Falling for the Opposition: An New Adult Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Lola West

  Chrystal jumped up and moved toward him. Instinctually, I put my body between them, my back to Drew.

  “Are you a demon like him, Drew?” she spat, throwing her body against my chest, trying to get closer to him, to hurl all the anger and fear she was feeling at him like a weapon. “Do you hold down girls that are smaller and weaker than you like Conner does? Do you rip their insides to shreds and tell them they should feel lucky you deemed them worthy of your cock?”

  All I heard was Conner. The name screamed in my mind like a siren. Drew’s friend, his frat brother, Conner Carrington did this to Chrystal. In the instances between her outburst and what happened next, I had the time to think that it made perfect sense that Drew was triggering her. I also realized that Drew had to go. This moment was going to be unsettling for him too, and I didn’t know how he would react. So I turned, holding Chrystal behind my back, standing like a shield between them.

  Honestly, Drew looked as shaken as Chrystal. His jaw was tight, his nostrils flared, and at this point there was nothing subtle about how his head was shaking, saying no, no way, not possible. And then he lost control of it.

  “No,” he said quietly. “Not Conner. He’s a good guy.”

  My heart slipped from my chest into the pit of my stomach and I struggled to pull a breath into my nose. Behind me Chrystal laughed maniacally.

  Calmly, I said, “Time to go, Drew.”

  But he was lost to his own confusion and struggle. He addressed me. “He’s a good guy, Lua. When we were pledges, he stopped the others when they went too far with Pete and me. He’s obnoxious sometimes but not this. He’s not like this.”

  Behind me, Chrystal screamed. “He raped me. He pinned me to his bed and fucking raped me.”

  Drew’s voice shook as he spoke, but he still said the words. “Maybe, he was confused. Maybe it was a mistake. Did you actually say no?”

  The air in my lungs caught fire and my heart burned black. He might as well have asked what she wearing or if she asked for it. I thought of him snapping in the car. Drew was always going to slip. He was never going to be able to free himself from his upbringing. Chrystal couldn’t fake the way she looked or how she was acting. She’d been hurt and all Drew could think was that his kind, his friend couldn’t be bad.

  I turned to Chrystal and with force said, “Do not listen to him. Do not.” Then I turned back to Drew. “It is time for you to go.”

  “Lu, I…”

  “Nope. Go.”

  Deflecting, he lifted the lasagnas and asked, “What about the lasagna?”

  Like a mama lion, I defended my turf. “I don’t care. Take them back to your frat house or leave them here. Do whatever you want with them; just get the hell out of my line of sight before I tell you where to shove them.”

  “Lu…” He was begging, but he was also annoyed. Angry that I was angry.

  I stood my ground. With Chrystal still behind me, I puffed up my chest and put my hands on my hips. “Time for you to go.”

  Huffy, he turned and stomped off toward the stairs. I watched his back, his shoulders shifting as he walked away. I didn’t move a muscle. Everything felt still and slow. A cool breeze wafted across my face. Inside, I shattered. I wanted him so much. I wanted to chase him, but I couldn’t make Drew better, bigger. Only he could do that. When he got halfway to the car, he lost it again. He roared his aggression and threw the lasagnas. They were heavy so they didn’t go very far. But they crashed to the ground, spilling my father’s sauce, ricotta, and slippery noodles on the ground.

  Then, directing his rage at me, he screamed, “Fuck you, Lua. Fuck you.”

  Behind me, Chrystal started sobbing.

  I didn’t flinch but one single solitary tear escaped, slipping down my cheek and taking all the joy in my heart with it.

  49

  Drew

  Two days after I left Lua and Chrystal on the porch at S.A.F.E., the police came knocking. They arrested Conner and less than twenty-four hours later, he was back in the frat house basement, playing video games and drinking beers. He smirked at me when they cuffed him. His utter lack of anxiety rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around what happened. I kept picturing Chrystal. I didn’t know her very well. But I knew enough to know that she wasn’t okay that day on the porch. Something bad happened to her. A girl like Chrystal wouldn’t be caught dead looking shredded and broken if she could help it. She was the kind of girl that my frat brothers loved to hate on, a girl looking for a Mrs. degree. The kind who came to Hamilton because she wanted to be the wife of a politician rather than a politician herself. Honestly, there was nothing appealing about that kind of woman. My mother was that kind of woman, a woman who gave up who she was to support a man. It didn’t end well.

  But I also knew that when it came to that type, Chrystal was the cream of the crop. She wasn’t a flake or just a pretty face. She was a poly-sci major. She was grooming herself to be the best wife possible, to be the smart, savvy, calculating backbone for a man with all the right breeding. While I hadn’t had many conversations with her, I’d seen her hold her own with grace. And if I remembered correctly, she took on a job managing the service and outreach for her sorority. Admittedly, I kind of hated her because of the way she treated Lu, but none of that mattered. Lu was right. Nothing about who Chrystal was meant that someone could violate her. No one should have hurt her.

  And still, I just couldn’t seem to compute that Conner could do such a thing. I couldn’t bring myself to think that someone I knew and cared about was that kind of person. But the more I thought about it, the more something didn’t sit right with me. I kept picturing the face of the girl who ran away from the bus at Bonnaroo. At the time, I thought Pete and I scared her, but now I wasn’t so sure. Something about the look in her eyes was reminiscent of Chrystal’s demeanor. And then there were others, inebriated women laughing and climbing the stairs with Conner’s arm around their shoulders. I kept telling myself that my thoughts were conjecture. But I wasn’t so sure. While I tried to reconcile it all, I stayed away from Conner. In fact, I stayed away from most of my brothers. I holed myself up in my room and focused on my work.

  I stayed away from Lua too. For the first few days, I waited for her to text or call, but when she didn’t, I realized that as far as she was concerned, there was nothing to discuss. My reaction to Chrystal reminded her that we would always stand on opposites sides of the line. Lua protected and defended those who suffered, and I helped toe the line that kept them suffering. I wanted to go to her. I wanted to lie down in the hall outside her dorm room just so I could be close to her. I wanted to beg her to take me back, to wrap her arms around me because she still believed I was the man I thought I was becoming but I wasn’t. I was tested, and I’d failed. Lu deserved better. She deserved someone who knew right from wrong at a glance.

  A week after Conner was released on bail, the senator called. It was the first time he reached out since I told him off on New Year’s Eve. His voice was jolly and booming, like there was nothing ugly between us.

  He started by saying, “Drew, my boy, how are your classes?”

  I tasted vomit in the back of my mouth. There was no part of me that was going to let him weasel into my life or manipulate me into doing his bidding.

  “What do you want?” I snapped.

  He continued his tone like I hadn’t spoken. “Everything here in the Capitol is well. You are missed but your sister and brother are happy, and your mother is fine.”

  To anyone else this was harmless small talk, but I knew it for what it was, a threat. He was throwing around the fact that he had control over my loved ones, reminding me to behave myself. I sighed but said nothing.

  “William Carrington called me today.” Of course, he did. Conner’s father was a very rich man, and he was also one of my father’s most supportive constituents. He single-handedly wrote checks that kept my father in office. “I hear there is a bit of trouble, a smear campaign, going on up there, some tras
hy girl trying to drag the Carrington name through the mud.”

  Unguarded for just a moment, I said. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  The senator laughed. His voice biting and bitter, he said, “No, it’s not, son.”

  Again, I didn’t say anything. My father took my silence as consent.

  “Early next week there will be a press conference and you’ll speak. Tell the world that Carrington’s son is a good and upstanding member of society.” I could feel the ground slipping beneath me. All the work I’d done to be better, to grow, to distance myself from my father’s ugly world was disappearing as he spoke. If I stood up in front of the media and defended Conner when I didn’t really know if he was innocent, then there would be no turning back. I would always be my father’s son. When I hung up, the senator was sure that I would put on my monkey suit and dance for him like I always had in the past. But I really didn’t want to. I wanted to be Lua’s Drew now and forever. I just didn’t know if that was possible.

  After the senator’s call, I’d moped my way through life for another day or two before Pete’s fists slammed on my door. The way the door shook, I’d guess that he was banging with both hands.

  “Yo, shit nugget,” he hollered. “Open your tomb and let us in.”

  There was some scrambling behind the door and then came a gentler approach, Katie. “Drew, can we come in? I promise to make Pete behave less like a Neanderthal.”

  I stood, crossed the room, and opened the door, then without really looking at them, I went back to the chair at my desk. I heard the door click shut behind them and then the springs in my mattress as they sat down on the bed. For a few minutes neither said a word. I faced my computer. Sunlight poured in through the window and refracted burps of light danced over my fingers on the keyboard.

  Somberly, Pete said, “The guys are throwing a house party tonight.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “You should come downstairs,” Katie suggested.

  I shrugged. My silence followed by more silence.

  Katie sighed before she said, “Earlier this year, you told me that you were going to be my friend. Like for real. Like we were going to confide in each other. But you’re not doing that now, Drew. You’re bottling it all up. You’re locking us out again. And we’re here. We care about you and want to be here.”

  I lifted one hand from the keyboard and leaning on my elbow, I rubbed my fingers over my forehead and face. I didn’t really know what to say. How do you tell your friends that you think maybe one of your other friends might be a really bad guy, maybe even an evil guy? How do you tell them that maybe everything you know, everything they know, might be wrong? Can you say that you were all born into a life that breeds injustice and predators and that maybe you are the monsters? How do you make them understand that maybe you’ve always been the monsters, even if you didn’t mean to be?

  You can’t really. There’s no way to tell that to someone. They have to learn it themselves. Because I didn’t know how to explain all that I said the only thing I could, the thing at the center of it all.

  I didn’t look at them when I spoke. “I think maybe Conner raped Chrystal. I’m not sure. But I think it’s possible.” My voice sounded small, like it hurt me to say the words.

  “He did,” Katie said. “I’m sure of it.”

  I snapped my eyes up to look at her and watched Pete have the same reaction. Pete sputtered, “You’re… You’re what? You’re sure?” Then suddenly, I watched terror and anger pinch his features. “Why? Why are you sure, Kates?”

  She looked at him with calm eyes and put a hand on his upper thigh in a way that felt very intimate. In a tone similar to a whisper, she said, “Shh… it wasn’t me. He never hurt me.”

  I felt like I was watching their interactions with fresh eyes. There was something between Pete and Katie, something I hadn’t noticed before. In that moment, I would have bet my life that they were lovers but somehow in the pit of my stomach, I knew it was a lot more complicated than that. It was something that felt strong but also a bit sinister, like they were keeping each other’s dirty secrets. Initially, the idea that they were connected in a way that I couldn’t follow or wasn’t invited stung. But then I looked harder. And I felt deeper, like Lua had taught me and suddenly, I was pleased that they had each other to cling to. Expelling the air from my lungs, I pushed past what I was seeing between them and focused on the words that had come out of Katie’s mouth.

  “But you know he hurt someone?” I asked.

  Katie nodded. Then she said, “He has a reputation for being rough. No one I know has come right out and said he raped them, but I wouldn’t be caught dead in a room alone with him, and I certainly wouldn’t take a drink he offered me.”

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me that? I hang out with him all the time,” Pete snapped at her. This year, I’d been busy with S.A.F.E., so Pete had really become friends with Conner. They spent a lot of time partying together. And yet, one word from Katie and Conner was on the ropes. Pete paused and swallowed before he said, “And you. I hang out with him and you.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “Fuck, Kate. Does being around him make you feel unsafe?”

  I watched Katie squeeze the hand she still had resting on Pete’s thigh. “You were there. I was safe.”

  The image of Chrystal curled in a ball on the porch the other morning burned in my brain and my lunch rolled in my stomach.

  Conner raped Chrystal.

  And maybe others.

  I couldn’t stand in front of the cameras and say otherwise. I wasn’t that man anymore. I would never be him again. No matter what. And just like that, I knew that while Lua might never be mine, I would forever be the man she changed. Still flawed and messy, but always Lua’s Drew.

  50

  Lua

  I felt like someone had their fist clenched around my heart. At night, lying in the bed in my dorm room, my mind would fixate on the spilled lasagna. I see the slip and slide of the soggy noodles in slow motion, a physical incantation of the mess that was Drew and me, all gory and broken like a car accident. Not that I wished it on her but in some ways, I was thankful for Chrystal’s struggles. She didn’t sleep either. So we stayed up at night eating candy and microwave popcorn and binge-watching old sitcoms.

  Honestly, Chrystal wasn’t okay, but how could she be? The Chrystal I knew all year was gone, replaced by an edgier, less girly, less bitchy woman. This version of Chrystal cut off her hair one afternoon when I was in class. I’d convinced her to see the counselor that was part of our college health center and to go to a meeting for victims of sexual assault, but mostly she spent her time in class, in our room, or by my side. We ate all our meals together. She didn’t answer the calls from her sorority friends, and she asked me to stand in the bathroom when she was in the shower. I did because I couldn’t imagine feeling that kind of fear and I wanted to do everything I could to make her feel safe.

  Two weeks after the incident, Joe came to visit. I was worried about having a man in our space. But Chrystal had been privy to all my phone calls with Joe during the year and even knowing him by proxy she felt one hundred percent certain that he would be more stress relieving than anything else. And he was. On the day after he arrived, it was unusually warm for April. Joe put on denim overalls with no shirt, a gray newsboy hat, and an emerald green cotton knit cardigan with leather patches on the elbows. Clamoring about our ghastly, ghostly complexions, he dragged Chrystal and me out on to the quad and then proceeded to alternate between doing cartwheels and shouting legit compliments at the people passing by.

  “Dude, I love your shoes,” he hollered at a nerdy-looking guy wearing bright purple Doc Martens.

  “Is he always like this?” Chrystal asked. I still hadn’t gotten used to looking at her with her pixie-length hair. So, every glance in her direction left me a little baffled.

  Clearing my throat, I shrugged and answered, “Pretty much.”

  The nerdy guy smiled and called back to
Joe, “Thanks, man. Online, Doc Marten store.”

  “Good on ya. Wear ’em in good health.” Joe smiled.

  “I can’t decide if it’s annoying or infectious,” Chrystal noted.

  Joe and I answered at the same time, “Both.”

  Joe continued, explaining his perspective. “I am well aware that some find my personality irksome. But ultimately my brazen kindness is undeniable.”

  I teased, “Twenty some-odd years and I still find myself in the irked category.”

  Joe stuck his tongue out at me.

  Chrystal smirked at us. “You two ever date?” she asked.

  Again, in sync, we blurted, “No.”

  “Totally no,” I emphasized. “But we are soul mates, if you use the word mates in the British sense, friends connected on the soul level.”

  “Yes,” Joe confirmed in a British accent. “Soul mates, for life.”

  Chrystal nodded, but her eyes were looking past us. I turned to see what caught her attention and watched Drew’s friend Katie make a slow and measured approach to the blanket we had spread out on the lawn.

  Quietly because she was closer but with his same panache, Joe complimented Katie. “You look like the Breck Girl.”

  Katie smiled and then in that formal way she had, she said, “Thank you. I will assume that was a compliment.”

  Joe nodded. “It was. The Breck Girls were ads from the seventies, all American beauties that helped sell shampoo.”

  “Well then, I’ll return the note and tell you that you are also a beauty of sorts, the artsy rustic kind that women feel drawn to.”

  Joe blushed. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him blush before.

  But I didn’t pause to consider the moment. Instead, I shifted my position so that I was once again shielding Chrystal, protecting her from Katie’s possible onslaught.