All Grown Up Read online

  He bit down on his lower lip. “Yup,” he said. “That sounds good.”

  He kissed me again, putting his hand behind my head, and kissing me even harder, so hard that my head was bouncing against the wall and his hand was the perfect protective barrier.

  I heard the door and pushed him away playfully. “Hey,” I said. “Your parents are here, I think.”

  “Shit,” he said, moving away from me. “Go to the dining room. I need the bathroom—”

  He looked down at his own erection, which was clearly visible despite the fact that he was wearing tight jeans that seemed to keep it down. He scrambled away toward the bathroom and I moved the hair away from my face and tried to straighten up my clothes. There was a rush to all of this and, despite myself, I could feel how excited and exhilarated I was. I didn’t want to let it show, of course, because I was supposed to be the responsible tutor who was helping Jody bring up his grades to an acceptable level.

  I looked up to see if I could meet his mother’s gaze as she walked in, surprised to see that it wasn’t his mom or dad at all. Instead, it was a bunch of his classmates—our classmates—coming toward me like a stampede.

  There were three of them, but they all were large and a little terrifying. There was Max, who was six three and wide at the back, with a shining and deceitful smile. The other two were Alan and George, two wholly indistinguishable entities from one another. They were both tall, slightly dark haired, with tans that they got from playing volleyball at the beach. Their personas were entirely practiced.

  That wasn’t what they wanted the rest of us to believe, but anybody smart enough could’ve seen it.

  It was still a little strange to me that Jody hung out around them. He was better than them. He was smarter, funnier, more kind. But when he was around his friends, it was very easy to see that they all worshiped him. It was a little disconcerting, because it wasn’t like he tried to get them to like him. He just acted like himself; cool, calm, collected. It was one of the things I had always envied about him. He made everything seem easy, even when it clearly wasn’t.

  George, or at least I thought it was George, looked at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m tutoring him.”

  “Not on his social skills,” Max said, grinning. They all laughed, as if he had said the funniest thing in the freaking world.

  “Calculus, if you must know. If his average goes down, he won’t be able to play volleyball anymore, and then he won’t be able to carry our team. You know you couldn’t do any of what you do without him.”

  “Didn’t know you had such a fan in Jess Meyer, Jody,” George said as Jody emerged from the hallway, looking like he had just washed his face, and perhaps even his entire body, with cold water. I saw him tense up and his gaze darted between me and his friends. “We let ourselves in. The door was unlocked and you weren’t answering your phone.”

  Jody swallowed. “Sure, no worries.”

  “So why haven’t we seen you at any of the games?” Max said, turning to me. “Since you’re such a big fan and everything.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t like any sports,” I said. “I just know the importance of averages. He’s bringing you up.”

  Max rolled his eyes. “You’re so cute,” he said. “Look at little Jess, pretending she knows shit about volleyball, and pretending she knows anything about Jody. He’s only taking your stupid tutoring so he can play. Don’t flatter yourself and think that’s why he’s with you, you’re only in the Banks house because you’re getting paid to be here. And let’s be real, you should be the one paying him.”

  Jody winced a little at that, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, his gaze darted between his friend and where I was sitting. There was a second where it was clear that he was contemplating what he was going to say next.

  “To be clear, Jess, he doesn’t enjoy your company,” Max said.

  Then they all laughed. Every single one of them, including Jody. I felt a stab of pain in my chest, slammed my book shut, and started stuffing my things into my backpack. “Okay, well, since he enjoys yours, I’m going to go.”

  Max scoffed. As I raced past him, on my way to the door, he spoke to me. “You’re not better than us,” he said. “You’re not better than a single one of us, so don’t start getting any ideas.”

  I didn’t say anything. By the time I got to my car, my eyes were filled with tears.

  CHAPTER THREE

  2019

  I looked down at Jody, who was sitting on the bed, a grimace on his face. He looked like he was in pain. It would’ve been entirely unprofessional to say that I was enjoying it, though it wouldn’t have been untrue. I didn’t need to share that with him.

  “Your x-ray came back. You’re fine. I mean, all things considered.”

  He swallowed. I thought I could smell the faintest alcohol on his breath. “Good. That’s good.”

  I nodded. “You got lucky, you’re not going to need surgery, when in every other situation, you might have. So…”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know what it means, Mr. Banks,” I said, trying to sound as patient as possible. “I’m going to take it out, and you might bleed, but I promise you I have that in hand. You already got some medication, right? For pain management.”

  He looked up at me, our gazes meeting for just a second. “They gave me some ibuprofen or something.”

  “Good. Then this will hurt a little less.”

  “How much is it going to hurt?”

  “It might just be a bit of pressure, or you might feel like screaming. But it will be temporary, and it will be quick, and I promise you I’m good at this.”

  He blinked. He closed his eyes, tilted his head up, and relaxed his shoulders. “I know. I’m not worried about your expertise.”

  I smiled, a little too proudly, aware he couldn’t see me.

  “Okay,” I said. “Take a deep breath.”

  He took a deep breath.

  I grabbed the handle of the knife. Teri, the ER nurse, was next to me. She could do this by herself, really, but I had the patient’s trust, and I wanted to get that knife out of him myself. Regardless of what the tests might have said, there were still other things that I needed to worry about, like his tendons and the tissue of his arms.

  “Another one,” I said. “I’m going to count to three, and when I do that, I’m going to pull out the knife from your arm. Look away, okay? It might hurt more if you look.”

  “Why would it hurt more if I look?”

  “Because you’ll see me pulling a knife out of your body,” I said. “That has to hurt.”

  “Okay,” he said. He paled a little as he looked away from me, holding his arm to his side slightly.

  “Three, two,” I gripped the handle of the knife as tightly as I could. “One.”

  I pulled hard away from him. The knife made a sucking sound and then it popped. The pressure must have only lasted for a second, but it was enough for him to instinctively move his hand up to where the knife had once been. He winced a little as he looked at me. I put my hand on his wound and held it there.

  “See, it’s not bleeding,” I said. “Pressure is going to help, but there might be some inflammation, and we need to keep you in the hospital for observation for a little while.”

  “Great,” he said.

  “Look,” I replied. “You got seriously hurt. With a knife, falling on your kitchen floor or whatever, but you still got seriously hurt, and you might get even more hurt if I send you home. Are you going to get more hurt if I send you home?”

  He blinked. “I don’t know.”

  I looked at Teri, who nodded and left the room. This kind of thing was normally left to the nurses or someone else, but I had a particular interest in him, one which was much more than academic.

  He was more than just a patient and I couldn’t put that aside, no matter how much I wanted to.

  “I’m going to transfer you to one of our attendings,” I said.
“Every doctor who works at this hospital is wonderful, and you’re going to be under the best of care. In the meantime, I’m going to move this cloth away so I can take a closer look at your wound. There is a possibility that you’re going to need stitches.”

  “Are you going to be the one to give me stitches or is that also going to be someone else?”

  “If you need stitches, I will be the one who gives you stitches,” I said matter-of-factly. “But you might not.”

  “What if I don’t want you to transfer my care?”

  I looked at his wound. “Why wouldn’t you want me to do that?”

  “Because I don’t know any of these doctors,” he said. “I don’t trust any of them.”

  “But you trust me,” I said. “Mr. Banks, I assure you that all of my colleagues are highly qualified, and—”

  “Can you cut it out with the Mr. Banks bullshit?” he asked, sounding more annoyed than I had expected.

  “Sure,” I said as I began to wipe his wound clean. Once again, this was normally not my job, but the ER was very quiet and there was a part of me that was completely relishing this, even though I knew that I shouldn’t. Even though I knew that I should feel bad. “This is going to sting a little, but it’s very important that I do a thorough job. We don’t know how your body is going to react, maybe you will get an infection. Hopefully not, which is why I am prescribing a course of antibiotics.”

  He looked me up and down. “You don’t believe me.”

  “People come up with weirder lies. Usually, to cover up weirder wounds or emergencies, but still…”

  “Like what?”

  I took a closer look at his wound. “You are going to need stitches.”

  “Great. Do you know how much that’s going to cost me?”

  I looked up at him. “Your insurance should cover it.”

  He scoffed. “You think I have insurance?”

  “The hospital has a very good financial program. Give them a call, and they might waive all of your fees.”

  “It is barbaric that I have to pay for hospital care.”

  I nodded. “Don’t get me started on the American healthcare system. You’ll never be able to leave.”

  He smiled. “At least we still have something in common.”

  I looked into his eyes. “Our deep dislike of hospitals?”

  He smiled. “Of injustice. Our deep dislike of injustice.”

  I swallowed, turning away from him. I didn’t want him to see me rolling my eyes.

  “I just need to get some things.”

  “I didn’t fall on the knife. I got in a fight.”

  “I figured. Where?”

  “Right in the arm.”

  I looked at him over my shoulder. I smiled, despite myself. “Was it at a bar or something?”

  “Or something. Do you really need to know the specifics?”

  “You know someone has already called the police, right?” I asked. “Whether you want to hide it or not, the truth is going to come out eventually.”

  “And painfully. Just like the knife.”

  That time, I did laugh. “I don’t know,” I said. “But it would help me ascertain where it was, which might help me know what your chances of getting an infection are.”

  “I was at a friend’s house. There was a dispute and before I knew it, he grabbed a knife, and stuck it into my arm. Are you happy now?”

  I turned around to look at him. “Not even a little bit.”

  “Join the ranks of women who aren’t happy with me.”

  “Great. I don’t know how I should react to that.”

  He smiled at me. “At least you’re a doctor, so I care about your opinion.”

  “But not the rest of them?”

  He laughed. “Why would I care about the rest of them, when I can care about what you think?”

  I felt my cheeks reddening, the blood rushing to them. I cleared my throat before I turned around, trying, once more, to keep a semblance of professionalism as I made my hands fists at my sides. “Stay put,” I said. “I’ll be right back, and we’ll find you a bed upstairs so you can stay for the next day or so until we know you definitely don’t have an infection.”

  He said something else, but I was walking so quickly away from him that I didn’t hear him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  2009

  I didn’t want to deal with him.

  I knew exactly what was going to happen, because it wasn’t as if he hadn’t done it before. He was sweet, full of apologies the next day, telling me he was going to make it up to me stat. I knew that he was, but the hurt could have been avoided in the first place, if he hadn’t just frozen and then given into his friends demands of acting like he didn’t really even know me.

  Like I was even just his tutor, and we weren’t more than friends.

  Because we were certainly more than friends.

  He had asked me, one afternoon, after I had helped him with his homework, if I wanted to be more than that.

  And I had, repeatedly and decidedly, said no.

  Because he never said hello to me in the hallways, and because he practically ignored me in every single class that we had together. I didn’t want to think that he was just going to pretend not to know me if we were together, but he chipped away at me, slowly winning me over, even though he had absolutely no right to win me over, even though I didn’t want him to win me over.

  He made me laugh at all the right times. Every day that we spent together, I smiled a little more, and I could feel myself falling for him, slowly but surely. He was good at tearing down my walls, at making me feel safe, even when I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be feeling safe around him. He wasn’t a safe person—no, he was dangerous, and he had that smile that made me melt inside. I didn’t want him to, but his eyes would shine when he spoke, and I felt a little like an idiot when I looked away from him.

  He was so gorgeous—all of him. I could have kept looking at him for the entirety of the afternoons we spent together, which was kind of a problem when I was trying to teach him how to calculate important things. None of our classes seemed that important when we were hanging out next to each other. He was the only person in the world who could make me forget how laser focused I was, to the point where I almost didn’t want to see him. It always felt like he was derailing me and making me think less about my goals, which I couldn’t afford.

  My parents weren’t rich and I was going to have to pay my own way through college. My friends felt sorry for me, because their parents were going to pay their way, and that was what made sense for them. My mom worked as a security guard for a shitty little hotel in the northside of town, and my dad was more interested in his new family, though none of the children were biologically his.

  I didn’t worry about it too much. I didn’t worry about my dad, or what he wanted, or what that meant for my own life. I was going to put my head down, work hard, and I was going to make it on my own. I wasn’t trying to find a boy to distract me, not at all, but Jody was good at distracting me anyway.

  He would smile at me and I felt like I was melting. I didn’t want to feel like that, I didn’t want to feel like there was a boy who was distracting me from my studies or my goals.

  I wasn’t going to take his shit anymore, though. There was no way that I was going to pretend that I was okay with him ignoring me, once again, because of his dumb friends.

  I was trying my best not to think about it as I advanced toward him. He was sitting outside, on one of the benches, his books spilled around him. The sun was hitting his hair and his friends weren’t around. I hadn’t planned on running into him, but he was right there, and it would have been a shame to waste the opportunity that had presented itself on a silver platter.

  I approached him, making as much sound as I could as I walked up to him. There was a second where I hesitated, but I didn’t want to hesitate. I wanted to be brave. I wanted my confrontation of him to be brave, to make sense, and most importantly, to be brief. I
f his friends arrived, I didn’t know how he was going to react.

  Actually, I thought, grimacing, I knew exactly how he was going to react if his friends came around. He picked up his head and his gaze met mine. His eyes widened a little as I sat a few feet away from him.

  He scooted slightly toward me, not enough to be noticeable.

  “Hi,” he said, finally, though he wasn’t looking at me.

  “Hey,” I replied, also not looking at him.

  “Jess, I—”

  “No, don’t say anything,” I said.

  I heard him shuffle uncomfortable in his seat. Good. I wanted him to be uncomfortable.

  “I just want to talk, and you can talk after me, if you want to,” I said. “But you don’t have to say anything at all, either.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “I told you no one needed to know, and I meant that,” I said. “But I didn’t sign up for you to act like you don’t know me, or to act like your dick friends can demean me. I’m done. I will find a different tutor for you, and I’m not going to be in the way of you getting the education that you need. But I’m not going to sacrifice myself for, you know, you—”

  “Wait,” he said, for the first time looking right at me. “I don’t want—”

  “I don’t care what you want, Jody,” I said. “This isn’t good for me, you know it isn’t good for me, and the worst thing is, you know it isn’t good for you either.”

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” he said. “I just, I don’t know. They come around and I panic.”

  “How about don’t panic,” I said. “Just treat me like a human. Nobody has to know I’m your girl—”

  “Shh, keep your voice down,” he said.

  I swallowed, standing up. “Anyway,” I said. “It’s not my problem anymore.”

  As I stood up, I felt someone push me back on the shoulder, and I sat down again, a little startled. I looked back to see Max, who was glowering at me, his teeth shining in a devilish smile.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

  “I’m just sitting here,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

  “Aw,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “You are mad, huh? Little Jessie is sad that Jody doesn’t want to be seen with—”