by Lori L. Otto
“I will.” I won’t need to, Max. I’m sure I’ll be hearing from you first.
After tossing my phone in the passenger seat, I continue my train of thought from earlier this morning on how I’m going to do this tomorrow night. I wish there was one person in my family I could go to. I was hoping Chris would be more helpful. I’d heard his love life before Anna was a little disastrous, but I guess it’s just too far in the past for him to recall–or he’s just too committed to his wife to think of anything but commitment.
I know my dad ended relationships with women before Mom, but he adores Zaina. Jon broke up with Livvy twice, but I know they were just fights. He has always been madly in love with my sister. It seems like nearly everyone else in my family has much more experience being on the receiving end of these situations.
It’s not like I can ask them what their favorite way to be dumped was. I don’t think that’s appropriate.
The planner in me wants to have everything laid out for tomorrow night, but no matter how organized my thoughts are, the reality is that I have no idea how Zaina’s going to react. No amount of careful thought is going to make this go smoothly or easily. I just need to know what needs to be said and say it, and then be ready to discuss what happens next.
There’s no easy way out of this. There shouldn’t be an easy way out of a four-year relationship.
When I get home, I call Coley to verify our plans for the following morning, but have a hard time getting off the phone with her. “So, what’s your dating history look like?” I ask her. “You never talk about that.”
“That’s because it’s kind of personal,” she says.
“I get that,” I respond, “but you know what you know about me.”
“Your life is an open book, though. I learned most of what I know about you before I ever met you. It’s not like you’ve told me much about your actual relationship with Zaina,” she retorts. “That’s always been in that murky gray area that we don’t really talk about because we’re just friends.”
“Right.” I sigh into the phone, still wanting to know more. “Zaina and I were each others’ firsts. We waited two and a half years before we had sex. We did it for the first time about two months before she went away to Oxford. We were on this big group trip with our friends in St. Thomas. It was probably the craziest trip I’ve ever been on.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
“Our relationship was great in high school,” I continue, bypassing her question entirely, “and I realize a lot of it had to do with the fact that our friends were always around. Max and Callen and Brinlee were ever-present. Rarely did we do anything without them. Our date nights nearly always started with the five of us. We might split off into couples by the end of the night, but group dates were the norm.
“After Max and Callen broke up, and then went off to school in California, it put a lot more pressure on me and Zaina to have our own little relationship. I’ve just recently come to realize how much of a role our friends played in what we once had. They infused everything with fun. Together, Zaina and I have a hard time having fun.”
“Trey,” she says when I take a break. “I don’t… I don’t want to be the girl you come to with your relationship problems. That’s why I never ask about her.”
“That’s not what I want from you, either, Coley.”
In the building silence, I want to tell her that I’m breaking up with Zaina tomorrow. I want to ask her advice. I want to know if she wants to go out with me once I’m single. But I feel like every one of those things betrays my current girlfriend, so I keep my mouth shut.
“I had a few boyfriends in high school,” she finally says. “Nothing long term, though. I dated one guy for most of my senior year. There was considerable slut-shaming before then.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Lots of catty rumors. People said I slept around. Well, the guys said I did, so the rest of the school believed it,” she explains.
I choose not to ask, not really wanting to know. It doesn’t really matter to me. “That sucks. People can be so mean. They were probably just jealous of you,” I tell her.
“It didn’t matter what their motivations were. I’d still go home and cry some nights. But it made me stronger. It made me a better poet, too. I wrote a lot. And it was nice to have Joel with me. People counted him out as weak because he was deaf, but he wasn’t. He got suspended for giving one of my exes a black eye.”
“He’s scrappy,” I tell her, laughing.
“Yeah, I guess you know. He’s pretty fearless, to take you on.”
“I like that he’s protective of you.”
“Nyall used to be that way, too. I can’t imagine what he would have done to those guys.”
“Hmmm,” is my only response. “So what happened with your last boyfriend?”
“He was recruited to Michigan State on a track and field scholarship, and at the end of the year, they had invited him up to watch an event. He hooked up with some girl while he was there. When he came back, he immediately came to my house and apologized profusely and begged for my forgiveness and said he didn’t want to break up, but I couldn’t stay with him.
“Once a cheater…”
I close my eyes, breathing in deeply and slowly. After holding that breath for a few seconds, I let it out quietly, thanking God for giving me the patience and willpower to not act on any of the impulses I’ve had while I’ve been with her. “Yeah.”
“You know when something’s there,” she continues. “You know when something’s worth fighting for. There was nothing there for us.”
“So,” I wonder aloud, “you’ve been with someone and felt that what you had was worth fighting for?”
“Haven’t you?” she responds, not answering me.
“I asked you first.”
“I have to go.”
“Then so do I,” I tell her. “But I’ll see you bright and early. Want me to call you when I’m downstairs?”
“I’ll be watching from the lobby,” she says. “I’ll see you at seven. Unless you’re having second thoughts–”
“I’m not,” I tell her, cutting her off.
chapter fifteen
I have a steaming hot Caramel Macchiato from Ruvelyn’s waiting in the cup holder for Coley when she climbs into the car on Sunday morning. A bag next to it has blueberry muffins with butter and some strawberry cookies that she can enjoy later.
“I love that you’re always early,” she says to me.
“I love that you’re always ready,” I respond.
“It’s called ponytail-no-makeup.” I call it natural and effervescent and lovely. Anytime I see her freckles, I imagine she’s shed a layer for me; that her guard is down, and she’s letting me in, closer to the woman I want to know.
I realize I’m no more special than anyone else around us, but that doesn’t change how I feel.
“You wear it well,” I say simply, only giving her a brief sideways glance with a smile. “I wrote a ton last night. I couldn’t sleep. I grabbed the notes from your interview off our shared drive. Amazing job, by the way.”
“Yeah? I felt pretty good about them.”
“They were incredibly thorough.”
“I’ve gotten a lot better with my shorthand, thanks to your guidance. I typed those up on Thursday.”
“I may let you redline what I wrote while we fly today, if that’s okay. Turn the tables a bit.” She clasps her hands together, and a playfully evil grin spreads across her lips. She seems to like this idea. “Cool. I may sleep while you do that.”
“Can you sleep on a little plane like this? Isn’t it loud?”
As we travel under the George Washington Bridge, I look over at her and laugh. “This is no puddle jumper, Coley. It’s a jet. Like, you can actually stand up in it, walk around, go in another room.”
“Another room?”
“Just a small bedroom.” She looks at me skeptically. “It’s where I was thinking my nap may take pla
ce, while you edit in the main space. No?”
“Who has a bed on a plane?” she murmurs to herself.
“My parents take a lot of long flights,” I explain.
“You ever done anything else in that bed?”
“Like a mile-high sort of thing?” I ask for clarification.
“Yeah.”
“No, because I don’t like to think that anyone has done that in the plane, Coley… Because if anyone has, it’s my parents, and I don’t like to think about that. So thanks a ton for that image, laureate.” She laughs at my discomfort. “Now I don’t even want to sleep there anymore.”
“Good, you’ll stay awake with me. I’m kind of nervous about this jet thing,” she admits.
“Really?” I ask, turning into the Teterboro entrance. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. This pilot’s my favorite. He’s only had two crash landings, but he survived them both.”
She swats me hard across my bicep.
“Ow!”
“You deserved that. You better knock on wood the first chance you get, Trey Holland.”
“I said he survived them both!” I continue laughing, showing the guard at the gate the ID my father had given me last night when I went by his house.
“Good morning, Mr. Holland,” the woman greets me.
“Hi.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“Virginia,” I say. “Winchester Regional.”
“I meant, with your car. Yours is the third hangar on your left.”
“Oh, right.”
Coley starts giggling.
“Whatever you do, don’t drive on the runway.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Have a good flight.”
“Thank you,” I tell her, taking back the card.
“Like you wouldn’t know where you were flying to,” Coley says, still chuckling at me.
“Shut it, laureate.” When I round the corner to our hangar, Bruce, our pilot, already has the plane out and is doing checks with a mechanic. He signals me into the large garage. We gather our things, securing our backpacks, and as soon as we get out, Coley takes me by the forearm and drags me down the concrete area that spans the length of the hangar. “What are you doing?”
We stop in front of a mulberry tree, and she raps her knuckles on it three times, then signals for me to do the same. “Go ahead.”
“Oh, this is because of the cras–”
“Stop. Saying. That,” she says through gritted teeth.
“You’re perfectly safe, Coley,” I tell her as I knock on the bark of the tree. She rolls her eyes at me before we walk back toward the plane.
I get her set up with my story before we take off, and we’re deep into conversation when the plane finally goes aloft. She doesn’t even notice it and is surprised to see we’re already high above the ground when she peeks out the window. I don’t nap, choosing to discuss the article with her as she reads through it. The flight isn’t long, and we’re on the ground in Virginia just as we feel like we’ve got a solid article to present to Professor Aslon tomorrow.
It takes a lot of stress off us both.
“A limo?” she asks when we get off the plane.
“I thought we might be talking about the article. I was thinking the privacy screen might be in order.”
“Oh,” she says, fighting to keep this incredibly alluring grin off her face.
“What? What do you think about that? It looks like you have some experience with a privacy screen. Do you?”
“Excuse me?” She looks at me, surprised.
“I mean… what’s that look?” I bite my bottom lip, memorizing her expression.
“Get in the god damned limo, Trey,” she instructs me.
“Ladies first,” I remind her, stepping aside as the driver holds the door for her. I slide in after, but then move to the bench seat facing backwards so I can watch her as we ride to the hospital. “Water?”
“Sure.” I get a phone call as I reach into the cooler to get a bottle for her. She climbs over me and gets it herself while I answer the phone and catch sight of her non-thong underwear by accident.
“Hello?”
“Trey? It’s Professor Aslon.”
I cover the mic and whisper to Coley. “Professor Aslon.”
She looks at me, confused.
“Hi. What’s up? I mean, what can I do for you?”
“The President of the University just called to inform me that Asher Knoxland was arrested early this morning.”
“What? Asher was arrested!”
“Who are you talking to?” she asks me, her voice worried.
“Sorry, yeah. I’m with Coley. We’ve been working on the story.”
“How far along is it?”
“We feel really good with it.”
“Good enough to let me take a look?”
“Yeah. I can send it now, if you’d like.”
“Please do. We’ll likely need to make some edits about what happened this morning. But this is going to be big news, and people are going to have a lot of questions–questions I hope you’ve answered.”
“Yeah. The only person we haven’t gotten permission from to use her real name is Pryana. The other two–Lucy and Kamiesha–they’re both okay with it. I have to confess, though. Pryana doesn’t really know we were writing the story.”
“I know,” she says. “I’ll talk to Pryana. People who were at the party last weekend will know the story is referring to her.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you two going to be around today?” she asks.
“We’re in Virginia visiting a family member. If you can leave me a voicemail or email, or make edits and upload it to our folder, we’ll check in when we’re finished. We have a plane ride home tonight when we can do more work,” I explain.
“Perfect. Thank you, Trey. Thank Coley for me, too.”
“I will. And I’ll send the article as soon as I’m off the phone.” When I hang up, I start my laptop, connect it to my phone and submit the story to my professor’s inbox. “Holy shit, Coley.”
“Did she say why he was arrested?” I shake my head. “Wow.”
“She’ll give us more info this afternoon.”
“Wow!”
“I mean, he’ll probably post bail or something. If they allow him to; he has the money. So let’s not get our hopes up, but this is a step in the right direction. They have evidence. They must have found probable cause somewhere. And if he was arrested, that’s NYPD, not campus police. This is a big deal.” I realize I’m shaking.
“I just wonder what they found. What made them keep looking?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Lucy or Kamiesha finally went to the police.”
Maybe we had nothing to do with it at all, but I’m still proud of the work we’ve done together. I smile at her, hoping she can see the respect I have in her and her work.
“I need to call Pryana,” she tells me. “I wonder if she knows.”
“Yeah, call her.”
I listen to the one-sided conversation. It’s obvious that Pryana has already been informed of the arrest, and it sounds like the police were the ones to tell her. Coley starts repeating parts of what our friend tells her so I can get more of the story. Both Lucy and Kamiesha reported their incidents last Thursday. This was enough to raise suspicions and force the cops to keep investigating. They found a cab driver who identified Asher and Pryana and said that he’d taken them both to Pryana’s apartment after picking them up at The Wit at one in the morning. The cabbie said Pree could barely walk.
A little more research led cops to a surveillance camera outside a nearby bank. It showed Asher walking back toward Central Park about two hours after the cab dropped him off.
The police got a search warrant and found Pryana’s keys in the back of a desk drawer in Asher’s apartment.
Nothing positively identifies him as the rapist, but it puts him at the scene of the crime that night. It also shows him as
a liar.
After Coley gets off the phone, she looks up and around her. “We’re here,” she says, the excitement from the previous conversation draining from her face and sullenness taking over.
I look out the window to my left, seeing two main buildings. Behind them are many more buildings, all connected with a tall, black fence that lines the walkways. It looks very much like a prison and not much like a hospital.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she says.
“No,” I say, trying to shake it off.
“It could be so much worse.”
“He’s, what, twenty?” I ask her, feeling overwhelmed with sadness. The driver opens the door for us. “Shit, Coley.” I let her get out first, making sure she has all of her things, plus her water.
“Sir, here’s my card. Just call when you’re ready for me to come back.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, giving him a cash tip that I’d gotten out of the ATM last night.
Coley and I stare at the hospital for a few seconds. “What’d you expect? A vast expanse of green pastures? Horses? A hotel-like facility?”
“I’ll sound like an idiot if I say yes, won’t I? I don’t mean to make you feel bad. Shit,” I say again, just trying to get my wits about me. “Is it all necessary?”
She nods her head and starts walking toward the entrance. I follow her, wondering how she does it every month, and at the same time understanding why she doesn’t do it any more often.
“Coley,” someone at the check-in desk says to her warmly. “No Joel today?”
“No, he had too much prep work to do for school,” she says.
It’s at that moment the woman looks up at me and drops her jaw. “Is that–” She looks back at Coley. “Is that? That’s not who I think it is. That’s Jack Holland’s son. Is that Trey Holland? Are you Trey Holland?” she asks, finally working her way back to me.
“Hi,” I say, holding my hand out to her, “it’s nice to meet you…”
“Henrietta, and oh, my, I need a hug from you, cutie! Oooo!” she says loudly. As I hug her, Coley stands behind her and points at my cheeks, making sure I know just how badly I’m blushing right now. “How do you know my sweet Coley?”
