Free Breathe by Melanie McCullough

Bowl-o-Rama parking lot and crawled beside her. The soft-top was off so I could easily identify Nolan and his football buddies. Nolan leaned to the side, his head poking out through the open passenger side window while he spoke to Abby.
    I was too far away and the truck’s engine was far too loud for me to hear the conversation but I saw Abby turn to Nolan, her face coiled in rage. She spat fire in his direction and I knew it couldn’t be good.
    When we were sophomores, Abby tutored Nolan—part of the community service project every student at our school was required to complete each year. Abby chose to tutor students failing math and she was assigned to Nolan. When she’d first told me about it she was near to tears because they’d never gotten along. The next time we talked about him, her voice was softer, her criticisms less harsh. Three weeks in, he asked her out and Abby said yes.
    The night Abby and Nolan were supposed to go to dinner and a movie we got stuck in traffic coming back from a meet. By the time I pulled up outside her apartment, Nolan had been waiting for an hour, alone with Abby’s mother.
    I waited until Abby went inside then I circled the block. I wanted to catch a glimpse of the couple as they left for the night. Really torture myself good. But on the second pass, Nolan was on the front lawn, shirtless and pulling his pants on over his boxers and Abby was slamming the front door.
    Abby liked to lie to herself and pretend I didn’t know about Maggie. That I wasn’t as aware as the rest of the town what her mother was like. That because I wasn’t born in Little Bend I’d somehow missed the gossip floating through town. That I didn’t know Maggie was a drunk and that she liked to sleep around. Like I didn’t have to listen to Nolan Carter brag to his friends in the locker room the next morning about what he’d done with Maggie. Like I couldn’t sense the change in Abby when Maggie crossed the line. For the most part, I liked to let her believe it. It was easier for her. Easier for me.
    Abby never wanted to talk about it and I never pushed. I hated myself now for not pushing then. Tore me up that I’d done nothing to stop it. To protect her when her mother refused.
    I swerved into the Jeep’s lane, braked, and blasted my horn. The driver looked up, startled, and slammed on his own brakes, bringing the Jeep to a screeching halt inches from my bumper and sending Nolan’s head crashing against the metal frame.
    I flew from the truck, leaving the heavy door swinging behind me as Nolan hopped from the Jeep. We stood toe to toe between our vehicles, the glow of the headlights bending around our legs as the sky broke and rain began to pound the ground around us.
    “You could have killed someone, asshole,” Nolan screamed at me through the deafening downpour.
    I shrugged. “Can’t say I’d be sorry if I had.”
    “You really want to do this? You’re outnumbered.”
    To be honest it was the last thing I wanted. I was freezing in a swimsuit that covered only the area between my knees and my hips. And I was pissed. What I wanted was a hot shower and some time to cool off. But I knew underneath the bravado Nolan was nothing more than a coward. That was why he picked on Abby—because she was tiny and fragile, and he assumed weak. But he didn’t know Abby. And he didn’t know me. Growing up in the Scott house hadn’t exactly been all sunshine and rainbows. I knew how to handle a bully. And I knew that if I stood my ground, he’d back down. So, I met his star without blinking and said, “Outnumbered, maybe, but not outmatched.”
    Large drops of moisture fell from the sky, slicked my face, my bare chest, and gathered at my feet. Nolan laughed, trying to sound cooler than I’m sure he felt, and told me “I was lucky he was feeling generous,” that “I’d get what’s coming to me when I least expected it.” More cowardly words were never spoken. Then he got back into the Jeep and I waited