Forty-One
Forty-One
I remain riveted by the sheer force of his stare. Thomas’s face tilts slightly. His eyes move from my eyes to the roses I hold in my hands. From the roses to my cheek, which, until a few moments ago, had Logan’s lips attached to it. And finally he comes back to my eyes.
Was he already there when Logan kissed me? Was he there when Shana poured her juice all over me? I want to believe he wasn’t. I feel like he definitely would have done something if he had been there. He would have defended me, right? But would he have? Even if it meant going against the girl that “he always comes back to.” Yes, he would have defended me. I know it. I can feel it.
A few quick strides and Thomas is standing before me in all his glory. I don’t need to hear him speak to know that he is beside himself with rage. “What the fuck were you doing with him?” He demands through clenched teeth.
“Thomas…” I say his name weakly, in a pathetic attempt to calm him down.
“What were you doing with him?” he repeats, enunciating each word carefully.
I look around uneasily. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?” He stares into my eyes for a few seconds without uttering a word, then he contemptuously snatches the bouquet of roses from my hands and heads for the exit. I hurry after him. I realize what he’s planning to do too late because, by the time I reach him, the roses are already in the garbage. Part of me would like to scold him, but the other part knows perfectly well that if I did, we would just end up fighting. And that’s not what I want.
I follow him down the hallway, begging him to stop. He doesn’t pay me the slightest bit of attention. At the end of the hall, he takes a right, and I follow him. We go down a flight of stairs until we find ourselves in a small classroom, usually used by students to work on group projects. There are no windows in here, the whole room is lit by one dim overhead light. To my right is a small vending machine and a water cooler; there’s a round table in the center of the room and a little bookcase against the back wall.
Thomas fills a cup from the water cooler but does not drink. He sets it down on the table instead. Then he slumps in his chair while I remain standing on threshold, psychologically preparing myself for what awaits me. He takes a pack of cigarettes out from the pocket of his jeans, pulls one out and brings it to his lips.
“You can’t smoke in here,” I point out to him wearily.
“I smoke wherever I want,” he pronounces with an autocratic air.
“You’ll impregnate the room with cigarette smoke and might give someone an asthma attack. If you have to smoke, you can do it outside,” I snap, irritated by his shameless attitude.
“You’re wet,” he says, lighting his cigarette while staring at me challengingly.
I blink in confusion. “What?”
His gaze drops to the damp patch on my jeans. “You’re wet,” he repeats with an eerie calm. “And it’s cold outside.”
I lower my head and stare at the wet fabric. “Oh yeah. That.” Awkwardly, I rub the tip of my nose with my index finger. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m curious to hear it.” He billows out cigarette smoke. Cold eyes. Voice low and intimidating.
“I don’t feel like talking about it.” The bitter smile that twists his lips hides a certain disappointment. But I don’t have the courage to tell him about everything that happened with Shana; it was too humiliating and I would feel pathetic all over again recounting it. Especially because I just let her do that to me, without even trying to defend myself.
Thomas takes another drag on his cigarette and, shrugging his shoulders, says “Then tell me why you were in the cafeteria with Fallon and not at the Marsy serving customers.”
Here we go.
Sighing, I close the door behind me and sit in the chair across from him. “Two hours ago Derek called me and changed my shift tonight to a double on Saturday,” I explain.
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I didn’t think I needed to tell you about that kind of thing. Besides, you were at practice, and I didn’t want to bother you.”
Thomas doesn’t respond. He keeps his eyes fixed on his right hand, clenched into a fist on the table. His knee is bouncing nervously. “How long had you been standing there?” I ask finally, hesitantly.
“For a while,” he says shortly.
“What did you see?”
“Enough.”
“Define ‘enough.’”
He knocks the ash off his cigarette into the small paper cup in the middle of the table and rubs the back of his neck, looking at me. “The other night you asked me to count to ten. I told you that was too much but that, for you, I would make the effort to get to three. For you. Only for you.” I can hear the frustration in his voice, and my heart aches. “Wanna know how far I’ve gotten?”
“Thomas, I…”
“I started counting after practice was over, when I heard that you were in the cafeteria with him and that he had kissed you.” He continues, not allowing me to get a word in edgewise. “I kept counting in the locker room. On the stairs. In the hallway, until I got to the cafeteria and I saw him sitting at the table, with his gelled hair and that fucking golf sweater of his. I was about to go over to him, but I saw that you weren’t there. So I thought that it was all just a misunderstanding and I stopped…for you. Because if it was up to me, I would have at least had a little fun with him.” His mouth curls up into a skin-crawling smirk and his eyes shine with wickedness. “But then, a little later, I saw you come in. I saw you go to him, I saw you look at him and smile at him. I saw you let him touch you and kiss you.”
I close my eyes, disheartened. He misunderstood everything, but I can’t blame him, I probably would have done the same thing in his place. I bow my head, dismayed.
“It wasn’t what you think, I…” I look back up at him. “I didn’t know he was coming back today. He showed up here out of nowhere and I panicked.” I stretch my hands out on the table and entwine them with his, hoping that this will draw his focus back to me, but Thomas is just staring at the table, lost in who knows what spiraling thoughts. “Thomas, listen to me…”
“Did you tell him?” he interrupts, darting his eyes up at me.
For a moment I feel my heart pounding in my throat. I look away from him and shake my head. “No, not yet,” I admit.
Suddenly ashen, Thomas leans forward and pulls his hands away from mine. “And what the fuck were you doing the whole time? What, were you exchanging makeup tips?”
I cock an eyebrow. “Did you really think I was just going to tell him everything in the middle of the cafeteria, in front of all those people?”
He gives me a casual shrug. “I don’t see the problem.”
“The problem is that he deserves basic respect, Thomas, which I haven’t been showing him.” I let myself collapse against the back of the chair, exhausted.
“Let’s hear it then: When do you plan to tell him?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?” I can feel his anger all the way down to my bones. I nod. “When exactly?”
“In a little while. In his room.” As the words come out of my mouth and I watch the expression on Thomas’s face grow increasingly grim, I realize that perhaps going to Logan’s room alone wasn’t the best idea…
“The answer is no,” he says after a few moments of silence. An extremely tense silence.
I frown. “Excuse me?”
“You will not go to his room,” he pronounces.
“I’m only going there to talk.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you go there to do.” He snuffs out his cigarette in the cup of water and, in one sharp movement, gets to his feet. “Don’t be alone with him.” Furiously, he throws the phone on the table and points at it. “Call him and tell him. Now.” I blanch, looking from him to the phone in shock.
“No,” I say resolutely.
“No?” He stares incredulously at me.
“Maybe you are used to acting this way, but I have no intention of breaking up with him over the phone,” I inform him resentfully. “Also, I must have missed the part where I asked you for your permission. You have no right to tell me what to do or what not to do. You are not my boyfriend, Thomas,” I say defiantly.
He narrows his eyes to two slits, his whole body tenses. He shakes his head and rests his palms on the table, bends forward to lock his eyes on mine. “I don’t want you to go see him.”
I lean forward as well and retort with the same audacity, “And I don’t want you to control my life like that. Whether you like it or not, I’m going to see Logan, and I don’t want to discuss it anymore.”
“Jesus Christ!” He pounds the table so hard the cup of water wobbles and I cringe in my seat. “Why the fuck do you have to make everything so difficult?”
I press a hand to my chest, shocked. “I make everything difficult? Do you realize that you’re the one making a huge deal out of nothing here?”
“Because I’m worried about you!”
“You have no reason to do that!”
Thomas hangs his head and breathes deeply. After a moment of silence, he begins speaking, this time in a calmer tone, as though he’s trying to soothe both of our tempers. He looks me steadily in the eye. “I don’t trust him, Ness.”
“But I do.”
He huffs. “You trust everyone.” He says it like it’s a damning condemnation, as if this is reason enough for him to look at me with pity in his eyes.
I frown. “That’s not true.”
“Right, you’re right. Apparently, the only person you don’t trust is me, or am I wrong?”
It’s true that when he took me to the tree house, I told him that I didn’t trust him. But how can he believe that’s still how I feel after everything that’s happened between us? I wouldn’t have done any of the things I did with him if a part of me didn’t already trust him.
“So is this how things are going to be between us from now on? You’re going to decide where I can go, what I can do, who I can meet…all because you think I’m this naive waif incapable of taking care of myself. Am I right?”
“Don’t talk nonsense. You’re free to do whatever you want.”
“Except see Logan.”
“Exactly.”
I snort, frustrated by this surreal situation. “I’m sorry, Thomas. But regardless of what you think, Logan has always treated me well. Can you say the same?” I realize too late that I have said this more contemptuously than I wanted to.
“Are you serious?” he asks resentfully. For a moment, it hurts me to see such bitterness on his face. But I can’t just forget how many times he’s managed to break my heart in the last two months.
“Yes, I am serious.” As I say it, his face twists in anger. His nostrils flare and his eyes blaze with fury.
“You know what?” he says, looking me straight in the eyes. “There’s a party tonight at Matt’s. I wasn’t going to go because I had other plans, plans with you. But, in the end, you’re not really that important to me.” He offers an indifferent shrug and keeps talking, “So who knows? Maybe I’ll go and maybe I’ll lock myself in a room alone with some girl.” He stares at me with a sinister glint in his eyes. “But just to talk, of course.” I am frozen stiff.
I bite the inside of my cheeks until they bleed, trying not to cry in front of him. It takes me a while before I find the strength to reply in a steady voice. “You don’t need to resort to these cheap threats, Thomas. If you want to fuck someone else, just do it,” I spit with all the contempt I can manage. I rise slowly from my chair, making an incredible effort to keep holding the most bewitching and deadliest gaze in the world, all while he sits motionless. “And, for the record: you do hurt me. You are hurting me.” I feel like I can’t breathe, like all the oxygen has been sucked from the room. I turn and walk shakily to the door But, just as I open it, Thomas pounces from behind me and slams his palm into the door to shut it again.
“You’re not leaving.” The low, commanding voice stuns me just as much as the wave of vetiver and tobacco.
“You’re going to keep me here by force?” I say, the warning in my tone undermined by the trembling of my voice.
“If I have to, yes.”
I shake my head, disappointed but also indignant.
“You are crazy, and I must be even crazier because I’m chasing after you. You just told me you wanted to spend the night with someone else. What the hell do you want from me?!”
“I want you to listen to me!” he yells in my ear. He slaps the door so hard that I jerk in fright. When he realizes he’s gone too far, he leans his forehead on the back of my head and rests his hands on my shoulders, exhaustedly. He takes deep breaths, until he regains his composure. “Listen, I don’t want… I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to be like this with you.”
“And yet, this is what always happens,” I murmur with tears in my eyes.
“I’m not good at dealing with emotions, especially when it’s about you. I wish I knew how to do it. I wish I wasn’t always so…” He leaves the sentence hanging, as if struggling to find the right words.
“So?” I swallow with difficulty, staring at the dark grain of the wooden door.
“Angry,” he whispers against my ear, “constantly angry.”
“Why?” I ask softly, almost a whisper.
“About too many things, Ness.” His hands slide down, traveling the curve of my hips, before coming back up to my waist. His arms surround me and squeeze me tightly. “Sometimes, you calm that anger. Other times, you set it off like nothing else. And you know the weird thing? When I first saw you, I made the mistake of thinking you were just a spineless little brat. Instead, you are this indomitable, stubborn little brat who drives me out of my mind.”
“I-I’m sorry,” I babble, as the caress of his fingers on my hips and the delicious sensation of his lips so close to my skin cloud my thinking.
“For what?” Still behind me, Thomas strokes my back before grabbing my chin and tilting my head to one side, exposing the curve of my neck. My heart thumps wildly.
“For failing to live up to your expectations,” I murmur breathily. Thomas traces the pulsing vein in my neck with his lips. I can feel them curving into a smile. He laps at my skin with his tongue, sending shivers all through my body, when all of a sudden, my phone starts ringing.
I grimace. I pull it out of my pocket and see that it is Logan: he must have come back. “I have to go now,” I say trying to move away from Thomas. He won’t let me; he tightens his grip on my side, grinding his pelvis against me.
“Thomas, don’t do this…” I beg him, almost in a trance.
He bites my neck, making me moan softly. “Don’t do what?”
“L-Logan is waiting for me,” I tell him. I can feel his tongue on my neck and desire swamps me like high tide.
“Let him wait.” He begins to nibble on my neck, his tongue moving slow and firm, sucking ardently on my skin.
I can’t hold back my moans, which escape in strangled gasps from my parted lips. Involuntarily, I tilt my head back to rest against his shoulder. Thomas wraps a hand around the back of my neck, kissing my skin with increasing passion. He’s lingering on one spot; my throat is on fire and tendrils of flame reach down to my stomach. But then something happens… With my one last glimmer of clarity, I realize what he is doing.
I turn away, outraged, and push him off my neck, sending him staggering backward just a little. “You gave me a hickey?” I accuse, bringing a hand to my damp skin, surely already turning purple.
He gives me a smug half smile and answers, “What do you think?”
I widen my eyes and my mouth drops open. “You…you deliberately gave me a hickey right when I’m on my way to meet Logan!” The evil grin that lights up his whole face makes me realize that this was his plan from the beginning. He wanted to brand me as if I were his property!
“See it as encouragement to end this whole thing quickly,” he says, shameless as ever.
“God. You are truly impossible, Thomas!”
But none of my outrage seems to faze him. He grabs my jaw with one hand and plants a searing kiss on my mouth. “You’re right, I am impossible. But you are mine. And you had better remember that while you’re dumping his ass.”
“Go to hell! I mean it, Thomas, you can go to hell!” I turn away, dazed and angry, and stomp out of the classroom, slamming the door hard behind me. Immediately, my phone vibrates in my pocket again. It’s a text from Logan telling me to meet him in the student union. As I turn the corner and walk up the stairs, I rapidly undo my braid and nervously try to hide the hickey with my hair.