ReCAP: A NORMAL Novella (7 page)

"I don't understand why
you're such a good friend to me," Rory admits. "I don't understand
why you stand up for me. And it scares me, because… I care about
you, and I've just… I've been hurt or abandoned by every man I've
ever cared about. My boyfriend, my father, my best friend… and some
of it, it was my own fault… Maybe everyone else is fucked up too,
but I'm fucked up
more
, and I… I don't know what I'm doing," she
repeats.

I love it when she's so forthcoming. And I
love that it's not with anyone else. Maybe she tells things to
Carl, but no one else, I'm sure of it. And I'm humbled by the
fact.

I want her to trust me –
to be worthy of that trust.

I've never been in a relationship. Never
cared about a girl I've hooked up with. Not more than a friendship,
and even that was only really with Kendall. And Kendall is very
pretty. Hot, too, but not like Rory.

I've never thought of
myself as having a "type", but Rory – there isn't a thing I would
change about her. It's like she was tailor made for personal
physical preferences I didn't even realize I had. The perfect body
– full in all the right places, just the right amount to fit her
slim frame. She's about eight or so inches shorter than me, which
puts her at about five foot six, which isn't short for a girl. It's
in the contours of her bone structure, the shape of her eyes, that
unnamable something that shines within them. It's in the exact
curve of her waist, and that tight little ass – the first thing I
ever noticed of her… it does something to me that no girl ever has
before.

But it's so much more than
physical, too. She fucking
inspires
me.

She's the toughest girl
I've ever met, and Bits – who's usually pretty judgmental of other
girls – happens to agree, as does my mother. And who wouldn't?
Rory's fucking
perfect
.

It makes me not only want
her, but want to
have
her. For her to be mine. To be hers in return. For us to
be
us
. And it's a
bittersweet thing to want something I never imagined myself
wanting, and at the same time, to know it isn't
possible.

And it means the world to me that she's
apologizing. Even now. She could have easily let this thing with
Chelsea overshadow that earlier argument of ours, and I probably
would have never brought it up again. Even though it'd been
lingering in my mind.

I rub my face and then rest my hand on the
back of my neck, if only to prevent myself from reaching for her
again.

"I'm not gonna lie to you, Rory, that hurt.
What you said at lunch," I admit.

But I also understand why she was upset. I
get that it must seem like I've been pushing her. By telling her
she didn't need a pill that evening in the library, and by my
obvious frustration over her having had to take one this afternoon.
By telling her she shouldn't let Chelsea get to her when I know I
would have reacted far worse if it were me in her place. I blow out
a deep exhale and sigh.

"But look, you were right," I tell her.

Her brows pinch together and she looks too
damned cute like that. It's distracting.

"I still think you're
stronger than you realize, but… I shouldn't try to tell you what to
do. I shouldn’t have said you don't need your medication. I don't
want you to think I'm judging you, I just… I think you're the one
judging yourself. And way too harshly. The way you talk about
yourself - that you're fucked up, that you're broken…” I hate that
she thinks of herself that way. She doesn't deserve it. I don't
know how to make her understand, so I take a page from her book,
and just tell her exactly what I think about the matter.

"I know you've been hurt, and I don't
pretend to know the details. But you're just you, Rory, and there's
nothing wrong with you. You're fucking perfect, okay? The way you
are."

"
Why?
Why do you say these things to
me? Why do you defend me? Why did you tell me about your dad, about
your sister?" She holds my gaze, fierce as ever, demanding an
explanation for what I was sure she already understood.

"You know why."

She stares at me, as if
she really doesn't know. But she
must
.

But it appears as if she's going to make me
try to articulate it anyway.

I sigh. "Come on, Rory.
We're kindred, aren't we?" I don't have a reason for it, I just
know it's true. "I don't know why, but we are - you and me. The
first day I saw you have that panic attack, I was just drawn to
you. At first maybe I thought you reminded me of Bits, but it took
only a second to see that wasn't the case. That you were nothing
like her." I remember that morning with utter clarity. My every
thought, at every moment. I knew even then that this girl was going
to change things.

"I love my sister," I tell
her. "I'd kill for her, but she's fragile, meek…” Nothing like
Rory.

"
You
… you always insist you're fine,
because you always are, even when you're not. You're tough. You
protect yourself when you feel threatened, you beat triggers, you
even beat a full-blown panic attack without taking a pill. I was
there. I saw it, remember? And you just kicked Chelsea's ass when
she accused you of hiding something that wouldn't be anyone's damn
business even if it were true, which it isn't."

Rory glares at me, her
gaze somehow defiant. I know she's reluctant to accept her virtues
– her strengths – the same way other people are reluctant to accept
their flaws. But she's a fucking badass, and as much as she thinks
she's broken, in reality, she's the bravest person I've ever
known.

"How do you know?" she
demands. "How do you know I'm not exactly what she says – some slut
who had a baby in high school and moved away to hide it? How do you
know I haven't been lying to you since the day we met?"

I want to laugh. Rory
isn't some slut. Rory isn't
some
anything. She's one of a fucking kind, and I
wouldn't think an ounce less of her if she
had
had a fucking baby. Nor would it
make her a liar. She doesn't owe me a damned thing, and every piece
of her she's chosen to confide in me has been nothing short of a
gift, and I treasure her confidence more than she knows.

I take the small step that
separates us, until I'm right in front of her, close enough that
she has to look up at me. She swallows anxiously and I hope to God
it isn't because of me – that she knows by now that I would never
hurt her.

"Because, Rory, even if it
were true, it wouldn't make you a
slut
. And not telling me something
personal doesn't make you a
liar
. But the thing is, Rory…
t
his
," I brush my fingers over the top of her scar.

Rory gasps so faintly I almost think I
imagined it. Because it was definitely not a gasp of fear.

It's the most intimately
I've ever touched her, and my fingers itch for more, but I'm
careful not to cross a line. "
This
is not a C-section scar."

"Oh yeah?" she challenges.
"Seen a lot of Cesarean scars, have you?"
Little smartass
. Her hoarse tone is
in direct contrast with her snark, and I wonder if there's even the
slightest chance that she's as affected by my proximity and touch
as I am by hers. My lips quirk up into a half-smile

"Just the one. And only
when my mother wears that skimpy swimsuit I hate. Because it's
hidden by all the others. Because it's tiny – her scar. Much
smaller than yours. And the thing is…” I move my fingers down and
toward her middle, over the waistband of her leggings, to the
approximate location of my mother's scar from delivering Bits via
emergency C-section. But I move them back after the shortest
moment, and I stroke the top of Rory's scar with my thumb, feeling
the slightly raised tissue, and it amazes me just how sexy I find
something that's supposed to be considered an imperfection. But
it's a part of her, and it doesn't nothing but turn me on even
more.

"So, Rory, unless you
managed to grow a baby in your hip, and then had some quack cut it
out of you with a jagged kitchen knife, something else gave you
that scar."

She stares at me, and I give her the chance
to speak. I will her to tell me how she got it. To confide in me
again. To tell me if whoever it was that hurt her did it, and how.
The thought infuriates and crushes me at once. But she doesn't say
a word, and I decide to brave the question, despite the fact that
I'm terrified it will shut her down.

"Someone cut you?"

Her eyes fall to the floor, but she nods.
Rage surges through my body, boiling my blood stream and tensing my
muscles. I grit my teeth.

"Is this the person your father didn't
protect you from?"

She nods again. But I need her to look at
me. I clasp her chin and bring her gaze back up to mine, but when I
retract my hand, there's a small amount of blood smeared on my
index finger.

What the fuck?

"She scratched me. Chelsea," Rory
murmurs.

Of course she did. I take a deep breath,
needing to calm myself from my outrage toward everyone who's ever
hurt Rory.

"Let's get it cleaned. Who knows where those
nails have been," I say, only half-joking, and it peeks out - her
faint smile.

It only slightly relieves my distress, but I
distract myself with the task at hand. I grip Rory's waist and lift
her onto the counter with ease. I clean the scratch carefully, and
I decide to keep talking. Because she was answering.

"Was it a friend of your father's?" I ask
her. She's already said that it wasn't her father, that he hadn't
protect her, but he wasn't the one who hurt her. I think about her
issue with the locker rooms and I wonder if maybe it was a coach or
trainer or something. I've thought about this so much since I met
her. But I've never felt like I could ask her about it before.

I dry her chin and move on
to my shirt, which hangs loose over her bra, and start
buttoning.

"I think she stole my tee
shirt from my bag while we were walking the track. Chelsea I mean,
but I have my gym tee, I could—“

"Just keep my shirt Ror, okay? It looks
better on you anyway."

Still, the girl just hates accepting any
kind of help, and she's making me feel useless again.

Sure, I stopped the fight, but it was a
fight she was winning. Rory didn't really need my help as much as
Chelsea did. It was instinct that made me grab and restrain her. I
didn't want Rory in a fight, hurt or in trouble, even if it was the
latter that was more likely. She didn't want to accept my shirt in
the first place, and now she's trying to give it back to me again.
Well, at least she let me clean her scratch. So I'm not completely
useless, or so I tell myself.

And I won't lie – I like
the way she looks in my shirt. I like seeing something of mine on
her. Like that she's wrapped up in me. However corny that might
sound. I continue on buttoning it down, and she doesn't try to get
out of it again.

But then her voice startles me, so low it's
practically a whisper. "His friends, son. My ex." I'm half in shock
that she actually told me this, and I cling to this bit of
information.

So it was a boyfriend, and their dad's were
friends. I know I should probably quit while I'm ahead, but I can't
seem to help myself.

"Is this the boyfriend you
mentioned before? Who hurt or abandoned you? The
bad
breakup
one, or someone else?" She'd mentioned a
boyfriend when we'd first started hanging out. But she also
mentioned someone else, and I don't know if there were more guys in
her life. A girl that beautiful… she must have had no shortage of
fucking admirers.

I look down at her, and rest my hands on
either side of her hips, our legs touching.

"I've only ever had one boyfriend," she
replies.

Then how does this "best friend" since she
was a kid play into this?

"And he's an
ex
…? I ask her. She said
she didn't have a boyfriend, but sometimes she looks so lost that I
wonder if her heart is still with someone else.

"I already told you I don't have a
boyfriend," she says, and I feel like the world's biggest
idiot.

"I know. I just thought…
maybe you did have someone," I admit. Or maybe I'm just looking for
excuses for why she doesn't want
me
.

She shakes her head. "I
have no one," she says matter-of-factly. And she's not just talking
about boyfriends anymore.
God
, I hate that she says that. I
hate that she thinks it.

How doesn't she see that
she has friends who care about her? Carl, Tina… How doesn't she see
that she has
me?

And then she lets out a
short laugh. "Although, if you ask him, he probably wouldn't agree.
When we broke up… he says I belong to him no matter what I say,
that I'll always be his," she murmurs, her sweet southern drawl
whipping around her vowels.

"Ah, but I heard you say
you, uh, '
aint anyone's
," I remind her in my best Rory impression that sounds more
like a cartoon cowboy.