The In Between

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Justin

All the lights are on; there’s music pouring out of every window of Amanda’s house. She’s having a party.

I take a deep breath and knock on the door.

The door is unlocked and I push my way through throngs of classmates. Some greet me with nods, and “hey’s.” Ben lights up and fist-bumps me like he hasn’t seen me in years.

“Where’s Amanda?” I ask him.

“Upstairs, I think.” He hands me a beer. I put it down and take the stairs two by two.

The door to her room is cracked open. Something comes over me, I don’t know what—an uneasiness, I guess—of who I used to be. Amanda’s boyfriend. A guy who used to spend afternoons in this room, who used to smile and laugh over dinner with her parents, who used to horse around with her little brother. It feels like a former life.

I knock, pushing the door open. She’s sitting on her bed, looking up at me, as if she’d been waiting here for me.

“You came to my party,” she says softly. She seems weird—more serious than usual. I can’t tell whether she’s been crying or not.

I shrug. “You asked me to come, so I came.”

She swings her legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up straighter. “Yeah, thanks,” she murmurs.

“You said you wanted to talk? No games?”

Amanda shakes her head somberly. “No games.” She motions for me to sit.

“I’m good,” I say.

“This isn’t easy for me, you know,” she says, playing with a knit blanket at the end of her bed.

I look around, getting pretty uncomfortable. “Where’s Wayne?”

She shrugs. “Downstairs. Drunk. Whatever.”

I nod. Coming here was a mistake.

“Justin, I—” she starts. “I still love you,” she says softly.

I sigh, looking out the door behind me. Looking for an escape.

“I don’t know what happened,” she continues. “I just became such a bitch—I’m honestly not even sure why! It’s like I thought that was how I was supposed to act, or whatever,” she says.

I scowl at her. “Come on…”

She looks me dead in the eye. “Justin, you know I’m not like that, I—”

“All I know is what you’ve put out there,” I snap. “And anyway, none of this matters. You’re with Wayne. I’m with Tara.”

“It matters to me!” She is crying now. “We went out for two years and then one day out of nowhere you wake up and decide you love a rescue dog.”

“Seriously?” I say, getting exasperated now. “I mean, you try to say you’re not a bitch one minute, the next you’re insulting my girlfriend?”

“Justin, I was your girlfriend. You hardly know her.”

I shake my head. “I hardly know you,” I say. “Look, you can do or say whatever you want to me, but leave Tara out of this, okay? You’re making her life miserable with your stupid mind games—”

“I can’t help it if Sally and Lauren are protective of me.”

“Sally and Lauren don’t do anything unless you tell them to.”

Amanda wipes some tears from her eyes. “Fine,” she says, standing up. She takes a perfume-drenched step toward me, the familiar scent reaching me before she does. I step back. “You just let me know when you’ve come to your senses,” she mutters quietly. “I can’t promise I’ll still be around.”

* * *

On the drive home, I crank up Vampire Weekend, but Amanda’s words manage to drown out the chorus. I’m still pissed, that’s a given, but as I get farther away from her house, I start to feel kind of bad. I never thought I could hurt Amanda. It was one of the things that, pre-Tara, made sense to me about her. She was bulletproof. I never had to be careful about what I said or did around her. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it could be comforting.

I guess I was wrong…