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  I couldn’t even wrap my head around this new information. He’d liked me for a while, since freshman year, since he met me—which, if I hadn’t been so angry, would probably have been a point in his favor. But, knowing he’d liked me, just not enough to be with me, dampened everything. He liked me, but not enough to commit? Not enough to give up other girls? Not enough to care?

  You are mine, he’d said. No, I wasn’t. I leaned in close, hoping my whisper would convey more wrath than yelling.

  “I’m aware of my insecurities enough to know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m also confident enough to realize I’m worth more than a passing fling when you’re too bored with all your other prospects.”

  CHAPTER 17

  “UGH,” I MOANED. “Why does eating a salad take so much work?” I asked, not sure if I was talking to Jules or the calorie gods.

  “Why are you eating a salad anyway?” Jules scoffed. “You hate vegetables.” She knew me well.

  “I’m eating a salad because my breakfast this morning consisted of a brownie, two cupcakes, and a pint of ice cream.”

  “Lex, that has more meat than lettuce,” she scoffed, finally looking into my bowl. “It’s not a salad—it’s a chicken sandwich without the bread.” I might as well have just grabbed some bread. I liked bread too much. Rolls, biscuits, stuffed crust—didn’t matter. Give me the gluten.

  Truth be told, I celebrated with carbs and mourned with carbs. It contributed to my tight jeans and my happy lifestyle. I knew I should really do more cardio. I would have, too, if it didn’t make me feel like my esophagus was slowly closing and a sharp dagger was pressing into my side. I was trying to stop, though. My pants were starting to judge me. Even elastic only has so much give.

  My diet was truly a spinning carousel of bad choices and little self-control. The food pyramid for college students is seriously skewed. The bottom is composed of free food. The top is fine dining, which encompasses anywhere you sit down at. This is rare, occurring only when you are trying to impress someone, or when your parents come into town and treat you. The next to bottom is made up of food that can be delivered to your door: pizza, Chinese, Thai. The rest of the pyramid is filled with anything that can be cooked in the microwave. Thanks to modern technology, the options are unlimited: popcorn, baked potato, pizza rolls.

  After eating all the meat out of my salad, I wanted a nap. You know, as a reward for my healthy choices. A whine escaped my lips when I walked into my bedroom. I’d done laundry all weekend, and by laundry, I mean I’d sorted it, put it in the washer, transferred it to the dryer, and then thrown it on my bed. So now, at two o’clock in the afternoon when I’d just finished a mind-numbing class on formatting screenplays and eaten a lunch fit for a rabbit and I desperately needed a nap, I had to lie on the wrinkled laundry. I’d have to put it back in the dryer before I folded it anyway, right? What was the harm in napping on it first? No harm done, thank you, and it smelled fantastic.

  Is there anything better than a nap? Feeling the sun through your closed eyelids ranks right up there with cuddly puppies and fall bonfires. Still, two hours of sleep did very little to tame my exhaustion. It was like my body was stuck on low battery mode, sluggish. Even with the magical beans that turn into heavenly liquid, I just felt blah. There was no scientific diagnosis for it. It was just blah.

  Medically speaking, it was probably just hormones, or, considering my addiction to food that could be delivered to my door, a nutritional imbalance, but all I knew to call it was blah, and blah had me curled up in the fetal position, ignoring my adult responsibilities.

  I had moped enough about Ben. Jules insisted I put on my big girl panties and deal with it. My big girl panties, in this case, were black lace, and dealing with it meant alcohol—lots of alcohol.

  I was still working on being an adult.

  There are some things that should come with warning labels, such as tacos, yoga pants, and tequila. Tonight, I was pushing the limits on all three.

  I didn’t normally drink to excess, or really at all, but healing a heartbreak is a painful process, and it’s different for everyone. For me, it was comfy clothes, greasy meat, salty margaritas, and lots of R-rated insults with foul language—at least that was what Jules prescribed. Since I wasn’t in a position to trust my own judgment, I listened.

  “Tacos and margaritas,” I demanded after my late class.

  “Let’s go to that place on 5th street,” Jules suggested. “They have better margaritas.”

  “But the one on Maple has better tacos,” I protested. The look she gave me said it all: Margaritas are more important than tacos right now. I relented.

  After gorging myself on the greasiest tacos imaginable, I shifted to just drinking. “Ah tequila, you dirty whore. I hate how we aren’t friends, and I hate that I forget that every time.” I cursed the alcohol I continued to drink while Jules ignored my rant.

  That’s what best friends are for, right?

  “I really liked him, Jules,” I told her for the fifteenth time in the last hour, or four drinks, however we were keeping time.

  “I know, sweetie.” She rubbed my back as I leaned onto the bar. “It’ll get better,” she promised.

  “Really? ’Cause it feels like it’ll hurt forever.”

  “That’s the tequila.”

  “I don’t know. It felt worse before the tequila,” I admitted, hiccupping twice and covering my mouth. She thought I might hurl, but after a moment, she wrapped her arm around me, and I leaned into her. “The tequila is only prolonging the hurt, not curing it.”

  “Now is not the time for truths,” I said after a minute or two. “Forever is a long time to hurt.” Banging my head on the wooden bar caught the attention of the beefy bartender, who was dressed in all black with tattoos crawling up both arms. They were dark and beautiful, exactly how I felt in that moment—at least the dark part, not the muscles part. The parts of my body I could still feel, felt like jello.

  “How are you ladies doing over here?” he asked, coming to refill my glass yet again.

  “I hate that question!” I protested, causing his eyebrows to shoot up in amusement and Jules to sigh beside me.

  “The default answer to ‘How are you?’ is ‘Good.’ I’m tired of saying good when I’m not good. I’m not good. I’m not fine. I’m not okay. Those aren’t answers. They are fillers. They are I don’t want to share with you what’s really going on in my life deflectors. They fill the silence.”

  The bartender, a man in his late twenties, looked at me for a moment without speaking, possibly counting how many drinks he’d served me.

  “Forgive her,” Jules jumped in. “She’s naturally philosophical anyway, and the alcohol intensifies it.” He smiled then, sliding a shot in front of me.

  A few drinks will help you to forget him, she’d told me when we started drinking, but I knew better. Ben was a drug, stronger than the eighty proof. I’d reach alcohol poisoning before I forgot him. I’d forget my own name before I forgot his memory. I was feeling some serious heartbreak deep inside my chest that I knew the alcohol couldn’t numb. It was too much, too much for a relationship that had barely started. I should have been thankful our relationship had been cut short. I couldn’t imagine the heartache that would have been caused by the loss of months and months of Ben-induced happiness.

  These philosophical thoughts did not stop me from pouring the alcohol down my throat. I took the next shot then slammed the glass down on the bar, temporarily loving the sound of the glass hitting the old wood.

  “Alright, Lex, I think that’s enough. Maybe take it a little slower?” I’d only had…what, three shots in five minutes?

  “Another?” the bartender asked as retrieved the empty shot glass from in front of me. He couldn’t have been that much older than me, as I noticed then, blinking a couple of times in an attempt to see only one of him. His tattooed arms were partially covered by a black button-up he had scrunched up to his forearms. His hair was cut short, close
to his head.

  “Yes!” I answered as Jules disagreed.

  “She doesn’t need any more,” Jules told him.

  “Do you want to go out with me?” I half yelled into his face, probably with spit accompanying the words, causing Jules to turn to me with a look of shock on her face. The bartender, to his credit, didn’t even bat an eye, either knowing it was the alcohol talking or knowing I wasn’t actually emotionally stable enough to commit to a date right now.

  “Are we celebrating?” He changed the subject in his rough, I just woke up voice, gesturing to the new shot he’d poured me.

  “Not celebrating—mourning,” I explained, accepting that he’d denied my advances without saying a word. I was only a little hurt by that, thanks to the tequila he continued to pour for me, which I was sure he would have stopped doing if he hadn’t made sure Jules was stone-cold sober.

  “Ah.” He nodded as if ‘unpaid therapist’ was detailed in his job description. “Did he cheat?”

  “What? No.”

  “Wreck your car?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Kick a puppy? Steal your money? Curse your mother?”

  “No, no, and no.”

  “Sounds like you can make it work,” he said reasonably, as if it were that easy. Was it? Maybe it was. Maybe I should have just been focused on the now. Maybe I should have taken his weird freshman claim as a compliment. Maybe I was the one standing in the way of my own happiness.

  Maybe it was the tequila talking.

  “Jules!” I yelled, forgetting she was right beside me.

  “Yes?” I did not care to notice her exasperated tone.

  “Take me to Ben,” I instructed, throwing my fist into the air, ready to lead an expedition to find him. Her sigh was very heavy.

  My knees bounced eagerly in the car, Jules driving stiffly beside me. By the time she pulled up in front of the old fraternity house, I was too antsy, and I bounded up the steps on pure adrenaline.

  “Ben!” I ran into the sitting room to find ten sets of eyes facing me, all sober. They were in some sort of meeting if the khakis and pressed shirts they wore were any indication. I’d forgotten it was Wednesday, which was when the freshman and sophomore pledges met in the living room to discuss things—probably which girl they were putting a claim on, now that I thought about it.

  “Whoops.” A giggle escaped before I could cover my mouth. These guys were wasted six days out of seven, but the one day I’d had a little too much, they were all stone-cold sober and judging me with those judgmental eyes. Those judgy judges.

  “Damn, you’re a fast drunk.” Jules came up beside me, assessing the situation. “Well, don’t just stare at her. Somebody tell her where he is.”

  Miles, one of Ben’s closest friends, was leading the meeting. He couldn’t stop his smile and pointed up. I took off up the stairs. My thoughts were erratic and short. Feet move forward. Must find Ben. Don’t throw up.

  When I made it to his door, I shoved it open without knocking. His shocked face met mine for all of two seconds before I ran past him into the bathroom, where I barfed up all my confidence with the tequila. When I could raise my sweaty head off the toilet, finding Ben didn’t feel like the smartest decision. Probably had something to do with the fact that I looked and smelled like hell.

  Jules was holding my hair back while Ben moved the books off his bed. The heat of his body warmed me when he sat down next to me, and I felt his rough hand rub small circles on my lower back.

  “I’ve got her,” he told Jules. “She can stay with me tonight.” I knew she gave him a look and a hushed warning, but he did eventually convince her to leave me with him. I had to admit, it was where I wanted to be, if only to get some things off my chest and the rest of the tequila out of my stomach.

  Eventually, I ended up in Ben’s tee and boxers, curled into a ball, facing him in the bed. I hadn’t even said a word yet, unless you counted when I hiccupped in his face as he helped dress me, and I hoped we weren’t counting that.

  He finally spoke. “What’s up, Lex?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why’d you come?”

  “Is tequila a good enough reason?” I peeked an eye open to see him. Nope, tequila was not an acceptable answer. “I missed you. I miss you,” I amended. “Not past tense, present…and future. I miss you every day, and it had barely even started.”

  His deep exhalation caressed my face. “I miss you,” he said. “Do you want this?”

  “If you still want to. If you still want me.”

  He pulled me into his arms. The tequila had nothing on Ben. He had this smell, this fresh linen scent mixed with a strong musky aroma. I tightened my grip on his shirt and inhaled.

  “Did you just sniff me?” he asked. I could tell a smile was on his face without looking.

  “Yeah, you smell good,” I admitted, snuggling into his chest. We lay there wrapped in each other for a long time before he said anything.

  “I still want you,” he said, answering my earlier question. “I’ve always wanted you.”

  I love words, love what they express and the power they hold, the power to mend or break, to give hope and take it away. I didn’t have any words for that moment, though, none that did my feelings justice. Even the thought of expressing my feelings to him hindered my health.

  Breathe. Breathe. Just breathe, I repeated to myself, willing my lungs to contract and expand inside me. Sometimes I felt trapped in my own rib cage, like a storm that’s been brewing and needs to finally be let free, probably a tornado—no wait, a hurricane, the water rising up so high, so violent, it can no longer be contained in the ocean.

  What words could I say? By the time I opened my mouth, I was sure Ben had long given up on me talking at all. He probably thought I’d fallen asleep.

  “I want every person I know to have my name scribbled somewhere in their story, preferably good things. I hope my writing touches other people’s stories every day…but you? I want my name etched so deep in your skin you can’t remove it, can’t cover it—can only admire it.” My heart pounded so hard in my chest I was sure he could hear it. “And I wouldn’t mind if it was there forever,” I said as I exhaled. It was an agonizing moment of quiet before I felt his breath and heard his words.

  “Are you sure forever will be long enough?” The last thing I remembered before sleep captured me was the feeling of his lips being pressed to my head.

  CHAPTER 18

  SLEEP HAD COME easily between the warmth of Ben’s bed and the peace of his arms, but there was nothing easy about the next morning. For one, I’d never woken up next to Ben before. I was worried about the state of my hair, the breath I knew would smell awful from the previous night’s alcohol, and the looming conversation about the state of our relationship, or lack thereof.

  Squeezing out from under his arms, I took care of two of my worries in the bathroom. My hair no longer had the ability to be pretty, but the elastic on my wrist forced it into submission. A little toothpaste on my finger and two swishes of mouthwash improved my breath for the time being. Unfortunately, there was nothing that could be done about the approaching discussion that had the potential to make me feel even worse than all the tequila I had consumed.

  My five minutes of hygiene had woken Ben, so when I climbed back into bed, I was met with his sleepy eyes. I had to pretend they had no effect on me. By pretend, I meant covering my face in my hands so I wouldn’t blurt out feelings I wasn’t ready to admit to.

  Embarrassment and shame shown all over my face. He lifted my chin up to move my hands and encourage my eyes to meet his. My pride did not want to talk about the effects the tequila had had on me, so I jumped right into the true reason for my hurt.

  “Why’d you pick me? Why’d you put that tag on me like I was yours? I wasn’t. I never have been.” Anger and vulnerability laced my words. My eyes were clouded with pain, and I wanted him to feel it, wanted him to know how inadequate he made me feel.

  “No
t one person in that fraternity is good enough for you. I can’t help it. Even then I wanted you. I knew you were special.”

  “So…what? You just dated your way through the sororities to get your fill? Just left me on the back burner until you were ready for a real relationship?” My breath caught in my throat. It was a challenge to get oxygen in.

  “That’s not it at all.” He pulled me into his chest and rocked back and forth, whispering “I’m sorry” into my hair several times. I didn’t know how long we sat there, his arms wrapped around my arms, which were wrapped around my torsi. Eventually I continued, speaking into his chest.

  “What? Was I not good enough for you to want a relationship then? Is that what it is?” I did not want to admit that traitorous tears were threatening to make an appearance. My bottom lip quivered. I squeezed my hands into fists and held my breath. “You didn’t want a relationship with me.”

  His flinch told me he knew he had been wrong, but I needed more than that. I needed words, confirmation. I needed a reason to continue this. I needed a purpose for taking a chance and letting hope potentially destroy my heart.

  “I can’t give you a reason for the stupidity of freshman me, Lex. At the time, I thought I didn’t want a relationship. It wasn’t about you, just the idea of a relationship at all. I thought I needed to make some decisions based on me and my future. I was afraid. All I know is when they asked who I chose, yours was the only name that came to my mind. It felt right saying it, like you were already mine.”

  “But I wasn’t, Ben. I wasn’t because you didn’t care enough to make me yours. You left me alone to be with other girls, to date your way through the sororities. Have you been sitting here saving yourself for me? Or have you just made all these selfish decisions ensuring your own happiness? Happiness that clearly didn’t involve me?”