Chapter 17 #2
“Sorry!” I yell, crumpling my paper in my fist, sprinting away from the almost-crime scene in case someone gets the idea of using their trombone for unsanctioned violence.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m on the opposite end of campus, huffing and puffing with my hands on my knees.
A metal scrapyard sits outside of a single-story building, left here by the preceding elements and patinaed in a gorgeous green that shimmers in the fading light.
It’s as if the past itself has been mummified.
Untouched vines and overshoots slither between long-forgotten beams, and a circlet of conifers surrounds the immediate area, segregating this secret haven from the rest of the structure-hugging core.
My ambition, if anything, is resistant to befall the despair that tries (and fails) to pull at my psyche—like an omnipotent hand uprooting something rotten.
When I step inside and peer through the vision panel of the first door, I scan every head until Staten’s jet-black hair enters my line of sight. She’s jotting something down in her notebook, her eyebrows folded in adorable concentration.
I know she’s probably going to snipe me for this, but I begin to wave my arms around like a madman, trying to get her attention.
A few other eyes drift over to my spectacle, and I have to continue this sick humiliation ritual while my nerves marshal a new line of defense.
I’m not above bursting into the room, but I think I speak for everyone involved that nobody wants that.
Realistically, it probably takes three minutes before she notices me, though I’d equate it to a goddamn eternity. Her gaze finally mirrors that of her distracted classmates—curiosity did kill the cat, after all—and she blanches the moment she sees me.
I gesture for her to come outside.
Her pale face is sheeted in annoyance.
I beckon her again.
No movement.
Jesus, I forgot how stubborn she was. I’m not caffeinated enough for this.
Since demanding doesn’t seem to be working, I clasp my fingers together in prayer, shake my hands through the glass, and silently beg her to come outside and put me out of my misery.
We’re talking theatrics here, people. Over-exaggerated expressions, evicting tears from their goddamn ducts if I have to.
The classroom is soundproof, but I can practically hear the growl that egresses from her lips. She begins to pack her things up, and I have to refrain from punching my fist into the air victoriously.
Staten exits the room, and she doesn’t have the chance to berate me before I’m pulling her sideways and out the double doors of the building.
“What the hell are you doing?” she exclaims, impatience sprinkled in her tone.
“I’m sorry, this couldn’t wait,” I preface, planting her outside and subsequently shoving my essay in her face.
She grumbles a few expletives under her breath but eventually concedes, taking the wrinkled paper and locking her eyes on the giant B+ still sitting pretty on the front. And just like that, her irritation becomes a nullified threat.
“Holy shit!” she squeals loudly, shedding her backpack so she has full articulation of her body. “You did it!”
It feels as if there’s an arrow fletched with affection, bound for one destination and one destination only—my heart. Almost throwing up my lungs was so worth getting to see her reaction.
My mouth hitches into a shit-eating grin. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Going into this arrangement, I never expected Staten and I to reach an armistice, but I can say, with full confidence, that the rod of tension between us has finally snapped.
She launches herself at me, twining her arms behind my neck and almost knocking me off my axis. In this split second of monumental history, neither of us admit that we prefer each other’s company to empty space.
My essay flutters to the ground, but I’m more focused on squeezing Staten back than preserving my first B plus. Elation is syrupy, sticky, sweet. Relief is similar to lighting a match on the first try, despite the howling winds that forbid it.
I can feel her heartbeat hammering against my chest—can smell the hints of lavender tucked beneath the waves of her hair.
I hug her so hard that her feet come off the ground a few inches, and she yelps into the alcove of my neck, tightening her hold around me.
I wish that I could freeze time. I wish that I could relive this memory over and over again.
When Staten’s heels reacquaint themselves with the ground and we both pull away, she pitches forward enough for it to be noticeable, her lips slightly off the mark of mine, like she was just about to—
“Were you about to kiss me?” I ask, noting the call and response of our bodies, as well as the exodus of belly-dwelling butterflies traveling up the canal of my throat.
Her voice shoots up uncharacteristically high. “What? No! Of course not. I—it—I just tripped over my feet. Kiss you? Hah, please. That’s hilarious. I-I would never kiss you.”
Even though I don’t believe her for a second, the words still pistol-whip me. There’s a thumbprint of disappointment in between my ribs—one that raids any unspent confidence still lingering in the shadowed corners of bone.
“Ouch,” I joke.
She trembles a little. “Shit. No, that—that came out wrong. I just meant…”
I run my tongue over my canine, hitting her with a nerve-neutralizing smile. “Relax, Ace. I’m just messing with you.”
“Right.”
Would I have opposed being on the receiving end of Staten’s affection? No, no I would not have. Will that ever happen when Leif the Cockblock Kennedy stands in my way? No, no it will not.
I don’t remember a time when I felt this…
content…with myself. It makes it harder for me to be selfish with Staten.
I have to remind myself that her happiness comes before anything else in this world, and that she made this arrangement under the understanding that me helping her get Leif was a part of the package.
“How’s it going with lover boy?” I inquire, surmising that a change of subject will do both of us some good.
Staten’s jaw hardens. “It’s okay, I guess. He’s not giving me the cold shoulder anymore, which is good, but he’s acting strange around me. Possessive. Like he has something to prove,” she explains.
Ugh. Just what I wanted to hear.
Deep-rooted disgust agitates the baseline acid in my belly. “He’s marking his territory.”
The way she rears back is almost comical. “Excuse me?”
“Now that you’re off the market, his interest has gone up. Guys want what they can’t have. He never saw you as an option before because you were so readily available to him, but the minute you’re all over his ‘competition,’ he’s suddenly the one vying for your attention.”
Leif is punching out of his goddamn weight class. He should want Staten whether she’s entertaining another guy or not. He should want her because she’s…well, her. Freakishly intelligent, selfless, empathetic. It’s a miracle that he even thinks he has a chance with someone like her.
I’ve learned to read Staten pretty well over this past month—to the point where I can usually anticipate her next set of words—but nothing could prepare me for the question that punctures through me like a bullet with no exit wound.
“Is that how you feel?”
My fuckboy software glitches. “Huh?”
“Have you ever wanted something you couldn’t have?” she reiterates, imploring me with her large, doe eyes, waiting for me to spill the ubiquitous truth of the male species.
I contemplate lying to her.
I don’t.
“Yeah, I have.”
She gnaws on her lower lip in contemplation, hands trembling as if she’s a first-time phlebotomist trying to tap a vein that won’t show itself. “So, what do I do? How do I let him know that I’m interested?”
“You flirt with him,” I say matter-of-factly.
“Flirt…with him?”
Jesus. It’s worse than I thought.
“Yeah, you know—compliment him, touch him.”
“I’ve never flirted with anyone before,” she mumbles quietly, shame a thorn in her voice that I wish I could pick out.
I want to tell her that she’s flirted with me before, but the fact that she doesn’t remember—or maybe didn’t perceive it that way—informs me she didn’t mean to. Maybe it was all just friendly banter, and I transformed it into something to satisfy my basal wants.
I, for the first time in my life, misread a girl coming onto me. I’m hopeless.
Although it kills me to imagine Staten all over Leif—mapping his skin in teeth impressions and tongue marks—I shove my frisson of jealousy far into the recesses of my mind, determined to lock it away for the foreseeable future. “It’s all in the eye contact, Ace.”
“I don’t…”
I tip her chin up so our eyes meet, and she freezes under my touch, her pupils dilating in the canary-feathered sunlight of the overripe afternoon.
In my head, I count the spray of freckles on her flawless skin, tabbing that number in my head so I can reconstruct this memory when I’m not with her. She’s so pliant, so trusting.
“You look fucking incredible today, Staten,” I drawl with a rasp that’s been known to melt the legs of even the toughest Knox-proof women, my thumb skirting the length of her jaw.
She doesn’t move. She doesn’t even say anything. She just holds my gaze—a gradual blush creeping into her cheeks—her brain trying to delineate what’s for show and what holds an inkling of truth.
All of it is true.
“Is this a part of the lesson?” she stammers, her full, thick lashes tickling her brow bone.
“Do you want it to be?”
“Fuck, Knox. Don’t say that.”
A high-voltage grin. “I’m just complimenting my fake girlfriend.”
Her chest heaves once, twice, those pupils of hers swallowing the puce rings of her irises. “This doesn’t feel fake.”
“Then I’m doing my job right,” I respond.
Like a bungee cord snapping in midair, the fantasy dematerializes, and I sever eye contact. Not because I want to, but because I’m afraid that I won’t be able to free myself from her stare the longer I let myself sink into my own homespun, habit-forming obsession.
“Just hit him with some prolonged eye contact and he’ll be putty in your hands.”
Staten’s lips open to probably dispute my irrefutable evidence, but no words have the gall to enter the atmosphere. She’s still looking at me like we never agreed on minimizing our voiceless intimacy—like she’s still caught in the riptide of my eyes.
I bend down to retrieve my essay, and the price of a good grade seems worthless compared to the ache that ravages my heart.