Contradictions

by Tiffany King

  “My humor is just too sophisticated for regular people.”

  “Regular people? You mean human beings, right, Spock?”

  “Do you even know who Spock is?” He sat forward in his chair like the end of the world hinged on my answer.

  “Sure, he’s Luke’s father,” I said, looking down at my book so he wouldn’t see my smirk. I’d learned on Wednesday that Trent’s biggest pet peeve was when characters from his favorite shows or movies were mixed up.

  “First of all, Spock is from Star Trek, while Luke’s father—whose name is Anakin Skywalker, or Darth Vader to the layperson—is from Star Wars.”

  I egged him on further by looking down at my book, disinterested.

  “Furthermore, the two are not even in the same universe or time period, for that matter. One happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, while the other takes place in the future. It couldn’t be any simpler,” he sputtered.

  It was almost too easy, like taking candy from a baby. I let him suffer for a few seconds before looking up and grinning at him. “Don’t get your undies in a bunch, Captain Kirk.”

  “Do you always use nicknames as a shield?” he asked, moving my statistics book closer to him.

  My grin faded. Damn him. He always seemed to be able to do this to me. With a few words he could knock me down several notches. I clamped my mouth closed, even though I was dying to retort, but that would only waste more time.

  “I took the last practice test in unit one of statistics. I asked Ms. Joyner about the makeup exam. She said I could go in on Monday and take it. Even if I ace it, the highest grade I can get is an eighty-five.” Changing the subject was how I got around his random probing questions that always seemed to make me uncomfortable.

  He took the bait. “What did you score on your practice test?”

  “Ninety-eight. I missed a damn ratio problem.”

  “Ratios,” he announced, flipping open the book to the appropriate section. “We’ll go over them again.” His tone was animated as he searched for the page. For once, I was happy to dive into a textbook.

  The next hour passed with Trent covering ratios yet again. He was patient in his explanation and deemed me ready for the test when I correctly answered ten complicated problems that he had randomly pulled out of his head. It must be nice to be a total brain.

  After we finished with ratios, Trent proofread my paper for business communications while I worked on a mock employee schedule for a group assignment in my business management class. We had to create a fictional online company, which was surprisingly fun. The group voted and decided on an online shoe company. The project was worth 80 percent of our overall semester grade, so it was important my group did well. I was struggling with how many employees would be required to ship out shoes each day when Trent finished proofing my paper.

  “Was it awful?” I asked, clicking the track changes button on my computer to read his notes. Just two days ago, I had broken out in a cold sweat over the idea of him reading my stuff, but I had come to realize that although he was very analytical, he was also an excellent tutor. Without sounding critical, he had a way of clearly explaining things so they made sense.

  “No, you covered many of the points that were in the rubric. I noted a couple more points you might want to add.” I nodded my head absently at his words since I was already reading his notes. I was a little embarrassed over the grammar mistakes he found. I always seemed to mess up there, their, and they’re, which was pretty aggravating since I knew the difference. I shut down my laptop once I finished reading through his notes.

  Stowing all my stuff in my bag, I stood up and was quite pleased with myself for getting through another session. It was all about mind over matter. Trent stood up with me.

  “I guess I’ll see you on Monday,” I said at the same time he started to ask me a question, so our words jumbled together. “I’m sorry, what?”

  He pushed his glasses up, which meant he was either nervous or thinking hard about something. “I asked if maybe you wanted to catch a movie,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “No,” I barked out like a drill sergeant. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way, but his question took me by surprise. I tried to smile so the rejection wouldn’t seem so harsh.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t seem to be bothered by the shortness of my answer as he leaned back against the table we had been sitting at. “Why not?”

  Did I really need to break it down for him? Judging by the way he stood waiting for an explanation, that’s exactly what I needed to do. I sighed loudly, placing my heavy bag on the table.

  “Because we’re the least compatible couple on the planet. We have absolutely nothing in common.”

  “That’s not true. We’re both from the same town.”

  “So? Millions of people live in New York City, but that doesn’t mean they’re all compatible.”

  “Fine. We went to the same high school.”

  “You’re making my case for me. We went to the same high school and yet our circles never overlapped. What does that tell you?”

  “That I was biding my time,” he said, taking off his glasses so he could clean them with his shirt.

  My mouth dried, making my next retort die in my throat before it could even emerge. Seeing him without his oversized geek glasses was an instantaneous knee-jerk kind of moment. His blue eyes were even more pronounced without the glare from the lenses. Plus, I was seeing an unobstructed view of his entire face. To say the overall effect was panty dropping would be putting it mildly. Heat moved through my body, latching on to every single nerve ending.

  I tried to focus on his last words, but my brain was on vacation on smexy island. I was having a hard time remembering what we were even talking about. I knew I was rejecting him. I just couldn’t remember why.

  The buzzing of my cell phone provided the interruption I needed to pull my eyes away from his. “I have to get this,” I said, grabbing my bag and fleeing the library. Thank God for lifelines when you’re about to drown is all I have to say.

  I hit the ANSWER button as I pushed the library doors open.

  “Hello.”

  “Where are you?” Cameo demanded.

  “At the library. Why?” Things had been a little tense around our apartment the last few days. Cameo and Derek were still trying to adjust to the new me and the fact that I spent more time lately studying than partying. At least Derek seemed to understand my situation and was handling it better than Cameo. She continued to act like it was something I could fix with a weekend of cramming. As for not going out every other night to drink, she dismissed my new lack of interest as me being too dramatic over David’s death. What she didn’t understand was that I just didn’t see the point of wasting my time here at school. Sure, it took David’s death to make me realize that, but Cameo wasn’t going to change my mind because she called me overly dramatic. Anytime she brought up his name, I would cut her off. It was a taboo subject for me.

  “Derek heard there’s an underground party at Phi Beta. We’re going to check it out, so you need to hurry home.”

  A week ago those words would have filled me with an almost euphoric feeling. Regular parties were superb on their own, but an underground party was downright killer.

  “Are you sure? I thought every frat house was on lockdown. They could get in serious trouble if word gets around.”

  I could hear Cameo’s sigh. I didn’t need to see her to know that she was probably making a face at her cell phone. “What do you think underground means? The school’s not going to find out. Are you going with us or not?” She was clearly irritated, but that didn’t mean she had to act like a complete bitch.

  Now I was aggravated and never one to respond well to bitchiness. “I’m on academic and extracurricular probation, in case you forgot?” I snapped.

  “How could we forget since you like to remind us constantly,” she snipped back. “Are you never going to go to another party, ever?”

 
I wanted to lash out more, but I bit my tongue. My silence was all the answer she needed. “Fine, suit yourself,” she said, disconnecting the call. Her parting words lacked the bite that she had started with. She sounded more hurt than anything else. Feeling guilty for snapping at her, I put my phone back in my pocket and leaned against the rough brick exterior of the library. I closed my eyes, trying to calm the twisty emotional monster mucking up my brain. What was happening to me? I felt like I was going through some kind of identity crisis.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Damn it. Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  Trent looked as surprised as I felt. He’s lucky he didn’t get a punch in the throat or a kick in the balls for sneaking up on me like a freaking ninja. “Sorry. I assumed you knew I was there since I was right behind you when you came out here,” he pointed out. “I can’t help it you’re so self-absorbed you missed that part.”

  “Self-absorbed? Are you kidding me?”

  “What’s wrong?” His eyes cut through me, seeing past my defensiveness.

  I glared at him for a moment. I didn’t need any psychoanalysis bullshit. “My roommate is pissed at me, all right?”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you care? You’re not the Tressa Whisperer. You’re already involved enough in my life as it is.” I turned to walk away.

  Trent’s hand reached out, encircling my bicep. It was probably my imagination, but the warmth of his touch traveled through the two layers of clothing I was wearing. Luckily for him, my normal instinct to knee a guy in the balls for handling me that way never surfaced. I chalked it up to the fact that Trent was different because I felt nothing for him.

  “Don’t be like that. Tell me why your roommate is pissed. By the way you talk, you two are close. Maybe it’s a simple fix.”

  “What makes you think everything can be fixed?” I already knew the answer to my own question. His analytical mind always looked at everything like an equation that could be solved.

  “Because it can. You just have to take the emotion out of the situation to find the root of the problem. Conflict is caused by emotion. As human beings, we allow and even thrive on the emotions that ultimately lead to our destruction. Look at the root of every war and you will find a dictator who allowed his emotions to control his thinking until it curdled into something else.”

  “People are not math equations, Trent. Your concern is touching, but for such a smart guy, you don’t know shit. For your information, emotions don’t always cause conflict. They also cause good things, like love. For every emotion that leads to our destruction, there is another that makes us stronger.”

  “Interesting hypothesis. I think—”

  “Wait a second. Let me cut you off right there,” I interrupted. “What I said wasn’t a damn hypothesis, it’s a fact, you goober. Look, people don’t choose to have emotions, they’re part of us. Like it or not, you can’t just turn them off. Without emotions, we’d all be robots. My roommate is miffed because of the decisions I’ve made to change my lifestyle. You think she gives a rat’s ass about the logical reason for my decision? Hell no. She’s pissed. Hence, human emotion.”

  He raised his eyebrows at my choice of words. “I see. So the student becomes the teacher.”

  I doubled over laughing. “God, you can be such a nerd, but I’m glad you understand. Welcome to Earth.”

  “I still say she should understand you’re on probation,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Yeah, well, that’s easier said than done. I’m just not sure I care anymore, but who knows? Maybe where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “And you no longer have the will?” he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets.

  “Nope,” I admitted, turning to walk to my car. This chat was stimulating, but wasn’t helping my current situation. It really wasn’t Trent’s fault. Not even my friends understood where I was coming from.

  He kept pace with me by jogging along my side. “Why not?”

  “No offense, but I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” I’d yet to confide in anyone about the way I felt about David’s accident. I tried with Cameo, but all she wanted to do was tell me I was being stupid, so I buried it in my gut and spent the last week being twisted into a tight knot of guilt. Logically, I knew I wasn’t directly responsible, but I had been there. I couldn’t help dwelling on what would have happened if I’d never talked to him, or maybe if I could have talked to him longer. Was our conversation the point on the pendulum of life that triggered his death? Would it have mattered if he went into the water sooner or later? This was the morbid shit that was keeping me up at night. The coroner’s report had come out and concluded that David had smacked his head on an outcropping of rocks when he tumbled overboard. They believe he lost consciousness and drowned. Would that have happened if he had been in the water a few seconds earlier?

  I confided none of this to Trent. It wasn’t in my nature. I didn’t talk about insecurities and, until now, never considered the cosmic ramifications of anything. I was the dial-a-laugh girl, the gutter-minded rock star.

  Trent walked beside me all the way to my car without saying anything more. I avoided his eyes. They were becoming my kryptonite. Obviously, the Superman theme was sticking. God help me if I started thinking of myself as Lois Lane. I’d have to find the tallest building around and jump off.

  Neither of us spoke as I climbed into my Jeep. Trent stood on the sidewalk watching me while I backed out. His attentiveness was disconcerting. Why couldn’t he just be a douche like every other guy I attracted?

  10.

  I spent Friday evening holed up in my apartment by myself. After leaving Trent, I’d driven around aimlessly for over an hour, hoping to avoid Cameo and Derek. My ploy worked. By the time I entered our apartment with a bag of junk food, our apartment was empty. Just the way I wanted it.

  The evening was a far cry from my normal Friday activities. I ate crap I knew I would regret and watched mindless TV. Toddlers competing for tiaras was new to me, but that didn’t stop me from watching six episodes in a row.

  I hated that Cameo and I couldn’t seem to get past this hump. It was as much my fault as hers. My life was changing and I wished she would accept that, but maybe it was too much too fast. Maybe she needed more time to adjust to my shift in priorities. I debated staying up until she got home so we could hash it out, but in the end I headed to bed earlier than I had on a Friday night in years. I wasn’t sure what I could say to fix the situation. There was a chance I would just make it worse. Normally, we were joined at the hip and did everything together. This week had proven that things had changed for us. Maybe they would never be the same again.

  Unfortunately, lying in my dark, quiet bedroom only encouraged me to think about David’s death. The guilt festered in my stomach like some alien had inhabited my body. I was still tossing and turning two hours later when I heard the front door open and close. I feigned sleep when my bedroom door squeaked open a few seconds later. Derek’s footsteps echoed on the wooden floorboards as he approached my bed. Though my eyes were closed, I could feel the weight of his stare as he stood beside my bed. I don’t know if he bought my ploy or just didn’t want to make the situation any more awkward by calling me out, but after a moment, he retreated from the room. I could hear Cameo’s and his muffled voices through the thin walls. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I knew it was about me.

  I contemplated how much I’d changed in a week. The old Tressa would have stomped out to the front room and confronted them. Now I stayed in my room, not certain I could muster enough fuel for a fight.

  Maybe I was broken. I felt broken. I’d never experienced this crushing sense of hopelessness. I wasn’t used to feeling like I was letting down so many people at once. The list felt endless.

  Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, uncertain of what I was morphing into. In the end, my last thoughts were about David’s memorial service the following day.

&
nbsp; • • •

  I learned several things the next day that I would have rather lived my entire life without ever knowing. Funerals are nothing like they seem on TV or in movies. On a screen, you get a one-dimensional sense of the despair, but in real life, it’s painful and ugly. Even if David and I didn’t have our moment, if I’d never talked to him, I’m not sure I could have attended his service and remained dry-eyed. His parents’ grief was real and seared through you like a hot poker being shoved in your eye.

  Sitting on one of the hard pews, sandwiched between Derek, Cameo, and her maybe, maybe not boyfriend, Chad, provided my crazy muddled mind with sudden clarity. Giving up my old lifestyle was the right thing to do. Partying, hazing, pranks, and everything else I had ever been involved in were part of a life I no longer wanted.

  The somber memorial service started with the minister giving a long-winded eulogy. For the benefit of the younger crowd, he thundered on about responsibilities and the consequences of bad choices.

  After he finally ran out of steam, David’s best friend from high school got up to say a few words. A picture of David filled my mind as his friend talked about their friendship. The way he described David reminded me of the flirtatious, cocky guy I had gotten to know moments before he jumped into the raft. Unlike David’s parents, his best friend, Troy, didn’t point fingers or accuse anyone of any wrongdoing. Judging by the stories he told, David had always been a daredevil.

  I was relieved when neither of David’s parents got up to talk. Seeing them lean on each other, trying to draw strength from the other was hard enough. I couldn’t imagine how suffocating the grief of losing a child must be.

  The four of us opted out of attending the luncheon that MSC was hosting following the service. Trying to eat a big meal after having your guts spoon-fed to you just felt wrong on so many levels. Instead, we headed to Javalotta.