I fought the urge to pull out my Kindle and show them Couch Surfer—all the five-star reviews and I can’t wait for the next book comments. I knew none of that would matter to them. Just like Professor Dylan, they viewed that kind of writing as mindless and easy. A waste. They had no idea writing as Candy was the first time I’d ever not felt self-conscious about myself. For me, mindless was good.
It was my only thought that morning at one of the computers in the campus computer lab when I uploaded Melted for publication.
I’d wanted to use my laptop, but I’d left it on all night by mistake and it was completely dead. I searched for my power cord, but instead found the small blue vibrator sitting in the drawer where it usually would be. I took it as a sign that I needed to take better care of my power cord once I finally found it.
Apparently, I didn’t need any help taking care of my vibrator.
But I decided to view having to upload Melted in the university computer lab as a sign, a fusing of two worlds. Sitting at one of the university computers, watching it tick through the upload process to KDP, watching the students around me doing work on the other university computer stations, I knew that regardless of what anyone else thought, I wanted Candy and her work in my life, my real life.
Considering I was sitting here in workshop, still listening to what my peers had to say about “Boxed In,” meant I wanted Candice and her work, too. Professor Dylan had pushed me to make a decision and I had.
I picked both.
“Does anyone have anything positive to say about the piece? I thought the characters were well drawn,” Professor Dylan implored.
“I bet he did,” I heard one of the giggling girls say. Her counterpart spit laughed.
I winced and bowed my head. I hadn’t realized it until having been reamed by them, but none of my fellow writing students had attempted to befriend me since I’d been at school. Not the way Amanda had.
Not that I had tried to befriend them, either.
Was what James had said true? Was I so insecure, so afraid of failure that I was jealous of everyone?
I thought about the way the authors I’d met online as Candy and I supported each other. This room, this place was not about that. I didn’t necessarily think it was my fellow students’ faults, either. It was what they thought they needed to do to survive.
Perhaps Professor Dylan was teaching them his sensibilities without even meaning to.
After class, I ducked into the bathroom down the hall. I closed the stall door, pulled out my phone, and stared at it. Without even thinking, I clicked into my contacts and hit call on “Dad’s Cell.”
It rang once, twice, three times before he finally picked up.
“Candice, are you okay?” he asked, instead of saying hello.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“What?”
“I’m just wondering—the call last night, today.” He paused. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to admit they’d seen my call last night.
“Am I only allowed to call you now if I’m dying?” I asked.
“Don’t act like you’re innocent here, Candice. You made your choice. We all have to live with it.”
“You and Mom made the choice. I’m the one who has to live with it.”
He was silent for a moment, considering, or maybe he didn’t know what to say because he knew I was right.
I exhaled. “I guess that starts by saying good-bye.”
I hung up before he could respond. I’d had the strength to leave New York knowing the consequences and I had the strength to live with those consequences. My life here couldn’t be about making my parents proud anymore. Maybe it never really had been.
It had to be about making me proud.
It was no longer about proving them wrong. It was about proving me right.
Chapter Twenty-seven
James was standing outside the Language Arts building when I walked out. He was both the first and last person I wanted to see. Clearly, we hadn’t left things great, and considering what I’d just been through, I was not in the mood for a replay. But I also wanted us both to be able to take back everything we’d done and said last night and have him hold me. To be able to fall into his white-T-shirted chest and have him tell me everything would be okay.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said, walking past him. I’d meant it in both ways: that no one could see us and that I probably didn’t deserve it for the way I’d acted the night before.
I indicated he should follow me to the side of the building, so no one would notice us together as they walked out. That was all I needed. Why not add to my humiliation by letting all my fellow grad students know there was something going on between me and James; the cracked coconut on top of my crap day.
“I thought you might need me, might need a friend,” he said, trying to keep up. It would be hard. I was booking.
“Why? I don’t think I’ve been such a great friend to you lately,” I admitted.
He shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” His eyes reached for mine like he wanted to embrace me but was too afraid to touch me.
“I’m not,” I said, looking down.
He nodded. “There were two ways your critique could go,” he said. “I have things for either situation.” He pulled out a bottle of champagne in his right hand and a bottle of tequila in his left. “I also have dinner, because food can go both ways, too.”
“Wow, if this is how you apologize, I accept,” I said. My stomach felt like someone was throwing glittery confetti inside it.
“Your turn,” he said, a smile quivering to life on his lips.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said. “Can we have an IOU on the ‘showing you just how much’?”
“I think I want it in writing,” he joked.
“I can either give it to you in writing,” I breathed moving closer to him, “or write it on you with my tongue.”
“I’d better hurry up and tell you what I have to tell you then,” he said.
“Oh crap,” I replied. I could tell he’d been wanting to admit something to me for a while now, I just hoped I’d be able to deal with his confession as well as he had dealt with mine.
“Here’s the thing.” He explained. “I don’t think Candy is a joke, far from it. I think it’s amazing you can even do all you do.”
“What does that mean?” It wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. His own secret has to do with Candy?
He exhaled heavily, letting me know he was about to say something important. “The truth is you have no reason to be jealous of me. The reason I haven’t published a book yet isn’t because I don’t want to. It’s because after writing the story that got me all my notice, I’ve been kind of blocked.” His face was pale.
I didn’t say anything. Just let his words settle between us.
“Expectation is a bitch.” He shrugged.
“You haven’t written anything since?” I asked. I couldn’t help it; whatever people thought of my work, I would still write. I couldn’t imagine being that scared of what people thought.
Shut up, of course you can.
“Don’t worry about rubbing it in,” he said, lowering his hands, still holding tight to the bottles.
All this time I’d thought he was better than me, but he wasn’t. He was running from his past, just like I was. He was trying to find his future, just like I was; we were just going about it in different ways.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I totally get it.” I paused. “It’s why I can write as Candy so easily. No expectations.”
“I thought moving would make things easier, but everyone here knows about how awesome I supposedly am, too.”
“You’re too hard on yourself,” I said.
“I think we both are.” He sighed.
We stood there for a moment, realizing that for weeks the only thing we had really been hiding from each other was how alike we were.
“I guess you n
eed those as much as I do,” I said, pointing at the liquor bottles still tight in his hands, waiting for me to choose.
“I need you, Candice,” he said.
I hugged him, hard, the bottles knocking against his legs from the force. I didn’t care who saw; it was okay for me to want him, to need him. It was okay for the two of us to be unsure of everything else in our lives but this.
“Left,” I whispered into his ear, “and keep the champagne, too. The way I’m feeling, I’ll probably drink both.”
“I’m a lucky man,” he mused.
We hopped on his motorcycle and drove along Highway 1 to the beach. The ocean was on one side of us, the university, eclectic architecture, and neon of Miami on the other. It was like the highway was a dividing line between the fantasy we allowed ourselves to live when we were alone together and the real life we had to live in front of everyone on campus.
I decided to savor this side of the highway: a picnic dinner in a basket on the back of the motorcycle, the beach, the sun just starting to set, the salty wind in my hair, my arms encasing James’s solid back and chest.
We parked on the hot asphalt and walked toward the beach. James and I took off our shoes when we hit the warm sand. It was still toasty from the full sun all day. He took my hand while we hunted for an empty patch to sit down. There were a few scattered people on the sand, but it was dinnertime, so most had already headed home.
We stopped at a child’s sandcastle eroding grain by grain in the breeze, the ocean beyond it endless blue glass. James lay out a plaid wool blanket and gestured for me to sit. I recognized it from his bed.
“You could have brought a towel,” I said.
“I think this sets the mood a little better,” he said.
“What mood is that?” I asked, feeling my lips twist.
“I’d say a blanket from a bed doesn’t require any explanation. Also,” he joked, “I didn’t have any clean towels.”
“That seems more like you,” I said, sitting down.
He joined me and emptied the picnic basket: brie, fat red tomatoes, and a crusty baguette.
“Do you do this for all your TAs?” I asked.
“Depends on the grade I want,” he replied, licking his lips and letting me know he was going for nothing less than an A.
“I should get my ass handed to me more often,” I said.
“There is something about a damsel in distress,” he said, cutting the tomato into thick slices. “So let me guess: formulaic, pedestrian, ordinary?”
“Those words are actually nicer than what they said.”
“Most people are intimidated, so they lash out,” he said.
I nodded. I guess it’s what I’d done. But really, it wasn’t James I’d been intimidated by, it was me. It was admitting I was allowed to want what I wanted for myself without caring what anyone else thought.
“And the rest wouldn’t know good work if it bit off their nipples.”
“Interesting phrasing,” I said.
“Sorry,” he said, “I admit it. I am staring at your nipples. I am thinking about them. I am coveting them.”
I looked down, my light blue cotton tank top showing the two of them at full salute. “Apparently they are thinking about you, too,” I said under my breath.
He opened the tequila and passed it to me. I took a long swig. It made my insides feel like I had downed a shot of bleach, hit like a chemical burn.
“Take another,” James said, indicating the bottle. “Being told you’re not good enough, even if it isn’t true, is never easy to hear; especially from a table full of vultures.”
I obeyed. “It did feel like they were vultures,” I said, the liquor loosening and warming my blood, “and I was paralyzed, not dead, lying by the side of the road in the desert, helpless. Each thing they said was another piece of flesh being pecked away.”
“How can someone who isn’t a good writer come up with such a telling analogy?” he asked.
“Tequila?” I asked, taking another drink.
“Whatever it takes,” he replied.
I put the tequila down, lay back, and put my hands on both sides of my head. “I want to apologize again for last night. You’re not who I’m mad at.”
“Really?” he asked. “That’s new and different.”
“Mad is the wrong word,” I said, turning to him. “Disappointed, I guess.”
“You mean your parents?”
I nodded. “They’ll never accept this. What I want for my life. It will always be foolish in their eyes.”
“If you want it, how can it be?” The words came out so quickly, he didn’t even have time to think. It let me know he believed it. That it was his truth.
“I know.” I sighed. “But it’s a little hard to remember when my cheering section is a guy I’ve slept with.”
And Mandy, I thought.
“We’ve never technically slept,” he said, turning sideways and resting his head on his arm.
(Super-hot double-entendre alert.)
He moved in close to my ear. “I’d cheer for you anyway,” he whispered.
“I’m starting to believe you would.”
“Now if you were doing something you didn’t want to do,” he said, tracing his finger lightly on my thigh, “that would be foolish. For example,” he tapped his finger for emphasis, “pushing me away when it’s obvious you want me.”
“Ego much?” I asked.
“Hey, I mean, you did jump me in a parking lot…and in your apartment…and in a cab,” he said, his finger punctuating each entry on his list.
“I did not jump you,” I said, but I couldn’t help smirking.
“You did,” he said, “and I liked it.” He paused. “I kind of can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Me neither,” I admitted.
“So why don’t we stop thinking about it.” He kissed me, firmly, like he was compensating for what our fight had interrupted the night before. We made out like teenagers who were afraid to do anything else, that kind of determined groping. Each kiss felt like oxygen, the only thing keeping me alive. He moved on top of me, our lips inseparable. He fit perfectly into my curves, his chest and hips to mine, our skin salty and sandy.
He stopped and ran his thumb against my cheek. “How about not sleeping together some more?” he asked.
“I’m not tired,” I breathed out, the sky darkening above us.
I waited for him to put on a condom, but before that, he reached over me for the baguette and took a bite from it like it was a carrot. “I’m going to need all my strength for this.”
He was slow, tender, his eyes on mine, holding me as strongly and surely as his arms. I let myself sink into him, completely submerge. This was what I wanted, always. He was who I wanted, always, and the way he was looking at me, his brown eyes as exposed as our bodies were, let me know he felt the same.
He kissed me and through his lips I could hear the roar of him—a growl from deep, calling for me, begging for me. He moaned my name and I echoed with his.
“Candice,” he said. “Candice,” he repeated more forcefully, my name becoming his mantra.
“James,” I sighed, his name becoming my song.
Our bodies drowned against each other, thrusting in sync like the waves, in and out, in and out, the rhythm of nature, of two people realizing they should never have an ocean, a highway, or a classroom between them again.
Then we lay back and watched the stars start to flicker to life, his hand in mine.
“So was the Keith stuff true or is the grade-A asshole really that stupid?” he asked.
“No, it’s real,” I said, “but I’m not sure about the stupid part.”
“I am,” he said, gripping my hand tighter. “He sounds like an idiot.”
“He’s going to be a doctor,” I explained.
“That doesn’t mean he knows a good thing when he sees it.” James snuggled in close. “Lucky for me.”
“For both of us,” I replied. “But like you point
ed out, it wasn’t all him. I’m the one who needed to learn how to know a good thing when she sees it.”
“I’m glad you were willing to study with me,” he said.
“Hey, I’m the teacher here,” I joked.
“Speaking of, I should probably drop your class,” he said, turning to me.
“Because you’ve already missed a discussion section?”
“No.” He pulled my hand to his lips. “I think you know why.”
“Good.” I laughed. “Because I wouldn’t want to have to fail you.”
“We could probably work out some extra credit if I decided to stay,” he said, his lips on my neck, his tongue tickling down to my clavicle, my breasts, my stomach, licking at my belly button, sliding down to where I would have had rhinestones affixed in the shape of a butterfly after a Brazilian.
“A-plus.” I sighed.
Chapter Twenty-eight
It was late when James dropped me off, late enough that I tried to get in the apartment without waking Amanda. No such luck; she was waiting up for me at the kitchen table.
“Where the hell have you been, Candy?” she asked. She’d called me Candy, so I knew she couldn’t have been really angry. She knew I’d been doing something I shouldn’t have been doing that she would probably approve of.
We hadn’t spoken since the night of the double date, and while I had been expecting this conversation, I hadn’t been looking forward to it.
“Oh,” I slurred, realizing I was a lot drunker than I thought, a lot more light-headed from my time with James than I realized. “I went out for some drinks after my first critique. It was pretty rough, so I needed a few.”
“Drinks with?” she singsonged.
I paused. If I finally admitted everything going on with James, I couldn’t hide it anymore. When the two of us were in secret I didn’t have to, didn’t want to, but saying it to Mandy would bring it into my real life; the life on the other side of the highway. James hadn’t officially dropped my class yet, so he was still my student—still off-limits on this side of the highway.
“You’re keeping something from me,” she said, her eyes turning to suspicious slits, “and considering I tell you everything, that doesn’t feel great.”
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