The Boyfriend Project Read online

  Bogart hadn’t been in my life long. But I couldn’t have loved him more if I’d raised him from a pup.

  When we got to my house, Jeremy hopped out of the car and dashed around to my side. I had the door partway open, but he opened it fully like he used to. I’d forgotten how nice it was to have that courtesy. I was exhausted. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’ll stay for a while,” he said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”

  Once I got inside, I didn’t want to be here, either. The house felt so empty. How could a dog take up so much room that when he was gone his absence was so keenly felt?

  “Let’s sit on the deck,” Jeremy said.

  “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”

  “You go on. I’ll get us something to drink.”

  I didn’t argue. I simply unlocked the sliding glass door, opened it, and stepped out onto the deck. I dropped onto a cushioned lounge chair and stared at the sky, thinking about the rainbow bridge where dogs were supposed to wait for their owners. I wondered if owners waited for their dogs. I so wanted Bogart to be back with his original owner.

  I’d pick up his ashes in a few days. I knew exactly what I was going to do with them.

  I barely noticed Jeremy coming outside. He sat on the lounge chair next to mine and extended a glass of lemonade toward me. I didn’t remember us having lemonade. Lemons, yeah. So that meant he’d made it.

  As I took a sip of the iced concoction, I realized that he made it very well. “Thanks.”

  “There was nothing else that you could have done,” he said. “Anything else . . . he was suffering—”

  “I know,” I said, cutting him off before he could list all the reasons behind my decision. I knew them all. “I don’t feel guilty. I’m sad and maybe a little angry. I couldn’t control what happened to him.”

  “But you did control it. You made sure his last minutes were peaceful.”

  They had been. Dr. Syn had given Bogart an injection. While I petted him, he hadn’t even reacted to the needle. He’d simply drifted away. It was the first time that I’d been with an animal when he was put to sleep. I’d always avoided it at the shelter when we got an animal that was too ill for us to help.

  “I think he knew where he was going,” I said. “That he was going to be with Mr. Forrest now.”

  “Probably. Dogs can sense things.”

  Sitting up, I turned until my knees were almost touching Jeremy’s. “I like to control things,” I told him.

  “I know.”

  “I think because I had no control whatsoever when my dad died. It was such a freak thing, you know? He was just driving along, approaching an overpass where some repair work was being done. . . . He was going to pass under it—and just as he gets there, it collapses. Hits him. Kills him. Instantly they say, but how do they know? And sometimes I think if I hadn’t been dragging my feet that morning when he took me to school, if I hadn’t forgotten where I put my backpack, if I’d been ready to leave when he first called for me—he wouldn’t have been there at that precise moment.”

  Jeremy took the glass from me, set it on a nearby table, then held my hands. “Kendall, if you’d been ready, something else might have delayed him. The line of cars at school where he was dropping you off might have been longer. Maybe he stopped for gas, maybe there was a traffic light. He didn’t die because you were searching for your backpack. Just like Bogart didn’t die because you brought him to the park today.”

  Tears stung my eyes as I nodded. “In my head I know that. But I never misplaced my backpack again. I never misplaced anything again. Until you. I misplaced you.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’m right here.”

  I shook my head. “I tried to control you, make you into what I thought I wanted. You changed and I lost you. You were the one thing that was perfect in my life, the one thing that I shouldn’t have tried to control. I miss you so much.”

  Chapter 42

  JEREMY

  When we first became friends, I quickly figured out that Kendall had control issues. I’d always found them amusing. I’d had a hint as to what was behind them, but I hadn’t realized how deeply they were ingrained. I should have.

  “I’m right here,” I repeated.

  She slowly shook her head. “Not the Jeremy I fell in love with.”

  That hurt. Maybe it shouldn’t have, but it did, because it meant she wasn’t really seeing me. Or maybe I wasn’t seeing me.

  “What’s different?” I asked.

  “Your hair.” She touched it, brushed the strands off my brow.

  “Your jaw.” She skimmed her fingers lightly over the brown bristles. I didn’t know why my beard was darker than my hair. She tugged on my shirt. “Your clothes.”

  “That’s all outside stuff,” I said. “I can change it back.”

  “I don’t want you to if you like it.”

  I did like the longer hair, the not shaving every day, the not worrying if my clothes got wrinkled. But that was just for now, maybe through college.

  “When I graduate from college, get a job, it’ll all change again,” I told her. “But my appearance isn’t really the issue, is it?”

  She shook her head. “You stopped texting me throughout the day.”

  “And I started messing with other girls.” That was hard to say. Even harder when the words echoed between us, when tears welled in her eyes.

  “I never was one of the popular guys,” I told her. “Girls never noticed me. Until you. Then all of a sudden this summer I had their attention. I thought it was cool. But things between us changed before that, Kendall. When you started hinting that I could make improvements about myself. I kept thinking about my parents and wondering if that was how their unhappiness with each other started. They pick at each other. Dad’s wearing the wrong tie. Mom colors her hair and it’s the wrong shade. Who the hell cares about ties and hair? But suddenly you seemed to care, and it bothered me. I tried not to let it, but it did. Even when you didn’t say something point-blank, I began to feel like you didn’t like the way I was.”

  “I know.”

  I shook my head. “No, you don’t. Not really. You were the only one who ever accepted me the way I was.”

  “Jeremy—”

  I touched my finger to her lips. Lips I’d kissed so many times that I’d lost count, lips I wanted to kiss again. But I had to tell her everything first, had to be honest with her, had to say things I’d never said out loud.

  “Anytime my mom gets upset with me, she calls me a ‘mistake.’ My dad isn’t so blunt, but he’s not shy about letting me know when he’s disappointed in me. I’ve tried my entire life to please them. To behave, to get good grades, to dress sharply, to act properly, to be what they want me to be. Then you started asking me to change things. Little things. I told myself they didn’t matter.”

  I studied the lines on her palm, traced them, as though all the answers were there. “My parents got married right out of high school because my mom was pregnant. They both worked while they were in college, they shared babysitting duties. My dad’s a successful lawyer but they fight all the time. I just wish they’d get a divorce, but that wouldn’t be good for my dad’s image.”

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I mean, I knew they were hard on you, but—”

  I lifted my gaze to her, and she went silent. “At first, I didn’t mind you suggesting that I change things. I know you like to be in control, but the more you wanted changed, the more I felt like I wasn’t what you wanted. That I was about to travel my parents’ path of being with someone but wanting someone different. Then we went to that stupid party. Jade and Melody were flirting with me. I thought, ‘They like me the way I am.’ And I wanted to be liked the way I am.”

  She closed her hands around mine. “Jeremy, I’m so, so sorry.”

  I stroked my thumbs over her knuckles. “Here’s the thing, Kendall. They don�€