Other Side of Beautiful (A Beautifully Disturbed #1)

by Sarah Zolton Arthur

  Two hours into hell and Dr. Benet asks us to break into groups, just the people in our own row. My groupmates all talk over one another, fighting to be heard in a conversation I have no idea of what’s being discussed, because I’ve been so intent to watch the Sysco delivery truck driver in his hideous khaki slacks unload dolly after dolly of boxes into the food court.

  Somewhere along the way someone decided to suck me into the fiery death of conversation, but not paying attention, I hadn’t realized it until all the chatter had subsided and their ninth circle icy glares bore into my neck. Since I haven’t been paying attention, I try to answer with what I think most teachers expect when they put us into groups on the first day. “I’m a writing major,” I say. “My minor is sociology.” They couldn’t have stared any harder if I’d said I’m a flying monkey with x-ray eyes who likes to wear leisure suits.

  Apparently that was the wrong answer. They turn away, ignoring my presence. I feel confident they’re done with me and turn my attention back to the window. The Sysco guy must have finished unloading because the truck is gone. Screw this. I pull out my phone and surf the interwebs until the people around me start packing up their backpacks. I pack up and full-on sprint out of there.

  Dr. Benet’s class proves the existence of hell. Without a hint of doubt, proves it. Apparently when Satan fell from heaven, he brought size-six coeds along with him. Damn winter semester, which stands poised to become the suckiest semester in the history of semesters. No matter what, I have no chance of escaping a Kelsey or Hilary. They are my nightmare for the next fifteen weeks.

  I need real people. I need my people. Ditching class number two and making the ten minute drive to The Brew—Ha! I’m a poet and didn’t know it—is probably not my smartest educational decision. But we’re talking my sanity here, and I’m not exactly someone who should take sanity lightly. Writing classes happen in the evenings, so that’s where all my writer peeps will be, tucked away in the far corner of the room, in our booth. Not one of them has class earlier than 1:30 p.m. That used to be me.

  I hold back, watching them in the booth sipping on coffees and talking animatedly with a flurry of hands and voices rising over one another to be heard. Errol sits at the far end of the booth, only half of his back resting against the green cushion, his arm propped up along the back ledge. Sabrina rests in the crook created by the way he sits. She keeps her head resting just above his heart. Sickeningly cute as always. No one has ever wanted me like that. There was a time when I believed I didn’t deserve it, and maybe I still do—that is, still believe I don’t deserve it. Sometimes I think I want it. Do I want it? Wanting has never been good for me. It muddles my head.

  Thoughts like these would consume me if I let them. They are old Elly’s thoughts, which have become harder to suppress over the past few months. My head might be placating old Elly, but my body has come through for new Elle, my hand finding the inside of my blue jean pocket before I ever have the chance to think about it. My thumbnail runs over the ridges of the medicine cap, feeling the nail catch on the ridges and chip from the rough contact.

  The phone buzzes in my coat pocket. Kelly’s in class. Everyone else is here, so I know who’s calling. I hate that woman. Why can’t she just leave me alone? The phone buzzes again, and I know she’ll keep calling. It’s like she wants it to happen again. Nibbling away at my strength little by little, phone call by phone call, so when it does happen, she can say, “I told you so.” I don’t want it to happen again. I don’t want to go back there, ever. Ever. Ever. Still, I reach inside my pocket and slip my phone out, staring at the screen just a beat longer before hitting accept.

  “Took you long enough,” she says. No ‘hello.’ No ‘how are you doing?’ No ‘how’s the first day’ encouragement. Just ‘took you long enough.’

  “Maybe I was in class.”

  “Those writing classes don’t start this early. Don’t lie to me.”

  “What do you need, Cricket?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me. Your sister is receiving an award at school. You need to send her a congratulatory gift.”

  “I received an award for my writing last semester and she never sent me anything.”

  “Nonsense. She’s getting a real award. Writing is what people like you do when you are too dumb to do anything else.” The trouble is, she believes it. She really thinks I’m too dumb to do anything else. That there isn’t a lick of skill involved. That I don’t work my butt off honing my craft. The phone begins trembling in my hand, a sure sign I’m about to lose myself. My ritual. One long breath in. One even longer breath out. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

  “Elly? Elly, are you still there? What are you doing? Heavy breathing in the phone like a pervert? What’s wrong with you?”

  “No…mother. Just collecting my thoughts. I’ll send her out a gift.”

  “Fine. Oh, and Dinah and I will be flying out to Cancun next Friday. Jane Hennessy is getting married. It’s one of those destination weddings. You aren’t invited. She asked if you might want to come, but I told her not to bother inviting you. You are too fat to fit in a bathing suit, so what would be the point of wasting a perfectly nice beach vacation if we all have to see you jiggling in the water? I told her, I don’t have a daughter, I have a manatee. A sea cow. She laughed.”

  That woman has impeccable timing. It’s like she could sense it from 3,000 miles away. Elly’s feeling low. I should call and make her feel lower. When I look up from slipping my phone back in my pocket, some cute coed has her size-two butt plastered against Benton’s lap. His dates usually aren’t so brazen to sit with him while he sits with us. Benton keeps us off limits, so to speak. At first glance, my friends seem okay with her being there. But then I see it—their steely eyes and tight smiles give them away. Even Benton looks less casual than normal.

  Self-esteem has kicked my ass today, and I have the feeling it’s just warming up. No way could I sit across from coed Kelsey, watching her kiss him and pet him and whisper little private jokes in his ear purposely to keep us out of their little lust bubble. Closing my eyes to regroup, I call on my ritual for the umpteenth time this morning because my superpower is out of control. On the third long breath out, I open them again, but Benton and his trophy have disappeared.

  Maybe instead of coffee I need to just go home and sleep the rest of the day. I turn and head outside before any of them see me looking on the verge of tears.

  “Usually people buy coffee when entering a coffee house.” I feel his warmth against my arm and smell his unique scent of freshly laundered clothing and citrus fruit. That smell never grows old.

  “Changed my mind, I guess.”

  “You feeling okay? I’ve never known Elly Dinninger to change her mind about coffee.”

  “Some days it’s just not worth the struggle. And it’s Elle now.” A sob cracks the last word in half.

  “Hey, talk to me.”

  “Nothing new. S-same shit, different hour.”

  “Did Cricket call again?”

  And I break. How humiliating. I break right there in front of Benton. He puts a warm to-go cup in my hand, helping me down to the curb.

  “Coffee?” I really try to collect myself, and it starts to work until he answers.

  “Mocha.”

  “B-but you don’t drink mocha.”

  “No. But you do. Looked like you could use it.” He had seen me? With that gorgeous brunette sitting in his lap, he had seen me skulking by the front door?

  “Where’s Kelsey?”

  “Who?”

  “Coed Kelsey. They’re all named Kelsey, Britney, or Hilary.”

  He pops out a laugh. “You’re close. Her name is Emily, and I don’t know. When she started whispering stupid shit in my ear, I told her she had to go. It’s one thing to show up at our table uninvited, but when you try to exclude my friends, no way.”

  “Won’t that make things uncomfortable tonight?”

  “I’m not seeing her tonight. We went out a couple
of weeks ago.”

  “Why don’t you ever date a girl more than once?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I see. We’ve been friends a long time, remember?”

  “I’ve dated women more than once. But if I do too many they start to think we’re in a relationship. I’m not a guy who wants to settle.”

  “Commitment-phobe.”

  “No. I mean settle for Ms. Right Now. I want Ms. Right. So I date. It’s what college is about. But I’m not one of those campus manwhores like in the books I see you reading. I don’t even sleep with all of them.”

  He’d hit it, my exact thoughts. I visibly pall even though I really don’t mean to. The Benton I know has a very well established reputation, a well-deserved reputation from what I’ve always understood. But he hasn’t left a string of broken hearts behind. Women genuinely like him. When my whole face heats crimson from the stupid reaction I don’t mean to give, I turn away from him, hoping to save a bit of dignity. Even if what he says is the truth, it doesn’t fit with what the GHU population has accepted as fact. Maybe it’s easier for me to think of him as a man who doesn’t want to settle down. That way it’s not just me he doesn’t want. Of course, being my friend he won’t let me look away, and he pulls my face toward him. If I have to face his rejection, he has to face my question.

  “Dr. Branagh?” He winces. God, I knew it. “Rare talent is a euphemism.”

  “It was a bad night for both of us, and we ended up in the same bar. It was only the one time.”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation. I had no right to ask.” The words sound terse, much more so than I mean them to.

  “Are you upset about my love life?”

  “No. I’m upset that when you have a bad day you get to screw someone like Dr. Branagh. I just get my bad day.”

  “Come on, what happened?”

  “This semester has dropped me right in the middle of the seventh circle.” I start crying again. More humiliation, just what I need. “Swear to you, the seventh circle.” I set the coffee on the pavement next to me and drop my head to my knees.

  “And Cricket?”

  “I-if I c-could just die.” Benton hands me a napkin and I blow my nose. “I-in a way that wouldn’t embarrass her to t-talk about with some n-neighbor who remembered she had another daughter, then she’d be b-better off.”

  “She said that?”

  “N-not in those words, but her meanings were clear.”

  His hand moves to my back, rubbing small circles, the touch calming some parts of me while invigorating others. I feel the gentle pressure through my jacket and close my eyes, leaning back into his comfort. Not everyone is lucky enough to call Benton Hayes a friend. Yet that’s exactly what he is doing here, being a friend.

  “Oh, god! Elly, are you all right?” I recognize Sabrina’s voice straight away and recognize her shoes as she drops down to the curb next to me.

  “She’s had a rough start. And it’s Elle now.”

  “Since when?” Errol asks, coming around to stand at the front of us, the tips of our shoes touching. “Did we vote?”

  Sabrina punches his leg and I feel her hand replace Benton’s with those same calming circles. “It’s a name, not an amendment.”

  “I think it’s cute.” Collin, who I knew had to be lurking around somewhere, finally makes his presence known kneeling down in front of me next to Errol. “Really, Elly—Elle, what happened?”

  Benton answers for me. “Really bad first day, and Cricket called.”

  I hear several gasps followed by a collective, “Oh…”

  These friends of mine are both a blessing and a curse, full of understanding and compassion for a fellow friend. They are good and loyal. But they don’t know any more about mine and Cricket’s relationship than I let on, and I haven’t let on much, which makes the understanding and compassion come across as pity.

  “I think I’ll just go home and try again tomorrow. Maybe I’ll get a little more done in my WIP.”

  “Might not be a good day for that, all your characters will end up dying in fiery explosions or being hacked apart in a jealous rage.” Benton teases me, though he is perfectly right.

  I stand up to leave, taking my mocha with me. Benton and Sabrina both tug on my coat to get me to pause, and I look over my shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?” Benton asks first.

  “Because I’d be happy to come with you,” Sabrina finishes for him. No, my pity party is a party for one, but I thank them all just the same and make my way back to my car.

  Two days pass before I see my writer friends again. In that time, Kelly dragged me to a super coed techno club where every Kelsey and Britney yell over the thumping bass in that quintessential college girl upward inflection where each sentence sounds like they’re asking a question?

  “Do you really know Benton Hayes?” the Kelsey legitimately asked.

  “Because he’s so hot?” Britney did not let me down.

  “Yes, I do?” I teased them both, although neither of the rocket surgeons picked up on it. “And yes, he is? We’re good friends?”

  “Do you think you could hook us up?”

  “Sorry, he works for a different service now,” I had told her and walked away laughing to myself. Yes, my bitch-o-meter was kind of registering high that day. Most coed Kelsey’s are perfectly nice, but clearly she’d caught me in a bad week. Even though I started finding my rhythm in class, I couldn’t shake Cricket’s last phone call. Her hateful words were eating away at my self-confidence, turning my normally pleasant personality into this septic one I hardly recognized anymore.

  More than once, Kelly, even in her inebriated state told me, “you need to get laid.” Isn’t that the truth? It might not cure me from my funk, but it sure would help.

  Wednesday night couldn’t come fast enough for me, as I longed to spend time with my friends, like-minded and with purpose. And with Benton, I shouldn’t want to see him. Actually, I should be totally embarrassed to see him. But with the way he took care of me when I had my little episode, as much as I hate to admit it to myself, being around him makes me happy. Happy in a way that the others, as much as I love them, just don’t.

  Chapter 7

  Elle

  Group—voluntary, yet encouraged by the writing department. Scriveners is our name. It gives us a safe place to present our work for critique. Benton and I have tonight’s critique. Next Wednesday, Collin and Errol, two other guys Tim and Callum follow that, and then Sabrina chose to go by herself the last week of the month.

  We gather in the littlest conference room off the second floor of the library. Benton, Collin, Sabrina, Errol, and, yes, even Tim and Callum surround me with their manila folders, thick from critiqued work just like mine, sitting on the oval table in front of us. We look less like writers and more like board members of some internet startup.

  “Well,” Benton starts, “this is a piece I began over break. It’s getting close. I finally picked a title, call it Little Girl Lost.” All of us here are well aware that when Benton says ‘getting close’ it means better than anything we could come up with and should probably consider switching majors, or maybe consider truck driving school.

  “She sits on the rusted park swing, black, cracked vinyl pinches the bottoms of her thighs as she sways just enough to strain the chain links against the metal post—squeak squawk, squeak squawk—cutting the silence.

  “She sits on the sand, knees pulled up to her chest looking out past the water shimmering with gold dust from the setting sun, out past the horizon to another place or another time or another someplace she’s missing in the here and now. The wind delicately stipples goose pimples up her arms and the high tide laps October chilled waves against her pink, painted toenails.

  “She sits in a little café tucked into a back corner table with her nose pressed purposefully into the pages of a book while sipping intermittently, nursing a cup of strong black coffee. Fooling no one, her eyes betray her, darting
from the page she’s spent the last half hour reading every time someone calls out, ‘hey’ or ‘hi.’

  “Only the day changes…”

  Benton Hayes, everybody. Benton Hayes. The man is human, so somewhere within his piece, theoretically, I should be able to find something to critique. But like everyone else sitting here dumbfounded, nothing comes to mind. What I wouldn’t give to have someone listen to my work and respond with the same starry eyes the rest of the group watched on his with. Each one of us waits to take a turn to talk, but when listening to a piece from the caliber of writer like Benton, we have more questions than opinions.

  “How did you come up with this one?” He speaks first after probably a full minute. But after hearing Benton’s powerful words, Errol asks what I’m sure we are all thinking.

  Benton, his dimple showing, looks at us with what I can only describe as dreamy eyes, as if in a trance. He laughs then, shaking his head before answering. “It’s inspired by someone near and dear to me.”

  “Don’t suppose you’d divulge who?” Sabrina asks.

  “Not here.”

  Collin gets a greedy look on his face and asks, “Someone from your past, maybe?” The problem with having a best friend is they know too much about you. Kelly’s set me up before too. Not one of us here believes that Collin doesn’t know who the piece was written about.

  Our beliefs compound when Benton returns Collin’s greedy look with a hard glare of his own, answering back, “present and hopefully future.”

  “Well couldn’t you just—” Sabrina tries to get him to open up to us, but he cuts her off.

  “Okay, Dinninger, guess that leaves you.” He clears his throat, and just when group is starting to get good. I want to know who Benton harbors those feelings for just as much as the rest of our table, yet at the same time, I feel thankful he wouldn’t reveal the name, because that would be one more thing for me to obsess over.