“Chill, Blix. I’ll be there if you need someone to protect you. Or someone to leave the theater and screw around in the backseat with.”

I laughed outright. “I’ll make it through the movie. Nothing could gross me out more than that backseat. It’s probably got the DNA of half the girls in this county on it.” I glanced back and shuddered.

“Cruel,” he said. “But potentially true. I’ll be sure to spray it down with some Lysol before I invite you to climb back in.”

We were at my house. “Invite me in.” His voice pleaded with me.

“No.” I shook my head. It was getting easier to relax with Saxon, but I needed to have a sanctuary of my own, and that’s what my room functioned as. It was bad enough the ghosts of Jake still loomed large. “Uncle.”

“What?”

“I’m saying ‘uncle.’” I said. He looked at me blankly. “‘Uncle.’ I’ve had enough. Of you.”

He laughed again. “You’re a stone bitch. But I like you like that.”

I popped the passenger door open and he grabbed my hand and pulled me back. “Goodbye, Brenna.” And before I knew it, I was in his lap, my mouth and his tangling hungrily. I finally pulled away and got out, shaky and uncertain.

Chapter Twelve

I didn’t look back at his car when he pulled out of the driveway. I went to my room, and I had two immediate desires. I wanted a shower, and I wanted to call Jake. But I didn’t do either. I headed up to the attic, which was above our garage, low-ceilinged and dimly lit. The boxes were all labeled. Mom and I moved around quite a bit when I was a young kid, and a lot of our things had been lost. What we had, she treasured, and it was all boxed and labeled. It took a lot less time than I’d expected to find what I was looking for. It was in the box labeled ‘Brenna’s Art: Age 5 & 6.’

I found the book, the one I had loved so fiercely that I had colored all over it. The original pictures were muted, sketchy and incredible. My scribbles overtop were vibrant, harsh. And also incredible. Together they made a complicated, beautiful mess. I put the box back and took the book downstairs.

Thorsten and Mom used Christmas as an excuse to spoil me again, and this time it had been in the form of software and a new printer, plus a huge pile of soft cotton t-shirts in my size. I also had a feeling there was a silk screening press in my future. After my successful sale of t-shirts at local Folly concerts, Mom and Thorsten were so impressed with my skills, they upgraded and added to my equipment. That’s just the kind of awesome they are.

I put some of the pages through my scanner and manipulated them on my laptop so they would make workable images. Then I fiddled with the contrast and repaired the low resolution. But there wasn’t a lot I needed to do. My kindergarten self had all of the artistic imagination in an afternoon of scribbling that I now needed hours of focused work to achieve.

I ran the print-offs and pressed them with the iron. The design was incredible. I had never been so impressed with anything I made before. I got so into it, I didn’t hear Mom come in. She was in the doorway when I finally sensed her presence and looked up.

“Mom!” I ran to her and gave her a hug.

“Hey sweetie. I see you found your book?” She sniffed my hair. “You smell like smoke.”

“I rode my bike a little far, and Saxon drove me back here.” I obviously omitted any mention of the action in his messy bedroom.

“That was sweet of him,” Mom said carefully, looking at my shirt. “This is incredible, honey.”

“Yeah. Too bad I made it when I was five.” We both studied it for a minute.

“Well, use it as inspiration for new things.” She ran her hands over the design. “So where was Jake today?”

“He and I still aren’t dating.” I swallowed hard as the ugliness and confusion of the day shook through me again. “And we’re not really talking right now.”

“Oh, Bren. I’m sorry.” She did sound sorry, but I knew it wasn’t so much about the fact that I wasn’t back with Jake as the fact that I might be hurting over it.

“Saxon invited me out on Friday night. I wanted to go to that new sushi place Thorsten told us about.” I glanced at her, interested to see her reaction.

“That sounds fun.” Her voice was guarded. “Does Jake know?”

I wasn‘t positive why she was asking. I figured it was mostly curiosity. I was sure she wanted to know if I was following her ‘date lots of guys’ advice. “I don’t think Jake cares one way or the other,” I said, remembering our kiss in the greenhouse. Which was technically our second kiss in a Zinga’s greenhouse. That kiss was sharper in my mind than every deliciously intimate thing Saxon and I had done together, and I really didn’t know why.

“It will work itself out, Bren,” Mom promised. It was a promise that made no sense, but I somehow trusted her simple words.

“Thanks, Mom.”

She left me in my room, my beautiful, comfortable room, and I worked like a fiend, printing and ironing. I took a long shower. I made some playlists. I did some extra homework. I ate dinner and watched TV. I didn’t want to go to sleep. I didn’t want Monday to come. Or, more pointedly, I didn’t want Monday afternoon to come. I didn’t want to see Jake, to have to deal with what we still had and didn’t have anymore.

Especially since what we had before was comparatively simple.

And so completely good.

Damn my longing for Saxon. If I had known how complicated this would all get…I still would have done it. No doubt. I needed to know. And I needed to be free. Even from the most amazing, understanding guy there was.

That night I lay in my bed and wished the phone would ring. I willed Jake to dial my number, to tell me that kiss had sparked something in him, that even though I screwed up he still wanted me.

I had done as much for him once, and it had sucked. I had accepted his massively unbalanced past. Thinking about the crazy things he had done had made me insane; imagining the other girls, wondering what it had been like and how I held up. Especially since I had nothing to compare. And the better he was, the more adoring, the harder it was. Because it clouded my judgment and made me unsure.

There was always the feeling that I was being adored from a really high pedestal. Had I willed my own fall? It seemed a little crazy, but so did everything right now. Maybe I wanted to even the field with Jake. Maybe I wanted to see if he was as tolerant as I had been. Was I testing him?

My mind raced. All I knew was that letting go of him was proving more and more difficult, and there wasn’t much of a chance of it getting better when I was going to be seeing him regularly every day.

My head ached, and I felt flushed and achy. Early January bike rides to the middle of Nowhere, New Jersey will do that to your body. I had too much to think about, but sleep eventually wound itself around me and pulled me down into its inky depths.

The next morning, I woke up with less time than I’d prepared to have. I did my hair in hot rollers, something I rarely did. I also used a new technique with my eye makeup and put on a new shade of lipstick. I wore one of the new t-shirts I had designed, a red one with a deep v-neck and tight, slim dark jeans with red Converse. I knew I looked hot. I wanted to. I wasn’t about to think about who for.

I ate my oatmeal, grabbed my backpack and headed out the door. Mom wasn’t there to join me most mornings now. Since she’d gone back to teaching, she left in the early morning and was gone for most of the day two or three times a week. I was so preoccupied as I stepped out of the garage that I almost smacked into Saxon.

“Saxon!” I cried. “What are you doing here?”

“You forgot your bike. In my trunk. So I decided to do the right thing and bring it back. This morning. And force you to ride in with me.”