Page 175 of Keeping 13

I couldn’t open the plastic bag.

I couldn’t fucking open it!

My hands were sweating, fucking perspiring, which was ridiculous because I had bought condoms before—frequently. Granted, it had been a while since I made the necessary rubber run, but still…

Six long fucking months.

Oh Jesus, I hoped this wasn’t going to be a new thing for me. Was I losing my touch? I couldn’t find the fucking opening of a plastic bag.Fuck.Was this going to happen to me with everything?

“Do you want a hand with that?” she asked for the third bleeding time.

“I can do it myself, lady,” I snapped, flustered, and more than likely frightening the poor pharmacist. “Icando it,” I repeated in a calmer voice. “I’m just out of practice.”

“Out of practiceshopping?” she asked, frowning.

“With a lot of bleeding things,” I muttered under my breath before finally opening the bag. “See!” I grinned, victorious, as I held the twelve-pack in one hand and the tricky fucking carrier bag open with the other. “Icando this.”

“Yes, you can,” the pharmacist replied, giving me an encouraging thumbs-up.

Jesus…

44

Bust-Ups and Push-Ups

Shannon

In a world where everything was changing at the speed of light, I could depend on one thing to remain the same, and that was Lizzie and Gibsie’s blatant dislike of each other. Every day during lunch for the almost two weeks that we had been back to school, they had tossed snarky comments and remarks back and forth at each other. Some cruel. Some funny. Some downright disgusting.

I couldn’t understand what the problem was between them, and even though Lizzie was one of my best friends, I had to admit that she was the orchestrator of every argument. She seemed to find a problem with everything Gibsie did. He was either breathing too heavily, or chewing too loudly, or taking up too much of the table. It didn’t matter what Gibsie did or didn’t do; Lizziealwaysfound fault with him.

By lunchtime on Thursday, the tension bubbling up between them had reached a breaking point, and I was seriously beginning to rethink our sitting arrangements, wondering if we would be better off sitting at our old table. At least they would be far apart from each other. The only thing that kept me at the rugby table was the boy whose arm was slung over my shoulder.

I couldn’t look at Johnny too often; it just wasn’t good for my poor heart. I tried to just breathe and be normal, focus on anything other than him, because I knew that if I thought too much about how good it felt having his big body pressed to mine, or how he made me shiver when he leaned close to whisper something in my ear, and how he absentmindedly stroked my arm with his thumb as he laughed and joked with his friends, I would burst into flames.

Johnny’s father was back in Dublin and his mother was with him. They wouldn’t be home until late tonight, so he had invited me to go over to his house after school today. I wanted to go, more than anything, but I was a nervous wreck thinking about the storm I knew I would face when I got home tonight. They were already furious with me for taking spins to and from school with him, so I knew I would be returning to a battle, heightened by the fact that my father was due to be discharged from Brickley House any day now.

I tried not to think about my father too much, knowing that thoughts of him evoked crippling panic attacks. Instead, I focused on the positives in my life. I focused on my friends and my brothers, but mostly I focused on Johnny. My mother’s wrath or the fear of my father wouldn’t stop me from going to the Kavanaghs’ house, though. To be honest, I wasn’t sure anything could. I was desperate to spend time alone with him. He made me feel safe, and wanted, and I was sticking to that feeling like glue.

“Are you seriously that stupid?” Lizzie’s high-pitched snarl cut through my thoughts, causing me to almost leap out of my skin.

“You okay?” Johnny asked, turning to look at me.

“Yeah,” I choked out, resisting the urge to press my hand to my chest. “I just wasn’t expecting that.”

“Ignore them,” he whispered, resuming his thumb tracing on my shoulder.

“Are you being for real?” Lizzie continued to hiss, glaring daggers at Gibsie, who was sitting across from me. “Or is this just another stupid joke to you?”

“Relax,” Gibsie huffed, folding his arms across his chest. “I was only asking a question.”

“Well, ask good questions,” Lizzie countered and then shoveled a forkful of salad into her mouth. “Not stupid ones that only make you appear even stupider than you already are.”

“‘Stupider’ is not a word,” Gibsie scoffed, and then quickly looked to Johnny for backup. “Right, Cap?”

“It’s a comparative adjective, lad,” Johnny replied, shifting uncomfortably.

Gibsie gave him a blank stare.

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