Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Seven
Talking with my two best friends has reassured me. I still feel like I’m caught in a whirlwind of emotions but I manage to get through the weekend without any casualties. On Saturday morning, Tiffany told me that Travis was leaving for sure, and I finally processed that news. I’m once again speaking to Mom exclusively in monosyllables; it has become our only form of communication. Alex updated me on his plan to visit Stella in Vancouver at the end of the month to celebrate Thanksgiving together. I’m just grateful that it’s finally Sunday evening. For the last three days, I have had to constantly beat back thoughts of Thomas. His prolonged silence has only fueled my fear: he forgot about me right away and must be out having fun with God knows who. This suspicion burrows deep within my mind, making it hard for me to concentrate, even on studying. In fact, I’ve barely touched my books these last few days. Snuggled under the comforter, I am listening to music and trying not to think, when I get a message from an unknown number.
You awake?
Puzzled, I stare at the screen for a few seconds. Who’s this?
Come out.
It’s after midnight. No one in their right mind would ask me to go outside in the middle of the night, especially in this downpour. I come to the conclusion that whoever it is has simply gotten the wrong number or is trying to play some stupid prank on me. I don’t reply and put the phone back on my bedside table. I lie back down and stare at the darkened shape of my ceiling. A few moments later, another message comes through:
I have something that belongs to you.
What the heck?
I pull the covers off and leap out of bed. I peel the curtain away from the window and scan the driveway and the front yard. Right at the corner of my house I catch a glimpse of something, but the poor lighting and the thick rain prevent me from really seeing it. I squint a bit and realize that it’s a motorcycle. His motorcycle.
I spin around with my heart in my throat. I start pacing the room, nibbling my thumbnail, not sure what to do.
What is Thomas doing here? And how the hell did he get my number?
Oh God, if my mother finds out, she’ll actually kick me out of the house.
Bad timing, Collins, really bad timing.
I’ll give you five seconds, if you don’t come down, I’ll come up.
I goggle. No way.
I’m coming, I reply. I quickly slip on my boots and a gray chunky wool cardigan a few sizes too big for me. In front of the mirror I fix my fluffed-up, tousled hair, then I rush downstairs, trying not to make any noise.
Before opening the door, I close my eyes and take a breath deep. Be strong, Vanessa, and don’t let your guard down for anything.
When I come out, I find him leaning against the wooden porch railing a few feet away from the door. His legs are crossed at the ankles in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyelashes are beaded with tiny drops of rain, and his damp hair is plastered to his face. His clothes are soaked. The black sweatshirt and dark, low-slung jeans give him that typical careless look that makes my stomach clench every time.
You like what you see, don’t you, Vanessa? needles that stupid little voice in the back of my head. I shake my head slightly, trying to shut her up.
I close the door behind me and lean back against it.
“What are you doing here?” I ask determinedly.
Before answering, Thomas just stares at me for a few moments with a piercing gaze. The chills that run through me have nothing to do with the cold.
Come on, Vanessa. You can do this.
“I was riding.” He nods his head toward the road behind him. “And I found myself here,” he concludes, looking back at me.
“You were riding in this weather? That’s not very wise of you,” I answer, frowning.
Thomas levels a challenging stare at me. “Do I look like a wise person to you?”
I sit down on the small sofa next to the door. “Not even a little bit.”
He shrugs. “I was already out when it started raining.”
He was out late at night? Awesome. For my own sake, I decide not to investigate further.
“You should have gone back home,” I say angrily, trying to look anywhere else.
“Didn’t feel like it.”
“I guess you were having too much fun.”
“Not so much. I went to the Marsy for a few beers with the guys. You didn’t work today,” he says immediately.
“I swapped shifts with my coworker, Cassie.”
“That’s a rip-off. There’s never shit to do on Sunday in this town.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I indulge myself on the other days.” I push some of my hair, tousled by the wind, out of my face.
“That’s because you’re boring,” he snickers.
I shoot daggers at him with my eyes. “Did you come here to insult me?”
“I didn’t insult you,” he answers seriously.
“If you tell someone they’re boring, you’re basically telling them that you think they’re devoid of content. Empty. Useless. Inert,” I hiss.
“If I tell someone they’re boring, I mean only that they are boring. And you are. And you’re also quite touchy.” My blood is boiling in my veins. He’s still just as arrogant as he ever was. I sigh resignedly.
“You said you have something that belongs to me, right?” I cut to the chase, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Oh, yeah…right,” he answers, scratching the back of his head, suddenly distressed. He backs away for a moment, clearly hesitant. I arch a wary eyebrow. This change of mood bothers me. It is so rare to see him like this that it’s almost funny. My lips turn up in an involuntary smile, which I immediately cover with my hand so he won’t notice.
After a handful of seconds, he returns to the porch and kneels in front of me. I stare at him skeptically, having no idea what he’s doing.
“I think I screwed up.”
I furrow my brow at him. “What do you mean?”
“Like I said, I have something that belongs to you. But first you should know that when I left the house, it wasn’t raining. It only started to rain later, but it was too late to turn back by then.”
“I don’t understand what you are talking about, Thomas,” I say impatiently.
He ducks his head and then reaches for something he’d kept tucked behind his back, under his rain-soaked sweatshirt. A book. A book with a soggy, ruined cover. It seems familiar to me… I take a closer look and…my God, I don’t believe it. I stare with my eyes wide before snatching it out of his hands. “But this is mine! And it’s all…it’s all wet! Destroyed! You destroyed my book! My favorite book!” I hiss, still in shock.
Thomas falls silent and does not take his eyes off the porch’s floorboards. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you realize how important that book was to me, you stupid asshole?” I moan. “It was a gift from Alex’s mom.”
“Fuck.” He covers his face with one hand. “I’ll buy you another one tomorrow, I promise.”
“Buy me another one? You can’t just buy me another one. It was a first edition, dammit!”
“So?”
“So you can’t just find them lying around. And it was a gift!”
“So I’ll buy you one that’s not so hard to find,” he replies simply.
“It’s not the same, Thomas! And it wouldn’t be my book anymore. It would just be a stupid reminder of you and the book you destroyed!”
“I’m really sorry,” he repeats in a low voice.
“Oh, yeah, I really believe it,” I snap irritably. “When did you even take it?”
“The night I came to your house, remember? You went on about this book, how much you like it and shit. I wanted to know what was so special about it, so before I left, I grabbed it.” That’s why it wasn’t in my room that morning!
“Can I ask why you didn’t tell me?”
“Because I didn’t have time. We had a fight and then didn’t speak to each other for a month.”
“Well, you should have told me anyway; you can’t just take other people’s things without permission. Besides, you said you don’t read.”
“I wanted to challenge myself.”
My eyebrows shoot up incredulously. “Did you really read Pride and Prejudice ?” The mental image of it is almost enough to make me laugh in his face.
He stares down at the book I hold in my hands. Some locks of my hair have fallen over the cover, and he takes a strand, twisting it around his finger as he seems to consider something.
“It smells like you, you know?” He lifts his face and our eyes lock. “Sometimes, when I was reading it, it almost felt like you were there.” I swallow and blink, staggered by the sweetness in his voice.
“Smelled like me,” I correct him nastily, trying to hide the emotion in my voice. “Did…did you at least like it?” What I would actually like to ask him is why he was thinking about me when we weren’t talking to each other.
“Fuck, not even a little.” He chuckles.
“Why did you decide to give it back to me now?”
As I stare into his eyes, I realize that a part of me is desperately hoping that he did it because he felt an irrepressible urge to be near me.
“I don’t know, I had nothing else to do.” My throat burns and I, for the thousandth time, am left feeling like a prize idiot.
“You had nothing else to do?” I repeat with disappointment. He gives a surly nod. And I explode: “You know, I should really thank you for going to the trouble of bringing me back my favorite book—which now, thanks to you, will have to be thrown away—at one in the morning in a rainstorm. But the truth is, gratitude is the last thing you deserve from me.” I stare ferociously at him before standing up and turning my back on him. Just as my fingers touch the handle of the door, Thomas grabs my wrist and stops me. “Let me go!” I warn him, wounded.
“Will you stop for a second?” He pulls me close to him and wraps his muscular arm around my waist, squeezing me like a vise.
“Why should I stop?” I press my palms to his chest in an attempt to create some distance between our bodies, but he won’t let me. “The last time we spoke, you were awful, and now you show up here in the middle of the night just to insult me and return a ruined book!”
“I’m a fucking dick, I know that,” he admits, looking into my eyes so intensely that I can’t help but waver. “It’s not true that I had nothing else to do. I wanted to see you and I thought the book could be a valid excuse for it.” One corner of his mouth lifts in his usual crooked smile. And I find myself forced once again to summon all my willpower in order not to completely fold in the face of his incredible damned charm.
“And the urge to see me came upon you at one o’clock in the morning? Were you too busy before? And you also have my phone number, apparently. You could have called, texted…basically anything.” I am no longer willing to be anyone’s last resort.
“I spent the weekend in my dorm, catching up on my classes from last week. In the evening, the boys asked me to join them at the Marsy. I didn’t really feel like it, but I was hoping I’d be able to catch you there. But you weren’t there. On the bright side, I was able to get your number from Matt.”
I sigh, trying to figure out whether he’s telling the truth.
“I find it hard to believe you. With Travis, I was fooled for too long. I won’t let it happen again.”
“I’m not him!” he exclaims angrily, his jaw twitching.
“You keep saying that, but you’re just as distant and domineering as Travis. Not to mention the fact that I never know what’s going on in your head.”
“What is unclear to you?” He scowls, letting my wrist go. I shrug and sit back down on the sofa. Thomas kneels down again to look me in the eye. A gust of wind brings his scent to me, fresh and intoxicating.
“Why are you so insistent on having me if you don’t care about me? I mean, what you’ve asked me for…you could get it from anybody.”
“But I want it from you,” he breaks in.
“I don’t get why. You said it yourself: you’ll never be able to give me what I want, just like I’ll never be able to give you what you want. We are an unmitigated disaster together, Thomas. For one thing, we never agree on anything. I am awkward, boring, and incapable of shutting up, which, by the way, pisses you off almost all the time. You, on the other hand, are handsome, popular, and confident. People respect you. So many girls are into you, girls way more confident and experienced than me. And what do you do? Waste your time with someone like me. Come on, look at me, and look at you. You can see for yourself that something isn’t right, can’t you?”
He cocks his head to one side and stares at me. “I could say the same thing to you.”
I blink, confused. “Meaning?”
With one elbow resting on his knee, he fiddles with a tuft of my hair. “How is it possible that you don’t know…” he says, lifting his face toward me. “You think I just want you for your body? Not at all. If I just wanted to fuck, I could pick up the phone right now.” He pulls it out of the back pocket of his jeans. “Call the first number in my contacts.” He swipes one finger across the phone and selects a name. “And spend the night with some random girl.” He looks at me in silence for a few seconds while I stare uneasily back at him. He tosses the cell on the cushion next to me. “But that’s not what I want. Because none of them are you.” He takes my face between his hands and with a thumb he caresses my cheek, following the line of my cheekbone and pausing to look at me, specifically at my mouth. “The more time I spend with you, the more I want you. But I am also well aware of how wasted you are on me. I know it every time I look at you, every time you get close to me, every time I hear you talk or touch you. Every time I force you to deal with a heartless bastard like me. You could have so much more than this, you deserve more than this. And you know it. Yet, you keep trying to see something in me. Something good, but you’ve got it wrong. The person in front of you is just a fucking disappointment.”
“Stop saying that. You are not a disappointment.”
“Stop idealizing me.”
The coldness in his voice cuts straight to my heart. Why is it so hard for him to see what I see? Sure, he’s not a perfect guy, I realize that, but I know that there is good in him. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it.
“Then I just don’t understand what you want me to do. Basically, why did you come here? Why are you telling me all this? Are you asking me to accept you as you are or are you telling me to let you go?”
It takes him a while to answer, as if he were wrestling with himself. “You should leave me alone,” he says with certainty, before adding, “although I hope you won’t.”
“Because you’re selfish, right?” I murmur, aware and resigned.
He nods. “And I want you to be mine.”
“Why?”
“Because I do.”
“‘Because I do’ is not an answer.”
“Because I feel good when you’re near me.”
I shake my head. “That’s not enough for me.”
He sighs and closes his eyes, bridling at the pressure I’m putting on him. “Ness.”
“No, Thomas. You say you want me, but then you can’t tell me why. I’m beginning to think you only see me as something to use for your own benefits. After all, you said it yourself, didn’t you? You feel good when I’m with you. I am an object you use to feel at peace with yourself,” I retort, getting angry.
He glares daggers at me. “Don’t talk bullshit.”
“Then you explain it to me. Why do you want me in your life if you think you don’t deserve me?”
“Why are you being so difficult about this?”
“Because I’m tired of not being good enough.” He stands up, upset and running a hand through his hair. I can tell by the tortured expression on his face that he would rather be anywhere else right now. But I don’t give up. Not when he leans against the wooden railing, pulls his packet of cigarettes out and brings one to his mouth with a troubled air. And not when he takes a long drag in total silence, refusing to look at me. There is no sound but that of the rain falling on the asphalt and the roof above our heads. I hold his gaze, trying with all my might not to be intimidated and finally, after a few seconds that seem to last forever, he grants me one small admission: “You make me feel like no one else ever has before. Is that enough for you?”
“And how do I make you feel?” I ask in the faintest whisper, clutching the book in my hands in an effort to contain the explosion I can feel brewing inside me.
“What the fuck…” He grinds the heel of his hand into his forehead. “You make me feel good,” he manages through gritted teeth. “But also like a complete asshole.” He looks back at me. He reaches for me, getting onto his knees once more in front of me. Cigarette smoke envelops the both of us. It bothers me, and, as soon as he senses my discomfort, he wafts it away from me. “You’re weird and awkward and sexy like no one else I’ve ever known. Just hearing you talk blows my mind. Or the way you twist your hair when you’re nervous…and how you pull it over your eyes when you get embarrassed.” He puts two fingers under my chin, forcing me to look at him. “When you look at me and, for some insane reason, your eyes shine. When you smile and wrinkle up your nose a little bit and push the tip of your tongue against your teeth… I swear, you drive me crazy.”
He smiles. “I like waking up in the morning and knowing I’m going to see you again. It makes my day better. I like walking into the classroom and seeing you sitting there in the front row, waiting for who knows how long for class to start. And I like your little pout when I do something or say something that pisses you off. I like you the way you are, even when you try to hide inside these giant clothes you wear. You are the only girl I fuck for pleasure, not just to get off. You’re the only one that I have to watch come underneath me because when you do, you take my fucking breath away,” he adds after a few seconds of silence. He takes one last puff from his cigarette before crushing the butt under his shoe. He put his hands on my hips, and only then do I realize that I have been holding my breath this whole time.
I look at him, incapable of answering. I am so confused and taken aback at the same time. My heart is pounding in my chest but I am insanely afraid that this momentary happiness will be shattered again.
“Are you…are you being honest?”
“With you? Always.”
“Then why do you keep stopping me from being with you the way I want to be?” I ask, my voice cracking.
“Because what I told you the other day in your room is the truth. I will never be what you want. I like you. And I want you. But I won’t make you promises I can’t keep.” I look into his eyes for a few seconds and that is long enough to make me give in.
I want him too. More than anything else in the world. And he’s right here, in front of me, making me tremble all over with just a glance the way he always does. I don’t want to think about anything right now except for him, except for us. So I wrap my arms around his neck and, the very next moment, my lips are pressed against his. I know this is wrong, that I’ll probably regret it tomorrow and that I’m only further complicating a situation that already started off too complicated. But I can’t help it. His mere proximity clouds my mind and makes me so vulnerable. I can’t contain these feelings I have. While the storm rages in the background, I surrender to his passionate kiss.