The Fifteenth Minute

by Sarina Bowen

  “That happens,” I lie. To me, sex with DJ was a Very Big Deal. But for him it might be just another Saturday night. I don’t like knowing that.

  “And afterward she got into her sleeping bag on the floor. And when I woke up the next morning she was gone. I thought that was the end of the story. I mean…we didn’t talk about it afterward. I, uh…” He sighs. “I steered clear of the topic, because I wasn’t really interested in starting something up.”

  That part sounds familiar. That’s exactly how it was between Kevin and me—we did it once. It was awkward. We never spoke of it again. “But you were still lab partners,” I point out. The awkwardness goes away eventually. Kevin and I are still good friends.

  “Yeah. We got a B-plus on our final project. I felt like a dick for awhile, though. Like maybe she was waiting for me to ask her out. But I wasn’t interested in dating her. Maybe that sounds mean, but she wasn’t really on my radar. And if she hadn’t climbed into my bed, nothing would have happened.” He gave his head a violent shake. “I thought that was the end of it.”

  “But it wasn’t?”

  He squeezes his eyes shut. “I got a call four months later. In August. From the assistant dean of students. Turns out this girl told the dean’s office that it wasn’t consensual.”

  At first I’m not sure I’d heard him correctly. It takes a moment for his words to play back in my mind. And when they do, a chill spreads across my shoulder blades. “She what?”

  His eyes still closed, he nods. “But it did not happen like that. I’ve thought about that night a thousand times since. There are all these details I use to hold on to my sanity.” His eyes snap open. “She wasn’t drunk, either.”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  And DJ keeps talking now, the words tumbling out. “She initiated everything. The kissing. Then the touching. She’s the one who asked me if I had a condom.” He pushes the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “I didn’t force anything. I would never do that.”

  That’s when I remember to breathe. “I know that,” I gasp. Because, on a gut level, I do know it. But I’m also confused. How could two people have such a different version of events?

  DJ pushes his body back against the car door. “Like I said, I’m telling you this so you don’t hear it from someone else. But I know how crazy it sounds.”

  “So…” I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. “What’s going to happen?” If the college really thought he raped someone nine months ago, why was he still here?

  He gives his head a shake. “I wish I knew. The college has me on a kind of probation until they decide whether or not they believe me. There’s no criminal case against me. Harkness can handle me however they want. I have a lawyer, and he’s trying to get them to do a thorough investigation. But they don’t have to.”

  I swallow, and my throat is dry. “Why do you think the girl would do this? Who wants that kind of attention?”

  His expression flattens, as if someone suddenly turned out all the lights. My heart is thumping like crazy, and I realize my question sounds like an accusation. But I’m really just trying to understand.

  DJ’s dark gaze travels to the ceiling of the car and stays there. “I don’t know, Lianne,” he says carefully. “But I’ve spent a thousand hours thinking about it. And I can’t ask her. I can’t even stand in the same room with her. The college has ordered me to keep back fifty yards.”

  That gives me a shiver down my spine, because it sounds like something on Cops. It’s hard for me to reconcile the boy I slept with last night with someone who basically has a restraining order against him. But nothing of what he’s told me makes sense. “Okay, if she’s seriously telling the college you…” I bite off the end of my sentence, unwilling to put that word next to DJ’s name. “If that’s what she says happened, then why aren’t the cops involved? And why did she wait—” I do the math, “—four months to say something? That’s got to look weird, right?”

  He shakes his head. “Real rapes are underreported all the time. Because girls are scared or embarrassed.” He has to stop and take a breath. DJ looks almost as stressed as I feel. “The college wouldn’t think the lag was weird. But the whole thing makes me feel insane.”

  “I bet.”

  “I mean really insane.” His voice cracks. “In the middle of the night I get all these wacko ideas. Like—what if she got raped for real, and was too traumatized to remember the details? Maybe her memory only offered up this random night in April. Or what if someone snuck into my dorm room that same night and hurt her? And I know I sound like a fucking crazy person right now. But these are the things I think about when I can’t sleep.”

  Macbeth hath murdered sleep, my brain offers up.

  “And the worst part is that I can feel all my friends wondering, too. And my family. My parents say they believe me. But I can hear them wondering—if I’m innocent, how the fuck did I get into this situation?”

  “I can’t even imagine.”

  One of DJ’s hands grips the steering wheel, and his knuckles are white. I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it. His other hand fidgets with Orsen’s keys. “I know this is a lot to dump in your lap. I wanted to take you out for pancakes. You…” He frowns. “The only time I feel like myself is when I’m with you. But if you want me to drive you home instead, it’s really okay.”

  He stares out the front windshield now, looking at nothing. I’m good at reading people’s emotions, and I can feel the stress pouring off him. Right now I have to decide what to do—are we going to try to have a semi-normal breakfast, like lovers do on a Sunday? Or are we going to go home?

  And that’s when I realize why DJ didn’t tell me about this before. Because I can’t sit here without forming my own theories and opinions about what happened. Just like everyone else in his life, I have to decide whether I believe he’s telling the truth or not.

  God, how does he get through the day?

  “Let’s have breakfast,” I hear myself say. “Can we order bacon?”

  He tips his head back against the window, and I get a small, weary smile. But no dimples. “Of course we can.” He has the air of a man who’s ordering his last meal. But it will have to do.

  We get out of the car and walk silently to the front door. It swings open suddenly, and when I take a quick step backwards, my back collides with DJ’s chest. He tucks me into his side almost absently, his arm circling my back. And while we wait for a family to make their way outside, he brushes a kiss against my cheekbone.

  I was this close to having an ordinary lovers’ Morning After. But now we’re only acting those parts.

  And the room is full of people. Too full. “Can we have that booth in the back corner?” I ask the hostess quickly.

  “Sure, hon,” she says, grabbing two laminated menus.

  I pull my hat down ridiculously far and follow her in a hurry.

  DJ does the gentlemanly thing and takes the seat that faces the door to the kitchen. But that’s actually the seat I want, because then I don’t have to worry about making accidental eye contact with someone who will ask me to take a selfie with them. I take off Bella’s hockey jacket and my trusty baseball cap and toss them on the empty seat. Then I say, “Scoot in.”

  After aiming a look of surprise at me, he complies, making room for me.

  I sit down beside his big body. When I pick up my menu, our elbows touch. The fact that we had actual full-on, bare-naked sex last night is both weird and not weird. Here I am scanning the breakfast choices beside a man who was recently inside me. This idea heats me up, and I lose my focus between the western omelet and the quiche Lorraine.

  DJ puts his hand on my knee, and I start to tingle.

  “Um, what?” I ask after a beat, realizing that he’s asked me a question. I look up into his slightly amused face.

  “Which do you prefer, blueberry or plain?”

  It takes me a second to realize we’re talking about pancakes. “I don’t know. I haven’t had p
ancakes in a decade. I’m more of an egg-white omelet kind of girl.”

  “Wow,” he says, dropping his menu on the table. “Scary revelations all around today.” He smiles, but it doesn’t make it all the way to his eyes. The boy beside me is drowning in his troubles. They’re here in the booth with us and sucking down all the available oxygen. I wish I could rewind twelve hours or so to when I didn’t know. But that isn’t really fair. DJ told me a couple of times he needed to keep his distance, and I pursued him anyway.

  Now I tip my head to the side, resting it on his bulky shoulder. He turns to me and brushes a quick kiss on my temple. “What if we go halvsies?” I offer. “A big omelet and pancakes?”

  He gives me a little elbow nudge. “An egg-white omelet? I don’t know if I can choke that down.”

  “A real one,” I compromise. “But with vegetables in it.”

  “Deal,” he says.

  All the food is surprisingly good. Or maybe I’m just starved. But soon my mood is shored up by eggs, pancakes and the side of bacon DJ ordered. I check my phone and find a couple messages from female hockey players thanking me for my “all-chick playlist,” as one of them calls it.

  When I show DJ, he gives my knee a squeeze. “You don’t have to do it. I know you’re busy. But if I get kicked out, they’d love to have you for the rest of the season.”

  The coffee I’ve drunk goes sour in my stomach. “You’re not getting kicked out.”

  “That’s my girl.” He gives me another sad smile. “Feisty Lianne. Maybe you should be my lawyer. I’d rather spend four hours with you than him, too. That’s where I was yesterday. He’s still hoping to get me a real hearing.”

  “What if they don’t? What’s his plan B?”

  DJ actually winces. “He wants to sue the college for violating my rights. I’m not allowed to set foot in the residences. You may have noticed that I, uh, never walk you upstairs.”

  “That’s why you live in Orsen’s house.”

  He nods. “I’m hanging by a thread, smalls. I’m sorry to dump the whole sordid tale in your lap. But I need you to know why I’m a shitty date most of the time. It’s not because I don’t like you.”

  I grab his hand under the table and squeeze. DJ finishes his pancakes left-handed so that he doesn’t have to let go of me. And even though we haven’t had the most conventional lovers’ Sunday morning breakfast, it will just have to do.

  When the waitress drops the check on our table, DJ snatches it up. And I don’t pull out my wallet and try to pay half, because I know he doesn’t want me to. Maybe I don’t date, but I watch films about people who do. I know the most basic rituals. The dude gets to pay sometimes, even if the chick got two million dollars for her last film.

  “Thank you for breakfast,” I say as I slip out of the booth after he’s paid.

  DJ gets out, too. Then he reaches for my things on the opposite seat. “It was nothing, smalls,” he says quietly, holding out my coat for me to put on.

  That’s when I hear The Sound.

  Sometimes it’s a sharp intake of breath. Sometimes it’s followed by laughter, or a little shriek. But after a while all the forms of The Sound are easily recognizable. Because you know you’ve been spotted, and the next ten minutes of your life have been rescheduled, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.

  Today it comes from two tables away, where three teenaged girls and perhaps their grandmother are having brunch together. One of the girls has clapped her hand over her mouth, and the beads on the ends of several dozen braids are swinging around in her shock. Behind a pair of bright pink glasses, her eyes bug out and then light up.

  She is adorable, and yet she brings out my inner sociopath. Because the timing? Not good.

  “Omigod!” she yells, jumping up so fast that the glasses of orange juice on their table wobble. Her sisters’ eyes travel over to see what she’s staring at.

  In their excitement, the girls practically leap their table to get to me. I turn to warn DJ and watch as his eyes widen in alarm. Then, in the span of a fangirl shriek, he moves with freakish precision, somehow sliding his body between me and the charging girls.

  “Um,” I say, putting a hand on his back. “It’s okay.”

  He looks over his shoulder with one eyebrow raised, as if asking how a thundering herd of girls could ever be okay. But he doesn’t know how it is with me.

  “Omigod,” the girl with the pink glasses says again, peering around DJ. “I saw on the news that you lived in Harkness now and I’ve been looking ALL OVER THE PLACE! Please? Can we have a picture?” She whips out a phone, and DJ eyes it like it’s a rattlesnake in the desert.

  I give him a gentle shove out of the way, because I know the only way out is through. I take the camera from the girl’s hand and pass it to my freaked-out-looking date. “Take a couple, please?”

  The girls swarm around me, giggling and touching me. I smile as best I can and try not to think too hard about my unwashed hair and yesterday’s walk-of-shame clothes. They don’t care that you’re not wearing any makeup, I promise myself.

  I’m almost free when someone mentions autographs.

  Digging into my pocketbook for one of the Sharpies that I always keep there, I tell DJ that he can warm up the car if he wants. “I’ll just be a second.”

  He eases toward the door, but his face is wary.

  I sign a napkin, a phone case and a library card before making my excuses. By some miracle, nobody else stops me, and I’m shooting for the door of the diner a minute later.

  DJ yanks it open and we’re free.

  We hurry over to Orsen’s car and climb inside, slamming the doors. He cranks the engine and then lets it warm up. “Shit,” he says finally. “Does that happen a lot?”

  I shrug, because it does, but I don’t want to admit it. That wasn’t even so bad—those girls approached me when I was putting on my coat. But people have sat down at my restaurant table. They’ve followed me into the ladies’ room. They’ve gotten off the elevator at my hotel room floor just to see where I’m sleeping.

  “People are really fucking scary,” DJ says suddenly, echoing my own thoughts.

  “This is true.”

  Our ride back to Beaumont House is subdued. I don’t know where DJ’s head is, but I’m wondering about a girl named Annie. Who she is. And why she’d accuse him.

  “Are you okay?” he asks when we pull up outside.

  “Yeah,” I say immediately. “Are you?”

  He regards me with those dark eyes. At least now I know how he comes by his brooding. “Sure,” he says, fooling nobody. But this is a ritual too. The man says he’s fine. He has a big strong body, ergo he is not allowed to crumble.

  Today I feel like telling ritual to go suck it.

  Quickly, I lean over and kiss him. He makes a little, bitten-off sound of surprise. “Thank you for telling me,” I say.

  “Thank you for being awesome,” he says, his voice all gravel.

  “You owe me a couple of hours of Shakespeare,” I remind him.

  “I’ll pay up.” I see the flicker of a real smile when he says it. There was even the ghost of a dimple.

  “You’d better,” is the last bit of bravado I fling at him before getting out, waving and closing the door.

  Inside the Beaumont gate, I take the flagstones two at a time. I whip over to our entryway door and then up the stairs. In my room, I throw Bella’s jacket on my floor and climb onto the bed where nobody slept last night. I put my face in the crook of my elbow and take a deep breath.

  I don’t know what to think about the bomb DJ just dropped on me. I asked him to, of course. And before that, he’d tried to warn me away. Now I understood why he’d been holding that story in. To hear it required you to choose a side, and I kind of hated myself for thinking about it like that.

  Every moment I’d spent with DJ I’d felt absolutely safe with him. And if anyone asked me right this second whether DJ was a terrific guy, I’d say yes in a heartbeat.
r />   So what the hell happened last April eleventh?

  My computers were just across the room, their screen-savers scrolling through a slideshow of my dragon corral. I know at some point in the next couple of hours, my curiosity will win, and I’ll be Googling the heck out of all the girls at Harkness named Annie. But first I will bathe.

  I’m humming one of the DragonFire themes (it’s a sickness) when I shut off the water after my shower. Shoving the curtain aside, I’m startled to find Bella standing there. She hands me my towel, one eyebrow raised.

  “Morning,” I say as my cheeks begin to heat.

  “You are so busted. I knocked on your door an hour ago and there was nobody home.”

  “That happens,” I try. “I had an early breakfast.”

  She grins. “With who?”

  Jeez. I wrap the towel around myself and duck past her and into my room.

  She follows me, of course. “Come on, babe. Did you or didn’t you?”

  See, I’ve pictured this moment before. I’ve actually been looking forward to the time I’d finally have to confess to Bella that DJ had rocked my world. And he had, of course. But this moment isn’t sweet like I’d imagined, because it’s been overshadowed by everything I’ve learned since.

  “Well?” Bella demands. “Look, I know you’re a private person, but the suspense is killing me. Did you do the deed? Wait—I know you’re shy. So you don’t even have to say it out loud. Blink once for yes or twice for no.”

  That makes me giggle, because I love Bella to death. And nobody at Harkness has been more generous to me than she has. “We did it.” My smile fades, though, and she notices.

  “Omigod.” Bella claps her hands to her cheeks. “Why aren’t you happier? Was it awful? No—it couldn’t have been awful. They’re a very talented family…” She’s pacing my tiny rug, then stops, a look of horror on her face. “Oh, hell. Does he have a fun-sized dick?”