by Rachel Shane
“Mackenzie.” Layla leaned forward, placing her palms on her thighs. “Lying will only make this worse for you. Harrison Wagner came to me last night and told me how Corey assaulted him. So please stick with the truth.”
My pulse spiked. Whatever Harrison had said, it obviously painted him in a golden light. I wiped my sweaty palms on my shirt. This wasn’t a hearing, not for my version of the truth anyway. This was a witch trial. “A police officer made us leave,” I finally said, spinning the tale the only way that might save some semblance of grace. “Told us to go to another hotel a mile away.” My voice grew more confident with each word. “We had no choice.”
My gut twisted. From the vague details I could recall about last night, only one thing was startlingly clear: I was the one who had given Corey no choice. An unspoken ultimatum. When he’d seen me drenched in snow, teeth chattering, fingers turning blue, he’d renounced all semblance of safety to keep me warm. He’d weighed the options and deemed frostbite a greater threat than a one mile drive in icy conditions. Whether it was black ice or leftover alcohol in his system didn’t matter, all that mattered was that it was a terrible idea. My terrible idea.
“Why didn’t you call me? I would’ve talked to the officers and straightened things out. You guys were in no shape to drive.”
“No time. They forced us right out and I wasn’t about to argue with a police officer.” That seemed like it might be true. It probably was.
“Yes, but I signed a contract with the Greek Organization. Therefore it was my responsibility to make sure everyone stayed safe. My ass is on the line now.”
I stifled a snort. Now this guilty until proven even guiltier trial made sense.
“Our house is in danger of being shut down if they find out about this,” Layla continued, “If you weren’t going to call me, fine, but you should have at least been smart enough to call a taxi to take you ‘one mile.’” She mimicked the quotes with her hands in an attempt to mock me. “Though that clearly wasn’t possible considering you were drunk. Which, I need to remind you, was against the rules.”
I swallowed hard. What did she want me to do? Admit it? Apologize? Beg? I went for the trifecta. “I know. I’m sorry. We weren’t thinking clearly. I realize it was dumb now, especially after the accident, but—”
Her mouth gaped. “What accident?”
Air whooshed from my lungs. Oh crap, she didn’t know about the accident? She tapped her pen against her notebook, waiting. I sighed and spilled the minimal details. Black ice. Car in ditch. Corey passing Breathalyzer.
She slapped her hands on her notebook, making me jump. “Oh my God. I thought he was arrested for the fight, not a DUI! We’re going to lose our house! I don’t believe this. You’re so irresponsible. You could have died!”
Her words sent a cold, crackling sensation racing up my spine. I could have died.
“If you died, the sorority would be shut down for sure.”
My eyes widened, then rolled. “I see you have your priorities in order.”
Her face hardened. “Here’s the deal. We have no choice but to kick you out.”
The words should have stung but instead they became my ammo. I straightened, remembering Corey’s words from earlier. “If you kick me out, I’ll talk to the school paper about what happened. Everything that happened. I’m sure they’ll be very interested to hear about your friend Molly.”
Layla sucked in a breath. One of the other girls tapped her on the shoulder and whispered in her ear. She continued glaring at me. I held her stare, a dumb game of chicken. “Fine,” she finally said, scribbling something on her paper, a clear attempt to drag this out. “We’re putting you on probation for the rest of this semester and next semester as well.”
“Probation?”
“You’ll attend chapter meetings, of course, but you can’t go to any of the social events or mixers.”
I clung to the loophole in her punishment: she couldn’t ban me from Quigley’s.
“You’re on thin ice. One more wrong move and”—she drew her finger across her neck—”You better pray this doesn’t get into the paper.”
As soon as I left the room, I leaned against the door jamb and let out a breath. I wasn’t getting kicked out.
The realization that I could have died the previous night hadn’t occurred to me until Layla had pointed it out. After a soothing hot shower, I retreated straight to Corey’s room. Apologies bottled in my throat and I needed him to hear how sorry I was for what I put us—him—through. “I’m sorry,” I whispered when I stepped into his room, afraid if I didn’t blurt the confession right away, the guilt would eat me alive.
He held out his arms for me. “You have nothing to apologize for.” A shaky breath rattled from his lungs.
I curled myself around him. “It was my idea to drive. I—”
“I could have said no. Should have.” His head flopped back on the pillow with a kind of heaviness that could only signal an end to the conversation. A stalemate. On this one point, we would never agree.
“But I’m going to make it up to you,” he promised. And though I didn’t say it out loud, I recited the same promise back to him in my mind.
We lay in his bed for a while, holding each other. The mood was shadowy and dark like a thunderstorm pounding against the window. The thump thump of a bass from whatever song the brothers were blasting on the first floor matched my beating heart. Every so often, a load cackle of “Woahs!” rose up through the door crack. I always pictured Corey’s room happy and busy, with people constantly walking in and out, a party at all times. I pictured it bright and saturated with light. But that night, the room seemed murky and dull, covered in a yellow hue, urine in color, washing over the area as if it were the Mexican desert.
We fell into each other like old times, like new times. This was one way I could repay my debt. I reached my steady hands under his shirt, scrunching it up and pulling it over his head. His lips found mine, a kiss with such power, it nearly sucked the life out of me. His fingers fumbled to get my clothes off, and my heart raced marathons. It seemed like we were in a rush, like we couldn’t wait even one more second. “The candles are still in my car,” he whispered, hot breath on my ear.
I didn’t need candles or gimmicks. I didn’t even need crazy positions. All I needed was already in my arms.
He must have felt the same way because the entire time we stayed in the most boring position of all but it was absolutely perfect. We kept eye contact the entire time instead of squeezing our lids shut to enhance the pleasure. He used the slow, deep trusts I liked the best.
“God, I missed this.” He pulled my body close to him; his wet mouth nestled neatly into the crook of my neck. His body shuddered and I knew it wasn’t from the cold air creeping in through the cracked window.
Tears streamed down his face and clumped into a puddle on my clavicle. I had a flash of Harrison accusing him of crying, hurling it at me like a weapon.
“You know, Mac, when I was in the police station, all I could think was: ‘thank God she’s okay.’ I couldn’t live with myself if you weren’t. My own life didn’t flash before my eyes, yours did.”
Guilt stabbed my heart, digging a long spike into my arteries. But then Corey wrapped me tighter and dissolved the guilt with a stronger emotion. Warmth bubbled in my chest and spread down my arms and legs until I tightened my entire body around him. “I’m glad we’re both okay.”
“I’m sorry, for you know, all that shit I put you through before. I want to be with you.” He kissed me deeply. “I want to deserve you. I’m going to change.”
There were no more obstacles. Nothing to hold either of us back. Corey had finally committed to me.
But I was starting to realize that maybe he wasn’t the one that needed to change. I was.
HE KEPT TRUE TO his word. I tried to do the same.
I awoke before Corey and turned onto my side to study him like I would a subject I was about to paint. The rectangular shape of his eye
s and his puffy lower lids that folded over like he’d tucked his eyes into a blanket. His pouty parched lips, the ridges in them as pronounced as the deepest canyon. The height of his chest rising as oxygen swam through his veins. The precarious pause between breaths, an interval where he had everything he needed to sustain him. Every pore dotting his skin and the blotchy patches of redness that always appeared in the morning or when he was drunk. I charted these patches in my mind as if I were sketching I canvas, tracing the exact curvature of his nose, the tip tilting upward to mimic the silhouette of a cat’s paw.
My feet landed with a soft patter onto the hardwood floor, and I eased open his desk drawer until I pulled out a college-ruled notebook. He didn’t have any pencils so I carried a pen over to the bed, propped the notebook on my bent knees, and drew him. Artists only ever showcased their finished pieces, but it was the process I liked best, when a blank canvas transformed over the course of pencil marks and brush strokes. A glimpse at a work in progress always had so much potential. Corey was a work in progress.
I was still only a sketch.
As I settled the notebook onto his nightstand, Corey popped one eye open, his mouth curving into a smile. “Hey, you.” He pulled me back to him, his body warming me with sauna-heat. His fingers trailed along my arms, dropping tingles along the way, then slid along my stomach. He paused there, scrunching up the fabric. “Did you sleep in your clothes?”
“You stole the covers in the middle of the night. I got cold.”
“You should bring over pajamas. Leave them here.”
My chest swelled, filled to the brim. A change, the first step. I’d overheard girls at the sorority defining their relationship’s seriousness on a scale of zero to The Guy Let You Leave Items At His Place. Fallon occupied an entire drawer at her boyfriend’s off-campus room.
“And a toothbrush?” I asked.
“Hmmm.” Corey pressed his index finger to his lower lip. “That might be bad idea.”
I raised a brow.
“Because then I’d never stop kissing you.”
I slept over every night for the next week. We didn’t go out to Quigley’s. We certainly didn’t go to any sorority events. In his room, we could be alone. We could be ourselves; and for me, it was important to define who that person was.
Well, except for Nate, who refused to be sexiled. Sure, he’d give us an hour sometimes but then he’d stomp into the room and slam drawers until we pulled apart and stayed that way until morning.
On Thursday, his fraternity was having a large Afterhours party that started at two A.M. We’d tried to skip it all together but Corey’s house chore for the week was set-up. I had to finish my animation final by the morning so I killed time in the graphics lab until the party started. Afterhours was held in the basement but when I arrived, I headed for the second floor. A brother guarded the stairway.
“You can’t go up there.” He crossed his arms.
I squinted at him, trying to place his name, but I didn’t recognize him. I’d only met a few of Corey’s seventy-five frat brothers. “Have to drop something off in Corey Taft’s room.” I dangled my purse in his face as evidence.
His face softened. “Oh, are you Corey’s girlfriend? He told me he has a girlfriend now.”
My breath caught. The word girlfriend hugged me like a caress. He’d mentioned me to brothers I didn’t even know! I nodded and stomped up the stairs. Inside the room, I pulled a bottle of lotion out of my purse and some concealer, then added them to the half drawer Corey had cleared for me. I now had a stash of all the essentials: toiletries, spare shirt, and even a tampon in case of emergency.
At Afterhours, Corey swept me in a dance and paraded me around to all his brothers. Bodies—mostly girls—packed the finished basement whose only decoration consisted of beer stains on the wooden floor and paint splattered walls that must have lost a competition to some pledge hazing ritual. The dark lighting hid the rest. Hard rap music pounded in my ears.
Bianca pulled me away and thrust a beer into my hands. “You are not going to believe what Nate told me tonight.” The tone of her voice and straight face didn’t indicate whether this was good news or bad news. She made everything seem like a juicy tidbit of gossip.
I chose to interpret this as good news. “That he loooooves you?” I raised my brows a few times in succession.
Her smile wavered. “Oh, not that. Still haven’t told him how I feel yet.”
We swayed in a dance, grinding too close and earning cheers from some of the brothers. “I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”
“I want to be sure he’s going to say yes.”
“You two hang out every single day. He’s going to say yes.”
“Stop making this about me, this is about you!” she said. One of the frat brothers approached her but she held up an uninterested hand to him and he shuffled away.
I pursed my lips. “About me?” Oh God. It was bad news. Probably something about how often I slept over.
She nodded, a smile stretching on her face. “He said Corey told him, and I quote, ‘It was a rough time when I wasn’t with Mackenzie. I’ve never been happier than I am now.’”
Those words rung in my ears, spoken in Corey’s voice, as if he had said them directly to me. My entire body tingled. “He told Nate that?”
“Yes! That’s huge. He looooves you,” she teased in the same tone I’d teased her with.
And I loved hearing her say that. The important part was that he told this to Nate, his best guy friend. Guys didn’t say things of that caliber unless they meant it.
But he still hadn’t said it to me.
That night, we lay in his bed, his arms surrounding me. Night descended upon us like a thick winter shroud. He whispered something in my ear, something that sounded like French. His accent was impeccable, or at least it seemed that way to me.
“What are you saying?”
“I said ‘you’re beautiful.’” He kissed the top of my head softly.
“I don’t believe you. You probably said, ‘I hope the chef makes tacos tomorrow.’”
He whispered something else, and this time I caught the word taco in the middle of the sentence.
I chuckled. “I know some French, too. Je suis de petits poisson.”
“You’re a little fish?”
“It’s the only phrase I know. My mom taught it to me when I learned how to swim.” Tears knocked at the back of my eyes. I hadn’t thought of that memory in a long time, the way she stood there in her one-piece bathing suit, cheering me on like I was going for the Olympic gold. My throat tightened.
“Vous êtes mes petits poisson.”
“Now, what does that mean?” My voice came out all hoarse.
“You’re my little fish.”
The tears spilled over, though this time not out of old memories. I was truly happy. “I know one more,” I said to distract myself.
“Oh yeah?”
I whispered the French lyrics of Lady Marmalade, the ones that translated to “Would you like to sleep with me tonight?”
He raised one eyebrow at me. “You know what that means right?”
“Yes. That’s why I said it.” But he didn’t try and obey the lyrics. For the first time ever, we didn’t sleep together.
We slept next to each other.
Ever since I made that collage for Fallon, she had been painting wacky self-portraits. A few photo copied Frida Kahlo paintings gave her inspiration, and for lack of a better subject, she settled on painting herself. Her pictures were quite beautiful with hyperrealistic brush strokes, and I really did think she had developed a nice theme. She’d even received more praise than I had in class.
But self-portraits didn’t translate into abstract sculpture. And she was about to fail her sculpture composition final. Mackenzie to the rescue.
I met her in the sculpture studio. Clay-streaked tarps covered every table. Gray stains littered the dull concrete floors while exposed brick walls gave the room a prison feel
. At least the painting studios had glossy white shellacked walls, blank canvases all around. And the graphics labs only had gorgeous Macs with their sleek silver consoles and their perfect names.
Fallon pointed at her project, a lump of clay sitting on the table. “It looks like a giant blob of clay.”
I pursed my lips, opting for the glass half full approach. “What’s it supposed to be?”
“Something beautiful.”
“Well, I know that. But what’s the assignment?”
She laughed so hard she snorted. “No, really. That’s the assignment.”
I cringed. Open ended assignments were the worst when you lacked inspiration.
“I think I took the assignment too literal. I tried to make a pun out of it. You know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” She twisted the oval shaped lump around where two circles had been carved into the center of the clay to resemble an iris and pupil. “Behold, an eye.” She clapped a clay covered hand on her forehead, leaving a streak behind.
“But it’s abstract sculpture class,” I said, my voice rising like a question.
She slumped into the nearest seat. “I’m going to fail. I’m going to get kicked out of the school for being an impostor.”
“Why don’t you try to sculpt an emotion?” An image of Corey, sad and depressed, holding onto me like a life raft as tears streamed down his cheek. “What would sadness look like? Or love?”
“I know what frustration looks like.” Fallon slammed her fist on to the clay sculpture. I jumped from the surprising violence of her actions. Curved strips of clay oozed from beneath her hand and arched upwards, creating the appearance of a lopsided ocean wave.
I tilted my head at the sculpture. “Actually, I think that looks pretty cool.”
She perked up. “Cool? Or beautiful?”
“Definitely beautiful. Do a few more of these to make it a series and you’ve got yourself one kick ass final project.”
The calendar flipped through days like a Vegas car dealer. Finals filled our afternoons and the final nights before winter break loomed over us. Corey and I spent every minute together until there were no minutes left and we stood outside my dorm waiting for the car service to take me to the airport.