by M. K. Hale
“So you weren’t calculating and diagnosing me while you stroked my cock?”
She flinched again. “Don’t be so crude.”
“If you had stayed with Ryan, would the paper be about him?” Why did that thought fill me with even more anger? Why was I jealous at the prospect of her breaking anyone’s heart but mine?
She placed her hands on my chest again, attempting to comfort me. “It would have always been about you.”
I groaned in agonizing frustration and backed away from her, to the other corner of the room. I needed space.
“How could you do this?” My voice cracked on the words as my heart cracked on the feelings.
“I had always planned to write about you and then we… I felt guilty—”
A bitter laugh shook my chest. “Well, that’s something at least.”
“It was too late to write about anyone else. Nate, it’s my final paper. It counts for most of my grade. I chose you because you’re the person I know best. I see myself in you.”
“This is the last time I put my trust in someone.”
“No.” Allie’s eyes widened, and she closed the distance between us again. “Don’t say that.”
“I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
“No.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. My skin was ice. I had never been so numb. “Nate, I love you. I was going to tell you—”
“When?”
She looked down, and I read her like one of my history books.
I said, “You never would have told me because you knew what this would mean.”
She clung to me, crying onto my arm. “I’m sorry.”
I peeled her off of my body. “Goodbye, Allie.”
“This can’t be goodbye. Nate, it can’t be.”
“You wanted to fix me? Congratulations. You fucking broke me.”
“You don’t look good,” Joey, my only friend who was not a real friend, commented while I attacked my pasta with an aggressive fork.
Joey was another RA in my dorm, and we ate together at the dining hall on occasion, but once I had been with Allie, I had spent all my time with her instead. Ryan used to join us for lunch, but now it was down to Joey. He was the only one I had left, and I barely had him.
I felt alone.
Still, him agreeing to meet me for dinner to distract me from my thoughts about her was extremely welcome. “Tell me something I don’t know,” I bit out.
“The capital of Ghana is Accra.”
“I already knew that,” I told him, and he grinned at me.
“And that’s why you’re a freak.”
“I’m sure Allie would agree with you.”
My mood had been horrible for two days, ever since I had broken up with Allie. She had tried knocking on and opening my door, but I had locked it. She tried talking to me through the wall we shared, but I blared music for the first time in my life just to drown her out.
I could not forgive her. She had taken my family’s secrets, my secrets, and used them for a grade. Diagnosing me like I was mentally ill. Like I was less stable than her, the girl who put herself in danger just to feel something. The nerve.
Joey frowned and let out a deep sigh. “Man, you need to get over this.”
“Excuse me?”
How did he not understand? He sided with her? Her over me? After what she had done?
“Maybe it started as a paper, but then it became more. It’s not like she didn’t tell you all of her secrets in return.”
“She used my personal life to analyze for a class.”
“It’s not her fault your personal life is so interesting.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Joey’s tone lost all of his amusement. “Ever since you two broke up, you have been pissed like nothing I have ever seen before. I thought you were tied up tight before, but damn, Nate, now you’re even worse.”
I hid my hurt at his words, keeping my expression blank as I was used to doing. Why did everyone have to judge me so harshly? I worked hard to fit in with everyone’s humor and expectations. Allie had been the one I did not have to work for. Damn it.
“When you’re with her, you’re better. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”
“I can’t trust her again.”
“Trust is earned—”
“And she broke it.” I slammed my hand against the table, which shook under us from the assault.
“You know what they say, love mends all wounds—”
“But she didn’t love me.” I was grateful to him for trying, but he was wrong. “She never loved me.”
“How do you know that?” Now Joey sounded as agitated as I felt.
“Because I know her better than I know myself.”
Going to the gym had been a great idea. Pumping iron to the point of pain, meant no ability to think about Allie, to worry about how she was doing, to remember how good it felt to be with her. Going to the gym had been a great idea. Too bad she was there in her hot pink sports bra and spandex shorts. I almost passed out from looking at her. Knowing what was under those clothes somehow tortured me more. I wanted to rip them off her, flick my tongue—
Fuck.
She was killing me. Staying away from her was hard enough, but now she had to be right in front of me in barely anything, sweating, with her hair up in a ponytail I instinctively wanted to pull.
Again, I repeat, fuck.
She stared at me, so I went to the other side of the gym where her treadmill had no view of me. I lifted weights on a machine when Ryan appeared right in front of me.
“Trouble in paradise?” he asked.
“I don’t have time for this,” I grunted, continuing to stress my muscles with the weights. I came here to not think about Allie, not see Allie, and especially to not talk about Allie. I regretted how my friendship with Ryan had ended after I began dating her, but she had been worth it. At the time she had been worth it, worth everything. Had she even cared about all the things I had given up for her?
“I expected you two to work out together like those sickening couples, but instead it’s like you’re putting as much distance between yourselves as possible.” Ryan tilted his head and smiled. He was such a jerk. “Did you throw her away just like the girls before her?”
I stayed silent, ignoring him as much as I could. Just lift up and set back down. Up, Down.
“You stole her, used her, and now it’s all over? She no longer fits what you want? I have to say, I never imagined Allie as a submissive—”
“Shut up.”
He did not take my advice to stop questioning me. “Was it just a game to you?”
“It wasn’t a game to me.”
She had been the one to play me, using me for information. She had probably planned to throw me away once she submitted the paper. Would she have ever even said she loved me if I had not found the paper and confronted her?
“Well—”
“Why are you pestering me, Ryan?” I snapped and set down the weights, moving threateningly closer to him. Sleep evaded me, my hair was fussed, and I knew I appeared a bit wild. The fear in Ryan’s eyes was warranted. “Do you still want her? Is that why?”
“I—”
“You can have her.” The words burned out of me with the sour taste of regret.
If he ever laid a hand on her, I would break all twenty-seven bones in it.
Days went by in a haze without Allie. It was not until I walked down the hall to my room, when I saw her in nothing but a damp towel, that I realized a week had passed since our breakup. Her wet hair dripped after coming back from her shower and the way the small towel draped over her, cinching and accentuating every curve.
“Fuck,” I said and wished I could have shoved the sound back into my mouth. Her head snapped up, and her expression became one of horror. Apparently, cornering me in the hallway wearing a towel like a seductive temptress had not been her plan. “What are you doing?”
“Um.” She refused to make eye contact with me. “
Marissa must have come in while I was in the shower and left. She locked me out.” She stood right in front of her door, staring at it as if her mind had the power to open it. I almost felt bad for making her look so miserable. Wait, she should feel guilty. It was her fault. I had loved her, trusted her.
“I have a master key.” I unlocked the door to my room to go and get it for her. Now I knew why being an RA and dating one of the residents was a terrible idea. Not only did it break the rules, but it was awkward as hell when the relationship ended.
“Here,” I said, unlocking her door for her.
“Nate—”
“Allie.” That was all I could say.
“I’m sorry.” The heart-wrenching tone of her voice made me second-guess my claim of it always having been about the paper.
What if Joey had been right, and she had grown to care about me? What if it was all real? What if I was throwing away the chance of a lifetime?
But it could not have been real. She would not have written those things about me if she had loved me the way I loved her.
I was stone. “Me too.”
“Can’t we just go back to the way things were? Before.” She asked, “Can’t we just pretend this didn’t—”
“That’s not how it works.”
“I miss you,” she said. The pained expression on her face and the fact that she was still clad in her towel made me want to wrap my arms around her and never let her go.
“You can’t just have everything you want.” I stuck to classic, dry sarcasm, hoping to sting her as much as she stung me. “Welcome to real life. May I take your order?”
“Yeah.” She met my eyes with the same confident look I knew so well. “I’d like to return your sarcasm. It’s too dry for my tastes.”
“I’m not going to get over this.”
“I think you will.”
I raised my eyebrows. Oh, so now getting back together was a new challenge? Our relationship before was based on a charade, and now she planned to start new as a dare?
“I was passionate about you, Allie.”
She appeared surprised by my admittance. “I-I was too.”
“But passion is being excited about something. Tenacity is the ability to stick with it.” I moved swiftly to her, giving her no time to react. My lips pressed against hers, not as a kiss, but to mumble against them, “We’re done.”
I heard her as I walked back to my room.
“We haven’t even started.”
Chapter 30
Allie:
* * *
The semester was coming to an end, and Nate still refused to give me the time of day. I had sworn to myself I would win him back and prove my loyalty again, but it was hard to accomplish when he hid from me.
Finals week commenced, and I had not told Nate about my submitting the paper. I had also not told him I threw away the one I worked on all semester writing about him and had spent three sleepless nights rewriting one about a random girl I had met in my film class instead.
Revealing Nate’s secrets and analyzing him—like a product of experiences instead of a person—was unforgivable. While writing it, I knew it would crush him if he found out. Of course, he not only found out but read it and broke up with me. I did not blame him. It had broken his trust and his heart.
He thought our entire relationship had been an act. It had not been.
Breakups were a lot like war. Deserters got out unscathed, and fighters could lose limbs or lives. It felt like I had lost a part of myself. Like my arm was gone, but I could still feel it. I would try to reach with it, only to realize it was no longer attached to me. Nate was a ghost to me. I missed him like what I imagined homesickness to be like if I had ever liked my home enough to miss it. Thinking about him hating me made me nauseous.
I had been fine without a guy before, but now I was weak from the withdrawal of him. Real love was a drug I had not known was addictive until I tried it. I hated being dependent on anyone, but Nate had become everything I wanted. I loved him.
Even if my plan failed and he never took me back, I would have no regrets over the time we shared because love, even the painful or destructive kind, should not be regretted.
Everything that happened to me with Logan and my parents and my town messed me up. But if I had never been burned, I would have never risen from ashes. I would not have been strong enough or complicated enough to fit with and understand Nate as well as I did. That did not mean I was glad over my harsh past and that if time machines were real I would not splurge on one and buy a steel baseball bat to rival Logan’s wooden one.
No one deserved what had happened to me, but Nate made it better.
“Girl, stop,” Gavin said, pausing his video game and nudging me on his beanbag chair in his room.
I had been hanging out with Gavin constantly since Nate had created a massive hole in my heart. I was used to talking to Nate, eating with Nate, sleeping with Nate. Now everything felt lonely. Gavin helped me be less depressed. I needed to be less depressed to scoop Nate back up. I needed to be classic Allie: confident, fun, and colorful.
“Stop what?”
“Turn that frown upside down,” Gavin instructed me.
“You should really be studying right now instead of playing video games. Don’t you have a final tomorrow?” Now I sounded like Nate.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you are my mother,” Gavin said. I threw a piece of popcorn at him, and he caught it and ate it. “But you’re right,” he added. “We should be doing something else. We should go to a party.”
“Are you serious?” I questioned him. He hated going out. He had once said, “Why would anyone go outside if they did not absolutely have to?”
“Aw, come on. We need to celebrate the end of the semester and get your mind off the end of something else.”
“Nate and I are not over. I’ll get him back.” Losing him was not an option. Not after everything we had been through.
“I have full and utter confidence in you.” Gavin tapped my head with affection. “But we should still go to a party together. I won’t see you again until the start of next semester. This can be our big friendship boom before we don’t see each other for two months.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Friendship boom?” Gavin was the only thing in my life capable of making me smile without Nate around.
“It’s a real thing.”
I laughed for the first time since losing Nate. “I guess I could go to a party.”
I missed getting dressed up. Drinking my problems away sounded bad, but it was just one night. I deserved a little fun. Every day since the breakup, I had studied until my head hurt: “pulling a Nate,” as I called it.
I had become dedicated to an academic schedule of homework, studying, and sleeping enough hours to not be a walking zombie. Of course, I still felt like a walking zombie, due to my inability to sleep well without Nate next to me in addition to my emotional turmoil of being without him. Still, my new habits had helped my grades go up by at least three percentage points in all of my classes. Maybe Nate had it right. Maybe I had needed to work harder.
“It’ll be fun.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“This is the worst,” I mumbled like a grouch, reminding myself of Nate. My sexy grump. No, not mine. Not anymore. But soon.
Drunk college students screaming at the top of their lungs and dancing—correction, gyrating—to the pounding music packed the house. The temperature straddled the line between boiling and tropical rainforest, caused by the heaters and damp humidity from people’s beer-breath and sweat. Gross. It was gross.
“Oh, come on, it’s…” Gavin began, but when someone threw up next to him, he did not continue.
“Ryan has been glaring at me for an hour now.” I had spotted Ryan across the room from the moment I had stepped into the small, off-campus house. Even in the hot crowd, I felt his chilly reaction to seeing me.
“Maybe he’s not glaring,” Gavin sug
gested, shrugging.
I gave him a look of disbelief. “Then why are his eyes narrowed on me while his lips curl down into a scowl?”
“Maybe that’s his smolder. His sexy smolder look. You don’t know.” Gavin tried to comfort my guilt over how things went down with Ryan.
First Ryan, now Nate. Was there a reason behind my rough pattern with relationships? Was I the problem? Damn, maybe I was. I should have never said yes to go on a date with Ryan in the first place.
I should have never finished writing the paper on Nate once we had gotten together. Mistake after mistake. That was classic Allie. Who was I kidding with the confident, fun, and colorful demeanor I put on? I was a mess. And, without Nate, I was an even bigger mess than before.
I could not keep doing crazy, wild things just to feel alive. I could not keep pushing everything I had been through down, deep inside. I needed to grow up. Nate needed me to grow up. I would take responsibility for my actions.
“I’m going to talk to him,” I told Gavin and stepped forward.
His hand wrapped around my arm and pulled me back. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I need to apologize to Ryan about how things went down.”
“I mean, it’s messy, but, Allie, you do not need to apologize to him. He chose to date you. You chose to end it. It’s not your fault you felt less than he did. You went on like three dates max and kissed Nate once. You did not cheat on him; you are not a bad person; you are just a freshman trying to date. College is a tricky time.”
“You’re such a great friend.” I hugged him and smiled. “You’re like the brother I never had.”
“If I had been secretly in love with you this whole time, that would have stung, but I prefer blondes.”
“I’m still going over to talk to him. The animosity from his staring is making me jumpy.”
“Fine, but meet me back here ASAP before one of these blondes steal me away.”
I giggled as he mimed gazing through binoculars, looking for his next conquest.