by Nikky Kaye
I’d had crowds turn on me before. I’d felt the swift change of a collective mood, from hesitation to awe, or from blankness to hostility.
This… being the target of pointing and laughter in a high school gym… was a new experience. Well, not in my teenage nightmares, but in real life it was a new thing.
I frowned at Serena, whose face was as pale as the corsage I’d given her. Her hand was over her mouth. Her wide eyes zeroed in on the screen behind me.
Of course, I turned to look.
At first, I just blinked. Standing so close to the screen, it was like looking at a Pointillist painting or trying to make sense of an ultrasound picture. But the colors, sounds, and everything about that fucking video had been seared onto my brain ten years before, and blowing up a frame or blurring another wasn’t going to change that.
Yeah, that was my ass on display.
I felt like throwing up. The shock of the violation hit me in the solar plexus so hard I thought I’d bend over. My hands went to my collar to loosen the tie that was strangling me, only to remember that I hadn’t worn one that evening.
#micdrop
When I looked for Serena again, she was gone. The DJ had decided that this prank needed a soundtrack, so a rap song began blaring. There was still laughter, though. Still jeers, whistles, echoes in my head.
I darted to the side of the stage, toward the small stairway that would take me down to the gym floor. For one brief moment, I considered hiding there for…ever. My head spun with the centrifugal force of my emotions—rage, humiliation, regret, shame. Was Serena on the screen, too? I felt a sudden compulsion to look and see if she was, and a furious need to protect her.
I burst out the door, my gaze darting around. Where was she? I needed her!
I pushed aside anyone who dared to talk to me, weaving my way around a few people who had their phones up in front of their face to record my reaction. It’s possible that I punched a few of those phones out of the air, sending them skittering across the floor in between people’s feet.
“Hey!”
“Fuck off!” I snarled, still looking for Serena. I needed to get out of that goddamn school.
In the middle of the gym, by the center court lines drawn on the floor, I found her—with her head bent over the digital projector and her fingers flying over a keyboard.
What?
She didn’t even see me pull up next to her; she was so engrossed in the laptop connected to the projector. You know—the one showing my pale, scrawny teenaged ass on the stage screen like it was a fucking abstinence PSA assembly.
Her head jerked up. “I’m sooo sorry, Marcus!”
I slammed the laptop shut on her fingers.
“Ow!” Her hair bounced around her shoulders as she whipped around to look back at the screen.
The picture was still there.
“Oh god,” she whimpered. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
Scowling, I dropped to a squat to examine the projector. I’d used this kind before in lectures. Usually I wasn’t in charge of A/V at those things, but nonetheless I knew there were fragile parts I should be careful with, expensive components that could be damag—oh, fuck it!
I ripped the power cord out of the back so hard that the projector flew off the cart and crashed to the floor. Serena jumped back as the plug snaked out like a whip to lick at her ankles. Her high heels slipped on the polished floor, and she cried out as she went down.
Around us, some had gone back to dancing, but a lot of people still stood there, gawking at the frenetic floorshow that was Marcus Blake and Serena Rossi.
She looked up at me, shadows around her eyes from her mascara running. “Marcus, I’m so—”
“Why? Why do you keep apologizing?” I yelled.
Then I froze, all the blood draining from my head.
“Did you do this?” I stomped over to her, my hands fisted at my sides and my heels barely missing her fingers. “Did you have anything to do with this?”
“No! But I feel responsible—” She couldn’t finish, beginning to hyperventilate through her tears.
Sprawled on the floor, her dress had ridden up her thighs to an alarming point. As she drew her knees together and to the side in a ladylike fashion, her hands shook as she tried to pull down her skirt. Principal Lemmon pushed past me to help her up.
“Serena, the projector…” Lemmon scolded her as she wobbled like a baby giraffe. She reached for the laptop on the cart and opened it up again.
I just stood there, gaping at her in shock. I couldn’t believe this had happened to me again. It was sickening.
I ran.
“Today, we are discussing The Idiot.” Behind his basilisk stare, Viktor looked very pleased with himself as he looked around the table.
Silas chortled. I glared at him. He put his hand up. “Hey, don’t look at me. It was Viktor’s choice.”
Why had I decided to come today? Oh, right. It wasn’t an actual decision.
Since the moment I fled the reunion, I’d been in a state of perpetual motion. I checked out of the hotel, but fuck if I remember packing everything up. I drove back to the city, but I don’t recall letting myself into my apartment.
I was numb and detached. Serena was blowing up my phone with voice mails and texts, until I decided to just turn it off. For the first time in a very long time, I doubted everything.
The only reason I was sitting in the back room at Silas’s old restaurant Settlement, was because he’d dragged me there.
“My phone is off,” I pointed out earlier when I opened the door to stop his pounding.
“I know. I asked your doorman if you were back.”
“And he just told you?” I was going to have to have a talk with my doorman, clearly.
Silas grinned. “No, I bribed him. Then I bet him a thousand dollars I couldn’t get you to answer the door.”
“Of course you did. You really are a shitty gambler, Silas.”
He shrugged. Now we sat at the chef’s table with Viktor, about to discuss nineteenth-century Russian literature.
Or me.
The “idiot” reference could go either way.
Silas yanked the giant bottle of hot sauce from Viktor. It was our conch shell. If you held the hot sauce, that meant you were in the “hot seat” and nobody could interrupt you.
In theory.
“The Idiot. That’s awesome. But Viktor, you gotta lay off on the Dostoyevsky. It’s killing me. Hey, did Nathan and Luke have the heads’ up on this?”
It would explain why they hadn’t shown up. It was just the three of us, and I could pretty much guarantee that only the taciturn, bearded Russian had actually read the book.
Silas rolled the bottle between his palms. “Figures. So, Marcus, what happened with the girl?”
“Girl?” Viktor blinked. “What girl?”
“I don’t wan—” I broke off, my lips pressing together. Silas already knew the original story, and I had full faith in Viktor’s discretion. If Luke and Nathan had been at the table, it might have been different.
Silas shoved the hot sauce into my hands. I sighed. With my head down, I gave them the abridged version.
“Damn, she fucked you over again.”
“Nyet.”
I looked up at Viktor. “You have a different interpretation of this dramatic tale?”
His lips twitched under his beard. “It does not appear as though she had anything to do with this… incident. You pulled the trigger too soon.”
Rumor had it that Viktor was mafia. I couldn’t tell if his words were a literal suggestion, or just a turn of phrase.
Silas snorted. “You can’t trust women, Viktor.”
Trust was the crux of the problem. I leaned forward to rest my chin on top of the oversized bottle. It helped keep my jaw from dropping when I realized that it hurt so much because I’d trusted Serena.
Until I didn’t.
My kneejerk reaction had been to assume the worst. After a week of intimacy and re-establishing o
ur friendship, I’d yanked it all away without even talking to her about it. That made me the asshole.
The hot sauce fell over and rolled across the stainless steel table as I put my head in my hands and groaned.
“Fuuuuuuck.”
“Sorry,” said Viktor.
“What are you sorry for?” I asked him wearily. “That you told me the truth?”
“No. That you’re in love with her. My condolences.” He folded his hands and looked down, like he was proposing a moment of silence for my bachelor status.
My hands fell away, leaving my forehead to bonk on the table. We were all silent for a moment. Eventually I straightened, let loose a heavy sigh, and scrubbed my hands over my face.
“Do you think she’ll forgive me?”
“Beats me.”
Viktor shrugged. “You may need to grovel.”
“If you’re really motivated,” Silas added, “eating her out might help.”
Idiot.
Chapter Ten
Serena
At first I was worried. Now I was just plain mad.
And heartbroken.
Marcus had completely ghosted. He wasn’t at the hotel, wasn’t answering his phone. He hadn’t even been to see his mother. It hadn’t felt time stand still like this since I got the call about the car accident that took my parents’ life.
I really thought he’d forgiven me. Hadn’t he? We were moving on, weren’t we? The gnawing feeling in my stomach all week wasn’t hunger—it was fear. Fear that he wouldn’t come back, and I’d not only lose him but also my faith in humanity.
As a nurse, it really behooved me to have some faith in humanity.
Michelle could tell that something was wrong, but we weren’t close enough for me to share the whole story. So I did something really dumb.
I talked to Mrs. Blake about it.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said quietly. My nose itched with the threat of tears, which was not going to happen at work. “I can’t get him to talk to me.”
She squeezed the armrest of the wheelchair we’d just transferred her into. God, I needed to snap out of this. I was trying to trust that he would see the light at some point, but with every day of silence... I squatted down by the wheel to adjust her feet in the rests. Her slippers were falling off.
“Here you go, Cinderella.”
I stilled at the feel of her hand on my head. She patted me gently. My eyes closed. Sometimes missing my mother was like the ache of a phantom limb. After a deep breath, I rested my palms on my thighs and stood. Smiled at Mrs. Blake.
“Ready for the ball?”
I’d grabbed the award from where Marcus had abandoned it on the stage, and brought it to the home. We decided to have our own little ceremony on Sunday afternoon, and now it was show time.
The staff and mobile residents were crowded into the common room. Usually this kind of excitement was reserved for certain TV shows. In fact, some of the residents probably thought we were gathering for a season finale or something.
Michelle nodded at me as I wheeled Mrs. Blake in and put the brakes on her chair at the front of the room. “We ready?”
“Yep.” I turned to the expectant audience. Care workers leaned against the walls, and about a dozen residents sat in power chairs and wheelchairs. Only half of them were looking up.
“I’m not a professional speaker, Mrs. Blake. Not like—” My voice cracked a little, and I cleared my throat. “Not like your son. But we wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your lifetime teaching award.”
Most teachers wouldn’t receive such an award until they were twenty years older. It sucked that her “lifetime” of teaching had been cut short like this.
“You changed the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of young people. You made learning fun, and you made sense of the insensible. I think one of the things that stuck with me the most from your class was your advice never to judge—”
Marcus walked up behind me to stand on the other side of his mother’s chair. Oh my god. My heart raced. I turned my head to Michelle questioningly.
“Someone must’ve called him,” she explained in a low voice.
Oh, so he was answering the phone for the home—just not for me. I bit my lip and tried to remember where I’d left off. Changed lives, learning fun…
“Uh…”
“Judge a book by its cover,” Marcus finished for me. His voice was deeper than I remembered, huskier. He leaned down to make sure that she knew he was there. When she smiled at me—really smiled—so did I.
“Marcus. Here.” Her voice was clear and strong.
It was always a joy to see patients have a good day, but seeing Mrs. Blake’s awareness made something in my chest swell up.
“Hi, Mom. I’m sorry.” He lifted his gaze to me. “I should have been here.”
Was he talking to her or to me?
“You didn’t get to hear my awesome speech last weekend. It brought the house down. Sheer chaos, I’m telling you.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth before a horrified giggle slipped out. Some of it still seeped between my fingers. He raised a dark eyebrow at me.
“I’m sure someone recorded it,” he said wryly. “But the gist of it was that you taught me—and others, I’m sure—to trust. Students trusted you, and that was what made your class special. Well, to most kids, anyway. You’re my mom, so I’m genetically required to trust you.”
Michelle laughed. A couple of the residents looked around, startled by the sound.
“So yeah, that was most of it. Trust is a two-way street, a fluid dynamic, blah blah blah. Really, you had to be there.”
I cleared my throat. He met my gaze. “And don’t be a—” I glanced at the elderly audience. “—butthole,” I added.
His smile felt like it was physically stretching something in my throat. “Right. Don’t be a… butthole. I think that might be the title of my next book.”
We put the award in her lap, where she wrapped a frail hand around it. Michelle had handed out some paper party horns and noisemakers before Mrs. Blake and I had rolled in; and those who could toot and twirl did so now, with enough enthusiasm to make up for those who couldn’t.
There was a small cake, which most residents turned into crumbs. I alternated between sneaking peeks at Marcus as he talked quietly to his mother, and telling myself to ignore him. Easier said than done.
Especially once he grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the hallway.
“Wait!” I looked back at Michelle and she waggled her eyebrows and held up ten fingers.
He kept tugging, his fingers wrapped around my wrist. Part of me wanted to jerk my hand free, but a bigger part of me reveled in the feel of his touch again. He led me back to his mother’s empty room.
I stood there, feeling awkward, while he sat on the edge of the bed. The plastic-covered mattress made a crinkling noise under his weight.
“Serena, I’m so—”
“If you tell me you’re sorry, I’m going to punch you in the face.”
He held up his hands. “Then what am I supposed to say?”
“How about the truth?” I was thrilled to see him. I was angry. I was afraid.
I was waiting.
“The truth.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “The truth is that I’m a butthole. I should have stayed.”
I shook my head, my face hot. “You should have trusted me, Marcus. I thought we were past that.” He reached out for my hand. I let him take it but I remained at arm’s length.
“I know,” he said. “We were. We are?”
Are? My throat felt tight. “What do you want from me?”
Please say forever, please say forever!
He hesitated. “Patience.”
Well, patience was kind of like forever.
“And I want your heart, and your body and soul.”
Tears spilled hot on my cheeks. “Oh.” I sniffled. “Is that all?”
“I thought I was in love with
you in high school,” he said. “But I was an idiot.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “This is where the patience comes in, isn’t it?”
With another tug on my wrist, he pulled me to stand between his spread knees. “Like I said, I was an idiot.”
“And a butthole.”
“I’m just talking high school, here, Serena.” He rolled his eyes. “It was pointed out to me recently that maybe I hadn’t really grown up much since then.”
Certainly he held a grudge like a teenage girl—not that I could blame him. He mumbled something that sounded like “groveling” but I didn’t quite catch it.
“What?”
His hands went to my hips. “Serena Rossi, I’m in love with you. Now. Here.”
I looked around at the sterile room. “Here?” I squeaked, my heart skipping.
“Not here, here. But… shit, now I need to ask you to forgive me. I know we’ve been here before,” he said. “But a wise, beautiful, sexy woman once told me that forgiveness wasn’t for her; it was for me.”
“She sounds very… compassionate.”
He leaned forward to press his face into my stomach, and said in a muffled voice, “I sure as fuck hope so.”
“Marcus…” His hair was soft between my fingers, his breath hot through my scrub top.
His eyes were the color of smoke when he looked up at me. And a little pink around the edges. “I love you.” He flinched as one of my tears landed on the side of his nose, which he twitched like a rabbit.
“I love you too, you butthole.”
“Try that again.”
“Fine. I love you too,” I said, omitting the “butthole.”
Marcus nearly pushed me over as he rose and caught me up in his embrace. Hard. He kissed me, deep and long.
He pressed the breath out of me with his body, and took yet more from me with his silent promises. Over and over again he claimed my mouth, until I was wobbly and panting.
“Oh!” My bones were failing me, my muscles tightening and releasing just like my inhibitions. “I missed you this week.”
“I missed you this decade.”
I felt his hardness hot and tight against me, and he held me so close I could swear I felt his heart beating in syncopation. My hands went to his cheeks. “Do you promise to trust me?”