Anything More Than Now (Sutton College #2)

by Rebecca Paula

  I am, and since I don’t want to get kicked out of the frat, I’ll go to make him happy. I’ve been “better than this,” and “smarter than this,” and one time was even told I was “more respectable than this.” I’m not sure what this is, but since the rest of the world has already decided its narrative of me, I don’t care anymore to find out. This is some moral line I can’t seem to tow.

  I should have left the speech earlier but thought I should probably show my face since I organized it for the frat. Then I had to run into Reagan, literally. That’s explanation enough of why I’m racing to meet my new tutor. Well that, and I made the idiotic decision to drive instead of walk.

  Zola Books is a beacon on a street of up-and-coming businesses. With its love of all things vintage and continuation of Portland’s obsession with good caffeine, it’s begun to rival Powell’s as the trendier younger sibling over the past few years. From the exposed brick interior and rough-hewn beams, to the sound of whirring espresso machines and the industrial bookshelves that stretch from floor-to-ceiling, it’s a booklover’s haven. It’s also one I avoid because Reagan works here. She haunts this city, taunts me, breaks me.

  It’s bad enough she lives with Beau now in her bungalow apartment with two other roommates, still works at the library, and tutors in the student center. That’s the only reason I decided to shell out some cash for a private tutor. I don’t need her to see me scrambling for help like a bunch of overwhelmed second-semester freshmen.

  I shake off the rain racing down the shoulders of my jacket as I step instead the store, instantly hit with the aroma of strong-brewed coffee and the sounds of the latest indie folk star over the speakers. The girl at the checkout counter looks up and smiles, blushing as she returns to the book she’s reading.

  I scan the crowd, heading over to the group of busy community tables in the center of where others work with headphones on. I have no idea what Josh is supposed to look like, so I send another text, then freeze when I spot the pink—no, magenta—raincoat thrown over a chair at a small table for two beside the back of a bookshelf.

  Reagan is seated facing the front of the store, her nose in a book, and the rest of her body twisted up in that familiar reading pose she loves. She’s knots and flowers, and from the look of it, walked in the rain to get here.

  My phone buzzes back: Can’t meet. Sent someone else who can help. Ask for Reagan.

  Fuck. No.

  I fall back a step when her head snaps up and meets my stare, her blue eyes narrowing in on me as though I’m the cause of all of her problems.

  “Why are you here?” She brushes back her bangs but they’re weighted down by the rain. Her straight hair still frizzes like it did that day outside of the library freshman year. Back when I fell for the idea of a girl who lived between the pages of a book. The fringe of her hair curls, deep brunette tentacles weaving around her glasses to rest upon her cheeks.

  I scratch the back of my neck, glancing to the towers of books scattered around us. “I’m meeting someone.” Anger bubbles up in my chest, frustration. “I didn’t know I needed your permission.”

  Reagan shrugs, then returns to reading. Her hand shakes as she flips the page. The paper gets caught on her chevron thumb ring, slicing a neat paper cut below her knuckle. She curses under her breath, then sucks on her knuckle, her eyes cast back to me questioningly.

  I should just walk out and find another option. My shift starts at the Thai food truck in ninety minutes. I could show up early and visit with Beau before he heads off to help coach hockey with his old coach. Instead I do the stupid thing and open my mouth. “Josh told me I’m supposed to find you. You’re the…tutor, right?”

  She gives a heartless laugh, mumbling something about a dumb jock. “Then you’re twenty minutes late.” She shuts a well-worn tour book on New York, then gestures to the empty seat across from her. “If it happens again, find another tutor.” The winged eyeliner above her heavy lashes is smudged, making her blue eyes appear as if they’re endless—two deep pools sitting behind her glasses on that perfect oval face. And just when I think I might fall into them, she gestures for me to sit again, like the salty barnacle that she is, and I snap out of it.

  “Never mind.” I take out my phone and scroll through my exploding inbox of deadlines, reminders of deadlines, and more proposals. I wouldn’t be failing if I could only get shit done, but officially declaring poetry as my major last semester was a huge mistake. I can write, but tell me to dissect an iambic tetrameter and forget it. I’d rather be back at my place, smoking and having a beer while I draft my next book. “I’ll find someone—”

  “For one, you can get your head out of your self-righteous ass, and ask me nicely.” Reagan stuffs her book in her packed canvas tote, hissing as her sliced thumb gets smashed between a collection of books and notebooks. She’s from a world of ink, hell, even the side of her right hand is covered in it.

  Normally I wouldn’t be quick to say it, but she makes it so easy. “Bitch.”

  Reagan points to the chair again. “Sit.” She ruffles to the bottom of the bag and pulls out a planner full of scribbles and daydreams, then a red pen.

  She’ll be insufferable if she wins and I leave. And that’s where I draw the line.

  “Josh said something about a poetry class. Where’s your paper?” she asks as soon as I sit.

  A rush of air escapes my lungs as I push the chair back onto its hind legs. My knee knocks against the underside of the table, causing her mug of tea to spill over. I smile, satisfied. “Must have forgotten it. Guess we’ll have to reschedule.”

  Reagan tosses down her pen, rolling her eyes at me. “Take off your fucking sunglasses and grow up. You’re acting like toddler. Need a nap?” She bends forward and rips them off my face. “Are you high right now?”

  I frown, crushing my sunglasses in my hand. I wish I was, but the reason behind my bloodshot eyes is way less fun. No one at Sutton knows who I really am. I doubt they even read my books. I was eighteen when I hit the New York Times bestseller list, followed by a whole bunch of others. Four years later, I’ve written two more books as Asher Stone, the young adult author, a mysterious voice behind a powerful pen name. Or so my agent says. She keeps pushing me to go public, I keep pushing her to sell the rest of my books out on proposal.

  On campus, I’m only Noah Burke, and according to Reagan, I’m the local fucktard who likes to screw around—just another frat boy who doesn’t take school seriously. She probably assumes Daddy pays my tuition, too. “I wish I was. Didn’t know my tutor was going to rip me a new one.”

  She opens her mouth, her eyes widening.

  I know what she’s going to say. And even if she is a bitch, I can’t let it happen. It’s the reason why we are what we are. “I’m not Beau. Don’t compare me, Rea.”

  I’ve spent the past two years trying to get my shit together, trying to be my own person. But that’s the thing about your past—it never really goes away. And all I want, more than anything, is to finally shake it.

  Reagan

  His words sting like a slap against my cheek. I feel them in the deepest corner of my heart, feel them as they disappear into the pain that suddenly radiates through my body, pulsing as another uncomfortable reminder that I’m not good enough. “You might as well leave then.” I gaze down to the table and fiddle with my pen while I try to think of something, anything to say that will hurt him back. The problem is, I can’t.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  I hold out my hand, stemming his words. Recovered, mostly. Getting over my breakup with Beau Grady is another story. “You can go.”

  Noah stands and grips the table, crowding me, and tilting his head as though he’s trying to piece me together. His canvas military jacket hangs open to that black Henley from earlier. But it’s his lips, unassuming to maybe anyone other than me, that makes today all the more confusing. I’m pretty convinced we hate each other, for whatever reason. But then he has to ruin everything by coming close,
by letting whatever it is that rests between us fade. And then that chapter break is finished.

  We’re just a boy and a girl in a bookstore, assessing each other’s mouths like kids with chocolate cake.

  His eyes, rich like sea-salt caramel, flick up to mine as he reaches over to my tea mug and pulls out the tea bag. He places it on my thumb, the heat instantly erasing the nagging sting from the paper cut.

  “Go?” he whispers.

  I shake my head in answer, remaining frozen while he keeps near. I wonder if Kelsey is cold today. I wonder if she’s caught out in the rain or if she has a roof overhead. Or if she’s even still alive. God, I hate myself. I’ll just need to find another way.

  Noah opens his mouth to say something else, then slips on his sunglasses and pushes back from the table on a sigh. “Yeah, fine.” He leaves without a word more, and I’m left hating him and his smug face and his bloodshot eyes and lack of ambition.

  For a boy, he leaves me with a lot of ugly feelings in his wake. I swallow them down with each sip of my lukewarm tea, angry that my paper cut doesn’t hurt as much because of him, angrier that he was the one to show up out of the entire Sutton College campus.

  I shove everything back into my bag, shivering at the memory of his breath against my neck. I want to punch the world in the face when my phone vibrates across the table, a number I’ve called exactly twice in the past two months.

  I answer, sinking back down in my seat, a nervous tremble vibrating through my body.

  “Miss Landry, it’s Greg with Mallory Investigations. How are you today?”

  I’ve never met Greg, but I picture a lithe ex-SEAL with a platinum buzz cut sitting behind a meticulously cleaned desk. It’s all there in the clean clips to each of his words. He comes recommended. Not only is he ex-military, he worked for the Seattle and Portland police departments. He better have some credentials for the fees he charges.

  “Second semester just started so things are busy,” I say, wincing at how bumbling that sounded. “I’m good. I’m okay.”

  Papers shuffle over the phone line, and in the background I can hear his receptionist answer another call. I’ve never had the stomach for extreme sports, but I bet that rush of adrenaline you feel as you’re just about to jump off of a cliff is similar to what I’m feeling now, and I’m just perched on the edge of my seat, waiting for my world to change.

  “That’s good then. Listen, I won’t take long. I’m just calling to follow up on your inquiry. I think I can help you but I have a few other interested parties and before I agree to work with them, I thought I’d call to see if you want me to take on your case. It’s not fair to take on too much of a workload. That’s how loose ends become unsolved cases.”

  Shit. “Finding my sister isn’t an option for me, Mr. Mallory, it’s something I need to do. I’m trying to…” I stop short of saying “I’m trying to get enough money saved to hire you.” My mouth just blurts out, “Yes, I want you to take this case on.”

  I scribble down a date and time for our meeting to discuss everything further. I swear my hand moves in its own volition because my mind is racing ahead to thoughts of seeing my sister again after seven years, of remembering the last time I hired a PI, of how stupid I am for saying I can pay when I don’t have the money.

  *

  I ask for more hours at the Zola that afternoon, email both bosses of my campus jobs to see if there’s another position I could pick up, but the answer is the same—no.

  By the time I start to walk back to the bungalow, the short hours of winter struck and it was dark and cold. I adjust the collar of my raincoat, trying my best to ignore my shivering legs as the wind bites through the worn cotton of my leggings. The passing headlights flash and glare back against the gathering rain puddles, temporarily blinding me to the sidewalk ahead. I stumble, a hand reaching out from the darkness of the bypass bridge to steady me before I go flying through the air.

  I straighten, whirling around to remove my ankle from the stranger’s grip. It’s the same every time. I hold my breath, squint my eyes as my heart trips an unsteady beat. I see flashes of the last time I saw Kelsey—of her sitting on the curb of a sidewalk, trash blowing around her feet. A gray hoodie is drawn up around her normally long hair. Except we had a fight the night before and she cut it off with a pair of dull scissors. She’s rocking back and forth, a cigarette pinched between her fingers. Her eyes are red and her skin has become sallow since meeting him—the guy she claims is good and will helps us. I can tell she’s high but she’ll just fight me about that too.

  “It’ll be okay,” she tells me. “It’s going to be okay, Rea.” Her voice cracks and I swear I see her wipe away tears as I sit beside her. Another car whizzes by, whipping up dirt and sand. It’s crusted heavy in my oily hair after spending a week under the bridge in Phoenix and stings my eyes behind my glasses.

  “Thank you,” I say now, disappointment heavy in my answer when I notice it’s not my sister staring back at me. I’m not sixteen, waiting for her to fix the world. No one can fix the world for you, even if they tell you it’ll be okay. It’s taken me a while to figure that out.

  The young man nods back, a scraggly beard growing in patches over his face. I spot the sign at his feet—the small collection of coins and a few crumpled dollars, and a backpack with a rolled wool blanket sticking from the top—as the light changes up ahead and another string of cars speed by.

  “Do you need a hot meal, maybe a place to stay tonight?” I ask.

  “Yeah, that’d be nice,” he answers.

  I reach into my tote and grab the stack of cards I made out with information about the shelter. Maybe it’s dumb, but no one ever stopped to help me after Kelsey disappeared. I could have been bleeding out in the street and it didn’t matter. I was invisible. I hand it over to him. “Tell them Reagan sent you.” I dig around for a bit more change. “And here’s some money for the bus. Take it to Elm Street, then look for the big Victorian house.”

  He mumbles his thanks and I don’t wait to see if he’s actually going to go. I want to believe that he will. I want to believe that I can help when no one wanted to help me, but sometimes the world doesn’t work that way.

  I’m soaked by the time I push through the door of the bungalow. My roommates Ethan and Beau are on the couch with Noah playing video games. My third roommate, Matisse, isn’t home. She works just as much as I do when she’s not here painting in her room.

  The guys ignore me, all but one. I feel his eyes on me instantly. I turn my back and slip out of my wet flats, my feet pink from the cold. I strip off my raincoat and hang it up, avoiding looking in the direction of the couch as I keep my head down on the way to the kitchen.

  I boil some water, scrolling through my phone, waiting for some magical answer to appear. I’m waiting to be notified I’ve won the lottery for one. I’m waiting for the doorbell to ring and for my sister to be waiting on the doorstep. I’m waiting to get the courage up to submit my application to a publishing internship in New York that I’ve been drooling over since freshman year.

  “I’m high, so you can spare the lecture,” says a voice next to me. I glance up to Noah leaning in the doorway. His arms are stretched out, bracing his weight across the wide doorjamb. His shirt rides up, revealing a sliver of his trim stomach and more tattoos as his jeans slip a bit down his waist. A fine line of hair trails down from his belly button, disappearing beneath his boxers. It’s an inviting show-and-tell.

  I’m not doing this. I’m not going to ogle Noah when he’s the very reason I’m here in the kitchen, wet and broke. I shrug, turning my back to stare at the kettle on the old stove. The dim overhead lights send shadows scurrying as he approaches, then Noah leans next to me on the kitchen counter, reaching into the cupboard for two cups.

  “I’m not having tea with you.” I stare resolutely at the stove, too afraid to move.

  He puts a mug away but doesn’t step away. Out of the corner of my eye I see him with his head hung low, his arms
folded across this chest. Pieces of his hair slip out from his beanie and I realize there must be a man bun he keeps hidden away.

  So much of us is hidden away.

  Like the way we stand here in silence, having a conversation. Like the way I think about him from day to day, determined not to fall for his cranky charm. Like the way he puts up with me when I’m a person who’s easy to walk away from.

  “I’m going to fail,” he says finally.

  That makes two of us.

  I pour my tea, then briefly gaze up at him, worshipping the slip of space that separates us right now. With a simple look I feel like I’m there in his arms, feel like his heart is beating to the chorus of “it’ll be okay,” feel like his lips are about to meet mine in a perfect kiss.

  “Show up next Tuesday, same time,” I say. I clear my throat, pushing away from the counter to keep my back to him. “And bring cash.”

  Chapter Two

  Noah

  I wrote a book about a boy who lived parallel lives. As with life, it has an ambiguous ending, never giving away which is reality. It was my own twisted way of writing a better ending for myself while I sat in juvie for the second time when I was seventeen. I emailed it to an agent in New York on a very uneventful morning when I turned eighteen. The sky was gray, the mountains heavy with snow, and I was cold because I couldn’t afford to heat the trailer. Isla had drank the little money we had so in between going to school, we lived off condensed soup and buried ourselves under blankets. Numbed fingers, numbed hearts, and an empty room in the back of the trailer filled with memories that died beside the road a year before.

  I never thought I’d write more than one book. I never really thought the one I wrote was something that deserved to find more readers than myself. My mother, a poet, had told me once that words demand to be heard. I guess One Way Out was the essence of that.