The Year We Fell Down

by Sarina Bowen

  My heart was fit to burst, for a dozen conflicting reasons. Fooling around with Hartley had been amazing, and God knows I’d wondered. But lying in his arms was the best thing ever, and I couldn’t say so. I love you, Hartley. Those words were on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed them down. Instead, I said: “Thank you for that selfless act of research on my behalf.”

  He cleared his throat. “You’re welcome. And my dick thanks you for letting him play along.”

  My heart gave a squeeze, because those were not the words of love I craved. So I made a little joke, because that’s what I do when things get tense. “Do all guys refer to their dicks in the third person?”

  Hartley stared up at the ceiling, his gorgeous face thoughtful. “Pretty much.”

  We lay there quietly, our heart rates returning to normal. Hartley stroked my hair against his chest, and I tried not to worry about what would happen next.

  “I need to ask you a question,” I said. Hearing my words, his face took on a wary expression, so I hurried on. “Hartley, what is your shit to shovel? Because you never say.”

  He chuckled. “You noticed that, huh?”

  “I did.”

  He shifted then, turning carefully onto his stomach, folding his arms underneath his chin. We were no longer touching. “Thing is, Callahan, I don’t think I can talk about that tonight.”

  “Really,” I said, flipping over onto my stomach too. “So all my shit is on the table, but not yours?” That didn’t seem fair. “You’re all up in my business…” Then I clapped a hand in front of my mouth. Even so, a bark of laughter escaped.

  “What?”

  I put both hands in front of my face. “I can’t believe I just said you were all up in my business.”

  Hartley snorted. And then the two of us were shaking with laughter, side by side. And it was just like any other night’s joke, except naked.

  Then, from the common room, I heard Dana open the outside door, arriving home. Hartley and I glanced at each other, clapping our hands in front of our mouths. As Dana moved about the common room, switching the television off, we shook with silent laughter. We didn’t stop until finally I heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. Even then, we were still gasping for air, and fighting off the rippled aftershocks of uncontrollable mirth.

  Soon it became very quiet in my suite. Dana had gone to bed.

  Hartley took a deep breath. “I think that’s my cue to sneak out,” he said. Slowly, he sat up, found his boxers and wiggled into them.

  No! I wanted to shout. But I held my tongue, and found his T-shirt, passing it to him. I pulled my own over my head. I didn’t want him to watch me putting on my other clothes, because it was such an awkward, hopping process. So I pulled the blanket at the foot of my bed up over me instead.

  “Before you go, could you, um, push my chair into my room? I’m kind of stranded here.”

  His eyes opened wide. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

  I smiled, and hopefully it was convincingly untroubled. “No biggie. I didn’t need to go anywhere for a little while there.”

  He blew out a breath, and I could feel it — that was the moment things got weird.

  Hartley hopped into the living room, retrieved his second crutch, and then shoved my chair at intervals into the bedroom. When he made it all the way back to me, he sat down on the edge of the bed. “Goodnight, Callahan,” he said, one hand dropping to my knee where it lay under the blanket.

  I couldn’t feel his touch, but I wanted to.

  “Goodnight, Hartley,” I whispered.

  He leaned back then, giving me a quick kiss on the nose. His face was serious, almost sad. “See you at brunch tomorrow?”

  “Yeah,” I said as he rose to go. Because that won’t be weird at all.

  After the door closed again, I lay there for a long time, missing him.

  Chapter Fourteen: Give Us a Kiss

  — Corey

  There was a polite knock on my door the next morning. Dana’s voice said, “Um, Corey? Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” I said, yawning. It was getting late, but I couldn’t make myself face the day.

  She walked into my room, looking around as if she expected to see something different. “So…what the hell happened?”

  Uh oh.

  “Happened?” I asked, my face twitching into an unavoidable guilty smile.

  She rolled her eyes. “Spill it, you. Because you are so busted.” Dana flounced over to my bed and sat down at the foot of it. “When I came home last night, one of Hart-throb’s crutches was on the living room floor, and now it’s gone. Was he in here?”

  I put my face in my hands. “For a little while.”

  Dana grabbed my hands and pulled them down. “Seriously? His girlfriend blew him off, and so he came across the hall to fool around with you? And where is he now?”

  I exhaled. It all sounded so wrong coming out of her mouth. “That’s one way to put it.”

  “Is there another way? Is he breaking up with her, or does he expect you to be his fuck buddy?”

  “Dana! It isn’t quite as bad as that. You like Hartley.”

  She looked sad. “I do like him. And I think he…” she flopped back onto my bed. “I don’t know what to think. The way he looks at you sometimes…” she shook her head. “I just don’t trust him. It’s like there’s a good Hartley and an evil one, and they’re always at war. I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But there’s a layer to the story that you don’t know.”

  She sat up quickly. “What?”

  “Well,” I swallowed. “I confessed something to him a few weeks ago, and…”

  She stared at me, her dark eyes searching mine. “What is it?”

  I took a deep breath, and I told her. Most of it, anyway.

  “So…” she rubbed her temples. “That’s the weirdest, most romantic story I’ve ever heard. He talked you into fooling around, so you could find out if you can…?”

  I nodded.

  “…and it worked?”

  My face was getting hot. “Did it ever.”

  Dana hooted with laughter. “Oh my God. And then what?”

  I took a deep breath. “Then he teared up. And then he left.”

  Her eyes were the size of saucers. “I don’t even know what to make of that. But I do know you’re in trouble.”

  “Why?” I whined, although I already knew the answer.

  “Because you’ve just exchanged one heartache for another. Now you know how good it can be, but you want it with him. Do you have any idea what will happen now?”

  It was the question I’d been avoiding since I opened my eyes that morning. “I think nothing happens now. Stacia will come back, and Hartley and I will pretend it never happened.” I swallowed. “It’s going to be awful, isn’t it?”

  Dana nodded. “A hundred kinds of awful.” She looked at the ceiling. “You know, his mother asked me about you two.”

  “Seriously?” I leaned forward. “What did she say?”

  “We were doing a few dishes, and she wanted to know if you two were,” Dana made her fingers into quotation marks, “‘a couple.’ When I said no, she looked really disappointed. Then she said, ‘for a smart boy, he can be such an idiot.’ It’s not just me who thinks there’s something there.”

  I shook my head. “His mother really hates Stacia, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “If you say so.” Dana stood up. “Let’s go to brunch.”

  “Only if you promise not to smile at Hartley. I’ll die if he thinks I spilled my guts already.”

  “It will not be easy. But for you, I will try.”

  Nervously, I followed Dana to the Beaumont dining hall forty minutes later. I’d stalled, hoping that he wouldn’t still be there. So we got there quite late, and Dana grumbled when she learned that there wasn’t any more smoked salmon for our bagels.

  Wouldn’t you know, I spotted Hartley right away. Only one of t
he big tables was still occupied, and it was packed with hockey players, Hartley at the center of it all. Before I could look away, he gave me a quick wink.

  “I saw that,” Dana whispered.

  “Stop,” I muttered. “Let’s sit over by the window.”

  Dana slid our tray onto a banquet, and I set down the newspaper crossword I’d been smart enough to bring with me. “One across is ‘half pint,’” I said. “I’d say a cup, but it’s four letters.”

  “I grew up with the metric system,” Dana complained. “What’s the next one?” She bit into her bagel.

  “A modern resident of Elba,” I said. “Six letters.”

  “Syria!” Dana announced.

  “Syrian,” I corrected. “Now we’re cooking with gas.” I scribbled in the clue. When I looked up at Dana, I could tell that she was eavesdropping. “What?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “I wonder what he told all of them?” she nudged her chin toward Hartley’s table. “When they asked how his birthday night was? You don’t think he’d tell them about…”

  I shook my head. “He wouldn’t brag.”

  Dana nodded slowly. “You’re right. I don’t quite understand what it is between you two, but I can’t see him gossiping like that.” She sipped her coffee. “He cares too much.”

  Not necessarily, I thought, picturing the way he’d snuck out. “Dana,” I dropped my voice. “He won’t tell because nobody brags about hooking up with the girl in the wheelchair.”

  She set down her mug. “Corey! You don’t really mean that.”

  Of course I meant it, one hundred percent. Guys bragged about bedding trophy girls. Girls like Stacia. Even as I formed this thought, Stacia’s face appeared under the arched doorway to the hall. The dismay must have shown in my expression, because Dana turned around to look over her shoulder.

  If possible, the girl was even more stunning than I’d remembered her. Her long, honey-colored hair fell in curtains down her shoulders. Her model-perfect face was made up in a way that was just not seen in the dining hall on a Saturday morning during finals. She wore a clingy black turtleneck sweater over a plaid wool skirt cut to mid thigh. Her high-heeled black suede boots reached way up, over her knees. Between the boots and the skirt stretched a good six inches of smooth, creamy leg.

  Her perfect fucking legs.

  The moment that Stacia found Hartley, her face lit up, and she began to prance across the dining hall toward him. His table fell silent, and I couldn’t look away. Beaming, she walked around behind his chair. “Well, give us a kiss, Hartley,” she said in an affected voice, which proved she knew she was the center of attention.

  Into the silence, Hartley mimicked, “Give us a kiss, Hartley. What, there’s more than one of you to service now?” His friends laughed.

  Then, as everyone watched, he pushed back his chair and stood. Stacia took his face in her hands and kissed him full on the mouth.

  And he kissed her back.

  While his friends hooted, he cupped his hands on her face and closed his eyes. It went on and on.

  The world went a little fuzzy at the edges until Dana pinched my hand. “Corey,” she said, her voice low. “Breathe.”

  But it was difficult, because I felt as if a vice was squeezing my chest.

  “Should we just go?” she asked me.

  I forced myself to look only at Dana. “No.” It would be too obvious if I got up and bolted from the room. I wished I could sink into the floor instead.

  Dana took the newspaper and studied it. “We need an eight letter word for a boat trip. Starts with a C.”

  “Um,” I forced a deep breath into my lungs. “Cruise. Cruising? No — crossing.”

  “That’s it,” she said. “And the G at the end starts a Greek food.”

  “Gyros,” I said automatically.

  “You’re on a roll.”

  I gripped my coffee cup. “I didn’t think.” What I meant was, I didn’t think it would hurt this much.

  “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Deep breaths.”

  Over at Hartley’s table, they’d found Stacia a chair. I could hear her whiny voice. “But Hartley, you said you’d take me to the Christmas Ball.”

  “And you said you were coming on my birthday,” he returned, humor in his voice.

  “Interesting choice of words,” Bridger put in.

  “You don’t have to dance,” she said. “You are only there to look good in a suit.”

  “Well, in that case,” he said, his voice humming out the same patient, half-amused smirk I’d heard on move-in day as he dealt with her. He spoke to her the way an indulgent father speaks to his little girl.

  It was not at all the way he sounded talking to me.

  “So where were you, anyway?” he asked her.

  “I would have come up from New York,” she said, “but Marco had theater tickets.”

  “Who did?” Bridger cut in.

  “My ride.”

  “Interesting choice of words,” Hartley said. “But you know, they’ve invented these things called trains…”

  “I thought of that,” she sighed. “But I had so much luggage.”

  “Now that I believe,” Hartley chuckled.

  Across from me, Dana just shook her head. “The evil one wins.”

  “Okay,” I said, pressing my palms against the ancient wood of the table. “I’m ready to go now.”

  Chapter Fifteen: The Ass Crack of the Year

  — Corey

  When I told Dana that I was ready to leave, I wasn’t kidding around. I needed to put a meaningful distance between Hartley and my crumbling heart. Fortunately, Christmas vacation was about to hand me the perfect excuse.

  But first, exams. I hadn’t wheedled and begged my way to Harkness to blow it during the first semester.

  For the next two days, I worked my butt off in the main library. From a study carrel deep in the stacks, it was impossible to listen for Hartley’s voice in the hallway, or wonder whether he’d turn up to play RealStix. I ate take-out salads from the coffee shop and studied like a maniac.

  Even my hope fairy took up the cause, fluttering between chapters of my calculus textbook, spouting theorems. She put on a tiny pair of glasses and perched on the lid of my travel coffee mug. Even better, she didn’t mention Hart-throb’s name. Not even once.

  I turned in my take-home exams early, and then turned my attention to economics. When I sat for the exam on the morning of the tenth, I was so well prepared that having Hartley seated beside me wasn’t too much of a distraction. I finished before the time allotted. When I wheeled out of the exam, he looked up.

  I gave him a quick wave, because it hurt to look at him directly. And then I was gone.

  He texted me fifteen minutes later. Celebratory lunch at Commons? On my way over there. But I didn’t even reply to the text, because I was already on the phone with my mother.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, her voice breathless.

  It wasn’t. Not really. But I would never admit it. “I’m fine. But I’m done early, so I changed my ticket.”

  “But what about the Christmas Ball? Your brother always loved that.”

  “Well,” I said, “it turns out that not everybody sticks around for it.”

  “Okay, Sweetie.” Her voice was uneasy. She wrote down my new flight number and time. And I went back to my room and packed.

  By the time the Christmas Ball got underway, I was in the air over the Great Lakes.

  Being home for three weeks was boring, but boring was just what my broken heart needed.

  Thankfully, my mother didn’t dote on me as much as she had the summer before. Not only was I used to doing things for myself again, but she’d had more than three months in an empty nest.

  I was careful to smile and tell my parents how well everything at Harkness was going. And I was careful not to brood. I even volunteered to make Christmas cookies with my mom, finally making use of all the handicap accessible changes my folks had made to thei
r kitchen after my accident.

  But when I was alone — lying in my new main floor bedroom, or staring out the passenger-side window of our car — my mind always went back to Hartley’s birthday. I would relive the sensuous slide of his lips against mine, and the stroke of his tongue. When he touched me, I’d felt it everywhere. How was it possible for him to kiss me like that, and not want to do it again?

  Obviously, he’d felt nothing, and I tried hard to make sense of that. I forced myself to replay Stacia’s reappearance in my mind, remembering how avidly he’d kissed her. I even made myself calculate how many hours had elapsed between the moment he had gasped with pleasure in my bed and then stuck his tongue in her mouth.

  It was fourteen hours. Give or take.

  The word paralysis kept running through my mind. His heart was like my unfeeling toes. I felt Hartley’s touch all the way through, but he hadn’t felt mine at all.

  For Christmas, my parents gave me a new laptop — a smaller, lighter model — and I had a good time setting it up. Of course, it came with a lecture from my mother.

  “The therapist says you need more time in your braces. We thought this would be easier to carry around when you’re walking.”

  “Thanks,” I sighed.

  “While you’re home, I booked seven sessions at the River Center.”

  “Mom! Don’t I even get a vacation?”

  “Not from physical therapy,” she said. “But if you want, you can do all of them in the pool instead of the gym. To mix it up a bit.”

  I put my proverbial foot down. “No! Just…no.”

  “Corey, you’re being unreasonable.”

  I didn’t want to argue with her. I just rolled out of the room.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t much easier talking to my father. He was in the midst of his hockey season, which I’d been following online. The girls were doing really well this year, but he did not want to talk about it with me. When I tried to make conversation, I received only monosyllabic responses.