Chapter 5 #2
I frowned—not at her, but at the entire situation—and pointed in the direction of the girls’ locker room. She grabbed my hand and maneuvered us through the crowd. My carefully coiffed blonde waves tumbled over my shoulders in a messy mass.
No sooner were we inside the bathroom did she open her mouth. I clamped my hand over it and with the other raised a finger to my mouth. Her eyes grew large and her eyebrows lifted. I motioned with my head toward the showers and silently asked her to follow.
Once we were tucked within the last stall in the last row, I closed the curtain, then covered my face, and breathed out forcefully.
“Please don’t ask.”
“Oh, girl, I’m gonna ask.” She cut me off with a calm whisper.
“And you’re going to tell me, and you’re going to describe every intimate detail—do they shave his chest?
Because, on the show, he has no hair on his chest, and I think that there must be hair naturally because he is Italian. And what about his—”
“Stop. Please stop.” I shook my head, my face still in my hands, and started to laugh. The sound was slightly frantic.
Sandra pulled my palms from my face and waited until I met her eyes. “Why are you so mortified about this? He is H-O-T hot. I would’ve thought you’d get T-shirts made that said Yeah, I hit that.”
“Oh, Sandra.” I smile-frowned. “It’s so complicated.”
“Um, no it’s not. It’s simple, really. Nico Moretti—or Manganiello, or whatever—still has the leg humpies for you.”
I started laughing and shaking my head again. “No—it’s not like that. He…he’s….”
“No, girl, it is like that. It’s exactly like that. I thought he was going to grab you by the hair and drag you away caveman style. Instead he manhandled you, just a little, and it was hot. I bet if we go to his table, he’ll….”
“No, we can’t do that. You don’t understand. Nico was Garrett’s best friend.”
Sandra’s mouth snapped shut and she blinked at me. “Wait…what?”
I couldn’t believe this person was me. I was a grown woman, standing in a shower stall, whispering about high school drama. I didn’t even do this when I was in high school.
I stepped back, leaned against the wall, and let my head fall against the tile. “Garrett and Nico were best friends.”
“And you were…” Sandra lifted her eyebrows. “And you were the girl that came between them?”
“No. Not at all. Nico and I…we used to play together when we were kids, like, all the time. Our mothers were best friends, and he teased me constantly. But then my mom died the same year Garrett moved to town. The next year, by the time Garrett and Nico became friends, Nico hated me, and I didn’t like him much either.
He started all kinds of rumors about me when I was in middle school—just dumb kid stuff.
He used to follow me down the hall whispering Skinny Finney—his nickname for me, by the way, which ended up being adopted by everyone. ”
“How did Garrett feel about this—about Nico’s treatment of you?”
“Garrett would stand up for me. Sometimes they’d go weeks without talking to each other. Eventually, Nico would apologize, but always in front of Garrett. I knew he did it just for show. But I didn’t want to be the reason Garrett and Nico fought. I always felt bad about it, like it was my fault.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but I was an adolescent and I couldn’t think of what to do, I didn’t know how to process it, how to not overreact.
But whenever we were in the same room together, it was like—I mean—we were always at each other’s throats.
I was shy with most people, but with Nico, I gave as good as I got.
I was really mean. He was really mean. I couldn’t stand him. ”
“Hmm….” Sandra tilted her head to the side, studying me. “You couldn’t stand him?”
I looked up at the ceiling without really seeing it.
What I saw was Nico next to Garrett’s bed, the two of them playing their guitars.
“That’s not entirely true. I cared about him, about Nico.
Even after—” I lifted my hands and motioned to the air around us.
“—just everything. I mean, we grew up together. When we were kids it wasn’t all bad.
Sure, there was lots of teasing, but there were good times too, you know?
And I thought he cared about me, as a friend, but the older we got, the worse he became. ”
“You think he didn’t care about you.” It was a statement.
I nodded my confirmation. “How could he? How could he possibly care about me and be so awful?”
“His treatment of you must have hurt.”
“It did.” I glared at her, didn’t particularly like the fact that she was right, that it was still painful. I was a twenty-six-year-old adult whose feelings continued to be impacted by high school hurts. But, I supposed, that didn’t make me any different than the rest of the general population.
Sandra sighed. “So, what happened? What changed?”
“When Garrett got sick, Nico and I started—we decided—to pretend to get along, to make things easier for Garrett. That year we took care of him—together. We didn’t fight. And after Garrett died, Nico and I continued to hang out.”
“Like go-see-a-movie hang out, or…?”
I tried to swallow again, but my throat was too dry. “He would climb into my bedroom window every night and hold me while I slept.”
Sandra was exceptionally quiet; I couldn’t even hear her breathe. I met her gaze and discovered that she’d turned into Shrink Sandra. She studied me with notes of detachment and supportive skepticism.
“Go on,” said Shrink Sandra.
I didn’t precisely know why but I did. “We—Nico and I—never spoke about it; not really. He just showed up one night at my window, and I let him in. He didn’t say anything; he just hugged me and I cried, and then we lay down on the bed and I fell asleep.
It was the first time I was able to sleep through the night since Garrett died. ”
I fiddled with the hem of my dress and recalled how it felt to wake up in Nico’s arms. He had been watching me sleep.
Just moments after I awoke, before I could form a coherent thought or thank him, he wordlessly kissed my forehead, extracted himself from my arms, and left the same way he came.
That morning, after he left, I felt a measure of peace. I felt grateful.
But that night, I wasn’t able to sleep until he arrived.
“I think at first he came because he needed the comfort, too. But then, after a while I think he just felt sorry for me.”
I stared past Sandra, remembering those months. I couldn’t fall asleep unless he was there. If he was late, I would wait up for him. He was so warm and strong.
I began to resent Nico for having something I needed; I didn’t like depending on him.
I hated the fact that I started feeling something for him, this boy who’d tortured me in school, and only four months after Garrett had died.
The thought of having feelings for someone was frightening enough, without that person being Nico Manganiello.
But later, much later, I felt shame for taking him so completely for granted. I was a mess.
“How long did this go on?”
“Four months.”
“And why did it stop?”
“I…” I took a steadying breath. “I can’t believe I’m talking about this, in a shower stall, at my high school reunion.”
Shrink Sandra’s smile was warm but aloof. “Did you ask him to stop?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I had sex with him. I lost my virginity….” It was hard to continue, mostly because I was going to admit out loud that I was a terrible person, but I forced the words past my tightening throat. “Then I went to Ireland for five months with my dad.”
“How did he feel about you leaving?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t talk to him?”
“No. The week before, before the night we slept together, I told Nico I didn’t want him coming to my room again. I didn’t want him sleeping with me. I told him I was okay and that I didn’t need him anymore.”
“Because you started having feelings for him?” Sandra guessed.
I smirked at her mad-mind-reading skills and twisted the fabric of my skirt. “Because I started having feelings for him.”
“And you never told him.” Another statement.
I shook my head to confirm.
“Then you went to his house, climbed into his window, and—what—seduced him?”
I nodded my head to confirm.
“Why did you do that?”
I couldn’t meet her eyes any longer. “Because I wanted to. I wanted my first time to be with someone I had feelings for. But I didn’t care if he returned my feelings because I was being selfish. I used him.”
Sandra sighed again. “Then what happened?”
“I left. I left him while he was asleep. When I was in Ireland, I sent back his letters unopened, and didn’t accept his calls. I cut him out.”
Shrink Sandra studied me, assessing, frowning. I waited for her to point a finger in judgment or to shake her head in disappointment. Part of me wanted her to. Maybe a good chastening might help me move past the guilt.
Instead, she asked another question. “What did he do when you came back? You finished your senior year here, right?”
“Yes. I was dreading seeing him. But when I came back, he’d dropped out of high school and moved to New York to become an underwear model.”
“So, that night when you slept with him, was that the last time you saw him?”
I nodded, “Yes, well—yes, until last week.” I glanced at my fingers. “You remember that he was the celebrity at the hospital last week that everyone was freaking out about. His niece might qualify for a clinical trial.”
“And how did he behave when he saw you?”
“Sandra….” I glared at her. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to discuss how he’d been able to fluster and disarm me so effectively eleven years after my monumental mistake. He was a big, old, gaping hole in my armor, and I didn’t like thinking about him, let alone discussing him.
“Elizabeth.” Her eyes narrowed as well.
All it took was narrowed eyes and the inflection of her shrink voice.