by Iris Taylor
Victor was standing there, his hair unruly, like he had run his fingers through them right after getting out of bed. His jaw was covered with a ten o'clock shadow and he looked like he had seen better days, which was saying something.
"Hey. How are you?"
“I’m alright. Wish exams weren’t coming up,” he said, laughing drily. “What about you? You look pretty excited – in your element, actually.”
He was right, and I knew it. I loved exam season. It was one of those times I had full control over, where I could push my self-discipline to a whole new level. I actually enjoyed revising. It completely helped that my grades always reflected the hard work I put in. I wasn’t about to admit that to Victor now though.
I shrugged. “Just fixing my notes. Still got to cover a few things.”
He looked at me shrewdly and peeked over my shoulder at my newly written paragraphs. “Are you summarizing your already brief notes?” He laughed then, a genuine, belly laugh, one that made his and my eyes crinkle. “You should consider selling them, like Cliffs Notes, you know? Lots of us mere mortals would be happy to get a hold of those.”
His words were well worth considering, but I ducked my head modestly. “Nah, I’m sure they already have enough of these online. You just need to go and look.”
“Mind if I join you?” When I shook my head, he pulled out a chair next to me and got a few of his own books out. “I’ll see if I can get any reading done. It’s been a while since I hit the books and I’m kinda rusty.”
Ordinarily, I would have launched into a lecture about how last-minute cramming rarely working, but seeing what he had been through recently and his present emotional state, I dropped it. We sat side by side in silence, my work slowed down a bit because of his distracting presence. I refrained from asking him why he looked so worn out. He could volunteer the information himself if he felt like it. It didn’t stop me from noticing his well-toned, veined forearms, or the familiar scent of mint and musk that was uniquely him. If I weren’t so hell-bent on ignoring my own thoughts, I would have admitted to myself that I missed him. He had a strong, large chest that I wanted to just cuddle into, and arms that made me feel safe and warm as they enveloped me. It was after a few minutes of rereading the same page that I realized he had stopped looking at his book altogether and was just sitting there, looking at his hands blankly.
“Are you okay?” I finally asked.
Silence. And then, “I wish I could turn back time.”
I turned to look at him. He looked exhausted as he ran a large hand over his face. I wanted to reach over to touch him, but felt it was too soon. It didn’t feel like time yet. “Why do you say that?” I asked quietly. My thoughts on it may or may not agree with his. I knew he had said he regretted his actions. Only time would tell me how true his words were.
He laid his palms up on the table and sighed. “It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting to be me. To have expectations to live up to, the golden boy, the captain of the football team, Mr. Popular. I’m sick and tired of it.”
He looked at me. “And now, I don’t even see the point of it all. Because it came with a specific group of friends I had grown up with and who I now realize I don’t even know anymore.”
His words jolted me. Did he really feel that way?
“Do you really need to hang around people whose values don’t match yours? Can’t you play on the team and still do your own thing? People drift apart, it just happens.”
He laughed roughly. “It’s a package, Cara. You date the cheerleaders, hang out with the rest of the team. Heck, our families spend time together. It’s expected that I will take over my dad’s company once I’m done with college and football. The same goes for Elijah and the rest of the crew. And we would probably end up marrying each other, too.”
“So what’s the problem with that?” It came out a little too harshly, but I couldn’t see myself pitying someone whose life plan was already in place. Financial security was the least of their problems, let alone the issues I had to face growing up, and here again in Ravenshaw Academy. No, I wasn’t sure I pitied their first world problems.
“The problem is – I’ve changed. I’m not the same guy anymore. I see how...superficial and shallow and useless the things we do are. Hurtful, even. And I want out. I’m tired of trying to fake it. I’m tired of fighting this new conscience I’ve developed.”
“Then don’t. Consider yourself lucky you have your eyes wide open now. Your gang isn’t exactly as amazing as you think they are.” When he stayed quiet, I added, “They hurt people left and right, step on people. They think they rule the world.”
I caught his attention with that. He appeared to be swallowing a protest.
“You may have the money to run Ravenshaw Falls the way you want to, but it’s at the expense of others. Their happiness, their livelihood. It’s not right.”
I held his arm then. “You can change all that. You just need to be able to see it. April’s mom lost her job because of Elijah’s dad’s moves on her. I almost got raped because some vindictive rich girl was bored. I won’t even get started on what else is happening out there.”
My words must have refocused his perspective on his own life. He let out a sigh and nodded. “You’re right. When you put it like that I sound like I’m whining away about nothing. I think that’s the pep talk I need to snap out of this. Thanks, Cara. I mean it.” He squeezed my hand. The warmth of his skin made me look down to where we were touching. My breath caught – I wanted more. I couldn’t sit here so close to him and pretend to not be affected by him. I miss him, dammit.
I wasn’t alone in thinking that. I watched as he slowly inched his lips closer to my face and placed a soft, gentle kiss onto my cheek. His warm breath fanned my skin, and neither of us made a move to pull away. I savored his scent, the proximity between us. I missed him, even though I probably should not. He had shown to me time and time again that trusting him was probably a mistake, yet here I was, yearning for the feel of his touch, of his lips on mine.
“Ehem.”
We jolted apart. The librarian, Miss Judith, looked at us disapprovingly. I immediately started to rearrange my books and notes into a pile and pretended to fuss around with my pencils. Victor sat there, watching me with an eyebrow raised, amused. Once the tiny old lady was gone, he laughed. “You should have seen your face. That was priceless. It’s like you ‘ve never broken any school rules before.”
I smacked him on the arm. “Not on purpose! Anyway, I don’t want to lose her good view of me. She lets me come into the library earlier than the opening times and lets me borrow books for longer.”
His smile showed me how ridiculous he thought I was being. “You’re seriously one of a kind, Cara. The hot, geeky kind.”
That earned him another smack on the arm.
We walked out the library together, and he asked me if he could buy me coffee before my shift that evening. I sent a text to my mom to tell her that I was heading straight to work so she wouldn’t get worried.
Cherie’s was bustling with early weekend customers and this made me nervous somewhat. Victor must have sensed this as he kept an arm around my shoulder as we walked inside. Thankfully, no one we knew was around, and I felt myself relax and enjoy the atmosphere. The choice of food there never failed to amaze me, and after some deliberation I decided on a nachos with extra jalapenos and a frozen strawberry gelato with a sprinkle of cashew nuts. Victor ordered us both a latte – I had forgotten the original purpose of the invite – and found us a corner booth away from prying eyes.
“I forgot how much I enjoy seeing you eat,” he said, eyeing me as I scooped up the melted cheese onto my tortilla. I ignored him and focused on savoring the gooey goodness.
“Here,” I said, pushing my plate closer to him. “Do me a favor and just eat.” He laughed and complied with my request. Pretty soon the entire dish was gone, and Victor signaled to the waiter for my ice cream to be brought out.
“Gaddd, I can’t get ov
er this place.” I said as I rubbed my full and very happy belly.
“We can come here again soon if you want,” Victor said with a mischievous smile. “Say, tonight after your shift?”
I threw my napkin at him. “Okay, not that soon, silly. How’d they make food this delicious?”
He frowned and leaned forward, his voice lowered in a whisper. “I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Seriously?!”
He leaned back. “My family owns this place. I’m pretty sure there’s a family recipe in there somewhere.”
My eyes bugged out. “Your family owns Cherie’s? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
He shrugged. “Why should I? I get more honest feedback this way.” He watched me as I sipped the last of my heavenly latte. “And it’s so much fun to see such ecstasy on your face.”
I blushed. I couldn’t help it. He probably hadn’t meant the double entendre but my mind had definitely not filtered anything out. I remembered the time in my living room when we were fooling around, and I suddenly felt hot, like I hadn’t just had a whole ice cream to myself.
Victor’s hooded eyes told me his thoughts had drifted to the same place as well. “Can I...pick you up from work tonight?”
I nodded and swallowed visibly. Standing up, I let him lead me as we left the shop. His taut, broad back conjured images of what I would do if we were alone together, and I had to force myself to calm down. The cool evening air sobered me somewhat, numbing my skin and placating my aroused state. I took a few cleansing breaths and managed to plaster a neutral smile onto my face before Victor turned to reach for my hand. He led us to his car and opened the door for me before jogging over to the driver’s side.
As he drove me to the bookstore, he took my hand again and kissed it. “Thank you,” he said in a whisper. “Thank you for giving me another chance and for spending time with me. I really, really needed that.”
I squeezed his hand in response. “Don’t make me regret this.” I didn’t care if my words spoiled the entire mood of the time we had just spent together. He needed to know I wasn’t about to be played one more time. I didn’t think I would survive another blow coming from him.
“You won’t, I promise.”
Chapter Fifteen
“You!”
I turned around from rearranging books in my locker to see none other than Jessica, her hands on her hips, her blond Barbie impersonation particularly strong today with her sparkly blue eye shadow and pink headband. She looked like she had come straight from Malibu instead of the English exam we just had. She was furious. It didn’t take too much to imagine her baring her teeth at me. Just pinch those candy pink lips back a little bit more
“What does it take for you to stop whoring yourself out to Victor?”
I rubbed my forehead. My subtle headache from the late night I had spent studying threatened to blossom rapidly. But her choice of words didn’t escape on me. Whoring? If I recall correctly we had barely passed second base. Images of Victor and Jessica together on the lounge chair crept into my mind uninvited, and I swallowed the nausea that welled up my throat.
“I’m not whoring myself out to him, or to anyone else for that matter. You can have him all you want. I don’t care.”
I turned to head towards my next class – advanced Biology – but before I could walk away, I felt her grab me by the wrist.
“Then why doesn’t he return my calls? And why hasn’t he been hanging out with us?”
The genuine sadness in her voice made me pause. The girl was truly and madly obsessed with Victor. I wondered if she truly knew him, or liked what she thought she knew of him. Looking at her, I almost felt sorry for her. She was faithful to all the wrong people – people who probably didn’t have her best interests in mind. Victor looked like he wanted out, and her best friend Adrienne was too busy with her own agenda to care about what Jessica was facing. I wondered if she knew about Elijah and Adrienne, or what they were covering up together. Then again, what did it matter to me?
“It’s best that you ask him. I can’t pretend to be able to answer any of that.”
Her mouth turned down at my reply. “I know you know something. He’s been distancing himself lately, not just from me, but from all of us. And I think he’s been confiding in you.” Her sad pout turned into an ugly snarl. “Stay away from him, I mean it. You won’t be able to win against us.” With that, she turned and stomped away, her short skirt swinging around her slim hips.
I sighed. Victor was right – he did come as part of a package. His friends weren’t a particularly attractive buy-one-free-all offer, not for me, anyway.
As I walked towards Biology, I could hear two male voices arguing. I turned because one of them sounded familiar. Simon was looking angry, his hand hitting Connor’s shoulder repeatedly. He was saying something I couldn’t make out but it was clear Connor had stopped responding to him, standing there whilst Simon delivered blow after blow on his chest and shoulder. After some time, he stopped, and Connor turned and walked away apathetically. If it weren’t for the utter defeat and crushed look on Simon’s face, I would have walked away to give him his space. As it was, I slowly approached him and gave him a side hug. He stood there, watching Connor’s back as he walked away. I could feel a shudder run through him, and saw that he was holding back tears.
“Hey...sssh. Wanna talk about it?”
We walked into one of the empty classrooms where he sat down on a chair and stared at his feet for a long while.
“Connor’s dating again.”
I felt my heart drop. No wonder Simon was so crushed.
“He wouldn’t tell me who. I know because he’s blocked me from all his social media accounts – all of them. And he’s not even sparing me a glance nowadays.”
He sobbed, a violent body-racking shake that made me tear up, for his sake. “Oh Simon...”
“I’ve never felt so lost, Cara. I’ve never felt so lost without someone like this before. I think it’s too late, but I really, really love him...”
I hugged him as he cried on my shoulder, his pain and sorrow radiating through him. “Why do you think it’s too late?”
“The way he looks at me, Cara. He doesn’t look at me the same way anymore. And he’s treating me like the wind – like I’m invisible.”
I kept quiet as he continued to explain further. He had seen pictures of Connor with another guy at some party – pictures he could only see by checking other people’s accounts. Connor had seemed pretty happy, and it was always the same guy he had his arm around. It seemed self-destructive to me, hurting yourself like that, stalking your ex and obsessing over his new beau, but I refrained from telling him so. He needed to go through the entire breakup cycle himself, that much I knew.
The late bell rang, and after giving him a long hug, we went our separate ways, promising to see each other at lunch.
Love was heartbreaking. I didn’t see the point of it all. I certainly wasn’t sure it was as beautiful as all it was hyped up to be. It made people do crazy things, lose themselves and their sense of self-worth. It could be cruel, gone when it was needed the most, debilitating the one it was snatched away from.
My biology lab exam went well despite my being late and getting a glare from the lab professor. Ordinarily, being late for a test would have been sacrilegious to me, but my life had changed me again, it seemed. Friends mattered a whole lot more now than it did before, and I was grateful Ravenshaw Falls had given me at least that.
Lucia and April were bickering over their own biology lab exam at lunch. I could see that April was right but decided not to speak up since Lucia was getting all flustered and animated. For someone who didn’t really care about her grades – or who said she didn’t – she was getting quite riled up.
They quietened when a silent Simon with swollen, red-rimmed eyes sat down and started to pull out a pack of Kleenex. Looking at me, it was obvious they wanted an explanation, but I wait
ed for Simon himself to speak up.
“Do you want me to get you anything to eat?” I asked him gently.
He shook his head. “I got everything I need right here,” he replied, gesturing to his flask. I wondered if it was the alcohol-blueberry smoothie again.
“I’ll grab a tiny bit extra just in case you get hungry okay?”
The line was long, attesting to the fact that exams made people binge more. I grabbed some cheese-flavored fries, two slices of pizza – one regular crust for Simon, one cauliflower crust for myself – and two sodas. If we needed more then I’d just have to line up again.
“Whoa – the hillbilly’s hungry. Got a bun in the oven?”
My head snapped up at the words. Elijah was grinning at his joke, and I wished I had a free hand to use to slap him across the face.
“I don’t, but I heard you have a few,” I replied before I could think my answer through. I watched as the color drained from his face, his self-assured smile disappearing fast.
“Bitch,” he said, inching towards me threateningly. “Where did you hear that?” His hands were fisted by his sides and if we weren’t in public I was sure he would have them wrapped around my throat by now.
I couldn’t help myself. “Apparently dating you is a super-hot thing. The rumors fly. Too bad they’re not true – the hotness side of it, I mean. Girls just get knocked up and dumped after you’ve had your fill.” I shrugged nonchalantly and turned to leave.
I felt my hair being pulled back and before I knew it, I was yanked to the ground, the food spilling out of my hands and across the floor with a clatter. Several girls gasped. Elijah’s face loomed over mine, flushed a dark, angry red, his eyes narrowed into slits. “Be careful with what you say with that big mouth of yours,” he hissed. “Should have silenced you much earlier when we had the chance.” I yelped when his foot kicked my side, his boot digging painfully into my flesh.
“Elijah!”
Adrienne’s face appeared next to his, and it was the first time I saw true fear in her face. “Don’t! She’s not worth it!”