by LP Tvorik
And why? Who had taught him that anger and violence were so inextricably bound? His parents, maybe? I’d always wondered why he ended up in foster care. Maybe his parents were abusive…
No. Whatever the reason for his reaction, I knew I could never hit him. Even if he really had cheated on me. Even if he did dump me for Deb. I couldn’t prove him right. Not on that count.
‥ ‥ ‥
At the end of lunch, I bid farewell to Gemma and made my way to the library for my study hall. Unlike English class and lunchtime, I didn’t let myself get my hopes up for the free period. I resigned myself to an hour of lonely studying and silence.
Unable to sit at our usual table, I picked one in the corner behind the bookshelves, pulling out a textbook and setting it on the table. I opened it up but couldn’t concentrate on the words. My mind was filled with vivid nightmare daydreams. Deb cuddling up to Nate in the front seat of his truck. Deb and Nate making out in the maintenance hallway between the gym and the auditorium. Deb in a hospital bed, holding Nate’s baby. Deb and Nate, on rocking chairs, watching a golden sun rise.
My heart lurched when movement caught my eye and I looked up to see Nate walking toward me. Swallowing the lump of emotion that had formed in my throat, I lowered my face back to my book and shielded my last shred of dignity behind a wall of false indifference.
I didn’t look up when he reached the table. Or when he sat down. He didn’t pull out any books, and I knew he was watching me, waiting for me to explode on him.
I didn’t.
“Don’t you have homework to do?” I asked icily, glancing up from my book.
Again, my heart lurched. I hadn’t gotten a good look at him all day, and what I was finally seeing had the soft, weak part of me clamoring for supremacy over the strong, vindictive part.
He looked like shit. I don’t know if it’s possible to lose weight over the course of two days, but he looked thinner. Rendered down to muscle and bone, the hard lines of his face harsher and more pronounced than usual. His eyes were glassy with exhaustion and rimmed by dark shadows, and the emotion in them sliced clean through my resolve.
He looked lost. The boy who picked and won fights with guys three times his size— who had unwanted answers to every one of my problems— who had held me in strong arms through every crisis— looked unbearably, incurably lost.
Was it guilt? The ice returned, encasing my heart behind a thin barrier of apathy.
“What’s going on, Nate?”
He shook his head, lowering his face. “It’s complicated, Al.”
“Is it Deb?” I demanded, my voice barely more than a whisper. I couldn’t bring myself to utter the words louder, for fear that they might be true.
Nate nodded, his face still downcast, and my heart broke. The fist that had been tightening around it all morning suddenly clenched, and for a moment I thought I was actually dying.
I didn’t, though. My broken heart kept beating, pumping blood to my arms and legs, helping me move as I clumsily shot to my feet, gathering my books and shoving them into my bag.
“Al, wait!” Nate said, reaching out to grab my arm, but I jerked it out of his reach. He stood, blocking my way as I went to leave. Unwilling to touch him, even long enough to shove him away, I turned around and circled to the other side of the table. He met me there, still blocking my exit. “Al, stop,” he pleaded, holding his hands out.
“Why should I?” I hissed.
“It’s not what you think,” he insisted, glancing over his shoulder to make sure we hadn’t drawn an audience. But the library was still and empty— colorful shelves of books and rows of unused computers hanging in stasis beneath the scent of dust and carpet cleaner.
“You’re not… with her?” I hissed at him. “Because it sure looks like you are, Nate.”
“No!” he exclaimed, before lowering his voice. “Of course not, Alex. I’m with you. I’m yours. I swear. I just…”
He trailed off, shaking his head and pushing trembling fingers into his hair.
“Just what, Nate?” I asked, stepping forward. I desperately wanted him to set me straight. Call me foolish, but I’d have believed anything he said. All he had to do was give me something. “I love you so much. You know I do. But how can I trust you? You never talk to me. Just give me something to work with, here. Anything.”
“I can’t, Al,” he moaned, sinking back into his chair and burying his face in his hands.
“Can’t what?” I asked, trying so damned hard not to cry. You can’t admit you cheated?
“I can’t explain,” he said into his hands. “I want to, angel, but I can’t. Please just trust me. I swear there’s nothing between me and Deb. I swear on my life. It’s you and me.”
“How can I believe that if you won’t even try to explain what’s going on?” I asked. I desperately wanted to sit down and take his hands and tell him everything was alright, that I forgave him, that I believed him. He needed to hear it. I could tell by his hunched shoulders and the desolation in his voice. My heart pleaded with me to fix it— to fix him.
My brain knew better.
“You’re not giving me anything to work with,” I said, my voice remarkably even, considering I could hardly think over the screaming in my mind, begging him to help me understand. “I want to trust you, but you have to understand how it looks. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, you’re driving Deb to school and hanging out with her between classes and eating lunch with her and your old friends. What else am I supposed to think?”
“Just trust me, Al,” Nate said, looking up at me. The raw need in his eyes should have ignited more sympathy, but instead it sent a chill up my spine. What had he done? What was so bad that it had shaken Nate? “Once I explain you’ll understand. I will explain. I just can’t yet. Please just trust me. Give me time.”
“You have a week,” I said, reason and self-preservation buckling beneath the weight of my love for him. “I’ll give you a week.”
‥ ‥ ‥
I gave him two.
Because I’m weak, I gave him two weeks to pull himself together and tell me the truth. The only time I saw him during those two weeks was in class and at study hall. I couldn’t bring myself to go to the spot and sit with him beneath the stars, suffocating beneath the silence and the weight of his secrets as they snuffed out every good memory we had made there.
To this day, I wish I’d gone. It wouldn’t have been pleasant, but I wish I had subjected myself to that uncomfortable silence and the shame of loving him when I knew I shouldn’t. I wish I’d let him hold me and suffered through the agony of passion and hurt his touch ignited. If I could go back, I’d go to the spot every night and put myself through all that pain. It would be better than the pain that came later, when I learned that he went there every night. That he waited for me until dawn kissed the horizon. That I’d wept tears of angsty teenage hurt into my pillow while our last moments of youthful love and relative innocence were trickling through the hourglass.
I like to think that, with the gift of hindsight and the knowledge of how limited our time really was, I’d have gone to the spot and let him love me so we both had something to carry into the years that followed.
But I didn’t. I saw him only at school, and what I saw there only buried me deeper in doubt and heartbreak.
He was slipping. Quickly. Snowballing back into the boy he was before we started dating— before he jump started my life and let me breathe hope into his.
He slept through our classes together, and stopped turning in his homework. He sat with his old friends at lunch and cut class with them to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot. Deb was with him nearly every moment of every day, stuck to his side like a leech. She never smiled, but I caught her watching me with warning and loathing in her eyes. Maybe he’d given her the same lines—that she was his one and only. Maybe she trusted him as little as I
did.
Once, I looked up in the cafeteria and she caught my eye. While I watched, unable to look away, she linked her arm through Nate’s. He flinched away from her, confusion on his face. Then he looked up and saw me, and his expression twisted in anger. He pulled his arm from hers and spoke words I couldn’t hear over the din of the cafeteria. I don’t imagine there’s anything he could have said to her that would have stopped my heart from breaking. Because even if they weren’t together— even if she was marking territory that wasn’t hers to claim— he still didn’t walk away. He still chose her over me, and no matter how much it hurt me.
Ironically, Deb wasn’t even involved when the powderkeg finally caught a spark and the whole thing went up in flames.
It was the end of the day, and I was heading home. It was a fifteen-minute walk, but with the way everything was going I didn’t mind the time alone to think. It was a little piece of normalcy, undisturbed by the shift in my relationship with Nate. Even before things went south, I walked home because my boyfriend had work after school.
That day was a Friday. I remember everything about it, from the weather to what I was wearing. Sunny and unseasonably cool; jeans and a sweater.
A car pulled up beside me as I turned the corner and started walking through the residential neighborhood surrounding my school. The neighborhood looked a lot like mine— white picket fences. Green lawns. Tire swings and minivans and rose gardens. It was lovely and idyllic and fake. What skeletons were these homeowners hiding? How many of these housewives quietly wanted to slit their wrists and bleed their lives into lukewarm bathwater?
“Hey, Aly!”
I looked up, and saw Isaac Campbell leaning out the passenger side window of a shiny red BMW. Without stopping, I stooped and saw Lance Curry behind the wheel. Both were leering at me as Lance idled the car along the side of the road, gong just fast enough to keep up with me.
My gut churned and I wanted to flee, but I forced myself to keep my step even and raised my chin, ignoring them.
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t be a bitch!” Isaac said, thumping gently on the side of the car with his open palm. “We just wanted to see if you need a ride home?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said sweetly, but with a hint of heat. Chile-laced chocolate.
“I heard you and Reynolds broke up,” he said, a sneer in his voice. “That’s a shame. You must be real lonely.”
“I’m fine.” Leave me the hell alone.
“Oh, I doubt that. It’s okay to be sad, sweetheart.”
Don’t call me sweetheart! “Well, I’m not, so you can leave me alone.”
My stomach clenched when the car pulled over at the curb and Isaac hopped out, blocking my path on the sidewalk.
“C’mon, Aly,” he crooned, cuffing me in the shoulder. “Just let us give you a ride home.”
“Leave me alone, Isaac,” I said, pushing past him only to have him circle around in front of me once more. Dread grew to cannonball in my belly when I heard another car door shut, telling me that Lance had gotten out of the car as well. His heavy footsteps approached me from behind and the skin on the back of my neck stood on end. Surely someone in one of these big, beautiful houses would see what was going on and interfere.
Maybe none of them were home, because nobody did. I kept walking, in lurching five-foot increments, each spurt of movement halted by either Lance or Isaac. Their words were kind but their eyes were lecherous, unabashedly roaming my body, and their fingers dug into my arm every time they stopped me.
I felt the barest shred of relief when I heard the familiar clunking of Nate’s truck approach and draw to a stop on the curb beside us. Then I panicked. What were the odds he’d just ask them politely to leave? I quickened my step in a vain attempt to drag Isaac and Lance with me and outrun the problem.
“Get the fuck away from her,” accompanied the sound of a slamming door, and suddenly Nate was blocking the sidewalk, towering in front of me, fists clenched at his sides, every muscle locked. He glared over my shoulder at Lance and Isaac, who had stumbled to a halt at my back.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said weakly.
But it was as if he was beyond hearing. He moved around me, his body seeming to expand into the cloud of his own anger as he placed himself between me and the others. I turned as well to see Isaac and Lance both back away a step. But they didn’t leave.
“We were just trying to give her a ride,” Isaac said, glancing nervously from Nate to his friend. Lance just glared, puffing out his chest, drawing himself up. My mouth went dry with dread. There was only one way this ended.
“Nate, it’s not a big deal,” I said again. “They were just trying to give me a ride.”
“Did you want a ride?” he asked over his shoulder.
“No, but—”
“Did you tell them that?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Then it’s a big deal, Alex. Go wait in the truck with Deb.”
What the hell did he think I was? Some kind of distressed damsel?
“I’m fine here,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, although his back was to me so I suppose my defiant stance was wasted on him.
“You fucks have two seconds to get the hell out of here,” Nate said, reaching behind to push me back, and I rolled my eyes in spite of myself.
“Ease up, man,” Isaac said, holding up his hands. “We thought you were done with her. Just a misunderstanding.”
“Done with her?” Nate echoed, his voice quiet but sharp with venom. Isaac and Lance each took a step back. “I’ll never be ‘done with her.’ And whether I am or not shouldn’t matter.” He was walking forward now, driving them back along the sidewalk. Nate was neither short nor scrawny, but the two football players each had him by a good fifty pounds. So it was strange that, from where I was standing, he seemed to dwarf them. “She told you she wanted to walk. You harassed her. Alex doesn’t like violence, so I’m giving you five seconds to get the fuck out of my sight. After that, whatever happens is on you.”
I’d never heard his voice like this— all chilly and hard. It made my spine tingle, and not with pleasure. With fear. Base, animalistic fear that told me to flee to the hills from the predator standing before me. Apparently Lance had no such instinct for self-preservation.
“You know what, man? Fuck you!” he said, stepping forward, his face beat red. “I’m sick of you lording around school like you own the place. You’re just some piece of trash with an anger management problem who dipped his stick in the preacher’s girl and caught a god complex.”
I didn’t even see the punch. One second Lance was standing there, chest out, face red, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth as he yelled in Nate’s face. Then I blinked, and when I opened my eyes he was on the ground, holding his jaw, and Nate was shaking his hand out at his side.
“How about you?” he asked, turning to Isaac, fists flexing at his sides. “You want some, too?”
“Goddammit, you pussy!” Lance yelled at his friend. “Fucking do something!”
Isaac’s eyes flicked from Lance to Nate, then back to Lance. I saw resignation, and before I could scream a warning he was barreling into Nate, tackling him onto some unwitting family’s manicured lawn.
As they rolled around on the ground, it occurred to me that I’d never actually seen Nate fight. I knew it was happening, of course. I couldn’t remember a day since I met him that he wasn’t bruised up in some way or another, and he was always getting suspended for starting shit at school. I knew it, but I’d never actually seen it.
It was terrifying.
I don’t know who that boy was, but he wasn’t my Nate. My Nate was sweet and thoughtful and annoyingly in control of not only himself but every aspect of the world around him.; He was smart and mature and had the answer to every problem.
The guy trading punches with Lance and Isaac wasn’t any
of those things. He was vicious and reckless and… feral.
I stumbled back as they rolled from the grass back onto the sidewalk, nearly knocking me off my feet. Before I could find the brainpower to be anxious about the outcome, Nate was on his knees, straddling Isaac’s chest, driving fist after fist into his face. His teeth were bared and I swear his eyes— normally the color of a stormy sky— were glowing red with bloodlust.
Then Lance was up, launching himself forward. Before I could blink he had Nate by the back of the shirt and was hauling him off of Isaac. Instead of toppling off balance like I imagine Lance intended, Nate used the momentum to his advantage, letting Lance pull him to his feet and turning as he rose, driving an elbow into the side of his assailant’s face.
“Stop it!” someone screamed from behind me, but I couldn’t move. My feet were rooted to the sidewalk as I watched Lance drop to the ground with Nate on top of him.
“Keep…” Nate growled, wrapping a fist in Lance’s shirt and pulling him up so they were nose to nose.
“Your…” he shoved him back to the sidewalk.
“Fucking…” Lance’s head snapped to the side with the force of Nate’s blow.
“Hands…” Another punch.
“Off…” Behind me, footsteps were slapping the pavement, but I couldn’t look away from the carnage before me.
“My…” Blood spattered the cement.
“For fuck’s sake stop!” Deb screamed, streaking into my field of vision. I reached out on instinct, snatching at her arm. She was going to get herself hurt. But her shirt sleeve slipped through my fingertips and she threw herself into the fray like she was bulletproof. “Stop it!” she yelled, grabbing Nate by the shoulder and pulling him back, leveraging herself into the space she created between the two men. “Stop!” She shoved him back, hands on his chest, and by a divine miracle she survived.