by Elena Monroe
What did it say about Elizabeth if she always picked the type of guys with no morals?
Hunter followed us to the spot we always commandeered, laughing and telling Elizabeth about the coffee shops back home. I sat down, eyeing him in a way that looked right through his charms.
“I know what you’re doing. She’s not gonna run back to Oliver and paint the picture you’re trying to create.”
Everything about me seemed so sure—my arms folded against my chest, my stern eyes, and my proper posture.
His hand touched my knee, “You always see through me, princess.”
He was right. It was one of the few things that made being in limbo so easy. He was cellophane, and I saw right through him, while Oliver remained behind a thick fog.
I stiffened at his touch; I wasn’t uncomfortable anymore. We spent the whole break making out, just to wear out our limbs, hoping it would transfer to our minds. Neither of us wanted to think anymore; it was clear by our hungry kisses.
I wanted to look uncomfortable. I didn’t want Elizabeth to get the wrong idea or see this as a way to wedge herself between Oliver and I again.
“Don’t ‘princess’ me.”
He turned to Elizabeth, “I’ve been calling her princess since second grade when she stopped playing at recess and brought books instead. Clearly, she loves it.”
That was the bad part of your life following you halfway across the country: all the memories they’d force you to keep remembering.
Every time the door opened, my eyes shifted up in the hope I would see Oliver. I forced myself to stop looking after the fourth person. I pulled out my iPad and went to work on studying, while pushing my earbuds buds into my ears, blocking out Elizabeth and Hunter gabbing, no doubt about me. I had the music on low. LANY’s soft tones poured through the buds comfortably in my ears, as my foot bounced on its own accord. I didn’t expect a bag to drop at my feet, scaring me from my own distractions. Before I could stop myself, the sass gushed from my behind my lips: “What the fuck…?”
My whole body shook with a temperament I no longer recognized. I grasped the sides of my iPad, before I looked up at Oliver standing above me, looking down, disappointed.
I never texted him back, and I could see how Hunter sitting beside me wasn’t helping my case.
He was the version of himself he typically saved for everyone else.
He stood there silently, looking over the scene, and I knew Hunter won. He didn’t even have to try. I didn’t text Oliver back; I didn’t explain that I didn’t know about his transfer; and I was here next to his enemy.
“I texted you,” was all he muttered, with his lips tight.
Before I could even think long enough to string words together, he snapped again, “Forget it, Layla. Guess more shit went down on holiday break than I know about.”
His words weren’t jabs anymore; they were knives, eviscerating me. My mouth was open in some lame attempt to speak, but nothing came out.
Hunter leaned over into my space, my air, telling Oliver, “She had nothing to do with me transferring. Well, at least she didn’t give me the idea. What’s wrong, Oliver? Can’t face your demons?”
Was Hunter seriously implying he was his demon? Why was he talking at all? No one addressed him, and it was clear he won already.
I watched Oliver’s fists, eye level in front of me, curl up tightly. I stood up from the couch almost right against Oliver, still silent. There wasn’t a surefire way calm someone down who’s knee-jerk response was always fists. I just stood there in his sight, blocking Hunter, before I finally found the words.
“Can we talk about this? Privately? Please…”
My fingers touched his arm, and his gaze snapped the same way his words did. He brushed off my arm when he mumbled, “I need fucking coffee. I’m over it.”
Boys never wanted to talk. It was always fists or sex.
He wasn’t over anything. Honestly, neither was I, even with my new-found sass, my chest was still tight, and my breathing was labored from all the adrenaline.
The rest of the time at the coffee shop, he refused to look or talk to any of us. His headphones created another fucked up crown he wore on top of his head, as he sipped his coffee and wrote in a leather-bound notebook. His room was filled with them, all used up, sitting on a shelf on an empty wall. I had wondered what he put in them. I had been neglecting mine. There was almost too much to say and not enough time to figure out how.
I mentally made a note to stop being lazy and crack the spine, at least to doodle or write a short poem.
Classes resumed after our lunch break, and I leaned down to gain his attention. He knew I was there; he just didn’t care in that moment. The anger clouded his vision again.
I spoke anyways, “I’ll text you? I only have two more classes.” I should have skipped and waited for Hunter and Elizabeth to clear out so I could talk to him, alone. I hadn’t had a growth spurt in abandoning my morals yet. I was still bound by basic rules, like going to class. I let my hand touch his shoulder, just for a moment, before I turned away.
Elizabeth connected her arm with mine, and Hunter trailed behind us. She said so matter-of-factly, “That’s how he is. He was the same way about Leon; he never believed me and always started drama instead of talking about it.”
I stopped walking and spun on the ball of my foot, breaking the connection with Elizabeth and now facing Hunter. “Was this part of your plan?”
I was eerily calm; I expected this as soon as the news reached me. He was plotting and planning, which amounted into transferring into my life.
It wasn’t games; those required more than one player. This was trouble, his own brand.
He was fighting a smirk. “Princess, I don’t control how unstable your boyfriend gets about new students.”
I balled up my fist and hit him in the arm harder than I intended. Actually, I didn’t even think through the action before it was happening. He didn’t flinch, and the sting only made the smirk grow bigger.
“I swear to God, Hunter, if you keep pushing him… if you ruin this for me…” None of my words sounded right; none of them were threatening enough. Maybe it was me that was the problem, not the words.
My dad wasn’t happy that I transferred from an elite, even praised school, to a smaller one in Massachusetts. He was all about image and how the world saw him. He had been worshipped since his birth, and that was a vice he wasn’t giving up any time soon.
Every decision was based on how he’d be praised. It wasn’t a shock I was accepted into a school that was praised the same way.
I couldn’t tell him why, not that I would, so I came up with bullshit. Most of my responses were bullshit—a skill I perfected when authority figures kept putting me in plain rooms and questioning me until the truth was so mutilated it seemed easier to lie. At least I could follow a lie. The truth? That was a bitch to follow—too many variables of whys and hows.
This had to have been the easiest decision I ever made, invading her personal space and making her face the possibility of… me.
I was impossible.
I was guiltless.
I was corruption.
And what did the volatile want? To never be wrong and never have to share the glory.
It’s not that I didn’t like losing; it’s that I didn’t like sharing. Growing up a child in a broken home really created a breeding ground for territorial behavior. Everything I touched, I owned. I didn’t share, and nothing I gave away was free.
It’d be easier if my motivation was tainted by the spilled blood Ollie coaxed out of me, but it wasn’t. I grew up fighting in the heavy heat of Florida, wearing all black, and being snuffed out by the sun. He drew some blood? Big deal. I’ve been in juvie fights tougher than his wannabe bad-boy act.
He was in my way and forcing me to share.
The best way to get someone to stop sharing was to break the toy and kill their desire. That’s exactly what I was going to do to Layla: break her and put t
he pieces back together as just mine.
Holiday break felt foreign. I felt like I had outgrown our hometown, and nothing fit the same way. That was the problem with growing up that they never warn you about; adolescence never felt the same again—no matter how hard you tried to recapture it.
I guess I never really had an adolescence, not until I abandoned all the rules and started lying more regularly. However, that never gave me more freedom; it only condemned me to the Hillsborough Juvenile Detention Center… regularly. By the time I was in high school, I had already been twice. Suffice it to say, my divorced, constantly-feuding parents knew me less than the staff at Hillsborough.
I lived too dangerously, while Layla lived too safely.
We weren’t meant to be.
We weren’t fate.
We were a challenge—one I was accepting, because I never did anything the easy way.
Something changed; she wasn’t just the girl soberly judging the rest of us for having fun anymore.
She was hiding the same way she always did when I spotted her at Adrian’s annual party. It showed, that he hadn’t grown up any, and kept trying to relive the past with each weekend. I’m sure Florida State raised the stakes, introducing drugs and even more eager girls he could use as party favors. I didn’t want to be there, but my boys back home convinced me it’d be different. The only difference was us.
I only actively made waves when I had to—when pushed the exact right away and nothing less. It took me half a dozen short stays at Hillsborough to figure out how to control my anger, and even then it was a chore. This party wouldn’t be fun; it was a business transaction—a chance to sell a lot of party favors.
I could tell she wasn’t just hiding from everything, but from someone—no doubt Miguel. He had a crush on her since second grade, but he was too much of a pussy to do anything about it and she was too nice to reject him straight up.
I took the opportunity to help her out in return for a favor down the road.
That night changed everything for us.
I wasn’t just Hunter—the bad guy, the villain, the assaulter—but I was someone she trusted in a moment of need. We spent the entire party hidden in Adrian’s room. It started the same way it did that night, except we covered much more this time. It moved too quickly from my lips attacking her neck, to a heated argument about Ollie’s intentions, to ending with her crying herself to sleep tucked into me, like she needed protecting.
I felt it too, the instinctual need to protect her.
All through high school, I kept my eye on her, unconvinced her friends would put her before a bottle, sex, or their own needs. She was in the middle of trouble, and I protected her in my own way, in the shadows.
The next morning, she woke me up by gently pushing my chest and asking me to take her home. We stopped for breakfast instead, and every day blurred into one long night together.
The only markers were the amount of marks I left on her body. Each night I added to the collection, sucking at the sensitive parts of her skin until they bruised. Her expression permanently stuck on conflicted, each time innocently watching TV turned into more. She’d plead under her breath and beg me to help her forget. Without substances, it was the only solution I had. She wasn’t wearing cotton panties anymore, and I noticed. She was more confident than the last time I was between her legs, almost unrecognizable.
I didn’t ever initiate anything, not after her confessing she thought I raped her. I knew I wasn’t Captain America, but hearing that killed any drive to get laid—or worse labeled me a rapist, on top of every other label I’d been smacked with.
Rape? Really?
That night’s memories replayed in my mind—always in the background, always scanning for clues, since she said it out loud a year later.
We were both drunk, not tipsy or buzzed, but drunk. I was waiting for the bravery to fade that night. I saw how she always looked at me, like something she couldn’t have. Each time I got dismissed from class, her mouth fell open, wanting to speak up for me, but she couldn’t get the words out. Every lunch period I ate while sitting on top of my car balancing a blunt between my fingers I’d catch her gaze.
That night, I was waiting for her to slap me or want to take it back. That moment never happened. I was already moving as slowly as I could, but we made it to the finish line anyways. Our naked bodies rubbing, both vibrating against our own excitement. Her confession of being a virgin didn’t surprise me, and when I fished the condom out of my wallet, well, it was already happening.
In the daylight, every sin looked different. With the light brought shame, or it was supposed to. My shame didn’t come with the light, but a pair of bright blue with a hint of green eyes, looking at me like I was in fact the Devil incarnate.
Both of us saw it completely different.
I even opened up to her after she witnessed the dynamics of my broken home life. The new wife of my father, not much older than I was, pretended to be a mom, when really she’d rather be shopping with my dad’s credit card. Thankfully, my younger sister lived with my mom—the equally frustrating, yet more stable parent. I only lived with my dad to create some space in being a bad influence on my sister and to stop scaring the herd of boyfriends my mom went through.
Layla became a constant. Without her, I felt myself slipping back into destruction and lies. I was back on the NYU campus for a whole two weeks, and I had already landed myself in the dean’s office, more than once, for being an asshole. It wasn’t a true offense, but if enough people complain, I guess they call in the big guns.
College wasn’t some magic pill. I wasn’t going to change who I was because I was paying tuition to learn the same type of shit. If anything, that only made me more agitated with the expectations of change.
It didn’t take me long to realize holiday break was a fluke or biding our time. She was healing me just as much as I was helping her to heal in the Post-Ollie Era.
So, I transferred to Amherst on a whim, because of the slightest possibility of her and a nagging feeling to protect her.
Her boyfriend threw a tantrum in the coffee shop, like an over-privileged bitch and directed all his anger at her instead of me, like I intended. This put a flaw in my design. I wasn’t worried about them already making up; that was child’s play when me being present set someone off that much. He really had no idea how to play this game with me. I hadn’t even utilized Elizabeth to my advantage yet.
She looked at me with hungry eyes. I remember her eyes being red and filled with too many tears last time I saw her. I was pretty sure she was mentally devouring every inch of me.
Fresh meat, wearing the same intoxicating scent of mischief. Ollie’s ex. Layla’s new best friend.
I wondered what B’s position on Ollie was. On break, she held back her own vicious tongue, agreeing with whatever Layla felt. If she hated him in that moment, then so did B. If she missed him, so did B. If Layla doubted him, so did B. It was without a doubt the weakest display of friendship I had ever seen. None of my boys would lie just to agree with me. None of my boys needed constant attention, coddling, or praise like B did.
Elizabeth was his ex, yet Layla’s new bestie. It reeked of desperation to keep the past close.
Did she hate him? Did she still love him? Did she hate Layla?
There was a lot Elizabeth would eventually tell me, alone in a room, after feeding her hungry eyes just enough for her secrets to spill over.
Layla pleaded with me to not cause trouble, but that was the one thing I couldn’t give her.
Ollie wore everything on the outside, no matter how much he tried to seem guarded or aloof. He hadn’t mastered burying it just under the surface, and this was exactly how I was going to ruin him.
The whole time he stomped his feet I watched his every move, giving away all his secrets. I had sold enough drugs to notice certain agitations of a user.
Did Layla know Oliver was using again?
I could finally inhale once Hunter, Layla, an
d Elizabeth left. They both greeted him like a new student they saw potential friendship in, and they continued their unimportant conversations even with me present. I thought I had made my position clear on this asshole.
Did they all forget he raped my girlfriend?
That wasn’t a sin that belonged in this group.
We were all bad, but only in our own minds. Out in the big, bad world, we were regularly tortured people with too many sins and not enough Hail Mary’s. Hunter was something worse—someone only an exorcism could cure.
I texted Layla a few more times after she left, and I knew Hunter would follow right behind her. This wasn’t my first run in with him, and I couldn’t figure out how he gained the same title as me: “bad boy”. I kept thinking how easy Florida must be if Hunter was what they produced. He barely came up with impressive comebacks or even fought back when I put force behind my fist crashing into face. He was a walking contradiction.
Layla didn’t text back. Great… she must have been mad me. I smirked at my screen empty with any replies, knowing she was giving me a taste of my own medicine. The same way I would go silent and expertly avoid her.
I pulled out my book from my overly worn bag, The Thirteen Deaths of Heath Stein. He kept planning his death and failing. It sounded like a great metaphor, yet I was expecting it to turn into some kind of romance a few chapters in. She’d be his savior or some bullshit. It was realistic, but always out of grasp. No one ever wrote about keeping love, only finding it and keeping hope alive.
The book balanced on my legs as I pressed play on my phone, finally releasing the music to my headphones. I wasn’t at peace, but a good book normally pushed my thoughts the same way a good drive cleaned out the cobwebs.
It wasn’t immediately that Hunter sat on the couch across from the broken-in chair I sat in. I was a few chapters deep, getting to know Heath Stein, when I let my eyes look up, without my face moving, half expecting some freshman unknowingly sitting in a no parking zone. Instead, I saw Hunter sprawled out like he was intimate with the couch, this coffee shop, my school… I suddenly felt like the stranger in this situation. I closed my eyes slowly, hoping I was just letting my anger somehow manifest my worst nightmares and he wasn’t truly there. I opened my eyes, and he was still there, just looking at me silently.
