To the Steadfast (19 page)

Mischa puts a hand
around his sister. “Don’t blame Cody for this. I pursued her. It was my fault.
”

Violet leans into her
brother’s arms and begins to cry. It would be so much easier to hate Mischa if
he didn’t keep on doing sweet things like this. Saving me, taking care of his
family, it makes me forget all the bad stuff.

“I should go,” I tell them
before I lose my nerve.

“Let me take you home,”
Mischa says, still holding his sister.

Being alone with him
will only make things worse. I need to make a clean break. “No, you guys have
some things to work out. For what it’s worth, Violet. I really am sorry.”

I don’t look back and
keep walking through the front door. This part of town is more rundown than my
neighborhood. Dogs barking, car alarms in the distance, all the sounds that
make the perfect soundtrack to a kidnapping. The numbers in my phone are
limited, and I’d rather walk home than call my dad. At the top of my contacts
list is the one number I shouldn’t call. The one number that pains my heart
every time I look at it. I can’t call Killian, so I dial information and get a
number for a taxi service. When I find out the wait is thirty minutes, I hang
up and decide to walk. After a block, I get the strangest feeling that someone
is watching me, but when I turn around no one is there.

 Scared, I call
Killian.

“Hello?” He sounds out
of breath, slightly frazzled, but curious. If it’s even possible to get all
that from one word.

“Killian?” Stupid
question. Who else could it be?

“Yeah, who’s this?”

I take a slow deep
breath, afraid he’ll hang up when he hears my name. “It’s Cody.”

“Who?” he’s practically
yelling now, and there’s a bit of shuffling in the background.

“Cody.”

Silence. “What do you
want?”

“Can you come get me?”

His voice changes and
it’s swiftly full of concern. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I’m leaving—” I don’t
want to say Mischa’s house. I don’t want to ever mention that name to Killian
again. “—Violet’s house, and we got into a fight. “

“You can’t ask Mischa?”

I don’t say anything.
Killian blows into the phone causing me to hold it away from my ear.

“Fine. I’ll come get
you. Where does Violet live?”

I give him the
directions to the corner I’m standing on and hang up. Occasionally a car stops,
and I can feel their eyes on me as they pull away. One car even has the nerve
to roll down their windows and holler. Frightened, I move from the spot toward
town. I don’t get too far before a car pulls beside me. I don’t make eye
contact until the window rolls down and I hear Killian’s voice.

“Get in.”

It’s a black Audi, the
one his parents bought him after high school graduation. I open the door, still
afraid to look him in the eyes.

“Are you okay?” He
turns on the air, and I fan my hot face.

“I’m fine. Thanks for
the ride. I hope I didn’t disturb you.”

“Not really.”

“Are you at your
parents’ place?”

“No, they’re home for
the weekend so I was staying with an old buddy. Guess I gotta go home now.”

He pulls up to my gate,
but not the driveway. “Can you get in on your own?”

“Yeah.” I move to pull
the handle, but stop and turn to look at him. I can’t stand whatever this is
between us. I miss him. I always miss him.

“I’m sorry, Killian. I
never meant to hurt you.” The night is just full of apologies.

He snorts, though he
doesn’t look amused. “I feel like such a fool. I really thought you were over
him.”

“I’m so stupid.” I put
my hand out and squeeze his hand.

“When you chose him
over me, it hurt. Call it male pride or ego or whatever you want, but it didn’t
feel too great.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I
could explain it better. Have you ever been so in love with someone that you’d
do anything they asked and no matter how many signs they give you that they’re
no good, you don’t listen?”

He pulls his hand out
of my grip. “You don’t know what love is, Cody. You’ve never seen real love.”

“How do you know?” I
spit out.

“I promise you. The way
Mischa treats you, that isn’t love. You’ll never be enough for him.”

I know this. I’ve
always known this, but I’ve never hated myself as much as I do right now.

“Why are guys such
jerks?”

“Because we’re
incapable of being mature. I mean, that’s why God didn’t give us nipples that
squirt milk. We’d be running around all day squirting each other.”

I crack a smile. Now
that’s the Killian I know and love. “That sounded mildly gross.”

“That’s what I’m here
for.”

He stares straight
ahead and for the longest time we just sit there beside each other. I should
get out, I should leave, but I can’t bring myself to.

He inhales. “Did you
sleep with him?”

I look up at him. A
piece of hair falls in front of my eyes and it shields his view of me. When he
pushes the hair behind my ears, I shake my head. “But I still wish I could take
it back.”

He leans forward and
kisses my forehead. “I broke up with my girlfriend for you.”

“What?” My fingers dig
into the leather seat. “What are you talking about?”

“I broke up with my
girlfriend. The one who was at my parents’ place the other day. I did it
because when I saw you, I knew there was would be no one else who could compare
to you. You were finally going to be eighteen and it wasn’t going to be so
wrong for me to want you. Technically, I was going to break up with her
eventually. I thought that maybe you could feel the same way.”

“I didn’t know.” I
squeeze my  burning eyes shut so I don’t cry.

“You need help, Cody.
Who knows, maybe we all do. You need to get over this guy who will never love
you, and I need to get over this girl who will never love me.”

I don’t know what to
say. A lump forms in the back of my throat. It blisters with an unbearable
passion. Do I love Killian? No, not right now. Could I ever love him? Quite
possibly.

 “I’m sorry,” I choke
out. “If I only knew. Maybe we can—”

“You felt it, but you
chose to ignore it.”

“I need time to process
this!” I try to find the words to explain how I feel, but Killian is right
about everything.

“It’s too late now. I’m
not sure I can forgive you. Not right now. Please get out of my car.”

“Please.” I reach out
to touch him, but he moves away. His eyes are glossed over, but the pain is
written all over his face.

“You broke my heart,
and I’m trying to be a man about it so please go.”

A hot tear falls down
my cheek as I step from the car. Another tear follows and then another. He
pulls away into the next driveway. I enter the code on the gate and walk up to
the front door. Why am I crying so hard? Why did his words affect me so much?
Killian was the only one in the world who understood me, and I hurt him with my
thoughtless, careless actions.

 I was so obsessed with
the possibility of Mischa, I lost what was in front of me. Killian. A year ago,
I would have grabbed a bottle of liquor, a few pills, a joint, anything to numb
the pain of being a screw-up. I can’t do that now. And I can’t let anything
else get screwed up.

 I grab my mp3 player
and go to the back deck. I drag one of the cushions to the diving board and lay
down across the middle. From the pool, I have a straight view into Killian’s
bedroom window. Just outside it, he’s sitting on the roof on a lawn chair that
straddles the peak. From the little light provided by the windows, I see he’s
got a bottle in his hand. He’s not watching the sky, he’s watching across the
highway at our subdivision. I wonder if they finished the apartments yet. I
can’t see from this low, but I can tell from the drink in his hands that he’s
celebrating. The finish of another home for another family. Needing to hear his
voice again, I dial his number on my cell.

It goes to voicemail.

I dial it again, but I
get the same recorded greeting. Even if he does eventually forgive me, things
will never be the same.

I make one more tearful
call, but this time to Lydia.

“Hello?”

“Can we go somewhere
this weekend? Get away.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just
getting to me. This town. The memories. The people.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Yes.” I move away from
the pool and go inside to where I can sit down. I curl up with a pillow from
the couch and tuck my legs under me. “I need to fall out of love with him.”

“Who? Mischa?”

“Yeah, I can’t let him
string me along anymore. He’s had a girlfriend this entire summer, and he’s not
going to leave her for me. I’m not a kid anymore and it’s time I did what I
want.”

“And what does that
mean?” It comes out in a whisper.

I take a deep breath
before divulging my plans. “I don’t want to attend Columbia in the fall.”

I can hear her
breathing on the other end, but other than that the line is silent.

“Are you mad?” I ask.

“Yes! I mean no! I mean
it sucks that we had all these plans to go to school near each other and stuff,
but I want you to be happy. As long as you’re not just trying to appease your
grandmother.”

“I do want to be happy,
but I can’t do that if I keep letting everyone walk all over me. It’s gonna be
hard, and it won’t happen overnight, but I need to do this. I don’t want to
spend the rest of my life in a job I hate, pining over some guy who will never
love me.”

 “Do what you gotta do.
Don’t worry about me. What did your dad say?”

He hasn’t exactly
jumped for joy when I express my feelings about going to nursing school, but
he’ll get over it. I’ll get a job if I have to, do whatever it takes.

“Are you ready to go
home?” Lydia throws her book into her backpack and
stands up. “I’ve been reading for hours and I’m bored. Can’t we go out and have
some fun?”

Even if I wanted to
answer her, I won’t. I’m in the zone which means no distractions. It’s something
Lydia has never figured out. I don’t know why I let her come to the library
with me, she doesn’t even go to school here, but she flew all this way to hang
out with me before the fall semester lets out, and I didn’t feel right leaving
her alone at my apartment. It’s not like I have a choice. Finals are in a few
days and memorization was never one of my finer points. She doesn’t take the
hint and begins hitting the Anatomy book in front of me.

“It’s late. Do you
really need to be wandering alone at night like this?”

I wave my hand at her,
still not looking up from my book. “I’ll be fine. You can go get some sleep.
Really.”

She hovers for a few
more moments. “I didn’t leave the greatest city on earth to visit so you can
ignore me. No studying tomorrow. I mean it.”

I wave my hand again
and rest my chin on my hand as I start over and begin reciting medical
terminology in my head. The program is a bit more tedious and involved than I
had imagined. I knew becoming a nurse would be hard work, but these anatomy
classes are a killer.

“DO or MD?” a deep
voice asks from behind me.

I twist around to see
who’s talking. A guy with thick, dark hair and caramel-colored skin is standing
behind me, looking at my textbook. He doesn’t look like a freshman, and the
confidence rolling off him leads me to believe that he might even be a senior.

“Nursing,” I eventually
spit out. “I’m not even sure I can make it that far. The curriculum is a lot
more than I bargained for.”

“I’ve seen you studying
a lot. I normally sit over there.” He points to a table a few yards away by the
window. I’ve never noticed him, but I don’t exactly check out my surroundings
much either.

I eyeball him from
behind my book as he sits down in the seat across from me. Why is he sitting
down?

 “Oh, that’s nice.”

“Freshman?”

“That obvious, huh? I’m
having a hard week. I made a C on the last test. I haven’t had this much
trouble in a long time.” I close my book and fiddle with my hands in front of
me. I can feel his gaze on me, but I can’t seem to bring myself to look him in
the eyes. Why am I so nervous? I hate this.

“Same here. My father
is a scientist at a private consulting company. He hasn’t stopped talking about
adding me to the family business in about…twenty years. I’m an engineering
major. ”

I allow myself to
smile. “That’s nice.”

“Where are my manners?
I’m Bassam.” He holds out his hand and when I take it, he shakes it so
overzealously I begin to laugh.

The muscles in my neck
relax as he lets go of my hand. “Nice to meet you, Bassam. I’m Cody.”

“Nice to meet you,
Cody.”

I stuff my pencil in my
backpack and look back up at him. “So, are you a senior?”

“Yep.” He rocks back
and forth in his seat nervously. “Nursing, huh? I hear they have a tough
program here.”

“Tell me about it. Even
a 4.0 GPA won’t guarantee me a spot, and I’m having issues with all this
memorization and stuff.”

“If you ever need a
study partner.” He gives me a slight wink.

“Thanks, but I doubt an
engineering major and a nursing major have any classes in common.”

He laughs for the fifth
time in the last ten minutes. “Oh, man. You’re not gonna make this easy on me
are you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m trying to ask you
out.”

My brow scrunches up as
I try to analyze exactly what part of our conversation resulted in a date. I’ve
been out of the game so long I’ve forgotten how to flirt or even what it feels
like to be flirted with.

“Really? What part of
studying resulted in a date? Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t have time for
dating right now.”

I stand up and throw my
backpack over my shoulder. “Nice meeting you, Bassam.”

He stands and follows
me. “Wait. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just see you sitting here
every weekend, and I wanted to say hi. I don’t come here to pick up girls, I
swear. My roommates are really loud, so I need a quiet place to study.”

I make it as far as the
glass entrance doors and turn around. He doesn’t seem like a creep, and he’s
graduating from college in a few months. Surely it would be okay to talk to
him. I could use some friends, any friends. Lydia is the only one I talk to.

“Fine, but just so this
is out in the open. I don’t date.”

“Don’t date guys or
don’t date at all? Or is this because of my ethnic descent?”

My mouth drops open. Is
he serious? I can’t tell. There’s a playfulness in his eyes, but with his hands
crossed in front of his chest he looks serious.

“Um, this has nothing
to do with your gender or race. I just don’t want a boyfriend right now.”

“Is this because
someone broke your heart or were you really fat in high school resulting in
lifelong self-esteem issues.”

What in the world? Who
says that to someone they just met? My eyes center in on him which is easy to
do since he’s my height, no taller. His lips twitch like he’s holding back a
smile. So he’s joking. This is something I haven’t had in a long time, not
since I decided men weren’t worth my time. I kind of like it.

“You ask too many
questions.” I continue walking from the library with him right on my heels.

“Well, maybe that’s why
I’m an engineer.”

I push open the glass
doors and exit the library. “I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with why
you are an engineer. You build bridges.”

“Actually I’m majoring
in chemical engineering with a biomedical concentration. Completely different.
We have that in common. You want to be sticking needles in peoples’ asses all
day long, and I hope to be inventing the medicine you stick in people’s asses
all day long.”

I refuse to let him see
me laugh so I try my hardest to keep a straight face as I say, “My lifelong
goal is not to stick needles in peoples’ butts.”

“Could have fooled me.
What else do nurses do?”

I only have one answer
for him. “We help make sick people better.”

He puts his hands to
his heart and sticks out his bottom lip. I can’t take my eyes off his pout.
Lips so full, beautiful. What would it feel like to suck on them? I wonder if
they’re as soft as they look.

“I’m sick.” He fakes a
cough. “Can you make me feel better?”

“You really are
something else, but I do have to get home. I have a houseguest. ”

He doesn’t take no for
an answer and follows me for a few more steps. “Meet me for coffee in the
morning? A friendly thing.”

I really shouldn’t. I
don’t even know this guy. “I’m sorry. I can’t. Have a good night, Bassam.”

I just love saying his
name. It’s unique. Wait. No, no, don’t do this. He’s wearing a shirt under a
polo. Who’s done that since the ninth grade?

“It’s the broken heart
thing, isn’t it?” he calls out as I step away. I stop, turn around, and look
him up and down. I take my time, finally getting brave enough to lock eyes with
him. “No, it’s your clothes. I don’t like guys in polo shirts.”

Without waiting to see
how he reacts, I keep walking to my apartment.

He calls out, “I’ll
still be there waiting for you!”

My studio apartment
sits on the edge of campus. I didn’t get to pick it out, my father did. He pays
for everything. My living expenses, my tuition, as long as I spend summers
interning at his office. I think he still hopes to persuade me to change my
major back and go to medical school.

 I wouldn’t do it. I
wouldn’t go back to the life that had been planned out for me. I fooled myself
at St. Cecilia’s Academy. I became the daughter they wanted and hoped it would
change things, but it didn’t. I haven’t spoken to my mom in months. We’re both
too busy to exchange more than a hello text every now and then. I’m attending
one of the top nursing schools in the south so I can be closer to Nona. Things
should have gotten better, but they haven’t.  There’s still an emptiness inside
my heart.

I push the door open
and throw my bag on the kitchen table. Lydia is sitting on the couch reading
one of her scripts. She looks up. “That was quick.”

“Yeah, some guy started
pestering me so I decided to call it a night.” I pour myself a glass of
soothing chocolate milk, hoping to calm myself down.

She climbs over the
couch and gets in my face. Her brown eyes are wild with excitement. “A guy?
It’s about time you had some sort of freshman fling. I wish you’d get over
what’s his face already and have some fun.”

“I’m over him, but I
don’t want to put my heart out there again just to have it stomped all over.”

Lydia shakes her finger
in my face and backs up to fix the pullout sofa. “Sometimes if someone stomps
on your heart, it’s only to keep it beating. To make sure you’re still alive
when the day is over. You could call it a sole defibrillator.”

She beams at her clever
little joke, replacing soul with the sole of a shoe. We’ve had this fight way
too many times over the past few months. She’s playing the field in New York,
and she’s never put her heart out there, not that I know of.

 “It hurts,” I choke
out. “It hurts so bad I can’t breathe sometimes.”

She sits and pats the
spot on the sofa next to her. I curl up beside her. “One day, Sweetie. One day
it won’t hurt so bad. It hurts to love someone who won’t love you back, but
trust me when I say that Mischa wasn’t a good catch. In twenty years, you’re
gonna be this amazing nurse out there saving lives and he’s gonna be still
slinging drugs in Betty.”

“He can’t help the way
he grew up. His parents weren’t the best influences.”

“There you go making
excuses for him again! Stop that. Tomorrow we’re gonna find this mystery guy
and you are gonna ask him out.”

“Bassam.”

“Bassam. Ooh, exotic. I
like him already. Okay, we are gonna find Bassam and you are gonna ask him
out.”

“No.”

“I’m gonna make you.”

“No way. There are
twelve thousand students here. There’s no way I’m going to find him before
winter break. Though he did…”

She sits up on her
knees. “What? What? What?”

“He asked me out for
coffee in the morning.”

“What did you say?”

I roll my eyes. The
answer should be obvious. “No, of course.”

“Are you crazy? You’re
gonna go there in the morning, find him, and ask him out.”

“For the millionth
time. I’m not going to ask him out. I’m having enough trouble with school as it
is. I don’t need another distraction.”

She seems to take a
hint because she stops bringing it up.

“Have you talked to
Suzanne lately?” she mumbles.

“Not really. A text
message here or there.”

“Oh.”

I roll off the couch
and climb in my bed. “I’m wiped. I pulled an all-nighter last night, and I have
my last final tomorrow afternoon.”

“Sucks to be you. Sweet
dreams, Dakota.”