by Eden Beck
I sit there in confusion for a second before I realize what just happened.
What we almost just did. What I was going to let him do.
I’ve never sobered up so quickly in my life.
We went from being in a frenzied fit of intimacy, to Sterling dropping his hands from me as if he had burned himself and storming off into the other room. If he’s actually unable to perform sexually, then I get the feeling his drug problem is a lot worse than he is letting on.
Still, I doubt that’s the only reason my hands are shaking.
And I’m not the only one.
Sterling uncorks another bottle of wine and turns it upside-down, chugging the bottle as if it’s water. It’s a long moment before either of us tries to break the silence.
“I really should be going,” I say, my voice cracking as I work to steady my hands.
Sterling doesn’t look at me. “Figures.”
His words make me pause. I should hate myself for what I almost did, but instead, I find an unfamiliar emotion taking over me.
It’s pity.
For him.
“Hey, it’s no big deal,” I say, walking up to him and reaching a hand out to put on his arm. It probably isn’t the best way for me to react, but I’m just not sure how to handle this situation.
“It’s cool,” he says as he shrugs it off. “We shouldn’t have sex anyway.”
“Why not?” I ask, cursing myself for the ache of disappointment I feel at his words. I tell myself it’s just the lingering wine.
“We just shouldn’t. Wouldn’t be good for your reputation.”
I know it’s meant as a joke, but it falls flat.
“I should walk you home.”
I just nod.
The walk back to my dorm room is painfully awkward. We walk next to each other in uneasy silence. Despite my whole master plan with things, I keep finding my mind returning to the look on his face in that moment.
I’ve never seen such a genuine moment of emotion from Sterling.
It’s made me replay the entire evening over and over in my head. Maybe I was wrong. If this is an ongoing problem … well then … maybe I am the first girl he’s invited up to the suite.
Maybe he did set it all up for me.
Somehow, the idea just leaves me feeling worse.
We part ways in the same awkward silence, and I’ve never been so thankful to see Bridget already asleep as when I get back up to our shared room.
I suddenly feel no desire to share the details of my date.
I lie on my back and look up at the ceiling thinking about the way things played out tonight. I think about what Alaska and Clark said about taking things too far, and I am pretty sure this is exactly what they meant.
At first, this was all just an attempt to bully back the people who had bullied me. I wanted to find out their secrets. I wanted to harm them.
But as much as I want to make them all pay for the way they treated me last semester, I just can’t do it at the cost of turning into a monster myself.
Chapter Eleven
On campus the next day, Sterling is definitely not acting like himself.
In the morning when I see him at the bookstore café, he seems to be in a good mood—happy and upbeat, and almost as if he has completely forgotten about what happened last night. But then later at lunch, his behavior has done a complete one-eighty. He’s lethargic and leaning his head against his elbow at the table. He grumbles when Warren asks him why he missed the study session, and then practically bites Chase’s head off when he says something about prepping for an upcoming exam.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” I ask. “Not enough coffee this morning?”
I am trying to lighten the mood, but my remark is quickly met with hostility.
“You saw me get coffee this morning, Aubrey,” Sterling snaps at me. “Am I that unremarkable that you’ve forgotten already?”
I look at him with my jaw open, completely stunned about why he is acting this way, but Warren and Chase don’t seem to notice anything different at all. Maybe Sterling’s erratic behavior is par for the course since they’ve known him a lot longer than I have. But I can definitely tell that something’s wrong … and I don’t think it’s just the fact that his ego was bruised over what happened in his dorm room last night.
It’s something more than just emotional. Especially if he’s all but falling asleep at the lunch table. I think he’s having some sort of physical side effect to something, and I really hope this doesn’t have anything to do with his drug problem.
But if last night was any indicator, I’d be a fool to think it’s anything else.
Later in the day, I run into Sterling one more time before heading back to my dorm. He’s walking across the pathway heading in the opposite direction and since I assume that he’s still in a bad mood, I don’t really stop to talk to him. But much to my surprise, he reaches over and gives me a hug which nearly makes me drop all of the books in my arms.
“What was that for?” I ask when he lets me go.
“I just thought that a hug in the cold weather would be fun,” he says with a smile flashed in my direction.
This must be what it feels like to get whiplash.
I eye him more carefully, but he just squints back at me. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”
I shake off my thoughts from earlier. Maybe he was just in a funk, or maybe I was making it up.
I have to remind myself that I don’t really know him … like at all. This could all be par for the course with Sterling.
If Bridget is any indicator, he’s certainly more complicated the closer you get to him.
Just thinking of her for a moment makes a sour pit settle in my stomach. Right. I have to keep my mind focused.
I don’t want to be a monster, but I don’t want to be a fool either.
“I’m getting excited about the gala,” I say, thinking that maybe he’ll walk with me for a bit now that he seems to be in a better mood.
But as soon as the words leave my mouth about the gala, Sterling’s mood catapults downward again. It looks as if all the blood has just drained out of his face and a frown immediately tugs at the sides of his mouth.
“I have to go,” he says as he abruptly turns around on the path and heads back toward his dorm building.
I’m left standing in shock, unsure of what I’m supposed to do now.
I’m going to try to get to the bottom of this—about his mood, and the drugs, and his dad.
Or at the very least, as close to it as I can.
As close as he lets me.
Though there are soon other things occupying my mind.
First and foremost, Halloween.
Somehow, I completely forgot it was coming up, and now it’s practically upon us. There’s been so much going on that it entirely slipped my mind. On my walk between classes, I hear Bridget talking to a gaggle of her girlfriends about a little Halloween costume party in the dorms. She hasn’t spoken to me since before I left on my date with Sterling, and I can tell by the way she’s glaring at me as I walk up to the group that she doesn’t want to talk to me now.
“Hey guys,” I say, trying to pretend like I don’t see her disgruntled expression.
“Hey Aubrey,” Tammy says—either oblivious, or not caring about Bridget’s expression. “What are you dressing up as?”
“What, for Halloween?” I ask.
The girls all giggle.
“For Bridget’s costume party,” she clarifies. “Surely you knew about it already, I mean you guys share a room.”
I look over at Bridget with a blank stare.
“I must have forgotten to mention it,” she says. “You know, kind of like how you forgot to mention who you were going on a date with Sterling.”
Yep, she’s pissed alright.
Just before the other girls are able to start prying into what my date was like, Bridget cuts them all off and starts explaining her idea for the costume party that will be takin
g place in our dorm building—with the food and drinks being headquartered in our room, of course.
I wonder when she had been planning to tell me about this, if she was planning to tell me at all. I can just imagine the entire campus showing up to our dorm room floor in costume, as I’m lying in bed in my pajamas trying to sleep.
“Sounds fun,” I say with a pretend smile. I’m getting really way too good at faking shit. “I’ll whip up some sort of costume, I suppose.”
I suddenly spot Sterling across the campus and politely excuse myself to run after him. I’m not letting his crazy behavior slide by unnoticed, even if everyone else seems to be acting like this is entirely normal.
“Hey!” I shout as I run up to him.
His face is dark when he turns to glance my way.
“What do you want?”
Great, he’s back on the downward spiral of the mood swing, apparently.
“Are you coming to the costume party?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“What are you dressing up as?”
“I’m not sure yet, maybe a vampire or some shit,” he answers as he keeps trying to walk toward wherever he’s headed.
Not very original, but then again, whatever I manage to scrounge together tonight isn’t likely to be the height of Halloween fashion either.
“What about the gala?” I ask, suddenly. “What are you wearing to that?”
It’s a good question to ask, not only did I genuinely want to know what I should wear to match him as my date, but it also opened the door back up for me to push him a bit more about his dad.
The source, I have a sneaking suspicion, of today’s roller coaster of emotions.
“Unabashed shame and perpetual resentment,” he says.
“Huh?”
“That’s what I’ll be wearing to the gala,” Sterling snaps. “You asked me, and I answered.”
“Oh,” I say. “I was mostly asking about your clothes.”
He knew that, of course. So, he was either trying to make a point about how much he really doesn’t want to go or he’s just intent on lashing out.
“Dress pants and a shirt,” he says. “Probably not a tie because I hate ties.”
“I think that I’m going to wear—”
“Look Aubrey,” Sterling interrupts. “No offense, but I really just don’t care. You know that I don’t even want to go to the gala to begin with. I’m only going because of the deal that I made with you.”
“I know,” I say as I nod my head. “But what I don’t know is why you’re so opposed to going.”
“I already told you, I don’t like to be in the same room as my father,” he says.
“Yeah, I don’t like to be around my parents either,” I say. “But you seem more than just stressed about it. You seem like you’re having the equivalency of a nervous breakdown—no offense.”
“None taken,” he says.
Sterling stops walking long enough to turn and look at me for a minute. He can be so soft when he wants to be.
“Look, I just want to make sure that you’re okay,” I say as I reach up a hand to touch his forearm. I’m surprised when he doesn’t pull away.
For one second, his eyes almost flutter shut at the touch of my hand.
“Why?” he asks. “Why do you even care about what happens to me?”
I wasn’t really expecting that question so I’m not sure how to answer it. To be honest, I’m not really sure why I care about him so much. Now it’s my turn to try to avoid his questions.
“I need to get to class,” I say, suddenly drawing back. “I’ll see you at the Halloween party.”
The look on his face as I turn to hurry off almost makes me stop.
Almost.
Chapter Twelve
Bridget’s costume party is everything that I would expect from her and the recesses of her extravagantly frivolous and superficial brain. She actually had food catered in mere hours after the spread the school chefs already laid out.
I’m not even sure that’s something the dorms allow, but once again, it doesn’t seem to matter. Just like it doesn’t seem to matter that almost everyone is underage yet drinking a heavily spiked Halloween punch that is located right on top of my dorm room desk, dangerously close to my laptop … which I’ve got to move. I reach it right before a half-drunken girl nearly sloshes her punch all over my computer.
When I first got here, I thought the house mother would have had a heart attack over this sort of thing going on.
Now I just wonder how much Bridget had to pay her off to turn a blind eye.
“Sorry,” the girl giggles at me before walking away in her scantily clad mermaid costume.
I sigh and shove the laptop under my bed before all of my stored assignments get destroyed and I have to spend another semester at this place instead of going to Brown.
“Boo,” a voice says from behind me.
I turn around and see Sterling, dressed as—uh something.
“What are you supposed to be?” I ask.
He has a dress shirt on that is unbuttoned practically down to his navel and tucked into the front of black pants. His entire body—at least all of the parts of it that I can see—is covered in glitter that sparkles under the strings of twinkling lights that Bridget had her ‘party brigade’ of girlfriends hang up.
Sterling smiles and reveals a pair of custom-made vampire fangs.
“Of course,” I laugh. “You’ve dressed up as the brooding and sparkly vampire. The kind that are all the desirous rage in the YA section of the bookstore.”
“Well, you did say that I was moody,” he teases. “I thought I would at least dress the part. You know, kind of like how you chose to play the part of slut this semester?”
I’m not sure it that was meant as a dig or a jest, but either way I find it amusing.
“Well, I love it,” I say with a broadening smile. “I think you make an excellent vampire. You pull off the whole ‘tortured by his inner turmoil’ look very well.”
Sterling laughs and I get a warm feeling that starts in the bottom of stomach and rises all the way up into my chest. Maybe someday, when all of this drama here is over, he and I can go on a few real dates—the kind free from subplots and drug abuse.
“I like your costume,” he says.
I roll my eyes because my costume is literally a parody of my life as of late.
I used my old literal catholic school girl uniform and just cut a huge slit up the skirt. The shirt is from my freshman year and is way too small on me now, which makes my chest push against the seams of it and I unbuttoned it enough that you could see my bra. Add in a pair of thigh-highs with little bows at the top, and pigtails, and I was every bit the ‘naughty slut.’
Even more than usual, anyway.
“You only like it because it’s funny,” I say.
“No,” Sterling says as he stands a little closer to me. “I like it because it’s sexy.”
For a second, I’m not sure if he’s joking or not.
“Aubrey, I hope we get the chance to try that second date again.”
He’s not joking. He’s serious.
Everything in my body starts to tingle a bit. I try to keep my cool and not let him see that I’m as overwhelmingly tempted as I am.
“Wouldn’t a do-over just make it a third date?” I say jokingly.
“Yeah,” he laughs. “I guess it would.”
Then, without warning, something happens. It’s the kind of ‘something’ that I wish I had seen coming so that I could have either enjoyed it more or stopped it entirely. Right there, standing in front of the punch bowl that I just saved my laptop from an eminent short-circuiting, Sterling leans forward and gives me a kiss.
It’s short and sweet, but it’s enough that when our lips touch, I feel like my veins have just been lit on fire.
When the kiss ends, he pulls away and takes a small step backward. I look around the room and am thankful that everyone is busy enough that no one seems to ha
ve noticed the kiss.
When I turn back around to Sterling, he is already gone.
But the feeling in my stomach is still there.
What am I going to do about this? What am I going to do about him?
“What are you blocking the drinks for?” Bridget says as she pushes past me to refill her cup. “Move.”
I stare at her for a second like a deer in headlights with a smile on my face that still lingers from my kiss with Sterling. I honestly can’t believe that he kissed me—here out in the open, even if it was only a small kiss that nobody saw.
That was a kiss for no one but me.
No secret plan. No revenge.
“What is wrong with you?” Bridget asks when I don’t so much as move. “Did you fall and hit your head as a child?”
Nothing that she could say to me even matters. I simply turn around and walk out into the party, wanting to get out and away from her as fast as possible.
“You know,” Bridget says right before I get out of earshot, “one of these days you’re not going to be able to hold anything over my head anymore. You only have this power temporarily, so I hope you enjoy it while you can. Your time is running out.”
I turn right around and walk back to stand squarely in front of her.
Something in me snaps.
“Funny,” I say, “because I don’t think it’s all that temporary at all. You see, even when your little secret gets older and you may or may not care about hiding it anymore; the fact still remains that you lied. You lied to everyone about it and you continued to lie and lie and lie the more time passed. I’m pretty sure that Warren wouldn’t be keen on the fact that his precious twin sister lied to him for all this time. My time may be running out here, but that’s fine with me because I only need to make it until the end of this term, then I can get the hell out of here and into Brown. Your time, on the other hand, will follow you wherever you go.”
Now it was Bridget’s turn to look like a deer in headlights.
Yet, I’m the one who’s left feeling stunned.
One term. Just another month or so.