We could not leave to talk.
“I’m getting a beer. You want one?” Trevor asked, not stopping to hear my answer.
I was glad. I might not have wanted one, but I definitely needed one.
I’d already failed the alcohol test, but I also knew there was really a harder test I needed to be concerned about passing: Will I make it through the night and still be a faithful girlfriend?
Will my panic at hearing Joe’s question make me ruin everything?
The room was filled with the kids I would usually see on the quad, phones stuck to their hands like a compass as they walked from class to class with their backpacks on. Here they had their cup in one hand, phone in the other, standing in buzzing circles and ovals and figure eights like the room was a vein, the alcohol was blood, and they were cells.
Where the hell did that come from? Maybe I don’t need that beer after all.
I walked to the corner of the room and waited behind two girls in super-short skirts who were drawing what they thought would be the “coolest tattoo” on the biceps of some guy in a straw cowboy hat. It didn’t look like a tattoo; it looked like tear-stained mascara running down his arm.
I’d never worn a skirt that short and I wondered if they had to get drunk before they could even put them on, or if they were just extra drunk now.
I pulled out my phone, realizing I hadn’t checked it the whole walk. That it had taken so much concentration to put one foot in front of the other with Trevor and not run back to my dorm room and throw up in my trash can that I’d totally forgotten about it.
Still no text or call from Joe, which was odd but not unheard of. I was selfishly glad. It would have made me feel guiltier than I already did, if that were possible. Though considering I couldn’t stop thinking about him that night, I doubted it.
I started to text him but stopped. What if he said, I’m bored. I’ll come over.
That wasn’t unheard of, either. He did need to study, but I also knew that he blew it off for me a lot. Probably more than he realized. Not that his grades showed it, but imagine how much better he would be doing in school if I hadn’t followed him here.
If he hadn’t chosen a school we had both gotten into.
Trevor still hadn’t returned, but luckily I knew how to hold my own at a party without looking like a total mutant. I’d been to plenty of parties in high school. Sure, college parties were supposed to be bigger and wilder but I knew the drill: grab a cup, hold it, nod or shake your head when people offered you other things depending on how cute they were or how fucked up you wanted to be. That was amended when your friends were doing something. You had to do it, too.
Luckily, I didn’t have any friends here, since the things I did because my friends were doing them back in Collinsville had gotten me arrested.
I could only hope that Trevor wouldn’t offer me anything other than beer. There was no way I could call Joe to bail me out of jail.
Trevor came back with two red plastic cups in his hands and a friend at his side.
Thank goodness.
“This is Amy. She lives in my dorm,” Trevor said, pointing at me. “This is Pete. I jam with him sometimes,” Trevor finished, pointing at the friend.
“What’s up?” Pete yelled above the music. He reminded me of one of those guys in the jazz band in high school, dark smoky eyes, lips most comfortable on a trombone.
I nodded. I knew he wasn’t really expecting me to answer him, so I didn’t.
“You got any cute friends?” Pete asked, not wasting any time.
“No,” I said, not adding, I have no friends, which is what I was thinking. I took a sip of my beer, realizing too late I should have said, Yeah, Trevor.
My stupid mouth had betrayed me again. If I could rewind the moment, I totally would have said that. Of course, if I could rewind the moment, I could rewind this whole night and I might not have ended up here to begin with.
“Thanks a lot,” Pete said, looking at Trevor with slit eyes.
“Since when am I your matchmaker?” Trevor asked, his hand tight around his beer cup.
“You bring someone for yourself and leave me hanging,” Pete said, quiet enough that I probably wasn’t supposed to hear above the music, but I did.
“I’m not here for him,” I said, and then took a long drink of my beer so I didn’t have to say anything else.
Whether it was true or not, I needed to say it.
“You sure about that, bad girl?” Trevor stared at me.
My neck felt hot, my throat empty of breath. I wasn’t sure, especially if he kept calling me bad girl like that.
“I didn’t think so,” he said, smiling at Pete.
I tried to step back from Trevor, but there were so many people that there wasn’t enough room. We were standing so close now. Close enough that I could smell the cigarette smoke on him and hear the faint swish of his leather jacket as he moved. He could have saved my life now if he had to, which was ironic because standing so close to him could quickly end mine.
“You play or sing?” Pete asked me, possibly hoping for something for us to talk about besides his sex life and mine.
“No, not me,” I said, taking another long drink.
“You don’t play or sing and you’re not here for him. So what the hell are you doing here?” Pete asked, his eyes sparkling. I understood he was joking. I understood this was the kind of talk that happened when beer was being drunk, but his question still hit me right in the gut.
What was I doing there?
What the hell am I doing there?
Answer 1: I was bored.
Answer 2: I was invited.
Answer 3: My boyfriend just asked me to move in with him and instead of saying yes, I came to a party with another guy.
Answer 4 (and the one I didn’t want to even consider): I’m a shitty girlfriend on the brink of being even shittier.
I looked at my phone again.
“Waiting for your boyfriend to call?” Trevor asked, his lips so close to my cheek he could have kissed it without even moving.
“No,” I said.
“Hoping he won’t call?” he asked, his lips even closer.
“What?” I asked.
“Maybe that’s just me,” Trevor purred. “You, me, and my hat have an appointment later.”
“You can shove your hat,” I said, finally able to attempt to defend myself against his advances.
“Just tell me where, bad girl.”
I felt like such a dork, but I really liked it when he called me bad girl—liked it in the lower part of my stomach, which let me know I was such a dork. Which let me know I was in trouble.
Pete laughed and turned to Trevor. “A girl with a boyfriend? At least you have one hand tied behind your back, too.”
I wanted, needed a girl to talk to. Unsure if I would spill everything or just needed a place to hide, I let them know I was headed for the bathroom. Unfortunately it wasn’t until after I said it that I realized it was the second time in less than an hour that I’d said the word bathroom to Trevor. Forget even having a choice to reject him—I was doing just fine getting him to do that on his own. When I think of Amy, I think of her using the bathroom. Maybe she’s majoring in plumbing.
I fought through the crowd, my cup held high so it wouldn’t spill. Just as I suspected, there was a line for the bathroom and girls were in it. There was something about standing in line for the bathroom that made it okay to talk to people you didn’t know. There was something about an unnamed shot from a flask and an almost finished beer that made it okay to talk to anyone.
“I hate waiting in line,” I said to the girl next to me. It was true and it wasn’t like I knew what else to say. It’s not like I could start with, I am a gigantic whore.
“Yeah,” she said, turning to me. She had flame-dipped red hair, definitely from a jar, and eyes so blue they made my teeth hurt.
“Is there another bathroom?” I asked, trying to keep the conversation going. What I really
wanted to ask was, What am I doing here? How could I do this to Joe? Why did I agree to even come? Why am I still here? But she barely seemed interested in talking to me as is.
“I wish,” she said. She looked around like she wanted to find that other bathroom just so I’d stop talking to her.
But I couldn’t. I was a little drunk and when I’m a little drunk, I ignore the social cues life’s stage manager is giving me. This one was clearly, Move on.
“I’m afraid I’m going to cheat on my boyfriend,” I said, amazed how easily it came out of my mouth.
“What?” she asked, her head spinning so fast to look at me it might have launched across the room if it wasn’t attached. Now she was interested. I knew drama could make anyone your new best friend. I needed a new best friend, even if it was for just as long as it took the girls in front of us to finish peeing.
“I’m here with someone who isn’t my boyfriend,” I said, hoping that would make more sense.
“Naughty,” she teased. “Which one is he?” She twirled her hair around her finger so tightly her skin was turning as red as her hair.
“Does it matter?” I asked, feeling a bit like I was being interrogated, even though I was clearly asking for it.
“Um, yeah it matters. If he’s superhot, I say go for it. You only live once, right?” She held her cup high. “YOLO!” She laughed and took a drink.
“YOLO,” I repeated, not nearly with the force she’d said it. More like I was responding with here in class.
“So,” she said, leaning in to me, “who’s the lucky guy?”
“That’s him,” I said, pointing to where Trevor was standing. It was obvious even from this far away that he was indeed superhot. His blond hair fell just to his eyes, his worn leather jacket fit snug enough that you could see the muscles in his arms, the jeans he wore perfectly framed his ass, and he stood like the floor was lucky to have him on top of it.
I would say pretty much any girl in the room would be lucky to have him on top of her.
He wanted me to be his bad girl, and I liked that he wanted it—more than liked it.
“Do it,” she said, her breath hot in my ear.
I guess I had been asking her permission. I’d been asking permission from someone I didn’t even know because once again I was too afraid to just do what I wanted to do.
Even if I wasn’t completely sure what that was.
The bathroom door opened for her turn.
“My Twitter handle is @RockinRed15,” she said. “DM me what happens.” She closed the door behind her.
I grabbed my phone from my pocket, logged in to Twitter, and followed her, because at least if things went to shit with Joe, I’d have someone to talk to about it.
Even though I knew I really needed to be talking to Joe.
Why did he have to ask me to move in with him?
…
JOE
Emily and I had compromised, and she was wearing my shirt. She still wouldn’t admit if she knew where hers was or not, so while she made it feel like a compromise, I’m not sure that’s really what it was. At least I didn’t have to keep trying not to stare at her breasts.
I crossed my arms over my chest. My name tag now covered one side of hers. I tried not to think that my chest was bare, tried not to think about the hickeys that Amy had left in a line down my stomach.
Her idea of a joke.
Which would have stayed as an inside one, if I wasn’t so fricking polite.
The shirt hit at the top of Emily’s thigh, but she pulled it lower—the navy blue giving her pale skin the pallor of skim milk—as if now that she was partly dressed, she was modest.
“So tell me about your girlfriend,” Emily said, putting the collar up on my shirt, so it covered her cheeks, her face an O inside a deep V.
“That came out of nowhere,” I said, though I couldn’t deny that of course I’d been thinking about Amy. Maybe Emily could feel it. Or more likely she couldn’t help but notice the treasure map of hickeys that led into my pants.
“You made me put on your shirt,” she cooed. “You obviously either love her or are afraid of her.”
“You’re crazy.” I laughed.
“So both,” Emily said, in that way girls say things that lets you know they are smarter in ways you will never understand. In ways you didn’t want to understand.
“I had you put my shirt on for you,” I said. “In case you forgot, you were practically naked in a room full of frat boys.” I thought about it. I wasn’t afraid of Amy. I was afraid for her. She was vulnerable when she made the wrong decisions. That was why I had to make sure she made the right ones.
Of course it had been my decision that brought me here and now here had turned into being a half-naked girl’s babysitter.
“Whatever. Make excuses,” Emily said, still pulling on the bottom of my shirt.
“Weren’t you cold?” I asked, rubbing at my arms, trying anything to bring them to life, even if it meant taking my hands from my pockets. It was cold down there, the feeling of being in the earth that only a basement can bring.
“I guess I would be if I wasn’t totally wasted,” she said, smiling what I now noticed was definitely a crooked, drunk smile.
Why hadn’t I noticed it before?
Was it because I was trying so hard not to notice her? Was it because I only looked for things like that in Amy now?
The flushed cheeks, the high pitch of her voice, the way Amy’s eyes darted like gray hockey pucks in her head. I didn’t care if she drank as long as she was drinking with me. Not because I didn’t trust her, but because I needed to make sure she was okay. It took so little for her to go from okay to not okay.
I knew because I’d seen it, because I couldn’t be there to help her the last time.
“I guess that makes sense,” I said, watching Steve and Deanna doing funnels. Steve was pouring the beer down the funnel and Deanna was holding it to her mouth like it was a snorkel. She gagged and pushed it away, unable to finish it all. It went down the chest of her already wet shirt and dripped from her nipples like the rock wall of a cavern.
“Party foul!” Emily yelled, cupping her hands around her mouth like a megaphone.
Deanna laughed as Steve sucked the beer away from her chest, bending down to go from her navel to her breastbone.
I crossed my arms over my stomach, knowing what Steve was feeling. Knowing he was trying so hard to taste the person below the skin, or, I thought as I watched Steve stumble over, maybe that was just me.
Amy couldn’t hide things from me. I knew her too well for that, but when we were together, in bed, it was like even the little part of her she tried to hide was exposed, open, mine.
“He can clean me up anytime,” Emily said, licking her lips.
“You want a guy like that?” I asked, glad to be able to talk about someone besides Amy and myself.
“You want to be in this frat because of guys like that.” She responded in a way that let me know she wasn’t used to explaining things she’d said. That she was the kind of girl who didn’t have to. “I mean, he’s confident. He knows what he wants,” she rattled on. “Who doesn’t want a guy like that?”
Steve reminded me of some of the guys on the football team in high school. They thought they were cooler than we were because we played volleyball, but I knew if a football player and I were in a room together with a ball, only one of us would come out with a bloody nose and it wouldn’t be me.
“Maybe some girls,” I said.
“Oh, not your girlfriend?” Emily mocked, cuddling into my shirt.
“Why do you keep bringing her up?” I asked. It was getting annoying, like when someone kept reminding you that you had a test the next day when all you wanted to do was watch a football game with your friends. I mean, I could think about Amy all night and talk about her with people who really knew her, but Emily didn’t.
“Well, we can’t do anything fun because of her. So I figure we might as well talk about her. It’
s not like I need to pretend I care about what you’re talking about, since we both know this isn’t going anywhere.”
“Nice,” I said.
“What? I’m honest.”
“You’re mean.”
“And you’re too nice.”
“What the hell is too nice?” I asked. Steve and Deanna had moved to a ratty couch and were making out some more. Emily and I were still talking. Even if I was talking to her, at least we were only talking.
“You have this air around you like you’re afraid you’re going to break me,” Emily said, putting her face in front of mine so she was sure I was listening. “That’s too nice.”
I felt her saying that right in my chest, right where the remnants of Amy’s kisses sat, mostly because it made me wonder if Amy thought the same thing. I knew that before me Amy had done her best to stay away from nice.
“Well, you’re kind of a bitch,” I replied.
“Kind of?” she asked playfully. “See? Too nice.”
“My girlfriend is different,” I said.
“Right. She hates frat parties.” Emily laughed.
“Do you want to talk about her or not?” I asked.
“Do you?” she asked. “If so, tell me something real.”
The music was loud down there, loud enough that the two of us could have gotten away with not talking at all, but we were way past that.
“I’m afraid she doesn’t want to be with me anymore,” I said, amazed that I had. It was something I had been thinking for weeks, but couldn’t, didn’t want to put to words until a half-naked girl I barely knew had asked me. “I’m afraid I’m not ready to be with her.”
“I think we need a drink,” Emily said, getting up and padding on bare feet across the basement to the bar.
It was the first time I’d been able to tell someone about what I felt like was happening between Amy and me. The problem was that I hadn’t told her.
Chapter Five
AMY
I finally ducked into the bathroom, put the seat down, sat, and called Joe. He probably wouldn’t answer. You weren’t allowed to have your ringer on in the library and when Joe was doing work, he got lost in it. I’d seen it. His eyes practically sparkling as he turned the pages in the dusty, old leather-bound law books. It was almost like he was inhaling knowledge. I always admired him for being lucky enough to find something that he’d really cared about.
The Next Forever Page 4
