It's My Life - Stacie Ramey Page 0,73

she ever felt the way Rena obviously does about Chip (who knew?) or how I feel about Julian. I want to scream at her for letting that stupid-assed doctor screw up my life so much that I could be used as a weapon against the boy I love. I want to flail and cry and throw every single person under the goddamn bus, but I’m so damned tired it’s hard to stay awake, so I close my eyes and let myself sleep.

Twenty-Six

I’m half-awake when the door opens. “Jenna?” Rena’s voice greets me.

I open my eyes fully.

She sits in the chair Mom usually occupies and holds my hand. “Hey. How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” I lie. I feel like my chest is on fire. And that one syllable costs me a long, drawn-out coughing fit. Rena sits me up and pats my back until I finally stop.

“Well, maybe this will pick you up a little.” She waves a bag in front of my face. “I got you a new phone.”

I close my eyes and give her a throaty, “Thanks.”

“Let me just get this set up for you. You still have the same password, right?”

“Right,” I say. Then realize a second too late just what that means… Rena has my phone. With pictures that Ben must have taken of Julian and me when we were dancing. And the texts.

“Hey, this is a cute picture of you and Julian,” Rena says.

I open my eyes and see her squinting at my phone, scrolling through the texts, I guess. I can’t make my voice come out. I push the button to lift the head of my bed even though it makes me dizzy to do so.

“Jenna?” Rena’s face looks all puzzled. “Are you and Julian…are you…”

I’m sitting completely upright, finally. From here I can get some breath. “I can explain…”

“You and Julian are a thing? And you didn’t tell me?”

“It’s not like that. Exactly.”

She points the face of the phone at me. “It sure looks like it is.” I can see disappointment in her face, and I want to fix it, but she’s right. I didn’t tell her. But also, she didn’t tell me about Chip. So.

“Goes both ways, little sister,” I manage to get out before going on another huge coughing fit.

She chews her cuticle. I swat at her hand. “Disgusting habit,” we both say at the same time in the same Mom-voice. And the tension dissipates.

The door opens. Ben enters. “Hey sweets, what’s the haps? You hear from Prince Charming?”

Rena fires her words at him. “What? You knew, too?”

Ben puts his hands up in surrender. “Come on, Rena. We’re all friends here.”

“So? Have you heard from him?” Rena asks me.

I stare at my new phone. I have twenty-one texts. I’d counted them this morning on the iPad. Twenty-one texts from Julian. “Looks like it.”

Rena puts her hand out for my phone, when I won’t relinquish it, she asks, “What does he say? How is he?”

“I haven’t read them yet.” I put the phone face down on the tray table and give her a “don’t you dare” sort of look.

“Why won’t you read them?” Ben asks.

“It would never have worked,” I say. “It was stupid.”

“Oh. We’re doing this now, are we?” Ben says.

“Doing what?”

“Shooting this Julian thing in the foot because you’re too scared to see if it could work out.”

“That is not what I’m doing.”

“No?” Rena asks. “The least you could do is read his texts.”

“And what would the point of that be, exactly? He was just being polite. He doesn’t want to date me because of my CP.”

Ben points his finger at me. “Absurd.”

“You saw how he acted when they teased him about me. You were there.”

“I saw him coming to your defense,” Ben says.

I lean back against the pillows and sigh. “But I didn’t need him to do that. I didn’t want him to do that. I wanted him to get in the car with us and drive off.”

Ben cocks his head. “That’s sweet, but maybe not exactly reality-based for hetero hockey players en masse. First rule of any situation is you’ve got to know your customer.”

“Seriously, Jenna, you think Eric would have allowed those players to talk about you like that?” Rena’s eyes are huge, and she’s staring at me like she just can’t believe I would do this. “He’d have been right there with Julian.”

“I don’t need anyone to fight my battles for me. I don’t want anybody to fight on my behalf or because they feel sorry for me.”

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