Chapter 2 #2
“That guy who follows you into the bathroom to convince you that you need his number,” Chessa says with distaste, and we both shudder at the memory.
“You’re better than that guy,” I say, and Chessa nods.
“Maybe I am not,” he says with defiance. “Just look at them. They are two halves of a whole.” He holds his hand out like he’s delivering a passionate soliloquy. “They are matching pieces who found each other in this harsh, difficult world. They are—”
“They are brother and sister,” Carter speaks up, startling me, his tone wry.
“Wait.” Daan sits forward in the booth, shifting his attention to Carter. “Are you serious?”
Carter nods. “Fraternal twins, actually. Dove was in Economic Theory with me last year.”
Of course. I shake my head.
A sharp blast of laughter escapes from Chessa before she claps her palm over her mouth.
When she lowers her hand a moment later, her expression is one of deep solemnity, but her eyes are bright with humor and her mouth is twitching with the effort to stay straight.
“How fortunate they didn’t have to look very far to find each other in this harsh, difficult world,” she says in a strangled voice.
“Haha, yes, very funny,” Daan says, giving her the finger.
Chessa breaks, doubling over with laughter.
I swallow in anticipation of the disappointment from Daan, already watchful to make sure it’s not too much for him.
But no. There’s no swaying in his seat, no color fading from his face. No disappointment. Instead, Daan looks thoughtful.
Okay, ew. I have no siblings, but I used to wish for one, an older brother or sister, to guide me through the still-steaming shitshow that is occasionally my life. Someone who would understand, someone who I would be close with.
But not that kind of close.
I grimace involuntarily, and Carter, across from me, meets my gaze, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes and pulling at his full mouth.
A mouth that I’ve felt pressed against my own.
The moment feels … intimate. Like it’s just the two of us here, in a world of our own, operating in some secret understanding.
Except there is no understanding.
Pain sears through me.
“Carter, did you hear what I said?” Lennie asks, her voice just this side of a husky whine, drawing his attention back to her.
I reach for the almost-empty beer pitcher abruptly. “More beer? We need more beer.” I slide out of the booth, moving quickly toward the bar.
Happy’s is divided in half, with booths and four-tops on one side, and dartboards, a jukebox, and tall tables on the other side. The elevated bar dominates the center, patrons gathering in concentric circles around it.
Clutching the handle of the plastic pitcher tightly in my now-sweaty palm, I weave my way through to the bartop and step up.
“Another pitcher, please,” I say to Dove. Now that I’m looking for it, I see the resemblance between her and her brother. The brightly colored hair—hers is a neon red and his has bright blue streaks—is a surface differentiation that works at distracting from the obvious.
She nods in acknowledgement, grabbing the pitcher and spinning away.
Daan is right; she is graceful in a strangely elegant way. Is that what drew Carter’s attention to her in their shared class last year?
Jesus, Jo, get a grip. It was a class. Is he not supposed to know her name?
I lean forward over the bar. “And a shot of J?ger, please,” I call after Dove.
She holds up a finger in acknowledgement, and I lower myself back down.
“J?ger. Must be serious,” a familiar voice says behind me.
Carter.
I stiffen, gripping the edge of the bar. “What do you want? Why are you here?”
I sense more than see Carter’s shrug as he moves up next to me to rest his elbows on the bar. He’s careful, though, to keep facing forward, like we’re just two people who happened to bump into each other here. “I ran into Lennie in the hallway. She invited me,” he says.
“Bullshit.” I turn toward him. “Last week, you wouldn’t even acknowledge my existence, and now you’re here, hanging out with my friends?” The same ones we’ve been trying to hide this … whatever from for over a year. “What happened to ‘this is a mistake we can’t keep making’?”
A mistake that has generally landed us with our hands and mouths all over each other in whatever enclosed space was nearby: a closet in Lennie’s apartment the first time, before we knew our professional connection, but then also a balcony, a study room on the third floor of P.
Edgars, the tiny overheated bathroom in the union by the bowling lanes, I can’t even remember them all.
Carter’s shoulder is dangerously close to me; he smells like pine and something citrus.
An insane part of my brain is whispering at me to shift nearer to him, to press my chest against him, to make that heat flare in his expression once more.
It makes me feel powerful, alive, in a way that even feeding does not.
He’s brilliant, observant, kind, and extremely restrained.
But I can rile him. I can make him suck in a sharp breath and demand more, even when doing so is against both of our best interests.
It’s addicting and utterly terrifying at the same time.
“I saw your paperwork in Stephens’s inbox,” he says quietly, still not looking at me.
I freeze. Dr. Stephens is the Psychology Department chairperson, my advisor, and Carter’s boss.
“If you change your major now, you’ll be stuck here for at least another year. Maybe two,” Carter says.
He’s wrong—if I play my cards right and go to grad school here, it’ll be four more years.
Which is exactly the plan. Beecher is the only place I’ve ever felt safe, the only place that has ever felt like home.
Not that he would understand that. Not that he can.
At Beecher, I can be normal. Or, as normal as it’s possible for me to ever be.
“I’m not changing my major,” I say. “I’m adding one. Psychology and sociology.” Because God help me, if I can learn to understand people—that is, full-blooded humans—it’ll all be worth it.
“It has nearly the same effect, Jocasta,” Carter says in that dark disapproving tone that sends a blade of heat through me, despite his use of my full name. Or maybe because of it.
“And Beecher won’t be the same without your friends here. You know that. Why are you working so hard to stay?” he asks, leaning forward on the bar. “You’re smart. And the smart move is not sticking around here for more undergrad.”
I clear my throat—it feels like I can never speak clearly around him. “I believe this is considered—what is it, again?—oh yeah, none of your business. I have an advisor, thank you very much.”
Dove returns with my J?germeister and a full pitcher. I slide my credit card out of my pocket and pass it over.
“Listen, I know what I said last time,” Carter says tightly, his eyes fixed on the line of liquor bottles behind the bar. “I screwed up, and I’m sorry.”
I shoot the J?ger, wincing at the bite. “And?” I ask, my eyes watering from the shot and only the shot. I hope.
“What do you mean ‘and’?” he asks, turning toward me with wariness.
“What do you want, Carter?” I say, enunciating each word carefully. I can already feel the pleasant heat from the liqueur spreading through me.
Dove returns with my card and the bill. I stuff the card back into my pocket and scrawl my name and a generous tip that I probably can’t really afford across the bottom of the receipt.
Carter makes a soft, frustrated noise. “I don’t know. Can’t we be … friends? For now? There are no rules against that.”
Technically, since I’m no longer in his class, we’re not doing anything wrong.
But we’re still in the same department. People, including possibly Dr. Stephens, will assume anything going on now was going on before.
And those rumors might well follow Carter elsewhere, tainting his career before it even has a chance to start.
In other words, the same problems that have plagued us from the beginning, from that party—the one where he didn’t know I was an undergrad, the one where I had no clue he was a TA, let alone scheduled to be my TA—are still present and accounted for.
Friends. The word stings like a slap, but I force a laugh. “Exactly how much beer did you drink before I got here?” I ask, grabbing the pitcher and starting to turn away.
“Jocasta—” he begins, and my grip on my temper slips.
“Carter, why do you care?” I demand. “You said it’s too much of a risk, and nothing’s changed.”
“I miss you,” he says with a straightforwardness that stops me in my tracks.
When I glance back at him, he nods, blue eyes meeting mine without hesitation, confirming that I heard him correctly. Longing squeezes my chest.
But then he continues.
“And I’m not the only one with issues,” he says pointedly. “The first time we met, you told me you didn’t ‘do relationships.’”
My cheeks flush hot. “That’s not the same thing.” It’s dangerous to let my guard down, to be that vulnerable. Dangerous for him. Plus, even if he was able to accept me for who I am, that would mean opening him up to a world he doesn’t even know exists.
Carter reaches out and gently takes my free hand. Startled, I allow it. He tugs my sleeve up, exposing my wrist and forearm.
“This one is Ancient Greek.” His finger traces over the black letters tattooed vertically from the base of my thumb down the side of my hand, and I can’t breathe for fear that he’ll stop.
Then he turns my palm face up. His thumb moves horizontally over the vulnerable skin at the inside of my wrist, where a string of cuneiform signs, tiny black images, live. It feels so good, the surety of his touch. Not hesitant. Not afraid. “This one is, I think, Sumerian.”
The pitcher in my other hand starts to wobble, sending foamy beer perilously close to the edge.
How does he know Sumerian? Ancient Greek, okay—we live on a college campus and several of the letters are obviously recognizable as such, if he’s at all familiar with the fraternities and sororities.
But Sumerian? No one knows Sumerian. That was, in fact, the point. That only a few specific people—using that term generously—would be able to read it. My “father” was so pissed. My mother just hated the way the tattoos looked.
Carter must read the question on my face.
“Talin zijn mijn hobby,” he says, releasing my hand.
The only word I get is hobby. The rest sounds like when Daan is speaking to friends and family back in the Netherlands.
But I understand the gist. This, this is why I can’t stay away from Carter.
Who else has a hobby of learning random languages for fun?
Despite the current chatter about six-packs and thigh cuts, which he does have, curiosity and interest in learning more, being more, is always going to be hotter. For me, at least.
“Why do you have tattoos declaring yourself poisonous, Jocasta?” he asks, leaning closer, his serious brow furrowed with concern.
Technically, I have tattoos declaring that I’m toxic—deadly, even—but close enough.
Oh, hell. I sigh. He thinks this is all because of some deep-seated struggle with inadequacy. That’s what all that “You’re so smart, Jocasta” stuff was.
Of course that’s what he would think. What else is he supposed to conclude? Certainly nothing close to the truth.
But as I open my mouth to respond, the loud crash of glass breaking brings everything except the jukebox—Mariah Carey crooning about Christmas already—to a halt.
At the far end of the bar, Dove stands with her arms loosely at her sides, staring off to the opposite side of the room, sparkling bits of glasses and larger hunks of beer mugs scattered on the mat at her feet.
She’s making no move to pick any of it up.
Frowning, I set the pitcher back on the bar and lean forward to check on her. “Hey, are you—”
Goosebumps erupt suddenly on my skin, prickly shivers spreading up my arms, across my chest, and down my back. Like my skin is trying to shed me.
Oh no. I know what this is. It’s been over three years since I felt it last and never, ever, in Beecher, but it’s not a sensation easily forgotten.
Dread makes my stomach pitch southward.
“Jocasta?” Carter asks, but I ignore him, my whole body shuddering in reflex.
Someone else is here. Someone like me, a child of the Old Ones.
And whoever it is, they’re fucking spraying the room with magic.