by Julia Kent
“No, no, Charlotte,” Maggie soothed, her arm around my shoulders.
“Except I can’t forget. Can’t forgive, can’t forget, can’t move on, can’t stop thinking and now he kissed me and he—GOD DAMN LIAM!” I screamed.
All those trips to the local ice cream stand on our bikes in the summer when we were in middle school. The countless swimming and track meets I went to, watching him compete. Band practices where I was by his side. Going on class trips and riding the buses to Washington, D.C., Toronto, and Disney World for band competitions.
Our first kiss. Roses sent to me at school on Valentine’s Day. Homecoming dances and proms and…all of it.
All of me thrown away with one phone call. How? How could he do that.
“And worst of all,” I said, “is that I’m sitting here on this bench wishing to God that he’ll walk down that sidewalk.” I looked toward the bar. “And come after me and tell me he’s sorry and he is so sorry and how am I and how much he wishes we could have our baby and—” The new set of tears took over the words and Maggie just held me.
Because really—what else could we do?
Ten minutes went by. A bus stopped and went, the driver a bit confused when we didn’t get up.
Twenty minutes. I could count time by the big digital clock on the bank across the street.
And, finally, Maggie stood slowly, pulling me to my feet. She reached her hand out, palm up, and I knew what she wanted. I handed her my keys. She wrapped her arm around me and we began the slow walk to the parking garage where I’d left my car.
Liam never did come for me.
Liam
“I can’t believe she just hit you!” Sam’s voice cut through the crowd as I rubbed my jaw. What the fuck just happened? Her taste was on my lips, scattered across the tip of my tongue, the bite of that smack ricocheting through me.
“Why did she hit you? Because you kissed her?” Darla held the blowup doll, who looked at me with incrimination, that permanent O face an abomination.
“Because she’s a bitch,” Sam answered for me. I flinched, free hand curling into a fist.
“Don’t call her that,” I growled. Trevor looked between me and Sam, on guard. He should be.
Tyler wandered over at a snail’s pace. “Where’s the green-haired chick? She was interesting,” he mumbled.
“Shut up, Frown,” I barked at him. He held his palms up in a “no offense” gesture. But it wasn’t working. I needed to beat the shit out of someone. Something. Anything.
“She is a bitch, Liam. After what she did to you. She has some fucking nerve…” Sam’s voice trailed off as Trevor shot him a deadly look and shook his head.
I dropped my hand from my face and stared at the main door. My heart smacked against my ribs like a series of jabs in a boxing match. Five years felt like five seconds. Like five centuries.
I was going out of my mind.
“There a problem here?” Mac, the manager, came over, trying to disperse the crowd. “That slap part of the act?” His words were a joke, but the look on his face was anything but.
“No, sir,” Sam said. “Just…some unfinished business.”
Mac was a bald dude with no neck and a bunch of gold chains buried in chest hair so thick it made him look half human, half bear.
“Good. Stirs up interest. You got about fifty chicks ready to fuck you after the show now, Liam.” He smacked my back twice and walked away.
I grunted. “Don’t want to fuck any of them.”
“Your dick broken? Because there’s some fine meat in there,” Mac said over his shoulder. Trevor flashed me a look and pulled Mac aside, whispering something that made Mac shut up.
“What was that about?” Darla asked again. “I know she was your girlfriend, but…”
“She cheated on him. Got knocked up by another guy our senior year, right before prom, and now she comes here and slaps him,” Sam explained.
“That about sums it up,” said Trevor, who was back now, a troubled look on his face.
“How do you know it wasn’t yours?” Darla asked before Trevor could stop her. The familiar napalm-filled firebomb ignited inside me.
Sam frowned. “Because…because…” His voice trailed off as he looked at me. “You always just said you knew. How’d you know? I figured it was because of timing, like you hadn’t slept with her during the dates needed to know it was yours, or something like that.”
I couldn’t stop once I opened my mouth. And right there, in front of a bar filled with customers about to watch Random Acts of Crazy do its thing, I shared the one thing I’d never told anyone else in the world. Ever.
“Because I’m sterile.”
Chapter Six
Charlotte
I stared at the order screen. My fingers shook as I pressed “order delivered” and closed out Liam’s entry. Mission accomplished. Delivery confirmed.
At least I delivered something of Liam’s from start to finish, even if it was just a sex toy order.
Maggie had been a rock that night, getting me home and just listening. Being shredded like that wasn’t new. It was, in fact, a very old feeling.
Having the scar ripped open and my insides turned out for the world to see was new, though.
Liam kissed me. Kissed me! The memory of his lips against mine, the lust and grief and anger and want that I felt pulsing from him mixed with the completely insane reality of his actions five years ago and his silence.
My therapists asked why I never tried to call him. Why I didn’t tell him about the miscarriage. Why…why I did or didn’t do something.
Years later I realized that important detail. I talked solely about what Liam didn’t do. He didn’t call. Didn’t check up. For all he knew I had a child—a child!—of his, a grandchild to Sybil and Garrett, and he didn’t bother with so much as a text.
And yet those questions…why didn’t I reach out to him?
Five years of being asked that question still didn’t make it any easier to try to explain. The coldness in his voice, the way he had no reaction to my fear, my tears, my sheer horror at being a freshman in college and pregnant—pregnant!—while on the pill. I’d been a good girl, taking those pills faithfully. I never strayed, even took the damn things within the same hour every day, like clockwork, and when I got pregnant I’d been on them for two years.
I knew being pregnant wasn’t anyone’s fault. We’d had enough sex ed drummed into us in middle and high school to know that all forms of birth control (except abstinence!) had some kind of failure rate.
No one ever believes they’ll be in that one percent. I certainly didn’t. We didn’t use condoms because we were each other’s firsts.
Liam was still my only. Oh, the irony: the celibate sex toy party hostess. Then again, if anyone was an expert in using these devices…
A soft knock on my office door shook me out of my thoughts. “Yes?” I called out. It was office hours again and I was stationed at my desk, ready for whatever the residents threw my way, from shampoo-stealers to boyfriend-haters to balcony climbers.
Maggie. “Hey.” She touched my shoulder briefly before sitting in the hot seat, where students came for counseling or discipline. Mostly something in between.
“Hey, yourself.”
She studied me. “You okay?”
“No.”
She just nodded. “I wouldn’t be either after last night.”
All I could do was blink. A lot.
“You know,” she said softly, a sapphire in her eyebrow winking at me as sun danced over it, “I saw my rapist once. One of them, at least.”
My breathing stopped.
“I’m not equating it to your seeing Liam. I’m not.”
“I know.”
“But there’s a…similarity. The surprise of seeing someone who was the cause of so much pain.”
And love, though, I thought. And love, for me.
“But Liam was about love for you, too. So that’s the big difference,” she added. Sometimes we really did sha
re the same mind. She could be amazing.
My lips twisted into something that felt like a pathetic smile. “The love part is what I can’t get over.”
She sighed. “In my therapy groups people used to tell me I was ‘lucky’ because it wasn’t a date rape. That date rapes are harder to get over because you feel so betrayed.”
Anger tightened my throat. “I hardly call being gang raped by three men ‘lucky.’” She’d poured the story out to me a few months into last year during one of those late-night chats where you find out just how authentic the other person is. Dump your life story out like a peddler hawking his wares and see, in the morning, whether the merchandise is still any good.
Maggie and I had become fast friends. When you find someone who can appreciate you for who you are and not judge you for what’s been done to you, keep them. Male, female, young, old, Republican, Democratic, Libertarian or Breatharian. They’re rare.
A soft tap on the door made us jump. Fuck. Had a student overheard?
Maggie took a shaky breath and held up one finger. “Come in,” she called out.
I cocked an eyebrow and she closed her eyes, nodding. Okay, then.
Jordan, a third-floor resident assistant and part of the new crop of RAs, bounced into the room. Her hair was pulled back in a no-nonsense pony tail and she wore a Minecraft t-shirt.
“Someone puked in the washing machine on our floor,” she said with narrowed eyes the color of dark mulch. Her speech was touched by the presence of an orthodontic appliance. She was twenty going on twelve, so tiny but mighty.
“Report it to custodial services,” I said with a lame smile and a sigh.
“They said they’re too busy over in Hedelman with some giant party last night that included Silly String and a punctured keg.”
“How did someone get a keg into an undergrad dorm?” I asked.
“That’s the engineering wing,” Maggie reminded me. “Those freaks can figure anything out. I’m surprised there aren’t greased baby pigs on the roof.”
“Don’t give them ideas.” Jordan giggled. She quickly went back to serious. “Should we review the security tapes to see who did it?”
Jordan was a rule follower. An enforcer. She took her job so seriously I was starting to get complaints from her residents. Nothing like being written up at 10:01 p.m. for kissing your boyfriend as he left at dorm curfew to fuel anger at the RA.
“Nah,” Maggie said. She fished around in her pocket and handed Jordan six quarters. “Just throw a little bleach in there and run the washer through a cycle. It’ll be fine.”
Jordan’s eyes bugged out and she looked at me. “Is that allowed?”
I stifled a laugh and shrugged. “It’s probably the easiest way to handle it.”
“But people need to know that washing machines aren’t toilets!” she insisted, staring at the quarters in her hands like they were contraband.
“I think most people do,” I said with quiet authority. “But the video camera won’t capture much in that corner of the floor, and we’d spend a lot of hours trying to figure out something that can be handled simply.”
“But—”
“If it happens again, we’ll review tapes. For now, let’s just deal with it in a low-key manner.”
“Can I make flyers?” She perked up. “Put them on my floor telling people washing machines are not toilets?”
“Not unless you want a bunch of boyfriends to take a dump in them to make a point,” Maggie muttered. I kicked her ankle and she yelped.
Jordan glared at her, nostrils flaring, but then remembered who was boss. “Um, okay. So I just run the washing machine through and forget it happened?” She was huffy.
“Of course not,” I said. Maggie bit her lips and suppressed a laugh. Time to turn this into a good cop/bad cop routine. “Write it up in your nightly rounds report and we’ll keep an eye on it. Good job noticing, though—I like that you’re on the ball.”
Jordan beamed. “Thank you!” She left as quickly as she appeared, quarters jingling as she walked down the hallway.
Maggie rolled her eyes. “Posters! Can you imagine what would end up in the washing machines? A few steaming shits from the boyfriends would be the least of it.”
I shut my door quietly. “She’s young. She still thinks people just need to be educated so they can make the right decisions.”
We burst into laughter so hysterical we had to wipe tears from our jaw lines.
“When did we get so jaded?” I asked.
“After I got gang raped and you got dumped on the phone while pregnant?” Maggie shot back lickety-split.
I sighed. “Yeah. That about explains it.”
“Seeing him…that’s going to take you and rattle you like an extra in a Transformers movie that gets picked up by the bad robots and thrown halfway across Los Angeles,” Maggie said.
“You have such a way with analogies.”
My phone rang. The landline. Maggie looked at it like it was a tarantula that had come to life. I jumped in my seat, my heart zooming.
“Fuck,” I whispered, because a Resident Director’s landline rings for only two reasons: a call from a boss, or a call from a parent.
Neither is good.
“Charlotte Greyson, Resident Director. How can I help you?” I answered, pointing for Maggie to stay put.
“Oh, hello. This is Risa Lennon. Derek Lennon’s mother.” Derek Lennon. My mind raced. Sophomore, new to the guy’s wing across the quad. Glasses, dark hair. One of the math geeks.
“Yes, Mrs. Lennon!” I answered, feigning a chipperness I’ve never possessed in my life. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Actually, I’m not. I’m calling about Derek. He’s changed recently.”
I pulled out my log where I documented calls and incidents. Maggie frowned in a curious way.
“Yes?” I’d learned last year to say as little as possible but to be open. The parents would pour it all out.
“Derek is insisting that we do not have access to his grades.”
I covered the mouthpiece and mouthed the word “grades” to Maggie, who groaned and rolled her eyes. We all got calls like these every semester.
Out came my script.
“Mrs. Lennon, I’m sorry, but federal law prohibits me from providing any information about a student’s grades to parents. Once they’re adults, they can choose whether to share that information or not.”
“But Derek isn’t like this! He doesn’t keep secrets from us!”
“Ma’am, the semester is only a few weeks old. Which grades are you worried about seeing?” I switched from my bureaucratic voice to my soothing voice.
“All of them! Last year he let us talk to his professors!”
Poor professors.
“But then someone in student services”—she said student services like the words dog shit—“explained that he didn’t have to share, and now he’s going on and on about his ‘rights.’”
In my most professional tone possible, I replied with: “He does have rights as an adult now, and I know it’s hard to make that kind of transition. But there’s nothing I can do to help, Mrs. Len—”
Click.
“She hung up on me!” I shouted, staring at the black plastic hand piece. “Nice!”
“Good for Derek,” Maggie said. “Makes me want to find him and give him a high-five.”
“Jan said she used to get a call like this maybe once a year,” I said. Jan Murphy was the Director of Residence Life, thirty years our senior and quite seasoned in Res Life. “Now we get them once a week.”
“More than that. Freshman mid-term grade time is a horror show. I had twenty-three calls last year!” Maggie added.
I looked at my calendar. Four more weeks. I put an asterisk on it and wrote “Let calls go to voicemail.” Maggie looked over my shoulder and laughed.
“Puke in the washing machine, hover mothers, asshole ex ordering sex dolls from you. Just another week in paradise for us, huh?”
&nbs
p; A song blasted suddenly from an open window a few floors above. “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer” from Liam’s band began. Random Acts of Crazy had a huge following here, mostly consisting of freshman women who would love to hand their cherries over to Liam and Trevor, if the lounge talk I’d overheard these past few weeks were true.
Maggie’s phone buzzed. She looked at it and muttered a few choice curse words as she sprinted out the door. “Who the hell sets a couch on fire in a courtyard?” she yelled as her footsteps pounded down the stairs to the outside.
“Never a dull moment,” I called back. I closed my eyes and listened to the chorus of the Random Acts of Crazy song that wafted into the window, the blend of Trevor and Liam’s voices like a lullaby. Liam’s hands on me last night, his claiming of something that used to be his, how his fingers were so hungry for my hips, my ass…me.
He kissed me like he meant it. Like he really missed me.
But too bad, Liam. You really did waste your only answered prayer.
Liam
Amy and Darla were on the couch at Trevor and Sam’s place, heads touching as they bent over Amy’s e-reader, tapping and reading.
Amy frowned. “I don’t think werewolves have two knots in their penises.”
Darla looked surprised. “All my research says—”
Huh? “You’re talking about werewolf cocks? What the hell do you learn in library science school?” I asked Amy. I expected her to blush like she always did, but instead she tipped her chin up, defiant.
“It’s not homework.”
“Then you read this shit for pleasure?” Chicks.
“It’s not shit!” Darla turned pink, which took me by surprise. Nothing made Darla blush. The woman fucked Joe in an airplane toilet and came out covered in blue toilet water and took a fucking nap like it was no big deal. Why would she blush about a wolf’s penis?
“Hey, what you read is your own business. If getting off on bestiality stories gets you going—”
“It’s not bestiality!” Darla and Amy shouted at me. Amy flipped the e-reader over.
Sam came out from the bathroom, a towel around his waist, shaving cream on half his face. “What the hell is going on?” His eyes looked at me with a half-angry, half-curious stare.