I walked out the room and knew that she'd follow. Charli always opened doors and went second like she was either paranoid or a ridiculous amount of polite, some crazy foreign breed.
“Nothing. She was great, she kissed me at the end and I was thinking about someone else the whole time. I’m a jerk, a weird and conflicted jerk,” she insisted.
"Someone else?" I asked, peeking my eyebrow. "Was it Abby?" I wondered. The whole morning was kinda tense and I didn't know why.
We walked to the doorway of the hall and stood just inside since the rain was torrential.
I tugged Charli to stand with me near one of the pillars so we could be closer to the storm.
“No, not at all. I mean, Abby’s awesome but no. I was not thinking about her,” she said, keeping my hand and looking ahead at the rain.
"What do you think," I asked nervously. "Should we make a run for it?"
"We're breaking through, getting food and going back to hide forever," Charli said.
Charli tugged me playfully into the rain. Cold thick drops began to pelt us and I screamed a little. It was like being a kid, or what I remembered of it.
Other girls were running and walking, wearing coats or holding umbrellas.
When we got to the building, the rain stopped it's relentless pursuit. Architectural decisions got in its way. I looked up at Charli, covered in water drops and panting with excitement. Her cheeks were red and I could feel her nerves and stress from all that had gone and happened today.
I reached up and touched her cheek as I laughed.
"You're even cuter wet," I whispered.
Some girls came bursting out of the double doors and knocked into her, throwing her against me.
I caught her and held her a little, wanting to hold her for more. This was getting ridiculous. I really wanted her, wanted to touch her. I wanted to kiss her and steal her away. She'd become like a blanket for me. This great person who wouldn't hate me or treat me wrong.
Her hands held onto my arms and her eyes were zeroed in on my lips. She leaned into my space, almost close enough for a kiss, and bit her bottom lip, pulling away and looking away.
I'd been holding my breath and I let it out, bothered.
"Come on," I said, a little more gruff than I wanted to.
I held the door this time, not allowing her to do it, and I pushed her playfully inside.
"Shit," I huffed. This was the most people I had ever seen in the room all at once.
She pulled me through the room, along the side of the line until she saw someone she knew at the front.
"Hey, we are in a super hurry. Can we please cut?"
The blonde girl she had spoken to nodded and let us get in front of her. Charli took one of the prepared salads and asked the woman behind the counter for the grilled chicken.
"Where's the fire," I teased.
“If I was less mature, I’d say in my pants but I’m not, so I won’t."
"Oookay," I said, side-eyeing her. I picked up a sandwich and a piece of the chocolate cake. I'd have to make coffee when we were back in the room.
Charli was acting weirder and weirder every day.
"Are you on something," I muttered.
"Yes, you," she said.
I laughed, amused and a little surprised. When I looked over at her she was obviously attempting to hide her smirk but she cracked.
"Anything else?" I challenged.
"I wish. Maybe I'd be more brave," she replied.
"God Charli, what is going on with you," I wondered, worried. "Come on, let's go."
She was acting really strange.
We waited outside with our food as the rain streamed down almost violently.
"You want to run or find somewhere else to eat?" She asked.
"Let's wait a second," I said. "It'll let up."
It hadn't slipped my attention that Charli ran hot, always steaming and with no time to spare. She was always onto the next thing, and the next, never resting.
I pretended not to be observing her in my periphery.
Did it kill her to stand here like this? Neither here nor there?
"I like rain, just usually from the inside," she said.
"Mhmm," I nodded, amused.
The rain lessened just like I knew it would. I quickly started to walk through it since it would only let up for a few seconds at a time.
We got back to the room a little wet and sort of careful with each other. Charli opened the door and we both put our food down on our beds.
This time, I pulled my hoodie off and shrugged out of my shoes. It was late and if I left the room at all it would only be to go to the bathroom.
"I'm glad it waited to rain," Charli said.
She put her salad down and opened the container, putting the chicken on top and mixing the container of dressing in with it.
I watched her, interested. After I changed into soft joggers I sat down by her side and touched my hand to her back. "Are you okay?" I wondered. She seemed uncharacteristically sad.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Food will help," she said.
Okay…
I got up and got my food from my bed and started to eat it. It was kinda hard to understand her right now so I propped my phone up onto my knee and scrolled through Facebook while I ate.
"Sorry," she said, turning towards me.
"No, you're good," I defended. "You've had a long day."
I wouldn't be surprised if she snuck off to shower or something.
“Frustrating day,” she muttered.
She stabbed her salad with her fork.
“Do you have any plans for tomorrow?”
"My plan for tomorrow is to be left alone," I teased.
"Oh? You want me to leave?" She joked.
"Nah. You don't count. You're not annoying or terrible."
“I’m very glad that I don’t count then,” she said.
She put down her fork and looked at me.
“I wish we were far away from here in a place no one could get to us,” she said.
"Let's go," I suggested, but I couldn't help but wonder where she'd actually want us to be.
“You’d go with me?” She asked.
"Of course. Where do you wanna go?"
Did she need to escape something?
“Somewhere isolated. It’s crazy. I just feel like I can’t breathe right now,” she said.
I moved off of my bed and left my food. "What do you mean," I wondered, worried.
I walked close and sat down beside her again.
“It’s hard to explain. I was used to how things were and now everything is hitting me. You’re the only thing that makes me feel safe right now,” she said, looking at her hands.
I reached out and touched her hand with mine. "Why wouldn't you be safe?" I wondered. With my free hand, I touched and led a lock of her hair to fall straight over her shoulder blade and rest there."
“Mentally safe, not like someone’s going to harm me,” she expressed.
She leaned on me and let herself relax.
“Aww… Sweetie,” I said, shifting a little so I could hold her a bit more. “Anything I can do?”
"Make me forget?" She asked in a tiny voice.
I didn’t get it, didn’t know where this was coming from or what was wrong. I held her face and kissed the side of her head.
“Okay,” I said, pulling away. I breathed deeply and got up again to start to change. There was always a party on a Saturday but Charli wouldn’t like that scene so I started to think. The beach was nice but we didn’t have a car. And the rain created a bit of a barrier, we couldn’t just go somewhere and be outside. Not tonight.
"You can do that more," she laughed.
I’d been distracted when she said it. A smile overtook the better half of my face and I felt my cheeks flush. “Come on,” I said, bullying her. “Put something on, we’re leaving.”
I wasn’t just going to sit around if I knew I could make it better for her.
"Okay," she said.
/>
She went to the closet and found some joggers and a hoodie.
"Are you whisking me away?"
“I think I have to,” I smiled. What other choice did I have?
I threw my Halsey hoodie on and grabbed an umbrella from the very corner of the closet. I hated to use it but we didn’t know what was happening now so it was probably smart to take it.
"You could ignore my craziness and tell me to calm down," she said.
“Is that what you want?”
"I want you… uh," she shrugged and slipped on her shoes.
“What was that?” I asked. I pinched at her side and made a point to check on the expression she’d been hiding.
"Uhhh, maybe I said you," she teased.
“Well, you have me,” I reminded, watching her. I walked to the door. If she'd been missing that she really hadn't been paying attention. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 23
Being conflicted didn’t fit right in my mind. It overwhelmed me and made me want to escape to a place where no one could bother or touch me, except Laura. She’d gotten inside of my shield. She was making me different or I was just changing because of a chemical reaction to her.
Whatever.
My clothes were dry and that was a step up from where I’d been before we got food. This was still my home but I let her take the lead since I was lost. Before we left the building Laura called an Uber that took us to this gas station where someone Vic knew worked. She bought a few things and we got back in the waiting car.
Problem was, where could we go? The rain had slowed but it was still falling. The driver looked back at us expecting an address or direction.
“Ah, take us to the lake access,” I said.
The driver nodded and turned back to start driving.
“It’s where the crew team practices so there’s a big boat house that’ll be empty and no one would think to look for us there,” I explained.
The car flew down the dark road a little too fast for me, considering the road conditions. I shook my head and sighed. That was rule following Charli in my head trying to keep everything safe and on track again. I would have been in my room, miserable and angry if it wasn’t for Laura. She acted on things.
"Is someone looking for us?" She asked, amused and suspicious of me.
"No, but it makes me feel better to know that we can be totally alone there,” I said.
Explaining this mess would require me knowing what was going on myself. All I could figure out was that I wanted Laura and I was too afraid to say it. Lissa coming along made my head explode. She was putting this stuff in my head about how much she liked me and she would wait for me to make up my mind.
It was simple. I didn’t like her the way I liked Laura, no, the way I loved Laura. I figured that Lissa was safe. Telling Laura, the girl that could have her pick, was terrifying. She’d never laugh at me or anything but she wouldn’t return my feelings.
I wasn’t special. She was. That was also simple.
Then there was Vic, she’d been in this weird relationship with her for a long time. How could I get in the middle of that? No matter if she didn’t want her boyfriend, he was also there standing by like a spector waiting to take her away from me.
She might not even stay here past this semester and what happened in summer when we went back home?
I was fucked. The third simple fact that told me I should keep my mouth shut about how I felt.
The car slowed as we entered the park area where the boats were put in the water. I wasn’t on the crew team but I had a few acquaintances that were rowers so I knew that the lock on the boathouse sucked and it was easy to open.
We got out and ran for the shelter of the eave under the boat house roof. The rain was coming down hard again. Of course, I hadn’t thought to bring a rain jacket. My hoodie was thick and the water didn’t penetrate the fabric since we ran. I walked up to the door and jiggled the door using the handle.
“I need something to stick between the door and the frame,” I said.
I hadn’t brought my wallet or anything. I knew she had since she bought the alcohol.
“Do you have your student id card?” I asked.
"Uh… Here," she said, handing me some random casino card.
“You’ll have to tell me about this later,” I said, checking out the card.
I put the card in the crack and bent it toward the door handle and then back in the opposite direction. I looked back at Laura for a second and then pushed on the door, wiggled the card back and forth, and then with one final push, the door opened.
“Here,” I said, handing back her card.
The inside of the building smelled like wood and some kind of pollish. It was totally dark aside from the little bit of light from the windows on the far side of the room. I felt along the wall for a light switch and flipped it when my fingers found one.
A single bulb came to live above our heads. It flickered for a moment before staying on, giving us weak yellow light to see by.
The rain hit the roof, providing the only sound aside from our shoes on the wood floor. There were several boats stacked on some kind of rack in two rows and then a few boats on the floor by the windows, a workbench along that wall and equipment in one corner.
I walked over to the area where the equipment was stored and opened a few cabinets.
“Hmm, we should have brought our food,” I said.
There was rope, tools, a bunch of products to clean and maintain boats and a folded stack of towels. I grabbed the towels and smelled them, they weren’t fresh but they also didn’t stink. I could only imagine they were for the odd occasion when someone fell in the lake.
Below the cabinets there were big cubbies with different things in them. I looked through them until I found a big canvas tarp in the last one.
“Ha!” I brought the towels and the canvas over to one of the boats. It was an old wooden thing like a handmade canoe or something. There were two seats in it spaced far enough apart to lay between if we propped our legs up on one of them.
I put the canvas in the bottom of the boat between the seats and then looked over at Laura.
“Come on,” I said, stepping into the boat and laying back. I stuck one of the folded towels between my head and the other seat and rested my weight on it. “It’s nice,” I assured her.
Laura smiled and carefully moved in to join me. "Is this something you usually do," she asked.
“Nope. I’ve never done anything like this,” I said.
I was a very boring person. I’d tried to tell her things like this before. We fit perfectly side by side in the boat. Our arms touched and our legs were close, almost touching on the bench.
“What about you? Have you ever hid in a boathouse during a rainstorm?” I asked, smiling.
I used my pinky to graze the top of her arm, loving how soft her skin was.
"I uh, no," she swallowed, staring over at me, close. She turned onto her side to face me and watch me. I felt her hand on my stomach.
“What did you get to drink?” I asked.
Alcohol couldn’t hurt at this point. Maybe it would make my head less fuzzy or even make it so that I didn’t care that I was all mixed up.
"I um, wasn't sure what you'd be into," she said, pulling a wide and flat bottle from her purse. "It's like a whiskey," she said, handing it over to me.
“Why not?”
I opened the bottle and took a drink straight from it. I coughed and sputtered as the liquor burned.
“Shit,” I said.
I’d never had whiskey before. Hard liquor wasn’t something I drank. The most alcohol that I usually had was a few beers.
“That’s some intense stuff,” I said.
I looked at her, watching her considering my reaction. She was beautiful. I couldn’t stand it. I just wanted to touch her everywhere. I wanted to kiss her entire body and hear her make those noises she made the night she came home drunk. That could be what it took.
I turned
the bottle up, drinking a long swig, not even caring how bad it tasted or how much my stomach protested. I stopped drinking and coughed again after I swallowed the last of the drink.
“Woah,” I said, giggling and handing the bottle back. “Your turn.”
She watched me, solemnly. Then she sat up. As she tipped the bottle back and slowly drank from it she stared at me suspiciously "Why are you doing this," she asked, once she could breathe.
“I need it to be quiet in here,” I said, pointing at my head.
She drank a little more, not having a problem with the taste or the burn. "This isn't like you," she nearly whispered.
“Nope,” I confirmed.
I took the bottle back and had another drink. By now, the taste was nothing and the burn felt good. My lips felt a little numb.
I turned on my side so we were face to face and I could press my forehead to hers.
“I wish I could live in your pocket and go everywhere with you. You could pull me out when you want to hang out and talk to me all day,” I mused.
"That sounds like an Ed Sheeran song," she teased. Then she moved and turned to lay on her back.
“Does it? Did I just write a song?” I touched her arm again and grazed my fingertips along the side of it down to her wrist and back up again. “I wish I could write a song about you,” I determined.
"Why can't you," she said.
“I’m not talented like that. I can score you a goal but not write you a song, You deserve a song,” I said.
"I'd rather just have your company."
“That’s easy,” I said.
It was miraculous that I could focus on just the movement of my fingers on her arm now. The whiskey was a blessing now but it would probably hit me later.
Laura listened to the rain and smiled as she relaxed and shut her eyes.
“What’s your favorite sound?” I asked.
We rarely just lay like this anymore. School and soccer had kept me busy. That was another thing that made me crave her.
"I dunno," she laughed anxiously. "The rain is pretty nice though."
“Go ahead, ask me what my favorite sound is,” I prompted.
"No," she teased. "I don't ask things like that," she lied. "It's way too personal." Then she caught my gaze and groaned. "Okay fine. What's your favorite sound?'
Love Like Crazy Page 24