by Stacey Nash
“Like I said …”
I stood aside to let Molly pass through into my room first, then pulled the door closed behind us. Molly was right. Ella was a right royal pain in the rear who had deliberately caused another problem for me, just like she’d done all year.
Molly took her favourite spot on my desk and sipped her tea while I moved toward the swivel chair and carefully sat down. Just as I was raising the cup to my lips, I noticed the empty space on my desk. The cup fell from my numb fingers.
My computer was gone.
****
According to the dean there wasn’t a lot we could do. My room had been wide open, so there was no point calling for the cops to print the door. Our dorm was home to more than two hundred people, and there were often more than that onsite because people had visitors, and then there were all the other dorms nearby.
Unless I suspected someone in particular it would be near impossible to locate the thief. Of course, he logged the theft and reported it anyway. The best I could do though, was keep my eyes open in the hope whoever took it would be stupid enough to let me catch a glimpse of them with it. Not exactly easy when it was a black HP, just like so many others. My tablet, a wad of cash and some jewellery also went missing. But it was my computer’s absence that hurt the most. I’d need to start from scratch on that essay, and the Law assignment too, and I had next to no notes, since I’d always used my tablet in lectures. I was doomed to fail again.
I felt sick at the amount of work I’d have to catch up on. The dean promised to write my lecturers to support my plea for extensions, and exemptions, and all sorts of ’sions. It didn’t make me feel any better though. Nor did the fact I was working out of Oxley’s computer lab. It wasn’t a place I’d ever visited before, but I had no option. The computers lining the walls of the ample-sized room weren’t bad, and I could work all right if the other people there worked quietly, which thankfully they were.
I logged into my emails, and there was a reminder from Bethanie that I needed to RSVP, so I flicked back a quick message telling her I’d be there with bells on, but I was passing on the plus one.
The door squeaked as some other poor soul, probably pulling an all-nighter, entered. Anyone that was coming down this late would surely be here until sunrise. Like I would be, just to get this Socio essay rewritten.
A waft of disturbed air hit me with someone plonking into the next spot, and Molly whispered, “I ordered pizza. Come wait with me. I’m sure you could use the break.”
A huge sigh wound its way from me. I stretched my arms above my head. “Only if you intend to share, because I need sustenance to stay awake.”
“I ordered Ham and Pineapple.” Molly winked, and pushed up out of her chair. I clicked through to save my work to the flash drive which I ejected and popped in my jeans pocket. There was no way I’d lose this essay again.
“What time’s it coming?” I asked, pushing the heavy glass door open.
“Any minute,” Molly said.
We walked through the dark, deserted courtyard, and our shoes echoed off the mini bridge as we went to wait in the front car park. It didn’t look like we’d be waiting long though, because the beam of headlights swung into the parking lot just as we arrived. The car skidded to a halt right in front of us, and my heart just about jumped through my throat. It wasn’t at nearly being run over, either.
Logan’s red Corolla idled there, and I took a step back, cursing my traitorous friend.
Molly grabbed my arm. “I swear … it’s not … I just ordered pizza.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her. My heart sped up and slowed down all at the same time. I wanted to see him, but I didn’t too. I gulped, my mind a swirl of confusing mixed emotions. Then a familiar dark head popped up from the driver’s side door, and I could breathe again.
“Hey.” Jordan beamed.
I swallowed down the ridiculous fear that had clawed its way into my throat. It was okay; it was just Jordan. No. Big. Deal. “Since when are you a delivery boy?”
“Since the other dude’s sick, and I begged Logan to borrow the Corolla to pick up an extra shift.” He lopped around the front of the car, tapping his hand off the hood, then yanked open the passenger door and pulled out a heat-proof red pizza bag.
“How’ve you been?” he asked, pulling out the square box.
“She’s been terrible,” Molly answered.
I positioned my foot over hers and pressed down. Hard.
“Good. I’ve been good, Jordan. How about you?”
“Miserable. I miss you. Sergeant Logan’s making me exercise and clean up and study. It’s like boot camp gone bad.”
I forced a laugh, and took the proffered box from him. “Sounds good for you.”
“Yeah, well, it reminds me of Kayla, and I don’t need that shit.” Jordan took the twenty Molly held out and bounced off the hood again on his way back around. “Good to see you, Liv.”
He ducked in behind the wheel and took off. Kayla ... there was that name again. Logan didn’t want it to be like it was with her; Jordan didn’t want to be reminded of her. The girl must have been some kind of perfect. She must have been Logan’s world. What had happened, though? Why had she left him, and why was I anything like her?
The weight of the pizza lifted from my hands. “Wake up, girl. Our midnight snack is getting cold.”
I shook my head to free it of the thoughts of Logan and Jordan and … who the heck was Kayla?
“You coming?” Molly yelled.
I stalked up to her side, my blood boiling near the surface in a way that prevented me from thinking before speaking. “Who in heaven’s name is Kayla? Some ex-girlfriend everyone’s completely in love with. Still. And no one ever the flip talks about, unless it’s something ambiguous that’s left hanging with absolutely no freaking explanation.”
Molly stopping walking. “He hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what?” I demanded.
“Look, I don’t know … I wasn’t really friends with him back in our first year, but I’m pretty sure he took the next year off because … there were rumours.”
“For crying out loud. If he’s still in love with his ex just tell me.”
“Sometimes you sound like such an old lady.” Molly’s voice rose to a screeching octave in mimic of my own. “For crying out loud.”
I hit her, smack in the arm with my fist.
Molly chuckled, but it was tight and edged with something I couldn’t quite place. “I thought you broke up with him, and you know …” She sliced me an I-can-see-into-your-soul look. “… you don’t care.”
“I don’t.” Darn it, she was right. I had no place to care who the bejeebers Kayla was, or what she meant to Logan. In fact, I had no place to even be thinking about him, or her, or any of it.
Molly ducked up the stairs toward her room and I followed, trying to push the unwelcome coil of hatred away. When we reached our destination, she slid the key in her lock and held open the door. I threw myself onto her tartan blanket covered bed, and Molly started speaking before she’d even set down the box.
“Logan up and left toward the end of our first year. He’d been a pretty big partier, slept around a bit, had lots of friends, but he just up and drove out of here early one morning without even packing up his room or saying goodbye. A rumour went around … hell, a dozen rumours went around. But a few weeks later, when Dane came back from dropping all Logan’s stuff to him, he said Logan’s sister had died, and he wasn’t coming back.”
It felt as if my heart abandoned my chest, leaving behind nothing but a gaping ache.
I’d never had a sibling, so I could barely begin to imagine the pain he’d been through. It must have been horrific. Worse. It must have shattered their world and continued to do so every single day. I was such a jerk for worrying about grades and careers and futures, and my stupid reputation, while Logan supported me through it all when he’d lost his sister. My problems were nothing compared to that.
CHAPTER
TWENTY THREE
My laptop had been gone for two days and I felt lost without it, but I tried to keep perspective. Even if I relied on that thing heavily for schoolwork, for music, for keeping up with the rest of the world, it was only a computer.
I was stuck in Oxley’s computer lab and it sucked worse than chilli chocolate. Law was a hard enough subject as it was without the thump of some dude’s rap music in the background, the constant chatter of the two fresher girls on the computer next to me, and the continual opening and closing of the door. Not to mention it was darn stuffy that I’d peeled off both my jacket and sweater then slung them over the back of the chair. Heaving a frustrated sigh, I ground my molars together and tried to focus through the cacophony of noise.
Noise wasn’t the only barrier to my focus. It had been twenty-eight days since I’d run out on Logan. Five days since I’d seen him up at uni. One day since I’d learned the truth about Kayla. Even though she’d died almost two years ago, it must still hurt every day. He must still think about her constantly. For him and Jordan to rarely mention her—they both had to be carrying the pain of death close to their hearts. It made me want to hug them both, tell them how sorry I was that life sometimes sucks.
Focus. It had been twenty minutes and my cursor still hadn’t moved. Nor had the volume in the room faded. I needed a computer in my room. Desperately. Pity I hadn’t told my parents about my stuff being stolen yet. I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for the lecture my mother would surely deliver. So as usual, I was procrastinating until I had no choice but to tell her or until I blurted it out. I had a long history of both.
The door opened again, and whispers hissed on the air for a few seconds before the room fell to deathly silence for thirty seconds. Outrageous laughter erupted on the other side of the computer lab.
I spun around. “Shut the hell up! Some of us are trying to study here.”
The dude whose music had been irritating me for the better part of the last two hours spun in his chair and laughed even harder. There was a guy crouched beside him who wasn’t there before. His gaze flicked back and forth between me and the screen.
Music-man looked right at me and said, “Go screw yourself. Oh, wait …” He turned back to the computer, pointing to the screen. “… you already did that. Didn’t you?”
Before I drew another breath, I’d darted across the room and was peering at his computer. The blue stripe of a popular social media site spanned the top of his screen and smack in the centre was a video clip. Before he even hit play I knew what it was, and the world dropped out from underneath me. My chest tingled with dread.
The infrared image I’d recorded weeks ago played on-screen.
The room was deathly silent except for the the undeniable rustling of sheets coming from the video.
My heart slowed to a sluggish beat, and my mouth soured. Someone slapped me on the back. Laughter filled the room. Then the image froze on me reaching to stop the recording.
Likes, shares, comments … there were dozens of them.
This wasn’t happening. Why did I ever record myself sleeping, and why, good lord, why didn’t I delete it the moment I’d seen the truth? My palms slammed into the door but it didn’t budge. I rattled the handle, but couldn’t get out. I needed out of here, now. Why was the freaking door not letting me out?
The auto lock.
I flicked it, pulled the handle down and barged my shoulder against the glass. The door gave way, allowing me to burst into the cool afternoon air of Front Courtyard. Humiliation pounded through my veins and pumped my legs forward all the way out of Front, over the bridge, through the car park, and the hell away from there.
Once I was out I didn’t stop.
That video would go viral.
Everyone in college, on campus, would see it. Heck, Ella had probably seen it and already emailed her mother, who’d ring my mother. And there was no getting it back. This would be worse than first semester. That moment in the dining hall would be multiplied by a billion. I’d never be able to show my face again.
I choked back the noise that tried to break free from my throat and kept running. This couldn’t be undone. It wouldn’t be forgotten.
I ran down the road and turned off campus toward town. I ran uphill, along roads, past houses. I ran and ran, and didn’t even stop when the pain seared my lungs.
The image was scorched in my mind; the video on a continual loop of dancing blankets, soft moans, groans of pleasure, and my sleepy face paused at the very end.
Eventually, I collapsed on the ground, and everything was blurred pain. Each ragged breath in struggled to pull past the lump in my throat. A lump that represented the end of my dignity. I bit it down and erupted into sobs, huge heaves that tightened my chest until it would surely burst.
****
Sometime later, a warm hand brushed mine. I somehow knew that I was at the lookout, the lights of Armidale twinkling in the darkness below.
“Liv?”
I closed my eyes and swallowed. Everything felt numb; my fingers, my toes, my chest, even my thoughts. In the next instant I was moving, cradled against a hard chest and I melted into it, letting the horror of the afternoon carry me away.
I was in a car, then I wasn’t; I was in Logan’s arms as he carried me inside. The door snicked closed behind us and Logan placed me on his lounge, laying me along its entire length. It was far warmer than the hard ground had been. He walked away and returned with a brown blanket that he tossed over my legs and pulled up around me, tucking it into the side of the chair. He disappeared again and I started to shiver.
Trembles raked through my entire body in waves. I wasn’t sure when it had gotten so freezing, but I was icy to the core. The shivers felt as if they came from my very bones, and now they’d started they couldn’t stop, the coldness suddenly hitting me.
Logan appeared again and bent by my head. “Sit up a little,” he urged, placing a pillow behind my back.
I did as instructed, and he pressed a steaming mug into my hands. I curled them around it, my numb fingers tingling with the sudden warmth, and lifted it to my face to inhale the balmy steam. Then he sat on the floor, his arm slung over his knee which was propped up. He focused on my face while I stared into the mug, coaxing the steam into my cold soul.
“Logan,” I said his name softly, like a prayer. A prayer that once he heard the truth, he wouldn’t send me away. I couldn’t face college.
“Liv …” He shook his head. “You were lying on the icy ground with no jacket, trying to freeze yourself to death.”
A violent shiver tore through me, attempting to prove his words true. I sipped the tea, but still I couldn’t get warm. Something had frozen inside me and there was no hope. My world had fallen apart, and there was no way I could pull it back together. This time it was too much. The illusion of perfection was shattered. Everyone would know that I wasn’t the person I needed to be for the life I was born into. My career, my reputation, me … it was all lost.
Logan’s hand smoothed the loose hair back from my eyes, his finger trailing over my forehead, down the side of my face. I closed my eyes slowly and leaned into his touch.
“Dane rang. Molly thought you might have come here.”
My eyes sprung open, and I sucked in a sharp breath, remembering the reason I’d run. There was no way in heaven’s name I could have come here.
The cold still wasn’t fading. Another quake rocked my body as it tried to warm itself. Frowning, Logan took the cup from my hands and stood. He placed it on the floor, shrugged off his jacket, then edged his bare foot into the space between me and the back of the lounge, wriggling his way into the tiny gap behind me. There wasn’t much room, but he lay on his side and pulled me back into him. My back pressed against his front, and my legs bent to curl around his knees. His arm fit over my waist and his hand tucked underneath my tummy while his breath warmed the back of my neck. The shivers faded as I thawed with the borrowed heat.<
br />
Logan sighed. “I’m sorry. I saw it, and I’m so damn sorry. People are assholes.”
He tightened his arms around me, and my eyes stung with unshed tears. My body wanted to relax into his embrace, but I knew that I couldn’t. That was an understatement. People were downright cruel. The way we found humour in other people’s pain was just so wrong. Everybody did it; we were all guilty, and I had to share the truth with him so that he understood what he saw.
“It’s real.” I dragged the words out through a tight throat. “I have this thing called sexomnia and it means I … I masturbate while I’m asleep. I don’t mean to do it, and I don’t want to. I fall asleep every night telling myself not to do it; don’t let it happen. But I wake in the morning not knowing if I did or if I didn’t, and it’s so flipping scary that I can do something and have absolutely no control or recollection. I hate it. And everyone knows … I mean, they knew before, thanks to Christian, but they know it’s real, because they’ve seen for themselves and I can’t …” My voice cracked. I held my body rigid, bracing myself for Logan to push me away. “I can’t ever be normal.”
He slid his hand out from under my side and pulled it through my hair, pressing soft fingers to my forehead, tracing the lines of my ear, my cheek, my throat. His lips pressed against the back of my neck and my heart paused, anxiously waiting, hoping, fearing.
“I’m broken. You don’t need—”
“I need you, Liv.”
“I’m not—”
“Shh …” He pressed another kiss to my neck, and followed it with a second one right below my ear, awakening the warm buzz in my belly his touch always caused. “I need you, and I don’t care about what you do or don’t do in your sleep.”
I sucked my bottom lip, pressing my teeth into it. He didn’t get it at all.
“You’ve always been perfect.”
My throat clogged with unshed tears. I was tired of fighting. I needed Logan as much as he needed me. He loved me regardless of my faults, my flaws, all the tiny imperfections, and there was something about that which made me feel as if I were falling, but it was okay—I had a safety net, and that net was him. He didn’t understand though, and I couldn’t allow myself to fall without him knowing exactly what it meant.
