While we were in the middle of proving the sextrology of a Pisces and a Cancer being a passionate match, Kyle threw open the front door. I pulled away so fast I almost fell over backward, and it was only Nathan’s hand tightening on my waist that held me steady. Somehow in the last few minutes, without my realizing it, his hand had found its way underneath the hem of my shirt, singeing the bare skin where my waist curved into my hip.
“Ew.” Kyle made a face only a ten-year-old who’d had his cootie shot could make. “Get a room!” He spun and disappeared through the door, clearly not getting the cleverness of his own joke, seeing as we were at a bed-and-breakfast.
I felt like a coach on the sidelines of a football game after his players have dumped a vat of ice-cold Gatorade on him. It must have shown on my face, because Nathan dropped his hand.
“You’re having second thoughts,” he said flatly.
His hair was a little tousled, his lips soft from the kiss, and I couldn’t bear to look at him. “Yes—no,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I guess I am.”
“It’s Andrew, isn’t it?” There was a resignation in his voice that twisted me inside a little, but I couldn’t deny it.
“I’m just worried he’s my Tyrone, you know?” Of course he didn’t, and I rushed to explain. “Like Rebekah from mentoring that I was telling you about. The second guy was better at the physical stuff, and let me tell you, you’re a really good kisser. Better than Andrew, I’ll even give you that. But in the end, all she really wanted was Tyrone, and sleeping with his best friend did nothing but ruin that.”
I knew I could have handled that a lot more gracefully. It made it sound like what I was really hoping for was to get back with Andrew. Which, despite what Nathan might have thought, was totally not the case. I might have been blind before, but I wasn’t now. I knew that Andrew was an ass, and as much as a part of me really missed him, another part of me kind of…didn’t.
But in some ways, that was exactly what scared me. I mean, I had dated Andrew for over a year and I was only just beginning to realize how very wrong for me he was. I had only known Nathan for a couple days, and already it felt like he really understood me in a way no one else ever had. But was that even possible? And what could I know about it, if my judgment had been so off before?
“So, tell me, Leigh,” he said, and there was a quiet edge in his voice that made me glance at him. “Will you ever be able to look at me and see…me, Nathan, not just as Andrew’s roommate?”
The thing was, I already did. It was scary how quickly I was seeing everything in a different light, and I felt a desperate need to cling to something that, however sad, was at least safe. This thing with Nathan—whatever it may be—was just happening way too fast. How could I even know what I wanted, when it seemed to change with every passing second?
My gaze never left Nathan’s, and I could almost see the change in the green depths of his eyes before the words left my mouth, as though he had already known. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t think I’ll ever…”
The unspoken words hung between us, charging the air with their silence. For a moment I thought about taking it back, throwing my arms around him and admitting it was a lie.
I opened my mouth, but I just couldn’t do it. “I’m sorry,” I said instead, and the words had never been more inadequate.
Nathan gave a short laugh, and it was so devoid of any joy that I wanted to cry all over again. Why couldn’t we go back to the way things had been last night, when we sat on the roof and talked under the stars? Why couldn’t everything just be easier?
“I would understand if you wanted to leave tonight,” I said, my voice small. “I’ll ask my parents to reimburse you for gas money, and I can just catch a flight back to school.”
Nathan didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. He just looked down at his hands, his profile hard in the slanting light of the setting sun. “There was a moment, though,” he said finally, a slight question in his voice, and I knew what he meant.
“There was a moment,” I agreed quietly, and my heart ached to tell him how many.
But instead we just sat there on the steps in complete silence, watching the sun disappear behind the horizon.
SYMPTOM SUBSTITUTION: An uncon-scious process by which a repressed impulse is manifested in another symptom, like depression or anxiety
I SHOULD’VE known Nathan would still drive me back to California. He just wasn’t the kind of guy who would leave me there, and it’s not like he wasn’t driving back, anyway. We spent the rest of Thanksgiving avoiding each other, and then we drove back the next morning, each of us claiming a sudden need to catch up on schoolwork.
Of course, I had to hit my parents up for a little gas money for the drive back, because there was no way I was going to make Nathan pay for it all, given the circumstances. Even if he was my boyfriend, it’d be a little weak not to offer to pitch in, when the whole trip had been for my benefit in the first place. And, obviously, he wasn’t my boyfriend. I doubted he was even my friend anymore.
Most of the drive, he had the music turned up really loud, so the only time we got to talk was when we stopped for gas. “I’ve got it,” I said, jumping out at the station.
He didn’t argue. “I’m going inside for drinks,” he said. “You want anything?”
Yeah, for things to go back to the way they were before, when we were talking and laughing and having fun. Sometimes I just wanted to tell him…what? There was nothing left to say. “No,” I said. “I’m fine.”
What I really needed to do was put my personal problems on the back burner and throw myself into schoolwork, I decided. I had been a Kristy Salazar for way too long—it was time that I focused on my classes and that final project for Intro Psych.
I would not think about Nathan. What was the point? I’d already rejected him. It seemed like it was time to think about something else, anything else, other than my sorry love life.
When we got back to school, one of my first moves as Leigh, the new and improved student, was to contact Linda at the mentoring program about my doing a project involving body image. For someone I had written off as an empty shell, she was surprisingly helpful. She told me I should develop a brief body image workshop and use pre- and post-tests to assess the girls’ body image and self-confidence. We determined that I would prepare the workshop and, after jumping through all the necessary hoops, I could conduct the study next semester. It couldn’t get done in time for my final paper, but it’d make a pretty awesome independent study project.
A week had passed since Thanksgiving break, and there weren’t supposed to be any more mentoring sessions until after Christmas. So it was a bit of an understatement to say that I was surprised when I opened the door of my dorm room and found Rebekah standing on the other side, cradling the robotic spawn of Satan in her arms. I mean, I had pointed out my dorm to her when we took that tour, but whoever thought she would actually come here?
“Rebekah,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I ran away,” she said. “Can I come in?”
I wasn’t prelaw, but I was pretty sure that harboring a runaway was some kind of crime. “Um…” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “So call my mom and tell her I’m here. She don’t care.”
I let her come in, but I didn’t waste any time picking up the phone and dialing the number she gave me. It wasn’t like I was so far removed from my adolescence that I didn’t remember how lame it was when someone called your parents, but I was also an adult in the eyes of the law. If I could barely survive in college, how would I handle prison?
“Hi, Mrs.—” I began, before realizing I didn’t know Rebekah’s last name. Great. She picks me to be her sanctuary, and I don’t even know her last name. “Um, is this Rebekah’s mom?”
Once she confirmed that she was, I explained who I was and Rebekah’s sudden appearance on my doorstep. Her mother’s response: “She botherin’ you? No? Then why you botherin’ me?”
; So Rebekah’s comment wasn’t just teenage angst but rather, you know, the truth. “Well, sorry to bother you, ma’am,” I said, “but in case you need to reach me, my cell phone number is—”
I was left with a dial tone ringing in my ear. “Wow,” I said.
“I know,” Rebekah said. “She can be a bitch.”
“Is that why you’re here?” I asked, clearing a space on my bed for us to sit down. Ami and my quasi attempts at cleaning toward the beginning of the semester had spiraled downward into an out-and-out collection of mess. There were piles of clothes all over the floor, books and papers stacked on every surface (I had been trying to organize my first-semester notes, hence the covered bed), and free bathroom products littering the bathroom. At orientation, there were baskets and bins filled with free toiletries for the taking. Of course, Ami and I took armfuls of stuff and then went back for more—not that we needed any of it. But, hello, they were free.
“I was supposed to give the baby back,” she said. “But I don’t want to.”
“Why?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Seriously, that thing is like Rosemary’s Baby. Plus, I’m pretty sure Linda would be mad if you didn’t return a five-hundred-dollar infant.”
“I know,” she mumbled. Then she said something else, something I didn’t catch.
“What?”
“I don’t want to be a bad person,” she said, louder this time.
I was going to crack some joke, about how I was pretty sure that kidnapping a fake baby wouldn’t put her on Santa’s good list this year. But then she looked up, and I saw that her eyes had a sheen to them. For once, she didn’t look scornful or sarcastic or cynical. She just looked kind of sad.
“How could giving back the baby make you a bad person?” I asked. “You’re supposed to give it back. I think it’s Molly’s turn with the little devil now.”
“I wanted to give up my other baby,” she said. “Doesn’t that make me a bad person? It doesn’t make me good.”
“It just makes you young, and scared,” I said. “Even your body knew that. That’s why you had that miscarriage—because you just weren’t ready to have a baby. One day, you will be, and you’ll make a great mom—in, like, ten years, because, as dumb as Linda can be, I totally agree with her about waiting to have a child. But for now, you’re just a kid. And that’s how it’s supposed to be.”
“I guess,” she said.
“It is,” I assured her. “Believe me, it’s hard enough being a kid without having to raise one while you’re at it.”
“Yeah.”
“So you’re going to give the baby back, right?” I asked. “No offense, but Tyrone, Jr., kind of creeps me out.”
“True,” she said. “He is an ugly baby.”
“At least if he vacuumed or made toasted breakfast sandwiches, he’d be useful,” I said, “but as it is, he’s all the bad parts of being a baby and none of the cute parts. Must have gotten it from his dad, Tyrone, Sr., huh?”
“Tyrone who?” she said, and just when I opened my mouth to answer, she laughed. “Jus’ playin’. I know who Tyrone is. But he’s old news, ya know what I’m sayin’?”
I really didn’t. “But I thought…he was your soul mate,” I said.
Rebekah shrugged exaggeratedly. “There’s more fish in the sea, ya know? I can’t be cryin’ about Tyrone forever.”
I really hadn’t expected such nonchalance, and it threw me a little. But why should I have been surprised? She was, after all, fifteen. I realized how stupid I had been ever to use her situation as a parable for my own. Was it possible to analyze something to the point where you could no longer see it?
“Yeah,” I said, trying to find some common ground. “I’ve decided I’m done with guys. I’m just going to focus on school for now. That’s really what’s more important, anyway.”
Rebekah shook her head, and I rushed to defend myself. “What? It is. Right now I’m in a position to make decisions that could affect the rest of my life. What I choose to study could affect where I go to grad school in four years. What grad school I choose will affect where I live, what contacts I make, what I study…the job I eventually get. This is big stuff. You should be thinking about it, too, you know.”
“I get good grades,” Rebekah said.
“I’m sure you do,” I said, although honestly, up until that point I probably would’ve guessed the opposite if anyone had asked. Not because Rebekah didn’t seem smart—she did, sometimes too smart for her own good. But she didn’t seem as if she’d care much about school.
“And I’m bettin’ you get good grades, too, huh?” She set robo-Tyrone down on the bed, peering closer to my bookshelf to read the titles there. Somehow I doubted that she’d see my romance novels as evidence of a high GPA.
“Well—” I started to explain that Stiles didn’t actually give grades. Which is cool, because you can screw up and still pass, but also totally sucks, because every tiny detail of your suckage is laid out in clear language for everyone (read: grad schools) to see.
“You do,” Rebekah said impatiently. “You think too much. You’re school-smart, but real dumb.”
It was unclear if she meant that I was “real world” dumb or had just failed to use the correct adverb to modify the word. Either way, it was hardly flattering. “What?”
“You’re not a victim,” Rebekah said, “but you act like you are. In my book, that equals dumb.”
“That’s not true,” I protested.
“You act like your player boyfriend really messed you up,” Rebekah said, ticking off the points on her fingers. “You can’t tell that black-haired skank how you feel. You ‘choose’ school, but only ’cause you ain’t got any other options. How’s that for dumb?”
I was speechless. “Andrew dumped me,” I said. “How am I not the victim in that scenario? I didn’t even see it coming.”
“Exactly. ’Cause you’re dumb.”
You’re dumb, I wanted to say. It was childish, I know, but I couldn’t help it. You can’t ride a public school bus for ten years and not have an instinct to lash out when a kid calls you names.
I was still formulating my comeback when Rebekah spoke again. “You know what, though?”
“What?” I asked wearily.
“You’re nice,” Rebekah said. “And fun to talk to. I figure you could be smart, too, if you really tried.”
“Thanks,” I said wryly, although inside I felt warmth spreading through me. “You’re fun, too. Even if you are a smart-ass.”
“Better than a dumbass,” Rebekah pointed out.
“True,” I said. And then I heard it—the disturbing cry of an electronic baby. Tyrone, Jr., was crying like he’d never stop, and Rebekah picked him up, patting his hard plastic back.
“I just fed him,” she said. “I think he needs to be soothed.”
And then the image of her comforting a fake baby was too much, and I just started laughing. Rebekah started laughing, too, and that’s how Ami walked in on us—Rebekah and me laughing so hard that tears were squeezing out of our eyes, and Tyrone, Jr., still screaming his scary head off.
COUNTERCONDITIONING: Relaxation responses are reinforced to an anxiety-invoking stimulus, until eventually the stimulus no longer invokes fear.
BEFORE I drove Rebekah home, Ami and I decided to take her to the Toad’s Monocle for something to drink. I told Rebekah she had to try the Bee’s Knees, while Ami pushed the strawberry lemonade. Rebekah ended up getting a hot chocolate, even though it was still eighty degrees outside.
“So,” Ami said when we sat down. “Have you talked to Nathan at all?”
I gave her a look, and her gaze darted to Rebekah. “Sorry,” she said. “Are we not talking about that?”
“Who’s Nathan?” Rebekah said, hanging the book bag with Tyrone over the back of her chair. Every time I think that I’m done being grateful that he’s not a real baby, Rebekah gives me another reason.
“It’s no big deal,” I said. “He’s my ex-boyfrien
d’s roommate. Ex-roommate.”
“That’s a lot of exes,” Rebekah said.
“Yeah,” I said, giving a halfhearted laugh. I still hadn’t told Ami the whole story, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do so right here with Rebekah and her “baby” in tow.
Despite my best efforts, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Nathan. A few days ago he’d sent out an e-mail to the campus forum about selling a futon, and I pored over every word as though it were a love letter. And let me tell you, “comfortable and versatile, if slightly banged up,” even if it was the way I’d been feeling lately, didn’t give a girl a lot to go on.
At one point I even went into the math building, which must mean that I had it bad, because that is one weird place. It’s very sterile, with cold, tiled floors and glass-paneled doors, although I did notice that its bathrooms were way nicer than the psychology building’s. I wandered through the halls, feeling a little stupid but still nervously anticipating that Nathan would be just getting out of a class and we’d run into each other. I had even rehearsed a couple stories—in one I was seeking help on statistics from a professor, and in another I was meeting a friend.
Neither of those excuses came close to being believable. Clearly I was losing my touch.
Then I actually saw him—just a glimpse through the door of the computer lab. He had his iPod headphones in and was engrossed in something on the computer screen, and he didn’t see me. He looked serious and unapproachable, and I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should drop in and say a casual hello. But in the end, I just kept on walking.
“Leigh?” Ami said, bringing me back to the present. “Did something happen with Nathan?” Her inky black eyes were more concerned than ever. I could see she was genuinely worried about me, and she deserved the truth.
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