside me and his dark eyes narrowed in my direction. I’d explain everything in a minute and he’d understand.

“I didn’t think so. Nate just sounded so sure. It’s not the first time he’s been wrong about something.”

Will slid his arm from around me and he looked pissed.

“Well, I mean, Will is a great guy,” I told my friend. “I really like him—”

He pushed off the sectional and folded his arms across his chest.

“He seems nice,” Brynne added.

But really nice Will was now glaring at me. “Umm, Brynne, let me call you back. I gotta go.”

As I was ending the call, I barely heard her say, “Talk to you later.”

“What the hell was that?” Will demanded, though his voice maintained that cool evenness he always had.

“Everyone thinks Braden came home with me. We were supposed to break up at Christmas.”

Will

Anger was coursing through my veins. Had she really just told an enormous pack of lies about me to her friend? “Excuse me?”

Ashton rose to her feet and started toward me. “Don’t be mad.”

“I am mad,” I began with a nod. “You know I don’t like to lie.”

Her jaw tightened a little. “I don’t really have a choice in the matter, Will.”

“We always have choices, Ashton.”

“Braden and I already agreed—”

“Braden?” I growled. “What the hell does he have to do with anything?”

“It’s like I said, everyone thinks Braden came home with me. Remember? He was going to meet me later at the airport. He was supposed to come meet my family for Christmas.”

I did not like where this was going. Had she been talking to Braden the whole time I was with her in Connecticut? She said she hadn’t, but… Well, she wasn’t the most truthful person, was she? If she was lying to Brynne, she was just as likely to lie to me.

“We decided we’d break up over Christmas and then no one would know we were the Wheston breakup couple.”

So Braden had come to Connecticut instead of me? That was the story she was going with? “And where do I fit into all of this, Ashton?”

She shrugged. “We’ll just start seeing each other when we get back to school. No one else needs to know we spent Christmas together, and…”

“So you want me to lie again?” My temperature was really heating up. “You wanted me to lie to your family and now you want me to lie to our friends?”

Ashton shook her head and her red hair bounced across her shoulders. “Will, I wouldn’t have to do any of this if you hadn’t tweeted all that stuff that night at the coffee shop.”

So this was all my fault? That was the spin she was using? “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Chase already knows I’ve spent Christmas break here. Do you want to call him and ask him to lie for you too?”

She winced at that. And I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. I hated being put in this position. And she knew I hated it. I’d been very clear about that since the beginning.

“Shit. I forgot about Chase.”

“Well, when you’re honest, you never have to worry about who knows what,” I muttered under my breath, but she heard me. Her narrowed eyes told me she heard me.

“You’ll have to call him and tell him something else, Will. You’ll have to—”

“Absolutely not!” I said, and I was surprised at the volume of my voice. I always prided myself on maintaining my composure. But I was definitely losing my temper, quickly.

Ashton flinched. “Look, it’s not fair for Braden or me to be branded with that hashtag the rest of our lives, Will.”

I didn’t care what Braden Campbell was or was not branded with. I only cared about the fact that the girl I was in love with wanted to pretend to the rest of the world that nothing between us had happened. I only cared that she wanted to lie to everyone I knew about what we’d become to each other. I only cared that she wanted me to tell those same lies, which I was not about to do. “You’re so worried about being like the rest of your family, Ashton. But at the end of the day, you’re just as dishonest as the rest of them.”

“Will!” she called after me as I turned around and started for the staircase.

But I didn’t stop. I went right to my room and tossed everything that was out of my suitcase back into it and folded the stack of sweaters Chris Sommers had let me borrow and left them on the foot of the bed. Normally, I would have stripped the sheets and put them in the wash before I left, but I didn’t think I could stay at her dad’s house one more minute longer than was necessary. Besides, her father hated me anyway. Even if I’d done my own laundry, he’d still hate me. So what was the point?

Ashton

My stomach was tied in a knot. I got that Will didn’t want to lie to anyone. His honesty was one of the things I loved about him. But…Well, he had to see that I was in a shitty situation and a lot of it was because of him. If he hadn’t tweeted Braden’s and my blowup and if his tweets hadn’t gone viral, I wouldn’t be in this situation. But I was in this situation and he couldn’t expect me to wear that hashtag around my neck like Hester Prynne with her Scarlet A.

I mean, if he loved me, he wouldn’t want me to be ridiculed like that, right? And weren’t we kind of in this thing together? It would be different if—

“Where’s Will?” Chris asked, from the doorway.

I scowled at my brother. “He’s mad at me.”

“Why?” He stepped into the game room and dropped onto the edge of the section. “What did you do?”

“Why does it have to be that I did something?” I snapped. “Maybe he’s being the unreasonable one.”

Chris shook his head. “Well, he seemed pretty reasonable to me.”

I couldn’t care less who Chris thought was reasonable, not even when I was in a good mood. I flipped him off. “No one asked you.”

My brother shrugged. “Just sayin’, the guy seemed really into you. And you seemed pretty happy.”

“We are happy,” I snapped. Even if I wasn’t happy right in that moment, being with Will did usually make me happy. And if he’d just—

“You’re happy he’s gone? Or you’re happy that—”

“What do you mean gone?” The knot in my stomach tightened.

“Chris shrugged again. “Gone. I just asked you where he went. His bag is gone, his car is gone. Left all my sweaters on his bed.”

And then my heart twisted just as painfully as my stomach had. Will couldn’t be gone. We were just fighting, not breaking up. I leapt off the sectional and started for the stairs. My brother was right behind me, but I didn’t pay him any attention at all. I didn’t notice anything until I got to Will’s room and saw with my own eyes that he really was gone. Packed up and gone without even saying goodbye.

I thought I was going to be sick and tears started pouring down my face. How could he just leave like that? Had I meant so little to him that I didn’t even deserve a goodbye? I didn’t even realize I was shaking until Chris put his hand on my back.

“You should sit down or something.”

Or something. Like die? Because that’s how I felt, like I was dying. But I did sit on the corner of Will’s bed, because it was that or have my knees buckle beneath me. “How could he just leave?” I breathed out. If he’d gone for a walk just to blow off steam or even a ride, I could get that. But all of his stuff was gone. He wasn’t coming back. He’d decided to just leave me. No notice. Nothing.

Well, that was bullshit. If he’d really loved me, would he just have left like that? I tugged my phone out of my pocket and dialed his number. He was going to come back and we were going to finish our conversation.

The floor vibrated, right next to my foot. I leaned over the side of the bed and Will’s phone was lying halfway under the bedspread.

Shit. He’d left his phone. But he’d come back for his phone, right? If not for me, for his phone. And when he came back, we’d have a not so pleasant conversation about abandoning people. Maybe that’s how things went in the Parke household where mothers couldn’t even be bothered to spend Christmas with their children. But Will said he loved me, and Will didn’t lie…So how was I to accept that he loved me but he just up and left me?