The Keeper

by Jillian Liota

Charlie smiles and shakes her head.

  “Missed you this past week, girl. Where you been?” She sits a bit sideways on the seat, tilting her body towards mine to give me her attention.

  “Just busy,” I reply, taking a massive bite of my hot dog. “You know… doing… stuff.”

  She snorts.

  “Thank you for the insight into your life. That wasn’t vague or evasive at all.”

  She waits while I swallow down my food and take a sip of the water next to me.

  “Mack and I are trying to figure it out.”

  I nearly drop my food at the sound of the squeal that comes from Charlie’s mouth. Swear to God, girl has some pipes on her to rival an opera singer.

  “I knew it. I so knew it.” She’s now bouncing up and down in her seat.

  Part of me wants to roll my eyes at her excitement. The other part of me loves how thrilled she is for me. Charlie is one of those girls that can always put aside the shit in her own life and become completely immersed in the life of her best friend.

  I smile a reserved smile at her. Even though Charlie is the closest and most important friend I’ve ever had, I still find it difficult to gush to her about the things that make me happy. Mostly because I’m usually sure that the happiness is usually temporary or a fluke, and I don’t want to hear the pity that results from the inevitable fallout.

  “You been boinking?”

  I bark out a laugh, spitting water out of my mouth in the process.

  “NO!” I shout with more forcefulness than is probably necessary, thankful that there isn’t anyone sitting in front of me. “No, we haven’t been… boinking.” I chuckle under my breath. “We just decided last night to try and navigate everything.”

  “But there’s been kissing right?” Her face is far too hopeful for me to withhold the information about my handful of kisses with Mack.

  When I blush and nod, she squeals and starts bouncing in her chair, again.

  “You have to tell me. Everything. I want all the details. I want to know what he smells like and where his hands were and how many times you thought about doing it and…”

  “I’m not telling you all of that!”

  “Oh come on, RJ! My sex life is like a desert right now. A barren wasteland. I don’t even see any mirages on the horizon. You have to give me this sip of water to tide me over until I find the well of sexual healing.”

  I laugh again, tucking myself further into my seat and training my eyes on the field. The game hasn’t even started yet, the players still passing the ball around a bit before the whistle blows.

  “Well,” I clear my throat. “You remember how you went to O’Reilly’s last weekend and I was going to come with and never showed?” She nods. “It’s because Mack came by.” Her mouth drops open. “And we had our first kiss. And it was… I can’t even explain to you how absolutely divine it was. It was out-of-this-world, heaven, pure bliss.”

  Her smile is so big it practically dominates her whole face.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before? This totally makes more sense now!” I narrow my eyes in confusion. Her smile drops just a bit when she clarifies. “When you found out he was your coach, you were so broken-hearted and upset. I was still assuming you hadn’t gotten any lip-love. But if you had the all-consuming kiss first, and then found out he was your coach, I can see how that would shake you up.”

  I nod.

  “Well, that isn’t even the whole story.” As the game begins, I tell Charlie everything she’s missed over the past five days. She’s been so busy, we’ve been like ships passing in the night.

  But she reacts exactly like I think she will with every up and down. She fumes when I tell her about spotting Mack with Ronnie in Hollywood, and she aww’s when she hears about him showing up at my house. She gives me her dirty-girl smile when I tell her that we basically dry humped on the floor. She’s right there with me as I talk about practice and his moody behavior, my dad at the game, my argument with Jeremy. And I round it out with our conversation and kiss at the high school last night.

  “Damn, girl. Your life is like a telenovela. I’m sorry I’ve been so busy for the past week and haven’t been there for you.”

  Her words are said calmly, but I know she’s feeling regretful. Charlie prides herself on being an ‘invested friend’ - those are the words she uses to describe it. She doesn’t just want to be on the sidelines of your life. She wants to be in the game.

  Some of that stems from her inherent need to know everything. She’s not a gossip by any means, but this girl does love her some drama. But mostly, it comes from the fact that her heart is huge and her compassion is endless.

  Charlie’s in her last year of the nursing program at Glendale. Her hours are weird, her schedule throwing her all over the place. I’m not joking when I say we’ve been ships passing in the night. Sometimes she’s heading to sleep just as I’m waking up.

  I wrap my arm around her shoulders and squeeze her tight to me.

  “You know what you just said is dumb, so I’m not even going to dignify it with a response.” I plant a loud wet kiss on her forehead, then release her. “Besides, I was able to figure it all out on my own.”

  Her head tilts a bit to the side as she looks at me.

  “Did you, though?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just mean, like, you said you guys are going to ‘figure it out’.” she replies, using air quotes. “What does that even mean?”

  I shrug.

  “I’m trying not to think too hard about it. There are obviously things in the way, and we will just have to take it a day at a time. Neither or us wants to risk a disaster if people find out, but we don’t want to not see where this is going, either.”

  She nods, her eyes trained on the field, lost in thought. After a moment she continues. “I know I was the one to suggest the sweaty locker room sex.”

  “Thanks for that, by the way. He knows about that conversation and I was thoroughly red-faced and embarrassed.”

  She laughs.

  “Well, it sounds hot. And now that he knows about that idea, maybe it will actually happen.” She wiggles her eyebrows up and down. “But I just want to say this one thing, and then I will be nothing but supportive, okay?”

  I nod, knowing her heart will always be in the right place. Her pause leads me to assume she’s trying to figure out how to word something delicately.

  “It’s about what Jeremy said to you… about the whole ‘institutionalization’ thing.” She stops again. “Is there a concern there for you? I mean, at all?”

  Before I can say anything, she powers forward.

  “Don’t get me wrong. Every person is entitled to their bit of insanity. You’ve seen me at some pretty low points, and I would never judge someone just for experiencing theirs. I just want to make sure you think about it all, and decide what it is you need to know moving forward. I mean, there’s a difference between having one episode of madness after a horrible experience, and being literally psychotic. Just make sure you don’t get yourself wrapped up in something you aren’t capable of handling. You’ve already got enough mental instability around you with your dad. You don’t need to take on someone else’s mess too.”

  My heart warms at her words, so carefully articulated and willing to support me while still making sure I’m able to see something important.

  “I appreciate the concern, Char, I really do. But I don’t think Mack is actually insane. I think Jeremy was playing it up to get me to cut him out of my life, which I don’t think is fair. Regardless, I’m sure it’s something we will talk about eventually. But I don’t want to be so crass as to walk up to him and just say, hey, my brother said you’re a fuckin’ nut job and that you were in the looney bin. Let’s chat about that over ice cream. It’s something he’ll need to bring up in his own time.”

  She nods and reaches over to squeeze my hand. I’m content in that moment, just the two of us wa
tching Jeremy and his teammates running around on the field. My brother cares about me, my best friend wants me to be safe and happy, and I have an amazing guy who I can’t stop thinking about.

  And apparently, Charlie can’t stop thinking about him either.

  “So, seriously. When are you going to bang him in the locker room?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Letting out a sigh of boredom, I look across the library to where Thomas is standing in an aisle of books, arms crossed, his brow furrowed in concentration. Then I look longingly at the exit, as if daydreaming about packing up and rushing out the door will make this endless day finally end.

  We’ve been here for nearly two hours already, and I don’t think we’ve even gotten close to feeling like we have the right type of outline put together for our project. It’s been difficult to lay everything out when we haven’t even begun the prep work for our individual papers and presentations yet.

  We have the majority of the semester to work on them because they’re supposed to be extensive, comprehensive projects about one author and their impact on literature in a larger context. Realistically, if we want Professor Markson to accept our dual-proposal, we need to have a well processed outline that is in sync with the proposals we will have for our individual projects.

  But we’re struggling to make the outline without any real concrete decisions about what should be leading up to the outline.

  I sigh again and flick my eyes to the book in front of me, where I’ve been mindlessly flipping pages when I should be scanning the text for passages to mark.

  “Found it!” Thomas plops into the seat across from me, big grin on his face. “I knew it was there. It was just filed in the wrong spot.”

  I force a smile.

  “Awesome. I was surprised when you said the digital copy wasn’t in the school’s database. You’d think every university would have access to the same one.”

  “I know, right?” He flips the old book open on the table, amidst the handful of other books we’ve pulled so far that address the literary relationship and friendship between Edith Wharton and Henry James.

  We spend about thirty minutes sorting through books and articles, marking important passages with sticky notes and typing up our ideas for how our projects might intertwine.

  “You know what I think is so great about these two?” Thomas says suddenly, startling me away from the page I’m looking at. “They’re not some stereotypical mentor/mentee romance, you know?”

  My brow furrows as I look at Thomas, trying to understand where he’s going with this line of thought.

  “Okay, so James is this amazing, well-known author who made it clear that he was a bachelor for life. This beautiful young thing becomes his mentee. They have this amazing friendship and impact each others’ work significantly, right?”

  I nod.

  “It would have been so easy for something to happen there, you know? Similar interests, creative minds. I mean, I know she was married, but shit like that happens, and didn’t she end up having an affair with some other guy? Everything we can find about Edith and Henry indicates they were invested in each other, just not romantically. I like that their relationship is a passionate friendship and sharing of the minds without making it into something that takes away from their work. It seems more special that way. I feel like a romantic entanglement would have potentially taken away from what they accomplished together.”

  I smile slightly.

  “I’d never thought of it like that. I guess you’re right.” I grab my pen and tap it lightly on the pad of paper in front of me. “I think it’s easy to assume a shared interest or similar passions will eventually make friendships lead to a romantic relationship. But you need a lot more than that. Do you think that’s a valuable piece to play into the outline?”

  Thomas nods and twiddles his own pen between his fingers.

  “Yeah. Yeah.” He pauses, looking off to a spot just off the side of my head. “But I mean, shared interests are a good thing, too.”

  I squint my eyes at him slightly, unsure what he means. We’d just established that there was value in the fact that the Wharton/James relationship was strictly friendship, and he immediately starts back-tracking? Before I can ask, Thomas clears his throat slightly and leans forward, continuing to fiddle with his pen and looking at the table where the books are laid out.

  “So, in their case, it was a good thing. Because it would have significantly compromised their friendship and possibly damaged the impact their relationship had on the works they both put forward.” He clears his throat again. “But I think other friendships can translate into something more when those factors aren’t at play.”

  My eyes widen slightly and I feel my face flush with heat. Now I understand what’s happening.

  “Thomas…” I start, but my phone beeps. Probably Mack. And then it beeps again.

  And again.

  And again.

  When my phone beeps for the fifth time in a row, Thomas breaks the silence.

  “You gonna check it?”

  I grab my phone from my ugly maroon Jansport backpack that has clearly seen better days. Flipping it over, I unlock the screen and scroll quickly through.

  Mack: Still studying?

  Mack: Because I think we should go grab In-N-Out again

  Mack: Or tacos sound amazing

  Mack: I’m just really hungry

  Mack: And I want to see you, which is the real reason I’m bugging you. Text me when you’re done ;)

  A smile stretches out on my face. My fingers hover over the screen as I consider responding. Should I scrap my plans to do laundry and be an adult and hang out with Mack instead?

  “Something interesting?”

  Thomas’ voice snaps me back to the table.

  In the library.

  Where I’m supposed to be studying.

  “Sorry.” I wipe the smile from my face, put my phone on silent and back into the front pocket of my bag. “It’s nothing.” Looking back at Thomas, I try to give him my full attention.

  “What I was going to say, earlier… I just… RJ, do you want to go out sometime?”

  His voice is so clear and earnest. Not like he’s begging me to go on a date, but it’s clear he really wants us to do something.

  “On a date, I mean. I’ve liked you for a while and just… it took a while for me to… well…” His voice breaks off when he clears his throat again. A nervous tick. “What do you think?”

  If this was something Thomas had asked me two weeks ago, I probably would have said yes. But I know saying yes today isn’t in the cards. Not with whatever this new thing is with Mack. I can’t even study without thinking about him.

  “Thomas, I just…” I pause trying to find the right words.

  “If you’re about to say no, don’t say it yet,” he says, cutting me off before I tell him I’m figuring things out with someone else. “Just take a while and think about it. I know we argue a lot in class and I’ve probably really surprised you. But, I think you’re great. Amazing, actually. And beautiful. And I don’t want you to give me a knee-jerk reaction and say no, which is what I think you’re about to do. Just… think about it. Take some time, and come back to me later.”

  I give him a slow nod, not responding. I should just tell him I’m seeing someone. But honestly I shouldn’t share that with anyone, so I’ll do him the service of ‘thinking about it’ before letting him down.

  An awkward silence ensues as we turn back to our books and notes. I only allow a few minutes to go by before I let Thomas know that I need to get home to work on some other projects and get my life in working order before the new week begins. He looks surprised, but waves me off with a pleasant smile.

  When I climb into my car, I quickly turn it on and give the A/C a chance to cool the warm musty interior. Leaning my head against the seat, I close my eyes.

  Did Thomas really ask me on a date? It’s been at least six
months since I’ve been asked by anyone. A year since I’ve said yes.

  Even though it sent a small zing of pleasure through me to know someone was interested, that zing doesn’t hold a candle to the steady hum of awareness I feel when thinking about Mack. In such a short period of time, I’ve come to find his presence intoxicating, cathartic, enraging, arousing… everything.

  I glance at my phone, debating whether or not to call him. Eventually my fingers swipe open my screen and find his number.

  “Hey,” he says, answering after the first ring.

  “Hi,” is my only response, but even I can hear the overwhelming smile in my tone.

  “How was studying?”

  “Oh, you know. Boring and mind-numbing. After two hours I’m starting to reconsider this whole partnership thing with Thomas.”

  “How come?”

  I shrug, and then realize he can’t see me.

  “I don’t know. I just feel like it’s adding all of this work that I don’t want to do,” I finally reply.

  “Well, you shouldn’t not do it just because it’s hard,” he advises. “If anything, you should push forward because it’s hard. Because it means you’re about to do something great.”

  I hum at his statement, appreciating it in sentiment, but not in my present situation.

  “He also asked me out on a date.”

  Mack is silent on the other end of the line.

  “I’m not sure that us working together is a good idea, even if we can create something super cool and get top marks on the project. I just…”

  Mack clears his throat lightly as I let the end of that sentence trail off. When I don’t add anything else he finally says something.

  “So what did you say to him?”

  “Huh?”

  “When he asked you on the date. What did you say?”

  “I didn’t say anything. He cut me off and told me he wanted me to think about it.”

  “And are you going to?”