“You obviously don’t know very much about guys,” he said, taking another drink from his flask.
“No,” I said, watching the girls move closer with each chant, “I’m reacting this way because I do.”
“Oh,” he said, his lips close enough to my ear to bite it off. “Your heart’s been broken, huh? Big surprise.”
“Not broken, just woken up,” I said, trying to ignore the shivers his breath had sent through me. I knew it wasn’t him. I knew Joe could have a similar effect when he was that close.
Trevor pulled back to look at me. “Right,” he said, like he had remembered the words to a song and was reciting them. “But not by the boyfriend. The boyfriend is safe, but you don’t like safe, do you, bad girl?”
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, and I could feel the words in my teeth. The thing was that he did. In one night he had figured out what Joe still didn’t know or didn’t want to know: that I was unsure about everything. But what I hadn’t realized until that night was that it wasn’t because I wanted something else. It was because I thought I didn’t deserve it.
I thought that Joe was wrong to want me.
…
JOE
“So if your girlfriend doesn’t like frats, why are you here?” Emily asked. She’d brought back a six-pack of beers and already opened two bottles on the cement stair above us. It was obvious this was not her first frat party.
I took a long drink, the neck of the bottle moist in my hand. It was so cold and good and it was going down so easily I’d finished one and she’d opened me another before I even realized it.
“Are you working undercover?” I asked. I could feel my eyes looking at her over the bottle, sort of flirting with her. I looked away. I wasn’t trying to flirt with her, but she was the first girl I’d spoken to for longer than five minutes since I’d arrived at college.
I had also—even though I hadn’t tried to—seen her basically naked.
“I guess I’m just asking,” she said, playing with the label on her beer bottle. “We have to talk about something, right?”
It was true. I’d been to enough parties in high school to know that girls and guys could do two things together: talk or something else. And there was no way we could do something else.
“It’s the pre-law frat,” I said, shrugging, shifting, slugging down my beer.
“No other reason?” she asked, her voice almost humming.
“Should I have one?” I knew I wasn’t hiding anything from her. So why not admit that really was the main reason? Amy always told me that I might have been the only person she’d ever met who didn’t have ulterior motives. I guess this was what she meant.
“They throw the best parties,” she said, running her finger up and down the neck of the beer bottle. “You don’t agree?”
I gulped. This girl made me gulp. This was bad.
“Sure,” I said. “I guess word gets around campus, huh?”
“Word gets around town,” she said. “I go to Casablanca, the cosmetology school.”
“So why are you here?” I asked.
“The same reason we’re all here,” she said, her gaze scanning her friends around the room. “It’s the pre-law frat.”
“Looking to snag yourself a lawyer,” I said, talking as much as I was drinking now. I had both hands on the bottle, holding them steady.
“That’s the plan,” she said, looking past me. “I’m ready to be set for life.”
“You don’t feel like it’s too soon to think about the future?” I asked, knowing I was asking not because I didn’t agree but because I knew Amy didn’t. She didn’t like thinking more than a couple of weeks ahead. Maybe it was because she knew how easily everything you had planned could go up in smoke.
Literally.
“No way,” Emily said, her whole body straightening. “I mean, there are things I want in life. A beautiful home, a bitchin’ car, an expense account, and I want a guy who can give those to me. I can spend my time looking for that, or I can spend them getting wasted and sleeping with losers. If I’m going to get wasted and sleep with someone, I’d rather he be able to take care of me the next day.”
“So you’re basically sleeping with guys for money,” I said. I didn’t really know how else to respond.
“I want a good life. Why should I sleep with them for free?”
I nodded. It was what I wanted to give to Amy. I was a guy, so I had to provide those things for someone, and why did Emily want all those things when Amy seemed like she still couldn’t decide?
Was it because I was trying to force her to decide? Trying to force myself to decide?
I guess I was rushing things between us because I wanted so badly to have the perfect life for myself—the life that my father couldn’t give me. It was a selfish reason.
“You could be a lawyer,” I said, gesturing with my beer, “or a doctor.”
“Right,” she said, running her fingers through her hair. “People transfer from cosmetology school to law school all the time.”
We sat there for a moment, drinking, watching the basement around us. Most of the girls had paired off and were dancing, or doing what Steve and Deanna had been doing. I was pretty sure Emily, even though she was acting like a good sport, was becoming increasingly annoyed with her decision to pair off with me.
But maybe she also could feel what I couldn’t deny, that I liked talking to her. Sitting next to her, being close to her.
“Isn’t that why your girl is with you?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “she doesn’t care about that stuff at all. Thinking about the future scares her.” I was surprised I’d admitted it, but it wasn’t like Emily was keeping anything from me. Of course, I didn’t add that I was forcing her to think about it because I was afraid, too.
“What’s scary about knowing what you want?” she asked, making sure I could see her face.
“I think it’s only scary when you don’t,” I said, forcing myself to look away, to look at the stains on the cement basement floor.
“It sounds like you deserve someone who does,” Emily said, leaning closer to me.
“I thought we weren’t talking about my girlfriend,” I said, still staring straight ahead. I couldn’t look at her. I was afraid to look at her.
“We’re not,” she said, touching my bare stomach with her bottle of beer.
It made me flinch. “Please don’t,” I said, pulling back from her.
“Wow,” she said, her whole body hunching. “You really love her, huh?”
“I’m trying,” I said.
“Well.” She licked the top of her bottle. “When you get tired of trying, you can always call me.”
The thing was that I knew, for Amy, I would always try.
“I think I’m going to say good-bye to Steve and take off. You want me to walk you home?” I put down the beer I was drinking.
Emily turned to me and smiled.
I held my hands up. “Just walking.”
“Okay, superboyfriend. You can walk me home.”
Chapter Seven
AMY
I made the excuse that I needed a drink of water, but really, I sat on the porch of the house party. People kept stepping over me to enter, but I didn’t move. I just sat there, my phone out waiting for Joe to call back. In my old life I might have been smoking a cigarette, pretending I wasn’t waiting for anything.
In my new life I couldn’t help but make it obvious.
Maybe it was because I didn’t have the crutches from my old life. I only had Joe and right now I needed to talk to him to remind me that I didn’t need crutches anymore.
Of course, waiting for a guy to call was certainly crutch-like, even if that guy had just asked you to move in with him.
“What are you doing out here?” Trevor asked, coming up behind me. He lit the cigarette I had just been thinking about. The smoke floated around him, almost blue in the porch light.
“Nothing,” I said, putting m
y phone back in my pocket.
How could I admit I was waiting for my boyfriend to call? How could I admit that most of the reason I’d come was because I was scared of finally being happy?
“The party’s inside,” Trevor said, his words around his cigarette.
“You’re out here, too,” I replied. Not wanting to get into some back-and-forth flirting thing. I could tell by the way Trevor was talking to me that it was what he was going for. I could tell by the way Trevor was talking to me that it was what he was always going for.
I’d fallen for it already that night, but flirting with him wasn’t making anything clearer, except that I’d come with him not because I liked him but because I was afraid to fully let myself choose Joe.
“Can I sit?” Trevor asked.
I was surprised. He seemed like the type to just sit, but maybe that was the person I thought he was. The person I needed him to be for whatever I was doing. Or maybe he’d sensed the change in me—that I didn’t want to be his bad girl—a tentativeness that made him tentative.
“It’s a free country,” I said, taking my phone back out. It wasn’t something I would usually say, either, and maybe it was just part of the person I thought I needed to be—someone who didn’t care if he sat next to me. Who didn’t picture his hands digging into the skin on my back like it was clay.
“Hey, you were the one who decided to come here with me,” he said. He looked angry. He had gone from disappointed to angry.
“No,” I said, “not really. You asked me. I just didn’t say no.”
“That’s the same thing,” he said.
“It’s not,” I replied, staring out into the street. “I don’t do well with making my own decisions.” It was true—or had been, at least, until I’d chosen to be with Joe.
“So why did you come if you’re out here sulking, waiting for him to call?” Trevor asked, lowering his voice like he realized he’d lost. Not that he really seemed like he was fighting very hard, but that might have been because he never usually needed to.
“It’s hot inside,” I said.
“There’s no reason to lie,” he said, exhaling. “Lie to yourself, but don’t lie to me.”
“Fine, I came for me. I guess I was testing myself.”
“Well,” he said, his eyes on me, “that’s a nut punch of the truth.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I used to be a different girl. I guess I wanted to see if I still was.”
“You are who you are,” he said, stomping out his cigarette with his boot.
“You don’t believe that people change?” I asked.
“Why would they? That’s a lot of work.”
“Not if the person you used to be felt like more work,” I said, the words seeming heavy coming out. Being at the mercy of other people had seemed easier, but I knew with each nod of my head a little bit of myself was chiseling off.
I was tired of it. I needed to do what I wanted to do.
I hoped I wasn’t too late. My phone still hadn’t rung. Had I finally done it? Pushed Joe away without even saying no?
I deserved it.
“So did you pass or fail?” Trevor asked, turning to me. I could feel him waiting for the signal to move in and kiss me.
Under very different circumstances, I might have just done it. But I guess I also knew that, whether Trevor believed me or not, in addition to not being able to do it to Joe, I couldn’t do it to the girl I’d changed into.
The girl I now knew I wanted to be.
The old Amy would not succeed in continuing to fuck up my life.
Trevor, as superhot as he was, didn’t really like me. He liked the idea of being able to steal me away from my boyfriend, of being able to get me to do what he wanted me to do.
I wasn’t that girl anymore.
I pulled back from him.
“He would cheat on you,” Trevor said, indicating my phone.
“He wouldn’t, trust me,” I said, shaking my head. “I may not be able to trust myself, but I can trust him completely.”
“He’s a guy. Guys cheat and if they don’t, they think about it and wish they could.”
“Not Joe,” I said.
“Oh,” he mused, “so the boyfriend has a name.”
“Yes, his name is Joe. Not ‘the boyfriend’ and not the guy I am going to cheat on.” I felt my voice start to rise. “His name is Joe.”
The words were barely out of my mouth when I saw him walking down the other side of the street—shirtless, a girl next to him in only what I recognized as his missing shirt.
“What the fuck?” I asked, whispered really, that whisper that can feel as loud as a scream.
Trevor turned and laughed. “Walk of shame,” he said.
“That’s Joe,” I said, saying his name because I was trying to make myself believe it.
“Ha! Looks like he failed,” Trevor said, starting to laugh harder.
“Fuck you, Trevor,” I said. As I suspected—all he’d ever wanted from me was sex, and I’d been almost stupid enough to give it to him.
Not that it mattered now, considering Joe had a practically naked girl at his side.
“Hey, I just call it like I see it, bad girl,” he said.
“Stop calling me that,” I said, in that moment certain I would never be his bad girl, whether Joe had moved on or not.
I waited, wondering if I should just watch Joe walk by. There was a very big difference between studying at the library and walking home half-naked with an obviously drunk and half-naked girl.
Bigger than very big.
Joe had lied, but worse than that, he’d somehow found a naked girl and given her his shirt. There was no way I was just going to let him walk by.
“How was the library?” I yelled.
I saw Joe look around. He’d heard me but was unsure where my voice was coming from.
“Hey, boyfriend,” Trevor added. His hands cupped over his mouth. “Amy’s boyfriend!” He stood and yelled louder.
Joe finally turned to us. He seemed confused, his arms crossed over his chest to fight the cold. But then he saw us, saw me. First he looked angry. Then, I guess remembering he was supposed to be at the library, he looked terrified.
Maybe it didn’t matter what I wanted. Maybe Joe had made my decision for me. Fuck me for being too afraid to finally be myself.
He didn’t move, the half-naked girl at his side.
“Anytime, Amy’s boyfriend,” Trevor yelled. “I was just getting through telling her how you would cheat on her if you had the chance. Thanks for the visual aid.”
“Who the hell are you?” Joe yelled.
“Who the hell are you with?” I yelled back.
“Why don’t you come over here, so I can introduce myself properly.” Trevor laughed.
I could feel Joe’s eyes on me as he walked toward us, leaving the girl and his shirt across the street.
Maybe I could have walked over to him, but Joe was the one who’d lied. I may have been on the porch of a house party with some guy, but it’s not like I told him I’d be doing needlepoint all night.
“Amy, what are you doing here?” Joe asked, rubbing his bare arms.
“That’s what you’re going with?” Trevor asked before I could even respond.
“Who are you?” Joe asked again, his eyes squinting in a way I wasn’t used to seeing—Joe to the rescue in a very different way.
“Trevor,” Trevor replied. “I go out with a shirt on.”
Joe looked down. I saw him turn red. Saw his hands fist and go into his pockets. I knew how hard it was for him to keep them steady, but he was doing it. “It looks like you go out with other guys’ girlfriends.”
“Only when they say yes,” Trevor said, putting his arm around me.
I shook him off, even though I wanted to let him, considering I still didn’t know what the story was between Joe and Slutty McSlutterson.
“You might want to move away from her,” Joe said.
“What will you do if I don’t?
” Trevor asked. I could hear his chest puffing out under his leather jacket.
“I’m walking around without a shirt on,” Joe said. “Do you really want to question how crazy I can get?”
“Joe, stop,” I said.
“I don’t think you should be starting with me,” Trevor said, “considering you have a little friend of your own.”
“I’m not out with her. She’s drunk, and I’m walking her home,” Joe said.
“Who the hell is that?” I whisper yelled, trying to keep Trevor out of our conversation, even though it was clear he wanted in. But I needed to know who that skank was across the street with her boobs all up in my boyfriend’s polo shirt.
“Just a girl I met tonight,” Joe said, like that was supposed to explain everything.
“Why are you walking her home?” I asked, even though I knew. Joe couldn’t help but save.
Joe looked at me, knowing what I knew and that he wished it could have been me standing across the street, waiting and needing him to walk me home.
“You going to leave her standing over there like that?” Trevor asked.
“Why, you looking for someone else to hit on?” Joe spat.
“What the hell do you care?” I asked.
“Call her over here at least,” Trevor said. “She looks like a hooker who raided Tiger Woods’s closet standing there all alone.”
Joe looked at me, his eyes waiting for my permission. I nodded only because I wanted this done, and the quicker she got over here, the quicker it would be.
“Emily,” Joe said, yelling for her and waving his hand back, the same gesture that someone makes when he’s trying to get a better smell of something, but larger.
“First-name basis,” Trevor said, raising his eyebrows.
“Bite me,” Joe said.
“Looks like someone already did,” Trevor said, indicating the hickeys on Joe’s chest and stomach. “I’m hoping those are yours and if so, good job,” he added, looking at me.
I didn’t speak. My throat felt like it had fallen to the bottom of my feet. I had forgotten they were there and Joe was walking around shirtless with them out for anyone to see. So he could give some slut his shirt and our secrets, red and raw and beautiful, weren’t secret anymore.
The Next Forever Page 6