Anything More Than Now (Sutton College #2)

by Rebecca Paula

  Without her, I’d probably still be on the streets. By some miracle of miracles, I got placed into her foster home before I aged out of the system. I don’t think I would have gotten into Sutton without her support. I was still determined to survive another day. She showed me that it was okay to hope for a future.

  It was cold the day the counselors from the group home delivered me to her house. She had stood on the porch in a beautiful coat, a red silk scarf tied elegantly at her throat. From the backseat of the car, I thought she was another suburban mom, searching for a substitute for something in a broken girl. She said hello and I shrugged, holding onto my backpack. My hair had been cut in my sleep by my roommates the night before. They called me a bitch, angry that I was getting out. I was angry I was getting passed around. I was always running away, always searching for something permanent and solid and good. I’d run through half the states to find a home, then ran through more searching for my sister. I’ve ran, I still feel as if I’m running.

  There has to be something more to life than what I’m chasing.

  “Oh, I’m glad you came,” Trina says as soon as I step into her office. The Texas twang still bites at her words, even if she hasn’t been back for years.

  I shrug off my purse and sink down onto the old brocade couch against the window of the musty Victorian building. “What do you need help with today?” I rub my hands over my jeans, catching sight of the paper cut that’s still healing across my thumb. I’ve added a few stacked rings to try to keep myself distracted, but I think back to Zola and Noah every time it splits open again.

  The sofa cushion sinks lower as I fidget, unable to meet her in the eye. There’s another question that’s always brought up between Trina and I. I’m not sure if I’m in the right headspace to even tackle it today. There are pieces of myself that are exhausting to hide away.

  The phone rings and she holds up her palm, then motions to the tea kettle on the sideboard across the small room. The cluster of gold and silver bracelets swirl and collide over her forearm. Trina is a modern Woman in Gold, effortlessly sophisticated.

  Rain begins to fall from the overcast skies outside, and a shiver chases up my spine. I tug at my oversized sweater and make a cup of tea, moving forward with each minute but stuck too. Mainly stuck on Noah.

  “Something’s bothering you,” Trina says, hanging up. “Can you make me a cup, too? The usual is fine.”

  When I leave after graduation—if I leave—I’m always going to think of Trina’s addiction to chamomile. It might be calming, but for me it’s become something altogether comforting, the closest I’ve come to having a security blanket. Trina and chamomile tea and her house that was full of patience. “Has it been busy today?” I ask instead of answering her guess.

  She stands from behind the desk and sits on the couch, patting the cushion beside her. I shake my head, even as my body instinctively walks over to her, even as I slowly sink down and rest my head on her lap. Trina’s the closest thing I have to a mother, and since Kelsey left, she’s really the only person who attempts to keep me in her life.

  James Taylor softly plays in the background while I look up at Trina, speechless. She has kindness hidden in the shadows of her face but if you look hard enough, you see the world concealed there too.

  “Oh come on, you,” she teases. “What can be so wrong?”

  I close my eyes to avoid the truth, to avoid even mentioning the truth. This room, Trina—it all feels temporary. And the truth is, it is. I found her by luck, and now that I’m in my senior year, I need to be making plans like the rest of my classmates. I need to know what the hell I’m doing with my life. Why can’t I just get paid to read books all day and drink tea?

  “Reagan Landry, look at me.”

  I find myself laughing, even as I feel as though I’m about to come apart at the seams. “Do you ever feel like a stranger in your own life?”

  “All the time.”

  I scrunch my nose up at her, refusing to accept that this is the truth.

  She runs her hands over my head and smooths my hair. It reminds me of that first night, of me yelling at her while she tried to feed me dinner. I threw the plate at the kitchen wall and twenty minutes later I was in her lap, her fingers working out the knots of what little hair I had left.

  “I’m damn lucky to be where I am considering I was just another junkie on the streets twenty years ago,” she continues. “I’m lucky to have my daughter, mistake or no. I think I’m lucky to work at a job that I love where I can help others every day.”

  My phone buzzes across the couch cushions, bumping against my hip. I grab it, pausing as she nips at my nose, drawing my attention back to her.

  “I know I shouldn’t have all of this, but I do, so yes, on bad days I feel like a stranger.”

  On bad days. I don’t only have bad days. I’ve had years of empty ones. I have a long chain of days when I went from working at the campus library, to the local bookstore, to tutoring at the student center, to volunteering with the afterschool programs at the shelter. I lost myself in words and books, and then when it was quiet, I would hide away in my room until the sun rose and I began to hide all over again.

  “Rea, your twenties are meant to be hard. You’re going to have your good moments, but really, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes and mess everything up. And in the end, if you keep fighting, you’re going to end up okay.”

  I sit up and reach for my tea, anything to escape admitting that I’m running away from the idea of graduating soon and Noah and leaving what little I built for myself behind me in Portland. “Well, anyway.” I scroll through my phone, frowning when I see my email notifications.

  Dear Candidate, it starts. My eyes jump ahead, hoping to find a bit of good news. Instead, my day sinks further into a gloomy black hole of Reagan Landry fail. We’ve decided to continue with other candidates…. I don’t finish reading. Why bother.

  Trina snatches the phone from me, quickly scanning the text I didn’t have the heart to finish. “What are you going to do now?”

  “Am I supposed to have everything figured out immediately?” I stand, throwing back the rest of my tea, then march the empty cup over to the sideboard, before stomping back to reclaim my phone.

  “No. No one ever has anything figured out. If they say they do, they’re lying.” Trina removes her glasses and sets them down beside her, brushing her manicured hand through her salt-and-pepper hair, and I know. I know that for a lot of things in life, words aren’t enough. “If you’re not going to give up on Kelsey, then I’m not going to let you give up on New York. It’s not the only internship on the island of Manhattan. In fact, there are jobs you could try for if you wanted to be brave.”

  I sniff back the threat of tears and frustration clouding up my eyes, and gaze out the window.

  “I’ve helped you out, Rea, more than anyone ever helped me. I’ve rented the bungalow to you so you could have a decent place to stay without having to pay a ton. I’ve supported you when I could. I have a friend here in Portland who might be able to help you find a job after graduation. If that’s what you want. If you want to stay here and be safe and protected and hide from the rest of the world, then go ahead.”

  I swing my head to stare her down, my chin held high.

  “Or you could keep trying, keep breathing, keep fighting.”

  Noah

  I don’t see her again after we hook up. I go out of my way to avoid her, run every day as if I’m trying to forget her, and start to get my head on straight. I get my ass in gear and actually turn in my assignments so my advisor stops riding my ass. I might never admit it to Reagan, but poetry doesn’t seem so much like algebra now after her help. I see its parts, its inherent structure. I see beyond the beauty of the words. Keeping to myself has helped my word count. I’ve been writing a lot in between classes, in my room, at a coffee shop other than Zola. I think I’m finally getting somewhere on this book between working on the food truck and school. I’d probably
get more done if I didn’t keep my job on the food truck but it helps stop the questions about where I get some of my money from. The words I’ve written might be shit, but I’ll deal with them all in revisions. I’ll deal with everything later.

  But later apparently is now as I catch Reagan skirting through the crowd at my frat house. Everyone is dressed for the stoplight party—a crowded, sweaty mass of red, green, and yellow. All except Reagan, who’s wearing a black silk top that reveals a deep V of her back as she turns, scanning the room.

  “What the fuck is she doing here?” Ben asks me.

  I line up another shot at the pool table, sucking in a breath as I draw back the cue stick. “No idea,” I lie.

  “Bitchy ice queen,” Javier says over his Solo cup.

  I sink the eight ball, even after a little too much to drink. I know better than to get blackout drunk. Most days, I hate the idea of it. But now a ghost skirts through my house, determined to break me, more than I already am.

  “She just has standards, Javier. Landry wants nothing to do with your pencil dick.” The anger is bitter, more so after the Jagerbomb I chase down as Ben cheers me on.

  The lights from the dance floor flash around me, blinding me, confusing me. My frat brothers make bets, urging me to play again. They shove a beer in my hand, racking up the pool balls.

  It’s too hot in the frat house. A pair of sorority sisters dressed in green bump into me, winking and giggling as I smile, my back pressed against the pool table. I scan the dark, crowded room for black and blue and a body that makes me want to keep failing my classes so I can keep going to tutoring.

  “What the fuck, Noah? I have money on this. Keep playing.”

  I can’t find Reagan through this crowd and that’s the only person I care about here. She’s the only one I want to find, beside myself, and I’ve suspended that search indefinitely.

  “Burke?” Ben slaps the pool table, his eyes narrowed on me. “Take a shot, will ya?”

  I lean down, drawing back the cue stick, biting my tongue against a string of curses as someone bumps into me from behind. My pulse races, my muscles tightening as the house gets louder and busier and filled with more stupid. I did this to myself. I loved parties in high school, drinking until I blacked out and woke up on someone’s lawn. I loved Isla and her body and being indestructible. I loved being limitless. I was addicted to being indefinite as the Montana sky that stretched for miles and miles beyond me. And now that I’ve discovered the truth—that we’re all mortal, that we all have limits—I wish I had an answer for why I’m even in this frat house.

  “He’s a dumb shit,” someone mutters behind me.

  I ignore the comment, blowing out a steading breath.

  “That’s why he’s failing,” someone else says above the music. “What is it you do alone in your room anyway?”

  Between the flashing lights and the Jager rushing through my body, the crowded living room spins. Or maybe it’s just my temper. Maybe it’s just that I want to rip everyone’s heads off because they’re dumb fucks who can’t get out of their own way.

  So maybe I was lonely, maybe that was why I joined the frat freshman year. Days spent in isolation, staring at concrete walls can do that to a guy. That doesn’t mean I have to be fucking punished for living with a bunch of dudes who have the mental capacity of a kindergarten class.

  “Are you going to fucking play, Burke?” Ben asks again.

  I whirl around, throwing the stick at his face. He catches it. “Hey, let’s not…”

  Another guy steps forward, puffing his chest. “You think you’re better than the rest of us? You think you’re hot shit? We have money on this pool game so pick up your fucking stick and play, bro.”

  I have no idea who the guy is, or the others who start berating me from behind. It doesn’t matter really because I swing and my fist connects with that once-perfect nose of his—flesh, bone, blood. I’m not much good, but I can hold my own. If nothing else, I can wreck my life with an alarming degree of ease.

  “Get out of here,” Ben says, shoving me through the crowd that tries to corner me against the pool table. I swing wildly, ready to hit anyone and everyone. I have spirit, that’s what my mother used to say. The corrections officers called it something else—they said I was disruptive, said I was no good. “Just get the fuck out. I’m not having this shit in here tonight.”

  Air scrapes through my lungs, my shoulders rising up and down as I try to piece the world back together. It’s hard to keep what I am apart from what everyone thinks of me. It’s hard to think I’m much of anything other than a problem.

  My heart painfully rips at my chest as I elbow through the crowd. The party continues, the yelling behind me is settled and I’m all but forgotten. It’s sick that a part of me hopes the cops get called. It’s sick that some days I feel like I don’t deserve to be out here. I should be locked up. I should be dead.

  I shouldn’t exist.

  Flashes of bodies swaying to the house music pumps against my chest. Flashes of the press of Reagan’s hips against mine, the pressure of her fingertips in my back cause my feet to move forward before my thoughts catch up. I should leave her alone. I should stay away. “I’ve missed you” weighs heavy on my tongue as I weave through the crowd. “I want you” aches in my limbs. Maybe I’m “that guy” at tonight’s party, maybe I started trouble because I need to focus on something other than the girl I’m searching for now, maybe I want to believe in something good for a change. I do nothing more than push through my bedroom door, when my heart collides with my very favorite ghost, who likes to hide in the dark.

  Reagan steps forward, slamming me back against the closed door. I grin down at her, squinting to put her into focus. She snarls at me, which only makes me grin bigger. “Missed me, Rea?”

  Her hand curls around my neck and tugs my face close. “No.”

  “Liar.” I lean my forehead against hers, smelling tequila and cinnamon. I want to taste her lips.

  “Smug bastard.” Reagan slants her lips over mine, her tongue boldly sweeping into my mouth, my cock hardening. She presses herself against me in the dark, another stolen moment.

  My hands run down her back to that sweet ass of hers, and haul her against me again. I pick her up and spin us so she’s pinned to the wall. We breathe in, our lips dormant in their search for one another. I inhale the memory of her perfume, growing angry at all the things I can’t tell her. I kiss the dip by her shoulder, nipping at her neck. Her head falls to the side.

  “You disappeared,” she whispers into my ear. “I didn’t think you’d do that to me.”

  “Hurt, Four Eyes?” I’m shameless when it comes to Reagan. I wrap her hair around my fist and gently pull. She sighs, her body relaxing as her gaze meets mine. The tension that sizzled between us dies out when I catch the shame in her blue eyes.

  Reagan

  Yes.

  I don’t answer, afraid that if I do, he’ll only hurt me more. If I’m going to do this, if we’re going to hook up again, then I need there to be boundaries and rules. I have enough shit to do with midterms. After spring break in a week, I’m close to graduating. I have heaps and heaps of work on top of figuring out my entire life and here I am, kissing a fucking boy. My priorities are warped. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be crawling back to a hookup that was a complete fucking disaster. Except I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him either.

  “Shut up and kiss me, Noah.”

  He walks us back to his bed and lays me down, tilting his head while he studies me. Something in the way his hand brushes over my bangs feels as if he’s tucking me into bed. The fact that he’s being gentle throws me off. Everything about tonight doesn’t make sense, but then again I’ve had a little too much tequila.

  “I’ll kiss you. I’ve wanted to.” He kneels over me, a shadow in the dark. “But you’re here for the wrong reason and you want me for the wrong reasons, too. I don’t want that between us.”

  I. Hate. Him.r />
  I bunch his yellow flannel shirt in my hands, and shake his shoulders. “You don’t get to decide.”

  “No?” Noah breaks away, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I just did. You miss me there against you….” He softly brushes his hands over my thighs, playing with the edge of my skirt as if he’ll show me exactly where I want that hand. “Don’t you, Reagan?”

  I do. I hate myself for it. “Then I’ll leave.” My voice drops off, the threat a firm punch to his ego.

  “Tell me you kiss me and don’t think of him. Tell me I’m something other than a fucking rebound.”

  His room is too hot or maybe I am, but the air gets caught in my chest while my body burns for him. “Why?”

  The party downstairs echoes into his room. I avoid his gaze, afraid to hear the truth. Deep down, I’ve figured it out and maybe that’s why I let this happen the first time. And I hate that, too. I don’t want to use his feelings for me.

  “You know why. Need to hear it?”

  I shake my head, tears burning in my eyes. “Fuck you.”

  His hand brings my face around so I meet his eyes once more, burning mine, studying me. I never knew there was a depth to him. I never wanted see it. I never allowed him to be more than Beau’s best friend—the annoying asshole who always tagged along.

  “You have, and you liked it.”

  I raise my hand to slap him, but he grips my wrist and stops me, kissing my fist.

  “Fucking hell, you’re an angry girl.” He moves over me, sinking against me, warming me up. The tequila burns in my stomach. Coming tonight was a huge, terrible, possibly perfect mistake.

  I yank my hand away, drawing him closer so we kiss. Except kissing isn’t the right word for Noah. We’re not simply kissing, it’s more, something I can’t put a word to. His lips are gentle against mine, not rough. He’s not frantic either, but deliberate in breaking me apart.

  “I’m not going to be this guy for you, Rea,” he says, breaking away. His mouth travels down to my jaw, kissing the underside of my chin and continuing down my throat, to nip at my collarbone. Noah threads his hand into my hair, pulling me in every direction, spinning me into nothing. My breath skips from excitement, from the idea that he might actually give in. Then he breaks away, letting his sudden absence wash over me. He sits up and steps off from the bed. “I’m not him. When you can kiss me and me alone, you can come back.”