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“This me?”
“This open you. You’re happy. I don’t know…free.” His hand found the back of his neck, gripping slightly before dropping, then his long fingers reached out to lace with mine on top of my thigh.
“It’s late. I’m tired. I don’t have the energy to pretend right now,” I told him, pretending I wasn’t completely focused on where his fingertips were making my skin tingle.
“And are you usually pretending with me?” He briefly took his eyes off the road to glance at me. His fingers squeezed.
“Maybe. Probably. Less so now,” I told him honestly.
“Let’s keep it that way,” he proposed as he opened the passenger door to help me out of his truck. When his lips brushed my cheek at the bottom of the staircase, I might have leaned into him. I blamed it on my drowsiness and the drunkenness one can only get from too many chocolate chip pancakes.
Sleep hit me immediately when I fell on my pillow. There is a certain contentment in burrowing in your own bed. It’s cozy covering up with your own blankets, laying your head on your own pillow, and nestling into the form your body has already created on your mattress. It’s heavenly.
CHAPTER 11
IT DIDN’T LAST long enough. Jules woke me up a few hours later. She was spared my early-morning wrath only because she brought a fresh coffee from Lola’s. It was enough to make me stir, but not enough to make me happy about it.
“Wake up, grumpy pants. We’re going to yoga.”
“No,” I said flatly, struggling to pull back over my face the cover she’d pulled down. The sunlight invading the room was painful to my eyes.
“Yes. I want to go, and it’s your duty as my best friend to accompany me.”
I groaned at the thought of getting out of bed. Why was waking up so hard? You’d think having the practice of doing it every single day would mean I was pretty good at it by now. That was not the case.
Tears almost came when we pulled into the parking lot of the twenty-four hour gym. Based on the number of yoga pants I owned, you’d expect that I actually frequented yoga classes. You’d be wrong.
“Seriously? Stop being so dramatic!” Jules insisted, but the early hour demanded a flair for the dramatic.
“I’m not even sure I knew five AM existed,” I whined. “Who has the energy to work out before the sun comes up?”
“People who are busy after it rises. Just be glad it’s not hot yoga.”
The terror was unimaginable “You’d see real tears then,” I threatened.
Jules unrolled her mat next to me, facing the long wall of mirrors. The instructor arrived a few minutes later, a chipper young thing with flawless makeup and a cute messy bun. I already didn’t like her. If your hair looked that good without trying, I had to hate you, on principle.
She redeemed herself a tiny bit by starting out slow. I was in no way a yoga expert. I had been accompanying Jules sporadically for the last three years and was still stuck in the beginner stage. Corpse pose was my favorite. Child’s pose was manageable. Even downward facing dog wasn’t that bad, but most everything else made me feel like something in my body was ripping. When that something was my uterus, I was done.
An hour later, I felt better, though I’d never have admitted it to Jules. No need to add to her smugness. Exercise was the cheapest form of antidepressant, and yet it was completely underutilized. Maybe I’d write an article on that. As high as the stress level and as low as the quality of nutrition was in college, I was sure we could all stand to release a little more endorphins. I made a mental note. Surely some people liked to work out, right? Not everyone was as sweat-averse as me.
By my two o’clock history class, the high from my morning workout had worn off. I was struggling to keep my eyes open. The railroad tycoons weren’t interesting enough to keep me attentive. I had successfully been drowning out the sound of Dr. Kellar’s lecture, scribbling random words into my leather journal that would probably amount to nothing.
Ben’s voice behind me drew me back into the conversation he was attempting to have with me. I didn’t know how long he’d waited before he repeated the question.
“Are you coming to the Halloween mixer?” he asked, referring to the party the fraternity hosted every October—the party I avoided.
“Costume parties aren’t really my thing,” I admitted. The last time I’d dressed up for Halloween, it had involved a lot of pink tulle and a plastic tiara.
“You? You want to write novels for a living. You’ve wanted to be a writer the whole time I’ve known you. You are a different person every time you sit down with a blank piece of paper, and you’re telling me you don’t like to play pretend?”
I smiled, knowing I was blushing at the tips of my cheeks. I was flattered that he remembered I wanted to be a writer. We had been in the same mandatory university class freshman year where we had to do research on our anticipated major. Dixie College Sparksville required all freshmen to take the same prep course where we toured the campus, learned about school organizations, and attempted to plan our higher education. I had forgotten until just now, but it was where Ben and I first met.
“Why do you want to study engineering?” I asked him, pulling from the list of questions we had been instructed to ask our partner. Even then he was charming, but he didn’t know it as much as he would later.
“I like taking pieces and making something whole, making something work that didn’t work before,” he told me in his usual confident way. He already had the attention of every girl in the classroom. His girlfriend at the time, Mindy something or other, kept glancing sideways at us. I could feel her jealousy drift over to me. She had wanted to be paired with Ben, of course, but when the teacher got to our row, with a dark-haired girl in the front and Mindy behind her, they got paired, leaving me, in the fourth seat, with Ben, in the third.
“Why do you want to be a writer?”
Shrugging was my go-to answer, but this time I knew it wouldn’t work. “I guess I want to affect the world, make a dent in it, and writing is my way to do it. It’s how I’m most affected. Other people’s words help me, and I guess I’ve just always wanted to do that for someone, return the favor.” I paused, realizing how strange he probably thought I was. “And of course the whole no uniform, work from home, set my own hours thing appeals to me,” I added, hoping to lighten the mood a little.
“What do you want to write about?” he asked, even though I knew it wasn’t on our list of suggested questions. I liked his interested look; it added depth to his already handsome face.
“The truth,” I said, shrugging noncommittally. I hadn’t figured that out yet. “I just want to be brave enough to say what needs to be said, even if no one wants to hear it.”
“If you had to write about something right now, what would it be?” Again, deviating from the provided questions.
“I don’t know. Maybe how we”—I gestured around the room—“make physical vanity seem so significant.”
“Example?” he asked, tilting his head to one side, his curiosity evident.
“Every girl in here wants to be me right now.” I hadn’t missed the way they eyed me when I got partnered with him. I leaned in, lowering my voice, and he unconsciously did, too. “Because you look good.” I was a little embarrassed at that point, but I continued, watching a small smile play on his lips. “But that is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You could be terrible, have anger issues, or be emotionally unavailable or severely immature,” I told him. “I mean, I’m sure you’re really great and all, but they don’t know that. They don’t know who you are or what you care about, what makes you get up in the morning, and yet they still feel a strong urge to be near you, simply because you’re tall and have a great body. And deep eyes,” I added as an afterthought.
He didn’t say anything right away. I thought maybe I’d made him angry, but then he smiled. It was the first time I saw the laugh lines around his lips and the crinkles by his eyes. It made me smile, too.
It was the same smile I was looking at now. Costume parties really were not my thing, but he was right—I liked being someone different when I stared at a blank page. There was a reason I only did that on paper, though. College Halloween parties ranged from borderline inappropriate to rated XXX. The costumes might as well have been prostitution uniforms.
It was hard to tell him no, though. I settled on maybe.
CHAPTER 12
MAYBE TURNED INTO yes as soon as I mentioned it to Jules, who’d been begging me to go to the Halloween party for years. I knew going meant I was going to see way more girls’ bottoms and breasts than I’d ever need to see, but there I was, dressing alongside Jules and Tay, who had the weekend off and was staying with us, “reliving her college years,” as she wistfully told us. I didn’t remind her that she was still technically in college and what she was referring to as her college years had ended only five months earlier.
She looked amazing in her toga wrap and sandals. Jules looked as stunning as ever in her mini police dress, badge and handcuffs shiny on her waist. I had spent the last hour curling my hair to match my seriously rocking Wonder Woman costume.
It was fifteen minutes until ten when we finally walked into the party that was, as I expected, littered with half-naked girls. Immediately, my eyes began scanning the room for Ben. It didn’t take long to find him.
He was loosely embracing a girl on the makeshift dance floor. He had one hand hanging at his side and the other resting on the bare skin of a blonde—a fake blonde, I was sure. Her lips met his neck and something inside me broke, but not my heart. It felt more like hope. My hope broke, cracked in two.
My body tensing and my jaw dropping alerted Taylor to my severe anxiety. When she saw my expression, she scanned the room, looking for the cause. She found it, too. Quickly, she turned me around, no doubt leading me back home. I turned over my shoulder to take a last look at him and at her, and our eyes met. I saw his body still, no longer swaying to the music. He dropped his hand from her hip, but it was too late. The damage was done. I thought he called my name, but maybe he just mouthed it. It wouldn’t have been heard over the music anyway. The girl in lingerie in front of him never stopped moving her hips into his body, and I turned away—away from him, away from them, and away from that little hope inside me that made me think this relationship was actually going anywhere when there were undressed women in the vicinity.
What was I even thinking? We weren’t dating. This wasn’t even technically a date. We were only barely friends. Why had I let my hope get so high that the fall was sure to result in some internal injury?
No matter what words I used to convince myself I didn’t care, the hurt didn’t stop. I was tired, physically and emotionally.
I refuse to trust pretty criers. If you’re not sobbing uncontrollably with obscene amounts of snot, I don’t think you’re a true woman. Real crying brings on wheezing and the inability to breathe.
I was at that point. Once we made it back home, I was a little more comfortable letting my tears wreak havoc on my face. My mascara had paved a trail down to my upper lip. Sure, I was going for the Hitler mustache. Maybe it’s the Nazi leader. Maybe it’s Maybelline. Nope, just me and the emotional journey from Wonder Woman to wailing woman.
Swiping my eyes to try to regain my vision, I undressed and trashed the insanely expensive costume. I climbed into the scorching shower, washing out the hairspray and scrubbing the thick makeup from my eyes. I left the hot water when I thought I was all cried out. I was wrong.
I’d only been out of the shower for fifteen minutes when the yelling started.
“Oh, hell no. No, no, no,” I heard Jules yell, temporarily forgetting her drunken state. “You cannot be here.” Tay and I had left the party immediately. Jules had come home not long after us when Tay texted her the news, but she’d already had a little to drink.
“Come on, Jules, let me in. I want to explain,” Ben pleaded. Part of me hoped Jules would tell him no and make him leave, but part of me wanted to see his face without the usually cocky demeanor. I left the sanctuary of my room, joining them in the living room after painting on a mask of indifference.
“Lex,” he said.
“Oh, look, it’s the player.” He was still in his costume: Babe Ruth. Wearing a long pinstripe jersey shirt and a baseball cap, he’d abandoned the cigar that had been sticking out of his mouth earlier. He looked good. It angered me more.
He ignored my jab. “Lex, can we talk?”
“Sure, Ben, what would you like to talk about? The fact that I thought you wanted me at the party with you, that I thought you were interested in me?” I didn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed by the vulnerability in my voice. When his face fell, I was kind of glad he felt it.
“Babe, I am interested in you.” It was almost a plea.
“Did you seriously just call me babe?” I scoffed. He didn’t answer. “You clearly thought you were at the party with Ms. Playboy Bunny.” It was not a jab at her—that was her actual costume. “You have rather varied interests, it seems.” The vulnerability was quickly being replaced by anger, boiling my blood, and I was very close to erupting.
“I thought you’d ditched me,” he almost whispered. “I thought you’d decided not to come.”
“Stupid, stupid me. Here I thought if you cared, you wouldn’t be interested in other bleach-blonde bunnies.” That would have been funny if I wasn’t so mad. “Seriously, Ben, it’s fine. Not a big deal at all. You can go now.”
“Lex,” he started before my louder voice overtook his.
“I’m just replaceable to you. No matter where I was or even if I had stood you up, it took you, what, thirty minutes to drown your sorrows in a half-naked girl? Maybe an hour? It only took you an hour to find a replacement, Ben.”
“There isn’t a replacement for you,” he said, stepping closer to me, making me take a step back.
“That didn’t stop you from looking,” He again took a step closer, quickly this time, putting a hand on each side of my face, and he kissed me. He. Kissed. Me. The stupid jerk. His lips were soft, and they fit perfectly against mine for the half-second it took me to recover. I pushed him back—hard. I was fuming. This was the part in the cartoon where smoke would be coming out of my ears and he’d have those hearts bursting out of his eyes—at least until I ripped them off his stupid, handsome face.
“This isn’t some 90s romance movie. You can’t just kiss me and expect it to melt my heart of stone. Let me guess, it works with the other girls, right? Go be with one of them.”
“I don’t want to,” he said, reaching out to take my hand, which I pulled away.
“You could have fooled me.”
“I want you, Lex,” he said.
“I don’t think so, Ben. You don’t want me. You want to take off all my clothes, right? Appreciate the curves of my body? Touch me in all those forbidden places and forget who I am? Forget I don’t mean anything to you?” I paused for a moment, swallowing. “You know, experience that instant gratification like you do with all those other girls.”
“If that’s who you think I am, then no. If you honestly think I would do that to you, Lex, then no, I don’t want you.” He walked away then, slamming the door behind him. It rang into the silence, and I heard his heavy footsteps move quickly down the back staircase.
He was gone.
You could have heard a pin drop in that apartment.
“Let’s go to the diner. My treat,” Taylor offered after a few minutes. Jules agreed, which said a lot about the look on my face. This was not my usual role in the morning after—or rather, the middle of the night. I wasn’t usually the one in need of boy-bashing with the best friend
s.
Did I want to go to the one restaurant I’d eaten at with Ben? No. Did I want a plate full of bacon, sausage, and cheesy hash browns? That answer was always yes.
“Come on, we need not wallow in our sorrows.” Jules tugged me along beside her.
I’d said those words to her countless times the previous year during my Shakespeare class. They didn’t seem so enlightening on the receiving end. I’d seen her throw a pity party many, many times. I just wanted one, one night where I could throw a pity party and not hear a voice of reason. I mean, I knew I had flaws—I’m human. Didn’t mean I wanted to hear about them.
“It’ll help, I promise,” she said, pulling me into a one-arm hug and squeezing me hard. She knew more than I did about this.
We ate our greasy food in silence. It wasn’t until Taylor finished off the rest of her omelet that an actual conversation started.
“So what’s up with you and Ben?” she asked me.
“Nothing, obviously,” I answered sarcastically, which I immediately regretted. Whoops. Turned out anger came along with the pity party.
”Okay, up until last night, what was going on with you and Ben?”
“I thought he liked me,” I said, shrugging.
“I think he does like you, Lex,” Jules said, still picking at the rest of her oatmeal, the healthiest thing on the menu.
“Not enough to stay away from half-dressed girls, apparently,” I shot back.
“Okay, so last night you were supposed to be at the party with him? Like a date?” Taylor asked.
“Not a date, exactly, but he invited me. He said he’d see me there. I don’t know. I thought he was going to be there with me, with me. Now, I’m second-guessing everything.”
“I don’t think he thought it was a date, Lex.” Jules took a long sip of her Diet Coke.
“But why would I want a guy who doesn’t stop being with other people when he even thinks he likes me?”
“Truth,” Tay said, nodding in agreement.