Nothing Like You Read Online Free PDF Page B

Blurry was better. I turned and ran outside to my car. For most of first block I just sat, stuck to my hot leather seat, crying. I know it sounds so stupid because it’s not like Paul was my boyfriend or anything, to be honest I wasn’t even sure I really
liked
him; but something inside me said this was
it
for me: my life in turnaround. I’d paid my bad-luck dues with Mom back in May, and now it was time for something good. Or maybe luck doesn’t work like that. Maybe I wasn’t owed anything.
     
    I didn’t see Paul or Saskia for the rest of the day. On the ride home with Nils, I tried hiding my shit mood.
     
    “What’s wrong with you, weirdo? This morning you were bouncing off the walls, and now you look like you’ve been hit by a truck.”
     
    I didn’t say anything.
     
    He went on. “Classic bipolar behavior. Manic highs, awful lows …”
     
    “I’m not bipolar, jerk-off.” I punched him hard in the arm and then shifted the car into third. “I don’t know what my problem is.” That was true, I didn’t.
     
    He looked at me. He rubbed his arm where I’d hit him.
     
    “Oh, please. That didn’t hurt.”
     
    He pulled on his seat belt and twisted toward me. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
     
    A wave of sadness rolled through my body. “Like what?” I tried looking less devastated. I missed the old Nils. The Nils I could tell
anything
to before his lame libido came along and wrecked everything. “My period,” I blurted, figuring that would kill Nils’s craving for a real heart-to-heart. “Don’t sweat it. I’ll be fine.”
     
    And I was. I pulled it together well enough to take Harry out for some exercise, to cook dinner for Jeff. We ate in front of the TV like we always did on Monday nights, but then afterward, when Nils called and asked if I wanted to meet up in The Shack, I said no. Enough for one day. I kissed sleeping Jeff on the cheekand locked myself away in my room. I listened to the crickets. I stared out the window. I shut all the lights off and lit a candle. I tried to read. I blew the candle out.
     
    Then my phone rang. I grabbed it straight away, thinking it was Nils with one last push for The Shack. I didn’t even check the caller ID. “What now?”
     
    “Holly?”
     
    It wasn’t Nils. “Oh,” I said. “It’s you.”
     
    “Am I calling too late?” It was Paul.
     
    “I was sleeping,” I stammered. “I thought you were somebody else.”
     
    “Oh. No, it’s me. Sorry to wake you.”
     
    I didn’t say anything back. I wanted to make him feel bad. He went on. “I just, I didn’t see you in school today and I wanted to say hi.”
     
    “I saw
you
,” I said.
     
    He lit a cigarette. I could hear the flick of his Zippo, then one long, even exhale. I pictured the smoke shooting out of him in a skinny, gray straight line. “What’s that?”
     
    “With Saskia, I
saw
you,” I huffed. He didn’t say anything back, so I said, “So, what? Are you, like … back together with her or something?” I knew I had no right to be jealous. I must have sounded
insane
, but he was calling me and making me feel certain things and I felt deserving of an excuse or explanation.
     
    “We are, yeah.”
     
    “Oh.” That was all I could say,
Oh.
Not that him pressinghis body against hers in the hallway at school wasn’t confirmation enough, but hearing him say it made it sound so officially …
official
.
     
    “I like you so much, but Sass is going through a really hard time right now. Her brother’s sick and she’s really bad at handling family stuff and we’ve just known each other so long. I can’t
not
be with her. She’d have a breakdown, I swear it.” He paused, then said, “She’s nothing like you, Holly.”
     
    “No kidding.”
     
    “No, I mean, she’s not strong like you. She’s breakable.”
     
    I couldn’t imagine Saskia Van Wyck having a tough time with anything. I couldn’t imagine her working up a sweat in gym, let alone