Again (6 page)

Kate

It was finally Friday. I’d
survived a whole week following my rules and not getting kicked out for being
closer to middle age than teenager. I was even comfortable enough to go to the
Student Financial Services office and fill out the application paperwork
necessary to try for the scholarship I’d specifically chosen Hudson for. If I
was accepted, I’d be able to carry on my charade for at least another year.

Without even the slightest
apprehension, I signed my name and handed over my doctored transcripts to lie
about something I wanted yet again.

I had a cautious contentment
about things when I stepped out of the dorm elevator and headed toward my room
to lock myself inside all weekend. That is, until I found the girls with
insanely shiny brown hair and white teeth who had come to the floor meeting
drunk splayed out in the hallway. They were drinking vodka straight from the
bottle and laughing.

Oh sweet nectar.

I glanced down the hall
hoping for the first time since class on Monday to find Carter so he could
confiscate their bottle, get them the hell out of the hallway, and out of my
line of sight, but he was nowhere to be found.

I guess that was what I got
for not admitting I’d actually been hoping to see him all week long.

I headed toward my door
trying to ignore the girls and the bottle they held so casually. I’d made it a
week as a freshman without having one drink. That had been easy considering
alcohol hadn’t literally been blocking my way—so close it could trip me.

Every muscle tensed, my skin
seemed to scream as I fumbled with my key. It was slipping in my cold, sweaty
fingers.

I could say I didn’t want to
drink all day long, but my body knew different. My body knew saying
no
was never enough.

 “Hey,” one the girls slurred
as she stood.

“We locked ourselves out,”
the one still splayed on the floor added. I guess she figured the one standing
was talked out.

Crap.

“Can we hang in your room
till maintenance gets here?” the standing one said.

I guessed these girls shared
the same brain. Inspecting them it was obvious they also shared the same
body—long, lean, and athletic, the kind of girls who, in high school, would
have made Dawn’s life hell.

She would not want them in
our room.
I
didn’t want them in our room.

Fuck.

“Um,” I said, searching the college-take-two
part of my brain for an excuse. “My roommate wouldn’t like it,” I tried. That
was safe.
Not my fault you can’t come in my room with your bottle of stupid,
delicious vodka.

“You mean Twilight,” the one
sitting on the floor said, laughing.

“Yes, Dawn,” I corrected.
Twilight,
funny, but also mean; not like Dawn had probably been anything but to these
pink-bubble-gum girls.

“Is she home?” the standing
one asked. She was so drunk she was swaying.

“She means in her coffin,” the
sitting one said, bending at the waist with laughter.

“Not yet,” I said, deciding
to ignore the coffin comment, because she could have had one under her bed.
It’s not like I’d checked.

“Then what’s the problem?”
the standing one asked.

I froze, desperate for a
response to keep the crystal clear bottle of everything I needed to stay away
from outside my locked door. I came up empty. There was no fighting drunk logic.

Being drunk was like being a
zombie with a need for alcohol instead of brains, or whatever your mind decided
it wanted. Right now, these girls wanted in my room.

“Fine,” I agreed, “but when
Dawn gets back, you have to leave.”

“Not a problem,” the sitting
one said.

Her compatriot nodded
seriously, or as seriously as you can when you’re wasted off your ass.

They stumbled into the room
behind me and threw themselves on my bed in a fit of giggles. These girls were
like I had been back in college-take-one. Fun came before studying, friendship
and partying before grades.

I envied them. I coveted
what they had, the freedom of only needing to know where the next drink was
coming from.

The sad thing was that I
lived in that artificial abandon only a month ago. Would probably still be if
David hadn’t dumped and fired me.

My head started to pound,
the sweat slicking my hands seemed to slide up my arms to my neck, dripping
into my cleavage. I glanced from one of them to the other—living, breathing
proof why I was so lucky to have a roommate like Dawn.

Thank goodness for Twilight.

“I’m Steph,” the one who’d
been standing said.

“Alex,” the other one added.

“Kate,” I replied.

“Can I borrow those
sometime?” Steph asked, pointing to my Uggs. My college-age camouflage was
still working, even in such close proximity. Though boots to make me look nineteen
when I was really twenty-nine were definitely not what my grandmother had in
mind when she bought shares of Microsoft.

“Sure.” I figured I might
need to borrow something from her someday. It wasn’t like I wanted to wear
anything of Dawn’s.

There was a chance it would
bite me.

I sat cross-legged on the
floor in front of them.

“How’d you get stuck with
the Princess of Darkness?” Alex asked, nodding her chin toward her bed.

“We both needed a roommate.”

“She needs a warden.” Steph
took a long swig from the bottle and shoved it in my direction. “Want some?”

“No, I’m cool,” I said,
biting my lip so hard I could taste blood for how badly I did. If I were in AA,
I would have gotten my month sober chip at the end of this weekend.

A month, it was an
accomplishment, but I wondered if it really was when your whole life was a lie.

“What are you, a straight-edge-weirdo
like your roommate?” Steph asked.

Sullen, angry,
and
a
straight-edge Dawn
was
the perfect roommate for college-take-two. I just
had to make sure I stayed away from people like Steph and Alex for the next four
years. Unfortunately they encompassed 99.9% of the students here, and they were
in what was supposed to be my sanctuary, shoving liquor at me.

Why did I keep tempting
myself to break my rules?

Or had I forgotten college
was all about temptation?

“No, I don’t like vodka,” I
lied. I liked it fine. I liked anything that got me drunk. Sure, my preferred
poison was always Riesling, but if someone else was buying I’d drink moonshine,
or fucking Scope.

“Me neither, I drink it like
this,” Alex said holding her nose. It was adorably pink when she let go of it.

“You could drink something
else,” I offered.

They both laughed.

“Vodka has the least
calories,” Steph said as if she was explaining the secrets of the universe.

I nodded. It didn’t, but why
bother correcting her? Why waste the breath to tell them that drinking half a
bottle of vodka was fun and cute now, but sad and pathetic later?

That
I
was what
happened when the party never ended.

Alex peered at Dawn’s side
of the room and shivered. “It’s like half your room is haunted.”

“By Marilyn Manson,” Steph
laughed.

“Give her a break, guys.”

“Why would you want to?
Isn’t she like the roommate from hell?” Alex asked.

“Well,” I said, my brain
blinking to life as I crafted a lie, “the girl I roomed with at my last school
was a Mormon.”

“What’s so bad about that?”
Steph asked.

“At least they’re nice,”
Alex said.

“Yeah, but have you shared a
bathroom with someone who has to wear their special underwear? It was always
hanging on the shower rod, trying to convert me.”

They both snort-laughed, and
fell into each other.

“You’re funny,” Alex said.

“What school did you go to before?”
Steph asked.

Fuck. Think, Kate, think.
“I don’t really like to talk about it.”

They glanced at each other
then back at me. A mysterious past was perfect. Whatever people concocted in
their heads was way worse than anything I could tell them, even though my real
freshman year had been pretty bad.

A blur of drunken nights, hung
over days and as many guys as I could sleep with in between.

It would definitely be
easier,
smarter
, to go with the partial truth that I transferred because
I had “problems” at my last school. Why not use the real history that usually
filled me with shame? No one would wonder why I wasn’t drinking, with my past.

I swallowed. My throat was
as dry as dust. It was getting harder and harder to convince myself not to drink;
I needed to at least be able to convince other people.

“You should come with us to
a party tomorrow,” Alex said.

“I don’t know,” I hesitated.
“I’m kind of trying to last longer than a semester here.”

“We’ll keep you out of
trouble,” Steph said.

Though I doubted it, I couldn’t
help but think about the weekend ahead. I could either spend it stuck in my
room with Dawn shooting looks of death in my direction while she scribbled in
her sketch book, continuing to avoid Carter even though I didn’t really want to
avoid him, or out with Steph and Alex enjoying college-take-two.

Wasn’t that the whole reason
I’d gone back to school and pretended to be a freshman, so I could have the
real college experience?

 I could go to a party and
not drink.

Couldn’t I?

Carter

I was on my way to the
library Saturday night when I found Kate waiting in the dorm hallway in front
of her room. I hadn’t been avoiding her, but I guess steering clear had been
easier than admitting I wanted to see her. Her blond hair was in ringlet curls
as shiny as ribbon candy, her brown eyes were lined with sparkly blue. She wore
a tight white sweater and held her coat.

She was beautiful and if I
wasn’t her RA and on my way to the library I might have told her so.

“Decided to come with me to
the library after all?” I finally asked, even though she was not dressed for me
or the library. It was better than letting her know she was making it hard for
me to walk straight, to even talk straight.

“You go to the library on
Saturday nights too?”

I nodded, trying to ignore
how lame her question made me seem. “Every night at seven.” Who was I kidding? It
was
lame, but it also kept me on track.

“I guess you’re going to
pass Professor Parker’s class this time around.”

“That’s the plan,” I said.
“You look nice,” I added quickly, the words bubbling out before I could stop
them, honestly it was the least of what I thought about how she looked.

“I’m going to a party,” she
said, avoiding my eyes like she was guilty. I couldn’t tell if it was because
she was going or that now I knew about it.

I also could have been projecting.
Absorbed in my own guilt that I couldn’t be that kind of guy anymore—someone
who could go to parties and not be stared down like a criminal the entire time.
Or worse, feel like an asshole for even pretending it was okay to celebrate
anything.

I also couldn’t deny a distressing
worry starting like a pain in my lungs. I knew what happened at parties. I knew
what had happened at one party.

“Where at?” I asked, working
on steadying my breathing.

She shrugged, “Alex and
Steph are taking me.”

The back of my neck prickled—an
itch with no scratch.
She was hanging out with Alex and Steph?
Aside
from what could happen at the party, it was probably a matter of two beers
before they revealed who I really was, what I really was. Before I could no
longer walk up and talk to Kate and feel totally stupid about everything I said
like any other fumbling guy, before she saw what everyone else on campus saw.

I guess I should have taken
Tristan’s advice and asked her out sooner.

“I didn’t know you were
friends with them,” I said. The words felt black.

“I met them yesterday.”

Why was I surprised? Alex
and Steph probably liked what I did about Kate—her humor, her spirit, the way
she didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her. The difference was they
didn’t have anything to hide.

“First party of the
semester,” I said, leaning against the wall, trying to seem casual, even though
my pulse batted against my jugular. “Keep your wits about you.”

“Where else would I keep
them?” she asked, her lips tipped up.

The glow of her smile hit me
right in the center of my chest.

“Funny,” I said, trying to
smile back, “but you get a few drinks in you…” I stopped.

What was I doing? I wasn’t
her father. I wasn’t even her boyfriend. I was just some guy who wanted to make
sure she was okay.

Maybe it was because I could
sense she was trying her best to make sure of that too. She exuded confidence,
but I could tell it was covering something else.

I knew all about pretending
things were okay when they were anything but.

“I told you,” she said,
focusing on my eyes so intently hers started watering, “I don’t drink.”

“I know,” I said. I did, but
that could quickly change. If the night with Jeanie taught me anything, it was that
bad things happened when alcohol was around.

“You don’t believe me,” she
sighed.

“It’s not my job to believe
you.”

“What is your job again?”
she asked, putting her finger on her chin. Her lips spilled into a sensuous
smile.

It made me consider screwing
my job and my secrets altogether and kissing her senseless right there in the
hallway. Kiss her so hard she forgot about the party. Kiss her so hard whatever
Alex and Steph might tell her about me wouldn’t matter.

“Please be careful,” I said.
If
I
wanted to do those things to her, imagine what any other guy who
didn’t have his past stopping him would want to do.

“I’ll be with Steph and
Alex.”

“Like I said,” I replied.
But was I more worried about what Steph and Alex would tell her or who she
might become with Steph and Alex?

 “Hey, they’re your students,
Mr. RA, do something about it,” she said, her face turning red in a way that
seemed so not like her. Not that I even knew her well enough to think so. Maybe
I just hoped to.

Besides, I couldn’t do
anything about it. I couldn’t stop them and I couldn’t stop her.

I had no right to try.  

Tristan had said I should
let her into my compartmentalized life, but this was not what he’d meant.

“Okay then,” I said, forcing
myself to head toward the elevator. “Have a good night.”

“That’s it?”

“What else should I say?” I
asked, thunder in my ears.

“Why are you mad?” Her face
was a mask of confusion.

“I’m not. Have fun,” I said,
continuing toward the elevator and trying to keep my stomach level. I was
definitely something, but it wasn’t mad.

I wanted to pause this
moment. Beautiful Kate, shining like a snowflake in the hallway while I was
just her annoying RA, instead of whatever I might become after Alex and Steph
got ahold of her.