Put Me Back Together

by Lola Rooney

  “Me, too,” he said, then pulled me right into his lap and wrapped both his arms around me, placing his chin on my shoulder so his cheek was right next to mine. “You’re the only one I’ve told.”

  “You didn’t tell your friends, your roommates, Oleg, Tim?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “At first I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. And then…I knew what they wanted of me. They want me to be the same old Lucas, always ready to party, easygoing and fun. The basketball star. The stud. They wouldn’t have understood.”

  “You never gave them the chance,” I said, trying my best to be delicate. “They might have surprised you. I bet they would have wanted to be there for you.”

  I frowned, realizing how hypocritical it was of me to preach openness when I’d been lying about my pain to the people closest to me for much longer than a couple of months. Try six years.

  “I’m not so sure,” Lucas replied, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “But that’s why I was so glad when I met you.”

  “What do you mean?” I said as I interwove my fingers with his.

  “You didn’t know me before,” he answered. “You don’t expect anything of me. I can be quiet with you, or even sad, and you don’t question it. You don’t need me to be the old Lucas. When I’m with you it’s like I can breathe again.”

  I pulled my hands away from his. “So that’s why you like me? Because I didn’t know you before this?” I said, his words stirring up something I didn’t like in my stomach. “Then I could be anyone, any girl you happened to stumble upon. It’s not really me that you want.”

  I shifted in his lap, trying to dislodge his arms, but he wouldn’t let me go. “You’re not just any girl,” Lucas said steadily, his lips warm against my ear. “You’re the girl who didn’t even know what sport I used to play, who never noticed me in class, who doesn’t care about the next big party. You’re the girl who almost got into a fight with three guys twice her size to save a cat, who punched Buck Mullard in the face, who got me through a panic attack and then handed me, a jock, a sketchbook and expected me to draw. You’re the girl who would never even think of chasing me, who doesn’t care what I look like.” I wasn’t so sure about that one. “You’re the girl who told me she just wanted to be friends. Do you know the last time a girl said something like that to me?”

  “A while?” I said timidly.

  He squeezed me tight. “Try never,” he said. “And as much as I loved it, I don’t want to be your friend, Hero. I want to be with you. Only you. The girl wearing glasses and sweatpants with wild hair flying everywhere and a cat inside her jacket. The girl I can’t stop myself from wanting to kiss and hold in my arms and do everything else with. The girl who makes me feel like I might get through this if she’s there next to me. That’s the girl I want.”

  Suddenly I was the one whose chest was heaving with unshed tears, whose heart felt like it might burst. I only had to turn my head slightly to find his lips waiting for me, those sweet, soft lips and that moan-inducing tongue. Before long we were lying back on the cement and neither of us felt much like crying anymore. Breaking our kiss before things got too out of hand—we were in the middle of a playground, after all—I lay my head on his shoulder and we both looked up at the cloudy sky.

  “So I’m the only one who knows?” I said.

  “Well, family, too,” Lucas said. “And there’s Jenny. She came to the funeral with her family. They’ve lived next door since I was six.”

  “I’m glad you have her,” I said, and it was the honest truth. “It must be comforting to have somebody from home so close by.”

  “She’d actually pretty pissed at me most of the time,” Lucas admitted. “I haven’t come back here to see Mom since the semester began. It’s just…too painful. But Jenny comes every few weeks and she checks in on my mom. She thinks I’m neglecting her. She keeps telling me how much she needs me now, how she’s all alone. She yells at me a lot.”

  The scene on the bench suddenly made a lot more sense and I wanted to kick myself for reading it so incorrectly. I’d thought they were having a lovers’ quarrel and really she’d been scolding him for not visiting his grieving mother.

  “You’ll go see her when you’re ready,” I said.

  “I will,” he said. “Soon. Just not today. Maybe I’ll call her tonight instead. I could tell her about you.”

  “Telling your mother about me?” I said teasingly, pinching his stomach. “That sounds pretty serious.”

  “Well, that’s how serious I am about you,” Lucas said, and there was no teasing in his voice at all. It made my heart ache. My heart was really getting a workout today.

  Lucas rolled onto his side and I adjusted my head so his arm cushioned it and we were lying face to face.

  “That’s why it’s so hard for me to see what I did last night and not want to jump into action. I care so much about you, Katie. If someone’s trying to hurt you—”

  “Nobody’s trying to hurt me,” I said quickly, the lie turning sour on my lips as I said it. He’d been so incredibly honest with me, so vulnerable. This was the moment when I had to decide if I was going to be just as honest back.

  “But you know who broke into your apartment. That’s why you didn’t want to call the cops,” Lucas said. His eyes were fastened on my face. I could tell he’d been holding in these questions all morning, though he’d been dying to ask them. I wished he would look away, just for a moment, so I could think straight, compose my thoughts.

  Compose my thoughts, I wondered, or compose my lies?

  “I-I think it’s…an old boyfriend,” I forced out.

  “Does he go to Queen’s?” Lucas asked.

  “No…” I said. “I’m not even sure if he’s the one who broke in. It might have been one of his friends. He’s been…contacting me lately. Texting me. He might be sort of…stalking me.”

  All at once Lucas sat up, pulling me up with him. His eyes were wide and serious, his expression tense. He pulled out his cell.

  “I’m calling the cops,” he said.

  “No, don’t,” I said, covering the screen with my hand before he could dial. “It’s not as bad as you think!”

  “Katie, you’re telling me an old boyfriend is stalking you, that he broke into your apartment, and you expect me just to do nothing? I’m not going to let this guy hurt you!”

  “But I’m not hurt,” I protested. “He hasn’t done anything to me except rip up a couple of my paintings. Please, if you call the cops it’ll do more damage to me than to him.” If the police got involved the whole story would come out, I knew it. And then everyone would know I was a liar, Lucas included. I pictured myself being led away in handcuffs. I pictured the look on my mother’s face, on Emily’s face.

  All of a sudden I couldn’t catch my breath. I pressed my palm to my chest as I struggled to get in some air. Lucas’s face was narrowing to a pinpoint.

  “Okay, we won’t call the cops,” Lucas said, dropping his phone in his lap as he put an arm around my shoulders. “Just breathe, Katie. It’s okay. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I pressed my cheek into Lucas’s chest as my heartbeat slowed and air came rushing into my lungs.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled into his shirt. “It’s just that everything that’s happened between Brandon and me…the story is long and complicated. I just—”

  “You don’t have to tell me everything,” Lucas said, smoothing a hand over my hair. “Just promise me if you’re ever in trouble you’ll come to me. If you see him anywhere, if you hear from him, if you just think you see him, or if you feel scared, I’m the guy you call, got it?”

  “Yeah,” I said weakly, trying to imagine what that would be like. If I really did as Lucas asked, I’d probably be on the phone with him twenty-four seven.

  We stayed a little while longer, snuggled in each other’s arms, watching the clouds rushing by as the wind picked up. Then Lucas helped me up off the ground and we started walking back to hi
s car. It had only been about an hour, but I felt like days had passed since our drive into Christie. This morning was a distant memory. My mind was full of everything I knew now, and everything he didn’t know, my brain working so hard to keep it all straight I was starting to get a headache.

  “So his name’s Brandon?” Lucas said as he unlocked the passenger’s side door for me.

  I nodded.

  “Will it freak you out if I say I wish I could find Brandon and pummel him in the face?” Lucas said. “I won’t, I promise. But I really, really want to.”

  I smiled weakly as we got into the car, but the truth was his words did freak me out. Now that Lucas was involved in my life, I worried that he’d also get involved in my past. I didn’t want to pull him into that mess. I didn’t want him to defend me. I didn’t want to make those same old mistakes again.

  Lucas had said he wanted to be with me, only me. I tried to cheer myself up with this thought as he drove us back to Kingston, but the lies I’d told him kept popping up in my mind, dampening my mood. Well, I hadn’t lied exactly. Every word I’d said to him was true. I just hadn’t told him the whole story.

  That’s right, Katie, said the familiar voice inside my head. That’s how you lie without lying. That’s how you make sure he never, ever knows the real you. Because when he does, he won’t want you anymore, you can count on that.

  “What does he think you lied to him about?” Lucas asked as we approached campus. “I saw what he wrote on your wall.”

  Keep lying, girl, the voice said.

  “Just something that happened a long time ago,” I said.

  Once upon a time I’d thought of the truth was my enemy. I’d lied without question, without even thinking about it, the lies ready and waiting on my tongue, prepared ahead of time for easy use. Now, as I butchered the truth to suit my purposes, I found that lies, even lies of omission, were starting to take their toll.

  I’d didn’t want to lie to Lucas ever again.

  I just wasn’t sure I was ready to face the truth.

  17

  “So are you guys doing it or what?” Mariella said.

  “Shut up!” I hissed at her, raising a spatula threateningly and shooting a glance down the hall at the closed bathroom door. I could hear the shower running, so I was pretty sure Lucas hadn’t heard her. “We just fell asleep on the couch watching movies, that’s all.”

  “Seems like you’ve been watching a lot of movies lately,” Mariella said, her implication plain. She snatched a piece of bacon out of the pan as I moved them onto a plate.

  “We’ve just been hanging out,” I said, “and making out.” I gave my friend a sly grin and she bumped her hip with mine, smiling broadly.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” she said. “I told you he’d come around.”

  Lucas had actually been coming around a lot lately. Since the day we’d gone out to Christie we’d spent at least part of every day together. The thing he’d said about my calling him whenever I felt like I was in danger seemed pretty amusing now, since he was almost always with me.

  As the school year wound to a close we’d gone to our separate classes each day and then almost always met up for lunch before art class. Now that exams were on, we often studied together at my place or at the library or worked on our final portfolios in the studio. I’d even hung out at The Limo with him during his shift, sitting behind the bar on a little stool, listening with delight as Brit imitated the irritating customers and watching the overdressed girls drool over Lucas—which might have bothered me if he hadn’t made a point of kissing me dramatically whenever he got tired of them. That didn’t bother me one bit. We’d definitely been doing a lot of kissing and touching—maybe it was more like groping—but we hadn’t advanced any further than that. I wasn’t really sure why, because I certainly wasn’t the one hitting the brakes. I kept wanting to ask him why he was hesitating, but at the same time I didn’t want to spoil a good thing. Just making out with Lucas was still plenty exciting.

  “And now you’re making him breakfast like the perfect little girlfriend,” Mariella went on, pressing her hand to her chest. “I think I smell love in the air.”

  I swatted her hand with the spatula as she tried to steal another piece of bacon. “Nobody’s said anything about love,” I chastised her. “And don’t you have a child to parent or something?”

  Mariella leaned toward the open door as I grabbed the eggs out of the fridge and cracked them over the pan. “Are you alive, child of mine?” she called into the hallway where Ethan was playing with his toy cars.

  “Still alive!” Ethan called back, and I heard one of his cars hit the wall beside my door.

  “Great parenting technique,” I said as the eggs sizzled. “I guess what I was really trying to say is stop prying into my personal life.”

  Mariella smiled broadly at my irritation. “I guess what I’m really trying to say is when are you guys going to start screwing like bunnies, ‘cause I know you’re dying to.”

  Before the words were even out of her mouth, I heard the bathroom door swing open and Lucas’s footsteps on the floor. My eyes flew wide open and Mariella pressed a hand to her mouth as Lucas stepped into the kitchen wearing nothing but a towel—one of mine. It had yellow daisies all over it. “Did I hear something about bunnies?” Lucas asked with mock curiosity, his dimples showing.

  Openly staring at Lucas’s smooth and muscular bare chest, Mariella dropped her hand to display her mouth hanging wide open.

  “Mariella was just leaving,” I said to my friend, shooting daggers at her with my eyes.

  “Right, right,” she said, finally pulling her gaze away as Lucas retreated down the hall, chuckling. “Gotta get the offspring to school, a mother’s time is never her own and all that…”

  As soon as she heard my bedroom door close, she leaned in toward me and whispered, “Oh my God. Have sex with that as soon and as often as you can, girl. I mean, do it right here on the kitchen counter if you have to!”

  As I rolled my eyes, unable to stop myself from smiling, Lucas piped up from my room, almost as though he’d heard every word, “Goodbye, Mariella!”

  “Bye!” she called with the widest grin imaginable, and scampered out the door.

  Still shaking my head, I turned back to the eggs, which were burned into a solid yellow and brown mass. I could hardly focus enough to turn down the burner. Just imagining Lucas changing in the next room was making me dizzy. The image of his bare chest, which I’d never seen before—at least not all of it—kept floating into my mind as I tried cracking a new egg into the pan. It ended up on the floor.

  “I’m pretty sure the five second rule doesn’t apply here,” Lucas said into my ear as he put his arms around me from behind. “But I promise to eat the egg off the floor if we can keep on discussing that bunny thing Mariella was talking about.”

  “I have no idea what you’re referring to,” I said smoothly, turning around so I was facing him. He’d put on a t-shirt, which was slightly disappointing, but he was still wearing the towel. “And for your information, the egg on the floor was always going to be yours. I don’t believe in waste.”

  “Really? Because it seems like we’re wasting tons of space right here,” Lucas said, grabbing me by the waist and pressing my body to his, our hips aligning almost automatically now. Immediately I felt him pressing against my leg, through his towel and my apron. He reached up and plucked my glasses from my face, putting them down on the counter. I closed my eyes and let a long breath escape from my mouth as he nuzzled my neck with his lips. Then our mouths connected and I felt his hands behind my back undoing the knot of my apron. The burner clicked off.

  “I see your multitasking skills are improving,” I said breathlessly between kisses.

  “I’ve been practicing,” he replied with a proud smile.

  Picking me up by the waist, Lucas slid me onto the kitchen counter and then moved forward, pushing his hands into my hair as he continued to kiss me. Mariel
la’s earlier comment about the kitchen counter came to mind as I dropped the spatula and cupped his face with my hands. His groin was now pressing between my legs and my thin pajama bottoms offered almost no barrier. I gasped as I felt his fingers running up my back, under my tank top, though I wished he would move them around to the front. He’d still never touched my bare breasts and I was dying for him to. The feelings building up in the burning hot center of me were beginning to drive me wild and I made a noise, a combination of a groan and a growl, as I wrapped my legs around his hips.

  “Katie…” Lucas said. I could feel him stilling his hands, pulling back. He was putting on the brakes again. “I don’t want to do anything that reminds you of… I don’t know why you’re so afraid of him, but you said he was violent. Did he ever try to—”

  “He didn’t force himself on me,” I answered quickly.

  “Oh, good,” he said, heaving a sigh of relief. “I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to do anything that would make you think of him or make you feel—”

  “You don’t remind me of Brandon,” I said, interrupting him. And as I said the words I knew they were true. Maybe I had thought of Brandon the first time we kissed, but that was far behind me now. This was undiscovered territory, and being here with Lucas was the best thing I could imagine. “Besides, he never hurt me, not in the way you’re thinking. What he did…it has nothing to do with what’s happening right now. So can we stop talking about him, please? I’d much rather get back to this.” I tightened my legs around him.

  “Forget breakfast,” Lucas mumbled, pulling me to the ground. Our lips hardly losing contact, we stumbled down the hall toward my bedroom. I walked through the door first and in that moment made the sudden decision to let Lucas know exactly how much I meant what I’d said. I pulled off my tank top and dropped it on the floor, then turned to face him.

  His eyes dropped from my face to my chest and then he walked into the bed and fell onto it face first.

  I let out an open-mouthed laugh and climbed onto the bed as he turned onto his side, looking foolish. “Is it my imagination, or is Lucas Matthews blushing?” I said teasingly as he pulled me toward him. Just the feeling of his hands against my bare skin, the most skin I’d ever shown him, was enough to shut me up.