Put Me Back Together By Lola Rooney
1
The day I met him was the coldest of the year, and I wanted an ice cream cone. That’s why I was out on a Thursday night wearing sweatpants and my ugly glasses—the ones with my old prescription, which I only yanked out when I accidentally sat on the cute ones with my new prescription. It had been a long day. I was also wearing a pair of Uggs, which had survived three winters in Vancouver in pristine condition, but now, after just three months of winter in Kingston, they were covered in so many stains from the slush and salt on the roads that they looked like they’d been flushed down the toilet. The wind bit at my ears and cheeks as I trudged down the sidewalk. I pulled up the fur-lined hood of my jacket just as the phone in my pocket buzzed ominously. Okay, not really ominously, because ominous buzzing isn’t a thing. But it was still pretty weird. Nobody ever texted me, except…
Em: Omg, this party is cray-cray. Like, there are no words.
Me: Give me the highlights.
Em: Guy just flashed his junk at me. Girl just walked by wearing bottle caps over her nips.
Me: So it’s a naked party? Tell me you still have your clothes on.
Em: Most of them.
Me: !!
Em: RELAX! I took my shoes off. But if you’re so worried, come and join me!
Me: Not that worried.
Em: :( Don’t stay home wearing your ugly glasses all night!
Me: Don’t pull your pants down for anyone!
Em: No promises. ;)
A part of me hated that my sister, Emily, was out at a party getting drunk and eyeing genitalia while I was on my way to Dairy Queen, but not for the reason you might think. I had no interest in going to some obnoxious party where I wouldn’t know anyone—in fact, that was a perfect example of something I would avoid at all costs. What I didn’t like was thinking of her there on her own, without me to look after her. I had to remind myself that Emily was never on her own. She’d probably rolled into the place with an entourage. I was the one who found myself alone when Em went out on a Friday night. I was the one who didn’t have any friends.
Not that it bothered me. I liked it better that way.
As I reached the corner I looked longingly down Division Street. Division was the fastest way to get to Dairy Queen, the alternative being a twenty-minute detour down University Avenue. If I turned now, I could be back home in twenty minutes, happily riding my sugar high as I defrosted my toes on the radiator. But Division was also home to “party central,” a trio of houses rented out to a horde of the most horrifying species of university student: the boozy jock. After a memorable interlude on this block during my first week in Kingston—I stepped in a pile of vomit on the sidewalk, had the drunken vomiter himself ask me if I wanted to take a ride with him (the real meaning of “ride” only made clear to me later when my sister broke it down for me), and then watched him vomit again, this time on my shoes—I’d made a firm rule never to go down the block again, especially when there was a party going on, most especially a last-day-of-winter-break party. Already I could feel the thump of the bass in my chest, even from halfway down the street.
Biting my lip, I stared up at the interminable red light, willing it to change. Just being this close to partyland was making me break out in a cold sweat. The idea that this might be the party Emily was at didn’t make me feel any better. I felt a hot tightening around my ribs as I imagined her running out to find me and dragging me inside, the suffocating crush of bodies, the seizure-inducing music, the roomful of eyes following me, watching me, and absolutely nowhere to hide…
Giving up on the light, I crossed the street at a gallop and narrowly missed getting hit by a minivan full of old men who shook their fists at me.
Like I said, avoid at all costs.
I tried to focus on the ice cream cone I planned on getting—one scoop…no, two scoops…no, at this point it was looking like a sundae, with brownies, and nuts, and extra hot fudge—to keep my mind off my near-death experience and freezing toes. Stupid Uggs. My mother had told me they weren’t adequate footwear—they were slippers. I hated when she was right. Then I heard voices in the empty lot coming up on my right, and all thoughts of ice cream vanished.
It was a corner lot, snow-covered and dotted with doggy pee stains. Three big guys were hunched over the bushes by the fence dividing the lot from the sidewalk I was on. They were refugees from the party, I had to assume, judging by their lack of coats, overall drunken demeanor, and the fact that they were laughing at a clump of bushes. Two of them had beer bottles in their hands, which I was sure was totally legal. There was another guy over at the far end of the lot, but I didn’t get a really good look at him.
“Here, kitty, kitty!” said Drunk Idiot Number One.
“Pour some beer on its head,” said Drunk Idiot Number Two.
“Ow! It scratched me!” That was Drunk Idiot Number One again.
“Oh my God, you’re such a baby,” said Drunk Idiot Number Three. “Want me to kiss it better?”
I stared through the chain-link fence as One and Three scuffled with each other. Then Three slipped on the snow and fell.
“You’re such an a*shole. I think I broke my ass.”
“I’ll show you a broken ass!” said Two, launching himself on top of him.
Interestingly, I wasn’t the least bit nervous about being spotted by these three. It helped that they were morons and weren’t paying me any attention. I would have just walked on, but something held me back.
“I got it!” said One.
He held a small orange cat up by its scruff as his buddies scrambled to their feet. They all looked tickled. The cat looked pissed as hell. When Three leaned in to look at him, he took a swipe at his nose and missed by millimeters.
“He’s a mean little guy,” said Three. “Quick, get the bottle!”
I looked at the three boys, the howling cat, and the bottle, and that was when I surprised myself.
I stepped into the lot.
“What’re you doing to that cat?” I demanded.
They all spun around, Three almost losing his balance again. Two dropped his bottle. It was possible I’d yelled a little.
“We’re gonna get him drunk!” One announced gleefully, just as the cat wiggled out of his grasp and hightailed it back into the bushes. The other two swore and crouched down to find him again.
“Like hell you are!” I said.
Shoving my way past One, I stepped right over Two and placed my foot into the closest bush, the one that was too small for the cat to hide in. As soon as I smashed the branches down, the cat shot out between Three’s legs, making him fall over for real this time. The rest of us chased after the cat, but I grabbed him first, mainly because they were sloppily drunk and couldn’t run in a straight line to save their lives. I stuck him inside my jacket, zipping it closed over his fur, and folded my arms to hold him in there. I could feel him shivering against me, his heart beating rat-a-tat-tat.
“Aww, come on,” One whined. “Give him back!”
“There’s no way in hell I’m giving him back to you,” I said. “He’s frozen and terrified. He’s too small to be outside in this weather.”
“We weren’t going to hurt him,” Two said, stepping forward, his massive chest exactly level with my eyes. He was standing a little too close for comfort, and I took a step back.
He said, “Just let me see his little head. I want to pet him.”
I didn’t like the dark look in his eye, or the way he was towering over me.
“Not on your life,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed One coming up on my right side. As soon as Three picked himself up out of the snow, they’d have me cornered with my back to the fence. My heartbeat began to quicken as I took them all in. Suddenly they didn’t seem quite so harmless or quite so drunk. Moments like this, guys like this, always reminded me of Brandon. Suddenly it was six years ago and I was thirteen again, peering into a boy’s face, wondering what kind of violence might explode out of him. As much as I’d tried to change my life, to fix it, to control it, I was still that same girl, perpetually taken by surprise.
Not that I was going to let anything like that happen to me again.
“Listen, you little f*ckers—” I began, but I was quickly interrupted by a smooth voice coming out of the darkness to my left.
“Hey, fellas,” the voice said. “What’s the trouble?”
As he stepped into the light of the streetlamp, I realized it was the guy who’d been standing over at the other end of the lot by himself. I’d forgotten all about him. His tone was calm and friendly, as if trouble wasn’t something he expected to find, or, if he did, it wouldn’t be anything he couldn’t handle. I frowned a little at him. People who felt that comfortable in their own skin made me nervous, though that didn’t stop me from taking a small step in his direction. Mr. Calm and Collected was immensely preferable to the three menacing drunkards.
The reaction of Drunk Idiots One, Two, and Three was fascinating. They each tried to arrange themselves into a casual pose, while at the same time standing up straighter. One even put his hands behind his back, like his military commander had just walked in. They looked like Huey, Dewey, and Louie when Uncle Donald had just caught them red-handed. Turning back to Mr. Calm and Collected, I felt a flash of recognition. Wasn’t he important around campus, something to do with sports? It all started to make sense now. He was like their God.
“Hey, man,” said Two. “What’s up? Haven’t seen you around much lately.”
“Yeah, where you been?” said Three. “You missed George’s party.”
“Did I?” he said, his eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance over their heads. I noticed that, though he was not as alarmingly broad as One, he was taller than him. “I was just waiting for my girl here.”
He turned to me and flashed his dimples, which were so pronounced they were almost distracting. I stared at them, still frowning.
Tipping his head toward me, he said in a quiet voice, “You’re late, you know.”
Suddenly all four of them were looking at me, waiting for a reply. “Well, there was ice cream,” I blurted, flustered, “and then there was the cat, and…”
He put his arm around my shoulders and I had to resist the urge to take a big step away from him, reminding myself that he was the nice one. He was helping me out. Warmth flowed through his coat and into my side. I pressed my lips together to stifle a nervous giggle, which came out as a squawky gurgle instead. Basically, I sounded like a drowning seagull. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone besides Emily had been this close to me.
“Did he get out again?” he said, concern creasing his forehead.
Then he turned to his moronic disciples. “Thanks for helping her find him, guys,” he said. “She loves that kitty. She’d have been heartbroken if he’d been hit by a car or drenched in beer by some heartless thug.”
They all nodded in unison. “No problem, glad to help,” Three said as he began to back away.
“I love cattens,” said One.
“Don’t forget Lori’s party tomorrow. Taylor will be there. See you there, man,” Two said as he ambled after the others.
Mr. Calm and Collected waved to them as they walked away, waiting until they were out of earshot to mutter, “Not likely.”
His arm was still around my shoulder, though he hardly seemed aware of it, unlike me, who felt every inch of him burning into my side like a fiery brand. I said, “Thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”
He let go of my shoulder (finally!) but didn’t step away from me. Instead he gazed down at me, a smile slipping over his lips. I was practically shaking now, the proximity of this strange guy and all his heat getting the better of me. For a second I thought he was going to reach up and touch my cheek, but instead his fingers snagged on the zipper of my jacket.
“How’s he doing?” he said. “My cat back home would flip out if he was trapped outside on a night like this.”
Painfully conscious of how close his head was to mine and kind of irritated at the way he continued to invade my personal space, I looked down at the little orange head emerging from the neck of my jacket. “I think he’s…”
When he reached forward to smooth the fur on the little cat’s head, the tip of his finger dragged lightly across my neck. The feeling was electric and alarmed me so much that I uncrossed my arms and stepped away from him. The cat tumbled down the inside of my jacket and landed at our feet before scampering off again.
We both swore and ran after him, a chase that lasted a lot longer than the first one—the cat seemed to have smartened up—and when he was finally safe inside Mr. Calm and Collected’s jacket, we were both out of breath.
“I have to hand it to him,” he said. “He’s a determined little sucker. We’d better get him home.”
I adjusted the glasses on my face, raising my eyebrows at him. “You realize that isn’t actually my cat, right?”
“Well, he doesn’t have a collar, and he’s so skinny. I doubt he’s eaten for a while. Seems like he’s your cat now.” He grinned at me like this was my lucky day.
“I don’t want a cat,” I said, shaking my head forcefully. “Why don’t you take him?”
“I have two roommates who are an awful lot like that.” He gestured after the three idiots. “What’s the matter, Hero? You don’t need a furry friend?”
“No, I don’t need friends. I…no, I don’t need anything.” I glared at the ground. Had I actually just said that out loud?
He cocked his head and squinted at me, still grinning slightly. God, did this guy ever stop smiling? It was making me hostile.
“I recognize you from somewhere,” he said.
“Yeah, I recognize you, too,” I said distractedly, freely using my peripheral vision to scout out my escape route. “Aren’t you the…you know…goalie…quarterback…captain person?”
He burst out laughing. “What?” he said. “What sport do you think I play?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The one with the ball?” Sports weren’t something I made any kind of an effort to keep track of. They lived in a dusty part of my brain along with high school science, French cooking, and other things I never thought about.
Still chuckling, he said, “I guess that rules out hockey.”
“I guess,” I said, looking pointedly out at the street now. “So I should probably go.”
“Great, where to?” he said, falling into step beside me.
“What?” I said sharply.
He looked at me with an expression of mock alarm, which dissolved quickly into a smile.
Again with the smile.
“No,” I corrected him. “I’m going home, and you should go to wherever it is you were going.”
“I’ve got your cat in my shirt, Hero,” he said. “Wherever you go, I go.”
Inside his shirt? For some reason I found myself blushing crimson, which really pissed me off.
“Why do you keep calling me that?” I snapped as we made our way up the street. He walked incredibly slowly, like he didn’t have a care in the world. People who walked like that in this kind of weather made no sense to me.
“You saved this cat from death-by-beer, didn’t you?” he said. “Sounds pretty heroic to me.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” I said. “Besides, you helped. You saved him, too.”
“So what are you saying, I’m your hero?” He gave me a warm look, showing off his dimples again.
Oh God, the dimples.
“I’m saying walk faster,” I said, powering ahead. “What the hell is wrong with you? It’s minus twenty-five out here.”
“Whatever you say,” he said from behind me.
The wind began to blow and I pulled my hood back up around my head, but I still heard him add, “Hero.”
At my apartment door I fiddled frantically with the lock, which had decided to choose this moment to be temperamental. Somehow I’d managed to not lose Mr. Calm and Collected on the street, at the door to my building, or on the stairs up to my floor. He was standing next to me right now, still holding the cat inside his clothes—though this was something I’d decided not to think about ever again—and was leaning down to examine my lock in the way of friendly, helpful neighbours. I was now using nearly all of my energy to try to think of a way to get rid of him and the cat.
Finally, the lock clicked open and I backed into my apartment, holding the door tight to my shoulder so he couldn’t see inside.
“Thanks for walking me,” I said with a lot of head nodding. “You didn’t have to. But it was really nice of you, so thanks. Thanks. Thank you.”
I’d never thanked someone so many times in my life. It made me feel tired. I liked it better when no one was around to help me, so there was no one to thank but myself.
“I think he’s asleep,” he whispered to me. I found myself staring at his lips, which were nicely full and pink and soft looking.
Then—and I blinked a lot while this was happening to be sure I wasn’t seeing things—he pulled open his jacket and started unbuttoning his shirt. I glimpsed tanned skin and a smooth chest before I looked down, painfully embarrassed. When I looked up again he was holding out a bundle of fur. I gathered the animal into my arms and leaned against the doorframe. My cheeks were throbbing with heat now, which I was sure he could see, and I simply didn’t know where to look. I frowned at the hardwood floor.
“I’m Lucas, by the way,” he said. When I glanced up I saw that he was leaning down to peer into my downturned face, his expression curious. At least he wasn’t laughing at me.
“Katie,” I mumbled.
“Thanks for rescuing me, Katie,” he said. “I’ll never forget it.” He began walking down the hall, back toward the stairs.
“Rescuing you?” I said. “I didn’t—”
“What was that?” he said, cupping his hand around his ear. “I can’t hear you, Hero.”
“Lucas,” I called, leaning out the door. He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back at me.
I said, “Don’t call me Hero.” And then I shut the door.