WITHOUT YOU (STRIPPED) (4 page)

April 18
th

Almost a week and no word from Quinn. She’s not answering my calls. Or my knocks at her dorm. It’s almost as if she’s dropped off the face of the earth, only I know it isn’t so because I did spot her at school two days ago. Walking from the art building to the parking lot, a blond guy who could only be Billy at her side. Her
friend
. Whatever.

It took everything in me to not chase after her that day, but I know she needs time. It’s in her nature to run, and pushing would only light a fire under her already-burning vein. Besides, what would have I said? I’m not going to Costa Rica?

I don’t know that I can say that, yet.

Wooden floor boards creak as I ease down the hallway, searching room after room for the triangle-shaped one with the chipped sink. Fuller’s Warehouse is old and abandoned and the perfect place at the edge of town to lose myself in the magnificence of a desolate, dying building. Or to distract myself during the hours of three to five while my girlfriend creates a room full of freshmen blue balls. 

Broken windows and crumbling foundation lead me toward the back of the building where I, at last, find the room I’m looking for. I have no idea what this warehouse was used for, let alone this room, but its triangle shape and lone sink aren’t the reason I come here. It’s the rainbows of light seeping in through the plywood over the windows, splaying across the dingy white walls in heavenly bursts. Like God himself decided this suffering structure needed a little life.

It’s a photographer’s dream.

I situate myself against the wall just below the window where I spend the next few hours watching as light crawls and fuzzes along the corners of the room, turning from a bright yellow to muted orange, recording the changes with a succession of photographs. As the room starts to darken with the sun’s descent, my phone pings with a message from Andrew.
Party with Dabbs tonight. You in?

Any normal night I’d pass. Binge drinking and waking up feeling like I got hit by a train isn’t akin to rolling around in the sheets, so to speak, with Quinn. But since it’s looking like I’m going to be sleeping alone again tonight and, to be honest, a sloppy, drunk night might be what I need to take my mind off things for a while, I respond with:
You’re driving
. 

~*~

The yard is a minefield of tossed trash: beer bottles, cigarette butts, the carcasses of used-up fireworks ornamented with a growing mass of swaying bodies. Andrew and I pick our way up the grass plot when the front door silently swings open and Dabbs steps out onto the front porch.

“You fucking serious?” He extends his gaunt arms out wide in an I-am-Jesus sort of way and hops down the hollow, wooden steps. The long sea-urchin-like spikes of hair on his head don’t budge. A few heads turn in his direction and then follow his gaze to mine. “John Torrin Kingsley has decided to grace us with his presence tonight? Who the fuck died?”

Ignoring the superfluous attention I thrust my hands into my pockets, ready to tell him it hasn’t been that long—only since before Quinn became my world—when Andrew spouts back, “Thought it would’ve been you by now, Dabbs. That or arrested.”

From behind his black-framed glasses, Dabbs winks at Andrew. Two years ago, the guy was the kind of sturdy heft that made people think of baseball players—muscular thighs and a bracing neck that supported a head just slightly too small for his body. Now, the padding is gone, his arms and legs a scraggy consequence from housing too many pharms. “Glaze, you motherfucker, you better not puke in my flower pot this time or I will come and personally piss on your pillow tonight.”

I look over at Andrew and he shrugs at me. “Don’t feed me Jager Bombs then hump my leg and I think we’ll be good.”

“It was wrestling, not humping, asswipe.”

Andrew flings his arms out to the sides, a wide smile on his face. “Potato pot-
a
-to.”

Dabbs points to the front yard, a bulk of bodies dotted along the grass and an assortment of ice chests in the middle. “Beer’s in there. Help yourself. Oh, and no one’s allowed inside so piss in the bushes.” Dabbs sits on the porch steps of the two-story house his parents purchased for him just out of high school. According to him, it was a deal they’d made with him when he was sixteen: make it through high school without drinking or drugs and they’d buy him a house. He’d adhered to those provisions, technically, and spent his high school years ingesting full bottles of cough syrup to get high instead of beer or weed. The guy’s a total douche. But he knows how to throw a decent party.

Andrew and I both grab beers and head to the fire pit on the driveway where a few guys from the team let out hoots when they spot us. “Glaze,” Brady says, throwing back his shoulders to puff out his chest, “what kind of magic did you pull to get
him
out tonight?”

“I’m right here, dick.” Faster than he can blink, I slam the ass end of my bottle over the top of his. “Bottom’s up,” I say as yellow, foamy beer spills out like lava from a volcano. The guys laugh as Brady’s “oh shit” is muffled with the sounds of him slurping.

Maybe I can relax tonight. Even have a little fun.

A few beers later, Dabbs joins our circle, handing me yet another ice-cold bottle. Blurry-eyed, I glance to Andrew. “You sure you’re driving?”

He holds up his half-empty bottle and jiggles it. “Still sipping. Go ahead. It’s not often we get to watch our captain get piss drunk.”

“Captain?” Dabbs asks, wrapping his thin lips around the top of a beer bottle. He guzzles a long sip. “So admin finally let you back on the team?”

I nod. “They lifted the suspension after the last press conference with my dad. Apparently coming clean in front of a shitload of news cameras was all Pacific Rim wanted.” I look away, hoping the lie doesn’t show on my face. That day down at the harbor, when I’d discovered Quinn would have to leave Loyola and move back with her parents, I convinced my dad that clearing the Montgomery name—even if it meant muddying our own—was what we needed to do. I’d told the news reporters that giving me college credit for the classes I hadn’t taken was my idea, a trade of sorts for the massive amount of hours I had to spend to get his school’s crew in shape to take gold at this year’s nationals. We insisted William Montgomery be reinstated as dean and all class credit I’d received from Pacific Rim, even for the classes I’d actually taken, be removed from my record.

Admin didn’t reinstate her dad, though they did offer him a teaching job. They didn’t retract my credits, either, which I guess I’m glad about. Now instead of being an entire year behind, I’m only one quarter’s worth for the few months I spent drilling crew instead of studying.

Quinn was pissed that I’d lied about my involvement in the scandal, that I’d taken the blame for what her father did. But keeping Quinn close to me was why I did it. Guess that lasted all of a month.

“So how come you haven’t been around lately?” Dabbs interrupts my thoughts. “You got a girl?”

I roll the bottle between my hands. “Um…yeah, sort of.” Only she’s not speaking to me at the moment.

“Sort of… I have a
sort of
, too.” He pulls a pack of cigarettes out from his back pocket, retrieves one, and lights it. Smoke billows into the night sky. “Amber the check-out girl at Smarties? She comes over when she’s burning to get high and blows me in return.” Another inhale. Exhale. Then his eyes meet mine. “Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.”

Andrew scrunches his nose. “Isn’t that chick like twenty-eight with two kids?”

“Fuck if I know.” Dabbs smiles. “It’s not like she comes over to
talk
.”

Just then a pair of arms wrap around me from behind. “Thought that was you,” a familiar voice says close to my ear. Soft and sultry, and very much not Quinn’s.

Candace slinks around to my front, bare feet poking out from her skinny jeans, her full pink lips puffed out in her look-how-cute-I-am way. “Were you gonna say hi, or just ignore me like the last time?”

Andrew’s brows draw up, his
Oh shit, that’s your ex-girlfriend
thought widening his already-sober expression. He knows her from before—the last time, as she’s referring to, when I realized I couldn’t play her ridiculous cat and mouse games anymore and left her at some frat party. Not by coincidence was it the same party Quinn found me, the same night she and I escaped to the bluff to mess around with my new camera. The night I understood the feisty, closed-off Quinn was maybe just a front and the desire to see what was beneath her hardened shell was too strong to ignore.    

“Hi, Candace,” I say, looking over her face. I won’t lie; she’s pretty with blue-green eyes the color of sea glass and a smattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks. Her hair’s long like Quinn’s, only with choppy pieces that frame her face. 

She steps closer and hooks her arms around my neck. Her breasts press tight against my chest, lips brush my ear with the words, “I’ve missed you, baby. Especially,”—one hand trails around my head, her fingertip skimming lightly across my lips—“These. On mine.”

“Don’t bother, Candie,” Dabbs spouts from beside me. “He’s got a ‘sort of’ girlfriend.”

Candace leans back, raises a perfectly-shaped eyebrow. I take the moment to reach behind and unclasp her hand from my neck, nudge her back into her own personal bubble.

“Hm,” she huffs out. “A
sort of
girlfriend? Is that what I was?”

Candace was a distraction, a way to pass the time and help me forget about my suspension from the team. Sure we had fun for a few months, but there was no connection. Not emotionally, anyway.

Pursing her lips, she eyes the beer in my hand. “Torrin, I need to get my vodka from inside. Come with me?”

Candace is a normal college girl who likes to have fun. Not sneaky or a minx with a hidden agenda of seducing her ex-boyfriend. 

“Yeah, sure,” I say, looking to Dabbs to see if he’ll rescind his “no one allowed inside” rule. 

He lets out a huff. “Just stay out of my room.”

Inside, through a remarkably clean living room, I follow her to a small office-like den where she shimmies closed the shutter doors, securing us off from the tendrils of reggae music drifting in from the front yard. Grounded in sage-colored walls and oak bookshelves with a bronze ceiling fan anchored in the center, the place is far from one’s typical bachelor pad. It actually has style, thanks to Dabbs’s mom who hired a decorator when the house was purchased.

Candace pads across the room and from a small black cabinet beside the L-shaped desk, she pulls a fifth of vodka. She turns and grins, sweeping her hand over the glass bottle in game show fashion. “My juice of choice, as you might remember.”

Ignoring her comment, I settle into the padded wingback chair in the corner of the room and take a swig from my beer. “I don’t know how you drink that stuff. It tastes like rubbing alcohol.”

“Because beer is gross, tequila turns me into psycho-Candace, and whisky makes me throw up. This,”—she uncaps the bottle and takes a long pull ending on a slight recoil—“isn’t the best tasting, but it gets me drunk and happy.” She sets the bottle on the desk and lowers beside it. “So, Captain Kingsley, is it true? You have a girlfriend?”

I laugh. “I thought you would’ve latched on to the word ‘sort of’ and run with it.”

She crosses her legs and bounces one bare foot against the other, her head tilted. “I’m not stupid. When a guy says they
sort of
have a girlfriend it means they do. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about it or maybe the relationship is struggling…” Her words trail into a whisper, and her eyes meet mine. “Which is it for you?”

I don’t say anything because explaining the internship and Quinn’s opinion about it would numb the warm buzz coursing through me. After a beat of a moment, Candace hops off the desk and approaches me.

“Did you two have a fight?” She kneels on the floor and rests her hands on my knees.

“Guess you could call it that.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

Ever so slightly, she inches forward, her glassy gaze dipping to my mouth then back up. “Do you want me to distract you for a little while?” She captures her metal tongue ring between her teeth and waits.

And waits.

My thoughts turn into jack rabbits—hard to predict which way they’re going to move and therefore impossible to catch. Would my decision be easier if I didn’t love Quinn? Would I already be packing my bags? I think that answer’s obvious. But what if I pushed Quinn away? Made her hate me instead of love me? Would I then be able to leave her without looking back? Have no regrets like Professor Williams? 

Without thinking, my eyes settle on the giant mounds of flesh spilling out of Candace’s sheer, tight tank top and it must’ve been enough of an answer because before I know it her lips are on mine, her tongue and that barbell quick and insistent on distracting tonight.

She scrambles on top of me, pinning me to the chair with her legs on either side of me, and I open my mouth to let her in. The taste of sour vodka coats her tongue. Hands slip around my neck and tug at my hair at the same time she grinds the seam of her jeans into mine.