Chapter Thirty-Three
Susie
I arrive at class at the last possible minute and take my seat next to Bryan with awkward reluctance. It’s our last week, and that’s the good news and the bad news. He looks up as I open my notebook to a clean page.
He gives me a slight nod of acknowledgment before Professor Yardly starts talking. Class is all about prepping for the final exam. We have a blue book exam, which is going to be an essay on our choice of one of three topics.
Bryan has a lot riding on the final, although he’s quiet about it. He’s quiet about everything. Not even Liz or Eldy know what’s going on with his NFL prospects. If I put on my armchair analyst hat, that’s what I think is bothering him most right now.
Unless he has other things going on that I don’t know about, which is entirely possible.
He doesn’t say a word to me or communicate with more than a nod when I ask him a question, so when class ends, the need to reach him overwhelms my common sense.
I don’t want to let him go. I want to know if we have something worth risking our friendship with Liz for, even if it means losing my heart and a world of pain in the process.
“I hear Fletcher is having a party. Are you going?”
I’m trailing him out the door when he turns to me and gives me a look that says you know the answer—or maybe he’s saying it’s beneath you to ask stupid questions. No, that’s what I’m telling myself.
We get outside, and he’s about to take off, so I put a hand on his arm. “Wait.”
He stops and turns to me, his eyes wary, and he waits while I watch the white puffs coming from our mouths as our breath hits the cold air.
“Are you in a hurry for a reason?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer me. He’s waiting for me to say what I have to say. But I’m coming up blank because everything on my mind is too much for a conversation in the middle of the quad with people coming and going. It’s the kind of conversation that might end up with me in tears. Not what I’m looking for.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, except to reconnect with him, and I seem to have lost the ability, or more like he’s erected a wall so high it’s impossible for me to scale without getting seriously hurt.
He looks away from me, and my nerves light up with urgency to say something, anything.
“There’s a Christmas party. Fletcher’s party. They’re having it the last day of finals, so everyone can go.”
“They live in a fucking summer cottage with no insulation and no heat. They’re throwing the party and inviting as many people as possible for the body heat.”
My eyebrows go up. “Congratulations. You win first prize in the Grinch contest.”
I see the tiniest reaction in the form of him compressing his lips like he’s holding in a snort or maybe even a laugh. My heart flutters because I care too much in spite of all the cold logic telling me I shouldn’t.
“You stopped me because you wanted to give me sass about a so-called Christmas party?”
He dares me to tell him the real reason.
“I wanted to talk to you, to… clear the air?—”
“There’s no need. Class will be over in a week. The semester will be over. No more waitering, no more tutoring. No more football. No more us.”
My mouth opens and hangs there as my heart thuds in a heavy drum. His words are depressing and final, but they make no sense. And I’m not accepting whatever he’s trying to say.
“What the hell, Bryan? Is your life over too? Your life isn’t that bad that it deserves all this doom and gloom.”
I scold him, almost shouting. One or two people turn and look as he takes me by the arm and pulls me aside, out of the path onto the frozen dirt and grass.
“You don’t?—”
“What? I don’t know about all your horrible problems? Or are you one of those people who hates Christmas on general principle? You?—”
“Shut up, Susie.”
His voice is softer than his words. ‘None of the above.”
I heave out a sigh because he looks so sad, and I remember how broken he is and how I thought I could make a difference somehow, comfort him, save him from himself. But I can’t, and I hate feeling so helpless.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you. I have no right.”
“You know what my worst problem is?”
An inexplicable zap of nerves makes me vibrate, turning my tummy over.
“You are my worst problem.”
My mouth hangs open again, and again I don’t know what to say.
“It’s an old story, a cliché, and I’m not proud of that. In fact, I feel ridiculous. I would never admit it to anyone. Except you.”
“So come to the Christmas party.”
It’s all I can think to say. Not exactly comforting, but I haven’t been too good at comforting him lately anyway.
Bryan grunts. “I need to get through finals before I think about a post-finals party.”
“You’ll go,”
I say. “Dane won’t let you miss it because it’s a football party.”
I pause, but my words don’t move him. Then I take a deep breath and add, “Besides, it’ll give us another chance to see each other.”
I lay it all on the line and hold my breath.
“That’s why I should stay away.”
“Don’t.”
I deflate and my heart sinks because he’s convinced he’s right. I can’t stand the feeling that he’s slipping away. Desperate to avoid the sensation of losing him, I’m willing to settle for whatever small part I can get. Hell, maybe I’m desperate enough to accept the role of third wheel to him and Liz if that’s all there is.
“If you believe in final hurrahs, come to the party with me,”
I say quietly. I know he’s thinking if ever, but I can’t believe that.
He glances at me. “Are you asking me on a date?”
I can’t tell if he’s serious, so I assume he’s joking. It’s usually a safe assumption, even if he carries off the dry humor like a funny camel in the Sahara.
“We’ll see.”
He starts walking, and I walk with him in the direction of the library, well aware that I’m pathetic.
“What will we see?”
“We’ll see whether or not I have enough integrity or willpower to resist you.”
I laugh. “Still on a melodrama kick, I see.”
He grunts. “You asked for it.”
We walk in silence until we get to the library steps. “You going to follow me inside?”
“No.”
I turn to go, then I stop. “Liz is going home this weekend.”
He flinched when I said Liz’s name.
He says nothing, so I keep talking. “We don’t have a basketball game, and her mom needs her help.”
He grunts and eyes the enormous library doors like he wants to escape from me. Or maybe it’s Liz and her problems he wants to escape from. That’s something I need to find out.
“She’s bummed about it.”
My nerves pile up in my gut, churning it around like I’m making butter, but I forge on. “She’s leaving before dinner.”
He looks at me. He knows an invitation when he hears one. I hold my breath, feeling dizzy and keeping my eyes on his.
When he nods, I want to collapse with relief, but I don’t, because guilt replaces all the pleasure I might have gotten from knowing we’ll have another chance to be together.
Tonight. One night to figure it out or…
Bryan stays after dinner and comes up to my room when I suggest he can write a few paragraphs to practice for the English Comp final. He picks up his books, and as we walk from the dining room to the stairs, I feel eyes on us, ratcheting up my guilt-tension. He follows me to my door, getting closer and closer to me until I can feel his heat and scent press on my nerves.
I open the door and go in, bubbling with anticipation and trepidation. As soon as he steps inside behind me, he kicks the door shut, takes me by the arms, and turns me around until I’m backed up against it. With his hands on either side of me, trapping me, he flattens his body against mine, and the feel of him, every hard muscle, the weight of him, the powerful press of his arousal, makes me dizzy with pleasure.
“Is this what you want?”
he rasps, his face close to mine, his warmth engulfing me, and I breathe him in. His mouth is so close that I can’t help kissing it. He growls and responds, deepening the kiss, pressing harder against me until I tingle with unbearable need.
He lifts his mouth from mine and takes in a ragged breath. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
I nod as I trail kisses across his jawline. Surprising me, he lifts me off the ground and carries me to my bed. He brings me down on top of him, and we roll to our sides as he moves his strong hands down to cup my rear, pulling me exquisitely close, making me hyper aware that we’re fully clothed and that we won’t be for long.
He stares at me through half-lidded eyes, and the hunger I see, and that I feel in myself, makes my heart palpitate. Before he kisses me again, before I get drunk with desire, I have to know what we’re about, what’s bothering him, because I know it’s more than me.
He nuzzles my ear, and his hands slip under my sweater and slide up my ribs to my breasts, making me dizzy. I moan and nudge him away at the same time.
“I need to know something.”
He stops and gives me his attention, aiming the intensity of his eyes at mine so that I feel like the most important person in the world, the only one who matters.
“Tell me what’s bothering you, Bryan. Deep down, what’s it about?”
He closes his eyes for a second, as if he’s recalibrating. “I thought you didn’t want melodrama.”
He’s teasing, evading, and I smile as I caress his face, appreciating the roughness of his stubble against my palms. “Is it about football or your father?”
He snorts. “Same problem.”
“Why is your father so angry about you playing football? Why doesn’t he appreciate you for who you are?”
He moves to his back and stares at the ceiling, and I prop myself up on my elbow watching him, not wanting to miss anything, not a word or an expression or even a small involuntary tic. My heart fills with all the longing and blind adoration I’ve been holding for him for six years, grateful that he is who he is, a man—not a boy, because I can’t think of him as a boy anymore—who stops in the heat of the moment to listen to me, to answer my questions, even when it’s easy to see that it’s a hard thing for him to do.
After a long silence, he meets my stare. He clears his throat, but his voice comes out rusty, like he’s dredging the words from a deep, dark well, a place he hasn’t been to in a long time.
“I once had an older brother.”
He pauses and takes a quick, halting breath, turning away.
After a second of confusion, I understand. He lost a brother. A pain stabs at my heart, and I hold in a whimper of compassion. His father lost a son, his first-born son. My heart thunders with all the possible implications, and I try clamping down on the emotion because I want to hear the whole story. And I know he’ll tell me if I’m patient.
“His name was Caleb. He was four years older than me, and I idolized him. He was bigger, stronger, and faster than I am. He played football, and he was better than me. A superstar. Now he’s a ghost who haunts me.”
He turns back to me. “My family doesn’t talk about him. His name is taboo. It’s like he never existed except in my nightmares.”
I don’t know what to say, so I kiss him, soft tender kisses on his mouth and chin and along his jawline, feeling the tension there ease.
His Adam’s apple bobs as he clears his throat. “He died in a tractor accident. I was there. Dad wasn’t. He came too late. I was young but not ignorant about what to do. I tied my belt around his thigh as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, but it didn’t matter. The blade cut his femoral artery, and he bled out. Would have bled out no matter what I did, according to the doctors, because of the way it was cut.
“Dad didn’t care. He turned against me then. I was twelve. It happened not long before I met you. Caleb is gone, and I’ll never live up to him in my father’s eyes.”
“That’s so wrong.”
I can’t understand how his father can’t accept the truth of what happened, of how Bryan tried to save Caleb. Can’t his father see how hard Bryan works, how decent and loyal and caring he is? “It’s so unfair, so irrational?—”
“My brother quit playing football, and I didn’t.”
“But—”
“Caleb quit football and devoted himself solely to farming, like our father. I never did.”
I blow out a breath. “You’ve given up on your father.”
He nods, reaching over and pulling me closer.
“Were you close to your brother?”
I whisper.
I see the tremor of pain and regret run through him. “He told me never to quit football.”
He pauses, breathing deeply and slowly, like there’s a constriction in his chest. “It was the last thing he said to me while I watched the life drain out of him.”
“Oh no.”
Full understanding settles on me like a plague of locusts, dark and noisy, but I shake off the darkness. Whatever it is in me that can’t accept anything less than hope takes over, driving an urgent need to console him, to infuse him with all my hope and whatever sense of lightness, whatever comfort I can give him to alleviate his pain.
I rain kisses on his face, circling my arms around him and pressing my body to his as if I can protect him. “I’m sorry I made you talk about such a devastating memory.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s always there.”
He touches my face, stroking the back of his hand across my cheek with reverence. “Maybe talking about it is better.”
My chest explodes with bubbles like a champagne bottle popped inside me, making me fuzzy and glad I can make anything better for him, even a little. Talking to me about his brother seems like a special intimacy, something he doesn’t share easily.
Instantly, I wonder if he’s talked to Liz about his brother or whether she knew him when he was alive. She never mentioned Caleb to me, but then it would be like her to keep Bryan’s confidences. Shame heats me because I shouldn’t care; it shouldn’t matter. I’m not competing with her. I don’t want to take her relationship with Bryan away from her. I only wish she could reconcile what her relationship with him really is—and isn’t.
Shit. Maybe I’m the one who needs to figure that out. Maybe I’m thinking my relationship with Bryan is more than it is. Maybe he’s interested in a physical relationship with me, something casual and no more.
“Does Liz know?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Our family kept it quiet. My father insisted, and I never talked to anyone about Caleb. Not since he…”
He looks away, and I hug him tight and awkwardly. My heart insists that means something, that he’s interested in more than a casual fling, that he must care if he’s sharing something important with me that he hasn’t shared with Liz or anyone.
I lean forward and kiss him, covering his lips with mine, pressing and opening up to him with hunger and a need to show him how I feel. He tastes so good, feels so good, his body solid under mine, strong beyond my imagination. But not just his body, his soul, his essence.
I think I sensed his strength of character, his core of decency and protective nature from the very beginning when I found him, hurt and broken. He worried about me getting dirty or cold, as if I mattered more to him than himself.
He turns to his side and pulls his mouth from mine, brushing my hair from my face with his hand, steady and gentle.
“I told Liz there was someone else, but I didn’t tell her it was you.”
My heart leaps with my question answered so completely. And so terribly.
Managing to keep the tremble from my voice, I say, “Because you think that’s my secret to tell. I.”
He nods. “I’ll tell her myself or we can tell her together?—”
“No. After tonight, I planned to tell her after finals. I don’t want her to mess up her exams.”
I feel dizzy and nauseous at the idea of telling her. “What if… ”
“If you and I are all wrong?”
He snorts a derisive laugh. “Water under the bridge, princess.”
“No, it’s not.”
I reply without thinking. “I’m—we’re not committed.”
He stares at me, his face going blank as if I shut him down, pulled some kind of plug that killed his emotions, because a brick wall looks softer than he does right now.
“I mean, we don’t know what we have.”
He remains silent.
“I don’t know if we’re right, Bryan. You’ve given me so many mixed messages. I don’t know what to think.”
I feel tears well as the confusion takes over. My parents’ voices in my head tell me he’s all wrong even though they don’t know he exists. I know how they are. All my logical reasoning tells me he’s all wrong. He’s troubled.
But he doesn’t deserve his trouble, and I want to soothe him and take away all his hurt so badly I can’t stand it.
What if I can’t do it?
But what I’m most afraid of is that underneath whatever he feels for me, he has a thing for Liz that will never go away, that I’ll always be wondering about. I’ll always wonder if I’m enough, whether I was the right choice for him, whether he belongs with Liz.
“How do you feel about us?”
He asks the question in a stark, pained voice that vibrates hard, like he’s holding back a volcanic eruption of emotions with the last thread of his willpower.
“Confused, guilty… needy.”
He snorts at the last admission. “You don’t need me. I’m the last person you need messing up your life.”
“Then who’ll save you from…?”
I wave a hand.
“From what, princess?”
“You always call me princess when you want to make a point.”
He waits while I stall. Then I take a deep breath and admit the worst. “Who will save you from despair?”
He smiles. “There’s no saving me.”
“You’re wrong.”
Determination and fear rise up simultaneously, but I’m hopelessly hopeful, so determination wins. For the moment. “You have so much going for you. You’re about to get drafted into the NFL?—”
“I’m about to lose the girl of my dreams and my best friend—two different girls—probably on the same day.”
I snort. “I thought you weren’t into melodrama.”
He shoves a hand through his hair. “You’re right. Whatever my life is about, I’m alive, and I should make the most of it.”
He looks off into nowhere, and I have a feeling he’s thinking about his brother, that Caleb haunts him even more than his father does, more than the poverty and back-breaking work of his farm life.
The notion burns a hole in my soul as I imagine the fortitude he has to have just to walk around every day and to work so hard for a dream he tries equally hard not to believe in.
“This conversation is over,”
he says, sitting up and picking up his books. He stands and starts to walk to the door.
“Where are you going?”
Stupid, desperate question.
“Back to my apartment—or I should say, back to my hovel since I’m in a melodramatic mood.”
He allows a quirk of one side of his mouth, and it’s enough for his dimple to show, enough to make my heart dissolve.
Then he leaves and walks back to his apartment, taking the better part of my heart with him.