This was how the semester would continue. This was how things would go.
One day at a time, that’s how I had to take it. That was easier said than done, though.
When it came to life, everything was easier said than done.
Chapter Four – Levi
I didn’t go back to her dorm on Monday. After my little tiff with Dean, I was trying to tread lightly where I could. I didn’t want to make any more big scenes. As it was, Dean would be on the lookout for me now, so I had to press the brakes and cool off. Focusing on Kelsey would not help me cool off.
Plus, I didn’t want her to think I was some stalker or something.
I wasn’t. Not really.
I planned on giving Kelsey some space, maybe for a week or two, but that first Tuesday, that first lab after the weekend she spent away, I knew something was wrong with her. It wasn’t hard to figure out. She practically spaced out, she and her partner standing near a lab station near the windows in the back for most of the class. Though I was on the other side of the classroom with my partner, I could tell she hardly spoke. Her body was stiff, yet slumped. Her full lips were drawn in a line, and she spent most of her time staring out of the window.
It was a miserable fall day, not the kind of weather you’d want to gaze longingly at.
How the hell could I give her space when she looked so downtrodden? So depressed and sad and—fuck—lonely? I didn’t want Kelsey to ever feel those things; I wanted to make her better, to help those lips curl into a sly smile again.
It was as the period went on that I lost myself in my thoughts. What if her weekend was terrible? What if something happened to her while she was gone? I’d watched her at the Sigma Chi party, and I knew she was a girl who was comfortable at parties and drinking, even if she was by herself. What if…
No, I wouldn’t let my mind go there.
Once lab was over and everyone was packing up and leaving, trying to hurry to beat the rain that was surely going to fall, I stopped doing everything, my head turned toward the back of the class, where Kelsey still sat, staring out of the window. She and I were the only ones left in the classroom, and even though there was only fifteen feet between us, it felt like so much more.
My bag hung loosely over my shoulder as I quietly got up from my seat, slowly making my way toward her, inching closer like I was afraid she’d snap and bite me, a wild, feral animal I knew better than to trust.
Fucking stupid. If anyone shouldn’t be trusted here, it was obviously me.
I stood near her, saying, “Hey.”
My voice immediately snapped Kelsey out of whatever funk she was in; she blinked, coming back to herself, and immediately grabbed her bag, doing her damnedest to ignore me. If she wanted to pretend to not hear me, she could go right ahead. I knew those ears of hers heard me, and I knew I still affected her, one way or another.
She got up and walked out, slinging her arms through the straps on her bag. She did not walk with haste, but she didn’t exactly take her time. Kelsey was doing her best to ignore me, but that…that wasn’t what I wanted.
I walked beside her in the hall, saying darkly, “You know, common courtesy says when someone is trying to talk to you, you talk back.”
Kelsey’s feet abruptly stopped, and she turned those big, brown eyes to me. Heat crept along me; it seemed she still held power over me, even though we weren’t together. Fine by me, because I wanted her back. I needed her.
“Can we just…not do this today?” Kelsey spoke, hardly sounding like herself. She sounded so downtrodden it actually pained me to listen to her speak. It pained me because I immediately wanted to know what was wrong, how I could help make it better.
Stupid, because I never made anything better. I always made things worse.
My feet stopped, and I stood staring at her, my head tilted down. Had she always been so small? She was on the shorter side, and normally she had more than enough attitude to make up for it, but this…this didn’t feel like her.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound too pathetically desperate.
Me. Pathetic and desperate. That was a first for me. Kelsey was forcing me to have a whole lot of firsts—another first? Me wanting her to be my last. I couldn’t imagine any other girl with me but her. She was it for me.
All Kelsey did was shake her head and head to the stairwell, leaving me alone in the hall, save for a few other stragglers who took their good old time in leaving their classrooms. I watched her go, eyes studying the way she walked.
And her ass. I never could resist that ass. Watching her walk away was…not something I should enjoy so much, but I did.
I let her go. What else could I do?
I let her go, though my mind was on her every second of every hour until I saw her again during the next lab. This time, I said nothing to her. This time, I merely watched her. She was not acting like herself still, which worried me. I’d actually lost sleep over her, and I hated that she held this power over me.
When this lab let out, I let her go, not saying a single word to her. Unlike the previous class, however, I didn’t let her go alone. I followed her. A bit stalkery, yes, but I needed to prove my point.
What was my point?
I wasn’t giving up. I wanted to make amends. I needed to do everything I could to make this girl forgive me for past mistakes and make her believe that I wasn’t going to repeat them. Everything with Mel? Yeah, I fucked up, and if I could go back in a time machine and change what I did, I would. But everything with Kelsey? None of it was a lie. Not a single thing I said to her was a lie.
It wasn’t like I expected to fall for her, but that’s precisely what I did.
Love. I fucking loved this girl, and I wouldn’t give up until she realized it herself.
Kelsey was ten feet in front of me, heading down the wide walkway that led to the front doors of her dorm building, when she abruptly stopped and flipped to face me. Her lips wore a frown, and her brown eyes were cold.
“What are you doing, Levi?”
Levi. God, I’d give anything for this girl to call me Blue one more time.
“I thought it was obvious,” I said, both loving and hating the way my body reacted to being so close to hers. I’d give anything to be able to sweep her off her feet, pin her against the brick wall of that building, and show her just how badly I needed her. I would shower every inch of her skin with kisses, and when she thought she could take no more, I would keep going. She’d never had a lover like me before, and I’d never had a girl like her.
Couldn’t she see we were meant to be? We were as fated as fate could be when it came to humans.
She told me that I’d ruined her? Fuck that. She ruined me. She ruined me every which way. I hardly recognized myself anymore: quick to anger, almost obsessive, relentless. Kelsey had driven me mad.
“I’m following you,” I told her.
Kelsey eyed me up suspiciously. “Why?”
“Because you won’t talk to me.” The answers to the questions she asked were obvious; she should’ve known them without the need to speak.
“Don’t you think that if I wanted to talk to you, I would?” she posed her own question, taking a step toward me, closing the little bit of distance that sat between us. Her hands practically curled around the straps of her backpack, so hard her knuckles were white. “Don’t you think that if I wanted to see your face, I would make time to?”
I said nothing, because I knew nothing I could say would make her see reason. Not yet. She was too blinded by whatever rage lingered…although she still seemed off. She acted tough like usual, but behind that front, I saw it—the sad girl behind the mask.
“I don’t want to see you, or talk to you, or even be in the same room as you,” Kelsey went on, her words hurled like knives. Knives whose sharp edges stung, but I was a stronger man than she thought. Nothing she could say would make me— “If I wanted to get back with you, don’t you think I would’ve stopped myself from sleeping with so
meone else?”
I took back my earlier statement. That one…that question made me stop. That question made all of my thoughts vanish. Never before had I been so dumb-founded, so shocked, so…so ticked off.
“What?” I managed to say, speaking the word as if it was a swearword. What equaled fuck in that single-word sentence.
“Oh, yeah. I fucked someone else. Some rich boy,” Kelsey went on, and even though I knew she was saying it so blatantly to purposefully hurt me, to get me to stop chasing her, even though I knew I shouldn’t let her words get to me, they did. Of course they did. “Some rich boy with a fat wallet and an even bigger dick.”
My lips thinned, and it was hard for me to breathe. Suddenly the air tasted so stale and stagnant.
Kelsey shrugged, her voice raising, allowing every other student walking by to hear each word she said, “So what now, Levi? You still going to follow me around like a lost puppy, or are you finally going to realize that I never want to see your face again?” When I said nothing, when I only stared at her, she added, “I could go fuck a few more people, if that’ll help get it into your thick skull.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying.
“What?” Kelsey plowed on. “Just thought I’d offer, since I’m so nice and all. Any one of your friends who you’d like to see me ride? Might as well tape it, since there’s already one out there. I could be the next Kardashian, making my way in this world one fuckboy at a time.”
“Shut up,” I muttered, a muscle in my jaw tensing. It took everything in me to simply say those two words and not a whole lot more. My mind reeled, and I…I needed time to process. I needed…
Well, I thought I needed Kelsey, but with the way she was acting, she didn’t need me.
“Shut up?” Kelsey repeated, taking yet another step closer to me—dangerous territory, considering the conversation we were having. The most dangerous territory there was. “I’m finally talking to you, and you want me to shut up? Make up your fucking mind—”
She stood so close now, so close I was able to see the golden flecks in her brown eyes, the bit of color in their otherwise dark depths. Those eyes were not the eyes of someone who wanted a fight. Those eyes were the eyes of someone who just wanted to give up, not in. I knew it then: this was Kelsey trying to push me away, Kelsey saying these hurtful things to get me to stop. Whether or not they were true remained to be seen, but…
Fuck. This girl couldn’t help by making things easy, could she?
I shouldn’t have expected more from her. She always made things difficult. Difficult, I was pretty fucking sure, was her middle name. Mine? Stubborn. Stubborn and rash.
I had quick, fleeting thoughts about grabbing her and kissing her, wordlessly showing her that I meant everything I said, that she was never a lie to me, but those thoughts disappeared rapidly when I imagined her with someone else. Another guy. A rich guy with, in her words, a fat wallet and a bigger dick.
It was supremely difficult, but I held myself back from her. I held myself back, muttering, “I’ve made up my mind. It’s time for you to make up yours.” I said nothing else, spinning to walk away. For once, I was the one walking away from her. For once, she was the one watching me leave.
For once, I hoped Kelsey regretted the words she’d spoken.
“My mind is made up,” she called after me, annoyed, though I steadily ignored her. I ignored her, focusing on dragging one foot in front of the other, my back straight even though I’d just heard the worst news of my life.
Kelsey, with someone else. Kelsey, with another guy. It was like that night she’d gone with Grady to his car, only different because I wasn’t there to intercede, to stop her, to make her realize that she couldn’t go giving herself to some other guy when she was already mine.
Mine. She was mine. Why the fuck couldn’t that girl realize it?
Chapter Five – Kelsey
By the time I told Levi that my mind was already made up, he was gone, a figure in the distance. Probably a good thing, because what I said next would’ve only hurt him more. “I love you.” These three words I didn’t shout, because I didn’t want anyone else to know, especially Levi.
God, the look on his face when I told him about being with someone else…
I was a bitch. The world’s biggest, right about now. I’d said all that to hurt him—but hey, at least I told him the truth. I was with another dude, he just didn’t need to know that I hated myself for being with that dude. Nope. As far as Levi was concerned, I had fun over the weekend. I got my rocks off and my socks off by some rich boy whose dick shot money-laced cum.
The nitty-gritty details of the truth were so much less satisfying, but like I said, Levi didn’t need to know. He most certainly did not need to know I’d slept with one of my best friend’s crushes.
No. I’d made a mistake, and for the first time in my life, I regretted it. My life had been full of partying and mistakes, but this? There was no coming back from this. I’d said those things to hurt him, to push him away, hoping that he would finally just give up. Like, okay, he was persistent, I’d give him that, but that was about the only thing I could give him.
Levi and I couldn’t be together. There was too much baggage all around, and I…
Clearly, I only fucked up when it came to relationships. Why bother trying to have one if I was only going to mess it up past the point of no return anyways?
I did love Levi. Whatever weird part of me that still had feelings for him, even after sleeping with Sawyer, broke when I watched him walk away. In all of our encounters, in all of our arguments and bickering, I didn’t think he ever was the first one to walk.
I pushed him to walk first. This was what I got. This was what I wanted, even though it wasn’t. What I really wanted, of course, was Levi, but that was a pipe dream for a perfect world. The world we lived in was too messy, too burdened with past infractions. The real world sucked ass.
The sky let loose a single drop of water, and I felt the first raindrop on the tip of my nose. The cold water droplet startled me, and I slowly glanced up at the grey sky; soon enough this sky would be a permanent fixture. Sunny days were few and far between in wintertime, and since it was November now…
Yep. Winter was definitely coming.
Here winter meant the occasional heavy snowfall, but also freezing rain, sleet, ice, and hail. Yeah, fun stuff when the weather couldn’t make up its damned mind.
When another drop fell onto my cheek, I lowered my face and spun to hurry towards the sliding doors of the dorm building. Not even two seconds after I was safely under the roof of the glass vestibule, the sky let out, a downpour in a matter of moments. I knew Levi was still out there, somewhere, getting drenched.
The saddest part was that I still cared.
I wanted to warm his bones, tell him that I was sorry, that I didn’t mean it—even though I did sleep with someone else—and promise him that I’d never do it again.
That…that would require me to be a better person than I was. I wasn’t a good person; I thought we all knew that by now. The only thing I was good at was pushing people away and pretending my problems didn’t exist. Not skills that would take me far in life, but whatever.
My feet were sluggish as they drew me to the elevators, and I got on whichever one opened first. I hit the button near the number three, and I leaned my side on the railing as the doors slid closed. I had some papers to work on and do research for; this weekend I’d probably spend in the library.
Was it sad that I was already planning out my weekend? Probably not as sad as it was that I was planning for it to be slow and miserable and full of work. Not a Kelsey weekend at all.
I needed to step away from those Kelsey weekends. No more losing myself in the arms of someone else. That was self-destructive behavior I needed to stop. It wouldn’t help me go far in life, and if there was one thing I wanted to do, it was be better than my parents. Prove them wrong. Show them…show them that I wasn’t going to be like them.
>
I was deathly afraid of that, you know.
To be married for more than twenty years, only to call it quits. Just…why? No, I didn’t want to be like them. I wanted to be happy, and in order to be happy, I had to focus on something other than Levi, something other than the mistakes I made while at Hillcrest. I had to buckle down and prove everyone wrong—even myself.
Did I think I was capable of actually doing it? I didn’t know. Only time would tell.
One thing was for certain. I had to get through this, one day at a time.
When the elevator doors opened, I headed down the hall to my room. Mel wasn’t there yet, which I thought a little odd, but I supposed normally after lab I swung by the union to pick up some food. The funny thing about all of this shit? I wasn’t hungry. The stress was making me lose my appetite and probably a couple of pounds.
Oh, well. I’d get my appetite back eventually. It wasn’t like I’d ever be as thin as Mel, anyways.
I threw my bag on my bed, collapsing on my desk chair. I laid my arms over each other and leaned my head down, my forehead on my arm. My eyes closed, and I felt my body trembling slightly.
Fuck. What the hell did I do? Would things ever get better? I knew people made mistakes all the time, but this…there was no coming back from this, and honestly, I wasn’t interested in pursuing anything with anyone else on this campus. It’d make for a boring few years, but hey, if I picked myself up from this and guarded myself well, that was my prerogative.
Mel arrived an hour or so later, her raincoat wet. Unlike some people, she prepared for the weather outside. Not like me; I just slapped on a hoodie, some sneakers, and called it a day. In the wintertime, I froze my ass off usually—but I hated big coats. Hated them with a burning passion that could only be matched by my current state of self-loathing. The big, ugly, puffy things. They seriously looked hideous, and I hated every single time one of my parents forced me to dress in one growing up.
Now that I was an adult, almost out on my own, I was giving a huge metaphorical fuck you to those big, puffy coats.
Making Mistakes: A College Bully Romance (Playing Games Book 2) Page 3
