In Ruins (12 page)

“The
fuck
do you mean she got a ride? With who?” I'm the only person on campus Carl didn't just meet for the first time a matter of weeks ago.

“Dude. Take it easy.” Max glares at me, but I ignore him.

Devin blinks at me like she doesn't understand why I'm overreacting. “She didn't say,” she says a little defensively. “She got a text or an e-mail or something, and said she got a ride, and she got picked up like five minutes later. I offered to go with her but she insisted I stay. She had it under control; she's a big girl.”

If Carl was texting or e-mailing with whoever picked her up, then at least it wasn't someone she just met tonight. It should pacify me at least marginally that she didn't just get in a car with a drunken stranger, but I can't escape the feeling that something might be seriously wrong. I can't guess what her
family emergency
could be, but Carl's love and loyalty for her family—even for those who don't deserve it—is relentlessly fierce, and I learned the hard way she sets it above all else. So the idea that she would take a risk with her safety, whether knowingly in her desperation to reach them, or unconsciously—distracted by panic—isn't exactly implausible. And if she's as wasted from those shots with Ben as I suspect…

Fuck
.

I need to keep a cool head, because losing my shit won't help either me or Carl. But I can't stop myself from shooting Devin an irritated scowl before I leave them how I found them.

Carl's judgment might have been compromised by her distress—and Ben's goddamn liquor—but what the fuck is Devin's excuse? She should have known better than to just let Carl get in a car with someone without at least letting her roommate know where she's going. Don't girls have systems for this kind of shit? Devin should have gotten a fucking license plate or something, or at the very minimum asked Carl who her goddamn ride was.

I look around the party, and it doesn't take long to realize that everyone I've known Carl to hang out with is here. So who the fuck texted her and picked her up? The campus is only about thirty minutes away from our hometown, but almost all of our friends are away at school, and even if someone happened to have gone home for Halloween—not fucking likely—it would take them longer to get here than five fucking minutes.

I have no choice. I have to do something I've resisted doing since the day she obliterated my heart. I have to fucking call her.

But her phone goes straight to voicemail. It doesn't even ring. Like it isn't even on. My heart pounds like a snare drum. It isn't a bad sign in itself—Carl is constantly forgetting to charge her phone. But coupled with her family emergency and her mysterious ride, it has me on the verge of panic.

I try calling two more times with the same result, and on the fourth attempt, I surrender and leave a voicemail.

“Carl. I…
fuck
. Just—call me. And charge your fucking phone!” I growl into the mic.

I rub my temples, trying to soothe my suddenly raging headache. Then I try calling her again. Same result.

I storm through the living room looking for Leo—a freshman second stringer who doesn't live in the house—to demand a ride. He got stuck being sober driver tonight, and he's supposed to be hanging out on the first floor waiting for people who need a safe ride. But he isn't here.

I shoot him a text and find out he got stuck at some drunk girl's dorm when she started puking after he walked her to her room. He promises to be back within fifteen minutes, but I'm starting to freak out. Anger, anxiety, fear—it's a potent combination and my blood is thick with it, every muscle tense. I head out the front door to the porch, where a few smokers shiver in the autumn chill. I make my way down the walkway to wait on the curb, where four hours later according to my internal clock, but only twelve minutes according to my phone, Leo pulls up and I jump into the passenger seat before he even comes to a full stop.

“Stuyvesant Hall,” I order him. I overheard someone mention which dorm Carl lived in a few weeks back. Though I don't know why I'm going there now. It's unlikely she's there if she's dealing with a family emergency. But I don't know what else to do.

Leo doesn't move. “Why you wanna go there? Everyone's out partying and anyone else is only there because they're too drunk to be any fun.” He smirks. “Or they're the perfect amount of drunk, depending on—”

“Stuyvesant. Hall,” I repeat through a clenched jaw. I'm really not in the mood for his motherfucking date-rape jokes. My tolerance with his bullshit has already been wearing thin, and tonight's the night I just might fucking snap. Then I won't have worry about Zayne's class ruining my GPA and losing me my scholarship, because I'll be expelled for ramming this douchebag's face into the goddamn dash.

Leo finally gets that I'm not in the mood and takes off east toward campus. I don't even bother thanking him as I make my way through the courtyard to the front of the building. Leo was right about one thing—it is dead tonight. It's just after midnight and everyone is out having a good time. And here I am, standing in front of my lying ex-girlfriend's dorm—a lying ex-girlfriend I
can't stand
—with absolutely no idea what to do next.

I check my phone again. Crickets.

I text her to fucking call me back.

Still nothing.

Only residents of the dorm have the key fob to get in, so I search the directory for her room, and buzz the ringer five times before I accept that she's not there. Anyone else I know who could possibly let me in is currently at the party I just left.

With no other options, I settle myself on a bench near the entrance that Carl will have to pass when she gets back, and resign myself to wait.

I must have fallen asleep, because dawn is already breaking when I'm woken up by the idling engine of an obnoxiously loud sports car. The sound jars me awake and I jump into attentiveness. My back is sore as fuck from falling asleep on this stupid wooden bench that I now hate with every cell in my body, and I blink the grogginess from my eyes as they try and locate the source of the noise.

A glance at my watch tells me it's almost seven in the morning, and the small courtyard is already beginning to show signs of life—a student heading out for a jog, another enduring a particularly grueling post-Halloween walk of shame, dressed in the remnants of a very skimpy cat costume.

And then I blink again—this time in disbelief—as Carl emerges from the souped-up Mustang idling at the entrance to the walkway. My gut churns as I take in her weariness. She's changed out of her costume and into sweats, but a man's jacket is draped over her slumped shoulders. I don't recognize the car. I'm about to head over to her when the driver's door opens and out climbs—of all fucking people —our
professor
. Fucking
Zayne
.

What. The. Fuck.

He comes around to her side of the car and I watch them as she smiles sheepishly and he rubs the back of his neck. He murmurs something and she nods. He shrugs, smiling now, and Carl returns it, but hers is forced, and it gets my hackles up.

I start marching toward them but they don't see me, and Zayne squeezes Carl's arm and then just gets right back in his car and drives off. Carl walks with her head down and doesn't see me until the last second.

“Tuck?”

“What the fuck was that?” I growl. I don't mean to come off so accusatory. She looks stressed, and exhausted, and I don't want to make it worse, but I'm fucking tired, too.

Carl responds to my tone the only way she knows how. She straightens her back and narrows her eyes, and I wonder if it's just my tone that's got her on the defense or if it's guilt.

“What the fuck was
what
?” she snaps back.

What the fuck happened with your family, and where have you been, and what's going on?
“Did you fuck him?”
And that.

Carl's eyes widen indignantly. “Did you just ask me if I
fucked
our professor?!”

Well, you did just get out of his fucking premature-midlife-crisis-mobile in different clothes than you were wearing last night.
I raise my eyebrows expectantly.

Her mouth gapes open incredulously before her eyes narrow again. “Yes, Tucker. I did. You know, I was at your Halloween party and while you were busy with that skanky redhead I just thought to myself,
Hey, I've only ever been with one guy in my life, what better idea than to have a one-night stand with my fucking teacher
. Because I'm just such a fucking slut. And, you know, he was all for it. Because screwing some random student is totally worth losing your job, and—”

Goddamnit I can't take another fucking sarcastic word out of her mouth. “Enough!”

“Oh it's
enough
, is it?” she hisses.

Rationally I know it was a ridiculous thing to ask her. She may be a liar, but she's also a good girl. I know that better than anyone. Because I
know
she's only ever been with one guy.
Me
. Or at least I'd hoped that was still true. And fuck the damn wave of relief that surges through me at hearing it confirmed. Because I'm not supposed to care anymore, goddamnit!

“What happened, Carl? Why did you leave the party?” I try not to ask the final question, but I can't stop myself. “Why were you with him?”

Carl sighs and her confidence deflates before my eyes. “Look, Tuck, I've barely slept. I'm exhausted, and…I just can't do this right now.”

She
can't do this right now? I just spent the night on a goddamn bench outside her dorm imagining God only knows what and she shows up here first thing in the morning in new clothes with our young-stud professor, and
she
can't do this right now?

Well,
fuck this.

“See you in class,” I spit, and then I turn to leave.

“Hope you had fun with your skank,” she mutters, and it's all I can take.

“I did have fun with my skank,” I lie. “And I will continue to have fun with whoever the fuck I want. Have fun with our
professor
.”

Present Day

I watch Tucker walk away, his hostility radiating off of him in waves. I just don't have the energy for his childish bullshit right now. All I want to do is get into my bed and crash.

I don't understand what the hell he was even doing here. My brain is too tired to do any quality thinking, but if he's outside Stuyvesant Hall this early, chances are he's leaving some girl's dorm—maybe that Red Skank for all I know—and just the thought alone makes my already disheartened mood plummet into downright depressed. It was bad enough watching him flirt and walk off with her earlier, and I don't know why I was surprised. I knew he'd move on. I knew sleeping with me a few weeks ago didn't mean anything to him. But seeing it unfold before my eyes…it was more than I could bear.

And I didn't have
fun
with Zayne, either. I just needed a ride and he did me a favor. But Tucker hates me, and he's obviously moving on with other girls, so why the hell would he care even if I did go and do something crazy like hook up with Zayne?

Like that would ever happen. He's my professor and, as it turns out, a really nice guy on top of it. He didn't have to come to my rescue last night. He didn't have to offer his help. But he did.

My heart practically stopped beating in my chest when my phone buzzed with a call from Billy. I've always told him if he or his friends ever did anything stupid and needed help, that he needed to call me. And to his credit, he did call.

Hearing his slurred voice sent me into panic mode. He's only thirteen. I didn't have my first drink until well into high school, and the guilt of how my being away at school, even if I'm not very far, might be affecting him haunts me even now. Especially now. He has no one. My mother was in the city doing God knows what, and Billy's friends were supposed to be staying at our house. Instead they went to a party, and they got drunk. But they couldn't get back home. There were no cabs available, and their friends are all too young to drive, even if they hadn't been drinking.

But my mother wasn't answering her phone, and the no-cabs problem applied to me, too. And there I was, standing outside the lax party, practically pulling out my hair while I waited for an Uber that said it would be an hour—the shortest quoted wait time.

I figured I'd have to stay at home with Billy and wouldn't make it to my morning classes, so I decided to e-mail the professors of those two classes—Zayne and Professor Farley—to let them know I had a family emergency and wouldn't be in class the next morning. Because contrary to popular belief, attendance
does
count in college. So I e-mailed, and hoped they'd let it slide.

I didn't expect either of them to respond, certainly not that night, but Zayne did. And when his e-mail asked if everything was okay, and I replied that my little brother was in trouble and he had no one else to help him, Zayne asked if I needed anything. I wrote back joking that unless he had some sort of power over the availability of taxis on Halloween, I was on my own. But then he replied that while he had no power in the almighty world of Uber, he did have a car. And how could I turn him down? Billy was so drunk he was barely coherent and I was panicking.

Zayne got me to Billy in less than thirty minutes, and got us to my house just in time before Billy started puking into my mother's hydrangea.

Zayne helped me get Billy and his friends into the house. I thought he would leave then, but instead he helped me get them cleaned up and into bed. It was embarrassing as hell, but I couldn't exactly refuse his help when most of those kids already weighed more than I do.

But having Zayne in my house was surreal. I was struck by how easily I forgot he was my professor, and we fell smoothly into friendly conversation. Of course, once you share the experience of cleaning vomit from a squad of barely conscious thirteen-year-olds, your relationship skips a step or two.

I ended up making him a cup of coffee, and the more we talked, the more I had to remind myself that this man was, in fact, my professor, regardless of how friendly he seemed.

He was finishing his coffee when my mother finally texted me back:

I growled at my phone.

“Everything okay?” Zayne asked, and I buried my frustration for his benefit.

“Just my mother,” I murmured. “She's on her way home now.”

Zayne frowned. “Well, that's a good thing, isn't it?”

“Yeah. She told me I should go back to school. Like I should just leave Billy and a bunch of drunk thirteen-year-olds alone in the house. She just…aggravates me sometimes.” I regretted giving him that insight into my dysfunctional family the moment I said it, but Zayne managed to make even that less awkward. He noted that I seemed like more of a mother to Billy than our actual mother. He's observant, and kind, and it made me confide even more about her.

It turns out Zayne's mother and mine have a lot in common. “Materialism to the extreme,” he called it. But when he tentatively asked about my father, I just shook my head and changed the subject back to his family, asking if his parents were still together. A part of me knew it was inappropriate, but still, I felt strangely connected to him in that moment.

Zayne shook his head. “My mother tends to go where the money is,” he told me, “And my father was a businessman. Self-made. When he lost his business, he didn't have any family money to fall back on, and he lost my mother as well.”

My heart ached for him. At least my mother stuck with her marriage, even if it isn't much of a marriage, what with my father in prison and all. But then again, he didn't lose all the money. I wonder if that's why he put such stock in keeping it—to keep
her
. So much so that he traded nearly a decade of his own freedom. Even now the thought makes me cringe. That isn't love. At least not a love I would ever want for myself. I would have lived with Tucker in a shack if he'd have had me.

Zayne and I talked for a long time, and only when I had to fight to keep my eyes open did he suggest we call it a night. He offered to drive me back to my dorm, but I didn't feel comfortable leaving before my mom got back, and when he offered to pick me up at the crack of dawn just to give me a ride, I couldn't exactly turn him down. After all, my car was back at school, and I didn't want to ask my mother to drive me—I wanted her to stay home and be a goddamn mother to her son.

I must have thanked Zayne a hundred times, but he just blew it off, as if the fact that his student needed help was more than enough reason for him to offer it. Apparently he'd once had a student advisor who regularly went above and beyond for her students, and it's obvious that that's the kind of teacher he wants to be. I'd say he's doing a damn fine job.

I think of the final words of advice he left me with last night: “Everything happens for a reason, Carleigh. It's trite, but it's true. I know it doesn't feel like it on days like these, but hey, if my father hadn't gone through his hardships, I would have inherited a disgustingly handsome trust and would probably be partying on a beach in Ibiza right now. Instead, I found a calling in teaching I never even would have known to look for.”

From another man the words would probably have been sardonic, but from Zayne they glowed with earnestness, and I can't help but wonder if they might be true for me as well. If, in the long run, it's possible something good might come of all my regrets.

I enter my dorm room quietly and plug my phone in to charge. I already changed into sweats back at home, so I fall right into bed without waking a comatose Devin, who still appears to be wearing a smudged variation of last night's makeup.

Sleep doesn't come easily, though. Tucker's accusations ring loud in my mind, and the more I think about them, the angrier I get. I'd worried over how much I'd imposed on Zayne, but it never occurred to me that from the outside, him dropping me off early in the morning in front of my dorm might appear scandalous. Because it
wasn't
scandalous. It was all thoroughly innocent, and I can't help but feel outraged for Zayne that Tucker suggested otherwise.

The more I think about it the more disgruntled I get. How
dare
Tucker? While he was screwing around with Red Skank, I was dealing with Billy with no one to help me except one nice guy who really, really didn't have to offer. A really handsome, really sweet, really nice guy. Who I didn't even look at. And the sad thing is—it wasn't because he's my professor. The reason I didn't look twice at Zayne is the same reason I've been blowing off Ben Aronin since he asked me out a few weeks ago. It's because of Tucker, and the realization makes me want to punch a wall.

And suddenly, I'm done. I'm done apologizing and I'm done feeling sorry for myself. I'm done drowning in guilt and I'm definitely done sleeping with him. Especially now that he's been with Red Skank. I'm. Just. Done.

I close my eyes, fueled with a new determination, and I drift off to sleep almost instantly, ready to finally embrace my new single life when I wake. I am finally ready to get over Tucker Green.

Over the next couple of weeks Tucker and I seem to succeed in what I once thought was the worst possible thing—erasing us. I won't pretend it doesn't still hurt. But if there is anything to be gained in being Nicole Stanger's daughter, it's the ability to bury emotion and feign composure. My new plan of action is a simple one—trite but true—
fake it 'til you make it
.

And so I go through the motions of what I would be doing if I actually felt the emotional stability I'm working so hard to portray.

Tucker seems to have come up with an identical game plan. He flirts with girls and contributes in our group meetings for our creative digital marketing project, though he never addresses me directly, nor I him. And I'm pretty sure he's screwing The Red Skank, whose name I've recently learned is Courtney, and while she may very well be a nice girl, I'm still calling her
The Red Skank
—at least in my head.

I have also learned, however, that she does not in fact live in Stuyvesant Hall, which has led to an ever-growing snowball of internal speculation as to what in the hell Tucker was doing there that morning. At first I suspected he just ended up going home with another girl that night. Going home with some random girl after hooking up with someone else is certainly a slutty thing to do, but not out of the question for a single guy in college. But then I remembered the voicemail. The one he left me that night, demanding I call him back and sounding decidedly frantic. The one I decided to ignore, since I had already decided on my plan of action to move on. But it does make me wonder.

Then I remind myself again of my new mantra, which sounds unsettlingly similar to one I used to invoke after Tucker and I first hooked up.

I don't care.

I don't care, I don't care, I don't care.

Zayne wraps up his lecture and dismisses us. As I pack up my books, he casts me a warm smile, its soft curve of familiarity the only hint of our shared experience. I return his smile, and his familiarity, adding in a personal note of gratitude.

Zayne is a genuinely good guy, a fact I've come to realize more and more. In the weeks since Halloween, as the stress of the night itself—and the following morning—has faded, I've finally had opportunity to process just how much I'd inconvenienced him, and how selflessly he'd acted in turn.

Even Zayne's explanation for his kindness—his outlook on teaching—was exceptionally noble. The man has a gift, and his ability to forge connections with people—with
me
—isn't something to be taken for granted.

But Tucker, it seems, still isn't a fan. He still watches Zayne strangely, but at least he no longer glares at him as if he suspects he's some kind of serial killer. I realize he thinks Zayne is harboring some kind of inappropriate interest in me, but it's like he simply no longer cares. And why would he? I suppose that even if it were true—which God knows it isn't—it wouldn't be Tucker's problem anyway.
I
am no longer Tucker's problem. And I have to get used to that.

So tonight I make my first proactive effort in doing that.

I go through the rest of my classes and then catch up on my reading assignments, and by the time evening rolls around, I'm inevitably nervous, but I'm determined not to cancel.

Ben picks me up at Stuyvesant at precisely eight o'clock.
Punctual
.

After my hundredth excuse why we couldn't go out, Ben finally called me on my bullshit. And what could I say? He was right. So I told him, again, that I'd only just gotten out of a relationship, and I was hesitant to date. So tonight is not a date. We are two friends, going to dinner.

But as we drive off campus in an awkward silence, the air is thick with the discomfort of a first date. Ben tries to make small talk, but I can't seem to come up with more than one-word responses that seem to halt the conversation every time I open my mouth. By the time Ben hands off his car keys to the valet outside Bottega, I'm already regretting agreeing to this at all.

But I don't suppose I can back out now.

Ben's hand closes gently around my wrist, stopping me as I'm walking into the restaurant.

“Carleigh, if you don't want to be here, we can leave,” he offers, his handsome face etched with sympathy, and it only exacerbates my guilt.

I look down at my shoes. “It's not that I don't want to be here. It's just…” I trail off. What can I say? It's just…
I wish I were here with someone else
?

Ben gives my wrist a small squeeze. “Hey. Stop over-thinking so much. I'm dying to eat something other than campus food, and I'm happy to do it with a new friend. Okay?”