Chapter 29 Then
Then
Claire
When I find myself cradling my sister outside a shitty university pub, her eyes at once as manic and as vacant as a shell-shocked soldier’s, what I immediately want more than anything is for Luca to pay for what he’s done to her. I know he’s a dead man walking.
It was sickening watching it unfold, understanding before Nat did.
Or before she wanted to, at least. A couple of her friends were decent, concerned, but she was too wrapped up in her despair to notice the whiff of smugness that floated beneath some of the looks traded across the pub table.
There’s a certain delight to be had in Nat being put in her place.
The failed Oxbridge hopefuls of the world don’t like to be made to feel inferior, and Nat, who by now has learned how to be more well-liked than most of them, can afford to be taken down a peg or two.
It makes me want to smack the smugness off their faces.
They’re lucky Chris’s phone is the only thing I went for.
After freeing Emily from campus security, we retreat to Nat’s student digs.
Popcorn, chocolate, wine, ice cream, pizza.
Emily orders it all to the house, insists we don’t pay.
I think of the coins in my bank account and am grudgingly grateful.
We cuddle up together in Nat’s bed, an afternoon sleepover.
We play the “fuck him, he’s trash” game: endless volleys of insults about Luca traded across our small circle, but Emily and I seem to be the only ones with paddles to play.
So we play the distraction game instead: movies, TV shows, thumbs scrolling social media. Did you see this? And this? And this?
It all passes over Nat. Words wash over her as she stares off and the sky outside darkens to an inky black. Emily and I trade worried looks. Is she going to be okay?
The three of us eventually fall asleep, tightly squeezed in beneath the covers, that question resounding in my head before consciousness fades.
I do feel her get out of bed. Nat, that is.
I assume she’s gone to the toilet. Am too sleep-drunk to think straight, using the moment of lucidity to stagger out of the sweaty trap of her too-full bed and into the adjoining room that her housemate’s offered up as extra sleep space while on holiday.
As a result of my new spacious, peaceful bed, I don’t notice Emily leave at all. It’s only at three when my phone buzzes beneath my pillow that I wake. Clearing the alarm I set, I see Emily’s texts.
[02:03] Woke up and Nat wasn’t here. Didn’t want to disturb you, so headed out to look for her. Think she’s at that party to find him. If she’s not there, might need to call you in as backup.
[02:47] Found her. She’s pretty high, but otherwise fine.
Fuck. I was hoping—wishfully, I know—to slink off to the party alone. I’ve heard Nat wax lyrical plenty about wonder boy’s holey heart and the party felt like a good opportunity to test how much it can handle. Break my sister’s heart and I break yours—fair trade.
It also irks me that Emily wouldn’t think to wake me so we could go together. Or, more likely, intentionally left me lying there. Sometimes, it’s like she’s competing with me. Like she wants to prove that she’s the better sister.
Anger creeping in at the thought of Nat anywhere near Luca, I dress as inconspicuously as I can and walk my way over to the party house through the lamplit streets, still littered with drunk students making their way home.
By the time I spot Nat at the house party, watching from a distance as Emily tries to keep up with her wild dancing, she’s clearly off her face.
It tells me all I need to know. Things haven’t gone well.
Part of me wants to stay with her, make sure she’s okay, even though I can see that Emily is trying to do the same thing. I’m transported back to Marc’s bathroom all those years ago. It’s so easy for these boys to push her over the edge.
There’s something grotesque that squeezes at my chest at this thought.
The truth is, I love her so much and I hate her for what she lets them do to her, for the lesson she refused to learn after Marc.
It’s both that love and that quiet hatred that pushes me out of that basement room and up into the kitchen, where I’ve seen a group of frat boys lingering.
As I’ve hoped, Luca is still there among them.
He spots me, a gentle crackle floating beneath the bass, under the pressure of the can now more tightly constricted in his hand.
“Hey,” he says. “Claire, isn’t it? Nat’s sister?
” His grin is a little too big and his eyes are a little too wide, darting side to side at the friends around him.
I can spot another actor a mile off, can see that Luca’s smile is painting over something a little desperate.
I realize that, like my sister, he needs to be liked.
But Nat’s lacking the thing that makes Luca dangerous, the thing that makes him a little too loud, a little too gregarious, a little too reliant on “good banter”: crippling insecurity.
A couple of Luca’s friends shuffle uneasily, sniffing and rubbing at their noses.
It’s clear that something that Natalie has done has rattled them.
A little pride swells in me at that thought.
She hasn’t just let him get away completely scot-free.
Still, I’ve been hoping he hasn’t seen me in enough of Natalie’s Instagrams to recognize me as her sister, let alone name me.
“Yeah.” My smile is equally fake. “You must be Luca.”
He crosses and uncrosses his arms. “Listen, you must have heard about the uh…the um…”
“The video?” I ask. However I approach this, I can’t be too aggressive. “I know Nat was keen to talk to you about that. How did it go?”
There’s a flash of understanding in his eyes then.
He stops fidgeting. “It wasn’t good,” he says, a demonstration of regret creasing his features.
“I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of what happened, but it’s not easy.
I leave my phone lying around parties like these all the time.
Anyone could have gotten into it. Sucks for someone to betray my trust like that. ”
Were I more like my sister, perhaps I would believe him, but instead, I’m having to hide my clenched fist behind my back.
“Damn, you really can’t trust anyone these days,” I say. “Obviously, poor Nat’s a mess, but has anyone stopped to ask you how you’re doing?”
He blinks, eyes widening. “Wow, you’re— Wow. No. People don’t tend to care about the guy’s feelings. But thank you. I’m a bit shaken up, but I’m okay.”
And like that, he melts. The guarded hiking up of his shoulders softens into a more relaxed stance, and following his lead, his friends adopt his new casualness.
This is good. This is necessary. I’ve no intention of spending more time with Luca one-on-one beyond this, but I need to be able to remain in his periphery for my plan to work.
“All right, boys, shots!” Luca announces.
I hide the unspoken question that threatens to sing through on my face.
Do any of them really need them? Not one of them is anything close to sober, and if I’m right about Luca’s heart condition, I’m surprised he’s willing to drink so much, but his recklessness is of use to me.
I don’t complain when he hands me one of their oversize plastic shot glasses.
The boys quickly re-cluster in smaller groups, shots done.
Some of them leave the kitchen. There’s a guy with a mullet I have my eye on.
I’ve noticed him dipping his finger into a baggie a couple of times already, sucking the crystals off.
His slightly leery, slack-jawed grin and dilated pupils suggest a malleability and hunger that I can work with.
I decide to make him my friend for the night and corner him to talk.
He studied biomedical engineering. He is also on the football team.
There is a whole heap of uninteresting information I glean that I swiftly forget.
In any case, he is accommodating, and I float in and out of groups by his side; allow him to speak at me in corners of rooms; fall in and out of rounds of shots; strategically move whenever I feel there is a kiss incoming.
There’s a hairy moment in which we’re heading to the kitchen for more shots.
I hear the unmistakable timbre of Natalie’s voice on the way, undercut by Emily’s heady laugh.
I make my excuses in this moment and flee to the bathroom.
Nat will inevitably know I was here, but she doesn’t need to see me right now.
At least while I wait, I’m able to solidify my plan.
We’re back in the kitchen a few minutes later, ostensibly chatting, materially waiting. I notice Luca reenter. I almost want to tell him what I’m planning for him, just to see him scared, but I say nothing.
“More shots?” I ask Mullet. He’s absolutely fucked on the cocktail of whatever he’s taken but is obliging.
I gesture to the bottle as he begins to pour.
“Anyone else want one?” A couple of people nearby give enthusiastic yeses, and the first part of my trap is laid.
“Might as well do a few.” More pouring. “Could you do a couple of those MD ones you guys were doing? One for me, one for you.”
He looks at me quizzically for a moment. I’ve refused any drugs up until this point.
“Just a light one for me, thanks. If I do too much, I want to kiss everything in sight.”
“Yeah, of course.”
I watch as he tips the remaining crumbs of crystals from one baggie into one shot glass, and then opens a new baggie and tips almost the entirety of it into another.
“Isn’t that quite a lot?”
“Oh, this stuff is a bit shit. You need quite a lot to feel anything.”
I shrug as hands reach onto the counter for shot glasses, disappearing, reappearing, re-pouring. “Okay. A normal one for courage, first.” A plain tequila goes down my throat. I wince and then look over my shoulder. “Oi, shot king! Luca. Want one?”
He gives me a hazy smile, eyes half-closed. “Always.”
Mullet is already deep in fits of laughter with some nearby friends. I pick up my shot glass and another and head over to Luca. I ham up a burp as I approach.
“You know what, that tequila’s sent me west. Have both of these—I’ve got to go.”
It’s so easy. He just smiles, puffs up his chest, and says, “Sure.”
I give him my spiked one first, quickly pushing the second into his hand with a slightly furry-looking lime wedge to chase away any potential aftertaste.
“Fucking hell,” he says, grimacing.
The words have hardly left his mouth before I’m out the kitchen door. I’ve barely taken two steps when I find myself barreling into a chest. I look up to find glossy copper hair and an accusatory frown.
“What are you doing here?”
Emily. Shit.
“The same thing as you. I need to make sure she’s okay.”
She casts a look over my shoulder into the bright light of the cheaply furnished kitchen and sniffs.
“Your sister’s in bed. I took her back in an Uber—she’s good.
I just…I wanted to come back to have a word with that bastard.
I’ve been looking for him everywhere. I didn’t expect to find him doing shots in the kitchen with you of all people. ”
I send a glance behind me, cursing the time I’m lingering.
“I was palming off my unwanteds on him. And what good would you talking to him do?” I ask.
Emily looks hard at me then. It’s easy to underestimate her, but when it comes to defending her friends, to defending my sister, she’s a force to be reckoned with.
“Since when are you the bloody voice of reason? If your fuse was any shorter…” She shakes her head and sends a glare over my shoulder into the kitchen again.
“You’re right,” I say, using more push than is polite to steer her around the corner and out of the kitchen’s sight line. “You’re right. Which is how I know my sister doesn’t thank people for popping off on her behalf. She’ll be more embarrassed than she already is, and she’ll resent you for it.”
Emily crosses her arms, a slight stagger backward accentuating the gesture.
For a moment, I hope that she’s drunk, that she won’t remember this, but a disappointing assessment tells me she’s just bungling, not battered.
“I guess you’re right.” And before I can protest, her arm has swung itself through mine, and she’s dragging us both out of the party.
We stagger, arms linked, back to Natty’s student house. As we walk the quieter streets, I wonder what will happen to Luca. It’s different than with Marc; I know I want to hurt him, badly, but what I’ve done isn’t an exact science. If I’m lucky, he’ll really suffer.
When Emily and I arrive back at the house, we say good night and head our separate ways.
As I turn from her, make my way to the spare bedroom, I feel the press of her eyes in my back.
Her suspicion follows me all the way inside until I close the door.
Still, I know that whatever happens, she can’t make trouble for me.
Because if I was at the scene of the crime, then she was, too.
And I’ve no qualms about letting her know that if things become complicated for me, they’ll become complicated for both of us.