Allyson In Between ✔︎

Noah | Deleted Scene 5

"Is your dad out with the woman with the gloopy eyes?" Josh asks, holding his free hand in front of one eye and waving his fingers. I give him the quit-being-a-dumbass look, slide a beer out of its cardboard slot and head for the TV room.

"Oh, so it's like that, is it?" Josh says, with all kinds of attitude.

"Yep. And there's pizza on the counter."

"Guess who showed up at the pool bright and early this morning?" he asks, following me.

I sink into the couch and find the remote.

"Sweet little Lindsay came back to see if you were okay. She felt real bad about makin' you puke the other day," he adds, doing his shitty impersonation of my accent.

I clench my teeth and turn on the Xbox. Josh gets the controllers out of the cabinet and chucks one at my head. "I didn't let on," he says. "But I was right pissed when she told me you'd been goin' up to the treatment center. How come you don't talk to me no more?"

"Because you're a dumbass."

"Seriously, Dodge," he says, sounding pissed now. "What are you doing?"

"I asked you to come over here because I wanna blow shit up."

He presses the start button. We blow shit up for like five seconds and then he says, "Lindsay told me about Ally's memory."

He lets that hang out there. Like he's waiting for me to say something.

"She also told me the last thing she said before you blew Captain Chunks," he adds when I ignore him. "It kind of confirmed this idea I've been having—about you blaming yourself for something you had no control of?"

I circle my avatar behind Josh's and blast him out of the game.

"Mm hm," he says. "Thought so."

"Josh, just..." Dammit. "Find your balls and get in the game."

He smiles and taps out a finger-beat on the sides of his controller. Anything and everything is a drum to Josh Porter. "What do you want from me?" I ask him.

"I want you to say the words. Get it out before you explode. You should see the veins bulging out of your head right now. Go look in the mirror."

"Are you playing or not?"

"Not."

"Dammit, Josh, can you just—for one time—can you shut the fuck up long enough to get through a mission?"

"Huh, I don't think..." He makes a show of scratching his scruffy cheek, like he's in deep thought. "Nope, that's the first time I've ever heard you say the word fuck. It's even worse than I thought." He drops the controller and leans forward, grabbing the coffee table for leverage so he can hoist himself out of the man-eating coach. "Does your dad know you haven't been going to practice?" he asks on his way to the kitchen.

Dad hasn't asked. Probably because I made sure he's seen me carry my gym bag to and from my car a couple of times.

"I give it a week," Josh says. "You hold it all in for one more week and boom! Your dad will be wiping little chunks of your brain off the walls."

I lob a grenade at his newly regenerated avatar. My cell phone buzzes my back pocket in sync with the vibrating controller. I glance at Josh to make sure he's preoccupied before I take out my phone because I have a feeling...

Yep, it's Ally.

Thank you for visiting me this morning. My friend Grace helped me "hack" into Allyson's Facebook account tonight. I didn't have time to read very much (because I'm going to her birthday party), but I started at the beginning and I wanted you to know that she liked you a lot too. : )

"You are one pale motherfucker right now."

Josh is standing in front of me holding a paper plate stacked with pizza.

And then the plate is on the table and my phone is in his hand and I'm not sure if he took it or if I handed it to him. Either way, I don't object. My temples are throbbing and the pressure is building and I can't shake the image of my head going off like that grenade.

Josh moves his thumb over my screen, scrolling back to the start of the conversation. His forehead is all I see now that he shaved his head. And right now it's nothing but horizontal lines of wrinkled skin. Dumbass. 

"You went inside," he says.

The surprise in his tone is genuine and it sort of pisses me off.

"How'd she look?" he asks.

"Great."

"But she talks about herself in the third person."

Now his tone says that's weird as shit. Which is a relief. I really don't know what to do with the third-person thing. It seems a little...

"When are you going back?" he asks, but his eyes are narrow, like he already knows the answer. "You're thinking about not going." He closes his throat around a sigh to make it extra loud and shakes his head, judging me.

No, the dumbass is analyzing me.

Josh's entire family went to see a psychologist a few years back after his dad moved out. It all worked out—and that's great for them but it sucks for me. Now Josh thinks he can solve everyone else's problems by talking the shit out of them.

"You're thinking that if Ally keeps reading, she'll find out that you're the one who started the rumor," he says and I give him a nod. "She'll find out you're the reason dickheads like Dillon Van Cleave thought it was okay to get up-close and personal with her ass every time he walked past her," he adds.

I drop my head back against the couch because I wasn't thinking about that, but I will now—all damned night. 

"The shit's gotta come out, man. That's what shit does. It comes out." 

"That's real profound," I say, lifting my head. "Thank you, Dr. Phil."

Josh gives me the finger and tosses my phone in my lap. "You need to crash that party tonight." 

"No."

"Yes. You need to be the one who tells her."

"It's not gonna make a difference."

"Dude, she was ready to forgive you before you saved her life. Go tell her your side of the story. Don't let her read it on fucking Facebook."

I roll my eyes and Josh says, "Don't give me that stupid look you stubborn piece of shit. I've been listening to you cry about that girl long enough to know you're not walking away from this."

"I'm supposed to go back Wednesday."

"Yeah, stick with the too-little-too-late plan. That's always worked out so well for you in the past."

Author Note: I'm a little embarrassed by the lack of description in this scene. But I'm too lazy to do anything about it. lol