by J. C. Hayden
Roxanne was still going on about the anachronistic nature of marriage when I spotted Alex walking our way. He came up behind Roxanne and wrapped his arms around her enormous stomach and kissed her neck. She smiled and craned her neck to look at him.
“I was just telling them about how useless and silly marriage is.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “She’s just feeling defensive because people keep asking about her husband when they see her stomach.”
“It’s just rude,” she said, looking at Callum and I who were trying not to laugh. “To assume I have to have a husband in order to have children. First of all, what if I was gay? What if I was a surrogate? What if I just happened to be an unwed mother who had empowering sex all the time with as many people as I wanted and I didn’t know who the father was? What if—?”
“I’m so sorry you got roped into this,” Alex said, shooting us both a sympathetic look.
I laughed. “Believe me, I’m used to it.”
The four of us made our way back down to where Uncle Stefan and Aunt Erika were, Callum and Alex chatting about soccer while Roxanne subtly asked me if Callum and I were seeing each other.
“When I found you, you were both talking pretty closely to each other,” Roxanne said with an arch of her thick but perfectly shaped eyebrow.
“We’re just friends,” I said. “Always have been.”
“He wasn’t looking at you like you were his friend,” Roxanne said quietly.
I rolled my eyes but felt my stomach churn. “You’re reaching,” I said.
“Has he ever had a girlfriend?”
“Not really—”
“Yes, because he’s pining for you!”
“You’ve been reading too many romance novels.”
“Oh! Did you read the latest Kaye Goodwin?”
Roxanne and I had always bonded over our love of sexy romance novels, and I was more than happy to get her off the subject of me and Callum.
Callum and I were just friends. He wasn’t pining over me. And even if he was… I couldn’t imagine even thinking about another guy having feelings for me when every time my mind wandered I saw an image of Brody Galen—smiling at me with sleepy eyes the morning after, winking at me flirtatiously, hands in his pockets across the quad, the look in his eyes when I told him I couldn’t separate my feelings from our sexual relationship.
Later, Callum and I had managed to make it out of Murphys’ Musings and we were headed for Marmaduke’s where I was looking forward to taking a break. I was feeling happy and relaxed from seeing my family, but I always needed a mental break when they surrounded me. I just prayed that Callum didn’t want to continue our conversation from earlier because I was not in the mood to deal with anything heavy. I just wanted to drink some hot chocolate and enjoy some time with my best friend.
Marmadukes was packed when we got there. People were standing around because there weren’t enough chairs, lots of students had taken to sitting on their friends or significant others’ laps. I had been just about to give up and tell Callum that we should just find another place to have lunch when I saw a very petite but curvaceous woman with shiny black hair pop up out of the crowd and wave at us.
“Hey, Talia!” Callum called.
“We have some space over here!” she yelled. “Come over!”
Callum and I made our way through the crowd, and I hardly noticed Callum’s hand on the small of my back guiding me through the crowd.
A little less than an hour later, Talia, Callum, Carver, and I were sitting a bit off to the side of the table with a bunch of other people we knew from theater and class and the like, the four of us talking animatedly to each other, laughing loudly and often. We were in our own small little world of memories and nostalgia of the last four years, while everyone else—even Jack and Michael, who Talia and Carver were both sort of seeing and with whom they had come to this festival—were having their own laughs and conversations. But the four of us were separate from everyone, almost as if we—without being conscious of it or saying anything about it—knew that our last spring festival weekend as students needed to be shared with just us.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed so hard—the last time my face had actually hurt from laughing—I kept squeezing the hollows under my cheeks to keep my face from cramping, but I was also filled with a strange but insistent melancholy, almost as if I knew, deep down, that this would be one of the last times the four of us were together, just like this.
And as I laughed with them and looked at them and felt my heart swell with the love I had for them, I felt again that small tinge of regret that I had been spending so much time with Brody over the past weeks when I had these three people who I knew loved me, who I knew would always be mine, who I knew would never hurt me. But I also had enough self-awareness to know that if things had gone better with Brody—if the incident after the soccer final had never happened—I probably wouldn’t feel like I had missed this crucial time with them. I probably would have been wishing I was wherever he was.
But as it was, I was gripping my ribs as I laughed, savoring this time that I had so missed.
“And then you walk in,” Talia was saying. “Just walk right in—”
“—not a care in the world,” Carver added.
“And you’ve got sharpie drawings all over your face all over your face and neck—”
I groaned through my laughter.
“All over is a little dramatic,” Callum said, clearly trying to hold back a huge grin.
“All over your face,” Talia reiterated with an arch look. “And Professor Hollingsworth looks up as the entire class turns to look at you.”
“I might have screamed,” I said.
“Me, too,” Carver said through a loud laugh.
“And Hollingsworth says, so slowly and so confused—”
Talia and Carver spoke at the same time, “Mr. Jeffries, are you feeling all right?”
The four of us roared with laughter as Talia continued. “And then you go to sit next to Catrina, smiling like it’s any other day, and you say”—and for this part, Carver and I joined in with Talia—“Sure, professor, and you?”
We roared again—Carver stomping his feet in glee as I threw my head back and Talia squealed in delight.
“Wow, snarky bastard, wasn’t I?” Callum said after he finished laughing.
I shook my head, and while we all calmed down a bit, I stood up, patting Callum on the shoulder while still shaking my head at the memory of the one and only class the four of us had taken together in college—Comprehensive History of the Greco-Roman Empire. We were still all fairly uncertain about who exactly had drawn all over Callum’s face at the party the night before, but it had been the week leading up to finals and the four of us had gotten so drunk that we’d woken up all in different places and basically had to piece together the entire night.
“Gotta pee,” I told my friends as I left the table, and they all acknowledged me as I left before they went back to telling stories and laughing with each other.
While I made my way through the massive throngs of people in Marmadukes, I wondered, briefly, what it would be like when we all left Klein and got jobs or, eventually, families. I wondered what would change, what would stay the same, what I would miss most. But then I started thinking about the Callum’s drawn-on face again, and as I turned the corner of the hall where the bathrooms were, I was laughing to myself when I felt a hand grip my wrist.
I was smiling as I turned, but I felt the smile fall into a look of shock when I saw the beautiful and intense gray eyes staring back at me.
It nearly winded me, seeing him. It had been almost a full week since I’d been this close to him, since I’d looked into his eyes, and it was shocking, fundamentally, how acutely he could affect me, how he took my breath away.
“Brody,” I managed to choke.
“Catrina.”
There was something in his voice, something I couldn’t name, but something that made my
gut lurch. I noticed, just for a moment, that he had circles under his eyes that I had never seen before.
“What’re you—”
“I need to talk to you,” Brody interrupted in a rough voice before I could finish my question.
I exhaled as my heart clenched in my chest. “Brody,” I said slowly. “I don’t think—”
“Oops, I didn’t—oh, Catrina—oh.”
I looked over Brody’s shoulder and saw Talia rounding the corner, frowning and looking between the two of us. It was then that I realized that Brody’s fingers were still around my wrist and I pulled my hand away as slowly as I could without drawing attention.
“Hey, Brody,” Talia said.
“Well, it was good seeing you,” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly, before anyone could say anything else, and as quickly as I could, I darted into the women’s bathroom, seeking solace alone in my stall so I could try to breathe normally again.
The whole way back to the table Talia kept remarking that Brody looked sick, that she hoped something wasn’t going around the school that would mess up the last weeks of the term—because the last bloody thing we need, Catrina, is for our last choir performance at Klein to be a disaster. I remarked with nothing more than “hmms” and when we got back to the table with Callum and Carver, Talia kept glancing at me with a frown on her face, and I wished she would just leave me alone.
Suddenly I wanted to leave, I wanted to get out of Marmaduke’s—because just knowing that he was here, close, was enough to make me flounder.
Thankfully, mercifully, not much later, Jack came over to where we were to steal Talia away—although not before she could look at me quizzically again—and not long after that, Michael came in search of Carver. When it was just the two of us, I yawned widely and almost theatrically, hoping Callum would get the hint. I was incredibly lucky and grateful when he suggested we start heading back toward campus.
We managed to make our way out of Marmaduke’s relatively unscathed and with few interruptions. I didn’t see Brody again, and I sighed in relief when we made it just outside campus.
My head was spinning, but there were too many thoughts and scenes swirling inside me for me to be able to form one coherent thought for me to latch onto and process. Brody’s face in the hall at Marmaduke’s was the predominant thought—the thing that kept flashing in my mind over and over—and as much as I wanted to consider what the looks and shadows on his face meant, my mind wouldn’t stop moving frantically long enough for me to be able to make a determination.
We were almost to the street my apartment was on, away from the noise and hustle and bustle of festival-goers and street-walkers, when I heard Callum say my name.
I looked up at him, and I didn’t even get a chance to take in his nervous features before I felt his hands on my shoulders and his lips on mine.
Last Christmas during Callum’s senior year, my parents had gone away for their twentieth anniversary. My Aunt May had had a business trip in Dubai, of all places, to which Uncle Conrad had accompanied her, and it just so happened that that year was an off year—a year when most of my other aunts and uncles were spending extended vacations with their in-laws. So my brother and I, along with Clark (Gabe’s older brother), Gabe, and Annie (Gabe’s younger sister) had spent the holiday at Aunt May and Uncle Conrad’s alone together. Callum had been trying to work a bunch of extra hours at work, and since he didn’t have enough money for a plane ticket to go see his family in Austin, I had invited him to come stay at the Keatons’ with all of us.
I remembered one night when the two of us were sitting by the fire in my aunt and uncle’s living room. I had been sitting with a mug of hot chocolate, wearing one of my grandma’s homemade scarves she made us every year. Everyone else had gone to bed, and I had tucked my feet tucked under me as I listened to Callum tell one of the stories he had told me over the years about growing up without his father around. This story had been one of the particularly heartbreaking ones about how when he’d been in grade school and one kid had asked why his dad hadn’t come to the Christmas play.
I remembered Callum staring into the fire, not looking—not really—sad, but more contemplative, more pensive. And he had looked over at me and smiled, and I realized, for a moment, how close we were sitting and how good he smelled, and then he had leaned toward me, and all I wanted in that moment was for him to kiss me. I’d thought he was going to, and I held my breath, but as I was frozen he sniffed at my cup of hot chocolate, smiled, and said, “smells good,” before turning back to the fire.
As I was standing there on the path that led to my apartment, Callum’s lips moving against mine, his arms gripping my shoulders, I remembered that moment, and I couldn’t help but think how completely different I felt now, as compared to that Christmas.
It was a nice kiss though, and when Callum pulled away, I smiled just as I had the image of Brody smiling at me flashing across my mind.
“I’m sorry,” Callum said, cheeks slightly pink. “But I knew I would regret it if we finished this school year and I never got to do that.”
I stared up at him, trying to gather my thoughts, and all I managed, stupidly, to say was, “Thank you.”
We looked at each other for a few more moments before I turned and put my arm through his, holding it close as I rested my head on his shoulder and we walked the rest of the way back to my place.
Chapter FIFTEEN
Imissed him.
There was no way of getting around it—I missed Brody.
I miss him.
It was probably because I was sitting out by the reservoir—the book I had been reading abandoned on the ground next to me—the place where it all began, that the ache of missing him was particularly painful.
It wasn’t just the sex, although I certainly did miss that, I couldn’t deny, but no matter what either of us said, no matter what either of us attempted to convince ourselves of these past several weeks—what had happened between the two of us was more than just sex. There were strings, no matter how badly we each wanted to pretend there weren’t.
It was his smile I missed the most—the smile from across a room when no one was looking, the sweet smiles that were just meant for me, the smile he would give me when I would come to his apartment and he would be sitting there waiting, the smile he gave me in the morning when we woke up next to each other. That was the smile I missed most, the smile he gave me when he was just waking up, the one that looked like it came without thinking, like he couldn’t help but smile when he woke up and saw me next to him. I missed that smile.
And I missed… God, I just missed talking to him. Yes, we could pretend it was no strings casual sex, but what was it when we were just lying in bed next to each other and talking? When we’d laughed together about my family or something that had happened in school, when I talked about the slave driver Talia was during choir rehearsals, when he talked about the stuff he and Gabe got into, or when, once—just briefly before he had quickly changed the subject—he had mentioned how cool he thought it would be to be a writer. We talked all the time, and I missed that. I wanted to just talk to him again.
I bent up my knees and wrapped my arms around them, placing my chin on them. It was the same way I’d sat that night when I’d felt so vulnerable, the night he had first looked at me in a way I would never forget. I looked out at the reservoir glistening in the sun. It was a beautiful day, but most people were in class. I saw a few other seniors I recognized, a few other people I didn’t, but most people were at the library, in their dorms, or at home preparing for finals. The reservoir was flat and lifeless, and the sun was almost blinding off the flat shining expanse. And I just stared out at the world that seemed to be only occupied by me and my thoughts.
I had seen Brody in class since the fair, but I had done an excellent job of avoiding him—avoiding all eye contact and making sure to leave quickly after class so as not to get held up by him. Other than Callum’s brief comments at Murphys’ Musings and Talia’s
side glances, my friends didn’t ask about my sudden reappearance after weeks of isolating myself so I could spend time with Brody.
It hadn’t been until I wasn’t spending almost every free moment with him that I realized what a gigantic and important part of my life Brody had become.
We had spent so much time together—talking or… not talking—and now there was just this void, this wide gaping hole in my chest where Brody used to be. It might have been where the V used to be, replaced by the V with the X through it, replaced by Brody, and now… just nothing.
It was amazing to me how much weight that emptiness could carry. You’d think it would be nothing—it was emptiness after all—but it was heavy and crushing and burdensome, and it was all made worse by the fact that I couldn’t tell anyone why I was so upset. I knew that both Talia and Callum had to know that something was up. Carver was in his own little world, especially with Michael back in the picture, but Callum had already noted that I seemed different and that he’d noticed how sad I was last week. And now, ever since that kiss…
I knew it wasn’t fair. I knew that it was completely unfair of me to let Callum kiss me like it was perfectly normal and not say anything when I was so completely in love with Brody, when, even if we went out or…whatever, I knew I would be thinking about Brody probably the entire time. I knew it wasn’t fair to Callum or to myself to keep up with all of this, whatever it was, but I didn’t know what to do right now. I was lost. So completely and utterly lost, and there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I knew that even when I left Klein I would still be thinking about him, still wanting him, still loving him.
And he would still not feel the way I did.
Maybe it was better this way. After all, he had never been mine—not really. All those weeks we spent together and not once had either of us ever even suggested that our relationship develop into more, at least officially. I had fallen in love with Brody all on my own. He’d never said it, never would, and I had let myself get lost in the precarious relationship we had created. I had cloaked myself from the truth of what we were because not only was I in love with him, but I was in love with what we were. I was in love with our easy companionship, the way he made me laugh, the way I always looked forward to just being with him just as much as I looked forward to being with him. I loved how he knew my body without me telling him what I wanted—although sometimes I told him because he really liked that—I loved the way he looked at me, the way he made me feel perfect and alive.