Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
After two hours of sociology, my skull feels ready to explode, but at least being forced to focus on immigration trends and human rights means I don’t have time to be distracted.
“I’ve been trying to figure it out since this morning…” Tiffany whispers beside me, tapping her chin with her index finger. I detach my pen from my notebook and turn my attention to her.
“What are you trying to figure out?”
“What’s different about you today. I think I just got it, though.”
Instinctively I lower my head and look at myself. “I’m the same as always, Tiff.”
“Never, never, in the four years that I’ve known you, have I seen you wear a skirt that goes above your knees. And this shirt? I’ve never seen you wearing anything remotely low-cut. Your hair looks particularly gross today, but your clothes, darling, look like you want to impress someone. Now, the question arises: Who?” She tilts her face to the side thoughtfully. “Certainly not my asshole brother. For a moment, I thought it might be Logan, but you’re the one who told me that you don’t need to twist yourself to get his attention. So at this point, I’m wondering: it can’t be for a particular bad boy with green eyes and bulging muscles, can it? No, of course not, my best friend would never, ever dress up to attract the attention of that arrogant prick.” She blinks in a faux-innocent manner. “Am I right?”
I look at her in amazement. I don’t know how to respond to this insinuation, but she knows she’s hit the mark. I know too, and it plunges me into a pit of shame. Since when do I wear tight clothes just to impress a guy? A guy who, need I remind myself, treats me like crap on any given day.
“What were you smoking before school today?” I pretend indifference, nibbling on the cap of my pen.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she responds with a question in her eyes.
I shrug. “You know everything there is to know.” I barely manage a smile, but I can tell from the way she looks at me that I am a terrible liar.
“You sure? The wrinkles on your face say otherwise.”
“What? What wrinkles? I don’t have wrinkles!”
“You do have them. This one here, for example.” She points to a spot above my eyebrows. “It gets more pronounced when you’re surprised. And this one shows up when you are worried,” she continues, touching my forehead. “And this,” she points to the corner of my mouth, “wrinkles when you’re nervous. And right now, my dear, you are really nervous.”
I give up. Exasperated, I drop my head into my open notebook.
At the end of class, as the other students file out, I sigh and spill everything. “Yesterday I spent the whole afternoon with Thomas in a forest. We had a good time, talked about lots of things, until that evening when he showed up at the bar and saw me kissing Logan. He flew into a rage and got super drunk. Actually, he was already drunk when he arrived at the bar. Apparently he’s having a hard time, so he’s back to being his usual insufferable arrogant self.”
Tiffany stares at me for a few seconds with an incredulous look on her face. “Sorry, since when are you two talking again?”
“Since yesterday morning. He proposed a truce and apologized, in his own way. We decided to be friends.” She bugs out her eyes and bursts into thunderous laughter. I give her a blank look.
“What are you laughing about?”
“S-sorry, but”—she sheds a tear—“do you realize”—another tear—”what you just said to me? You and Collins are friends?” She bursts out laughing again. “Okay, let’s hear it, what kind of friends are you? The kind who have sex with each other or the kind who paint each other’s nails?”
How about the kind who insult each other every other day?
“Neither of those. And, believe it or not, friendships between men and women do exist. Look at me and Alex, we have been friends for more than ten years and we don’t have sex or do manicures.”
“You two spend your time reading novels and watching TV shows. And that’s totally different; you guys are like siblings.” She stows her laptop, a couple of books, and a small bottle of water in her bag. “But never mind that. We’ll come back to this topic another time. Right now, I want to focus on the part where Thomas caught you making out with Mr. Boring. What happened?” she asks, vibrating with curiosity.
“In my opinion?” I say flatly. “They challenged each other to a pissing contest, and Thomas punched him in the face.” Tiff’s mouth drops open in surprise. “And there’s more. Logan told me that, when he gets back, he wants an official answer about the two of us, and then a few hours later, I found myself sitting on Thomas’s lap and letting him squeeze my butt.” I put my hands over my eyes, ashamed. Ever since Thomas came into my life, I have been doing things I am not proud of. I don’t recognize myself anymore.
“Oh. My. God.” She stares at me in shock. “Did you get the name of the spell that boy has clearly cast on you?”
“I don’t know, Tiff. I was very tired and he was very drunk and, I don’t know… It just happened.”
“Did it just happen?” she asks, quirking one eyebrow. “Honey, continuing to deny how you feel about him won’t make your feelings any less real.”
Another direct hit. I could try to deny it but what good would that do? She’s right, as always.
“I know.” I pause to collect myself before continuing. “I know I feel something for him, I just really wish I didn’t. Whenever I’m with him, I feel I’m riding this pendulum. One minute, I’m in heaven, the next, it’s hell. And he is always the one who decides which way it swings. I don’t like it. I don’t want to feel so enthralled by someone who uses other people’s weaknesses as a weapon when he’s feeling defensive.”
“I know, honey.” Tiff hugs me and lovingly strokes my hair. “But you know what he’s like. You’ve always known. You want hearts and roses, but he’s only got darkness and thorns. No one can change that reality.” It might have hurt less if she had just stabbed me.
“How could I have been so stupid? How could I have bonded with a person who categorically rejects any kind of human bond?” I murmur with my cheek pressed against her shoulder.
“Because we can’t control what we feel. Our emotions run right over us. They overwhelm us. Sometimes they bleed us dry. They render us helpless and all we can do is go along for the ride, hoping not to get destroyed along the way.”
We pull away from our embrace and I look at her sadly. “Feelings are a bitch.”
“True. But sometimes it’s the bitch that makes life worth living.” She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “What are you going to do about Logan?”
“I have no idea. The closer I get to Thomas, the more I realize that he’ll never be able to give me what I want. Logan, on the other hand, is attentive, sweet, and caring. And I’m pretty sure I’m not going to find a girl waiting around in front of his door. Logan can give me everything I need, and I don’t even have to ask him to, you know?”
“But he can never give you what you really want.”
“I can’t get what I want anyway. Not in the way I would want it,” I say passively, shrugging.
“But… You can’t be with Logan if your heart beats for someone else.”
“The feelings will go away, sooner or later. But Thomas will always be the same.”
The heartbroken expression that suddenly darkens her face makes me realize that, unfortunately, she agrees with me. “You know what we should do now?” She sits up straight. “Let’s drown all our sorrows in a giant plate of tacos, the really greasy kind. What do you say?”
Her attempt to lift my mood does my heart good. I smile at her. “I say that sounds perfect. I’ll text Alex to come too.”
She stands up, gives me a kiss on the cheek and pulls me to my feet.
During lunch, Tiffany tells us that Carol is celebrating Halloween with a pool party—intentional this time—and invites us all to go together. I am not entirely convinced that I want to go. The idea of showing up in a bikini in front of this avalanche of people terrifies me. “The last time didn’t go so well, remember?” I remind her, taking a sip of water. Inevitably, my mind turns to Thomas and the night I spent with him. Strange, that night should have been devastating because of my breakup with Travis, yet the first thing I think of is that tattooed lout. That guy has monopolized my thoughts. Sometimes, it scares me the way he manages to make me forget about everything, becoming the single point around which I orbit.
“I know, honey, but the situation is completely different this time. First of all, Travis won’t be there. I’ve been very clear about that. Secondly, I’m sure we’ll have fun.”
“Hmm, and what do I do about work?”
“I can pick you up when your shift is over,” she answer easily.
“Tiff is right, between school and work, you barely have time to breathe these days,” Alex adds.
“And what about you? Will you come?” Tiffany asks him.
“I’ll think about it. School started two months ago, and I haven’t been to any parties yet. Not that I think it’s so fundamentally important, but it is Halloween. What the hell, I’ve gotta do something, right?” Alex chuckles.
“See?” Tiff squeals, giving me a fierce look. “Alex is coming. You can’t refuse!”
“Ugh, fine,” I say resignedly. I wonder why, after all these years I still try to argue with someone like Tiffany. I always end up doing as she says.
When my classes are over, I drop by Matt’s to shower. I’ve been looking forward to this for hours. It feels strange to be here at the frat house again, in the same place where I gave myself to Thomas for the first time. Just thinking about it conjures this heaviness in my chest. Luckily for me there is no one here at this time of day. I climb the stairs to get to Matt’s room and find myself forced to walk past Thomas’s. For a second, I am almost tempted to go in. The last time I was there, I had no idea that I was about to spend some of the most beautiful hours of my life in that room. Without really thinking about it, I lay a hand on the door and close my eyes, remembering those moments. Remembering him. Him, holding me tightly. Him, sitting on the cold bathroom tiles, taking care of me at my worst. Him, touching me passionately and kissing me gently.
“Damn it…” I whisper, resting my forehead against the wood. The squeak of a door opening downstairs, accompanied by masculine laughter, brings me back to my senses. I jump back and scurry to take refuge in Matt’s room, closing the door behind me.
The room is very large, strangely neat and bright. The walls are painted canary yellow, the bed at the back is large, but not like Thomas’s. On a white cabinet, there’s a television, a laptop, and a gaming console.
I head to the bathroom, and I am pleased to discover that it’s identical to the one in Thomas’s room, only it doesn’t smell like him.
After showering, I slip back into my black cotton underwear. I am about to dress when my phone, which I had left on the bed, starts ringing. I reach for it. It’s Logan. A sudden feeling of guilt floods my chest. I hesitate before answering, biting my lip. If he knew what I did with Thomas, he probably wouldn’t want to hear from me again.
“Hey sweetie, how are you?” he greets me.
“Hey, I’m good. How are you? Did you get home okay?” I press my knee into the mattress, biting my nails.
“Yeah. I’ve been here four hours and I’m already regretting it.” I hear a buzz of voices in the background.
“Is everything okay?”
“Now that I’ve heard your voice it is. Is it too corny to tell you that I miss you already?”
My mouth turns up in a small smile. It fades instantly, however, when I hear the door open behind me.
“What the…”
An angry voice startles me. I turn sharply and nearly fall off the bed. Thomas and Finn are looking at me from head to toe with their mouths wide open. I immediately end the call with shaking hands. I’m so frightened that I drop the phone and it falls to the floor. “What the hell are you two doing in here?” I scream, trying to cover my entire body with my arms.
“What the fuck are you doing in here half-naked?” Thomas lashes out at me furiously.
“What does it look like?” I angrily wave a lock of my wet hair at him.
“Are you with him?”
My eyes widen. Him who? Matt?
Like a lunatic, Thomas rushes into the bathroom to find him. Once he’s figured out that no one is there, he returns to us with a heaving chest. Finn and I stare at him in bewilderment.
“The water heater at my house was broken this morning. And Matt was nice enough to offer me a hot shower.” Why am I bothering to explain myself to him? “Now, why did you two barge in here without knocking?”
“We heard some noises coming from this room. We knew Matt wasn’t there and came to check,” Finn explains more calmly.
“I certainly wasn’t expecting to find you in here in your underwear,” says the cantankerous, tattooed man next to him.
“I don’t mind,” Finn interjects with a pleased expression. He stares shamelessly at my legs. “In fact, if you wanted to turn and get into that position you were in when we came in, you’d be doing me a real solid. Love the Brazilian panties,” he continues, as I try to cover myself up as much as possible with my hands.
Thomas turns to him with his jaw tense, grinding his teeth. “Stop looking at her, or I swear I’ll throw you out and beat your ass.”
Finn continues to stare at me, biting his lip. I’m starting to get really embarrassed. I don’t have enough hands to cover all the bare surface area on my body. My clothes are in the bathroom, but to go get them I would have to turn around, and I have no intention of showing my butt to that degenerate Finn. Thomas moves to stand squarely in front of Finn with his arms folded, blocking his view.
“Knock it off,” he warns him, grimly. “You’re pissing me off.”
“Okay, okay,” Finn says, raising his hands innocently. “You know what? I think I’ll head downstairs and have a nice, ice-cold soda. I’ll wait for you, but don’t get any ideas; they’re expecting us in the gym in twenty minutes.” He shifts his gaze to me and smiles. “Nice to see you again, pretty girl.” He winks at me as Thomas pushes him out the door and locks it behind him. I take a deep breath, trying to relax. Everything is fine. Except that Thomas turns toward me, enraged.
“You didn’t even lock the door, are you out of your mind?”
Damn, I forgot about that!
I pick up the phone from the floor and put it back on the bed. “I must have forgotten; I thought I had,” I explain myself calmly. In reality, I am anything but calm. I was stupid.
“You forgot?” He widens his eyes. “You’re in a frat house. Anyone could have walked in.”
I roll my eyes. I can’t stand it when he treats me like a child. “That’s what I said. Stop it,” I answer angrily. I turn my back on him and go to the bathroom to get my clothes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he says from outside the bathroom door.
“Tell you what?” I ask as I move back into the room. I head for the bed, avoiding his gaze as if it might petrify me.
“About the shower. You could have done it at my place,” he says in a feeble voice. If I were in a slightly better mood, I would have burst out laughing.
“After the lovely treatment you gave me? Don’t make me laugh.” I slip my skirt on, wiggling it over my hips and then pull on my shirt.
Thomas scrubs his face with his hand. “About this morning…”
I sit down at the foot of the bed to slip on my Converse. He comes over to stand next to me. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I cut him off before he has a chance to add anything else. I have no desire to hear anything he has to say. Not after all the nasty words he’s thrown at me.
“Well, I do.” He kicks his foot onto the bed, rests his elbow on his knee, and leans his chin on his palm, staring at me until I return his gaze. When he knows he has my full attention, he sits down on the floor, facing me. For a moment, my bare thighs are just inches from his face, and it seems to distract him. But he quickly averts his eyes back to me.
“I’m sorry.”
My lips twist as I give a bitter laugh. “For what? For saying that I don’t matter? For making it clear that having me around was a pain in the ass?” I slip on a shoe angrily. “For asking me to courier messages to your fuck buddy, who never misses an opportunity to treat me like shit? Which, by the way, you know very well?” I put on the other shoe. “Or was it for letting me know that you were going to fuck her the minute you kicked me out?” I glare at him.
Thomas runs a hand through his hair bitterly. “For all of that. I was an asshole, and I shouldn’t have been.” He sighs, looking into my eyes. “I didn’t do anything with her. I sent her away as soon as you left.”
I gather my still-damp hair and put it in a high ponytail. “I don’t care; you’re free to do whatever you want.” My voice sounds cold and detached, but just the thought of that stupid girl’s mouth touching his sends a rush of hot blood to my head. Knowing it didn’t happen does soothe me.
“I know I am,” he says with his usual swagger.
“Actually, I feel sorry for her. Imagine going to all that effort for nothing. Must be a hard pill to swallow,” I say testily, smoothing the bed covers with feigned nonchalance.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him trying to hold back a laugh. “You feel sorry for her, do you?”
“Very.”
“Don’t. She’ll be luckier next time.”
I suddenly fall silent. “I don’t like leaving horny girls unsatisfied in front of my door.” I open my mouth, ready to yell at him, but then I think better of it. I struggle to push myself off the bed and leave, but he holds me down by the wrists. “Where are you going?” he asks, stopping me with an amused smirk.
“You’re disgusting and I can’t stand you, Thomas. I cannot stand you at all!”
“What’s the matter? You’re not jealous, are you?” The smug way he says it irritates me to my core. He knows that I am, yet he torments me mercilessly.
“Jealous? Me? Of a bitch whose only ambition in life is to crawl into your bed?” I shrug. “You know I don’t care.”
I cross my arms over my chest and look out the window to my right. When Thomas tries to touch my face, I brush his hand away with my forearm. “Don’t touch me,” I growl, offended.
For some strange reason, my response makes him chuckle.
“The last time a girl crawled into my bed, she was drunk and desperate.” Is he referring to me? Has he forgotten all the times I’ve watched him stick his tongue down another girl’s throat in the last few weeks? Does he really expect me to believe that he hasn’t been with anyone since our night together? Does he honestly think I’m that stupid?
“I suppose that happens to you frequently,” I say, still avoiding his eyes.
“No, not that often. Usually they’re clearheaded and pretty excited,” he says, pleased with himself. He gets so much joy out of torturing me. He moves closer to my ear, pressing his hands against my thighs. I try to ignore the surge of heat that his touch kindles in me, but I get lost in the low whisper of his voice, shivering as he speaks. “I haven’t had a proper fuck in I don’t know how long. Every goddamned thought that pops into my brain is focused on just one girl.”
I stare at him in dismay. Does he actually have the nerve to come here and tell me that…he’s fallen for someone else?
I push him away more firmly. “You just keep hurting me, and you don’t even realize you’re doing it. It’s getting late, I have to go.” I try to get up again but he stops me and forces me back down, again.
“What did I say wrong now?” he asks, genuinely confused. I do not answer. I turn my head away from him, trying not to cry like an idiot. He looks down for a few seconds, then shakes his head with a smile.
“Look, you misunderstood…”
“You’ve been very clear: you’ve fallen head over heels for someone else. I’m so happy for you, thank you for letting me know.”
“First of all, I haven’t fallen for anyone. I said that a girl occupies all my thoughts; that’s different. Second, let me try get something straight: Who do you think I’m talking about?”
I goggle at him, incredulous.
“I don’t know, Thomas! You want us to sit down and gossip over milkshakes like old friends?” I snap.
“You just don’t get it.” His expression, resigned and vulnerable at the same time, bewilders me. “Forget it. It’s not the reason I’m here. I don’t like that you saw me in that condition, nor do I like the way I treated you this morning. You didn’t do anything to deserve it, except worry about me.” He rubs my knee and looks into my eyes with such intensity that all my barriers are dissolved.
“It won’t happen again. I’ve learned my lesson,” I say waspishly.
“I like that you care about me, it’s just that…” he mutters, looking at the floor. “I’m not used to it.”
It breaks my heart to see him so fragile. How is it possible that I was so angry at him until just a few seconds ago and now all I want to do is hug him tightly? Instead, I take a deep breath. I place two fingers under his chin and lift his face so I can look him in the eyes.
“Is this how you do it? First you pull some crap and then you beg for forgiveness, playing the poor, misunderstood boy?” I fold my arms over my chest and frown. “Tell me, how many girls have you bagged this way?”
“None that really count.”
“Ah, because I count?”
“Yes, you count,” he answers guardedly, as if startled by his own admission.
“That’s not what you said before.”
“I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”
I’m not willing to accept being treated badly just because he can’t hold his tongue when he’s mad, but right now he seems so sincerely sorry that I can’t help but forgive him. I snort, puffing my cheeks out slightly. I let myself fall back on the bed, cover my face with my hands, and try to figure out what to do. All logic goes to hell when Thomas Collins is involved.
“Ness?”
“Mhm,” I mumble with my face still covered.
“You’re not a pain in the ass. Well, not all the time.” I jerk my foot forward, hitting him on the chest with the toe of my shoe. He laughs, and the sound of it makes me laugh in return. He stretches out on top of me, holding himself up on his elbows and making room for himself between my legs in his usual arrogant and overbearing way, as if that space was rightfully his. Unlike the other times, however, I don’t sense any ulterior motives in this gesture, intimate and overwhelming though it may be. All I feel is an extreme need to be close to him, a need that seems to grow more and more urgent. I welcome his body by bending my knees and pressing them against his hips.
He moves my hands away from my face, and I lose myself in the green of his eyes. “But even when you are a pain in the ass, it’s the kind I always want to have around, the kind I don’t want to give up.” The kind he doesn’t want to give up…
I frown and take his face in my hands to make sure he is sober. I look closely at his eyes. They are not red, and the pupils are not dilated. “Are you high?”
“No, why?”
“Because you just said…” The words die in my mouth.
“I know what I said.”
My heart seems to burst in my chest. Yet, the small rational part of me won’t let me just be happy or simply believe him. How can he say that he needs me, when the moment I try to get close to him, he pushes me away in the cruelest way possible? “Sometimes I just can’t understand you,” is all I can manage to say.
“Then don’t. I have a hard time understanding myself most of the time,” he admits.
“Will you ever tell me what’s troubling you?” I stroke his eyebrow, moving the tuft of hair that always falls across his forehead and resisting the impulse to lean forward and kiss his half-open mouth. He stiffens a little at my touches, but he doesn’t pull away.
“No, Vanessa. That’s an off-limits topic for me,” he says firmly. “I need you to understand that. Tell me you can accept it.”
He’s almost begging me with his eyes. Knowing he is in so much pain devastates me. I wish I could just be indifferent to him. I wish I never got those feelings in my stomach when he talks to me, when he looks at me or touches me… Everything would be so much simpler. Even ignoring his suffering.
“Why do you want to keep me if you can’t let me enter into your world?”
“Because it hurts less when you are with me.”
His words always have the power to send my thoughts into turmoil and make my heart beat like mad. “I can accept it, then,” I say, surrendering to him. Thomas releases a sigh, as if a part of him was already preparing to meet more resistance from me and this capitulation has reassured him.
He gets up off me and we both sit down: me on the edge of the bed, Thomas kneeling on the floor. He reaches out for my hips and pulls me toward him. I’m startled at this unexpected gesture as he wraps his arms around my back and hugs me so tightly that, for a moment, I struggle to breathe. I hug him in return, because I have the feeling that he really needs it, and I hope, deep in my heart, that I can alleviate just a little bit of this untouchable pain that is weighing him down. He buries his face in the hollow of my neck and inhales deeply, smelling my skin. I do the same. He smells so good that I wish I could bottle it and keep it with me always.
“You smell like a dude,” he murmurs after a while.
I laugh out loud. “That’s what happens when you wash yourself with a dude’s shower gel.”
“I like it better when you smell like me.” He brushes my nose with his own and looks at me for a few seconds before speaking again. “Come to me the next time you need something. It doesn’t matter if we aren’t talking. Or if you’re mad at me for yet another fuckup. Just come to me.”
“Okay,” I agree softly, wondering how it’s possible that this is the same guy who spewed all that bile at me this morning.
The phone lights up next to me. It’s a text from my mother, reminding me to be home by five o’clock. “Now I really have to go.”
We both get up. Thomas reaches the door before me and turns the knob. Before he leaves, however, an enigmatic expression moves over his face. “So,” he tells me, “I’m gonna see you in a bikini tomorrow night.” He pauses for effect and continues, “Finally I’ll get to see you the way I want to.”
I frown. “Excuse me?”
“The party at Carol’s.”
I am paralyzed. I am overcome with panic. The idea of him seeing me in a bathing suit makes me incredibly nervous and I don’t understand why, since he has already seen me naked twice, and in my underwear just now.
“W-will you be there too?” I ask, embarrassed.
“I wasn’t planning on it. But then someone told me you’d be going, so I thought…why not?” He gives me a big, challenging grin.
I approach him suspiciously. “Who told you that?”
Thomas clicks his tongue on his palate. “I’m not gonna name names.” He winks at me and boops my nose. “Don’t be nervous. We’ll have lots of fun.” He grins derisively and leaves.
I stand there, heart racing, wondering why the hell I ever agreed to go to that party in the first place.