Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
DYLAN
I THINK I need my brain checked. Because I must be insane to pull away from a girl who kisses better than most people fuck—and trust me, that’s saying a lot. After Sierra sprinted out of the room, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Lidia just squinted at me until I grabbed my stuff and left.
But when Sierra pulled away and those green eyes settled on mine, I realized this wasn’t just some girl I could sleep with and never talk to again. It’s Sierra. My partner.
I can’t mess this up, not even if her lips were pink and plump and parted with moans I’d hear in my dreams. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never wanted someone this badly, that too, completely fucking sober.
“This one’s perfect!” Kian says, pointing at the cardboard box off the shelf.
How did I end up at the hardware store with Kian picking out a bookshelf?
I have no clue. All I know is that I can still feel the phantom movements of Sierra’s hips against mine.
She felt so right wrapped around me, straddling me, rocking against me.
I swear I could feel the scattered pulse between her legs.
She had that look on her face. The look I’ve gotten from women more times than I care to admit.
It’s all heat and impulsive decisions, the kind of unspoken desperation that makes you do reckless things.
Anyone else, and I’d have dragged her mouth right back to mine and let the sweet wet heat of her mouth consume me until we didn’t care where we ended up—my car, hers, against the wall.
But nothing about Sierra Romanova is like anyone else. She’s the most determined, hardworking, and impressive girl I know, and I’d never take this chance away from her. I wouldn’t fuck this up because I can’t keep my dick in my pants.
“Do you need any help?” the worker asks. Her eyes are on me, smiling like she knows me. “Hi, Dylan.”
Okay, she definitely knows me. “Hey,” I say, though I can’t recall her name.
Kian starts asking her a hundred questions about his bookshelf, and I back away because instantly I remember who she is.
A Beta Phi sorority girl. I relive flashes of the night I “married” her at our frat wedding.
No one really recalls that night, and I’m glad for it, because the flashes I do recall—my reception striptease and consummating with the wrong girl—are better left unearthed.
Girls on campus greet me with sugary smiles, whisper my name to their friends, or flirt with me at parties with bright, eager eyes.
It’s flattering, I guess. It’s also meaningless.
It’s made my college experience what it is, but after four years, I look back and realize none of it was real.
Not one girl I’ve been with twice, none have stayed the night—not that I wanted them to—and none I’ve had a single conversation with sober.
Even when I see my friends in happy, loving relationships, I don’t feel envy.
I see the effort, the balancing act, and it seems exhausting.
Love is messy—I’ve seen enough of that with my parents—and it demands more than I’m willing to give.
Lust, though? Lust is simple. Unattached.
It doesn’t ask for anything beyond the moment.
It doesn’t cling or linger. It’s exactly what I needed it to be. Until now.
“Looking to redecorate?” The woman at the paint desk starts telling me about the sale.
All I can think about is how I can still taste Sierra.
My mind keeps looping back to that look in her eyes just before it happened—the hesitation, the heat, the way her breath faltered.
Did she see me at that moment? Or the charming, cocky guy who can get a girl into his bed without trying?
There’s a boulder pressing into my chest that tells me it’s the latter. She can only want the Dylan I’ve shown her and everyone else. The other one doesn’t even exist.
I DON’T KNOW what came over me, but after dropping Kian off to hockey practice, I drove to Manhattan. Now there’s no escape as the elevator climbs to the penthouse floor.
For the first time in months, something pulled me to visit my mom. It might be the slight existential crisis I’m having, but I needed to take my mind off all that.
The elevator doors have barely opened before I hear my mom’s voice. “You’re here!” My mom is tall, but when she hugs me, she only comes up to my neck. Her familiar rose scent envelopes me and takes me back to smelling it on her as a kid.
“Hey, Mama. It’s been a while.”
“Too long,” she says, pulling me inside. “I made helva, you used to love it as a kid.”
The smell of melted butter and the sweetness of dates from the Turkish dessert is in the air.
My mom does everything to make this cold, sterile penthouse replicate the warmth that came from our house in Connecticut, but this was never where she was meant to end up.
Never what our family was supposed to be like.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask.
She tenses as she plates the helva. “Work. But he’ll come as soon as he’s free.”
I want to believe her, but our reality hangs in the air like a thick fog. We both know that at seven p.m. on Friday there can’t be anything productive he’s doing at the office, but I let the words go unsaid. Every time I’ve brought it up, it’s only hurt her.
She slides me a bowl. “We have lots to talk about. Anything you want to tell me first?”
I focus diligently on my helva. “Not really. But this tastes great, Mom.”
She tosses the Dalton letter in front of my bowl. Just when I think she’s going to be angry, she places her hand over mine. “You can talk to me, kuzum. I’m not mad. But I need to know you’re okay.”
The warmth of her voice and her eyes takes me back to a time when she’d comfort me when I lost a scrimmage or got detention. She was always there; my dad wasn’t.
“I’m fine, Mom. Really. It was a mistake, but I’m fixing it now.”
From the look on her face, I can tell she’s worried, but she doesn’t press.
She tells me how Ada calls her every day.
Unlike me. But the more she talks, the more I stare at the clock.
Each bite of helva grows bitter, the longer we wait for any sign of my dad joining us.
When she mentions missing the garden at our old house, I can’t take it anymore.
My chair scrapes against the polished floor, interrupting her as she reminisces about the day my dad surprised her with the greenhouse.
She stares at the half-eaten helva. “Ne oldu? You don’t like it?”
“I have to go.” I reach for my car keys on the counter. “I have a lot to study.”
“But your baba—”
“Dad’s not coming. And judging by the depressing echo in this apartment, he hasn’t been home in a while.” My voice cracks, the frustration spilling out.
She rushes after me. “That’s not true. He’s just late. He wants to apologize for how we sprung the vow renewal on you. He wants you to understand where he’s coming from.”
“I’m not the one he should be apologizing to.
” I itch to leave. It’s like the secrets embedded in these walls mock me.
“I begged you to leave him, Mom. When you said you would, I believed you. I believed you were finally standing up for yourself—because we both know what happens when I do it. So, forgive me if that phone call about your vow renewal wasn’t the good news I was expecting. ”
Last year, I applied for apartments. Kilner even got me a job at Porter’s by talking to the bar manager, who agreed to let me work even though I was underage.
I covered all the bases even though my mom would likely be well-off with half of my dad’s fortune.
But I didn’t want her to go through the process of a long divorce just because of money.
In my mind, it was simple: She’d leave him and be happy again. What more could she want?
“He’s changed,” she insists, her voice trembling.
I shake my head. “You may not deserve the things I’m saying to you, Mom, but you sure as hell don’t deserve what he’s doing either. Don’t make me feel like the bad guy for being the only person in your life who’s telling you the truth.”
Normally, I would have beaten myself up over making her cry, but I let all that go the moment she chose him. Again. I’m done trying to fix something that’s never been whole.
She moves in front of the elevator. “Stay. You haven’t been home in ages.”
“Neither have you.”
I slip into the elevator, and I hear the faint whisper of seni seviyorum—I love you—before the doors close, and I drive back to the only place that’s the closest to home that I’ll ever be.
TURNS OUT, I did some substantial damage at the hardware store.
I realized it only when I unloaded the stuff from my car after getting back from my parents’ apartment.
Two buckets of paint, every brush the sales associate claimed I’d need, a bedside table, a desk, and a plant that’s already wilting.
I’ve already painted half my room when my phone rings. MOM flashes on screen.
It’s late, and she’s still up. The thought only makes me feel worse for saying those things to her.
I should have let it go. Should have pretended like it didn’t affect me.
Sometimes I think my mom only stayed with my dad to prove me wrong.
That if I hadn’t voiced what a piece of shit he was, that she would’ve left on her own.
I prolonged it. The deeper your dig, the more likely you are to bust a water line.
“Jesus, open a window!” Kian barges into my room. I shove my phone back in my pocket just as he opens the window to stick his head out, sucking in air like he’s suffocating.
“I have the fan on, relax.” I use the back of my hand to wipe the paint off my cheek.
All my old shit is out in the hall, including my bed, because I ordered a new one.
The only memories I’ve made in this room were ones that lasted a single night.
In my bed, against the wall, on my desk—it all felt tainted with the person I used to be and people I don’t know.
“How do you have energy for this after skating?”
I shrug. “Ever since Kilner punished us that entire season after you streaked across campus, I’ve been prepared for anything.”
“That’s your bar for endurance? He made me do everyone’s dirty laundry full of jock straps last season. Sometimes, I can still smell the stench.” He shudders.
“Think you need to unpack that trauma with a professional, Ishida.”
Kian flips me off. “So, you never told me why we lugged two paint cans and all that furniture. And why is it baby blue like a nursery?”
I look at the lid on the bucket. “Actually, it’s called Caribbean Mist.”
Kian falls onto a lone chair, making an unnecessary amount of noise as he tries to get comfortable on top of the plastic sheet I’ve got covering my things.
“I’m totally digging the whole shirtless, covered in paint, depressed Van Gogh thing you got going on.
But what’s got you so messed up that it made you want to redecorate? I’m very concerned.”
“You can read about it in my diary.”
“Wait, really?” Kian’s interest piques.
“Get out before I give you something to be concerned about.”
Then he gasps. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”
“I thought we were over this nursery thing.”
“No, you’re into a girl. Holy shit, how did I miss that? No hookups, no partying, but you’re always finding an excuse to leave the house. Something is definitely up.”
“No idea where you got that. Besides, I don’t always bring girls home.”
He ignores me. “Wow, monogamous Dylan.”
“Monogamous Dylan?” Summer walks into my room with her hands over her eyes.
Kian chuckles. “You don’t have to cover your eyes anymore, Sunny. Dylan’s a born-again virgin.”
“Pulling out a page from Kian’s book?” she jokes.
This time I laugh and Kian glares. “Are you two just watching, or are you going to help?”
Summer grabs a paintbrush, but Kian stands back. “Actually, I just bought these jeans, so …” He sprints out of the room.
“I’ll be the first to say I like this new Dylan. Feels more authentic.”
“I think you mean sober.”
She shakes her head. “Nah, it’s you. You’re not looking for an escape route.”
I chuckle. “Psychoanalyzing again, Sunny?”
“Sorry.” She cringes. “But whatever or whoever it is that’s got you redecorating, I think it might help to talk it through. Nothing is as complicated as we make it in our head.”
“We kissed.” I don’t look at Summer as I say it. It just comes out. “Then I pulled away to tell her we probably shouldn’t, but her coach walked in and … I don’t fucking know.”
Summer’s quiet for a while. The only sound is the paint dripping from her brush onto the plastic-covered floor. “Sierra kissed you and you pulled away? Because you didn’t want to mess up your reinstatement or …?” I can hear the smile in her voice, but she hides it when I look at her.
She knows I don’t do this. Confiding in someone is like wiping the protective layer of varnish from a painting people admire, only to find that the glossy finish was the only thing hiding the ugly cracks.
“Everyone trusted me enough to do this, and I won’t ruin it. I’m not the guy she deserves.” I’ve never been that for anyone. And I prefer it that way.
“Maybe it’s not up to you to decide what she deserves.” Summer starts painting. “But I think you should talk to her about it. Figure out where her head was at when she kissed you. It’s hard to know the answer if you’ve been avoiding the question.”
Talking only leads to more complicated shit, but considering I’m partners with the girl, it’ll have to do.