by Mina Carter
“You coming back in, man?” Spence asks as I turn to face him.
Jaime’s voice stumbles out of my mouth. “Yeah, just give me another sec.” I take another drag off the cigarette to steady my nerves.
Why are you nervous? my conscious wonders. You do this all the time.
“I think I’m close, man,” Spence pipes up out of nowhere.
“Close to what?” I question, utterly confused, though I can tell I’m supposed to know.
Before he speaks, the answer blossoms in his eyes. The image of him and Charlotte in a bed, him using her more than loving her, lights my insides on fire and the remainder of the cigarette disintegrates in a puff of green smoke.
His eyes pop wide open. “What the hell was that?”
I shake my hand as if burned and take a step back, more to keep from punching him for his sinister fantasy than anything else. “I don’t know, man, must be defective.”
The toe of his right shoe digs at the spot where the ashes fell. “I haven’t ever seen a cigarette do that.”
I shrug and head back to the study group. “Who cares?” I stuff my hands in the pockets of my jeans. “So, what makes you think you’re any closer?”
He whistles and a shit-eating grin splits his face. “That Henry dude fucked up yesterday, and her roommate has never been a fan. She doesn’t think he is good for Charlotte. She thinks he is too oppressive and controlling. And, her other friend, that guy who’s in love with her but too chicken to say so, he hates Henry. I don’t think Henry realizes that he’s not drawing her back to him, though. She’s so confused, ripe for the picking.”
Shit! Did Charlotte tell him all that, or Alyssa? A problem I’ll have to deal figure out later. “You don’t say?”
He nudges me with an elbow and whispers, “I do,” right before we join the group. “You’re losing this fuck bet, Jaime. I’m banging that fine piece of ass before the month is out.”
It takes everything I have not to light him up right then and there.
Chapter 20
Fear drove me to take things too far, too fast…
I spend the next two hours working with a student, someone I don’t care enough about to even commit their name to memory, while watching Spence make moves on my girlfriend. She put him off in the beginning, but, by the end, she flashes him small smiles, blushes, and bites her lip.
“Jaime?” my partner snaps for the hundredth time.
Everyone at the table looks at me.
“What?” I answer, stalling as my mind searches for whatever it is he said.
You think you can write the intro to our topic on mythology’s impact on societal morality? his voice whispers from the recesses of my memory.
“Oh yeah, sorry,” I mumble and nod my head. “Thought you saw me nodding.”
Spence notices the focus of my attention, snickers, and slips his arm off the back of Charlotte’s chair and around her waist. She jumps and looks over at him in shock after scanning the entryway, I can only assume, for the face I should be wearing: Henry.
“Spence, how many times do I have to tell you…” she trails off when he leans into her ear.
“You know you like it, babe.”
Her shoulder meets her ear, but I can’t tell if it is because she’s embarrassed, uncomfortable, or flirting.
“There’s a lot more to this if you’ll just let me–”
I pretend to glance at my watch. “It’s getting late, don’t you think?” comes out gruff as I cut off his blatant attempt to get into her pants.
Everyone stands, collecting notebooks, laptops, and pencils. Spence glares at me the entire time, but I can’t bring myself to care. I need to leave before everyone else, get to the shadows, transform into Henry, and change shirts. There is no way in hell I’m letting that jackass walk with Charlotte alone, especially after the plans to draw her to his dorm room play out in his eyes. I contain my growl and clench my fists as I move away from them. The humid night air weighs on me when I get outside, making the already uncomfortable shell I wear heavier. I dart around the corner, breathing through the change and stretching all my constricted muscles. Better, I think, but I long to wear the skin and face I’ve chosen as my own. I toss Jaime’s shirt into his backpack after replacing it with my own and stash it in some bushes along the side of the building to be retrieved later.
“Charlotte, come on,” the whiny voice of Spence accosts my ears, drawing me back around the corner of the building. He’s trailing in her wake as she turns in the direction of her dorm and Greek row. “He went thirty-six hours without you and didn’t give a damn. Another thirty or forty-five minutes isn’t going to matter. Let’s go grab a cup of coffee or something.”
Her chin is tucked to her chest and her arms are crossed, all cues for him to leave her be. But, why doesn’t she just tell him the back the hell off? She stops when he grabs her arm and her head dips further in resignation.
I can’t let this continue. “Charlotte!” I call before he has a chance to say anything more.
Both of their heads snap in my direction. “Henry!” merges in the night in her surprised, high pitch and his frustrated, low growl.
She shrugs out of his grasp when she realizes that my eyes are staring daggers at his hand. “I thought we were meeting at the frat house,” spills weakly from her tongue. For the first time since my run, I notice how tired she is.
I gesture to the surrounding campus. “It’s late, my dear.” I’m careful with my words and even more deliberate about my tone, keeping it gentle and soothing. Her body relaxes as she takes a calculated step away from Spence. He shifts as if to follow, but I cut him off in three quick strides. “You shouldn’t be walking across campus alone.”
My competitor tries to body check me out of the way, not realizing I’m denser than I appear. “Ah, I wouldn’t have let her go alone,” he’s quick to cover.
“As I said,” I growl, not sparing him a glance, but Charlotte doesn’t let me finish.
“Enough,” she pronounces on an agitated sigh. “Thanks, Spence. I’ll see you tomorrow. Let’s go, Henry.”
She doesn’t wait for either of us to respond, but takes off through the trees. I forgo a formal goodbye and hurry to catch up to her. We say nothing until she tries to leave me in the parking lot of her dorm to go inside.
“I thought we were going to the beach?” I question as I catch her wrist to stall her.
“I’m tired, Henry,” floats over her shoulder since she won’t look at me.
“Hey.” I keep my emotions in check as I move around to face her. Her eyes are glassy and her bottom lip trembles. My arms slide around her, of their own volition, and pull her to my chest. “Oh, Charlotte,” I whisper, the words getting caught in my own throat. Her pain causes me more pain than I’ve ever experienced before. “Please, don’t cry. I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have left like I did yesterday.”
Her body melts into mine and her arms slip around my waist. She shakes with the force of her tears. A lump forms in my throat, along with a chasm in my chest. I repeat her name over and over again, as the fingers of my right hand comb through her hair in a soothing manner. Time passes without measure as she cries in my arms, not that I give a shit. I did this to her. I hurt her. Out of everything I’ve ever done–every lie, every manipulation, every life I’ve ended–I know this one transgression will haunt me above all others. Who am I?
When the last tear has been shed, I fold her hand into mine and lead her around the dorm to a copse of trees in the back. Night has taken hold of the world and laid an even bigger stake in the shadows along the man-made pond behind the building. We sit along the water’s edge with her curled into my side, listening to the crickets and frogs play nature’s song.
“I’m sorry, Henry,” her ragged whisper comes out of nowhere.
I shift and look down at her, kissing the top of her head before lifting her chin with a finger. “Sorry for what?”
“I’m stressed and confused and tired.”
<
br /> “And, you have every right to be every one of those things, Charlotte. I’m just as unskilled at this as you are, my dear. Just as scared. I wasn’t sure how to talk to you.”
She relaxes into me, snuggling closer, and holding me tighter. “None of that excuses my breakdown back th–”
I cut her off with a kiss. She sighs into it, succumbing to my pleading tongue when it grazes her lips. We kiss under a blanket of darkness, insecurity feeding our passion. I don’t need to look into her eyes to know she thought that the physical and emotional distance I placed between us yesterday spelled the end. She pushes our kiss past the innocent and youthful experimentation of the last few weeks. There’s aggression and possession in the swipes of her tongue and the grip of her fingers, which pull at my hair and dig into my back and shoulders. After today’s events, I was worried as well, and my movements are just as frenzied.
I shift her into a laying position and align my body over her. The feel of my desire pressing into hers undoes us both. She rips her lips free and moans into the night.
“Charlotte,” I gasp in her ear, my body heating to the point where I’m worried my internal fire will burn us to ash. But, I can’t stop, not even to remove our clothes.
Her body rocks a counter rhythm against mine. Unintelligible mutterings, seasoned with my name, spill from her swollen lips. Our limbs cling to the other, as if we both know we are teetering on the edge of something life altering. We continue this way, too impatient to remove the thin barriers between us. I crush her body with my own, my desires to possess her becoming clear. Her nails dig into my scalp as I swallow her desperate moans.
“I want you, Charlotte,” I gasp between kisses. “Scratch that, I need you.”
She nods in understanding and drops her hands to the bottom edge of my shirt. I groan at the feel of her hands dragging my shirt up my back.
“Char–lo–lotte,” stumbles from my lips before, “I love you,” rushes past my teeth. “You are my everything, and I ran yesterday because I can’t believe I found you and wasn’t ready to handle giving you the keys to my heart. I want to finish this life with you, my dear.”
She freezes, eyes wide and clear of her earlier passion. “You what?” she squeaks, her hands now on my shoulders and pushing my weight back so she can scramble out from under me. “Are–Are–Are you–proposing?”
Shit, I guess I did. I sit back on my haunches and run a hand through my hair. She’s shaking again, but not crying, as she stands above me. The shadows of night hide her facial expression from me. Is this what girls do?
“Are you saying yes?” I ask, the unsure question echoing through the empty night.
“How did we get here so fast?” she questions herself under her breath before saying aloud, “I can’t do this right now.” She takes a step back, then another. Before I process what’s happening, she’s turned and is halfway to the back doors of her dormitory. “I’ll call you later, Henry.”
Chapter 21
Your choice made no sense…
That was the last private moment I shared with her while wearing this particular face. I’ve seen her in class, Shakespeare and now Honors, but I wear another man’s face in Honors and she avoids me in Shakespeare. She darts in just before the professor begins his lecture, sits in the back by the door, and then darts out before he finishes. I’ve tried catching her, but using my inhuman speed in public is a no-go. The few times I call her name, she just ignores me and scurries off even faster.
It’s almost as if she senses I’m Jaime too. I don’t know what her relationship with him was like, but as the weeks pass, she becomes more distant with this persona. I sit, silently fuming, day after day, watching her get further and further away from me as Spence draws her closer and closer to him. I just don’t understand any of it. It’s as though someone turned a switch, casting me in the dark, and she has no idea that I’m missing from her life.
Alyssa is relatively quiet during these weeks as well. I expect her to be all over me for whatever it was I did to lose Charlotte’s trust and affection, but I hear nothing from her. Granted, she’s busy whispering in the ear of the depressed Wesley, guiding him on his path to world manipulation.
The semester ends. The school closes for the Christmas holiday. Days turn into weeks, which turn into months. It is now late February, just after the spring pledge auction at the frat house, where the woman of my dreams was suspiciously absent.
I keep watch over Charlotte as Jaime, the persona of Henry slowing melting to the background of my college existence, mirroring my Honors schedule and major to hers. We are in the library, studying together as a group and getting a head start on the end of semester research paper. The grating sound of my grinding teeth drowns out the chatter of my classmates as I watch Spence paw all over her. They are “officially” dating now, though I can tell she isn’t happy.
“Come on, babe,” he slurs in her ear while he tries to shove a hand between her legs. My stomach clenches at her discomfort and embarrassment.
“Stop, Spence,” she hisses and pulls away, her shoulder rising to meet her ear. “There are people around.”
The arm he has around her waist crushes her to his side. “Babe, we talked about this,” the hint of a threat floats amongst his words.
She and I tense in unison, her because she’s uncomfortable and nervous, me because I want to fry him where he sits.
She surrenders to his public pawing and the rest of the table averts their eyes, except me. He holds my gaze while he palms her breast. Her face grows crimson; it’s clear that she is not enjoying the way he abuses her delicate curves.
“I believe the lady said stop,” flies from my tongue in a low growl.
Charlotte pales, and the eyes of our study group partners make their way slowly back to our threesome. “Jaime,” she whispers, “it’s fine.”
A sinister smile contorts Spence’s lips. “Lady?” he quips at a volume that bounces through the library. “Trust me, man, when her clothes are off, she’s the furthest thing from a lady!”
His barb has the desired effect, on me, at least. The wind rushes from my lungs as my gut cramps as if struck. She’s fucked him! The realization bounces around my brain. And, I don’t have to see his view of the sex scene playing behind his eyes to know that is all it is, fucking. He doesn’t love her. He loves the idea of owning and controlling her, of manipulating her away from “Henry.” I just don’t understand why she, my ethereal innocent filled with grace, poise, and beauty, would let him.
I leap to my feet, sending my chair crashing into the bookcase behind me, and grab him by the collar of his shirt. “You are nothing more than a punk kid,” I snarl. “She deserves better than you,” I coat the words with persuasion, diving deep into his mind to plant the seeds that will end this farce of a relationship. For some damn reason, she had the strength to walk away from me, a man who is desperately in love with her and treated her like the lady she is, to be with this prick. Why?
My answer lights in his eyes, shocking me. Their muted conversation plays in my ears as if I have headphones on.
“Why not, Charlotte?” his smooth voice pleads as his hand catches her elbow.
“I’m not looking for a relationship, Spence,” she answers, her voice shaking with an emotion I don’t recognize right off. “I… I’m… It’s too soon.”
“Look babe, he whispers in her ear, his heart pounding in his chest. He wants her so damn bad. “Who said anything about a relationship? How about some good ole’ college fun?”
She sighs. “Fun?” she says before mumbling, “Do I even know what that is anymore?”
His hand drops to cup her rear, giving it a hard squeeze. “Let me show you, Charlotte,” he begs. “Let me help you find a release for all that you have built up inside. No strings, just sex.”
“No strings, just sex?” she repeats. He nods against curve of her neck, lips kissing her sensitive hollow. “Alright, Spence, where should we go?”
“Your relatio
nship is over,” I order before freeing myself from his gaze, unable to watch their first sexual encounter, though my own imagination runs rabid with conjecture. My eyes then land on Charlotte.
The whole exercise took less than a second to transpire, and the supernatural commands were pitched at a volume only he could hear. “I’m walking you home,” I insist before snatching up our books in one hand and grabbing hers with the other.
We don’t speak while I drag her through the quad in my wake, not caring when I bump and jostle the people around us. It isn’t until I hear her sniffle at my back while we wait to cross the street that I turn to face her. No tears have crested the lids of her eyes, but they will soon.
I can’t help myself and fold her against my chest. “Oh, Charlotte, what are you doing with an asshole like that?”
The tears fall as her answer comes through muffled sobs. “I don’t know, Jaime. I don’t even really know what I’m doing anymore. I feel lost, as if I’m floating through life, letting it happen to me. What is wrong with me?”
The feel of her palms moving along my stomach, around my sides, and across my back makes me shiver. The desire to kiss her and tell her the truth is strong, but I fight it. It’ll just scare her off now, and she’s already frightened enough. If she couldn’t handle the confession of my love, which is the only explanation I can come up with for our ending, there is no way she will be able to handle the truth of what I am.
“Shhhh,” I offer as my fingers comb through her hair. It feels so good to have her back in my arms, even if she doesn’t know it’s me. “There is nothing wrong with you. You just keep picking the wrong type of guy.” Including myself.
Chapter 22
Finding a way out became a top priority…
Charlotte quit “seeing” Spence, but she didn’t seek out Henry. Instead, the boy, Wesley, took back his place as the main, male fixture of her life. Days passed as I waited for Alyssa to summon me or seek me out. That day of reckoning finally arrives, as a voice coated in acid speaks up from behind me, Alyssa just isn’t the bearer.
