Clean Break

by Erin McLellan

  “I’ve had to read it in two classes and the professors used editions with different pagination.”

  “Oh.” His fingers twitched, and I suspected he was dying to correct his list.

  “Or you could read a book that wasn’t written by a boring, old White guy.”

  “I’m on the hold list for Their Eyes Were Watching God at the public library. It’s on the high school reading list, though, so it might be a while before I get it,” he said.

  And bang. Dead. It was so hard not to feel whatever it was that I felt for him when he said sexy-ass things like that. Dropping Zora Neale Hurston and the public library in one sentence was guaranteed to make me fall in love a little.

  More than a little.

  I kissed his cheek, his chin. I couldn’t help myself. I pulled back and tried to apologize, but he groaned like it hurt. Then we were moving. He yanked me away from the table, and we tumbled onto the ground by his entryway. I laughed, surprised to find myself on top of him, but he silenced me with his lips.

  I wanted to say, We shouldn’t be doing this. I wanted to stop us. I wanted to tell him that I loved him. Instead, I kissed him back.

  Chapter Nineteen

  CONNOR

  Travis’s words from the day before rang in my head like bad feedback from a speaker as we tumbled down in my entryway.

  You want things that I don’t.

  You want things that I don’t.

  I’d repeated the words out loud last night as I was lying in bed until they were distorted, huge, and ugly.

  I was in love. He didn’t love me back. My insecurity had snowballed until I’d nearly convinced myself that Travis had been using me, that he didn’t even like me as a person. I wasn’t worthy of his time. His affection.

  I’d replayed what I’d said to him, the way I’d laid it all out on the line for him, over and over.

  I knew this was my OCD and anxiety talking. Screaming, really. And I wasn’t fighting it like I should. It was hard to fight it when all the ugly things it was telling me felt true.

  I’d intended to talk to my parents about my anxiety over my role at the farm, but now I was pretty sure it wasn’t worth it. Dr. Greer was right. I could do good things here in Elkville. Fear about the future was normal. Without Travis taking up extra room in my head, maybe it wouldn’t feel so horrible to stay in my hometown.

  I needed to end this with him. It was starting to pull me apart, strip-by-strip. I’d thought I could handle it, that spending time with him was worth the inevitable heartache.

  I was very sure that was not the case anymore.

  But every cell in my body cried out as we crashed to the floor together. As his lips landed on my collarbone. As he moaned.

  He pulled back. “I’m sorry. We shouldn’t—”

  “I want to.”

  I reeled him back in, stopping his words, and ripped down his jeans. He wasn’t wearing underwear.

  “I do too,” he said.

  His hands were greedy on me. Greedy and desperate. He opened my jeans in a frenzy.

  With our clothes half undone and Travis on top, we ground together, and I touched every bit of his skin that was within range of my hands, wanting to press this memory into him and make it last.

  I stroked all the parts of his body that I loved—the ladder of his ribs, the ditch of his spine, his wide shoulders, his firm biceps, the perfect divot of his belly button—making a list that would have to live alone in my brain forever.

  I smacked his ass hard. He tensed and cried out. “Please, Connor.”

  I spanked him again.

  He grabbed both of our cocks in one hand, and it was rough and dry and too frantic, but I came like his finger had been on the trigger all along. Pleasure hit me in waves, and I released a low, pained moan. I didn’t want it to be over yet.

  It couldn’t be over yet.

  It was the last time, and I didn’t want it to end.

  When I blinked my eyes open, Travis was staring, his gaze hungry and hazy. He hadn’t come yet, but he was using my spunk to slick his way.

  “Connor,” he breathed. I grabbed his hips and pulled him forward and into my mouth. His knee landed on my shoulder, and one of his hands, probably the one covered in my jizz, smacked against the wall above my head. Still, it was perfect.

  He tasted of me and him mixed together. He didn’t let me adjust or control what was happening. No, he fucked my mouth ruthlessly, chasing his own oblivion. I let him, grateful to let go of my control.

  “Such a pretty mouth, Connor,” he panted. “So filthy.”

  I groaned, eating up his dirty words.

  “Oh God. Love when you make noise,” he said.

  His rhythm fell apart. His words fell apart. And the tip of his dick slotted into my throat. I gripped one side of his ass with one hand, to hold him steady, and spanked the other side with my other hand. He whined, high pitched and shocked, and came down my throat in a rush.

  The euphoria from my orgasm morphed immediately into something sad and strained.

  Travis fell back into the wall and sprawled, all long limbs and half-naked body. A sharp ache set up shop in my chest, and heat pricked behind my eyes. I couldn’t keep dragging this out.

  I was too scared to move, though. He snuggled closer, wrapping my hand in his own.

  I stayed silent.

  Finally, he propped his head up, leaning on his elbow, and frowned. I stared up into his dark eyes. His eyelashes kissed his cheeks each time he blinked. He was beautiful.

  He wasn’t mine.

  “Tell me a story,” he whispered.

  I squeezed his hand. “No.”

  TRAVIS

  I stared up at the ceiling of Connor’s entryway in a daze. He’d retreated to his bedroom several minutes ago, and I wanted to have a mini meltdown about it. I could hear him rustling around in there, so he was probably cleaning off. Most of his come had landed in my hand, but some had hit his stomach. I sat up and righted my clothes.

  When he returned, I was cleaning his spunk off the wall from where my wet palm had touched it.

  I straightened and stared at him. He was in different clothes, everything perfectly in place. He’d even put shoes on.

  He handed me a piece of paper. His hands were shaking, the only indication he wasn’t totally in control.

  “This is all the information you’ll need about Cressida.”

  The page was full of bulleted lists about his cockroach’s habits and preferred foods. Oh. The extra credit. That was why I was here.

  Connor’s penmanship wasn’t right though. It was spikey and wasn’t straight.

  His emotions were in his handwriting.

  “Connor,” I whispered.

  “I don’t need the information about Troilus. I have a solid A in the class. I’m good.”

  “Okay,” I said, then cringed. “Okay” was Connor’s word—the one he said that drove me crazy, that made me want to burrow into him and splay him open. “Babe, let’s sit down.”

  I needed to coax him into calm because if he wasn’t calm, then how the hell was I supposed to be?

  “I don’t want to sit.”

  He paced away from me, his hands fisting his auburn hair. Watching Connor, who was usually so measured and reserved, begin to fall apart was the hardest thing I’d ever done. He was rending apart in front of me, and I wasn’t sure I had the right to try to stop it.

  “We can’t keep doing this. It’s going to hurt us both . . . It’s going to devastate me,” he said, giving voice to the very thing I feared as well.

  He was much braver than me, and he had no idea. I wasn’t sure I would have ever been strong enough to say that out loud.

  “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  He stopped abruptly and stared at me, expression so open and vulnerable that my heart exploded in my chest. Good Lord, I couldn’t handle this today. Or ever.

  “This doesn’t bother you at all, does it?” he asked. “You’re unaffected.”

&n
bsp; “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Of fucking course I was bothered. I was heartbroken. But I was trying to make the right decision here. The right one for both of us. Each time he was in front of me, full of promises and potential, potential to kiss and fuck and hurt me the way I loved being hurt—each time he opened the door, I lost it.

  “I need it to be you,” he said. “I need you to end . . . this. The thing between us.” His voice grew shaky like he was going to cry, and everything cracked inside me. Pow. Gone. Broke forever.

  I reached for him. He let me draw him into my chest, his head tipped down.

  “I can’t stop it,” he said. “I can’t stop wanting you or falling for you. Each time we try, I give in. I’ll keep giving in because I love you, and I really, I—I just, Travis, I need you to be the one to end this and mean it. I’ll never mean it. It has to—has to be you.”

  “Oh, babe.” I held him closer, tighter, soaking in his warmth and his sudden stuttering. “Connor, I never meant to hurt you.” My voice came out as choked as his. “Never. I’m so sorry. I never meant for this to hurt you.”

  He nodded, his forehead against my chest. “I know. But I need you to make the break. I can’t do it. I need you to do it and mean it.”

  I tipped his chin up and held his face in my hands, so I could get one last glimpse of his eyes from this close up. So I could memorize the way they glittered in the warm light. The freckles on his nose, the divot between his eyebrows, the softness of his mouth, the barely there acne scars—I’d remember him for the rest of my life. I’d feel the loss of this forever.

  “This is over,” I said. And he nodded, almost gratefully. “I don’t want to keep doing this. It ends now.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’ll talk to Dr. Greer about reassigning us partners in class, and I’ll sit in a different seat.”

  His eyelashes swept down, and I stroked across his blunt cheekbones.

  “I’ll delete your phone number.” My words hurt more than I expected. I couldn’t imagine a life where talking to Connor wasn’t an option. I couldn’t imagine being cut off from him completely, but I was done hurting him.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice deep and gruff.

  My breath hitched, and I had the sudden fear that I was going to cry. There was a sob pressing against my chest, vying to escape.

  “A clean break,” he said. Then he shattered me by turning his head slightly in my hands and kissing the edge of my palm. “Thank you.”

  My fingers tightened on his face. Did he have any idea that I was drowning too? That I was hurting too?

  It wasn’t fair to tell him now. I swept a thumb across his bottom lip, then turned and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty

  TRAVIS

  I didn’t cry over Connor.

  The day after we ended, I skipped class. Then I attended a QSOC meeting that night so I could catch Dr. Greer afterward.

  “Are you okay? I missed you and Connor in class today,” he said when I approached him after the meeting.

  Connor must have ditched too. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

  “Yeah, I am,” I told him. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  “Sure.”

  He led me back to the empty circle of chairs left over from the meeting, and we sat down.

  “I’d like to change class partners,” I said, the words spilling out in a rush.

  “It’s too late in the semester to change partners. Do you mind telling me what happened?”

  My brain pinwheeled. I hadn’t planned out this conversation, and I clearly should have.

  “Connor and I have been dating. We broke up,” I said, simplifying it into as few words as possible. I’d never called what we were doing “dating,” and that had been one of the things that had probably hurt Connor the most.

  I was so disgusted with myself.

  “Ah,” Dr. Greer said. “That would do it.” He tapped his chin a couple of times. “I’m not going to make you be his partner if you don’t want to, but it’s too late in the semester to switch you guys all around. I think the best thing to do would be for you to both work individually from here on out.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Greer. I appreciate that.”

  “Of course.”

  We both stood up, and I tried to smile. This next part made me feel very stupid. “I promised I wouldn’t talk to him anymore or contact him. It was my fault, see, and . . .” I stared down at my sneakers, embarrassment choking me up.

  “I’ll email him and let him know what I told you.”

  Heat tickled my throat, and I had to clear it several times before thanking him again. He patted my shoulder, and I escaped the room, avoiding all my friends, including Roy, who watched me as if they knew something bad had gone down.

  I didn’t cry over Connor the next day either.

  Paulie and Joel knocked on my bedroom door at eight in the morning, waking me up. They were both wearing workout gear—Joel in a pair of old sweats and Paulie in a shirt and matching compression tights. I’d never seen Paulie in workout clothes. He looked like a super short Nike model. It was weird.

  “We’re going running. You need to come with us,” Joel said. His voice and words made me suspect that Paulie had put him up to this.

  I pulled myself out of bed and got dressed. Running was better than living in my head at the moment, and when I’d been younger, it had calmed me down, given me peace. I’d missed that so much.

  “Where are we running?” I asked. I’d have to take it easy, but maybe feeling the wind against my face would be exactly what I needed.

  “The cross-country course,” Paulie said. I glanced up at him sharply. I’d never been on the Farm College course. I’d avoided it on purpose, sure it’d dredge up all kinds of pain. The non-physical kind.

  “Fine,” I bit out. “I won’t be able to run for long. My ankle will start to hurt after about a mile.”

  “That’s fine. It’s a pretty day. We want to get outside,” Paulie said.

  I strode into the living room to find my tennis shoes and sat on the coffee table to put them on. The painting Connor had given me caught my eye and froze my breath in my lungs. He’d painted the name Brittany on the bottom in his perfect handwriting. It was the best painting on the wall, which wasn’t a surprise considering he was so exacting. He’d followed our teacher’s instructions to a T.

  Joel saw me staring at the unicorn and sat down next to me.

  “Do I need to take that down for you?”

  I nodded.

  “Remember last year, when Paulie and I broke up, and you helped me purge the house of things that reminded me of him?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do we need to do that—purge the house—rather than run?” Joel stood up and pulled the painting off the wall.

  I stared down at my feet. “No. I think that’s the sum of it.”

  “When did you break up?”

  “Can you call it a breakup if you were never actually together?” I asked. Joel didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

  We ran for three miles. I should have stopped after one. My ankle was screaming at me from the repeated impact, but it was better than the screaming in my brain.

  I avoided Paulie and Joel for the rest of the week. I honestly couldn’t handle anyone else being nice to me.

  During Friday’s Entomology class, Connor sat in the front row and I sat in the back. He seemed fine. I wasn’t.

  I wasn’t at all.

  I finally cried during the first week of May. We were supposed to turn in our cockroaches, so I lugged Troilus with me to Entomology 101.

  Dr. Greer was having us bring our cockroaches to a table at the front of the class in alphabetical order where he could easily mark off who had returned theirs.

  “Connor Blume,” Dr. Greer called. I watched as Connor handed Cressida over. Did he ever hold Cressida like his bucket list had demanded? I longed to ask him.

  “Travis Bradf
ord.” I carried Troilus to the front of the class. Connor was already in his seat by the time I made it down the steps, so we didn’t have to pass each other.

  I placed Troilus’s clear box on the table and said, “Bye buddy.”

  As I turned around, my gaze clashed with Connor’s and held. I stumbled, and panic bubbled up in my chest.

  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Troilus, which was ridiculous. I didn’t like him. He was a fucking cockroach.

  I managed to get back to my seat, gather up my stuff, and sneak out the door at the back of the classroom. I made it to the bathroom on the fourth floor, because I was nothing if not a sentimental fool, and texted Joel from inside one of the stalls.

  I think I’m having a meltdown about having to give Troilus back.

  He texted me back immediately, which was a first.

  Doubt the cockroach is the cause.

  A tear plopped onto the screen of my phone, and I swiped it away angrily.

  Joel texted a few minutes later. Are you okay?

  Nope.

  Where are you? he asked.

  I sent him my location and started to cry harder, which always happened if someone was being nice to me when I was sad.

  I’m on my way, Trav.

  I buried my head in my hands and let the tears fall.

  CONNOR

  I had to give my cockroach back to Dr. Greer this morning, so I finally dredged up the nerve to hold him in my hand.

  Cressida froze once he was in my palm. His antennae even stopped twitching. I was pretty sure neither of us liked it. I dumped him back in his enclosure and snapped the lid on.

  That was that.

  I washed my hands, then found my bucket list to mark off this item. It should have made me happy, but it didn’t. Travis was all over this list. Every item I’d completed was full of memories of him.

  Hold Cressida in my hand

  Lose my virginity

  Spank someone with a paddle

  Fall in love and be honest about it

  The rest of the list was silly, and it hurt to read: