Going the Distance (13 page)

Dale was doing extensions with massive dumbbells, shoulder muscles bulging. “A while. Sorry.”

Olivia frowned and looked between them. Something was going on. She had no idea what, but she wasn’t really in the mood to sit around guessing. She strode past Jarek and stepped outside. The rain was coming down hard now, but she hadn’t heard it over her mp3 player and the unpleasant conversation with Dale. She tugged up the hood on her jacket just as she heard her name, and turned to see Jarek descend. He loomed over her the way he normally did, but there was something off about him this time. Something more ominous, more serious. In the past she’d attributed his general air of menace as a leftover from his previous line of work, nothing particularly deliberate about it, like how she was always talking with her hands. But now it felt intentional, like he was trying to warn her away from him even as he told her to follow.

“Where?” she asked, her feet ignoring her brain and trailing him to the locked carpentry trailer.

“In here’s fine.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and opened the door, gesturing for her to enter first.

She glanced at his face as she slid past, and flashed back to the first time she’d seen him, when her instincts told her he was dangerous. She’d tried hard to dismiss the impression, attributing it to the events of the past year, when everyone was the enemy. Even in the time since, the times he’d hurt her feelings or gotten under her skin, she’d ignored the feeling, recognizing that he didn’t relate well to people, apologizing for him when he should have been apologizing himself. And then sometimes he did apologize, and it carried more weight than a normal apology, because she knew how hard the words were. She was always making excuses for him; she wondered what the excuse would be today.

“What’s going on?” she asked when he followed her inside. The trailer was dim, even with the blinds raised on its two small windows. The rain drummed on the roof, a steady, dull roar that slowly worked its way under her skin and made her antsy. The room smelled like sawdust, the way the kitchen had when her parents renovated it years earlier. She felt a sudden pang of yearning then, for the company of people who loved her unconditionally. In theory.

Jarek didn’t speak for a while. He turned on the lights, then locked the door, then unlocked it again and put his hands in his pockets. Olivia shivered; her skin was clammy from the workout, and the air was damp and chilled. She watched him pace, his eyes on the tabletops, scanning the walls of tools, the neatly ordered desk she’d let him fuck her on. That day suddenly felt like a long time ago; it had been different then, she’d known what she was coming in here for. Now she didn’t.

“Jarek,” she said, finally. “What is it?”

He paused mid-step, as though he’d forgotten she was there. Emotions warred in his eyes, and she could see him fighting to keep them in check. It was the way his shoulders never relaxed, the way he kept stuffing his hands in his pockets so his fingers didn’t curl into fists. “What’d you do yesterday?” he asked quietly. He was about seven feet away, and somehow the words cut through the pounding of the rain on the roof, clear as a bell.

Olivia watched him as he waited for her response, gaze trained on her face. He was waiting for her to lie, she realized. This whole thing was some sort of creepy interrogation dance, the only difference being that he’d left the door unlocked. As an afterthought. “I went to Shanghai with Marcus,” she said, keeping her voice level. “I told you that.”

“I don’t think you mentioned Marcus, Liv.” He stepped close so suddenly she barely saw him move. Instinct had her shifting away, but the tabletop bumped her lower back and kept her in place. Jarek didn’t touch her, just stood there, too close, waiting for something.

“It was last minute.”

“How was it?”

“It was great. Lots of fun.” A muscle ticked in his jaw and he studied her shoulder, her chest, her hip, looking anywhere but at her face. “I invited you, remember? You said no.”

“I remember.”

“So what’s the problem?”

He let out a slow breath and raised his eyes to hers. “What do you think the problem is?”

She arched a brow. He might have been an interrogator at one point, but she taught kindergarten. She knew how to handle a hissy fit. “You’re the one with the problem, evidently. You tell me.”

“All right. How about you spent the day on a date with Marcus, while I spent it here with my dick in my hand while everybody asked how I felt about my
girlfriend
going on a date with Marcus.”

She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t a date.”

“Then what was it?”

“A trip!” She put her hands on his chest and pushed him away, tired of being loomed over, as though that were somehow going to help him ascertain the truth. She had nothing to lie about; hell, her life had fallen apart because she’d refused to do precisely that.

“With fucking Marcus!” He grabbed her elbow and yanked her back, spinning her up against the table again. She’d stiffened in surprise when he yelled, and winced as her tailbone hit the wooden edge.

“Back up, Jarek,” she hissed on pained breath.

He didn’t budge. “You know how you asked me not to talk about you, Olivia?”

Goose bumps broke out on her skin. “What did you do?”

He gripped her chin and tilted her face to look at him. “Nothing. I gave you what you wanted, and I didn’t ask you for anything in return, because I thought it was implied.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t fuck around. That’s the only rule.”

“Rule? I—Jarek. First of all, there are no rules, and you have no business trying to make them; you’re the one who’s terrified I’ll start to expect something from you at any second. And I already told you, it was just a trip. You think we screwed on the train? Get away from me. This is none of your business.” She shoved him again but he still didn’t move, and she saw that her hands were shaking. She was upset, not afraid. She was almost positive.

“Nothing’s my business with you, is it?”

She glared up at him. “What?”

“Not the shit that happened in Michigan, how they chased you out of your own home?”

She wasn’t all that surprised, but she wasn’t happy either. “You looked into me?”

“Sure. Why not? I had some time on my hands.” She could picture him now, hunched over a computer for hours, scouring the articles and the web sites, equally divided between praising and flaying her.

“I told you I didn’t want to discuss it.”

“And we didn’t, did we?”

“Is this what you’re really upset about? I didn’t tell you about Chris and the video, so you accuse me of screwing around with Marcus?”

His face was so, so cold. She shivered. “No, this is definitely about Marcus. The other stuff is shit you should have told me.”

“You’re such a fucking hypocrite, Jarek. I didn’t go online to find out what you used to do.”

He laughed. “What’d you think a search would turn up, Olivia? I don’t exist. The shit I did doesn’t exist. There’s nothing to find.”

“Okay. Great. You’re a real man of mystery. It doesn’t mean you get to drag me in here and accuse me of something I didn’t do. As you’ll have noticed in your research, I have plenty of experience being harassed by assholes. I’m not looking for more.”

“What’d you two talk about?”

She heaved an exasperated sigh. She wanted to leave but he had one hand braced on the table between her and the door, and she knew it was a losing battle. “Everything. Our lives. Being here. People we were buying gifts for. He knows how to have a proper conversation. Not everything is a secret or a scandal.” She raised her brows meaningfully.

“Did you tell him about what happened at home?”

“No! Why are you stuck on Marcus?”

“Because you spent all night talking to him at the bar last week, then you snuck off to go out with him all day!”

“I invited you! You said no. And I would have told you Friday, but you blew me off with a text message!”

He ran a hand through his hair, obviously trying to get a grip on things. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to control himself. He so rarely showed any emotion, this was a novel experience. A little nerve-racking, sure, but…insightful.

“Is your temper tantrum over?” she asked.

He shot her a patronizing look. “Tell me about it.”

“I already told you. We went shopping. I bought you something, but I’m keeping it for myself now.”

“Not about that. About Michigan.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, suddenly tired. She wondered if this was an interrogation tactic: keep people off balance so they never knew what the real issue was. But Olivia thought she knew; she dealt with children every day, after all. He was jealous. Michigan was just a diversion.

She sighed. “What do you know?”

“I read everything I could online.”

“Then it paints a pretty good picture.” But she summed it up for him anyway. How she’d been in the kitchen when she heard Chris at the computer, watching some kind of movie. There were screams and cheers, then the mistakable sound of flesh smacking flesh and grunting, and she’d figured he was watching porn. It had been unusual, no question; she suspected he watched when she wasn’t around, but this had been pretty damn blatant. She’d peered into the room but had been too far away to see much more than a few bodies shifting around. Too far to discern faces.

Then two days later a rumor started to spread, and something in her stomach grew cold and heavy. She hadn’t wanted to know. That was still the truth. She hadn’t wanted to know and she hadn’t wanted to look and she hadn’t wanted to be right. But she did know and she did look and when she searched through his e-mail one night when he was at practice, she found what she hadn’t wanted to find: an e-mail containing a link to a video that showed half the high school baseball team gang banging a teenage girl who was obviously too drunk or high to make the decision herself.

She’d saved the file to the hard drive and that night when Chris returned home she’d asked him about the rumors, if he really thought someone had been raped, if any of his athletes had been involved. He’d been the star pitcher at the high school growing up, and when injuries ended his dream of a career in the majors, he’d simply smiled and gone to college and later gotten a job as a PE teacher, soon taking over for the outgoing coach of the baseball team. The video had been sent to everyone on the team e-mail list, and Chris had been among them. He wasn’t in the video—she’d checked, as hard as it had been—but she knew he’d seen it, knew he’d been acting different. And then he denied it.

“Nah,” he’d said, kissing her cheek before turning off the light to go to sleep. “Those guys would never do anything like that.” If she hadn’t seen it herself, she would have believed him. Chris was dangerously persuasive, wielding his charm so casually he had people convinced before he even started speaking.

The next time she checked his e-mail—something she’d never done before—the message was gone. But she still had the video. A week later the girl went to the police. The boys were arrested, and though half the people involved were seventeen, the town was small enough that everyone knew their names, even though they hadn’t been released.

And then the denials started. The boys were athletes. Strong students. Upstanding young men with bright futures. Look at that girl. She had a reputation. If she’d had sex with any of them—and she couldn’t prove it, not a week after the event—if she had sex with them, she’d been completely willing. It had probably been her idea.

Olivia hated the fact that she had hesitated. She was a woman. She was a teacher. She’d dedicated her life to helping shape children into good people with bright futures. And still it was another three days before she saved the video to a flash drive and drove it to the police station.

It was five days before news of the video leaked, and approximately one day before her name was connected to it. Before everyone knew the boys were fucked and she was the one responsible. As though she herself had somehow lurked in a corner of the room and recorded the whole thing on her phone, then e-mailed it to the entire team as a joke.

Chris tried not to hate her. He’d cried when he asked if it was true, and she’d cried when she asked what he’d planned to do with the tape. “The right thing,” he’d assured her, but she knew better. They could barely stomach each other after a month, though his presence was probably the only thing that saved her in those first weeks.

His parents had died in a car crash shortly after their high school graduation, and her parents had pretty much adopted him. When he left her they cleared out the spare bedroom and he moved in, and they’d all praised her bold independence as they left her out to hang. The first night alone in the apartment—her first night alone anywhere, ever, really—someone had thrown a brick through the front window. Without saying a word Chris’s move made a very clear statement: if Olivia’s parents were on his side, surely that made Olivia the villain. She would never know if the manipulation was intentional, but it was certainly effective.

Over the next month she’d paid to have her crappy car repainted twice to cover the slurs, and after she’d woken to find it tagged again—
TRAITOR, LIAR, BITCH, WHORE
, and, for some reason,
COCKHOLDER
—she’d given up. Work was getting tough. She’d been a popular teacher at the elementary school and suddenly people couldn’t look her in the eye. Four parents removed their kids from the class, and she began to hear rumors that enrollment was down because people didn’t want their children being taught by a traitor.

Olivia tried to be strong. She believed it would blow over. She loved her town and many of its people. She’d been popular; she’d been loved. And just like that they’d turned. Friends were too busy to hang out or call, people whispered under their breath when they passed her in the street or in the aisle at the grocery store. She used to run outside three nights a week, and suddenly she’d been afraid, hearing things, seeing things, coming home once to find her front door broken open, though nothing inside had been disturbed. She bought a treadmill and started running inside, away from the window.