Finding Dell (23 page)

Cold winter sunlight lanced through the window and highlighted Natalie’s strong cheekbones. She tugged on her long brown hair, twirling the ends through her fingers as she paced the room, leaving footprints in Ruby’s plush carpet square. Ruby stroked my hair and I let out little uneven gasps as I tried to catch my breath post-cry.

“Yoga classes,” Natalie said finally. “At Conrad Gym every Wednesday. And sometimes, on weekends, I’d like to go to the movie theater on the Pass with you instead of a party. You’ll need to remember Jesse’s name. That’s a big one. And just . . . just ask me how my day is instead of only telling me about yours.”

Natalie no longer avoided eye contact; her brown eyes were earnest. I nodded slowly at first, then faster.

“I can do all of those things,” I murmured.

Ruby clapped and whooped in delight. “Quick, sign the lease before you miss a yoga class and you two get in another fight.” She plucked a pen from her desk and handed me the papers.

Natalie and I both laughed, and I felt the months of forced stubbornness with her begin to melt away.

Later that afternoon, Ruby and Natalie wanted to walk to Cherry Court to see the apartment we’d rent. Instead, I decided I needed to talk to Dean. I knew I could trust him to give me an honest, raw answer about what to do with the mess I’d created.

Stepping cautiously across the slick sidewalk, I was reminded of how carefully Alex had held my elbow to guide me through the sheets of sleet outside the Brass House Theater. I kept my head bowed to my chest and pulled the hood of my coat lower over my eyes. I passed Alex’s apartment building and kept walking. I could see a faint glow of light through the living room curtains and I was happy that they were closed. I didn’t think I could bear to see Alex at this moment. When I pictured him alone in his apartment I wanted to cuddle with him on the couch. Then Cam’s face edged into my memory and I remembered I already had a boyfriend, and he was not Alex Connor.

I walked up the steps onto the rickety porch and opened the door without knocking. I entered with a burst of cold air.

Dean was lying on the couch. He smiled when I entered and propped himself to an elbow.

“Hewitt! To what do I owe this unannounced visit?”

I plopped down in a rattan chair brought in from the porch and sighed. I surveyed the room. It looked so different in daylight hours, outside of a party. Two walls of the living room were covered in scrawling signatures, Sharpie-made autographs of past partiers covered half the room from floor to ceiling, bearing inside jokes, names, and dates.

“I’ve got a problem. I did something I shouldn’t have. Can we talk?”

Dean’s eyes opened a little wider and he sat up fully. “Of course. What’s going on?”

“I . . . I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to jump right in. I cheated on Cam over the weekend. Here’s the thing, though—I don’t feel bad about it. I feel scared that he’s going to find out, and I don’t want to have to explain myself to him. But I don’t feel guilty for kissing someone else. That’s bad.”

“You don’t feel bad at all?”

“Not really. I feel worse about what people are going to say about me when they find out. And they’ve already started to find out. Natalie and I had a huge fight about it, and now Ruby knows, too.” I sighed. “Everyone in this town talks, and our circle of friends isn’t that big.”

“That’s true.” Dean lowered the volume on the TV. “I thought you might come by. I heard from the, uh, other party involved that something happened, but he didn’t know you had a boyfriend. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him.”

“What did he say?”

“The usual.”

A frown deepened the creases in my forehead. I knew I was hurting Cam, but I didn’t realize I might hurt Alex, too.

I glanced at the TV, momentarily distracted. It was tuned to a program about jellyfish. I was mesmerized by their soothing aquatic dance for a moment before I turned back to Dean.

“Let’s set the other person aside for a second. Here’s the real problem: if I knew Cam wouldn’t find out, then I don’t feel bad about what I did. But that means I probably don’t care about him the way I should, and it’s not fair to him to stay in the relationship.”

“So you’re considering breaking up with him because
you
cheated on
him
?” Dean asked incredulously.

I paused for a long moment and looked at Dean to gauge his reaction. “I guess I thought since he tried so hard to win me over, we’d never break up unless I did it. He was so, like, in love with me last semester. He’s a sure thing. Am I trying to test him or something? See how much he really cares about me? Like, if he will stay with me after I cheat on him, he’ll withstand anything and I can do whatever I want in this relationship?”

“Whoa, you’re starting to sound really self-absorbed, Hewitt.
I think you should wait it out. Don’t tell anyone and no one will know. I won’t say anything, not to Alex or anyone else. Ruby won’t betray you. Even Natalie will keep quiet. Then Cam won’t know, and you can pretend the whole thing never happened.”

“But it did happen,” I whined.

“Is it going to happen again?”

I stared into Dean’s eyes and averted my gaze back to the jellyfish gyrating on the glowing screen.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I whispered.

We were silent for a few long minutes, pretending to be interested in the program. Finally, Dean broke the silence.

“Maybe you are trying to see how far you can push him, after all.”

Tears welled up in my eyes and I shifted in my seat. Having sat on the porch for months, the rattan chair had started to lose its weaving. Sharp pieces were jutting out from the base in uncomfortable places.

“I can’t keep failing at relationships. The others, those might not have been my fault, but if this relationship fails I’m the only one to blame. I can’t lose another boyfriend,” I said as hot tears ran down my face.

“Then don’t tell him, or anyone else. But don’t cheat on him again. If it’s a one-time thing and he finds out, you can talk about it, explain yourself and stick it out. But if it is a frequent thing, then it’s all over. Then you’re just a selfish bitch,” Dean said matter-of-factly.

I brushed the tears from my face with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. Dean’s words were hauntingly similar to Natalie’s; it wasn’t a coincidence, it was a trend.

“You’re right. I won’t do it again, but I should feel worse. I probably don’t care about him like I’m supposed to. If I did, then this wouldn’t have happened.”

“So maybe he isn’t ‘the one.’ Who says he has to be?”

I ran my fingers through my hair. “What’s the point of dating if I don’t even like the guy all that much?”

“The point is to learn what it is that you don’t like so you try to make things a little better for next time. And then the next time after that. And then after a while of figuring out what you don’t like, you finally find the person you really click with.”

I laughed weakly and wiped away the last of my tears. “When did you get so wise, Dean?”

“Hey, I’m a smart guy! Look at me here, watching the Nature Channel!” He gestured to the TV. “I might get dumb at the bar on the weekends, but I can still bust out something intelligent now and then.”

I shifted out the rattan chair and got up to give Dean a hug.

CHAPTER 25

CAM’S CAR IDLED
at the crosswalk as we waited for a pair of students to cross near Potter Hall. In an attempt to restore normalcy, if only in my head, I asked Cam to drive me to the communications building, where we both had class.

Noting my shivering limbs and puffs of visible breath, Cam turned the heat up another notch and the car’s dashboard trembled.

“One of these days I’m going to get the heat fixed,” Cam said, eyeing the dash suspiciously as we waited for the trudging walk of the students.

“That would have been a good idea before winter,” I teased.

Cam bristled. “I only work part-time at the bike store,” he said quietly. “Money’s tight for me right now, okay?”

“I didn’t mean it like that, or like anything,” I said uneasily.

Cam hit the gas a little too fast once the students passed and we lurched through the crosswalk.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. Just a few short weeks ago he’d hold my hand and steer the car with his left.

Sensing my gaze, Cam glanced at me quickly. For a moment, he seemed to soften. Maybe it was a memory of our first kiss in the heady night-blooming jasmine bushes outside Palomino Hall, or the way the wind whipped our hair in front of our eyes at the top of the water tower surrounded by giant trees. His brown eyes crinkled at the edges and his white-knuckled hand dropped from the steering wheel to take mine.

“I know I haven’t been the best lately, Dell,” he said. “I should have taken you to that concert. I didn’t think I could afford it, but it was important to you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I mumbled.

“I’m sorry. But I’ll try harder. Let’s do something fun after class. Bowling in the Student Union, maybe.”

Before he turned back to the street, his eyes were earnest once again; they lost their steely edge that had masked them over the last few weeks. He was offering us a chance to start over. To my surprise, the doubt that I’d been feeling about him flamed up from my stomach stronger than the guilt over cheating on him.

I slid my hand from under his and stuffed it in my coat pocket.

“I can’t. I have to meet with my professor about a design contest I’m planning to enter.”

He didn’t ask about the contest, and I didn’t suggest another time to go bowling. At that moment I knew it was what went unspoken that meant the most to us both.

On Friday morning, I sat in my typography class with Professor Reese and tried to concentrate on letterforms and spacing. But it was hard to think about spatial balance when I had so many thoughts swirling through my head.

Eventually, I closed the book and waited for Professor Reese
to dismiss class so I could go to the library and learn the concept all over again.

But even now, the chapter on legibility and readability of typography swam before my eyes. I ran my fingers through my hair and looked up from my textbook. The fourth floor of Beaumont Library was quiet except for the hushed shuffling of people in the stacks as they searched for books. The university had received a grant for a library renovation a few years ago, so there was always a floor under construction. The fourth floor hadn’t been updated yet, and it still housed outdated chairs and sofas upholstered in muted mauves.

“Well, shut my mouth. Dell Hewitt! Can I sit here?”

Helen’s pale pink purse spilled across the table, knocking into my open notebook as she took a seat across from me.

“I’m having a heck of a time in my sociolinguistics class,” she whispered loudly. “Has Ruby said anything to you about it?”

I shook my head and closed my textbook. “I’m glad you’re here. I can’t concentrate on this chapter anyway.”

“It’s inhumane to have class on Fridays. How do they expect us to pay attention? Do you always come here at this time?”

I nodded. “Always by the art history books, every Friday afternoon.”

“Good to know,” Helen said. She thumbed through her textbook and opened it to a page filled with neon pink highlighting. “We are just two peas in a pod coming to the library at the same time this afternoon. Bernie would have said there was a karmic force behind it, or some gibberish.”

“Or just coincidence,” I laughed. “I’m still trying to get used to the idea that Bernie left. Sometimes, it seems as if no one even notices she’s gone.”

“I only knew her for a few months, but I was more surprised when she would actually go to class than when she told me she
was leaving. This is never where she was meant to be.” Helen twirled a pen in her bad hand thoughtfully. “But she was friends with that guy from her old dorm, Cameron Finn. Don’t you know him? He must understand how you feel, at least a little.”

A sharp exhale of breath escaped me.

“Yes, I know him. He’s my boyfriend.”

Helen’s eyes widened and she whooped loudly. A few people glanced over to our table with irritated looks. She clamped her hand over her mouth and gave the others around us a sheepish look.

“Since when? How did I not know?” she demanded.

“We’ve been together a month now, since winter break.” I paused. “Anyway, I don’t know how much longer we’ll be dating.”

“Why? You’ve barely been together. I haven’t even seen him in Paso Fino.”

I told her that I suspected that Cam had been pulling away from me. “We barely speak, and when we do, every word is so tense it gives me a stomachache.”

Helen chewed on the end of her pen. “Dell, you haven’t even been dating long enough to know what’s normal with him,” she said. “Give it time. Every dog has a few fleas.”

She saw my puzzled expression and laughed. “No one’s perfect.”

I smiled. My phone vibrated with a hollow shake on the table, but I didn’t pick it up to check the message.

“That you have a boyfriend is news to me. Here I thought you weren’t over Will Easton yet.”

“What do you know about Will?” I asked as I racked my brain trying to think of when I would have talked about him to Helen. At the start of school, she didn’t even know what he looked like to distinguish him from Alex.

“I see him sometimes.”

“You see him, or you’re
seeing
him?” I asked sharply.

“Oh, gosh, nothing like that. Dell, I’d never. We have a mutual friend. And he doesn’t know that you’re dating anyone, or I would have known.”

I leaned forward. “Why? Does he talk about me?”

Helen shrugged. “More than anyone else.” She waved her pen through the air. “Will’s a hard-to-reach guy. He likes to keep his options open. But I can tell that you’re still his top choice.”

My phone vibrated again, reminding me that I had a message to read. I ignored it.

“Is he dating anyone?”

“No, but you are,” she said with a wink.

She turned her attention to her dog-eared book and I reached for my phone. It would have killed me if she had said Will was dating someone else. All these months, I kept picturing him with this other person, the girl with the dark hair, until it became fiction to me. An unlimited fantasy in my mind. I wondered if he’d be upset to know I was dating someone other than him.