15. Protein Bars
FIFTEEN
Protein Bars
SHANNON
Elouise stared.
“In the library?”
“It was dark,” Shannon said. “You could barely see in front of your face.”
“In the library?”
“No one was there. The power was out, so it was just lightning and it was pretty sexy, actually.”
“In the library ?” Elouise nearly shrieked. She patted her hands on her cheeks to calm herself as Shannon’s bright pink flush deepened to scarlet. She pushed off her desk to spin in her chair, then grabbed the edge and stopped. “Where were you?” she demanded.
Shannon buried her face in her pillow. “Fourth floor, northwest corner, in that little lounge area.”
“By the windows.”
“Yeah, but it was raining buckets and you could only see when there was lightning,” she insisted, fighting back the vision of the flashes in his eyes, the bluish glow of the storm cast over their tangled bodies .
One more time for me.
“How romantic,” Elouise said, her voice unsteady as she wobbled in her chair. “Miss Peacock in the library with Caleb Fields.”
“Well, it wasn’t romantic,” Shannon said, rising from her pillow for a split-second before flopping back to complain at the ceiling. “Fine. It was sexy as hell,” she whispered. “Intimate. Sitting on his lap like that, face-to-face with him inside me, I couldn’t even tell who was moving whom. I think we were moving each other or we just fit so perfectly, and it… well…” Flustered, she sat up again and frowned. “It was a huge mistake, and I’ll save the story for a game of ‘Never Have I Ever’ when I’m a lonely old spinster surrounded by a glorious collection of Fire King jadeite and terrible decisions.”
She’d hurried into her clothes and darted toward the stairwell after Caleb walked away, but heard no thumping sound from his cast on the steps below, no response to his name. She paced in front of the rows of shelves and realized he could be anywhere, hiding out or killing time or limping down another set of stairs until the lights came on. He was gone. She had no idea where, and that was how he wanted it.
Elouise blew out a long breath, then spun in her chair in silence for a minute. “Shan, you and Caleb were getting along working on the papers, and for the first time, you said nice things about him without qualifying them with bad ones. And now you’ve had some mind-blowing sex again. Why is this such a bad thing?”
“Because he’s a… a trash-talking white knight who thinks he has to save me from Hayden,” Shannon said. She turned away to hide her trembling chin. “He thinks he’s such hot sh it, saving everyone from everyone else.” She shifted on her bed and grimaced. “Ow.”
“Ow?”
“Rug burn.”
Shannon explained the fallout as Elouise groaned and lowered her face to her hands.
“You are projecting way too much onto this,” Elouise said. “If you want to be the one who gets Hayden back for Delilah, fine. But Caleb wasn’t talking about that. He was talking about?—”
“Elle, what if he knows?” Shannon grabbed the rail of her bunk and rattled the bed. “What if Caleb says something to him?”
“He doesn’t know anything that could compromise what you’re trying to do for Delilah. Does he?”
Shannon shook her head.
“And so who cares what he and Hayden talk about? You panicked, Shan.”
“Of course I panicked. I can compartmentalize those two in my head, but not in a freaking weight room where they can say or do whatever they want. And then Caleb started with the bragging about how great he is,” Shannon pouted. “Bragging about beating up some kids in high school because it was the right thing to do and said standing up to Hayden talking shit about me was the right thing to do.”
“But I bet if you had the opportunity, you’d break every bone in Hayden’s body and call it ‘the right thing to do.’” Elouise pointed. “The only reason you haven’t smashed his face is because you need a ladder.”
Her fingers twitched as she curled them into tight fists, then released them and felt her entire body weaken. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” she whispered. “I don’t want to fight somebody else’s fight. Maybe Delilah doesn’t even want me to.”
“You never had to do anything, and honey, if it’s too much, I will never judge you for backing off,” Elouise said. “You don’t have to run this vigilante circus. Just like Caleb never had to stand up for anyone else, but he does it when he believes it’s right, even if other people don’t agree. You’re doing the same thing for someone you hardly know, because you know you’re the only one in a position to do it. When are you going to realize how alike you and Caleb really are? God, I’d hate to be on the wrong side of you two working together.”
“Hold on. I am nothing ‘alike’ with anyone who uses his good-guy logic to defend someone who hit his girlfriend,” Shannon said, scowling. “You can’t align those things. I don’t care why they did it, or that it was a long time ago, or anything. You know what Hayden did to Delilah. It all begins with getting away with it once.”
“Hayden has a pattern of dangerous behavior, and we know exactly what he did. We know who enabled him. Judge him for what he’s done, and leave everyone else in the world to their nuance,” Elouise said, almost spitting the last words. “You don’t know what happened with Caleb, and I bet when you do, you’re going to feel like a heartless bitch who should have just asked a few questions a long time ago.”
“What else is there to know? It’s the same principle as Hayden, right? Maybe he enabled something like that. I won’t have anything to do with a guy who stands up for someone who hurts women.”
“Honey, you sure did tonight.”
Shannon opened her mouth to speak, closed it, then opened it again and tried to force words from her throat when Elouise resumed her train of thought.
“You slept with him because you wanted to. Because it felt good, and because you care about him. Now you’re pushing him away so you don’t have to admit it, because you still think you need to despise him ‘on principle,’” Elouise said, with mocking air quotes. “And it has blown my mind every day since you met him that someone like you, who can appreciate subtext and character arcs and allegory, can’t look at your life with the same critical eye you give to words on a page.”
She turned back to her desk and opened her laptop as Shannon watched from her bed in silence. Elouise pushed her hair over her ears and corralled it with a hair tie, then began to type. “I’m still in the vigilante circus, by the way,” she said, eyes trained on the screen. “It’s not your fight, and it’s not mine either. It’s everyone’s. And if he’s half the man he thinks he is, it’s Caleb’s fight, too.”
Shannon drummed her nails on the table while classmates filtered in and the overhead light glared a harsh reminder that she couldn’t hide from what she’d done in the dark. The conference champions football shirt she finally fished from under her desk was freshly laundered and neatly folded in her bag, ready to serve as her white flag. Although three empty seats remained on the other side of the table, Caleb dropped his bag next to the seat at her right and didn’t look at her as he sat down.
“Hey,” she murmured, leaning toward him. “I need to talk to you. I’m really sorry. ”
“It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not fine. I shouldn’t have gone off on you like I did, and I want to apologize.”
“Whatever. I haven’t even thought about it,” Caleb said.
Shannon leaned back in her chair and tried a teasing smile. “Liar.”
“You haven’t seen me since then. How do you know if I’m lying?”
Trent took a seat across from them, eyes darting between their flushed faces.
Shannon noticed Trent but didn’t acknowledge him, and Caleb didn’t look up. “I don’t have any way to call you.”
“Funny how you always walk out without my number and without leaving yours.” Caleb stared at his hands and lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “You know how I feel, and you know what I want, and you latched onto some bullshit and pushed me away when we were figuring things out.”
“I’m so sorry. I want to talk to you after this.”
“We have work to do.” He slapped a copy of his rough draft on the table between them.
“Caleb.”
“Again,” he sighed. “Not how I like to hear you say my name.” He dug in his backpack for a protein bar and placed it next to his paper.
“Don’t eat in here,” Shannon said.
He looked up, smiling while he opened it. “I know a few things I’m not supposed to do in here. Running is one of them. The other, well.”
“I mean it. Those things are messy,” she said. Her lips twitched as a crumb fell from the wrapper.
He shrugged. “I’m hungry. For food this time. ”
“Well, you should have eaten before we got here.” She didn’t turn away from Caleb as Trent glanced back and forth, leaning in to catch their words.
“Right, Mom.” Caleb’s lips curled in a sardonic smile. He took a bite and spoke through a mouthful of peanut butter and chocolate. “I have to keep my weight up. I need to get back to two-thirty by April so I can run it all off this summer.”
Two hundred and twenty-four and a half pounds.
“I feel you,” said DeShaun, the wrestler. “It’s that time of year for me too, man.”
Caleb reached in his bag and retrieved another bar, then tossed it to DeShaun, who nodded his thanks. “I’m aiming for two-fifteen. I’ve got ten-and-a-half to go.”
“In that case…” Caleb checked his bag and pulled out an assortment of flavors. “Peanut butter, chocolate banana, strawberry cheesecake… Want another one?”
“Damn, man. You carry a pantry in there?”
“I just got a new endorsement. I’m supposed to eat these everywhere and show off the wrappers, so everyone knows why I’m the conference defensive rookie of the year. Who’s hungry?”
“An endorsement to eat?” Olive asked.
“Serious athletes pay attention to nutrition. This football team won’t win national championships with people who get lazy about details.” Caleb grinned and slid a cookies-and-cream bar across the table to Olive. “This one really tastes like a cookie.”
“You never told us you were a football player,” Blake said suspiciously.
He slid another bar in her direction. “Lemon zest. Nice and bitter. ”
“The whole conference?” asked a blonde girl who never spoke. Caleb winked and passed her a chocolate chip bar.
“You guys are not supposed to eat in the library,” Shannon said to no one in particular.
“Oh my goodness,” Olive said, her mouth full. She gulped down her bite. “You weren’t kidding. I need a glass of milk with this. It’s healthy, really?”
Before Caleb could speak, the lemon bar came skidding back at him. “I’m not trying to gain any more weight. What a nice problem you guys have,” Blake said, flipping her hair.
Olive rolled her eyes. “You weigh about a hundred pounds,” she said. “You can’t even say thanks for a healthy snack? Hey, muscle men, please tell Blake how pretty she is.”
“I’ll have that lemon zest, my man,” DeShaun said, holding out his hands for another catch. “The attention whore won’t miss it.”
Blake’s cheeks flamed as Caleb tossed a bar over her head. “Excuse me?” she asked.
“My guy and I were talking about nutrition, not about how anyone looks,” DeShaun said. “But as usual, you had to make it all about you.”
“The muscles are always a good look,” Olive whispered.
Caleb winked. “You’ve earned yourself a whole box of cookie bars. Do me a favor and show off the wrappers.”
“You are such a phony.” Shannon jabbed Caleb with a pencil and Holden Caulfield’s favorite insult.
“And you two just need to get a room and get it over with,” DeShaun said, gesturing between Caleb and Shannon. “Every damn week, you look ready to eat each other. Protein bars aside.”
“Sounds like a workout counterproductive to gaining precisely five-and-a-half pounds,” Shannon said. She poked Caleb again. “Do you have your macros calculated to even it all out if we take his advice?”
“Would it shock you to know that a few days ago, it occurred to me to make a little chart for that?” he asked, unzipping his jacket. “Just in case the occasion… arises. Again.”
“This is all out of line,” Trent said, slamming his hands on the table as he rose.
No one responded. Caleb dropped his jacket next to his chair.
His football T-shirt was a relic from a recruiting trip to the university while he was in high school, and far too small. As a uniform for his one-man ambush, it left little to the imagination.
Shannon refused the bait and didn’t take her eyes from his while every other girl at the table—and some of the guys—checked out how his muscles strained the faded logo across the chest and the seams at his shoulders.
“Again? That’s pretty optimistic,” she said, fuming. Even his bare arms were a taunt, daring her to remember.
He smirked. “I like to come to the library prepared for anything. I even restocked my backpack.”
“I guess thinking with different parts of your body is the dorkiest part of the grind.”
“It’s sweet how you remember fun little facts I share with you,” he said, reaching as if to poke her shoulder. He stopped short and dragged his finger lightly down her arm instead. “I guess you were really listening when I told you what I want.”
“Oh, I remember a lot about you and what you want, Caleb.” She spoke louder than intended, and her words landed on the table between them with a boom.
He undid the rubber band and shook out his hair, then scooped it back with a thin elastic headband and left it down.
It’s insidious.
She stared. His devilish, triumphant smile sent her heart tumbling in her chest, and the words in his eyes whispered in her ears as he tucked back loose tendrils.
One more time for me.
Yes.
DeShaun patted his chest proudly. “Called it,” he whispered to Olive.
Shannon’s pulse throbbed in her temples as she pinched the edge of the table, fighting to keep from slamming her laptop shut and leaving. After a few sullen seconds of conversation, where did the crass, winking braggart come from? Everything about him was quiet, even his jokes and innuendo. His beautiful hair. He kept everything close and allowed her in like a gift, starting the very first night with his shyness giving way to desire.
She nearly cracked. Nearly grabbed his shoulders and kissed him in front of everyone, in case the apology he wanted was her lips on his, whispering ‘yes.’ The air between them vibrated with unspoken words and unspent heat. Her hubris might suffocate her if she kept pushing Caleb away when she needed him more than breath. The real him, the one so desperate to be heard that he threw everything private on the table to show her how it felt to be no one special to him anymore.
Her fingers itched for a protein bar just so he might lay his hand over hers .
Shannon didn’t notice Trent left his seat until he appeared behind her, hands on her chair, and leaned forward to whisper in her ear as she opened her mouth to speak.
“Shan. Are you all right?”
She dragged her gaze from Caleb and turned, not realizing Trent was so close she nearly kissed him.
“Tired, I guess,” she said, mustering a smile as she drew back from his face. “I just need to survive until spring break.”
Caleb’s hand, hidden beneath the table, enveloped her knee and began a slow stroke up her leg, fingers lingering between her thighs. On her left side, Trent couldn’t see Shannon’s reaction or the movement of his rival’s hand. Caleb’s eyes darted among their classmates, everywhere but at her.
Shannon gulped back a demand that he listen and let her apologize. Instead she trembled, sewn to her seat as he touched her with a lazy hand that marked her with his fingerprints— mine, mine, mine —childish and petulant, like the smile he made when he scrunched his nose and teased her. Yet he was anything but teasing when he leaned forward on one elbow, serenely surveying the table while, unseen, he pulled her leg close and pressed it to his, spreading her thighs so he could slip his hand between them and walk his fingers higher and higher until?—
He paused, auburn waves brushing his cheeks in a mess of tendrils that once tickled her face as he lay over her. She barely had a breath in her lungs to hold.
Around them, the two students who fought over Dune weeks before gestured angrily at papers and tablets. DeShaun and Olive ganged up on Blake, her lip quivering as she fought back tears. The others hid their gazes in phones and laptops, only peeking at the commotion. Trent remained at Shannon’s left, gripping the back of her chair and ready to yank her away.
Against her better judgment, Shannon cast a quick glance over at Caleb, who looked as petrified as she felt. But where she was frozen, unable to draw air, he fought to control his labored breathing. The shoulder seams of his tight shirt seemed ready to give up. It might not be too hard to rip that well-worn cotton and the falsehood it represented off him entirely.
He pulled his hand away, and the places his touch warmed went cold.
The chill tightened her throat with the same icy fist that choked her as she sat on the library floor at his feet two nights before, trying and failing to stop the flow of stupid excuses and blame that closed the walls around his heart.
A soul-sucking loneliness engulfed her. Trent’s breath warmed her neck as he leaned over her, waiting, but every nerve in her body seized and demanded Caleb touch her again.
“Do you want to go?” Trent asked, oblivious. “This meeting is a wash. I’ll walk with you.”
Shannon grabbed Caleb’s rough draft from the table and shoved a copy of hers in front of him. She spotted the tremor in his hand just before he looked up. The electricity between them was more than the shameless taunt of his loose hair. A stupid protein bar endorsement, one more item on his long list of things he rarely shared, was suddenly a cover for everything else they couldn’t say.
Without thinking, she shot a hand into his backpack and snatched a strawberry cheesecake bar—a movement that caught Trent’s attention. Halfway to standing, she reached down again and grabbed the half-empty bottle of electrolyte water from the side pocket. Caleb didn’t look away as she pocketed both and turned her back. Trent slung an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her close, then slid a hand down to rest on her hip and smiled when he saw Caleb watching.
“You and I could swap papers, and Caleb could work with Olive,” Trent said as they left the library. “You don’t have to work with him.”
Shannon pulled away from his arm around her waist. “It’s fine. We’re halfway through it, anyway. It’s been a long day. I’m sure everyone is ready for spring break.”
“Caleb was out of line.”
“He’s fine. Everyone’s stressed with midterms.”
“What he said?—”
“It wasn’t his fault. I was bitchy, and he was teasing me. DeShaun was the one who made that crack about me and him, and at Blake.”
“That was out of line, too.”
She threw up her hands. “See? We’re all crabby. I would rather not dwell on it.”
He nodded and reached for her hand.
“What are you doing?”
Trent glanced down, back up to her face, and smiled. “Looks like I’m holding your hand.”
She eyed him, brows raised. Missy picked him because he met the definition of nice and normal for the old Shannon, and entered her world as linear and predictable as his scull on the river. If she wanted to hitch a ride back to normal, back to the old Shannon who was not obsessed with vigilante justice or Caleb Fields’ hair, Trent was a one-way ticket.
He tugged her off the sidewalk to a bench. “It’s just nice to feel a little close to you, especially when we’re both stressed out, like you said.”
“What’s stressing you out?” Shannon asked, hoping to turn the conversation away from American literature.
Trent draped his arm over the back of the bench where they sat in the shadow of one of the university founders, posed nobly in bronze with a turquoise patina sneaking in the crevices. “Like you said, midterms. Calculus is kicking my ass. This paper we’ve got is one of my easiest assignments.” He twisted a few locks of her hair in his fingers.
“Why do you keep looking back there?” Shannon craned her neck to see past the leafless saplings to the library doors, then gazed up and felt the statue’s disapproving glare.
“I’m not looking anywhere.” He twisted a lock of her hair and smiled, leaning forward as if to kiss her.
She stiffened. “Do you think you’re going to throw down with DeShaun when he comes out?” she asked, only half-teasing.
“No.”
Shannon stood so fast she yanked her hair out of Trent’s hand, firing a sharp pain across her scalp. “You’re waiting for Caleb. Do you think you’re going to call him out or something? Or just… oh my God.” She watched his eyes. “You want him to see us.”
Trent said nothing.
She sat and scooted out of his reach, her backpack on her lap like a shield. “That is so petty.”
“Is it?” he asked finally. “It’s screamingly obvious that he’s into you, even when he’s being a jerk to show it, like today. Do you really appreciate that ‘boys will be boys’ shit?”
“You can educate him on how to express whatever feeling you imagine he has,” Shannon said archly. “I’m more concerned with why you feel the need to plant a flag to claim your territory, especially when I am not your territory.”
“Yeah, you made that pretty clear last week. I wondered if this was why.”
The imprint of Caleb’s hand warmed her knee again, and the cool breeze rose to a wind and reddened her cheeks just in time to disguise the embarrassed flush as she wrangled a sweatshirt from her bag. “I’m not dating him, obviously,” she said, twisting her hair to pull it through the neck of her hoodie. “In case you haven’t noticed, we don’t exactly get along.”
He plucked a stuck strand of blue from the tangle around her neck and freed it from the sweatshirt. “I’m not trying to plant a flag on you,” he said, looking away. “But I was a little jealous, and… well, look, I could hear some of what you two said. I wondered if some meathead jock had gotten the better of me, and I reacted poorly. I get it. That was wrong of me, and I’m sorry.”
“Hold on,” Shannon said, raising her hands. “A meathead jock, really? We’re name-calling?”
“What else do you call a protein bar-shilling football player who spends all his free time in the weight room?”
“I’d call him a Division I athlete. He plays on the best football team in the country, and he works hard for that. How would it feel if I just reduced you to a guy who rows boats?” She shook her head, disgusted. “Caleb has always been nice to you. Why are you picking at him? ”
“He was a jerk to you today, for starters,” Trent said stiffly. “And it turns out Missy has some choice words about him.”
“Missy would never bring him up just to chat, so I guess you went digging.” She fidgeted with the cap of the electrolyte water she stole from Caleb and opened it, then took a long drink. “I’m not meeting you for dinner tonight. I don’t like where this is going.”
“Shannon, please hear me out. I made no secret of my interest in you, and when you held me off, I handled it like a gentleman. I know how to take things slow, and I know how to play the ‘pick me’ game. When you told me he and Missy dated, of course I asked some questions. I asked her questions about you, too, you know. Is that so creepy?”
“I guess not.”
“I see the way he looks at you every time we meet, and I wanted to know who I was up against.”
Every time?
“I thought… well, I hoped making a simple statement about us would be enough to keep things uncomplicated so we could move slowly like you wanted,” Trent said. “Playing checkers instead of turning it into a dramatic chess match. This is exactly what I didn’t want it to be, but honestly, after that scene in there, he needs to back off.”
“A statement about us?”
Trent was silent.
“And this checkers game is you versus him?” she asked. “Am I the audience, or the referee?”
He blew out a deep breath, shoulders sagging. “That was a poor choice of metaphor. I’m not explaining myself well, and I apologize.”
“You are making assumptions I’m not comfortable with,” she said, her voice chilly as the gusting wind. “With or without Caleb Fields or any metaphor. You can think whatever you want about his feelings for me, but you’ve got some balls trying to boot him out of a line you’re not even in.”
She glared as he reached for her hand again.
“Shannon, I’m sorry. All I meant was?—”
Shaking him off, she stood and threw one more remark over her shoulder. “And that meathead jock was president of the chess club in high school.”