Masquerade (Heven and Hell #1)(2)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Her Blackberry began singing a Taylor Swift song, and she sighed. “Who is it?”

I picked the phone up from the cup holder and glanced at the screen. “Cole.”

“Ugh.” She took the phone, hit the ‘ignore’ button, and dropped the phone back into the cup holder.

“Are you fighting with him again?” Kimber and Cole have a definite love-hate relationship. They’d started dating freshman year and had broken up and gotten back together so many times in the past two years that I’d stopped counting. It used to amuse me. Now I wondered why they bothered.

“I broke up with him.” She sniffed.

“I’m sure by lunch everything will be fine.”

“Not this time,” her voice cracked.

“Kimber, you know this is the usual pattern with you two.”

“I caught him kissing Jenna last night after the game.”

“He wouldn’t!”

“Oh, yes he did! I know we usually fight and make up, but this is different. He cheated on me!”

“With a skank!” Jenna Hoffman was a snotty brat. She flirted with everyone’s boyfriend and talked about everyone behind their backs. Unfortunately, the teachers all thought she was great. She got straight A’s and sucked up to all the right people. It didn’t hurt that she was next in line to be head cheerleader, and that her parents had serious money.

A giggle escaped Kimber.

“What?” I asked. Dealing with Jenna was no laughing matter.

“You said ‘skank’.”

“So?” I shrugged. “You act like I’ve never called anyone that before.”

“It’s been a long time. I almost forgot how…” She pressed her lips together and fiddled with the radio.

“How fun I used to be.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

I snorted.

“It’s just nice to see you excited about something.”

I didn’t think calling Jenna a skank for acting like one was me being excited. “So what are you going to do?” I asked, wanting to avoid this conversation.

“About the skank?” Kimber grinned. “Nothing.”

“About Cole.”

Her grin faded, and she stared at the road. “He keeps calling me.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“I told him to leave me alone.”

Her phone went off again, and I picked it up. “It’s him.”

“Just turn it off.”

This was serious. She never ignored his calls. She always answered to yell at him and then hung up. It was part of how they worked things out. Suddenly the idea of Kimber and Cole breaking up – for good – seemed like too much. I always thought they would be together, fighting forever. It was something I counted on – a constant. In a world full of change and uncertainty, I always thought I could count on them to be there…well, fighting.

“You okay?” Kimber asked, slowing the car.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Breathe.

“You having a panic thingy?”

“I am NOT having a panic attack.” Please, not now. I took a deep breath. Then another. The tightness in my chest eased. Kimber was watching me.

“Need me to pull over?”

“No. I’m fine. Sorry.”

She nodded, and we rode in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry,” I said as we pulled into the student parking lot at school. “That was really crappy of Cole.”

“Yeah.”

“You going to be okay?” I asked, reaching out, laying a hand on her arm.

She looked momentarily startled that I touched her, but she recovered fast. She smiled and said, “Shopping? After school?”

Shopping was the last thing on earth that I wanted to do. All those people. All those bright lights and mirrors. “Sure,” I agreed. She stood by me through a lot this past year and without her I probably would have gone insane. I would never be able to repay her, but this was one small way I could make a dent in the debt I owed her for all she’d given me.

She let out a loud groan as she pulled into her usual parking spot. I looked out my window at the car parked next to us. Cole was leaning against his dark blue pickup waiting with his cell clutched in his hand.

“I can’t do this right now,” she confided.

“Go,” I said, “I’ll talk to him.”

“Thank you.” She grabbed her book bag and scurried from the car. I heard Cole shout her name.

Kimber kept running, yelling over her shoulder, “Do not follow me!”

I was slower to get out of the car, reluctant to begin the day, but still I moved faster than normal. Surprisingly, Cole listened to Kimber and stayed behind. He stood at the back of her car, his hands shoved in his pockets, watching her run into the building.

I slammed the car door and dropped my book bag at my feet; reaching up to pull the hood of my sweatshirt up, I made sure my hair was smooth around my face. Cole turned to look at me. He looked miserable.

“Jenna, Cole? Really?” I sniffed.

“It wasn’t what it looked like.” He walked over and stood in front of me.

“So you weren’t kissing her?”

“No – I mean yes!” he yelled, frustrated.

I flinched.

“Sorry.” he sighed, bending to pick up my bag to hand it to me.

“It’s all right.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Really, I’m fine.” I was busy pulling at my hood.

Cole noticed me pulling the hood even further forward and said, “Quit hiding all the time.”

“You gonna to tell me about Jenna?” I avoided his words because I always felt like hiding.

He sighed and ran a hand through his rumpled, dark hair. It stood out all over his head, and his normally bright blue eyes were bloodshot. Even looking as wrung out as he did, he was still good looking. He stood almost six feet tall with the broad shoulders of the football player he was. He was a popular guy, one of the most popular in the class, but he was still a nice guy. Even though he did a lot of things to make Kimber mad, he never did anything like cheat. We began walking toward the school entrance.

“I could explain if she would just talk to me.”

“How do you explain what she saw?”

“It didn’t mean anything. It was a dumb bet. She shouldn’t even have seen it.”

“That’s your story? It was a bet, and you did it because you thought you wouldn’t get caught?”