Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Zaiah
The loud thrum of the away bus chugs to life, spitting out exhaust from the back end in white smoke that clings to the air while it ascends to the sky. I climb the steps to find a seat, the game we just played running through my head.
A loss.
We didn’t play hard enough. Good enough. Like we wanted it enough. Maybe I’m the worst offender. Things have gone to shit lately.
A text comes through, and for a split second, I hope it’s Len, even though we’re barely talking. She might text me if the dorm was on fire. Or if she forgot her key. Or…
I shake my head. It’s from my mom. My family always makes her text first.
Well…
2-5. We sucked.
I put my phone away, but it goes off again. Adam sits next to me, and I lean my head against the window, hoping to get some shut-eye.
“That blew.”
My sentiments exactly.
“You played well, though.”
“You too.”
“Bro, do not placate me with that shit. I gave up a bunch of pucks.”
I shrug, but the truth of it is, I can’t get my head straight about the game because it’s on a different topic.
Len.
First, she wants me to help her date Clark, the douchebag. I help her. Clark, unsurprisingly, turns out to be as douchey as I thought. Then, we have the most amazing evening. She was so free, so uninhibited. She danced like a seductress. She touched herself like a queen. The day after that, a flip switched.
My first thought was that she’d gotten back together with Clark. She hasn’t spoken about him and I haven’t seen them together, so I don’t think they are, but my brain can’t turn away from it. Regardless of what happened, she pushed me away.
Maybe we took it too far too soon?
Adam leans back, and I shut my eyes, hopeful that a nice, quiet ride back to campus awaits me, but that’s immediately thwarted.
“Have you seen Lenore again?”
I swallow. “What do you mean? I see her all the time.”
“I’m just, you know, curious.”
My stomach twists. I side-eye him, and he holds his hands up. “Dude, I’m only checking in. I thought for sure you were going to lock that shit down, but you haven’t said anything about her in over a week.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He’s quiet for a moment…until I glance over. “Sorry. I didn’t realize she turned you down.”
“She didn’t turn me down.” I sit, straightening my legs as far as they can go under the seat in front of me. These buses weren’t meant for guys like us. Too fucking tiny. Add Adam with his blabbermouth, and my space is getting smaller and smaller.
“Okay, man. I thought that might be the reason you’ve been so quiet lately.”
Luckily, that’s the last thing Adam says all trip until we grab our things and file off the bus.
The chill air coats me, my breaths coming out in a fan of white clouds while I walk toward Knightley. The creak of the door sounds when I open it and trudge up the steps, dreaming about my bed. Tomorrow will come too fast at this point.
I turn down the hallway and peer up when a door closes. The figure walking toward me stops me in my tracks. Clark. Coming out of our suite.
So they are together. She’s been hiding him from me because of what we did.
I see how it is.
I drag my bag back up my shoulder and avert my gaze, my hand twitching to take my anger out on him. Skinny little shit. He wouldn’t survive one check into the boards.
He sneers when he passes me. “Have fun with that one tonight.”
That one. That one? “Have a little fucking respect.”
“Oh, you’re pissed at me? That’s rich. You know how long she’s been drooling over me?”
I shake my head, stepping toward him, crowding him against the wall. “Let me make one thing very fucking clear: You’re a piece of shit. You treated her like garbage because you’re a narcissistic pig, and I swear to God, if I see you doing it again, I’ll use your head as a puck. Do you understand?”
“Zaiah…”
I peer to my right, and in the time it takes me to see Lenore standing in the doorway in her turtle pajamas, Clark makes his escape.
Should’ve punched him. Dick.
She pushes her glasses up her nose as I stride toward her, dragging my bag. “What did he say?”
“I don’t know what you see in him,” I grind out, rejection nearly knocking me off my feet. I thought we’d turned a corner, but I was wrong.
She moves out of my way so I can walk in with my gear. “I don’t see anything in him, actually.” Her voice is so low, so tiny. “What I saw before was a figment of my imagination. I had a crush on someone who didn’t deserve it. That happens to me a lot.”
I spin on her. “What was he doing here, then?”
She studies the floor. “Trying to get me to sleep with him.”
I drop my bag, heart pumping.
“He didn’t take it well when I finally told him off.”
I swallow hard. “You did?”
She gives me a soft smile and walks toward the couch, taking a seat and wrapping her arms around her knees. “I also used the term narcissistic pig. To think I was even trying to get his attention.” She blows out a breath. “He said my attempts were so desperate that he assumed I’d be an easy lay.”
I turn and march toward the door until Len’s voice breaks through the anger spinning in my head.
“He’s not worth it. He’s not worth anything. Especially not hockey.”
I stop with my hand on the doorknob. She’s right. If I get into a fight on campus, I’ll be punished. I’ll probably get benched for a couple games, and in my senior year, that’s the last thing I want.
“I still might,” I say, turning back to her.
We both stare at each other for the longest time. With a sigh, she lets her knees go. “Can you not go right to your room?”
My shoulders relax. Finally. “I don’t have to be anywhere but where you want me to be.”
She struggles to smile, but her cheeks flush, giving her a pretty, pink hue. “We should’ve had this conversation before, and I’m sorry I was such a coward. I was embarrassed. I was confused. I—”
I walk toward her. “You don’t have to apologize.”
“Let me get this out. The day you saw me at the café?” She sniffles. “My friend Flora was pointing out how Clark is toxic, and it dawned on me that I let so many people like that into my life, and I don’t know what that says about me.”
Her eyes tear up, and I sit next to her, bringing her to my side. “You’re a nice person.”
She doesn’t allow me to comfort her. Instead, she blurts, “I need to bring up Trish.”
My body stiffens.
“She was a shit friend as much as she was a shit girlfriend. You’ve probably already guessed, but I don’t talk to her anymore. We got into a huge fight the day you guys broke up.”
I swallow the sudden dryness in my throat and scoot away so I can look at her, tilting her chin up to peer into her eyes. “I’m sorry she was that way to you too.”
“Zaiah, I’m the one who told you about her other boyfriend.” A tear runs down her cheek. “I, um, I was a coward and sent you that note. I should’ve done it differently. In person probably, but I wanted you to know above anything else, and I wasn’t strong enough to tell you in person.”
My lids flutter closed as I remember what it felt like to open that note. Trish’s infidelity had devastated me. She’d had me in a chokehold. She was exciting. Alluring. But looking back, I can see the manipulation. That took me weeks, though.
I let out a breath.
“Don’t hate me.”
I run a hand down my face, surprise upending me for a moment. Across from me, however, Len’s nearly shaking, a worried shell of a person. I reach out to grasp her hand. “I wouldn’t have believed it unless you sent the evidence the way you did. Trish was a manipulator, Len, and she would’ve been the same for you, too. You’re too…pure for her. You did me the biggest favor.”
“Yeah?”
“I always wondered who sent it. I have to say, I never thought about you. I figured you hadn’t spoken to her, but I thought you grew apart when she transferred schools.”
“No, it ended pretty badly. She found out I sent the note. You know how you look back on fights and wish you said something differently? I replay our argument in my head all the time, and I come up with the best things to say, but I just let her hurl insults at me until she was done. Then she left. I actually felt bad about it.”
“Well, don’t.”
“She was the only friend I had.”
Every word she says breaks my heart.
“Also, um…I don’t even know if I should bring this up, but…you saw me first.” Her voice cracks, and she looks away. I reach out to turn her face back toward me.
She wipes her eyes. “If you think about the night you first saw Trish, you might remember you saw her through a window—”
“Dancing on a table.”
“You asked to come up.”
I nod.
She smiles a little. “It was me on the table, Zaiah. Trish let me borrow one of her dresses, and when you saw me, I was on cloud nine. Then you asked to come up, and I was buzzing all over. I thought… Ugh , this is so damn embarrassing… I thought maybe I would actually get a college boyfriend.”
“But you didn’t answer the door,” I tell her.
“I was pulling on the dress and fidgeting, so Trish told me I should change because I looked like a middle schooler playing dress-up. By the time I got back to the room, she had you tied around her pinky.”
I clench my jaw so hard it gives me a headache. Manipulated since moment one. Trish knew what she was doing. She never mentioned it was Len on the table, and when people asked how we met, she told them how I was smitten from the beginning, watching her dance. She made it sound so romantic. “I guess I’m a big dick, too.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Oh, I know about Trish’s manipulations, but I wish it’d been you.”
“You…do? But I’m nothing like Trish.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“But, I mean, she was so bubbly and cool.”
“Cool is overrated.”
“Coming from someone who is cool.”
“That’s how I know.”
Len’s quiet for a moment, and I don’t push her. Eventually, she says, “When it was all over, I saw what she was from the very beginning, but I didn’t see it at the time. She was always getting mad when I would get mad. She had this way of wording things so that I would apologize when I was the one who really deserved an ‘I’m sorry.’
“I think she even told me to change out of the dress so you’d see her and not me, and honestly, it was probably for the best. If the two of us were standing right next to each other, who would look at me? Even if I’d kept the dress on, it was only a fa?ade. The next day, you would’ve run screaming.”
“Give me a little credit.”
She shrugs. “I know where I stand.”
My hands turn to fists. No one will talk down to Lenore on my watch. Not even herself. “The only thing you lack is confidence. You’re beautiful, Len. You not only hold up to Trish, you blow her out of the water—inside and out.”
Blinking at me, she parts her lips. I can tell she’s thinking about what I said, but not believing it. Guess I know what my next task is.
“By the way, she didn’t have everyone fooled. My family disliked her from the beginning.”
“They did? They like me.”
“Like is an understatement. They love you, sweetie.”
She sits back, leaning against the armrest and slipping her toes under my thighs. “After what happened between us, I should’ve told you right away. But I had the revelation about Clark and Trish, and I’ve been—” She shrugs.
“None of this is your fault.”
“It must be,” she whispers. “There’s something about me that doesn’t see through bullshit. I can’t trust myself.”
“Well, you made progress today. You told Clark off. That’s a great start. You could contact Trish and tell her off, too.” The way she looks at me tells me that’s the last thing she wants to do, so I pivot. “Or… Okay, don’t laugh. When I was a kid, I had anger issues. My mom would sit me down and tell me to write a letter to get it out. On a side note, I have really good penmanship now.”
Len presses her lips together, amusement dancing in her eyes. “Did you ever give the letters to the person?”
“No, they were for me. It was a way of feeling it and letting it go. You love to write, so write Trish a note. Get everything out. Everything. Even all those one-liners you came up with after the fact. You’ll feel so much better.”
She taps her chin. “I like that idea. I think I will do that.”
“Then, maybe we can play hockey?”
Her cheeks flame. “Um, what now?”
I beam at her. “My parents also put me in hockey because I was aggressive. The doctor thought I had too much energy.”
Instead of making fun of me like I expect, Lenore grows quiet. “Speaking of that…” She runs her hands through her hair. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”