Page 44 of Old Acquaintances

His fingers tense. “You used to trust me.”

“I used to let you do this to me because I knew you’d never let me get hurt, even if I was scared. I don’t think that anymore. You are a stranger to me because the friend I left behind wouldn’t have done what you did to me.”

He doesn’t respond. I see my friends’ eyes drop to his face. Tucker quietly takes my hands from his head, I let him, and he dunks himself under the water until I’m freed. I swim around to face him, and he squats to my eyeline.

“I thought I wasn’t your friend?” he grumbles.

I decide to screw the control over my facial expressions. I don’t care if he sees me crack. The sun feels warm, the water warmer, but my blood runs cold, seeing this man who used to be a boy and thinking of how carefully he once handled me. The flippancy of his statement, the way it ping-pongs the responsibility back, makes me angry.

“Is that how you sleep at night?” I snap. Our friends stay quiet.

Tucker watches me as if they’re not even here. “Those areyourwords.”

“You know what I mean by that.”

“No - I don’t!” He exhales, exasperated. “Because I was nothing but a really, fucking good friend to you.”

“You were my best friend!” I cry.

I’ve never said that to him. Not out loud.

I thrust, “Youknowyou should have shown up. You know it. And you didn’t.” I swim off to the edge of the pool. Callie leans out of the way as I crawl out beside her, a rainfall of water dripping off my body and hair.

As I snatch a towel off a chair, I shout, “Everything nice you didbeforethe accident doesn’t count. Because you didn’t exist after that.”

Chapter Fourteen

Nutcracker

Pine Place Dance Academy didn’t have the rigorous ballet program I needed to pursue my professional goals. By freshman year, I began driving into Charleston, an hour each way, to train at a ballet school. My parents couldn’t have been happier to see me get my license, even though I wasn’t the most responsible driver.

Early senior year, on my way to Nutcracker auditions, I ran out of gas.

On the side of the road, just outside of Pine Place town limits, I called my dad. I sat in my Toyota Corolla, feeling panic rise in my throat, not because I was stranded, but because I would be late. I couldn’t miss the audition. I’d just spent four weeks at the San Francisco Ballet’s summer intensive and had every intention of scoring one of two Sugar Plum roles. I’d split it with someone, I didn’t care who. However, with ten seniors to cast, the competition was high.

I heard the gravel move before I saw the car pull up behind me. Through the rearview mirror, I watched Tucker hop out of his black truck. He walked up to my door and opened it.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I must have looked stressed. I felt stressed. I gawked at him. “What areyoudoing here?”

“I was at your house borrowing some fishing stuff from yourdad when you called. He’s getting gas with your mom. I’m going to take you to your audition.”

I stared at him. “How do you know about that?”

“I heard you talk about it at lunch.”

“You were sitting on the other end of the table -”

He snapped, “Do you want a ride or not?”

We’d only been back in school a week. I looked at the hand holding my door open and remembered how it felt running along my backside two months before. I thought about the last time I heard his voice -you go first- and the heaviness that throbbed in my core when his tongue danced against mine.

“Ella?”

I shook back to attention. “Yeah. Coming.” I exhaled, grabbing my bag and my phone, scooting as far from his body as possible.

In the truck, my knees shook. I kept my eyes glued to the clock. We still had a thirty-minute drive. I was supposed to be in the audition in twenty-five.

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