CHAPTER 24
Most people would take off as soon as they handed in the last final. Erin was leaving on Saturday, but I was staying because my favorite middle school student had invited me to his concert Monday night—he’d made first chair, and wanted to show off. We were required to vacate the dorms for winter break by Tuesday, so I would be going home that day, whether I wanted to or not.
Maggie, Erin and I met in the library to study for our last astronomy exam of the semester. Around 2 am, Maggie flopped face-down onto her open textbook with a dramatic sigh. “Uuuuugh… If we don’t take a break from this shit, my brain is going to be a black hole.”
Erin said nothing, and when I looked at her, she was checking her phone, scrolling through a text, and then replying. She hit send and noticed I was looking at her.
“Huh?” Her brown eyes were a little wide. “Um, Chaz was just letting me know the guys are taking turns keeping an eye on Buck. Making sure he doesn’t leave the house.”
“I thought we weren’t talking to Chaz,” Maggie mumbled sleepily—eyes closed, cheek pressed to the page we were reviewing.
Erin’s eyes landed anywhere but mine, and I knew she’d abandoned that plan. I decided to let her fidget a little longer before I let her off the hook. I’d always liked Chaz and could only fault him so much. I wouldn’t want to believe my best friend was a monster, either.
Checking my phone, I reread the texts I’d sent Lucas earlier, and his replies.
Me: Econ final: PWNED
Lucas: All because of me, right?
Me: No, because of that Landon guy.
Lucas: ;)
Me: My brain hurts. I have three more exams.
Lucas: One more for me, friday. Then work. See you saturday.
“Mindi’s last final is tomorrow.” Erin doodled a design around an equation in her notebook.
“I heard her dad is sitting in the hall during all of her finals,” Maggie said.
I’d heard the same rumor. “I can’t blame him, if that’s true.”
We watched Erin, who knew the truth between fact and campus gossip. She nodded. “He is. And she’s not coming back, except to testify. She’s transferring to some small community college back home.” The regret in her eyes was bottomless. “Her mom said she’s still having nightmares every night. I can’t believe I just left her there.”
Maggie sat up. “Hey. We left a lot of people there. It wasn’t our fault, Erin.”
“I know, but—”
“She’s right.” I made Erin look at me. “Put the fault where it goes. On him.”
***
I finally told my parents about Buck. I hadn’t talked to them since before Thanksgiving. Due to something left out of order in the pantry, Mom figured out that I’d been home, and called me. I guess she wanted to make sure a stranger hadn’t broken into the house and un-alphabetized her grains and condiments, so I had to fess up.
“But… you told me you were going to Erin’s?”
Instead of telling her that she’d come to that conclusion by herself—that I’d only mentioned Erin once, that she’d never bothered to verify what I was actually doing over Thanksgiving break—I lied. It was easier for both of us that way.
“Coming home was a last-minute decision. No big deal.”
She started jabbering about the things we needed to do over the break—I was due for a dental appointment, and my truck’s registration would expire in January. “Do you need an appointment with Kevin, or have you found a stylist there?” she asked.
Instead of answering her question, I blurted it all out—Buck’s assault in the parking lot, Lucas saving me, Buck raping another girl, the charges we were pressing, the upcoming criminal case. There was no stopping it, once it started.
At first I thought she hadn’t heard me, and I gripped my phone, thinking I’m not repeating all of that, if she’s too damned busy decorating for her party to listen to me for ten seconds.
And then she choked out, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She knew why, I think. I didn’t need to say it. They hadn’t been the best parents; they hadn’t been the worst, either.
I sighed. “I’m telling you now.”
She was silent for another strained moment, but I heard her moving through the house. They were hosting their annual catered holiday party on Saturday, and I knew how control-freak and anal Mom was about the house being perfect for that. Growing up, I’d learned to make myself scarce during the entire week leading up to that party.
“I’m calling Marty right now to tell him I’m not coming in tomorrow.” Marty was Mom’s boss at her software consulting firm. “I can be there by eleven.” I recognized the sound of her dragging her wheeled suitcase out from the closet under the stairs.
I gaped into the phone for a moment before sputtering to life. “No—no, Mom, I’m fine. I’ll be home in less than a week.”
Her voice shook when she answered, shocking me further. “I’m so sorry, Jacqueline.” She said my name as though she was trying to find some way to touch me through the phone. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.” My God, I thought, she’s crying? My mother wasn’t a crier. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you when you came home. You needed me and I wasn’t here.”
Alone in my room, I sat on my bed, dazed. “It’s okay, Mom. It’s not like you knew.” She’d known about my breakup with Kennedy… but I was ready to let that go, too. “You raised me to be strong, right? I’m good.” I realized as I said it that it was true.
“Can I—can I set up an appointment for you, with my therapist? Or one of her partners, if you’d rather?”
I’d forgotten Mom’s occasional therapy sessions. She’d been diagnosed with an eating disorder when I was really young. I didn’t even know what it was—bulimia, anorexia? We’d never really talked about it.
“Sure. That would be good.”
She sighed, and I thought I heard relief. I’d given her something to do.
***
After we finished several cartons of Chinese takeout and a conversation about how we chose our respective majors, Lucas fished his iPod from his front pocket and handed me the earbuds. “I want you to hear this band I just found. You might like them.” We were sitting on the floor with our backs to my bed. Once I was plugged in, he pushed play, watching me as I listened.
His eyes locked with mine as the music swelled in my ears. I couldn’t hear anything outside of it, couldn’t see anything but his eyes on me. He leaned closer and I inhaled the soothing scent of him. Cupping my face in his hand, he moved his mouth to mine, kissing me at a leisurely pace that somehow matched the rhythm of the song. He tasted like the wintergreen Tic Tacs he’d been sucking on.
Handing me the iPod, he picked me up, deposited me on the bed and lay next to me, drawing me into his arms and kissing me until the first song bled into the next, and the next. When he pulled back to trace a finger over the edge of my ear, I removed an earbud and handed it to him. We lay side-by-side on my narrow dorm bed—the length of which only just accommodated the length of his body comfortably—listening together, immersed. He opened a new playlist, and I knew that the song he chose was something for me—beyond a band he wanted to share, or something for us to discuss musically.
My heart reached for him as we listened, staring at each other, and I felt the threads of connection between us—fragile filaments, so easily snapped. Like the poem etched into his side, we were each curving to fit inside the other, and this melting and reshaping could be deeper, more resilient. I wondered if he felt it, and when I listened to the lyrics of this song that he chose, I thought maybe he did. Now don't laugh ’cause I just might be… the soft curve in your hardline.
The hallway outside my door was mostly silent, finally, after a day of people packing up and moving out that had begun early. We talked—recent history only—and Lucas relayed the story of how Francis came to be his roommate. “He showed up at the door one night, demanding to be let in. Napped on the sofa for an hour, then demanded to be let out. It turned into a nightly ritual, with him staying longer and longer, until at some point I realized he’d moved in. He’s basically the most brazen squatter ever.”
I laughed and he kissed me, laughing, too. Still smiling, he kissed me again, hands wandering over my waist and hip. As we started to make out, I panted out the fact that Erin wasn’t leaving campus until tomorrow—and therefore could walk in any moment.
“I thought you said she was leaving today.”
I nodded. “She was. But her ex-boyfriend is charting a relentless campaign to get her back, and he wanted to see her tonight.”
His hand wandered under my shirt, exploring. “So what happened with them? Why did they break up?”
My lips parted when his hand cupped one breast, molding it to his palm as though it was meant to fit there.
“Over me.”
His eyes widened slightly and I smiled.
“No—not like that. Chaz was… Buck’s best friend.” I hated how my body clenched when I thought of Buck, how my teeth clenched when I said his name. Without even being present, he triggered responses I couldn’t quell, and that infuriated me.
“He’s gone now, right?” he asked. “He’s left campus?” Transferring his arm to my back, Lucas pressed me closer, his hand at the back of my neck.
Closing my eyes, I burrowed my head beneath his chin, nodding.
“I doubt he’ll be allowed to come back next semester, even before the trial,” he said.
I breathed him in, closing my mouth tight and inhaling the scent of him through my nose. I felt sheltered by him. Safe. “I’m always looking over my shoulder. He’s like one of those jack-in-the-box clowns… I never told you about the stairwell, did I?”
I wasn’t the only one incapable of suppressing physical reactions. His body stiffened, and his grip on me was suddenly less gentle, more charged. “No.”
Mumbling the story into his chest, trying to stick to facts and nothing else so I could temper my own response, I ended with, “He made it look like we’d done it in the stairwell. And from the looks on everyone’s faces in the hall… from the stories that circulated after… they believed him.” I forced the tears back. I didn’t want to cry over Buck anymore. “But at least he didn’t get into my room.”
Quiet for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to comment, he finally pushed me onto my back, wedging one knee between mine and kissing me roughly. His hair tickled the side of my face, and I wrenched my hands—trapped between us—free, plunging them into his hair as though I could pull him closer.
The way he kissed me felt like a brand. Like he was tattooing himself under my skin.
He knew all of my secrets, and I knew his.
But that seeming reciprocity was a lie—because he hadn’t been the one to reveal his own. I’d excavated them, and worse, he was unaware of it.
My guilt mushroomed between us, along with my longing for him to share that part of himself. To trust me with it. I was going home in three days. I couldn’t bring this up with miles and hours between us, or keep it to myself for weeks longer.
When we slowed again, wrapped up in each other and allowing our libidos and heart rates time to decelerate, I saw an opening.
“So you sort of live with the Hellers, and they’re family friends?”
He watched me and nodded.
“How did your parents meet them?”
Turning onto his back, his teeth slid over the ring in his lip and he sucked it into his mouth. I recognized this as his stress-disclosing equivalent of Kennedy’s neck-rubbing.
“They went to college together.”
The earbuds had been dislodged sometime during the last half hour. He turned the iPod off and wound the wires around it tightly.
“So you’ve known them all of your life.”
He pushed the iPod into his front pocket. “Yeah.”
Images of what I’d read, and what Dr. Heller had revealed, flashed in front of my eyes. Lucas needed comforting—I’d never known anyone who needed it more—but I couldn’t console him over something he hadn’t shared.
“What was your mother like?”
He stared up at the ceiling, and then closed his eyes, unmoving. “Jacqueline—”
The scrape of a key in the door startled both of us. The room was unlit, except for a low-watt desk lamp. When the door opened, a block of light, filled with Erin’s silhouette, fell across the floor in the center of the room.
“J, are you already asleep?” She whispered, her eyes still adjusting from the bright hallway, or she’d have seen that I wasn’t alone on the bed.
“Um, no…”
Lucas sat up and swung his feet to the floor, and I followed. Timing is everything, I thought.
After tossing her purse on her bed and kicking off her shoes, Erin turned back toward us. “Oh! Hey… er. I think I might have some laundry I need to do…” She shrugged out of her coat and grabbed her nearly-empty laundry basket.
“I was just leaving.” Lucas bent to pull on his black boots and lace them up.
Mouthing, Oh my God I’m so sorry! over his head, Erin was the picture of contrition.
I shrugged and mouthed back, It’s okay.
Following Lucas into the hall, I gripped my opposite arms, cold after the warmth of lying next to him. “Tomorrow?”
He zipped his leather jacket before turning to me, his lips set firm. His eyes slid from mine and I felt the wall between us then, too late. Our gazes connecting, he sighed. “It’s officially winter break. We should probably use it to take a break from each other as well.”
I tried to form an intelligible protest, but wasn’t sure what to say. I’d just pushed him to this, after all. “Why?” The word rasped from me.
“You’re leaving town. I will be, too, for at least a week. You need to pack up, and I’ll be helping Charles get final grades posted over the next day or so.” His justification was so logical; there was no concealed thread of emotion I could wrench free. “Let me know when you’re back in town.” He bent to kiss me, quickly. “Bye, Jacqueline.”