I just can’t seem to stop myself. My eyes want to gawp, and I let them. I watch him draw his hand back in this insanely, gloriously awkward manner—as if he knows, he just knows he shouldn’t have done that. He should never have reached for me, and he definitely shouldn’t be trying to rectify that in slow motion.
It’s too much. All of this is too much.
Including the fact that we’re still staring at each other.
I’m starting to worry we’ll still be standing here, staring, tomorrow.
“You can just…put him on the couch.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The couch is there.”
“I see it.”
He has to be lying about that. He isn’t looking at anything but me. I’m beginning to feel immense and impossible, like a star going supernova in the middle of this dingy living room. In a second maybe he’ll take a picture and post it to Tumblr, with a GIF of him crying over the wonder of the universe.
“I’m sorry I didn’t open the door right away,” I say, just so I can hopefully get rid of some of the tension. That has to be the source of it, after all: He’s still feeling bad that I thought he would hurt me, and I’m still feeling bad about making him feel bad about that. It makes total and absolute perfect sense.
In a world where logic doesn’t exist.
“Don’t be sorry about that. It’s my fault.”
“Oh, no, no—”
“Yeah, it is. Wasn’t cool of me to ask you on the bike or get weird with you for not opening the door. You did right to be wary, okay? Never let some guy take advantage of you just ’cause you’re worried about seeming mean,” he says, and more than anything I want to explain here. The words even spring to my lips: I never fear being mean. I fear being my father and judging you with his eyes instead of my own.
But, of course, I can never let them all the way out.
For a start, no matter how messed up I am or what my issues are, I know his words are amazing. In fact, I heard Professor Eichman say something similar in a lecture on feminism only last week. A punk biker said feminist things, and all I really want to do is shake his hand for that.
Thank you for being cool, I imagine myself saying.
But luckily I don’t get the chance.
“I’ll just dump him over here,” he says, and then I can’t do anything but watch helplessly as he goes about it. He walks over to the couch, steering around me with such insane care I might as well be surrounded by a force field. I can actually see its wavery edges as he makes his way across the apartment. And once he’s dropped my brother, the sense of a line he can’t cross grows stronger. The wide berth he’s just taken grows wider.
He practically glues himself to the far wall in order to get back out again.
It was the strangest dance I’ve ever seen such a surly, massive-looking guy do. Hell, it’s probably the strangest dance I’ve ever seen any guy do. He seems so aware of his own size and the impression he might be giving that it’s almost a physical thing. He has another more horrible self wrapped around the real one inside him, and wants nothing more in this insanely tense moment than to shrug it off.
He thinks I find him murderous.
Even worse: He thinks it’s appropriate for me to feel that way. My suspicions are good and valid and strong. They are the way things are supposed to be, even though they also make him the kind of monster my dad would have undoubtedly said he was.
And now he’s slinking away. He’s already somehow out in the hall, and in another couple of massive strides he’ll be gone forever. He’ll be back to his life of weird meetings in parking lots, and I haven’t even really spoken to him. I haven’t told him how grateful I am for what he’s just done and said, despite knowing it will be with me forever now.
Once, a guy helped me.
He helped me without any expectations. Without demanding that I be grateful, or not frightened, or anything other than exactly what I was. He just did it, as though that is the way things are meant to be. People are meant to help people.
And I have to say something about that.
I run out into the hall, suddenly breathless and frantic with the need to tell him all the things I couldn’t when he was standing right there in front of me, words bursting at the barrier of my lips. That was so amazing, I imagine myself saying, but the second I see him, everything just deflates. The sentiment dies in my throat—and not just because of the pressure his actual presence puts me under.
He doesn’t even turn to hear me. He barely pauses. The most he gives me is a slight hesitation over the first step down, and suddenly it seems so silly to express all of these gushing feelings. He might be a decent man who does good things for people, but he’s still a stone monolith. He doesn’t want to hear me telling him that he’s the best thing ever ever ever with love hearts all around it and lots of happy flowers. I don’t even want to hear myself being like that in his presence.
But I can’t help noticing his reaction after I’ve finally squeezed a word out.
“Thanks,” I blurt, and his head turns just the tiniest fraction. Not enough to mean anything, really—or at least not enough to mean anything to anyone else. If my brother or any of my semi-friends did the same thing, I wouldn’t have thought it a big deal.
But on him, it is a big deal. It’s an acknowledgment, as strong as someone else’s handshake. And as he disappears down the stairs, something else occurs to me, too. There was another element to that slight gesture…one that I don’t quite want to admit. However, once he’s gone I can’t really hold it back. The idea just swells inside me, as sweet and awful as anything I’ve ever felt.
He was surprised.
He was surprised that someone thanked him, as though he’s never heard the word a day in his whole goddamn life.
Chapter 3
I do my best not to think about him. Whenever I start I get this weird gushy feeling, and that absolutely cannot be a good thing. He almost definitely does not have gushy feelings about me, and even if he did, what kind of life could we have together? I barely knew what to do with the engineering student Sam set me up with not so long ago, and he wore blazers. In his spare time he enjoyed collecting stamps.
Even if the punk is the best guy in the world, he is never going to be interested in stamp collecting. His pursuits are probably so cool and manly I can barely comprehend them, which means any conversation we’d have would likely only end in disaster. He might mention some really super-adult thing that I have no idea about, and then when I answer wrong, I’ll just look like a gigantic child.
I almost did with Sam a dozen times, so how would it be any different with him? Sam is less cool than him by quite a wide margin. She has no tattoos. She has no bike. She never carries guys over her shoulders or does wild and elaborate favors for total strangers. He does all of those things, and therefore, avoiding him altogether is a must. I even believe for a while that it will be easy, considering how unlikely it is that I’ll ever see him again.
But it turns out I’m pretty wrong about that, too.
I’m so wrong that when I see him outside my dorm room window, shock almost takes me out. My heart tries to escape out of my mouth, and no amount of rubbing my still-sleep-clogged eyes and shaking my addled head will make it go back down inside again. How can it, when he is really and truly there? I practically press my nose against the glass, but he doesn’t turn into anyone else. He stays just like he is, leaning on his bike right outside my window as though he’s just there waiting…
Dear God, is he waiting for me?
No, no. He can’t be.
But why else would he be here? There isn’t anything behind this building—just a dirt track, some dumpsters, an encroaching mass of dirty-looking greenery. Students don’t even spend any time hanging around out there hooking up, or smoking pot, or whatever else ordinary people my age do, and if they ever did in the past, I’m still not sure it would justify his presence. Magic elves couldn’t justify his presence.
There is literally n
o other explanation.
He is here for me.
And more important:
I want him to be.
Oh, I can deny it all I want, but I do. Every distraction I tried to have over the last three days flies away at the sight of him. All the advice goes right down the drain. I almost immediately want to fling myself out the window at him, and the only thing that stops me is the fact that none of the dorm ones open all the way.
I could probably get a leg through, and that would be about it.
Much to my great relief and eternal gratitude. Now I have time to think, and be rational, and not make a total fool of myself. I can make a plan instead of running headlong into disaster. The only problem is: Not running headlong into disaster is far harder than it should be. It involves picking an outfit that will not completely humiliate me, even though Sam is fast asleep and unable to help.
And clothes are my algebra.
I open the tiny rickety wardrobe jammed into the corner of our equally rickety dorm room, and recoil from a shirt multiplied by a skirt divided by an unknown quantity that I haven’t determined yet. I think it might be boots, but how can I know for sure? I spent the entirety of high school wearing a burlap sack and a balaclava. All of this is a complete mystery to me—which is probably why I end up in jeans and a hoodie.
A really, really baggy hoodie that hides just about everything I have, even though I swear I no longer believe that everything I have will lead me to whoredom. An inch above the knee and no more, I think, and then have to shake my father right out of my head. I just want to look neutral, in case I aim for cool and hit horrendous, desperate nightmare or go too far the other way and look like a nun. Neither of those options is appealing to me.
Nor is the next one:
Letting Sam know I’m going out, even though Sam is the last person in the world I want to talk to about racing stripes. How will I go about explaining his hair? His tattoos? His penchant for clothes that look as if they came out of a serial killer’s handbook?
He’s wearing a jumpsuit type of thing again today, only this time it’s a murky and rather unsettling green. Samantha would never understand that shade of green—it went out of style three semesters ago. I own a jacket in that exact same shade, and she tried to make me cleanse it with fire last Wednesday.
There’s a chance she’ll try to do the same to him, if she finds out.
So I just keep my explanations as small and vague as I possibly can. “I’m going to pick up my brother from some dive bar, so if I don’t text in an hour, maybe call the cops,” I say, then wait with bated breath for Samantha to turn over and pay closer attention. The second she does, all lies will fly out the window. I know they will. Those diamond-bright eyes will seek out my every secret, and suddenly I’ll be spilling my life story.
Once I forgot to wear slippers over my socks, and had to walk around barefoot for three days to show I knew the value of clothes. That joke I made about being allowed only one meal a day wasn’t really a joke at all because when I started getting breasts and hips, I was forced to eat less in case they got any bigger. Oh, and the reason my brother is out doing God knows what again is down to the time when he was confined to the basement for months.
Like Flowers in the Attic, I will say.
Only not played for campy entertainment.
“See you later, Samantha,” I say, but I do it so quietly it probably doesn’t count. She mumbles something in return—something that definitely won’t help should things go horribly, murderously wrong—but it keeps my heart from trying to punch out of my chest, at the very least. And it means that I manage to descend the stairs without turning to jelly and/or running back up again to hide under my bed.
It doesn’t really help once I’m outside, however. I get to the corner of the building and can’t seem to walk around it. Every time I try, my brain reminds me of what is just beyond the red brick. All that weird hair, and those eyes like winter fire, and his overalls. Lord, why do I like his overalls so much? I should hate them. I do hate them, except in all the places where I imagine reaching up to take hold of that winking zipper.
Then drawing it ever so slowly—
“I see you hiding there, girl.”
It isn’t the sound of his voice that gives me a little jolt. I try to pretend it is, but really, I know the score. I’ve just been caught in the middle of a very bad thought and now have to face the fact that he probably understands what that thought is. The thing is more than likely written all over me. I feel as though I’m holding up a neon sign saying I have sudden sex ideas about complete strangers, which probably explains my pathetic response.
“I’m not,” I say, the way little kids do when they’ve been caught eating paste or peeing in a flowerpot. The pee and the paste are quite obviously there, but by God, I’m going to insist they aren’t anyway.
He’s onto me, however.
“Really? ’Cause I gotta say, I don’t think we can brush this off as casual leaning. Might be able to push for hugging the wall, if we squint a little.”
“Maybe I just like this building.”
“Maybe you do.”
“Could be I have a thing for walls.”
“Well, everyone’s got their little fetish.”
I have to step out at that. Or, at the very least, step away from the wall. The last thing I need right now is him using the word fetish, what with my face being this red, and my body being this trembly, and that weird zipper thought still making word bubbles right over my head. Anything more and I’m going to look like a sex maniac.
Though if I’m close, he gives no sign.
“There you are,” he says, and sounds so genuinely pleased I’m not quite sure what to make of it. His voice goes a notch lighter and a touch springier—neither of which suits him in the least. But then if I’m being honest, most happy-sounding things probably wouldn’t suit him. He could be riding the Matterhorn at Disneyland while eating ten tubs of gingerbread ice cream and still seem as fierce and angry as fuck.
All I really have to go on is how he seems in comparison to the way he was the last time, and on that score, he is much better. His arms are folded over his chest, true. But they seem less angry about it. And his face has lost a ton of that wary steel it had before. I could almost call his expression calm and peaceful, if he seemed like that sort of person.
He is looking at me. He’s looking at me just like he did before—as though his eyes can’t get enough of my face. They dart over every inch of my features in an almost feverish sort of fashion, so intently it’s almost too much to bear. I want to glance away, but of course know why I don’t. Anyone would know.
Somehow I’m staring right back at him in the exact same manner, again. My eyes feel thirsty, and apparently he is a long, long ice-cold drink of water. I can’t stop gulping him down—not even when I stop to think about just how different he is from all the things I’m supposed to want. Not even when I need to ask him the most vital questions.
So it’s lucky, really, that he answers them anyway.
“Guess you’re wondering what I’m doing back here.”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“It’s nothing weird.”
“I didn’t think it was.”
“You sure? Some thug hanging around outside your dorm, waiting for you to come out…kinda creepy,” he says, and when he does I suddenly find myself wondering. Is that really how I see him? It sometimes seems as if I should, and yet the last thing I want to do is say yes. In fact, the opposite almost burns in my chest.
It makes my voice come out all fierce and fiery, in a way it’s never been before.
Not even in defense of Tommy. Not even in defense of anyone.
“Thug isn’t the word I would have used.”
“So which word, then?”
“I don’t know. What word would you use for someone who rescued someone’s brother and didn’t ask for a single thing in return?” I ask, expecting at least a nod of understanding. Inste
ad I get an expression of such utter confusion and surprise I’m not sure what to do with it. Clearly he’s never really framed things like that before.
And he doesn’t know how to frame it now. I can almost see him coming up with the term Good Samaritan or maybe even heroic stranger, and trying to pass on both. Then when he fails, he goes with something so ridiculous I don’t know what to say in response.
“Derek?” he suggests.
“That…wait…I…”
“Derek sounds like a trustworthy name. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about trustworthy names before.”
“But you get that Serge is not in that category.”
The only thing I get when he says this is a sudden and startling realization: That is his name, quite obviously. His name is Serge, like something out of a novel about poetry-reading lumberjacks. But clearly he doesn’t realize that. Or that it makes my heart thump to hear it.
He thinks I might find his name scary.
How do I tell him that I’m feeling the opposite?
“It could be worse. You could be called Beatrix.”
I do it by revealing something about me. Something I absolutely hate more than any other thing. I hate my ridiculous name and the way people react to it—either with bemusement or some joke about nineteenth-century spinsters. It’s just another thing that makes me different, to the point where I often lie and say I’m Becca, or Barbara, or Bonnie.
But I don’t want to lie to him.
I don’t want to lie to him so much that something else accidentally slips out at the same time. It just kind of comes with the name, I guess. Other words let me spread my vowels out and chop the ends off some of the stuff I say. But Beatrix is hard and clipped and always calling for my proper voice.
And naturally he notices that, above all other things.
“You been hiding an accent in there somewhere?” he asks, while my insides slowly sink down to nothing. I could have probably gotten away with just the name. I can always get away with just the name. But the second I speak in my real voice, I’m set apart. People want to know if I’ve ever met the queen or whether I know Brian from Bridlington. Every question becomes less and less about me and more and more about all the things I do differently, until finally I am as weird as I don’t want to be.
Never Loved Page 3