Easy (18 page)

I glanced behind
us as we set the table, relieved that no one else was within earshot. “No.”

He followed behind
me, placing forks on top of the napkins I’d folded. “Too bad for him.”

My eyes widened a
bit at this, and when I looked at him, he smirked. “What? Anyone can see you’re
too good for him. So why are you here?”

“Um, thanks. And my
parents went to Breckenridge.”

He recoiled,
astonished. “Fuck, are you serious? And I thought
my
parents were the
biggest assholes in this town.”

I couldn’t help
but grin, though I curbed it as much as possible. Carter had always seemed
unmanageable and emotional next to the rest of his logical, coolheaded family. I’d
never considered what an outsider he must have felt like with them—the
impetuous middle child between Kennedy and his little sister, Reagan, who gave
the impression that she’d been born a thirty-year-old accountant.

“Language,
Carter,” Kennedy said, rounding the corner.

“Fuck off,
Kennedy.” Carter retorted, not missing a beat.

Fully containing
my reaction was impossible. My jaw was like rock in the attempt, but a small
snort escaped, which earned a big, full-wattage grin from Carter. He winked at
me before scooting off to the kitchen to help his mother. I blinked, imagining
that the poor girls at my former high school must collapse against the lockers
when he sauntered past.

Kennedy was
scowling.

“What happened to
‘he’s not my kid’?” I asked, placing the last spoon before turning to him. “It’s
okay to berate him for dropping the F-bomb, but you wash your hands of helping
him kick an alleged drug problem?” I was definitely asking for it. Debating
with Kennedy was unwinnable.

He inclined his
head. “Good point.”

I blinked again,
thinking that the Moore boys were going to shock me to death by the time I left
town.

Grant and Bev
Moore were as oblivious as Kennedy had promised. They didn’t seem to detect the
strained air between their son and me in the four hours I spent with them, or
the absence of our usual PDA. He didn’t sling an arm across the back of my
chair during the meal, and though he pushed my chair in when I sat—as he’d been
raised to do—he didn’t kiss my cheek or take  my hand. When Reagan narrowed her
sharp thirteen-year-old eyes on us, I pretended not to notice her scrutiny.
Carter, of course, leered and flirted with me outrageously, trying to make me
laugh and piss his brother off. He succeeded on both counts while their parents
discerned nothing.

Not touching
except for the press of his leg against mine, Kennedy and I sat side-by-side
through a football game on the wall-sized flatscreen that made Carter so
furious he stood up and cursed at the screen a couple of times, for which his
entire family—all four of them—calmly rebuked him. The second time, he stomped
from the room and was gone for several minutes. From the way he flexed his hand
when he returned, I got the feeling he went to his bedroom and hit something.

As soon as Kennedy
pulled into my driveway to drop me off, I hopped out of the car, thanking him
for inviting me and making it clear that I was going inside alone. He smiled
tightly. “We should hang out Saturday. I’ll give you a call.” Thankfully, he
made no move to exit the car.

As though he’d not
suggested anything, I thanked him again and said goodbye. Once inside, I
watched him from a curtained window. He stared pensively at the closed front
door for a minute before pulling out his phone and calling someone as he backed
out of the drive.

***

After making Friday night plans
with Dahlia and Jillian, I practiced my bass in the living room until the
timer-set lamp clicked off just before 11 pm. Chuckling into the darkness, I
propped my instrument against the wall by feel, and placed the bow on a shelf
of a nearby bookcase. My phone lit up on the plant stand, signaling a message,
and I stood in the dark, reading and answering.

Lucas:  When will you be back on campus?

Me:  Probably Sunday. You?

Lucas:  Saturday.

Me:  Family drama?

Lucas:  No. My ride needs to go back then.

Lucas:  Let me know if you’re back early. I want to see you.

Lucas:  I need to sketch you again.

Me:  Oh?

Lucas:  I’ve done a couple from memory but they aren’t the same.

Lucas:  Can’t quite get the shape of your jaw. The line of your neck.

Lucas:  And your lips. I need to spend more time staring at them and less time tasting them.

Me:  I can’t say I agree with that notion.

Lucas:  More of both, then. Text me when you get back.

Okay, so sleeping was out.

I reread the text
while stealthy recollections of his lips on mine curled through me, igniting
small flames of desire that grew and fused as my memories of Saturday night replayed
in graphic detail. Standing in the dark, I closed my eyes.

I should be fuming
or at least distrustful where Lucas/Landon was concerned, but having tried to
work up some outrage over his sin of omission, I simply couldn’t. I reasoned
that I was on resentment overload between Kennedy and Buck, and in comparison,
Lucas seemed more a riddle than a risk. My plan for him, after all, had been to
use him as a rebound,
Operation Bad Boy Phase
, and it wasn’t like I’d
been fully forthcoming about
that
.

Attempting to get
a handle on my volatile musings, I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge
and walked upstairs to my bedroom, the only room still lit in the whole house.

When I checked my
email, I saw there was one from LMaxfield amidst the credit offers and listserv
info, and my heart rate jumped. He’d sent it this afternoon, hours before our
text exchange. Away from school, I was beginning to connect my tutor with Lucas—the
Lucas who spoke to me from behind this Landon alias. I wanted to know why, but
I didn’t want to ask—I wanted him to tell me.

Jacqueline,

I discovered that the Bait & Tackle has added coffee and wifi, along with a
new name promoting these innovative features. Joe (the proprietor) didn’t bother
to make up a whole new sign—he just affixed a whitewashed board to the ancient
original. Now the hand-painted sign(s) read(s): Bait & Tackle & Coffee,
and under “Coffee” it says “& wifi.”

They have three tiny tables and a couple of lumpy, floral overstuffed chairs—like a Starbucks,
if it had been decorated with yard sale furniture from someone’s grandmother.
It’s the only place in town that’s open today, so it’s packed. The coffee’s
actually not horrible, but that’s the best recommendation I can honestly give
it. And predictably, the whole place smells like fish, which sort of detracts
from the intended bistro ambiance.

Did your day go as planned?

You’re locking and alarming your house every night, right? I don’t mean to be
insulting, but you said you were going to be home alone.

LM

Landon,

Yes, I’m amply skilled in locking up at night. The state-of-the-art alarm system is fully
engaged. (And I’m not insulted. I appreciate the concern.)

I spent the day at my ex’s. His parents have no idea we’re broken up—he never
told them, for some reason. It was awkward. I don’t know why I let him talk me
into going. He wants to see me Saturday to “talk.” I may go back to campus early.
I haven’t decided yet.

I’m seeing friends tomorrow, so that should be more fun.

What about your family? What did you do?

JW

I couldn’t be sure
when he’d get my answer, since he’d need the Bait & Tackle & Coffee’s wifi
to sign on. After a restless night—one that crawled by, leaving me more
exhausted than I started—I made coffee and signed into to my school email. Unsurprisingly,
there was nothing new from LMaxfield in my inbox. I thought about texting
Lucas, but what would I say? That I’d tossed and turned all night, thinking of
his hands on me?

Chapter 15

When I stopped for gas halfway back
to campus, I sent Kennedy a text telling him I’d decided to go back early.

My phone rang
before I even pulled back onto the interstate. Kennedy. I took a deep breath
and switched off the stereo before answering.

“You’ve already
left? I thought you were leaving tomorrow. I thought we were going to talk
tonight.”

I sighed, wanting
to bang my head on the steering wheel, which wasn’t the best idea while driving
seventy miles an hour. “I don’t understand what it is you want to talk about,
Kennedy.” I wondered if he’d been blind to how many times I’d been ready and
willing to talk, and the multitude of chances he’d carelessly ignored.

“I think I made a
mistake, Jackie.” Misinterpreting my stunned silence, he added, “I mean
Jacqueline. Sorry, I think that’s going to take me a while—”

“What do you mean,
you made a mistake?”

“Us. Breaking up.”

I was silent
again, the words sticking as I tried to take them in, gulp them down. I’d
avoided campus gossip as much as possible, but I’d heard and seen enough to
know that Kennedy had been no saint in the weeks we’d spent apart. He’d also
had no shortage of willing participants. But girls willing to share your bed
don’t equal girls willing to put up with your random crap moods, listen to your
exhaustive legal opinions, or support your life’s goals the way someone who
loves you would. No—that had been my role. And I’d been dismissed from it.

“Why?”

He sighed and I
imagined what I knew he was doing—staring up at the ceiling, combing his hair
back from his forehead and leaving his hand there, elbow bent. He couldn’t hide
habitual mannerisms from me, even on the phone. “Why did I make a mistake, or
why do I think it was a mistake?” I knew, too, that answering a question with a
question was his way of buying time while he reasoned his way out of a problematic
situation. “This conversation would have been easier in person—”

“We were together
almost three
years
, and you just broke up with me—without even—there
wasn’t—” I was sputtering. I stopped and took a deep breath. “Maybe it wasn’t a
mistake.”

 “How can you say
that?” He had the nerve to sound hurt.

“Oh, I don’t
know,” I snapped. “Maybe the same way you so easily broke it off in the first
place.”

“Jackie—”

My teeth ground
together. “Don’t. Call. Me.
That
.”

He was silent, and
all I heard was road noise as my truck ate the miles of nothing between the
last town and the next. Most of the fields on either side of the road were inactive,
given the time of year, but a huge green picker was making its way through one
cotton field, and I stared at it. No matter what happened to any individual
person, life was going on elsewhere. The first time Kennedy kissed me, it stood
to reason that at the same time, other people were splitting up. And the night
Kennedy broke my heart, somewhere—maybe right there in my dorm, other people were
falling in love.

“Jacqueline. I
don’t know what you want me to say.”

In a matter of
seconds, I’d passed through a town that boasted a sizable outlet mall and
little else. Every mile took me farther from Kennedy. Closer to Lucas. I was
unsettled by the notion that Lucas was someone to go
to
, before
realizing that he’d been that safety zone for me from the moment we met.

“Nothing,” I
replied. “I don’t want you to say anything.”

My ex had the sense
to know when he’d reached a deadlock. He thanked me for coming Thursday and
said he’d be in touch once he got back to campus, which I didn’t acknowledge.

***

Jacqueline,

It sounds like he wants you back, or at least, he wants something more than
friendship. The question is, what do
you
want?

My
family is just my dad and me. We had old friends over for Thanksgiving Day, so
he was more conversational than he would have been otherwise. When it’s just
the two of us in that house, we tend to go hours without speaking. If you don’t
count “excuse me” and “pass the salt” sorts of things, the silence can
encompass whole days.

Dad
owns a charter fishing boat. Not much going on this time of year in the bay,
though he arranges deep-sea fishing trips or native bird-watching tours over
the winter. He’d scheduled one for today, so we said our goodbyes at 5am, and
here I am, back at my place just after noon.

LM

Lucas was ten minutes from me. I
wrestled with the urge to text him and tell him I was back, too. I knew I
wouldn’t win this battle for long.

I unpacked and did
laundry. The machines on our floor were easy-access while there were so few of
us back, but that wouldn’t be the case tomorrow, when everyone returned. I’d
been choosing laundry times that didn’t require me to go up or down. Avoiding
the stairwell altogether had become one of my quirks. I wouldn’t go into it at
all, even in a group. My subterfuge worked with everyone but Erin, who eyed me
closely the second time I used, “I forgot something in my room—I’ll meet you
downstairs.”

One night, she
asked me outright, “You’re afraid to go into the stairwell, aren’t you?”

I was painting my
toenails blood red, and I stared at the tiny brush and tried to keep my hand
from shaking.
Start at the cuticle, sweep up. Start at the cuticle, sweep up
.
“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yes,” she
answered.

The next time, it
was Erin saying, “Oh crap, I left my purse in my room. J, come let me in, would
ya?” Turning to the others, she said, “Hey, we’ll meet y’all downstairs in
five.”

Me:  I’m back.

Lucas:  I didn’t think you were coming back until tomorrow.

Me:  I changed my mind.

Lucas:  So I see. Free tonight?