Read Online Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later by Francine Pascal - Free Book Online

industrial outskirt of Sweet Valley. A safe time in a safe place where it is almost impossible to be lovers; where an unforgiving sun beats down, blaring through the grimy windows, lighting up every mark and tear of the red plastic seats. Unable to compete with a McDonald’s half a mile away, Shirley’s Diner limps along with never more than a handful of customers, none of them likely to be anyone Todd or I would know.
    Every day I swear to myself that I won’t go. All through the morning I feel in control; the decision has been made. It will never happen again.
    But the longing grows, and by noon no sacrifice is too great. Everything and everyone fall by the wayside, and I’m gasping and my heart is pounding and I think I will stop breathing unless I see him, touch him, feel him next to me.

     
    Jessica wasn’t aware of the sounds she was making, tearing at those excruciating memories, but they were audible enough to wake Todd, who, seeing her pain and knowing exactly what was torturing her, reached out and took her out of her dark thoughts and into his arms.
    “I was there again, in that month, destroying my sister.”
    “Jess, what can I do to help you?”
    “Nothing. Nobody can. I’m going to lose you, Todd. And I so deserve to.” She wept.
    “You’ll never lose me,” Todd said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
    But he, too, had his tortures. Starting with that first wild month, torn in a million directions, he’d been filled with shame and misery and passion, and one other torture he remembered too well: every day thinking he had lost her.

     
    I’m always there first, inside the diner, each time certain Jessica won’t show. But then she does, and I watch with relief and excitement as her white Ford sends up a dry cloud of dirt in the parking area. I can see into the car, see her leaning over for a last-minute check in the rearview mirror, fluffing her hair once quickly, then opening the door.
    Then comes the best part: the moment before she slides out. First come her feet spiking the air, flip-flops dangling, then the long, naked legs—naked because her skirt, short to begin with, has pulled up around her bottom in the slide out. Last is her slim body and beautiful face. I memorize every move of the ritual and each one thumps a separate beat somewhere in my chest.
    I lose sight of her when she walks around to the door and see her again only when she’s inside the diner. That first sight without the dirty windows separating us is raw, sending a rush of heat to my head.
    Never once does she look like Elizabeth to me.
    It doesn’t matter that we made love only that first night. Each time we see each other after that is the equivalent of making love again, so powerful is our connection.

     
    “I love you, Todd,” Jessica said, and held on to him tightly, burying herself in his body. She’d lost him once and it was nearly unbearable, though she had done it herself. But then that time, caught in the throes of that terrible month, drowning in the agony of guilt, there had been no choice. Even the day she saw A. J. Morgan’s car in the parking lot outside the diner. She gasped and though she had already pulled in, she swooped around without slowing down, hung a U and drove out.
    But instead of leaving, getting out of there, her chance to get out of everything, she drove around the block. Twice. On the third time, A.J.’s car was gone.

     
    Daily, I like beg myself to do it, to end it, and finally I just shut my eyes and do it. That’s when all the passion turns vicious. It is the only way for me to break away and to eradicate some of my guilt.
    I tell him it was a terrible mistake, which is true, and that I don’t love him, never loved him. In fact, now despise him. Which is not true.
    He tells me the same, and I believe him.
    Not three days after that last meeting, we have a scare. Elizabeth is with me at the bookstore, picking up some textbooks for her psychology course, when we run into