He didn’t get into her room. But he put his hands on her. And he scared her. Again.
I felt the protective rage and excruciating powerlessness building and didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t want to hurt Jacqueline, or frighten her, but I didn’t know what to do with the anger bubbling up inside, threatening to spill over.
I pushed her on to her back and kissed her, pressing a knee between her legs. I felt her struggle and my brain screamed WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING. I tried to pull back – but her hands, freed from between us, stabbed into my hair and held on tight, and she opened her mouth, pulling me inside and kissing me back just as hard.
I shuddered, loving her, loving her so much I could hardly breathe. Wondering if that was how it was supposed to feel to love someone or if I was just fucked all to hell and incapable of loving correctly, because all I felt was this insane, unfillable need, this empty black hole inside my soul. I was breaking apart in her hands, crumbling to nothing.
I had to stop. This had to stop. I’d given her what she wanted, what she needed – and I was in pieces at her feet. How could she not see? I couldn’t play this game any more. I had to save what little of me remained.
I wanted to strip her and possess her one last time. Spread her legs and adore her. Make her cry my name and shudder beneath me. I wanted to pretend, one more night, that I could belong to her. That she could be mine. I lay over her, kissing her, and knew it wouldn’t happen. Her roommate would return any minute, and it was just as well. There was no filling the space I wanted her to fill.
We slowed, lying side by side, and I began to compose my exit lines.
Then she asked about the Hellers, and my parents, and I turned on to my back and answered her questions.
And then – ‘What was your mother like?’
‘Jacqueline –’ I said, as Erin’s key hit the lock.
I got up as she entered, and Jacqueline followed. Erin tried to make like she had laundry to do, but I said, ‘I was just leaving,’ lacing my black work boots and wishing I’d worn my old Noconas so I could shove my feet in and go.
‘Tomorrow?’ Jacqueline said at the door, arms hugging herself.
I zipped my jacket and said, ‘It’s officially winter break. We should probably use it to take a break from each other as well.’
She recoiled, stunned. She asked me why, and I became all logic, no emotion – she was leaving town and I would be, too, for at least a few days Christmas week. She still had to pack, and Charles needed help getting grades posted – which was bullshit, but she had no way to verify that and I knew it.
I told her to let me know when she was back in town, and I bent to kiss her – one quick, barren kiss. Nothing like she deserved. Nothing of what I felt. I said goodbye and walked away.
24
Landon
I knew I wasn’t the only student in the school without a computer, but it felt that way. I usually logged in at the library, or during my programming lab, or at Hendrickson’s. I didn’t have lab or work hours today, though, so I was using the prehistoric computer at Wynn’s Garage.
‘Buy a cheap laptop already,’ Boyce urged. ‘You work all the fucking time so I know you’ve got the cash, and I sure as hell know you aren’t smokin’ it or shootin’ it any more.’
After pulling up the site where I hoped my SAT scores would finally materialize, I waited for the computer to wheeze its way to the login page where I tapped my password. Boyce watched for his father through the plate glass window, grimy from fingerprints, Scotch tape bits, blotches of who-knows-what and decades of no one thinking to buy glass cleaner.
‘Saving for tuition.’ I gave the excuse I used every time I refused to spend money on something. ‘And I never shot up.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ He squeezed my bicep. ‘Your big, hard, virtuous arms are reserved for tattoo needles only.’
I shrugged him off. ‘Shut up, man …’
Almost unattainable scores on the SAT were my only hope of scraping my sorry ass into college past the pathetic GPA I could only raise so much. Not even a straight 4.0 this year would be enough. I’d made use of every free online pretest and every study guide in the library for the past eight or nine months. If my scores on this goddamned entrance exam weren’t ridiculously high, I was screwed, and there would be no string Heller could pull to change that fact.
I hit enter, the screen flashed several times, and then there they were: the numbers that determined my future. I sat back in the chair, staring, my heart rate hurtling higher.
I’d done it.
‘Ninety-eighth percentile?’ Boyce’s brows arched and he hooted. ‘Does that mean what I think it means? Shit, man. I knew you were a brain, but holy fuck.’ He grabbed my shoulders and shook them, laughing. Boyce was the only person – Heller aside – who knew how badly I wanted this escape. How much I needed it. ‘Dude, you did it.’
I nodded, still stunned.
‘Oh, man.’ He shoved me. ‘This sucks. I’m going to be stuck in this crap town while you run off and fuck tons of college girls.’
I shook my head and smiled. Leave it to Boyce to zero in on the only part of college that might have appealed to him.
Belatedly, we heard a truck door slam. ‘Shit,’ we said in unison.
The bell over the door jangled right after I cleared the history, shut the computer down, and bolted from the chair, but Boyce’s dad wasn’t a complete idiot.
‘You jackasses looking at porn again on my computer?’ he roared, not even waiting for the door to shut behind him. Thinning hair stood straight up on his head, as though he’d received an electric shock.
Technically, we’d only watched porn on his computer once, though I was pretty sure Boyce still did it whenever he could. We’d come to an unspoken agreement that watching it together was too weird.
‘We were looking up college entrance exam scores,’ Boyce said, tracking his father’s movements. I didn’t even know he could string those words together.
‘Lyin’ sack of shit,’ Mr Wynn growled, lunging. We slid out of his way, Boyce ducking the meaty fist that flew at his head, halfheartedly, the way you’d wave a hand at a fly to shoo it away. His dad cursed us all the way out the door.
Boyce and I had bonded over defective fathers and absent mothers, but that’s as far as the parallels went. His father was an abusive fuck, where mine was silent and detached. His mother left his father – and her two sons – when he was almost too young to remember her. He’d never seemed to hold her desertion against her. I would’ve ditched his ass, too, if I was her, was all he’d ever said about it.