Chapter Two

I woke up in Gordie's room Sunday morning with a hell of a headache.

Everything came swimming back to me; Ace and the girl in Blue Point Diner, shooting pool at Irby's, and the tequila- oh the tequila.

I climbed out of bed, my throat tight and sore. My eyes felt hot and my head was pounding. I picked up my dress from the floor, slipping it back over my head and glancing sideways at my reflection in the mirror.

Jesus, it wasn't pretty.

My dark brown hair was a tangled mess and my make up had smudged under my green eyes. I tried my best to wipe my cheeks with my fingers before giving up and leaving the room.

I passed Gordie's parents room where the door had been left open, the unmade bed empty. So Gordie was up; he'd been good enough to offer me his bed and sleep in his parents room. That meant Chris got the sofa because the only other bed in the house was in Denny's room. And Denny's room was a no go area.

I paused outside Denny's closed door. It was easy to remember how I had once heard him playing his records in there, his girlfriend Jane's soft giggles floating under the door.

I was an only child and from what I'd seen of other people's siblings I was happy for it to stay that way. But Denny was different.

Denny always had a smile and a joke for Gordie and his friends. He spent hours teaching us how to throw a football. When he got his drivers licence, he took us all for ice cream. It's messed up but I think it affected me more when Denny died than it did when my own father died. Maybe because I was younger when my Dad passed, but maybe, and I secretly believe this option the most, because Denny was a nicer guy.

"You okay, Nina?"

Gordie made me jump as he came out of the bathroom.

"No, I feel like road kill." I croaked.

He smirked at me, pushing his brown hair out of his chocolate coloured eyes.

"That's a pretty good description of you right now."

I gave him a shove and he shoved me back good-naturedly. I hit the wall harder than I think he intended and he put out a hand to steady me.

"Sorry, guess I don't know my own strength." He flexed his muscles which were near non existent and I snorted. Gordie had grown much taller over the summer but he still had the same stick thin build as last year.

"Come on downstairs, I've made coffee."

I followed him down the rest of the landing, down the staircase and into the kitchen. Chris was sitting up at the counter, a cup of coffee and a pile of pancakes in front of him. He was one of those irritating people who always looked half decent in the morning- his blond hair was tidy, his blue eyes alert. This only served to make me feel worse.

"You still here?" I griped as I passed him.

He shot me a dirty look.

"How's the hangover? Looks pretty brutal."

I gave him the finger and sat at the table at the opposite end of the room.

"You want some pancakes?" Gordie asked me, ignoring our exchange.

"God, no," I shuddered. "Just coffee. And some aspirin if you got some."

Gordie whistled as he poured my coffee and dug around for aspirin in the kitchen drawers. He finally found some, ran the faucet to fill me a glass of water, then sat coffee, aspirin and the water glass in front of me.

"Gordie Lachance, I could kiss you."

"I'd hold off till she brushes her teeth."

I gave Chris a filthy look.

"Well, I wouldn't be offering you kisses whether you flossed, brushed and disinfected."

"Ah, man, would you two give it up?" Gordie rolled his eyes and pulled out the chair opposite me. "Nina, seriously, what happened?"

I hadn't told Gordie about the girl I caught in Ace's lap. Mainly because I knew I'd get a big fat 'I told you so'. Gordie didn't exactly have a sparkling opinion of Ace Merrill. But then, not many people did.

But, he was my best friend. And I kind of figured I owed him an explanation.

"You got somewhere to be, Chambers?"

Chris, who was shovelling pancakes in his mouth, made a point of swallowing his food before waving his fork at me.

"Oh no, you don't, Willis. You already got me demoted to the sofa. You ain't kicking me out at breakfast time. Wanna tell Gordie about your latest melodrama? Go do it some place else."

"Ignore him." Gordie held up a hand before I could reply. "He's gonna eat his pancakes and mind his own business. Tell me what happened."

I glanced furtively over my shoulder at Chris who seemed to be taking Gordie's advice and eating his breakfast. Then I turned to look in Gordie's trustworthy eyes and began to tell him what had happened. My Mom and her new husband Stan had been fighting. I left and went over to Ace's place but he wasn't home. So I wandered down to the diner and walked in on the Cobra's sat in a corner booth with a bunch of girls. One of who was sitting directly in Ace's lap.

"Jeez, Nina…" Gordie shook his head. He winced as he looked at me. "I take it you lost it?"

"Yep."

Gordie covered his face with his hands and then opened his fingers to squint at me.

"What did you do?"

"What do you think I did? I told her to get the hell up and i tossed her milkshake in her lap."

"Real clever," Chris muttered from across the room.

I snapped my head irritably in his direction.

"Chambers, you agreed to eat your pancakes and say nothing," Gordie intervened but I waved his words away.

"No, go ahead. If he's got something to say, let him say it."

"Okay." Chris took a big slurp of his coffee, before setting it back down. "Ace is the one you're dating, he's the one doing the cheating, but this poor girl who doesn't know you and probably doesn't know Ace is taken, she's the one you dump a milkshake on?"

There was an uncomfortable silence as his words sank in. I'd felt more than entitled to my outburst up until now, but what Chris was saying hit a nerve. It probably should have been Ace that I'd thrown the milkshake over.

"Oh, don't worry, I'm not through with Ace by a long shot," I said.

"See, that's the problem, Nina. You're never through with him no matter what he does. You'll be mad for a week or two and then you'll forgive him." Gordie said this glumly. "You could do so much better than him."

"Well, Prince Charming ain't come knocking yet," I tried to say this lightly. I hated the way Gordie was looking at me, all sad eyed and disappointed.

"You don't have to put up with him seeing other girls behind your back-" Gordie was starting in on one of his lectures but I cut him off.

"He's not seeing other girls." I was sure of this too. Ace was a player for show but I was his girl. Sure he could be gruff and cold sometimes but when it was just us, when we were parked under the stars in the park, or curled up in his one room shack, he was different. He spoke different, he smiled different and when he looked at me, I knew he loved me even though he couldn't say it.

What Gordie didn't realise was that under Ace's tough guy persona, he'd been hurt. His mother beat it out of there when he was just ten years old, taking his five year old sister but leaving him behind. At age fifteen, his Dad got in a bar fight and beat somebody to death. Once his old man was in jail, Ace was left to his crotchety aunt Mavis, but he'd never really lived there. Over the last couple of years, he'd been renting a one room home from Vince Desjardins uncle. It wasn't exactly a palace but it was Ace's.

Of course, everybody knew about Ace's family in Castle Rock. It was hard to keep secrets but if you asked him about the other Merrill's, he would tell you he didn't give a shit about any of them. Only I knew that the medallion he wore round his neck was a gift from his father. And only I knew that in his wallet he carried a picture of his mother and little sister.

"How do you know he's not seeing other girls? He tell you that?" Chris snorted in disbelief and I glared at him.

"LIke you got room to talk, Chambers. You ain't exactly a one woman kind of guy, are you?"

Chris was from a bad family, worse than mine, worse than Ace's even. His eldest brother Frankie Junior was in jail for rape and his other brother Eyeball was Ace's second in command. Mr Chambers was the town drunk and it was no secret he beat the hell out of all of his children. When we were kids, girls wouldn't go near Chris because he was a Chambers, but once he hit puberty and developed some muscles, suddenly his bad boy image was all the rage.

Chris hooked up with girls regularly but he'd never had a girlfriend as far as I was aware of.

"Least I ain't lying to nobody. I never tell anyone they're the only one when it ain't true."

"Gordie, would you tell him to shut the hell up?"

"Chris…" Gordie trailed off unenthusiastically.

"Oh, come on, Lachance, you know Merrill is screwing around on her as well as I do. If you were really her friend, you'd just be honest with her."

I looked at Gordie for him to deny it but instead he stared down at the table top.

"Just face it, Willis. Everyone knows Ace is using you except you." Chris laid down his fork.

"I swear to God, Chambers, if you say another fucking word-"

"You'll do what? You ain't mad at me really, just like you ain't mad at Gordie and you weren't mad at the girl from the diner. But it's easier being mad at us then admitting what Ace is, isn't it?"

"Chris, that's enough!" This time Gordie cut in sharply enough that Chris took a breath.

I stood up, pushing back my chair and giving him a look that could have killed.

"He's still worth ten of you," I spat before walking out.

888

It was nearing eleven o clock when I turned into my yard to see Ace's Plymouth parked outside. He was smoking a cigarette and looking mightily pissed off.

As soon as he saw me he was out of the car like lightning.

"Where the fuck have you been?" He demanded.

I glared at him.

"What's it to you?"

Ace threw his cigarette aside and fixed me with a hard stare.

"You disappear drunk as a fucking skunk for the whole night and you're asking what it is to me?"

I hated my mother just then. Anybody else's Mom would tell their kid to keep the hell away from Ace but my Mom treated him like visiting royalty. That also included telling him that I hadn't come home when he turned up that morning.

"Ace, I'm tired, I need a shower. I'm going inside." I started to walk away from him, heading up to our two bedroom one storey house. The porch was tired, the paint was peeling and usually it was the last place I wanted to be thanks to Stan, but right then, I just wanted to get inside.

Any time Ace moved quickly, it was dangerous. He had a slow way of moving, calculating and sure of himself, so when I heard his quick footsteps behind me I spun around.

He caught my arms pushing me against the house and thrusting his tongue into my mouth. I struggled for all of two seconds before I melted against him.

His hands slid behind me, pulling me closer and then again pushing me up against the side wall. When he finally stopped kissing me, I was breathless.

"So," he repeated slowly. "Where the fuck have you been?"

"Gordie's," I said, feeling a little light headed. I hated the fact that I could be mad at him one second and dizzy over him the next. We'd been dating for almost a year but he still gave me butterflies.

At the mention of Gordie, a look of contempt crossed Ace's face.

"Why is it every time things get a little heated you run round to Lachance's?"

I pushed him away while I straightened out my dress.

"He's my best friend, Ace. You know that. And he was good enough to pick me up last night when I was - how did you put it? Drunk as a skunk?"

"You could have come home with me," he said obstinately. I couldn't help that I found his sulking kind of cute. Ace Merrill never showed anyone any weakness but he couldn't hide the fact that he was jealous.

"So did the little punk behave himself or do I have to go round there and teach him a fucking lesson?"

In my mind, it wasn't Gordie but Chris that deserved teaching a lesson but I knew if I even mentioned what had been said that morning, Chris Chambers was dead meat. Ace tolerated me hanging out with Gordie but he hated Chris with a passion I never quite understood. Well, I understood it in the way that I didn't like him either but Ace never usually let anybody piss him off.

"Gordie always behaves. I really do need to take a shower," I told him. "Can you come back later?"

"How about I come keep you company?" He stepped forward again and pressed his lips against my neck. I shut my eyes for a second before coming to my senses and shoving him away.

"Ace, my Mom's home!"

"So? She won't care, she loves me. Even offered to cook me breakfast this morning."

I rolled my eyes. Of course, she had . It was damn near embarrassing the way she fawned over him.

"I need to sleep, Ace. I don't feel too good."

He looked at me silently for a long time.

"Alright, I'll come pick you up tonight then." He started walking back towards his car. "Seven o clock." (That meant eight). "And Nina?" He stopped and looked back at me from the driver door of his Plymouth. "We're good now, yeah."

It wasn't really a question, more of a command but I nodded anyway. Satisfied, Ace opened his car, got inside and drove away. He didn't even say goodbye.

And as I stood watching him drive off into the distance, it was Chris fucking Chambers voice I heard in my ears.

'Just face it, Willis. Everyone knows Ace is using you except you.'

I wouldn't believe it. Ace loved me and whatever anybody else thought didn't matter.

888