Which was actually a good thing.
* * *
“Are you okay?” I managed to ask, my body trying to regain all of its senses as I stared at him.
His arms poured from the short sleeves of his shirt, filling them to capacity and then some. He wasn’t built like the football players from a gym. He was different. Just big. Muscles that weren’t just toned, but firm and earned.
He hooked his hoodie on his finger and threw it over his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just leaving.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. “Couldn’t stomach signing the stupid banner, so they wouldn’t let me in.”
“Why wouldn’t you sign the banner?” he asked.
“Because I think it’s stupid. I’d never met Heath before. I’d only heard his name because he played football. Big deal, right?”
There was a flicker of a smile on his face. He took two steps toward me and I smelled sweat, skin, cologne and man. Then he looked me dead in the eyes.
“Heath was my stepbrother.”
My heart sank and I curled forward a little, wanting to crawl up into a ball and disappear.
He walked around me and I spun, daring myself to reach for him.
But I didn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I called out.
He stopped. “For what?”
He wouldn’t look back at me.
“For what I just said,” I said. “And for what happened.”
“Right.”
He took a step and I jumped at him.
“Wait a second,” I said.
I reached and my fingertips grazed his back. Big surprise - more muscle.
He paused a second time. “What?”
“You’re Heath’s stepbrother? That means you were in the car…”
Now he looked back at me. “And your point?”
I swallowed hard. “I don’t have one. I just…”
“Why wouldn’t you sign that banner?” he asked me. “Give me a reason. The real reason.”
“No,” I said.
“No? You insult my brother and his death and you keep talking to me? You won’t tell me the reason…”
I felt heat rush to my cheeks. “I don’t feel like telling you.”
“Wow,” he said. “So what’s wrong with you?”
“Wrong with me?” I asked. “I’m not the one who just got beaten up.”
Now he turned all the way around and faced me. “Beaten up? You think this is beaten up?” He pointed to his mouth. He smiled. “This is nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” I said. “You were thrown out of your own brother’s party. So… what’s wrong with you?”
I raised an eyebrow and crossed my arms.
I had no idea why I had the urge to stand up to him. I guess for a split second it was nice to be near someone else who wasn’t allowed at the party.
“What’s wrong with me?” he asked. He looked around for a second. Instead of answering the question or keeping the bantering (or was it flirting?) going, he shrugged his shoulders and turned again.
He walked away, leaving me standing there. Alone.
“See you later,” I called out.
That got him to stop one last time. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “You could follow me, I’m done with the bullshit.”
Chapter 5
Trev
She was just blur of a shadow next to the house. And now she was trying to catch up to me. I had to get away from the party and that stupid house. I shouldn’t have gone. The plan was not to show up, but thanks to the scene with Mom and John, I went. So I’d officially been unwelcome at two places during the night. All because of Heath dying.
I looked to my right and saw her finally catch up to me, just as I got to the sidewalk.
“You drive here?” I asked her.
“No. I walked.”
“Campus chick.”
“Uh, not exactly,” she said. “I don’t live on campus. I go to school here. And chick? Don’t ever call me that again.”
“Or what?”
“I’ll cut your balls off.”
I laughed. “Will you beat me up?”
“Looks like someone else already did that,” she said.
I stopped walking. “Who are you?”
“Me? Who are you?”
“You know who I am.”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “You’re Heath’s brother…”
“Stepbrother,” I said. “Heath’s father married my mother.”
“You were in the car…”
I curled my lip. “I asked you your name, sweetheart.”
The way the word sweetheart rolled off my tongue was too easy. Why I just called her that, I had no fucking clue. But it felt right.
We stood under a streetlight and I towered over her. She had brunette hair pulled back, thrown together in a second. Everything about her looked thrown together, but it worked. Her hazel eyes threw daggers up at me. She was as combative as hell, which was nothing but a front. I knew that because I lived it.
“Serafina,” she said.
Sera-what?” I asked.
“Asshole,” she said. “Are you kidding me?”
She turned and I reached for her arm. My fingers slid around it and I gently tugged.
“I’m messing around,” I said. “Serafina. That’s a pretty name.”
“My friends call me Sera,” she said. “Most people assume it’s Sara. Half of everything with my name on it says Sara. I stopped caring though.”
“Well, Sera… with an e and an a…”
She shook my arm away and raised an eyebrow. “I said my friends call me Sera.”
“Right,” I said. “I still have to call you Serafina. Or sweetheart.”
She shook her head. “You’re just a dumb boy like the rest of them, aren’t you?”
“Hardly,” I said. “I don’t go here. Never have. Never will.”
“Why not?”
“Heath was the chosen one for college,” I said. “He could play football and he looked the part. I was always better suited to being under the hood of a car.”
“So you fix cars?”
“Cars, trucks, whatever,” I said. “Do you want to know my birthday? Greatest fears?”
She scoffed. “You like this, don’t you? Being a confrontational jerk.”
“Nah,” I said. “It’s just me. Plus, you’re the one who got kicked out of the party first. Actually, you didn’t even get into the party. Disrespecting my dead stepbrother. And I’m talking to you. Think about it.”
“Shut up,” she said. “What’s your name then?”
“Trev,” I said.
I watched her hug herself for a second as she refused to unlock her eyes from mine.
“Chilly out here, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure.”
“My truck is parked over there.”
“Walk away from a party with a stranger and get into his truck,” she said. “Yeah, I think I’ve seen this on TV quite a bit.”
“Okay. Suit yourself. I’m going to get out of here. This is a waste of fucking time, sweetheart.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why?” I curled my lip and stepped toward her. My fingertips burned with the urge to grasp her arms and ask her why she was putting up a wall? I couldn’t remember the last time I was able to look at someone and feel what I did right then. Because with Becca, it was fake. “It’s a waste of fucking time because all that back there is an excuse for everyone to drink. And you know damn well that plenty of those assholes are going to drive home. They’re going to do the same dumb thing that Heath did. I only showed up to be respectful, but it got out of hand. I made a few comments and things got out of control.”
“What did you say?” Serafina whispered.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I could have torn through those guys that tossed me out, but I held back. So here I am. Walking the streets and going to get out of here. Back there? The guys are getting drunk a
nd acting like protectors. The girls are getting drunk and acting scared. Because reality just slapped their faces for the first time in their lives. Fuck that.”
With that said, I moved around Serafina and vowed not to stop again.
She was just some college woman, like the rest of them back there.
I crossed the street and started to ball up my hoodie.
When I got to my truck, I opened the passenger door and threw it to the floor.
I let out a long sigh and touched the corner of my mouth. I let one person get a punch on me. A freebie. I should have knocked his ass out after that.
“Hey,” a voice said.
I turned and Serafina stood a foot away from me.
“Hey,” I said.
“It is a little chilly out,” she said. “Mind if I sit in your truck for a minute?”
I side stepped and pointed. “Have at it, Serafina.”
* * *
She checked her phone five times in five minutes. I had the truck running, the heat blasting, the radio turned down low enough so that the music was just a faint murmur through the speakers.
“You have a hot date tonight or what?” I asked.
“What?”
“You keep checking your phone.”
“Oh. It’s nothing.”
“Right. Either you’re waiting for someone to call, or you keep checking to make sure your phone is working in case I try something stupid.”
She looked at me, her cheeks blushing. “It’s not that.”
“Sure.”
“Trev,” she said. “I am sorry about the accident. Whether you liked him or not… you were in the car. You could have gotten hurt or…” She bit her lip for a second and played with her fingers. She looked at me. “I didn’t mean to offend anyone by not signing that banner.”
She had me intrigued. That was for damn sure.
I rubbed my jaw and adjusted the air vent because the heat was starting to warm me up too much.
“I said that Heath should have known better,” I said. “Which was true. The other guy in the car, Matt, he was so drunk at that party the night of the accident that he slept on the back seat. Heath insisted on leaving. I had the keys and Heath snuck them off me. I got to a point where I said fuck it. He got into the driver’s seat. The rest is history. My comment didn’t go over so well.”
“Do you have food in here?” she asked, sniffing.
I laughed.
Completely disregarding what I just told her.
I reached to the back of the truck and picked up the dinner that Mom gave me.
“Yeah, this,” I said. “I tried to have dinner with my mother and John. Didn’t go so well.”
“John?”
“Heath’s father. Apparently it’s my fault Heath is dead.”
“He says that to you?”
“All the time,” I said.
“Jesus. That’s terrible.”
“The roast isn’t so bad,” I said with a grin. “But the cookies are really good. Want one?”
“Sure,” Serafina said with a smile.
I found the plastic baggie and took the cookies out. I handed one to Serafina. She took it, touching my hand, leaving me wanting her to drop the cookie and keep touching me. Now she looked at my eyes and hurried to look away. Guilty. Hiding. Everything a guy could ask for in a girl, right?
She bit the cookie and started to nod. “These are good.”
“Yes they are,” I said and took a big bite.
“I didn’t sign the banner because it seems dumb,” she said. “I mean, you sign your name on something for someone you’ve never met and you don’t know. Then they’re going to give that banner to his father, for what? To make it seem like all these people cared about him? I mean, if half those people really cared, he would still be here, right?”
I raised an eyebrow. “So that’s a shot at me?”
“I didn’t say that. I just… it’s stupid, okay?”
“It’s not stupid,” I said. “It’s something else to you.”
“What?”
“You’re hiding something.”
“Hiding something? I barely know you. Everything about me is hidden. That’s the benefit of being a stranger.”
Her phone vibrated and she quickly put the cookie on the dashboard, trading it for the phone. She turned just enough to shield herself, but I saw her reflection in the window. The screen light bounced off her face and the window. The look on her face… a nervous excitement.
I nodded.
A text message from someone she had been waiting for.
I was merely a convenient way to kill some time.
“I have to go,” she said.
She opened the door in a hurry and I reached for her.
I touched her arm as I leaned across the seat. “Hey, Sera… you going to be around here tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow? What? Why?”
“We didn’t get to finish our conversation here,” I said.
“Uh… so you’re going to drive around the streets looking for me?”
“When you say it like that, it’s creepy,” I said.
“Definitely creepy. And. Uh. I can’t. I’m busy.”
“Oh. Okay. Busy.”
I eased away and stared at her. I could tell she was really uncomfortable.
“Look, Trev, you asked me a question before. You asked what was wrong with me…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, the answer is simple,” she said. “Everything is wrong with me.”
She shut the door to my truck and started to run away.
I sat there for a few seconds, taking it all in.
I looked at the dashboard and saw the half eaten cookie. I reached for it and jammed it into my mouth. No use in wasting the cookie, right?
Then I smiled.
Everything is wrong with me.
I put the truck into reverse and smiled again.
“Everything is wrong with you?” I said to the empty passenger seat. “Everything is wrong with me too, sweetheart.”
Chapter 6
Serafina
I refused to look back, because if I did, I would have probably gone back to the truck and started telling him everything. Which wasn't like me. I was good at holding everything in. Keeping it in tight and finding new ways to keep it all silent. But there was something about Trev. Maybe because of what he said to me. Heath being his stepbrother. Heath’s father blaming him for Heath’s death. The fact that he didn’t go to college and wasn’t trying to find some party to hang out at.
He was different.
But so was Max. Professor Grunzien.
I swallowed hard after I stopped walking.
I looked at my phone again.
u coming?
It had been the message I was waiting for all night.
I replied with a smiling emoji and hurried to get back to my apartment to get my car and drive to Max’s house. Which was a good thing. It meant avoiding the party for Heath. It meant avoiding drunk frat boys and their sweet words and dumb promises. It meant avoiding all that college life stuff that I had once wanted so badly. But that dream was ruined a long time ago…
It also meant avoiding Trev for the rest of the night. Not that he was going to be hard to avoid. He had gotten kicked out of the party thrown for his own stepbrother. Now that was messed up. Messed up was sort of my thing though and I couldn’t stop thinking about Trev. Not just his size, cut muscles, and the way he stood over me like he was ten feet tall. There was just something raw about him.
I thought about Trev on the walk to my apartment. I thought about Trev on the ride to Max’s house.
I parked my car in my normal spot, hidden around the block.
I walked with my head down, trying to move casually so that nobody would think anything of me if they saw me. The neighborhood was totally quiet though. It was just a regular neighborhood.
I knocked on the door and Max opened it, greeting me with his normal smile.
“
Serafina,” he whispered.
“Max,” I said.
I entered the house, a place where messed up met with being broken hearted and gave me a false sense of being okay. Except this time… I wished I were back in Trev’s truck.
* * *
Max touched my face as we stood in his large kitchen. The ceilings were super high and there was a massive island in the middle of the kitchen with pots and pans hung from hooks above it. The kitchen looked like something from one of those house remodeling shows. And it was probably rarely used. The lights were out except for the lighting under the kitchen cabinets, which reflected off the pearl white subway tile.
The back of Max’s fingers ran down my cheek. He reached for the glass of wine in my hand and pried it out and put it on the counter. The label on the bottle of wine that Max opened was written in French. It was fancy and expensive, although I couldn’t tell the difference between that and a ten dollar bottle. I didn’t tell him that.
“You seem distant tonight,” Max said.
His breath smelled of brandy. He’d had quite a few in the two hours I had been there.
“You seem off tonight too,” I whispered.
All I wanted to do was leave. Find an excuse and slip out of the house. That’d never happened to me before.
“You’re right,” he whispered. “I had a rough day today.”
“Want to talk about it?”
Max laughed. “Serafina, I think we do enough talking throughout our day.”
When I first met Max… well, I called him Professor Grunzien. Then Professor Max. And now it was just Max, unless people were around. Then he became Professor Max again.
“I remember the first time I saw you,” he whispered to me. “Sitting in the middle of that auditorium. Sitting there, waiting for me to preach about economics. About supply and demand. About growth. About micro and macroeconomics. All that bullshit. You were always different, Serafina. I hope you know that.”
“I know,” I said. “You say that all the time.”
“I mean it. Now tell me what’s got you troubled?”
“Nothing important,” I said.
“Everything is important, Serafina.”
“Well, truthfully, there was a party for Heath tonight,” I said. “A memorial type thing.”
EVERYTHING WRONG WITH US_a novel by: Page 4