Chapter Sixteen #2
I whip around. An older woman strides toward us, dressed impeccably in a long linen shirt, the front tucked into beige barrel-leg pants.
Her hair, a mass of wild brown curls shot through with gray, is clipped behind her head but falling artfully around her lightly tanned face, which is bare of makeup.
I glance at Jamie, alarmed, and find his cheeks have gone red. He clears his throat, motioning to me. “I was just showing the lab to my… uh…” He trails off, looking flustered, and clears his throat again. “This is Blair. Blair, this is Dr. Slattery. She runs the ESI lab.”
My blood pressure evens out. Dr. Slattery, not me. Of course not me! Why would I even think that? I know better than to imagine there’s anything between Jamie and me but the flimsy string of our agreement.
“Nice to meet you, Blair,” Professor Slattery says, reaching to shake my hand as she draws closer. “Are you another mush-for-brains computer nerd like this one?”
I laugh. “Um, sort of. But I don’t spend my off days gazing adoringly at other people’s labs, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I’m not ‘gazing adoringly,’ ” Jamie mutters, still flushed.
“Liar,” Dr. Slattery says with a hint of affection that I can’t imagine sharing with a professor.
Teachers have always liked me—up until now, with Professor Douse—but not in a friendly way.
They like that I’m reliable, but I don’t think they’ve ever liked me as a person.
“So when should I expect to see you in a classroom instead of skulking around my halls, getting your dirty fingerprints on the windows?”
Jamie tucks his hands into his pockets. “I’ll hear back in September.”
“So I should expect you in January?” Dr. Slattery asks, allowing no wiggle room.
January. It sounds far away, but it’s only half a year. Two semesters, and we’re already well into one of them.
Jamie scratches his cheek. “Well, don’t engrave my name on my seat or anything.”
“Shit, I scheduled that already. Think it’s too late to get my deposit back?”
I try not to look shocked at an adult—a professor, a PhD—swearing in front of me.
Jamie rubs the back of his neck, glancing away with a smile.
“Sorry,” Dr. Slattery says, “am I embarrassing you in front of your g—”
“Friend,” Jamie says loudly, speaking over the rest of Dr. Slattery’s “—irlfriend” as it leaves her mouth.
But even “friend” feels wildly unfit for what we are.
(I try not to think about earlier, his arms around me, his mouth close enough to brush my neck.
This is not something I can allow myself to dwell on.)
“Right, of course,” Dr. Slattery says, shooting me a wink like she knows exactly what I’m not thinking.
Jamie runs a hand down his face. “Don’t you have tests to grade or something?”
“It must be so hard to be adored,” I say lightly, patting him on the shoulder. “We all feel really bad for you.”
“Let’s not go that far,” Dr. Slattery says with a snort.
“Adored.” She shakes her head, turning to go.
“You two behave. Don’t get another parking ticket—I’m not calling in any more favors for you.
And hey, keep your hands off the windows.
The cleaners are starting to hate me. Think all my students are little grubby-handed gremlins. ”
“So you’re clearly her favorite person in the world,” I say as Dr. Slattery retreats.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Modest of you, but wrong.”
He shrugs. “I think she just feels bad for me. I used to come here and… yeah, I guess gaze adoringly at their labs. Wishing I had better options. I was here one weekend when she was working in the lab alone, and she brought me in. Showed me everything. And then she told me about some merit-based grants and scholarships. A big one that pays out to a team that builds the best app.” He shoots me a sideways look. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
“Sure, sounds familiar.”
“I think Dr. Slattery is the first person who’s ever seen me want something and said, ‘Yeah, you can have it, and here’s how.’ Everyone else is always telling me to settle.” He turns away from me, both hands tucked in his pockets now as he starts back the way we came.
I feel a sharp pain in my heart as I realize something. “Ah.” I tap my ribs, the same spot where he has his tattoo. “That’s why.”
“For most of my life, wanting things has only gotten me in trouble,” he says as he presses back into the doors, pushing out into the sunshine. The contrast from the cold building to the blistering hot sun makes me shiver.
“But you want this.”
“I want a lot of things. Sometimes I feel like all I do is want.”
There’s something raw and ragged in his voice that I feel all the way to my toes.
“You don’t seem like it,” I say as he veers down a side path, making his way to a group of tables under some shady trees. He perches on a tabletop, his feet on the bench.
“You mean I don’t reek of desperation?” he asks with a self-deprecating smile.
I sit on the bench and tip my head back. “No, Jamie, as always you remain a complete mystery to everyone around you.”
He laughs but trails off when he sees my face. “You’re serious.”
“Oh, come on. You never let anyone know anything about you. I used to get hounded, because everyone assumed I’d know things because of Sawyer.”
“Like what?”
I laugh. “Exactly! I didn’t know anything!”
“No—what do you mean, you didn’t know anything?”
I tick them off on my fingers. “Every time you and Lyric got into it. When Juana dumped you at prom.”
Jamie frowns, looking away as he rubs the back of his neck. “Okay, but you know why Juana dumped me. She got back together with her older boyfriend. I told you that.”
“Only because I got a ride home with you. That’s the only reason I know anything about you—because I was there when it happened. You never would’ve told me otherwise.”
“Yes, I would’ve.”
“You would not! You never told me anything. Jamie, I didn’t even know you could do card tricks!”
He tosses his head back. “That’s nothing.”
“Or that you’re a Star Wars fan.”
He flushes. “That’s—those things aren’t important.”
“They’re you. Those are things about your life, like anything else. You keep everything about yourself all locked up. You’re a vault!”
“You’re one to talk.”
I freeze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He turns, pinning me with his gaze. “Why’d you send me away yesterday?”
I stare at him.
“I’m not the mystery, Blair,” he says when I don’t answer. “You asked what happened with Juana, and I told you. If you’d asked what happened with Lyric, I would’ve told you. You could’ve asked me anything—”
“Why did you bring me here?”
Jamie stops short, jaw working.
“Why did you share this with me?” I motion to the building behind us.
He rubs the back of his neck. “I guess to show you what it’s like to really want something.”
“You think I don’t want things?” The words leave me in a ragged whisper.
“I think you think you want things. I mean, look at the APM. You hate it there. Why are you torturing yourself?”
I bark out a laugh and jump to my feet, nervous energy coursing through me. “Have you forgotten everything you know about my parents?”
He eyes me, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped between them.
“I understand expectations, Blair. You aren’t the only one with parents who expect things from you.
I’m not only in ROTC for the money—my dad wants things from me too.
But if you let them dictate every decision you make, you’re the one who’ll end up miserable.
Better to figure that out now, don’t you think? ”
“I can’t just change the plan on them. Besides, what else would I do?”
“You could go undecided. You don’t have to declare a major yet.”
“And what, drop out of the APM? Give up all that time and money?”
“How much time and money do you think will go into the next four years? Do you want to be a junior when you finally realize you’re miserable and have to start over?”
“Stop.”
“Blair, I’m trying to help—”
I hold up both hands, a shaky laugh rattling out of me. “Careful, Jamie. I might start to think you give a shit about me.”
His expression flattens, eyes shuttering. “Why do you keep saying stuff like that? When have I ever acted like I don’t care about you?”
“Oh, you mean the entire time we’ve known each other?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, for starters, you treated me like a badly placed ottoman you kept stubbing your toe on—yes, Jamie, that’s exactly how you treated me; you always have! Since the first moment we met!”
“That’s complete bullshit,” he says, getting to his feet and starting toward the parking lot.
“I think I’d know—”
“You don’t know anything,” he says hotly, turning on me again.
“If I treated you like furniture, it was only because your parents treated me like some stray dog who’d followed you home one day.
I didn’t think I was even allowed to look at you, Blair.
The only reason I put myself through it was because I would’ve picked begging for your table scraps a thousand times over spending a single second at home with my dad.
But don’t worry, they never let me forget my place. Not once.”
I stare, dumbfounded, my heart picking up speed again. “I didn’t—”
Jamie cuts me a quick look before half turning away, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
Like he wishes he could gather up everything he’s said and shove it back down, but there’s no rewind on life.
“I didn’t,” he says hoarsely. “I never acted like I didn’t care about you.
I know that, because I did care about you.
A lot. So much, it scared the hell out of me that Sawyer would notice. ”
His words hang in the air like a quivering guillotine, ready to sever something vital. We are heading into a territory of truth I don’t think we’ve ever experienced together—or ever expected to.
“Obviously I still do,” he continues, “or I wouldn’t be standing here right now. As always, scared like hell that Sawyer will find out, and I’ll end up losing the one person who’s never made me feel like I need to apologize for being in the room, or like I don’t matter, or like I’m—like I’m trash.”
“Jamie, I do not think you’re trash.”
“I know you don’t,” he says quietly, his voice still hard. He won’t look at me, his eyes downcast. “You just cared about your parents’ approval more than you ever cared about me.”
I stare at him, scrabbling for any traces of my own righteous anger, but all I can find is guilt and shame from being so thoroughly read by someone I never thought had been paying attention in the first place.
“I don’t know why I keep trying with you,” he says. “I try, and I try, and I try, and you—it’s your world. It always has been. I’ve just been hanging off the side, hoping not to fall, but pulling my own fingers off one by one anyway.”
“What—what does that even mean?”
But he doesn’t answer, rounding the front of the Jeep and climbing in.
I follow, silently buckling into the passenger side. This time, when his screamo playlist starts up at top volume, he’s the one to reach forward and switch it off, plunging us into tense silence for the entire ride back to the beach.