Other Side of Beautiful (A Beautifully Disturbed #1) (12 page)

Chapter 21

Elle

How many times in my life did I dream of hearing these words? Yet now I’m so afraid I won’t believe them. I read somewhere that penguins mate for life. Many of their rituals follow ours, like a coupled pair will rub their heads and necks together, it’s a sign of love, the first sign actually. One touch starts the bonding process. And they don’t doubt the affection in any way. It just is. Ben has his head resting against my cheek, stroking the long strands of my hair. I press into him, absorbing his heat. If we could only stay right here the rest of the day. We both know how impossible an idea that is. And then with one last kiss, soft and beautiful, he helps me back over the console.

When we reach the double glass doors, he holds one open for me, staying at my side while we walk the hallway toward my first class of the day. I shrug out of my coat and notice Ben just standing about five steps away, staring at me with his eyes rounded.

“Wow. You look—stunning. You’re just, wow.” A group of four guys walking toward us, talking loudly, totally disrupt the magic of the moment. As they pass, all four heads turn, glaring at me. Ben closes the distance between us, flinging his arm protectively around my shoulders. “C’mon. Let’s get you to class. But maybe you shouldn’t wear this again,” he says, hooking his finger between my bare skin and the spaghetti strap of the tank top.

“I thought you liked it.”

“Clearly I’m not the only one.” I wonder about the penguins. Do they feel what we feel? If so, do they feel it in the same way? The male penguin, he offers the female a pebble or twigs for a nest. Ben offered me a place to stay. All these touches of his only serve to strengthen the bond. Maybe we aren’t so different from those penguins. “So, I was thinking,” Ben says. “Since tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, I’d like to cook dinner for you.”

“Can you make more than waffles?”

He snickers. He actually snickers at me. “Oh, Brontë, there are three things in my life I’ve learned to do really well, and cooking is the third. Just wait.”

“Uh-huh,” my voice squeaks. “I think I’d like that.” Well before I ever want to be, we stop just outside the classroom. “My last class is over at four.”

“I’ll be here, but I can’t hang too long. I’ve got class ‘til eleven today.”

“Don’t make your life harder. I’ll just walk home.”

“Walk home? You’re crazy, it’s freezing out there. And baby, getting to see you doesn’t make my
life
harder, just other parts.” I press my head to the lapel of his winter coat, gripping it in each of my fists and close my eyes as he strokes the back of my arms from the elbow just up to my arm pits and back down, dropping his lips to my forehead through the wisp of messy bangs. I spell Mississippi three times in long format—Mississ-ipp-i—in my head before he lifts his lips and I open my eyes again. Distracting myself with Mississippi is better than letting him go, which is what I do because it’s what he does. “Dinninger—I.” He stops himself, shaking his head. “I’ll see you at four.”

He leaves me standing there watching him walk away, his retreating form slowing the farther down the hall and away from me he gets, until he rounds the corner and I can’t see him anymore.

The room is at capacity when I slip inside. Exactly why I pick a seat so close to the door. A couple of the Hilaries and Kelsies are upward inflecting about something they saw on YouTube over the weekend. Honest to goodness, it doesn’t even register for me what they’re talking about until her voice gets low, which, of course, perks my attention.

“Well, you couldn’t see her face but she was blonde and
fat
?” The Kelsey gasps, as if she’d said, “she was a corpse,” or “she was a child.” And after he just tried to convince me of how “beautiful” I am? It has me strongly questioning his judgment. Wasn’t it Groucho Marx who said he’d never join a club that would have him as a member? What’s wrong with Ben that would make him want to be with me? Is it something I didn’t see before? Because clearly if being fat can be lumped in with necrophilia, he’s missing a couple screws. “People say he’s researching for a novel he’s writing?” The first Hilary keeps going. “He’s totally method?”

“I don’t know?” the Kelsey adds. “Supposedly they looked pretty comfortable? Like they were really into it?”

“Trust me?” the first Hilary says back to her. “Benton and I used to go out? He does not like the fatties?” I jump, accidentally knocking my backpack off my desk. The thud as the book laden bag hits the floor draws both Hilary and Kelsey’s attention. I bend down to pick it up, avoiding eye contact at all costs, pretending I hadn’t been eavesdropping.

This is not happening. This is not happening. This is totally happening
. I grab at my pocket for the phantom pill bottle, once again wishing I could remember the exact weight and feel of the ridges skimming over my fingers and catching at my fingernails. But no matter how hard I try, the memory pulled forward is vague, a shadow of what used to be. I’m on the brink, right now I’m brinking. As I try to push away the budding panic, I replace it with the only other emotion accessible. And it’s anger. I don’t get angry, but the further back I push the panic, the more worked up I get. Like violently worked up. I’ve never had the urge to physically hurt someone else before, but Hilary, I want nothing more than to yank every strand of her French braided hair from her pretty, petite head.

In the middle of my almost panic attack turned vicious internal tirade, pulling out my ritual in the middle of sociology 280, I faintly hear the Hilary ask me a question. A real question. “I said, you’re a writer, right?” she asks again. This time I hear her perfectly.

“Yes.” Long breath in. Longer breath out.

“Do you know Benton Hayes?”

“Um, yeah. We’re…
friends
.”

“Is he writing a novel?” The Kelsey turns to ask, leaning forward in her seat as if the fate of humanity rests in my answer.

“No. Not yet.”

“Because he’s doing research? I think I’ll call him tonight and ask? Maybe I could help him with research of a different kind?” All the girls around me break into a fit of giggles and pretend swooning. It’s annoying, but not nearly as much as knowing I have to spend the rest of the semester sitting next to a chick who screwed my boyfriend.

The last thing anyone would say about me is that I’m confrontational. But those fissures opened earlier by Kelly and Cricket, they crack wide open and I lose it. She can’t talk about him, about me, about
us
like we’re, I don’t know, sparrows or something. We aren’t. We’re penguins. Or, at least we’re closer to penguins than sparrows. We have to be, or what are we doing together?

“Maybe,” I start in, having no idea where or how far I’ll let my anger lead. “Maybe he actually likes this girl. Maybe he likes a real woman with real curves. Maybe she’s stimulating. Maybe he’s tired of girls who always speak like they’re asking a question? Maybe there’s a million and fifty reasons why she gets to call him Ben and you’re still calling him Benton.” That does it. I watch the wheels spinning. I watch their stunned faces as the answer that has been sitting next to them since the start of the semester clicks in.
Oh. My. God
. The Kelsey mouths with the Hilary close on her heels.
You?
She mouths again. And I raise my eyebrows defiantly.

“There is no way?” Hilary demands. “His standards couldn’t have fallen that much? He just needs a reminder that he can get what he wants without extra padding?” She thought she had me there. On any normal day, she would have. Today is no normal day.

“Sorry, honey, what he wants
comes
with
extra padding
.”

“Don’t go thinking you’re special just because he’s using you as a dick holder?”

“Well.” I rip out my phone from my pocket firing off a fake text. “Being a dick holder has its perks.” My phone may or may not have tipped, revealing Ben’s name across the screen from an earlier text. “He’s leaving class now. What are you doing with the rest of
your
morning?”

That’s it. The little bit of spunk I had managed to call up for our altercation, spent. And if she sees, I’ll be her bitch for the rest of the semester. I sling my backpack over my shoulder, tucking my purse and coat under my arm. My body may quiver like gelatin on the inside, but damn if I don’t keep up the last vestiges of confidence on the outside, at least until the door claps shut behind me. Then I run. I run. And hide. In the very last stall of the women’s restroom, giving in to the panic. I won’t call Kelly. Sabrina, I shoot a text. But she won’t be up yet.

I’m not stupid, despite what my mother thinks of me. I know who I should call, but he already came running playing hero. Once per morning is enough, I can’t ask him to do it again in such a short space of time. Hilary wouldn’t be so needy. As the panic starts to ease back, I’m left with an uncomfortable clarity. And I know Ben deserves better. He needs me to make this call.

Collin picks up right away and there’s no point in niceties. Because he won’t like me much when we’re done. “You need to talk him out of seeing me. I don’t have it in me to do it myself.”

“
What?
Why?”

I hiccup from the crying. I actually hiccup in his ear. “Because I’m selfish,” I tell him, and the crying starts all over again.

“No. Why would I talk him out of seeing you?”

“Because Hilary wouldn’t be as needy.”

“Where are you?”

“Social science building.”

“Don’t. Just don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right over. Meet me at the couches.”

Chapter 22

Elle

He does. True to his word, Collin finds me sitting on the floor next to the couches in the central common area with my face buried against my skinny jeans so the passersby won’t recognize me. From the YouTube video. And for being the world’s worst girlfriend.

“What the hell is going on?” Collin’s manly form falls onto the gray vinyl sofa, and there’s a part of me which can’t help being comforted that he would drag his butt out of bed so early for me. He pulls me up onto his lap, shushing me and petting my hair and letting his shirt cuff scrape delicately along my spine. Calming. Comforting. And just distracting enough. When I snuggle further down against his lap, he continues. “When Ben tore out of the apartment this morning, I thought someone had died. He wouldn’t let me come. But when he called afterward, I thought things were good.”

His hand keeps moving in those lighter than light touches so fatherly or brotherly I don’t want to ruin the moment by speaking. When I was a little girl, my dad used to hold me like he holds me now. And he lets me get it all out of my system just like my dad used to before he ever nudges me to answer him. If someone would’ve told me two years ago that I’d be a mess of crying angst leaning against Collin Pratt’s wall of determined friendship, I’d have asked them how long they’d been off their meds. Just like Ben, he’s beautiful and talented, a force of nature. But also like Ben, he’s so much more than that, especially to me. Everything about him makes him someone people want to know. And here he is, being my friend.

“
Elle?
” he prods.

“I know.” Ritual. “But first, I—thank you for coming.” Then I stall a little more, blowing my nose in a napkin I pulled from my backpack.

“I’ll always come, you know that. But knowing you’re about ready to break his heart, I had no choice. Hasn’t he been good to you?”

“Of course! That’s why.”

“I don’t get it, then. You need to give me something to work with here.”

“Look at me Col, I’m a mess. My head is a mess. You should have heard them in class, heard
her
. The way she talked about me before she knew. People think I’m research for a book.”

“Does it really matter?” he asks. “What people think?”

Yes it matters. Anyone who says they don’t care what other people think of them is straight up lying. What degree we care varies, but everyone cares. It’s human nature to care. The freshman hiding in the corner of the common area listening to Collin and me, she cares. That’s why she’s hiding. Staying under the radar. I remember those days, and they weren’t that long ago. The chick in the tight skirt barely covering her ass, with her tongue down some dude’s throat in a very PDA sesh, she cares too. Hell, the guy she’s PDAing with definitely cares. That’s how reps are built, right? Being seen with the right people. I tell Collin as much.

“He’s been popular with the ladies. It is what it is.”

“That’s not—you still aren’t getting it. You should see Hilary. What the hell is he doing with me when he had an ex like—?”

“I don’t remember a Hilary. She wasn’t that chick from the coffee shop?”

“No. She’s beautiful and speaks with an upward inflection,” I tell him, but he shrugs as if he has no idea who I’m referring to. “That was Emily. I’m talking about Hilary, his ex-girlfriend.”

“Is that what she told you? Because I’m here to set you straight. They might have gone out once, maybe even twice, but she was
never
his girlfriend no matter how she tried to package herself. And if you stopped to think about it, you’d know I’m right. We’ve all been friends too long, don’t you think?”

Hmm.

“Ben stopped doing the girlfriend thing probably eleventh grade. Just made things easier for him, well, until now.”

“So he didn’t tell you about her, but he told you about me?”

“God, I love you. But for a smart girl, sometimes you can be so thickheaded. She was a date. You’re
‘the one.’
” Collin actually uses air quotes to stress ‘the one.’ “With all the women he’s had, you’re his first. So quit being difficult. Keep being the friend he fell for, just with kissing.”

“But when do I get to be the girl that has people saying, ‘wow, Ben sure is lucky to have her’?”

“Wow, Ben sure is lucky to have you.”

“Ha,
ha
.”

“I’m done with the nonsense. No more freak outs, got me? Ben is my best friend. He saved my life. You make him happy. Happier than I’ve seen in years, but I’m not above shutting the two of you down if I thought you were wrong for him. Thing is, you—I haven’t met anyone more right for him. So do us a favor and don’t give up on him so fast.”

“Okay, tell me, how do I get through the rest of the semester with her?”

“You get through by knowing she’s inconsequential. You get through with a smug smile on your face because she knows
she
was a fuck and
you
are the girlfriend.”

“I am the girlfriend,” I whisper.

“Now you know there wouldn’t be any issue if you had taken writing classes. Ben likes to keep his worlds separate. Until you. Who wants to stare at a booty call for fifteen weeks? Just another way you can be sure he doesn’t want you going anywhere.”

“Thank you.” I lace my arms around his neck, squeezing my hug so he knows how serious I am.

“Hey, you’re one of us, and we take care of us.”

“So what now?”

“We’ll come up with something. If it’s one thing us are good at, it’s somethings.”