by Alyssa Cole
Edwin took a step toward Devon, then shook his head. “Maggie, you can try to talk to this dude if you want, but he’s not worth your time. Actually, he’s exhibit A of the type of entitled douche you should stay away from.”
Devon flinched at my name. His hands dropped to his side, and when his head turned over his shoulder, his attitude was gone and he looked almost frightened. He stared at me for a long time, his eyes growing wider and wider. “Maggie?” It was his turn for the guitar string to break. “Holy hell. Holy shit. Holy fuck.”
He scrambled down from the radiator after his strange litany, nearly falling but still unable to look ungainly, given his well-built frame. He ran, scooped me up into his arms and crushed me to him and, just like that, my humiliation was forgotten. For months and months, we’d spent almost every night virtually connected at the hip—or screen—but we’d never touched. Sometimes I’d wanted to feel his hand against mine so much that it had been a physical pain. The distance between us had hurt, and once I thought he’d died it had been insurmountable. But he was here now and he gave even better hugs than I’d thought possible. His whole body was warm and hard, and he smelled like something citrusy. It was appropriate. He’d once described the orange groves near his house, and every time the tart, sweet smell hit my nose I thought of him. Every time. And now he was here, hugging me.
“BodkinBabe?” he whispered.
I groaned. My all-purpose user name had been created when I was still way into archery and young enough to want something punny with a hint of sexual innuendo as I traversed the interwebs.
“Yes, ThrashBandicute, it’s me,” I mumbled against the fabric of his white T-shirt, which most definitely had whatever was left of my lipstick imprinted on it. I wrapped my arms around him and held him as tightly as he held me.
He laughed, and then loosened his grip so he could hold me away from him. We studied each other and the way the years had changed us. His face was so angular now, and I wondered if that was because he’d gone without food for long stretches of time.
“You cut your hair,” he said, and as he ran his fingers through the short strands, I sighed. It should have been weird, but it was comfortable instead. Devon was alive. I could feel the weight of his presence instead of just the weight of my laptop.
“I’m kind of a rebel now,” I said with a smirk.
“I always knew you were.” His eyes were intense as his gaze swept my face. “I still can’t believe you’re here. That I get to do this.”
“Wha—”
His mouth came down on mine, and I didn’t have time to think, only to react. My dad and brothers had taught me all the best ways to repel unwanted advances—jabs, kicks and twisting of joints—but when I slid my hands up to his ears, it wasn’t to disable him with a cuff that sent a painful rush of air straight to his eardrum. It was to grab him and pull him toward me, to bring his lips, his body, closer to mine.
I’d been so fixated on all the stuff that came after my first kiss that I’d never given much thought to the actual event. It didn’t matter, because I certainly would never have come up with anything close to this. His mouth was firm against mine, his lips warm, his tongue slick. There was a feeling I got when I could play a song through correctly without error and without looking at the tablature, a pleasant kind of warmth as my fingers and breath and brain combined to make something beautiful. Kissing Devon was kind of like that, but turned up to eleven. The hazy pleasure enveloped me as different parts of my body began to work in harmony—the ache between my legs playing a thrilling harmony with my hammering heartbeat.
“Oh my God, this is just like in a drama I watched where two childhood friends reunited as restaurant workers in Taiwan and fell in love!” Danielle’s voice reminded me that I had an audience. Her. And Edwin. Fuck.
I pulled my mouth away and disentangled myself from Devon’s limbs. When I looked at Edwin, his face was blank, as it had been when we’d encountered the roadblock. Embarrassment tried to dull the bright, happy feeling Devon’s kiss had instilled in me, but I reminded myself firmly that Edwin was just a friend. Getting hot and heavy in front of friends wasn’t a life goal, but it wasn’t every day you ran into your internet beau. He could deal.
“Sorry.” I glanced at myself in the room’s standard full-length mirror. My hair stuck up every which way, and my mouth looked like something out of a horror movie starring killer clowns. Devon’s wasn’t much better.
“Why are you apologizing? This is amazing! You have the best first-day-of-college story ever!” Danielle clasped her hands and looked excitedly at Edwin, whose enthusiasm level wasn’t quite as high.
“Do you want us to leave you here?” Edwin asked. His tone indicated he thought that was a less-than-optimal idea, and something about that irked me. I fought against my urge to go into brat mode.
“Yes. Devon and I have a lot of catching up to do. Thanks for asking, though.”
Edwin gave a nod and turned to go. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Don’t worry, Maggie’s not-boyfriend. If you come to my room, I’ll show you my chibis. They always make me feel better,” Danielle said, slipping her arm through Edwin’s. His eyebrows raised, but he didn’t look as put off by the suggestion as I would have thought.
“She’s talking about cute little anime figurines,” I called after them.
Danielle dragged him out of the room, and Devon immediately leaned in to resume where we’d left off. I placed a hand against his chest to stay him and extricated myself from his embrace. I was still excited to see him, but our brief pause had enabled the million questions his kiss had distracted me from to take precedent.
“That was a nice greeting, but maybe we should catch up first. I mean, it’s been years. I thought you were dead!”
“I thought you were too,” he said. “I never thought I’d talk to you again.”
There was such genuine longing in the way that he looked at me and how his fingers grazed over my skin. He touched me softly, the way an archaeologist would brush the dust away from an ancient treasure they’d unearthed. I’d never wanted for attention, but this kind of reverence made my breath catch and my brain scramble.
“Well, I’m here now. Let’s talk.” I sat down on his bed and patted a space a reasonable distance away from me. With room to think and process my feelings provided by the space between us, the immediate comfort I’d felt with him started to wane. We were essentially strangers, despite our shared past. A lot had happened in four years, and whatever he’d gone through had turned him into a guy who bit strangers’ heads off without a second thought. My hands started to sweat and I inched away from him a bit. “Well, first of all, the obvious. What are you doing in New York? I didn’t think there would be too many people from out of state, and I can’t imagine the trip from Tampa was an easy one.”
It wasn’t impossible, but the more I thought about it, the more unbelievable it was. Arden and Gabriel had just traveled across the country, but the trip had been grueling. Devon ending up here of all places? Impossible. I knew the world worked in weird ways—I’d seen it myself any number of times since the Flare—but this was pushing it.
He shifted uncomfortably, and the last bit of the openness we’d shared fizzled into nothing. He’d been gazing into my eyes as if he couldn’t look away before I’d asked the question, but now his shoulders were hunched and his gaze had moved to my shoes. He took a bracing breath. “Actually—”
I jumped to my feet, my instincts already way ahead of whatever he was about to say. That word, said in that tone, never boded well. He grabbed my hand, which made me that much surer he was about to say something shitty—he already expected me to run away.
“When we first started talking in the forum, I didn’t know how things would develop. You were just an avatar of a cat holding a bow and arrow. I didn’t know how important you would beco
me. I couldn’t have.”
Oh fuck.
Dread was already seeping through me, and I wanted this over with already. “Spit it out, Devon.”
He glanced up, apparently surprised at the harshness of my tone. I chalked it up to the fact that we hadn’t argued before, but then remembered that wasn’t true. We had once, when I’d told him my church was organizing a mission trip down to Florida, to help rebuild houses after a hurricane. I’d thought maybe there was some way we could meet, but he’d blown me off with a weak excuse. I’d been so mad at him that I hadn’t talked to him for days, but I’d missed him enough to make a million excuses for why I should overlook his behavior. It’s not like we’ll never see each other, he’d said when we started talking again. We have time.
My memory prepped me for the blow of his next words, but not by much. “I’m here because—” he took a deep breath “—I live in New York, and I have for a long time. For most of the time we were together, actually.”
I pulled my hand away and drew myself up to my full height to stare down at him. “What? Why would you lie like that to someone you cared about?”
He looked away from me, too cowardly to even explain himself after dropping that bombshell. He’d just given me an emotional donkey punch and now he was going to make me beg for an explanation?
“You know what? I don’t care,” I said. He looked up at me, distress in his eyes like he was the one who had been wronged. I shook my head. “We’re stuck living in this building together, but don’t you ever fucking talk to me again. You’ve been dead to me all these years, and now you really are.”
I marched out of his room, ignoring him when he called after me. Chin up, back straight and blinking away tears at the realization that I’d barely lived away from home for a few hours and had already managed to have my heart broken. They weren’t kidding when they said this program was fast-paced.
Chapter Seven
My phone buzzed later that night, a message from my mom. I read the text and responded to her queries. Yes, I’m okay, Amma. No, I haven’t accepted drinks from a stranger. No, I don’t know where the fuzzy handcuffs Arden left behind are. Please traumatize her and Gabriel with that question. I hit Send, and the phone buzzed in my hand before I could shove it under my pillow. Her message read, It’s okay if you’re partying, just be careful!
Ha. If only she knew.
After running from Devon, I’d hermited myself away in my room, alternating between unpacking and repacking my things and ignoring Danielle’s through-the-door pleas to grab dinner at the dining hall together. People wandered past my door, but there were no wild parties or even loud talkers. It seemed the bulk of the student body would be arriving the following day, if they showed at all. The welcome get-togethers were planned for later in the week anyway, and I could wait till then to be social—if I was even still around. I ate the last scraps of venison jerky and lay in my darkening room, feeling like shit. My thought patterns alternated between I can’t stay here and I’ll show that fucker and Why can’t things just work out for me?
I wasn’t used to being incapacitated by my emotions. I was easily annoyed, but I’d learned at the knee of Gabriel, Arden and John. Pesky feelings were usually dispatched by doing something useful, cutting a bitch or withering someone with a blast of sarcasm, respectively. None of those things felt right, though... I sat up in bed and grabbed my guitar. The dip and curve of it nestled against my body perfectly, and for a second a flash of how good Devon had felt against me popped into my head. Then how good Edwin had felt when I’d leaned against him in the hall.
Enough!
I wondered how soundproof the cinder-block walls were and opted to play quietly since it was late. I didn’t want to be the asshole of the floor—Devon already had dibs on that position.
I didn’t play any song in particular, just let my fingers skip across the strings as they wished. I’d played for long enough that I could zone out and still put together combinations of notes that complemented one another. Out of the random sequence of notes, something began to take shape. I pressed on, following the melody where it took me. The song was sad. The song was foolish. The song was...pretty fucking good.
Thoughts of Devon and his lies disappeared as the structure of the song overtook my consciousness. I had a groove going, something that was catchy with an undertone of melancholy. Once I could play that without making any mistakes, I began humming different melodies, trying to find one that was just the right mix of the emotions that had knocked me down for the count earlier. That was the funny thing about emotions—trying to capture the essence of them was the best way not to feel them at all. As I tried high notes and low, indie sprightliness and then folky melancholy, I was able to look at what I was feeling more clinically instead of curling up into a ball at the thought of what had happened.
Words began to emerge from my quiet humming. I avoided the phrase “you lied,” which would be too cliché even if it was the truest thing I could say about Devon’s actions, and opted for something poppy and peppy that clashed with the hint of sadness in the song. I frantically grabbed for a piece of paper and pencil with one hand while still thumbing the strings with the other.
The only sound was the scratch of my pencil, with the occasional strummed note as I made sure words and music matched. Finally, I put the pencil down and played the song through. By the time I got to the last verse, the power of the song was rolling through my body full strength, and I felt a vicious smile curve my lips as I belted out the words.
If I wanted a lost boy, I’d go read Peter Pan.
You think I’ll forgive you, but you don’t understand.
I’ve made my peace, you will not get a pass.
Ask me and I’ll tell you: shove it up your ass.
There was a smile on my lips as the last note faded. Nothing had changed—Devon had still made a fool of me, and I’d still have to see him around the dorm, but damn if I didn’t get a song out of it.
A light brush of knuckles against my door startled me, and I didn’t ignore it as I had all night. Creating a song had purged enough emotion that I could interact with other humans without biting any heads off.
“Sorry for ignoring you earlier,” I said as I opened the door and—yup. Not Danielle.
“No problem. Kinda hard to focus on other things when there’s a tongue down your throat.” Edwin had one arm against the door frame, but he took a step back so he wasn’t crowding me. He nodded toward Danielle’s door, which was now decorated with stickers of rainbow unicorns and dolphins. “I saw Pikachu at the dining hall earlier, and she said you wouldn’t come out of your room. I told her it meant things went really good with you and that dude after we left, but then I thought maybe it meant things went really bad.” He held up his hands, and there was a sandwich in one and a glass bottle of soda in the other.
Oh God. Why is he here? Why is he being nice to me? I ignored the way my heart bumped in my chest and the dimples that formed in his cheeks as I stepped away from the door to let him in.
“Your family would kill me if I let you starve,” he explained, but even that caveat couldn’t douse the warm happiness that his gifts had brought me. He thought enough of me to make sure I was okay and had something in my belly, late as it was. Even if he only ever thought of me as a friend, having a friend like Edwin wasn’t something to snub your nose at.
“Soda? I thought I was supposed to be doing keg stands and taking shots.”
“You are, but the best part of college is coming up with inventive ways to find booze. I’m not gonna make it easy for you.” He cleared a spot on my already messy desk for the food and then sat down on the edge of my bed. Only as I approached the sandwich did I realize how hungry I was. I unwrapped it and took a bite just as he said, “So, do I have to kill this guy?”
I took my time chewing, swallowing the morbid desi
re to say, “Yes! Finish him!” along with the chicken and lettuce. “No. If he’s going to be throttled, I prefer to do it myself.”
He nodded. “You can talk about it if you want. I know you’re fully capable, but I might have to kill him without your consent if he did anything too unforgivable.”
I considered not telling him, but then I remembered that Edwin already knew the first most embarrassing thing that’d happened to me; he’d participated in it. What difference would it make if he knew the second?
I opened the soda and took a huge gulp that left a sweet, fizzy burn at the back of my throat. “So, we dated for six months. But...online. We never met in real life because he was in Florida. Or he said he was in Florida. Turns out that was a bit of a fib. He was here in New York the whole time.” I bumped a fist against the burp forming in my chest. No need to rest on formality with Edwin.
“Damn.” He drew the vowel out long and high, and his face scrunched up like he’d just been kicked in the nuts. That was the look of someone who not only listened to you, but actively felt embarrassed on your behalf. There was a German word for it, but I was too lazy to see if the basic online search engines would pull it up. “You got catfished. I’m sorry, Maggie. I thought that only happened to people I didn’t know.”
I laughed around a bite of sandwich. “Hey, at least I never sent him my Social Security number.” A memory came back to me then. “After we first talked, he sent me a letter, and it was postmarked from Florida. I don’t get why he’d go through all that trouble. Maybe he’s some kind of sociopath.”
“Did he say why he did it?” Edwin asked, and when I just kept chewing he shook his head. “Maggie, I’m the last one to go to bat for this guy, but let me guess what happened. He told you he’d lied, and you whupped his ass and left the room.”
I shot him a disgusted look. “I didn’t lay a finger on him. I’m not trying to get kicked out of school for battery before the semester even starts.”