Again (10 page)

Carter

Monday morning Civics class was
about to start and Kate still hadn’t walked in. Maybe I should have knocked on
her door to make sure she was okay before I left for campus, but that would
have been too much. All of this was too much.

Besides, she’d had a whole
day to recover from Saturday night.

But maybe she hadn’t wanted
to recover.

I hadn’t even been drunk,
and I was having trouble recovering.

I
spun around in my seat. I had to stop because Professor Parker would surely ask
me
what the hell I was doing
in his patented blend of sarcasm and
asshole. Probably something about
if
he’d missed the announcement he
was holding class at the back of the classroom today instead of the front.

He’d
been my professor for this class freshman year too. He knew all about me. As a
person at this school he couldn’t have avoided following the case. It was in the
local papers and even the campus one. It was the whisper on everyone’s lips. As
a lawyer he probably thought I was getting off easy.

I
guess I did too. That was why I’d punished myself. Why I had to stop kissing
Kate before it turned into something I couldn’t stop. Why it was my duty to
make sure she got home safely. But she wasn’t in class now, so maybe I hadn’t
done enough.

Maybe
nothing I did would ever be enough.

My
mind rewound to Saturday night. Kate had gotten back to the dorm safely, but she
could have left.

She
was pretty drunk, so I doubted it. I’d held her up almost the entire walk back to
the dorm, trying to deny everything I felt when I touched her delicate frame—filled
with fever even in the freezing cold night. My stomach was as empty as air,
floating like a helium balloon set free. I’d left her in the lobby and taken
the stairs because if we had ridden in the elevator together I would have
kissed her again and again and again. I wouldn’t have wanted it to end.

Had
she found a guy who was willing to do what I couldn’t?

Professor
Parker turned to the dry erase board. I started typing notes, but my mind was
on Kate. Was I wondering where she was because I was worried about her, or
because I couldn’t stop imagining our kiss?

About
giving in to it so completely at first like I wasn’t me and she wasn’t her;
like we were just two people who yearned for each other without pasts, or
presents, or futures.

I
licked my lips. Damn, whatever was between us before our kiss had now
multiplied and bloomed like one of those fast-forwarded videos of a flower
growing in a garden.

I
tried to focus on Professor Parker droning on at his lectern, talking about
constitutional law and how it pertained to modern life, but Kate kept creeping
in. After a self-imposed sexual draught she was the sweetest nectar, a mirage
that was real. When we kissed, her lips, her body, her hands were all mine, wanting
me. The shiver of being touched again, the taste of willing lips, replayed again
and again in my gut.

I also
couldn’t stop hearing her reply when I said I wasn’t supposed to be with her.

Neither am I.

What
did that mean? Did she have a boyfriend? Did she have something from her past
keeping her from me too?

I
should have taken her back to my room, but I didn’t sleep with anyone anymore,
especially someone drunk.

And
she was drunk. She’d said she didn’t drink, but I knew what this place could do
to you. What it could change you into without you doing anything but being in the
wrong place at the wrong time.

“Mr.
Blackwood, do you have an answer?”

Professor
Parker was staring at me, along with the whole class.

My
ears and cheeks ignited. The tone in his voice made it clear he was repeating
himself. I knew from my last time around he hated repeating himself, hated
anything he deemed a waste of his very valuable time.

I
breathed out, gathering my composure, trying to cool the heat in my face, stop
my heart from beating in my throat. Everyone hated when people looked at them,
but I really did. In my case, they thought a lot more than the typical crap
people did when they got called out in class. 

“What?”
I asked, buying time, even though it was no use. I hadn’t heard his question.
There was only one question in my head.

Was Kate okay?

“What
is the most significant purpose of the US Constitution?” He sighed. “That is, if
you can spare your attention to answer.”

I
cleared my throat. My studying had at least prepared me for this. “Conferring
power on the national government and limiting the power of national and state
government,” I recited word for word from one of the chapters due today.

He
paused, didn’t even blink, making it clear he would never lose to me even if I
was winning right now. “Correct,” he said, “lucky for you. Moving on…” He
turned back to the dry erase board and started writing.

Had
he called on me because I wasn’t paying attention, or because he thought I’d
gotten off easy? That I should have left school like some of the other guys
had.

I’d
considered it, and as much as I hated what my father had done to make sure I
could stay, I deserved it. Being stuck in the place where Jeanie had been hurt,
where I hadn’t done anything to help her, was the ideal punishment. I needed to
remember, and leaving would only make me forget. I had no right to forget.

I probably
would have skipped taking Professor Parker’s class, but I had to. It was one of
the last ones I needed to make up from the mess I’d made second semester
freshman year. This class was supposed to be easy. I mean, I was a senior in a
freshman level class. Why was I making it harder by caring about Kate?

I
gathered my things together quickly when class was over, but I couldn’t escape
before Professor Parker yelled for me to stay behind above the din of everyone
leaving.

I
took a deep breath and walked to the front of the classroom. I was totally not
in the mood for a face to face with Professor Parker. I was never in the mood
for a face to face with anyone.

“You
do know you need my class to graduate,” he said, squinting.

“Yes
sir.”

Sir
was a word I learned to use after what happened to Jeanie, sir and ma’am. There
were so many people demanding my attention then, demanding my respect. Sir and
ma’am was how I gave it. A word was the very least I could do, but it was also
my way of keeping everyone from getting to me too much.

If
they were only sir and ma’am they weren’t people—asking things of me, requiring
things of me, looking down on me. The only person who mattered was Jeanie and
that was why I always called her Jeanie.

Not
that
girl
, like my father did, or
that stupid slut
like some of the guys
from the frat did, or even
plaintiff
like the lawyers and the papers
did. She was Jeanie. She was a person and she had a name.

“Then
you better start acting like it,” Professor Parker said, sliding papers into
his leather bag. “You can also tell your friend Ms.
Thompson
,” he said,
punctuating her last name, “if she misses another class I’m kicking her out.”

My friend, was that what she was?
I mean, I’d spoken with her a total of four times in a week, but
I’d also gone to a party to make sure she was safe. I’d also kissed her. I’d
also desired and denied myself a lot more.

“It’s
not her fault,” I said, searching for an explanation. “Her roommate was super sick
and she had to take her to the health center.”

I
guess I was going to keep trying to save Kate. She might have said she didn’t
need me, but that had nothing to do with me needing her.

Kate

I woke to a knock at the
door and squinted at my phone—five o-clock p.m.
Shit
. I’d slept through the
whole day.

Sunday had started in the
toilet and ended in the sewer. Apparently, I’d cashed in my grandmother’s stock
portfolio so I could have a safe room to spend in a coma recuperating from
being a drunken asshole.

She’d be so proud.

I considered putting a pillow
over my head and ignoring the knock like I’d ignored everything already that
day, but the pounding got more insistent, stronger, bringing the headache I’d
gone to sleep to avoid into focus like a bull’s-eye of fire at the center of my
forehead.

I stumbled across the room
and steadied myself on the doorknob as I pulled it open. “What?” I asked
angrily, my hangover doing the talking.

Carter stood in the hallway
with a cup of coffee in one hand and something wrapped in a paper bag in the
other.

My growling stomach hoped it
was a bagel, with extra cream cheese. But why would I even think it was for me?
Especially after how I’d acted. He was probably here to get his coat.

“Oh, hi,” I corrected, my
cheeks flushing.

“I wanted to make sure you
were all right,” he said.

“Yeah, about last night…” I
started, leaning against the doorjamb. Thankful he was giving me an invitation
to apologize.

“That was two nights ago. You
missed class today,” he interrupted.

“Fuck,” I said, not able to
keep the word in.
Seriously?
I’d slept a whole day and another half day.
Had there been something in one of those drinks? Did it even matter since I’d been
the one licking the plastic cup clean?

As a senior, Carter was
probably used to drunk girls make asses out of themselves. What he wasn’t used
to were those same girls disappearing for two days afterward.

I shook my head. “I guess I
slept through it.”

“I got that,” he said,
trying to get me to focus on his eyes, “but Professor Parker isn’t nearly as
generous as I am.”

“He noticed I wasn’t there?”
I asked, my voice rising.

He nodded, “I covered for
you. Said your roommate was sick and you had to take her to the health center.”

Was it Carter the guy who’d
kissed me covering for me, or Carter the RA covering for me? Why was I even
wondering?

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“I wanted to.” He looked
down at my hot pink manicured toes, attached to my bare feet. Attached to my
bare legs and my bare thighs, hitting at the T-shirt I’d slept in.

My ears burned. After my bra
the other night and now in this, Carter could conceivably imagine me naked. Considering
the bulge throbbing against me when we were kissing, I had a pretty good idea
about him too. My thighs and arms blossomed in goose bumps.

“Besides,” Carter finally
continued, “he said if you missed class again he was going to kick you out. I
had to say something.”

“Crap,” I said, my
adrenaline spiking like I’d been staring down at my cell phone on the street in
the city and almost been hit by a speeding cab.

“Just don’t miss class
again,” Carter said, as if that was the easiest solution in the world. It would
have been, if my stupid vices didn’t keep getting in the way.

“I won’t,” I finally managed
to say, “don’t worry.” Though he wasn’t really the one who should have been
worried.

“Remember the story:
roommate, health center,” he said, handing over the coffee and bag.
They
were for me.
“I need to pass Parker’s class this time.”

“Thank you for covering for
me and for this,” I said, ripping into the bag. It
was
a bagel with
extra cream cheese. I took a greedy bite. “Really, for everything.”

He waved my gratitude away,
like everything he’d done was nothing at all. “The story?” he asked.

“I can remember,” I said,
even though my lies were starting to pile up. Not that I couldn’t keep them
straight or anything, but I sure had an awful lot for just the start of the
second week.

“You think your roommate
will cooperate?”

I considered it and took
another bite of the bagel, frantic with the hunger of having not eaten for a
whole day, “If it means lying to a lawyer, she might.”

“Your roommate doesn’t like
lawyers?”

I shrugged and wiped my
mouth. “She thinks they’re assholes.”

“So clearly they room her
with someone who is pre-law,” he laughed, his blue eyes brilliant.

“I guess her dad’s a lawyer
or something,” I explained.

“My dad’s an asshole too,”
he said, breathing so hard his broad shoulders fell, “but not because he’s a
lawyer.”

“Clearly,” I said, toasting
him with the coffee and taking a long drink, “not a case of
like father,
like son
.”

“I sure as hell hope not,”
he replied quickly. He poked his head in and glanced at Dawn’s side of the
room. “It looks like her dad is Bram Stoker.”

“Yeah, she likes black and
metal spikes and anything that used to be alive.”

“Coolest thing about being
an RA,” he said, crossing his arms, making his muscles more prominent, “no roommates.”

“Yeah, but you must have
people bothering you all day for stuff.”

“You’d be surprised how many
people think that because they are on their own now, they don’t need help from
anyone.”

I pressed my lips together,
my mouth tasted sour. “I’m really okay. I just drank a little too much, that’s
all.” But it was an excuse. One I’d used so many times before. One I would keep
using, until I got my shit together.

“Don’t feel bad,” he said,
touching my shoulder. “When people first get here, they can get a little crazy.”

I nodded. I wished I could
lay blame there. It would have been a lot easier to deal with. The truth was,
I’d always been a little crazy, when I was in college the first time, when I
was out of college, and now that I was back.

Maybe I was just crazy.
Insanity was my real problem. I considered what life had to offer and was crazy
enough to believe I deserved more. Unfortunately, like most people, stuff got
in the way of going after more. My stuff always became alcohol because it
helped me cover up other stuff.

“I want to apologize for
Saturday night,” I said.

“Don’t worry. We’re fine.”

Were we? Because I felt
pretty damn confused about what we were.

“I still have your coat,” I
said, pushing my confusion down, “but I can wash it first.”

“Why? Did you throw up on
it?” he asked, his face tight.

“Slept in it,” I admitted.

“That doesn’t sound like it
would smell so bad,” he smiled.

I couldn’t help smiling
back, wishing I had the balls to pull him into my room. Wishing he had the
balls to throw me over his shoulder again and carry me over the threshold.

Was I seriously starting to fall for
this guy? Or did I like being taken care of for a change?

We stood there waiting to do
more than stand there. Everything I’d felt kissing him came rushing back like a
waterfall. I wanted this person, to touch me and kiss me, to make me scream. But,
I also didn’t want him to want me, because I wasn’t me.

While I was still lying to
everyone else, lying to Carter filled me with revulsion. He was too good to lie
to. He deserved a lot better than an old lady who lied so she could go to
college for free.

He deserved a lot better
than a college freshman who got drunk at parties and took her sweater off.

I stepped back into my room,
put the coffee and bagel on my desk and handed him his jacket. “Thanks again.”

“If you need to copy my
notes from class today, let me know,” he said, walking down the hall toward his
room.

I tried not to watch his
flawless ass go, but I couldn’t help it.

Apparently there was a lot I
couldn’t help.