I shook my head. “No, one day when the tears stop, I’ll look back on this year and say, ‘That was the year I loved a basketball player.’ But now it’s over, and I need to do what I set out to do.”
This made me think of Sarina. I pulled my phone from my pocket and found a text waiting from her. It said Call me, and so I did.
“Ri,” I said when she picked up the phone.
“Oh, honey . . .”
“Tell me what’s happening.” I spoke into the receiver with my head resting on Shelby’s chest.
Apparently, rumors about my story had broken on the evening news.
“The news said it was an anonymous source, and they were pretty vague about your identity. They only said, Hafton student believed to be moonlighting as porn star Ariel Stone.”
She explained that Frank had shut the studio down for the night as a precaution. “Lots of people fishing around for details but not finding much.”
I sighed. There were no words.
“Frank saw it first and called me. I looked it up on the web, and he saw it correctly. There was no mention of your real name, but Brittany is crazed right now. She’s ready to start a whole movement. She wants justice for all the women who pay their bills doing this,” Sarina went on. “She’s not going to let this go.”
“Well, I’m going to finish the project and self-pub the exposé, but first I have to go back to my place and try to make my transfer happen.”
“Aw, babe, I don’t want you to leave.”
“The sooner I get the hell out of here, the better. I can’t show my face around Hafton now that I’m outed, and after I publish my research, the program will never let me back in. This small town may as well be dead to me. I gotta go now, but I’ll call you in the morning,” I told her.
I disconnected the call and then rolled over to kiss Shelby on the cheek, telling her I had to go.
It was dark as I slipped out the back door into the night. I took an unmarked service road to the edge of College Avenue and walked all the way home with my beret pulled low and my coat collar pulled high. Inside my apartment, I undressed and slipped on big sweats and a Hafton T-shirt, and then turned on my laptop with the intention of googling Ariel Stone to see just how bad it was.
But first, I looked up the score of the Hafton game. We were down ten at the half.
I glared up at the ceiling of my empty apartment. This was all on me.
“Fuck,” I screamed at the walls, fisting my hand and punching the mattress.
Their loss, Blane’s pain, Sarina’s inability to work tonight . . . all on me.
After reading speculation in articles and blog posts with titles like “Who really is Ariel Stone?” and “Why would a college student do this?” and “It’s Cute Catie,” I curled up into a ball and cried myself to sleep, tangled up in sheets that smelled like Blane.
The revelation of my identity came from Johnny, Sonny’s intern who followed me. Apparently, he had an informant at the station as well as an ax to grind with both Sonny and me. When he found out Sonny uncovered something salacious, he went to work to steal his thunder.
It didn’t matter now. It was all out there, and I was ruined.
Over the next few days, I kept a low profile. Very low. The school told me to take a few days off from my classes, so they could deal with the media storm raining down on campus. My Italian professor called to see if I was okay, and asked if she could bring me a cappuccino or scone. She seemed almost empathetic to my plight, but I turned her down.
I’d involved enough people who didn’t deserve this. She definitely did not.
On Saturday, Sarina sneaked in via the fire escape of my building wearing one of Chantae’s scarves and carrying food from the diner. I could barely swallow the soup; the diner’s label on the lid was a painful reminder of Blane.
I shouldn’t complain. I’d had a few months of fun, a few moments of extreme bliss, and certainly enough memories to die happy. Not everyone lived out every second of his or her lives smothered in happiness. Why should I believe I would?
On Monday, Mo called me; apparently he’d stolen my digits from Blane’s phone.
“Seriously, you got to talk to my boy,” he pleaded with me.
“You’re winning, and he doesn’t need me,” I said.
“See? You still care.”
“Mo, thanks for calling. I have to go.”
After I hung up, I changed my phone number for the second time this trimester, which meant I didn’t receive Blane’s texts anymore. He’d been sending them consistently. Mostly they said, “Can we talk?” or “The ball is in your court, you have the power here. But come on, Cate.” Another one said, “Please? Let’s talk. I miss you.”
Now his name didn’t flash across my screen anymore, and all that was left was the memory of his touch, the burn of his name tattooed on my skin, and the scent of him that I believed lingered in my apartment.
I cried over the missing texts, at the thought of not ever knowing if Mo’s girlfriend had had his baby yet. I wouldn’t know if he had a girl or boy, or what they named the baby.
Tears came and went hourly.