“I better go, too,” Billy says quickly, an uneasy waver in his voice. He whirls back toward the row of classrooms. Halfway down the hall he tugs a phone from his pocket, scans the screen, and responds with a quick tap of his fingers. He slips into an office just as the door to Quinn’s room opens. She steps out: a duffle bag slung over her shoulder, hands on her hips, unsmiling.
“Is this how it’s gonna be now?” she says. “I get a job, and you’re a jerk about it?”
Ignoring her question I scoop her into my arms, drop a kiss onto her cheek. “Nice to see you, too.”
“God, Torrin. I’m serious.” She pushes out of my grip and tugs at her shirt. “What was that about? And since when did you become the jealous boyfriend?”
I shift on my feet and sigh, rubbing the back of my neck where residue from the earlier tension still lingers. I told myself I didn’t have a reason for showing up here unannounced, but somewhere deep in my conscience, I know there’s something that needs to be said to her. Just not here.
With my finger, I brush back a thread of hair from her face and answer anyway, this response just as truthful. “Since I had to start worrying about what every guy is thinking as he watches you stand naked before them. As they scrutinize every inch of your body, beautify it, and keep it in a notebook where they can drool over it…any time they want.”
She rolls her eyes, but a trifling grin betrays her look of annoyance. Which concerns me even more. She likes them looking at her?
“That’s a bit farfetched. Artists take Hunter’s class because they want to learn technique, not so they can go gaga over the models.”
“When I was a freshman, I wouldn’t have taken the class for that.” She lifts an eyebrow and I add, “Plus, I just watched some dude get all puppy-eyed when you were talking to him. And that fucking kills me.”
“He’s just a friend.”
“In your eyes,” I challenge and she blinks, taking a minute to let my words soak in. My fingers trail along the underside of her jaw as I step closer, lower my voice, and add, “Is it so horrible to want you all to myself?”
Pink creeps into her cheeks, and her gaze falls to the dirty linoleum floor. I bring her hand to my mouth and kiss each of her fingers, watching how the hardened mask of her face softens each time my lips touch her skin. Over two months together and I can still recognize the very look that had me diving head first into a relationship with this girl.
I lift her chin until she meets my gaze. “Come to the beach with me?”
~*~
“Have you ever had a moment in your life when everything was so perfect, so amazing that you wouldn’t change a thing?”
A crinkle forms along Quinn’s forehead as she rolls onto her side and looks at me. I guess my words sort of came out of nowhere. Lying here on the sand, a breeze drifting over the Mexican blanket I spread out for us, we’ve both been rather quiet.
With her fingernail, she presses a grain of sand into the red and black loops of thread and answers in a cautious tone. “Yes.” Most likely the thought of a time when her sister was alive and her parents had money accompanies that word. I nod, continue softly so the cluster of tourists sitting on the sand beside us don’t hear.
“Then one simple thing changes and, like a castle made of cards, everything starts crashing around you? One tiny glitch that has the power to crumble all the good?”
She sits up at my side, crossing her legs in front of her. “And that glitch in your life is…?” Just below the surface in her eyes, some heavy thought lingers. The awareness she may be the reason things haven’t been as smooth between us? Her sister’s death because it’s the one tiny glitch in her life that changed everything?
Resting my hands on her thighs, just below the frayed hem of her white shorts, I wrap my fingers around her tenuous muscles as if I could physically hold on to her as the next comes out of my mouth.
“You.” I stop. Lick my lips, thoughts sprinting through my head on how to put it. “Last winter I applied for a photography internship with Traveler magazine. The prospect was poor, considering thousands of people apply every year and very few actually get in.”
Her expression un-wrinkles, eyes growing round. “You got in?”
I nod. “Got a letter a few days ago. I was accepted for the summer and fall quarters to study under Joel Harrington, one of the most famous wildlife photographers around.”
My words sit between us, undisturbed, for an uncomfortably long moment. Then a wide smile stretches across her face. “Babe, of course they accepted you. They’d be dumbasses not to.”
I have to look away; the prideful glow in her expression only makes this harder. In front of us, a wave crests then blasts with a boom that echoes down across the sand. I sit, unmoving for a moment, letting the sound of water rushing sand flood the cavity separating us. There’s no easy way to say this.
Closing my eyes, I lower my voice to almost a whisper. “The internship is in Costa Rica. I’ll be there for five months.”
Another wave shatters against the sand, the impact vibrating clear up to where we’re sitting. I peek through my lashes at her.
Arms wrapped around her legs and chin resting on her knees, she’s staring at me. The silence stretches out until a scrawny kid in the group beside us lets out a “Whoa” as he spots a surfer catch a wave, and then Quinn says, “And I’m the glitch because…?” The wariness of her tone chokes me, as if someone’s thumb is pressed hard into the hollow of my throat.
I take a breath, hold it as long as I can then let it out. “If it wasn’t for you I would’ve already accepted the position.”
She stiffens, eyes narrowing. “Geez, Torrin. What do I say to that? You’re welcome?” She starts to get up, and I grab her arm.
“Stop. I didn’t mean it like that, and you know it.”
“No, I don’t know,” she says, her voice hardening. “What did you mean? Because right now you’ve got me pretty fucking convinced that I’m holding you back from your dreams. A photography internship with some famous guy? Who fucking wouldn’t accept that?”
“A guy who is in love with his girlfriend and couldn’t stand to be away from her for five excruciatingly long months. A guy who is afraid to lose the one person in his life that brings out the better person in him.” My hand slides down her wrist and grips her fingers. “A guy who loves you more than anything in the world.”
She rolls her eyes. “You were just fine before we met. Other than your ridiculous need-to-save-the-messed-up-girl complex, which apparently you haven’t gotten over because any other normal person—even if he loved his girlfriend—would be outta here in a second.”
“Guess that settles it. I’m not normal.” I smile and tug her closer, lean my head into the crook of her neck. Another deep breath, soaking in her scent.
My head dips as she pulls away. “I think you should go.”
I meet her glare with one just as intense and test out the word, “No.”
“Yes! You’re missing out on a really great opportunity. And for what? Me? I don’t think so. I refuse to be the reason.” She stands and stares down at me. “You clearly have a lot of thinking to do.” And then she stalks away.
“Quinn…”
“Don’t follow me, Torrin. I’ll take the stupid bus.”
Faces turn from the group beside me, eyes flicking between Quinn and me.
Ugh. I stretch backward, lumps of sand digging into my back, and rub my face. That went well.
April 18th
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-burni
ng 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 b
lue-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.”
Without You Page 4