The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C

by LeighAnn Kopans

  Jesus, what had Crash done to her? Setbacks had always just pissed Rion off, made her push harder against whatever had knocked her down, had her figuring out how to get back on her feet as soon as possible. Now her whole body was just on strike, dragging itself through every movement like it would rather not have shown up to work today.

  Probably because Crash hadn’t just knocked her down—he’d smashed her to smithereens. Was there a way to come back from it? Sure, but it would be a hell of a lot harder than holding up her fists and fighting back.

  Rion’s shift started at one in the afternoon, and as she walked in, Kelly, a girl with a bleach-blond pixie cut who had taught her some great tips for getting a perfect post-bleach tone, was just taking a girl back to get her nose or navel or tongue pierced. Maybe even her nipple, but from the look of her—trendy jeans and a pea coat, it was a tiny stud in her nose.

  Rion forced a teeth-showing smile at Kelly before she disappeared into one of the piercing rooms, and forced her legs to walk over to the curving desk, then her arms to hoist her bag onto it. She collapsed into the chair and lazily pulled up the mixing software, already mentally searching for the songs she could blend together, and found a slow Imogen heap track, dark and soothing, and let the tinny chords flood her ears.

  So a few seconds later, when a slight figure with long, dark waves plopped into the chair next to her, she was caught completely off guard.

  “Holy shit, Olivia, you scared me!” Rion’s heart thudded, an unwanted reminder of how much it had ached since yesterday.

  “Rion! Oh my God, are you okay? I’ve been calling you and I was seriously just about to send somebody to your dorm.”

  “Of course I’m okay! Are you okay? You’re the one who had a drug bust go down in your studio yesterday.”

  Olivia sat up straight, and she stared at Rion with a confused look on her face. “We need to back up here. When I finally got to Crash last night, he said he hadn’t been able to get a hold of you, that he didn’t know where you’d run to. And if he didn’t know where you were…well, that worried me. That’s all.”

  “Wait a minute. What do you mean you got to Crash?” Suddenly, every nerve in her body was a live wire.

  “I bailed him out. Thank God it was only five hundred, because we hadn’t cashed out the register yet and—”

  “Well, aren’t you pissed at him?” Rion’s voice had risen at least two levels. The girl getting pierced by Kelly squealed in the piercing room, and Olivia shushed her.

  “No. Kind of pissed at Steph, because I can’t keep her on now, and she was one of my best piercers. Not to mention she really needed the money.”

  “Hold on,” Rion said, biting her tongue from inserting a mother curse word. “Now you need to back up. What does Steph have to do with this?”

  “Rion, the pot was hers. Fell out of her damn locker. So fucking careless.”

  Suddenly, Rion felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. A tiny part of her hoped this wasn’t a horrific alternate reality, and what she thought was happening was just a dream. “But, Crash…he got arrested, so…” Rion managed to stutter.

  “Rion, no.” Olivia looked sad, disappointed. “Crash just took the fall for her. I don’t think he realized how much she actually had in there, but still. It was cool of him.”

  “What the…?” Numbness smacked Rion in the chest and spread over her whole body. “Why would—I mean, how could—I mean, I had no idea. God, why would he do that?” Her voice was back to hysterical pussy levels again, and as the piercing room door swung open, Olivia gave her another glare.

  While nose ring girl—Rion had been right about that one—checked out, she whirled on Olivia. “But seriously, what the fuck? Why would—”

  “Are you talking about Steph?” Kelly butted in. “Yeah, that sucks. Crash is amazing.”

  Rion blinked. So Steph was the one selling pot, and the boyfriend she’d written off completely was actually a marijuana knight in shining armor. Goddammit.

  “Rion, you know Steph has been going through a lot. Her husband had to have another surgery, and they didn’t have much savings to begin with. It’s a real shit storm. She can’t take another job because she can’t get good child care at weird hours.”

  Rion swallowed and nodded.

  “She told me used to sell a little on the side when she was in college, just to help pay her tuition, which I knew, but I hired her with the understanding that she was done with that,” Olivia explained.

  Rion let a short, shocked laugh escape. Olivia and she weren’t too different, after all.

  “I guess she dug up new contacts when things got really rough. Anyway, I don’t know who the tip was from, but getting arrested would have ruined her whole family, basically, because of her past record. Definitely jail time. So Crash stepped in.”

  “Because he has no record,” Rion said, guilt and mortification blooming through her stomach. Dammit. He had no record. Just like he’d promised her.

  Olivia nodded. “And he’s white. And he has some spare cash to fund bail. And he’s seen Steph going through a lot. Anyway, the worst he’ll get is community service and a fine, which I’ll help with because I love the fuck out of both him and Steph. And also because my big brother bailed me out more than once, and I really do need to pay it forward, for karma purposes.”

  Olivia glanced at a framed picture of her, a guy two heads taller with a near-identical face to hers, and a woman a little shorter than her with bouncy blond curls standing under a sign that read, Joey and Hawk’s Bar and Restaurant. “I worked for him. He and his wife started the Joey and Hawk’s chain in Philly. Figure I can do my part for a kid struggling like I was.”

  “Oh my God, why do you look so mortified?” Kelly asked, her eyebrows wrinkling up. “I thought you and Crash were a thing. And how did you not know all this?”

  Even Rion’s lips felt numb, but she forced them to move. “Because I…oh God,” she moaned, putting her face in her hands, smudging her eyeliner even more. “I told him I wouldn’t speak to him. I’ve had…some really bad experiences with guys who were users. We only started dating when he swore he wasn’t. And I thought he’d been lying to me, and now…oh fucking fuck fuck fuck.”

  Rion had never believed herself to be one hundred percent wrong about anything. Until now.

  “Hold on,” Olivia said, narrowing her eyes. “You’re telling me he called you and you told him to rot in that jail cell?”

  “Oh my God,” Rion moaned, pushing her fingers back through her hair. The air had gotten so thin in the room, and her heart physically ached.

  “Well, you’d better get up to his place, then,” Kelly said, wide-eyed. “Olivia doesn’t really need you. Still winter break. Right, O?”

  “Yeah, get out of here. Come back if you can but otherwise, don’t worry about it.”

  “But, I—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Paid. Okay?”

  Rion stood up, swiped her coat off the arm of her chair, and slung her bag over her shoulder. She squeezed Olivia and tripped over the rolling chair when she tried to walk out from behind the desk. Olivia and Kelly dissolved into laughter, and Rion silently swore to glare at them for it later. Right now, they were saints, even if it was just for making her realize what a complete and total idiot she was. When she was halfway out the door, Olivia called, “And don’t kill yourself on the way up!”

  She couldn’t get to Crash’s place fast enough. She ran out the door, then through another outside door that the key to his apartment fit in. Rion thanked every deity out there that he’d given it to her. She dashed up the stairs, dying to see his face, trying to figure out the words she’d say to apologize, to try to fix things, to ask him why he didn’t just tell her what he’d done?

  She banged on the door, her heart galloping a mile a minute. He had to be awake. After thirty seconds, she knocked again, passing the seemingly endless moments by visualizing the layout of his apartment. She couldn’t hear the shower runni
ng, so that wasn’t it. Finally, she heard the creak of footsteps on the old wooden floor.

  “Crash?” she said, begging her voice not to get all crazy. Not with him. Not when she had to get him to hopefully forgive her for all the shit she’d screamed at him last night. When he was in jail.

  The footsteps padded to the door, and she steeled herself. Should she touch him? Hug him? Kiss him? The peephole darkened, and she waited for him to pull the door open and let her fall into a hug. She’d never looked forward to apologizing so much in her life.

  The door slowly, torturously, opened a crack, and Crash rested his head against the doorjamb, looking at her with one eye open. “What do you want, Ri? Did you come to take your shit home?”

  “I…um…” Immediately, she was deflated. He didn’t smile, and his eyes didn’t sparkle. He wasn’t standing with square shoulders and arms crossed, ready to tease her for her horrible mistake.

  Probably because none of this was funny. Dammit, Rion.

  The hallway was suddenly beyond awkward. Nowhere to lean, nowhere to sit, no place to ground herself. “Can I come in?” she asked, her voice suddenly turning meek.

  Crash scoffed. “Suit yourself,” he said, flicking the door open with his fingertips and then turning to go inside.

  “Okay…” she said as he stalked to the kitchenette in the corner. “Should I sit?”

  “Like I said. Suit yourself.” Crash filled up the coffee pot and spooned in some grounds—not nearly enough, which apparently he hadn’t learned from the dozen times she’d tried to teach him. The moments where he set the coffee to brewing and walked, looking exhausted, to the big mismatched chair opposite Rion were excruciating. He looked at her with tired, red eyes ringed in purple.

  “Are you okay?” Again, that quiet, careful voice. Something she never thought she’d use, never thought she’d want to use. Never planned on being sorry, wanting to give someone else consideration.

  “Well, I had a fucking shitty night, as you can probably guess. Obviously you don’t care, but don’t tell me you don’t know that it took for fucking ever for Olivia to get done with her police interviews and come check on me at the jail.”

  “I didn’t know,” Rion said, quietly, watching her shoes.

  In the two years since she’d been on her own, Rion never backed down from any confrontation. She prided herself on looking conflict directly in the eyes, stating her opinion, standing up for herself, not feeling sorry for a single damn bit of it.

  Now all she wanted to do was rewind the clock 24 hours and start over again. She wanted to be the kind of person who could trust someone she loved, even though she knew that would take every ounce of strength she had.

  “Of course you knew!” Crash said, slamming his coffee cup down. Rion counted the sloshes, one side to the other, as they spilled out each side of his mug. Seven, before they stayed inside. It was the only thing she could do, to focus on the coffee, because everything else around her fuzzed and blurred into something unrecognizable, something she couldn’t even begin to touch.

  “You know what happens when you get hauled into jail. It was bad enough, with the drunk off his ass kid throwing up in the corner of the cell and the officer glaring at my tattoos like they automatically mean I’m some delinquent. But then to have to wait for my boss to come and find me? To have to stuff a handful of condoms back in my pocket from the giant plastic bag they put all my shit in? Jesus, Rion. What the hell?”

  By then, his voice had softened, like being angry with her had taken everything out of him. He slumped back in his chair, shaking his head back and forth, refusing to look at her.

  The combination of an instinct of self-preservation, standoffishness, and stubbornness was not serving Rion well. After all, he had still lied to her, even if it wasn’t in the way she’d originally thought. “I mean, I didn’t know you covered for Stephanie. You didn’t tell me she was selling, and…”

  Crash finally looked at her with narrowed eyes, and Rion suddenly regretted wishing he would. His voice was low, steady, measured. “You mean you actually thought that was my pot?”

  Rion pressed her lips together, shook her head. Yes, she regretted the assumption. But she wouldn’t apologize for trying to protect herself. “You surrendered! It happened before I could even look at you. What the hell was I supposed to think?”

  “I’ll tell you what you were supposed to think. This is Crash, the guy I’ve shared everything with for the past three months, the guy who spent Christmas with me, the guy I love. If you still do.”

  Rion’s heart twisted, the pain of it taking her breath away.

  “You were supposed to think, ‘Wow, this is the one thing Crash promised me, absolutely and positively, he had nothing to do with. So I trust that he wasn’t lying to me.’”

  “You know what that is, Crash? That’s the way to get burned. I’ve been through it once, and I’m not going to let it happen again.”

  Crash pressed his lips together and started nodding sort of manically, like a storm was brewing behind his eyes and he was just trying to figure out the best way to let it out. “It would never have happened with me. Because I wouldn’t lie to you. Because I love you, Rion. But obviously you don’t love me enough to believe me when I tell you I don’t do that shit.”

  Rion didn’t have an answer to that. “It’s not you, Crash, it’s me. I would have that reaction with anyone, because look how one asshole’s stash of pot, one time, totally fucked over my life! An asshole I totally trusted. I don’t have anyone left to have my back, so I have to look out for myself.”

  Crash stood and shook his head, staring at the floor. Rion stood, too, a reflex she’d probably developed from spending so much time with him. The realities of the moment swirled into a terrifying mix she couldn’t grab hold of, couldn’t predict.

  “I wanted to be the one to have your back, Rion. I thought that’s who I was. But obviously I’m not good enough. And I’m sorry for that, I really am. Because you are the first person I thought was able to look past my job and my appearance and see me—a stand-up guy just trying to make it. Guess you’re just like every other shallow bitch out there.”

  Rion’s shoulders tensed against the sudden and violent urge to sob. She looked him square in the eye, wishing she could apologize, knowing she’d hate herself if she did. Crash reached down, wrenched open the door, and stared at the hallway outside.

  All at once, Rion realized—he was kicking her out. Pushing her out on her own, saying goodbye without a second thought. That wasn’t love. Love gave second chances. Love understood past hurts and forgave them. Didn’t it?

  Whatever. She didn’t fucking need him and his sanctimonious anti-stereotype bullshit anyway. What a fucking douchebag, making her feel bad for trying to protect herself. As she picked up her hoodie from the chair, still wrinkled and warm from her pathetic ass crushing it just seconds ago, she pushed down the confusing, whispering feeling that she was the wrong one, that she was throwing a hell of a lot away by walking out right now. That maybe her pride wasn’t worth it if this was the price.

  Fuck that. She was nothing if not strong. It was the girls who broke down in tears, who apologized and groveled, who needed a guy in order to breathe, who were setting themselves up for a world of hurt later. She slung her bag over her shoulder and stalked out the door. “What the fuck ever,” she said, pushing past Crash, regrettably bumping his shoulder on the way.

  The entire four-block walk back to Harrison was filled with the thought that she’d never feel that shoulder against hers again, but not a single tear rolled down her cheek on this walk back.

  Being alone was better anyway. Okay, so maybe Crash hadn’t been selling drugs this time. But if someone they worked with was, and he was willing to take that fall for her, what else would he do? Someone who was complicit was almost as bad as someone who was actually dealing, actually using, wasn’t it?

  The warm blast of air in the Harrison lobby alerted her to the fact that she’d swiped
her card and walked through the door—actions she barely noticed because the loop of rationalizations running through her head was so loud. The eerie quiet of the Harrison lobby on Winter Break barely registered with her, except in a vague feeling of gratitude that nobody would have to see her like this.

  Like what, though? She wasn’t crying, wasn’t raging, wasn’t losing control. She was perfectly calm and stoic, like stone. Frozen, rigid, and strong. Dying on the inside, steady and functional on the outside. It could be worse. She could be losing her shit, like the night Dad died or the day Mom went to jail.

  Now if only she could get through life like this.

  Suite 17C was empty and dark, but the door to Amy’s room was ajar, casting a triangle of light on the rest of the room. She’d either gone to get something to eat or gone to shower, and that girl deserved both. Getting dumped by a non-boyfriend was almost as bad as getting thrown out by a real boyfriend. Or maybe just equally bad.

  It was better for Rion, too. If she tried to lean on anyone else right now, she would learn to always expect someone to be there for her to catch her when she fell. As she was learning now, that was a dangerous expectation indeed. She’d almost gotten there with Crash. Almost.

  The silent blue-black of the Suite’s common room felt like the perfect place for Rion to be now, so she settled onto the futon, trying so very hard to feel like she was in her body and not out of it, like she was okay, like she was whole with or without Crash, with or without someone who matched her so well.

  Even though Rion knew that wholeness shouldn’t feel like a desperate battle to hold all the pieces of yourself together, she sat there, wrapped her arms around herself, and told herself, over and over, that she was just fine.

  I had a guy break up with me for being Jewish. No joke. We had been dating for a couple of months. I thought it was going great and we were getting ready to introduce each other to our families. Then one night he comes over and says that he doesn’t think we are moving forward on the same path. I was absolutely dumbfounded. So I asked why. He said, “Well, I’m pretty religious and you seem pretty religious. So I just don’t think it would work out.” Keep in mind that I told him I was Jewish the night we met.