Again (3 page)

Carter

I stood against the back
wall of the lounge waiting for the floor meeting to start. I certainly wasn’t
looking forward to assembling the little snots from my floor into one big room
of eye rolls and sighs on day one, but being a dickhead was kind of my job
description. 

A few students milled around
in front of the soda machine, maybe trying to pretend they weren’t coming to
the meeting. A few others sat together laughing on the couch. They were so
excited to be back, to be away from their parents again. They had no idea what
freedom could change some people into. Freedom to do and be whatever you chose had
the power to turn some into fools, others into victims or, at its worst, into
monsters.

Kate and I shared a smile when
she walked in. Her roommate sulked next to her dressed in enough black to drown
a widow. Her name was Dawn. She’d never been a problem, she was quiet enough
and, unlike most of the other students on the floor, she didn’t party.

The only time we’d ever
talked was when she complained about the beer cans and liquor bottles in the
trash room, not because people were drinking, but because they didn’t recycle.

I cleared my throat and ran
my hands along my thighs waiting for the room to silence. Only fifteen people showed
up. Not surprising since it was second semester and everyone already knew the
rules. Doubly not surprising since no one followed them anyway.

“I guess some of your floor-mates
still haven’t learned what mandatory means,” I said, my voice booming out above
freshman heads.

I heard the room groan and
glanced at Kate. Her blond hair was as light as spun sugar, her eyes wide and
waiting.

I swallowed air.

They say when you talk in
front of a crowd you’re supposed to picture people in their underwear but, when
it came to Kate, that was probably not a very good idea. Maybe Tristan was
right. Maybe I couldn’t stop thinking about her because she was new. Because when
she looked at me she didn’t see what everyone else saw.

Rapist, Liar, D-bag,
the words must have flashed like a neon sign above my head even
though they weren’t entirely true. I’d admit to being a
D-bag
, but I’d left
the frat house before anyone had hurt Jeanie and I’d never lied about it. The
thing was, I hadn’t stopped it, either.

That was why I wore the
D-bag
scarlet letter. Why I still told people to call me Chazz, as Kate had already
noted, the D-Baggiest name I had.

I deserved to have people view
me that way. So why couldn’t I help being excited that for now at least Kate
wasn’t?

“Anyway,” I said, putting my
hands in my back pockets, “wanted to go over the campus housing rules quickly.”

I highlighted the big ones,
No Smoking, No Drinking, No Pets, and Considerate Volume Levels. “Just remember
as long as I don’t see it, I don’t have to report it.”

Everyone shifted and squirmed,
impatiently waiting for me to shut the hell up and let them leave, but Kate
didn’t look away once. She was either really into following the rules, or
really into me. I shook the thought away—she was probably being polite, a
maturity seriously lacking in most freshman.

As if proving my belief,
two girls trolled into the lounge and drowned me out with their
cackling laughter as they stumbled drunkenly trying to sit down.

Stephanie
and Alex. They were pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside. They hung out on
frat row. Were the kind of girls the frat brothers in TKE would have called “frat
rats.” Of course, if someone tried something with them they didn’t choose to do,
drunk or not, they probably would knee him in the balls. I had to admire that
at least.

“Sorry we’re late,” Stephanie said.

“Not really,” Alex murmured.

Usually I left them alone because, even
though they never said anything directly, I could tell they knew the rumors
most everyone eventually heard about me. The thing was, they weren’t making a
fool out of me in front of the whole floor when I’d let them be in the past.

“A
reminder because it seems like some of you have forgotten,” I said, my
attention tight on them, “there is no drinking
anywhere
in the dorms.”

 “We’re
not drunk,” Stephanie said.

“Just
happy to be here,” Alex added.

“You
didn’t even have to force us,” Stephanie said, her words pointed.

“Or
anything,” Alex added, laughing so hard she spit.

I
started to sweat, my ears singed. I should have written them up for being drunk
right then, but it was the closest they’d ever come to calling me out on the
past I dragged behind me like a ball and chain. I swallowed and glanced at Kate
who was too embarrassed for me to even scan up from her lap.

I
made myself breathe, reminded myself I was in charge. It was what Tristan was
always telling me:
drown out everything but the certainty that you are a
good person who made a mistake.

The problem
was the mistake I made proved I was the opposite of good—and what I’d done
hadn’t only hurt me.

“Okay, any questions?” I
asked, trying to keep my eyes from twitching, my body from trembling. I wasn’t
expecting any, and I definitely didn’t want to hear from Alex or Stephanie. I
hated that their little performance had now made sure I would continue to let
them be.

“Going once, going twice,” I
continued.

I glanced at Alex and Stephanie;
they had the satisfied smirk of someone who won on their faces. I forced myself
to flash a smile. My heart might be close to exploding on the inside, but I’d
smile on the outside.

I couldn’t show they were
getting to me.

The room stayed silent, as I
suspected.

“No, okay then; if you need
anything my door is always open, except when it’s closed,” I said, clapping my
hands together, they were clammy.

The room started to empty
out. Tristan was right, I
was
rusty with girls and, even worse, I told awful
jokes because I was nervous around them. Even more awful, I let girls like
Stephanie and Alex mess with me when I was in front of them.

I had to at least try to
salvage my total crash and burn. I went to catch Kate and Dawn as they were
leaving. “You guys settling in okay?” I asked, standing straighter and forcing
my chest out. The only good thing I learned from my father was to exude
diamond-hard confidence regardless of how things really were.

Dawn looked at me, then Kate,
rolled her eyes, and left. At least she hadn’t lodged a formal complaint.

At least she hadn’t asked if
I would
force
them to settle in okay.

“How does it look like we’re
doing?” Kate asked. Her hair was in a high ponytail so her neck was visible. It
was so soft and milky I made myself turn away. I wanted to ask her to dinner,
but I couldn’t. That was coming on way too strong and I didn’t come on strong
anymore. Truthfully, I didn’t come on at all anymore.

Besides, she lived on my
floor.

But even with that rule
between us, I couldn’t help hoping she’d continue standing there talking to me,
at the very least to avoid going back into the room with Dawn.

“Well, if you need anything,”
I said, trying to ignore my pulse blasting in my neck.
Was I seriously so
rusty I couldn’t even come up with anything but a repeat of what I’d said to
everyone else?

Kate wasn’t just everyone
else, but there was no coming out and saying so without verging on stalker.

“Your door is always open
unless it’s closed,” she grinned mischievously.

“Terrible, right?” I winced.

“It’s not the worst thing
I’ve heard someone say on the first day,” she said, holding her smile as she
repeated the words I’d thrown her way in the bathroom earlier.

“Hilarious,” I said, my
pulse slowing to a manageable tempo. At least she wasn’t running away this time.

“It’s not like you told a
knock-knock joke or something which, considering you were talking about doors…”

“What am I, your great
uncle?”

“You don’t have to be old,” She
paused on the word, practically rolling it against her tongue like a sourball,
“to tell a knock-knock joke.”

“No,” I said, “you have to
be an asshole.”

She laughed, her whole face
brightened, her brown eyes shining. “Now that’s a good joke.”

“I’m here all night,” I said,
opening my hands wide. My body relaxed—the sound of her laughter was like a
salve.

“Until you’re not,” she
retorted.

We turned to the deafening noise
of a few of the guys on the floor skateboarding down the hallway and hooting.

“I’m pretty sure they are
breaking like three rules right now,” she said, indicating them with her chin.

I sighed, but didn’t stop
them. They were having fun. They weren’t hurting anybody, except maybe
themselves if they fell and broke something. “At least they aren’t naked.”

“Something you’ve seen
before?”

I nodded. “And hope to never
see again.”

“So naked is the stepping
over the line point?” she asked.

I couldn’t stop looking at
her lips. My knees almost gave out at the sound of her throaty voice around
that word. “If you’re a guy on my floor, absolutely.”

“What about a girl?” she asked.
Her skin was so dewy, so soft, and so female.

I hadn’t been this physically
close to someone so beautiful in years. I wanted to kiss her, make the plump
lips she bit at playfully waiting for my answer, mine.

“It’s not easy being an
authority figure,” I said; for a lot of reasons.

“I don’t know why the hell
you’d want to be; keeping people who are out on their own for the first time
following any kind of rules seems impossible.”

I had no choice. I had to be
an RA and keep my nose clean until I could finally leave this place and not be
the guy who stood and “watched” the night Jeanie Pratt was sexually assaulted.

Even though I hadn’t stood
and watched, I’d run away like a chicken and hadn’t done anything.

It didn’t matter how you considered
what I’d done, or hadn’t done. It was all bad.

“I’m more of a puppet regime
than anyone with real power,” I said.

“So you can call a floor
meeting, but you can’t make anyone come,” she said.

“I’ve made some people
come,” I replied, before I could stop the words.

What was this girl doing to
me?

We stood in uncomfortable
silence. Me watching those lips, the way her teeth made small indents in them,
her tongue wetting them. The way they seemed to be inviting me at the same time
they were pushing me away.

This was the place where I could
have asked her to dinner, could have said something to make her stay. But
keeping thoughts in my head was safe, acting on them was where things would get
complicated.

Especially once she found
out who I really was.

“I should probably get back
to wielding authority,” I said.

“We wouldn’t want anyone
getting naked on your watch,” she shrugged. “Or maybe you like to watch,” she
added as she walked out of the lounge.

My whole body exploded in goose
bumps. What kind of freshman talked that way? What kind of person talked that
way?

I liked it.

I wished her parents were
still alive so I could thank them for making someone like her.

Though, in some ways, Kate
was lucky not to have parents to deal with. I’d meant what I’d said about wishing
mine were dead sometimes. My father wanted the charges against me to go away, so
he paid off Jeanie’s family just like a bunch of other guys from the frat had.
He also paid off the college.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t
enough money in the world to bring me relief for what I didn’t have the balls
to stop my frat brothers from doing.

Was one hundred thousand
dollars enough to make what those guys had done to Jeanie okay? Or should the
ones who’d held her down, who’d put their hands over her mouth, be in jail?

Was living the last three
years as a monk enough justice for not having stopped them?

Was three years of loneliness
enough of a punishment to finally allow myself to touch someone like Kate?

Kate

The next morning I was up
early, headed to the shower before anyone else would be awake. My face might
have been young, but my body was aging. Sure, not in ways anyone would notice
unless they looked closely, but why give them the chance?

Why let them study me,
especially in the fluorescents of the dorm bathroom?

Even without unforgiving
lighting, I had the beginning of varicose veins, the jiggle in my thighs only
twenty-nine years of gravity can bring, and the whisper of cankles.

It was best to keep that
under wraps for as long as possible.

I also hoped to avoid the
inevitable bumping into Carter in a towel scenario for as long as possible.
Thinking about it was bad enough and, after last night at the floor meeting, it
was all I could think about.

I still couldn’t figure out
why he was getting to me the way he was. Why I was talking to him like we were
in some kind of college co-ed porno. Maybe it was because he’d been the one
person besides Dawn who had spoken to me for more than five minutes, and yet he
still hadn’t laughed me back to the city.

He believed I was nineteen,
and it was intoxicating. It changed me into a sultry, flirty freshman whenever
he was around.

I needed to do my best to
try to not have him around.

I’d skipped dinner last
night, deciding instead to read through the thick books I’d purchased with
Grandma’s stocks for my new Legal Studies life. Dawn didn’t go to dinner
either. But in her case I guessed it was because she didn’t eat anything that
wasn’t still breathing.

She did, however, continue
to listen to her suicidal music with earbuds, which I considered progress and
enough proof she would do her best not to kill me in my sleep.

I headed out into the cold
winter morning equipped with a travel mug of coffee and munching on a cereal
bar. I moved with the kind of purpose only a Hail Mary can create toward
Thompson Hall for my Civics class. Class one of twenty-five I would need to
complete my Legal Studies degree.

My time here had to be about
who I would become when I got out, not about enjoying myself while attending.
It was about leaving here with a degree instead of a swollen liver.  

Sure, by the time I
graduated and then graduated law school, I would be thirty-eight, but at least
I’d be doing something with those eight years. I’d have something to show when
I was through besides a crooked neck from answering the phone and carpal tunnel
from typing.

College-take-one had only
given me a wickedly high tolerance. College-take-two needed to bring me something
better than a dead-end desk job and an even deader-end relationship.

It needed to be my second
chance.

Attending class without a
hangover, hell, waking up sober, was a good start.

The snow crunched under my
feet as I continued across campus. It was fitting. Everything I was wearing
seemed to creak and crunch too because it was so new, bought for the part. A
few key designer pieces and the rest purchased at Forever 21.

Forever 19, was more like
it.

I wore black leggings and a
knee-length heather gray cable knit turtleneck sweater, with my new Uggs and
puffy purple North Face jacket. It was like I’d stepped out of
Seventeen
magazine minus the latent anorexia.

I thought about law school
and smiled easily, even with my mouth tight from the cold. Living the fantasy
of my new college career, I let myself imagine meeting a new man there.

I’d be able to admit my real
age by then. It wasn’t weird to go to law school as a thirty-four year old. What
I was doing now though, I thought, surveying the snowy, gray campus sprinkled
with students bundled up in brightly colored coats, was definitely weird.

Sure there were those movies
where the main character wishes they could be older or younger when they blow
out their birthday candles, or when they are in front of a fortune teller
machine, or while they are holding a possessed totem, and then magically
overnight they are, but I didn’t have time to wait for magic.

I had to make my own.

When I reached the lecture
hall, I tried to quiet my mind, slow my stampeding heart as I sat down at the
back of the auditorium. I hoped it was far enough away to avoid suspicion. Sure,
I’d made it into the dorm, somehow convinced Carter and Dawn, but this was my
first class. All I needed was the professor asking me where my AARP card was.

Or someone from the
administration barging in with my doctored transcripts and kicking my ass all
the way back to New York City.

I opened my laptop and sat
at attention, ready to learn, learn, and learn when Carter took the seat next
to me.

Was he following me?

I hadn’t counted on a
stalker, especially on day two, although, if there was anyone who I would want
to stalk me, I would definitely choose him. I couldn’t help but sniff the air
around him as he settled into his seat, filled with the sharpness of the type
of body spray they advertised on MTV.

I might have been trying to
avoid the inevitable bumping into him in his towel fresh from the shower, but
his scent made me picture it immediately: his sculpted upper body, the taut
lines of his stomach, and the damp towel around his waist covering the rest…

“Legal Studies too, huh?” he
thankfully asked before I could go any lower. A waft of freshly brushed
peppermint breath hit me.

“I thought you were a
senior?” Even as a freshman I would have understood he should not be in this
class. As an adult I definitely understood it.

“I failed some classes my freshman
year,” he explained. “I’m going back and making up the required classes this semester.”

“How stereotypical,” I said,
which I had every right to because it was basically what I was doing. Of
course, with a ten year gap instead of his three and the whole lying to
everyone thing.

He leaned in closer to me,
so close I sensed dampness coming off his hair. “Less than you think.”

“I’m not going to fail,” I
said, even though he wasn’t asking. I was trying to convince myself. My real freshman
year, I absolutely would have bombed this class. I mean, I failed
Rocks for
Jocks
back then. But not now; not this time.

“I wasn’t talking about you,”
he said, breathing out. “Things can happen you never plan on. That’s all.”

“Why, what happened?”

His eyes went dark, his skin
blanched white. He shook his head. His silence was suffocating.

“Never mind,” I said, trying
to cut through it.

“Sorry,” he sighed. “The
point is, I graduate at the end of this year or I pay my own way.” He paused. “I
guess that is kind of stereotypical, huh?”

I bit my lip. My picturing the
hot RA in his towel was, too, just like his smothering sweet attempts to help
the lost freshman girl—the lost freshman girl who he seemed to keep finding.

He leaned back in his chair.
“I’m working on being less predictable. For instance, I was probably the only
twenty-one-year-old in the world to have been sober on his birthday.”

“You’re only twenty-one?” I
asked before I could stop myself.
Only
—I was supposed to be younger than
him.

He stared at me for a minute
before answering, “Twenty-two.”

Like that made it better. Hot,
thoughtful, and sober, this guy was seriously too good to be true. Except for
the being-seven-years-younger-than-me part.

He squinted. “Twenty-two,
three months and four days. I’m a Libra, the scales. I guess that makes sense.”

“You’re telling me an awful
lot about yourself considering we met yesterday.”

Students starting filling in
the seats around us, but it was like we were alone in the lecture hall. Maybe
that was the real reason I couldn’t get Carter out of my mind—when I was with
him it was like I didn’t have to pretend, which, considering my whole life now
was fake, made absolutely no sense.

“You told me you lost your
parents before I even knew your name. I kind of figured I was safe telling you
my zodiac sign.”

He remembered my lie. Not
like it was an easy thing to forget. I guess now it needed to be my truth.

Crap, I needed to call my
mother.
Tell her I’d gotten to
Senegal with the Peace Corps in one piece and that the dam we were building for
the villagers was going super-duper.

Forget it—way too much lying.
I’d email her.

 “I don’t drink either,” I
said. It was my mantra now, but a few weeks ago my mantra was just that word,
drink,
drink, drink
. Even this morning it was hard to deny the gnawing need I knew
I would have for a glass of wine. Only one, after what I assumed would be the
longest day of my life.

“You’re not pre-law because
your parents died in a horrible accident and you want justice, right?” he
asked.

“I’m a college freshman,” I
said, hiding a smile, “not Batman.”

He shrugged, “I’m doing it
for justice.” He reached into his bag, took out his laptop and clicked it on.

I guess he wasn’t just some
cute guy who asked me to call him Chazz, or even just my RA; he was someone
with loftier goals than mine. He wanted justice for someone, for something. I wanted
a career where I didn’t have to keep getting people coffee and giving the guy I’d
been screwing more than coffee on his coffee breaks.

There was more, though. My lack
of a college degree had given me one and only one future—office bitch. There was
no escape. You could move up, down, and sideways but you could never get out.

No matter where I worked,
there was only so high I could ever go.

Especially when the guy I
had been sleeping with for the last year was also my boss and hated answering
his own phone almost as much as he liked my blow jobs.

Sure, I could have gone to
community college, or night school, but I wanted what I’d run away from at
eighteen. The real college experience, minus the booze. I appreciated the irony.

Carter put his book on his
desk. The cover was shiny, the spine straight, as if it was right off the
shelf.

 “I’ve already done this
week’s reading,” I said, like I was trying to prove something.

“Me too,” he said, “three
years ago.”

“But you bought a new book?”

“New class, new book,” he
shrugged.

My itchy sweater and cat ears
hat clearly illustrated I shared his beliefs.

Our professor walked down
the aisle to the front of the lecture hall. I took in broad shoulders, the perfect
amount of beard to make it sexy instead of scruffy, and cavernous brown eyes.

What was with this place and
all the hot guys?

As someone who watched
Grey’s
Anatomy
religiously when it was still cool, I couldn’t deny that my Civics
professor and, I noted, glancing at my schedule,
Faculty Advisor
,
was a dead ringer for Dr. McSteamy.

My chin seemingly fell into
my lap.

“All the girls do that,”
Carter whispered with a tilt to his head.

At least I’d kept my panting
internal. I closed my mouth quickly.

I glanced at my schedule again
and followed the asterisk next to
Faculty Advisor
at the bottom of the
page.
Faculty Advisors are available during office hours to their freshman
advisees for any questions or concerns they might have.

I definitely had some
questions and concerns.

He reached the front of the
hall and stood behind the podium. “I am Professor Greyson Parker. You can call
me Dr. Parker. If you get an A in this class, you can call me Greyson.”

Are you kidding, his name
was Greyson?

“No doubt you are here
because you want to attend law school,” he continued, “and in my class and
discussion sections I will do my best to prepare you, but you may also discover
the work load makes you want to choose another profession.”

I stared at my laptop, my neck
and chest as uncontrollably hot as a forest fire. 

Perfect. So far I had one
guy I couldn’t touch and one who would never touch me who I also couldn’t
touch.

“You may also consider
pairing up to study,” Professor Parker said. “Being a lawyer is not a solitary
endeavor, but a team sport. You might as well get used to working well with
others now.”

“What do you think?” Carter
whispered. “It would be convenient being on the same floor.”

“No thanks,” I whispered
back. Even though, having worked at a law firm, I knew Professor Parker was
right. But Carter and I already had enough connecting us. It was hard enough to
keep him out of my head. I didn’t need to “work well” with him, too.

“I’m smarter than I look,”
he said.

“You failed this class.” Better
for him to believe that was why I was saying no.