Summer of Us

Chapter 20

CJ is guilty. I can tell because when I finally emerge from the house near midnight, he's sitting on his back porch, facing mine. No telling how long he's been out there, but it must've been a while, because Monty's blood is still splattered on his shirt. His leg is bouncing up and down anxiously, and when he hears the door his head perks.

Pulling my hood up, I make the trek over into his backyard. I swat at the bugs flying at my face and ignore the roar of the cicadas in the grass, the trees. It's the end of summer, but they don't know that—not yet, at least.

He doesn't say anything as I approach, but he watches. From my steps up to his porch to me taking a seat beside him, his eyes are fixed.

"How is he?" he asks, his voice hoarse, like he hadn't spoken in hours. I wonder if his parents knew, if his sisters. Had they been home when it happened? Had the neighbors complained? Had one of the moms called them up and told them everything?

"You broke his nose," I say, sliding my sleeves into my palms. It's not cold, not in the slightest, but it makes me feel better. Safe.

"Is he at the hospital?"

"Nah. Asleep, on my couch," I say, though that isn't true. Mom doesn't want him to start bleeding again and risk staining her beloved piece of furniture, so her and Sandy had blown up the air mattress for him, and he's knocked out between the dining and living room.

We sit in silence, listening to the chirping bugs. A raccoon emerges from the brush, its beady eyes glimmering in the Laurens' porch light. It darts across the yard and disappears into the next one.

"Monty told me about what you did to him in high school," I say. CJ stiffens beside me. "About following him to the bathroom, and threatening him at prom." I scratch a mosquito bite on my ankle. "I don't know what's scarier, that it took him three years to tell me that, or that we slept together and you never did."

"It's not something I'm proud of," he says, cracking his knuckles. Their bruised and the skin is broken from where he hit Monty. "I thought I was doing the right thing, at the time."

"How's that?" I say. "Nothing you did prevented him and I from being friends. I don't understand—we hadn't spoken in years, and yet you were trying to control who came near me. It's freaky, CJ."

He rubs his right temple, giving me a moment to see all the damage from this afternoon. At first glance, it doesn't look like Monty landed anything. But now I see the bruising along his jaw, the swelling of his upper lip. There's tiny tears in along his cheekbone, and marks decorate his arms, fingerprint size from where he'd been grabbed. The neck of his t-shirt is a ripped, a hole about an inch wide, the collar separating from the rest. For once, CJ doesn't seem so invincible.

"I was jealous, ok?" he finally says, his busted eyebrow twitching.

"Oh please. You had loads of girlfriends in high school."

"Not like that, Aves," he says. "God, I didn't even notice Montgomery at first. Not until I started seeing you guys everywhere together. And then Justin started some bullshit rumor, about you hooking up with this scrap of a kid, and when I finally woke the fuck up I realized—you finally replaced me."

"Replaced you?"

"Don't play dumb," he says, his tone condescending. "You know what I mean. You and I used to do everything together. We were best friends."

"Ok, but you're the one who stopped being friends with me."

CJ's eyebrows pull together in irritation. "Me? Aves, after your dad died you pushed me away like I was diseased. You never answered the phone or came outside, you never wanted to talk to me when I stopped by your place. And then school started in the fall and we got on the bus and you acted like I didn't exist."

"That's not true," I say, my mind working overtime. I try to recollect these memories, scrambling to gather what really happened. "You wanted to sit with your football friends you made at camp. You ignored me."

"So what, you assume just because I made some new friends, I wouldn't want to be yours anymore?" he snaps. "Were you afraid I'd leave you behind because I wanted to meet new people? We're not wired the same, you and me. And I didn't expect you to want to hang out with new people, not so soon after the accident. I get it. But Ava, you were my best friend, my best fucking friend. I would never do that to you." He breathes out, like he'd been holding it this whole time. "You know, I used to think you pushed me away because I reminded you of when your dad was still alive, that it was too painful for you to deal with or something. But you still hung out with Trent, which didn't make sense to me, because he was there before too. But I could never figure out why. I always thought I did something wrong."

My mind collapses. Maybe he's right. Maybe I did push him away, in some capacity. Maybe I compartmentalized our friendship and made myself think CJ was the one who left me. He's easy to blame, with his million and one friends. Maybe all this time, my brain had protecting me from the truth—that I was the one who left CJ in the dust, not the other way around.

"I guess you're probably right," I admit, though it hurts to do. Really, is anything worse than admitting you're wrong? "Maybe I was threatened by all the attention you were getting, and blocked you off before you could drop me."

"I would never drop you," CJ says. "Ever."

"You don't know that, CJ. And it sure didn't seem that way, back then. I guess I was just defending myself." A tear drips from my eye, but thankfully, no emotion makes its way into my voice. "It always felt a little like me against the world, after the accident. I always saw the worst outcome of every situation."

"Naturally," he says.

"Naturally," I echo. "It's still not right for you to harass Monty all that time, though."

"Yeah, not my finest hours," he says. "I'm sorry. For everything before, and for today. I just—" CJ covers his face. "How could you go off with him like that? He's got a girlfriend."

"Not anymore. They broke up a few weeks ago."

"Then why didn't you tell me? You didn't think I deserved to know?"

"Not my finest hour," I repeat. "I'm sorry. I should've told you." I sigh, rubbing my temple. "And I'm sorry we had a falling out. I wish none of it had ever happened."

He pauses. "You sorry for all that shit you used to talk about me? Don't give me that look, I know you would talk trash every chance you got. Almost compelled away a few of my girlfriends, actually."

"Really?" I say, but when he glares I'm back to apologizing. "We're straight now though, right?"

"Yeah," he says, running a hand through his hair. "We're straight."

"Oh, Sandy says you're banned from the house forever, now."

"Yeah, I figured," he hangs his head. "Are we also banned from being friends?"

"That, she can't do," I smile. Under the light of the moon, he smiles back.