A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  “Special K?”

  “I didn’t slip pills into your screwdrivers, okay? I’d never do that,” he said.

  Spoken like a criminal. A criminal who set his own moral code and then violated everyone else’s.

  “What would you do?” Celeste asked. “What would you put in my screwdrivers that I didn’t know about?”

  Matt swung his hair from his eyes, his gaze a cross between wary and angry, like a boy caught shoplifting bubble gum or a pen or some other worthless trinket. He crossed his arms. “Switched out your vodka for grain alcohol.”

  The obvious thing she’d missed.

  No wonder she hadn’t tasted the vodka. No wonder she’d gotten plastered. No wonder she’d gotten raped.

  Alcohol was a date rape drug, too.

  Celeste brought the flashlight up against her chest. “Why would you do that? Why would you drug me?” she asked.

  “Get a grip. I didn’t drug you. You were already drinking. I just switched your drinks. Big deal!”

  More lies he told himself.

  Celeste wanted to calmly walk up to Matt, smash him over the head with the flashlight, and watch him bleed out. Get a grip, Matt. It’s not like I shot you in the head!

  If she got into a shouting match with Matt, she’d never find out what really happened. On Cops, the officers always kept their calm. On Cops, they talked to the douche bags as if they were reasonable human beings. On Cops, the men in blue made friends with their not-friends. “Why did you bother switching my drinks?”

  Matt shrugged one shoulder. His gaze went to a spot on the floor between them, and Celeste thought of their instructor, Chef Jones, reprimanding Matt in front of the entire class.

  The answer’s not on the floor, Matthew. It’s in your head. Find it.

  Celeste thought of Natalie, her not-friend Natalie, pacing her every move at Drake’s party while Matt went to get her a second drink.

  “Why was Natalie in on it?” Celeste asked.

  “Why-why would you . . . ?” Matt asked, a lame attempt at denial. Even though his stammer betrayed him first, his flushed cheeks came in as a close second. More embarrassed about Natalie’s involvement than having drugged and raped Celeste?

  Celeste made herself chuckle. “It’s not like I can do anything about it, right? I just want to know. What’s the big deal?” she said, throwing his words back at him.

  “Yeah, sure.” Matt sat down on the edge of his bed and then glanced at the spot beside him, as if he thought she might join him. “You know Drake is a total dick, right?” Matt asked.

  “Okay.” Yet Drake hadn’t been the monster who’d attacked her. Funny—as in not at all—how these things turned out.

  “You know how he’s always baiting us,” Matt said. “You know, really looking for a place to stick in the knife.” Matt gritted his teeth and made a twisting motion with his fist.

  Celeste’s breath stuck in her lungs, trapped, as though Matt were still pressing his mouth against hers. She flicked her gaze to the door, but Matt remained seated.

  “So one day after class,” Matt continued, “Drake noticed me looking at your ass, and he goes, ‘I bet you can’t hit that.’”

  Celeste imagined Matt running after her and smacking her butt. She knew that wasn’t what Drake had meant. Funny—as in not at all—how Matt had used the term baiting. Because he’d totally taken Drake’s.

  Drake had used Matt to get back at her.

  “You made a bet that you could get me.” Celeste thought of a faceless figure jumping out from an alleyway at night. She thought of the way something deep and dark in someone’s mind could take him over, like an illness, until the friend you knew, the friend you thought you knew, ceased to exist.

  Matt’s smile made her take a step back. “That’s right, kiddo.”

  Celeste made a rolling motion with the flashlight. “So, Natalie. . .”

  “Was the only other person who bet against Drake,” Matt said.

  Other person?

  “No wonder Natalie was shadowing me. She wanted to make sure your plan panned out. She wanted in on her payday.” How could Natalie do this to another woman?

  How could Natalie have done this to another human?

  “So this was about money?” Celeste asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. This was about me sticking it to Drake.”

  By sticking it to her.

  “Why did you take the nude photos of me?”

  Matt slid his hands from his thighs to his knees and shook his head. “I had to do it,” he said, and Celeste thought of the words he’d spoken when she’d blinked awake from her drugged stupor: Go back to sleep. I have to do this.

  “But why?” she asked.

  “To prove it,” Matt said.

  Matt had tried to prove himself real by drugging and raping her and taking posed photos after she’d passed out.

  “You cheated,” she said.

  “So what? I still won.”

  No, you didn’t.

  The day she’d overheard Matt bragging in class, she’d thought herself a slut and a fool for letting him betray her. When she’d learned about the photos, she’d understood he’d violated her, but she’d still deep down felt like it had been her fault. But when she’d remembered that he’d raped her? Then, finally, she’d gotten real.

  “Okay, douche bag. Now you’re going to listen to me. You’re going to listen to the truth.”

  A smile tweaked the corners of Matt’s mouth. Amused? Nervous? She hoped he was scared to death.

  Celeste pointed the flashlight at Matt. “First, you drugged me.”

  “Grain alcohol!” Matt said, as if he was frustrated with her inability to believe the bullshit lies he told himself.

  “Alcohol’s a drug,” Celeste said.

  “Jesus! You were already drinking.” Matt used his deep, angry voice, like an animal blowing itself up to scare away a larger prey.

  Defensive much?

  Celeste took a deep breath into her belly, the way Zach had taught her. If Zach knew she were here in this room, he’d jump into Matilda and come to her rescue, no red cape required. She was glad Zach didn’t know where she was.

  She made sure to look Matt in the eye. “When I woke up, you raped me.”

  Her pulse battered between her ribs. Her skin fired with the need to run. Her eyes refused to blink.

  Matt’s gaze skittered to the side. When he looked back in her direction, his leg was bouncing, same as the morning she’d awoken to confusion, sunlight seeping around the blinds, and Matt sitting in the desk chair. He’d been waiting for her to wake up. Had he been worried that she wouldn’t?

  She needed to stop trying to figure out what douche bags were thinking.

  “We were practically doing it,” Matt said.

  She wanted Matt to see what she saw. She wanted him to see his real self.

  “I said no. I told you to stop. But you wouldn’t. You shoved your disgusting—” Her breath clattered through her teeth. “No matter what you tell yourself, that’s the definition of rape. I could barely breathe, and you were crushing me. You were hurting me. And all the while you were having your great, good time, like I was some piece of shit. Like I wasn’t even there. Like I didn’t even exist.” What he did to her affected not just her body but also her soul. “You almost killed me.”

  Matt blinked at her. “I was just messing around, buddy.”

  “Exactly what a rapist would say.”

  Matt made a sound, a cross between an exhalation and an annoyed chuckle. He squeezed his lips together and shook his head. “I feel sorry for you, Celeste.” He pointed to his ear and made the universal sign of a crazy person.

  “I hope you never hurt another girl. I pray to God you never get the chance. You’re a lousy baker, a terrible friend, and a rapist. I feel sorry for you.” Celeste turned and took hold of the doorknob.

  Matt stood up. “Celeste, wait.”

  For the first time this morning, his eyes looked different.
Turned down with sadness rather than widened in fear. For the first time this morning, his stance looked more aw-shucks embarrassed than what-the-fuck angry. For the first time, he looked as though he might turn into the old Matt and try to apologize.

  Celeste kept her hand on the doorknob. “What is it?”

  “You, um. You’re not going to the police, are you?”

  Are you kidding me?

  Was a lie still wrong if you lied for all the right reasons, even if one of those reasons was revenge?

  She was a good girl, but she wasn’t that good. “I’m not going to the police,” she said. “I already went.”

  Matt’s body went rigid, his expression tight and pained. For a second, she was back in that bed with Matt above her, having his great, good time. For a second, her vision clouded. For a second, she was everywhere and nowhere. Then she pulled herself together. “In fact,” Celeste said, “they’re on their way to arrest you right now. If I were you, I’d grab a few things and take off. If I were you, I’d run.”

  “Thank you for warning me.”

  For the first time this morning, Matt sounded sincere.

  That, she figured, was as close as she’d ever get to an apology.

  Celeste slipped out of Matt’s room and closed the door behind her. The rush of a flushing toilet echoed from the bathroom at the end of the hall. Somewhere nearby, music filtered through a student’s closed door. She race-walked down the center of the hallway. Then she yanked open the door to the stairway, pounded down the stairs, flew out the wedged-open doorway and into the freedom of the new day. Beneath achingly blue skies, old faithful Old Yeller sat steady and true.

  She’d let every Celeste-is-crap lie in her head seep into what she’d thought had happened with Matt, and then she’d let that infested mixture grow into its own big, fat lie.

  She needed to stop spreading lies about herself.

  Hidden inside Old Yeller’s glove box, behind the folder with her insurance, registration, and service records, was Katherine’s. 22, the gun she could’ve used to blow Matt’s brains out. Lincoln would’ve been proud she hadn’t lowered herself to Matt’s level. She was proud she hadn’t lowered herself to Matt’s level.

  Instead of shooting first and asking questions later, she’d taken Zach’s advice, kicked ass, and gotten answers.

  Celeste held her hands up to her mouth like a megaphone and let out a whoop. The echo bounced off the redbrick buildings and roared back to her, the sound of her own strong voice. She stomped her feet and raised her arms up in triumph.

  Just because she had the power didn’t mean she needed, or wanted, to use it.

  She felt more than a little smug about her ability to resist temptation. She felt freaking superior.

  She felt like a freaking superhero.

  Katherine wasn’t certain how this was going to end, only that it would.

  Outside of her apartment, the sun was setting, the sky pulling down the shades on another Wednesday. Any minute now, Barry would arrive at her door. Once again, she sat waiting on the sofa, the support solid beneath her legs, the velvet soft beneath her hand. Yet half of her mind was stuck on yesterday’s events.

  A mere thirty-five hours ago, she stood on the westbound side of the Mass Pike, with her hip thrust toward oncoming traffic and her thumb protruding, and rediscovered her decades-ago affinity for hitchhiking. Only this time, instead of twentysomething guys with long hair and oily voices pulling over to give her a lift, a forty-something woman in a silver Corolla had pulled into the breakdown lane and donated a tire. The woman—who could’ve been Katherine’s sister, Lexi, if Lexi had also been African American—had purchased the tire the previous week, after having dreamed she’d blown out a tire on the Mass Pike. The dream, she’d told Katherine and Zach, must’ve been about Katherine.

  Synergy? Flow? The universe paying Katherine back for years of events not lining up in her favor? At that point, Katherine would’ve agreed to plain old dumb luck.

  Thirty-two hours ago, Katherine and Zach had arrived on the campus of Culinary America and gone straight to the dean of students to find their friend Celeste Barnes’s dorm room. The dean told them Celeste had left school unexpectedly weeks ago and that they should alert him if they found her. Then, in a move that solidified Katherine’s impression of Zach as a terrific detective, he admitted Celeste was his girlfriend and claimed he was afraid she’d come back to rekindle a romance with another student, a certain Matt Something. The dean, clearly flustered, admitted that a certain Matt Something had stopped by his office earlier that morning to withdraw from school.

  Something had happened between Celeste and Matt. But no guns blazed. Neither a SWAT team nor the local police careened onto the campus with their sirens blaring to apprehend a woman hell-bent on revenge. After twenty minutes of debate, Zach and Katherine had decided to trust Celeste’s note, promising her return, and they headed back to Maine. At three o’clock this morning, they found Celeste back at her apartment, safe and sound and munching out on a plate of toast and eggs big enough to satisfy Zach’s bottomless pit. Celeste had quite a tale to tell herself.

  Katherine was about to add another tale to her cache of life stories.

  The overhead and table lights blazed. No candles sat on her mantel to set or accent a mood. Neither appetizers nor dinner covered the tables to distract from the necessary conversation.

  She’d secured the tarot decks in their drawers.

  She wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt, and she’d pulled her hair from her face with a ponytail holder found rattling around in the bottom of her purse. Her feet were bare. She’d left the black boots in the closet.

  Barry would appreciate the absence of filters.

  Even sex was a distraction, a pleasant way to avoid challenging emotions. She and Barry had made love on Sunday, breaking down a physical barrier and giving them the semblance of progress but changing little.

  Barry still hated secrets. She hated keeping secrets. But letting go? Who knew what the truth would ultimately unleash?

  She was about to find out.

  When Katherine stood to get the door, her sight grayed, like pixels of a photograph, and she remembered that she’d forgotten about lunch. For the first time in her life, she’d been too anxious to eat. She held on to the door for balance.

  “What’s wrong?” Barry asked.

  When he’d come into the bakery this morning, she’d shared an abbreviated version of the road trip—why she and Zach had gone and how they’d eventually returned and found Celeste. Katherine had promised to tell Barry a longer version of the story tonight. She’d promised to tell him all he deserved to know. She owed him . . . so much love.

  “What if nothing at all is wrong?” Katherine asked. “What if everything is finally right?”

  Barry placed a hand at the small of her back. The other hand took hold of her upper arm. “Sweetheart, sit down.”

  Katherine’s legs wavered beneath her, like timeworn, sea-weakened dock stanchions, but she refused to sit. If she sat down, she’d collapse. If she sat, she’d lose her nerve. Barry’s gaze held so much love for her. If she sat, she’d never know whether his love depended on a false image of her he’d created from her lies.

  Would her admission convince him he’d never really known her at all? That the woman he’d loved was nothing more than a figment of his imagination?

  She’d never know unless she risked another loss.

  “What if, nearly twenty-four years ago, I gave birth to a son, and gave him away for adoption?” Katherine asked.

  Barry’s expression flicked from concern to confusion. His hand fell away from her back. “What are you saying?” he asked. And his eyes, those loving eyes, blinked at her, as though breaking up her image might bring the meaning of her words into sharper focus.

  What had she done?

  She felt light, as if she were somehow floating above herself. She forced herself to stay in her body, where the fibers of the Oriental rug pricked th
e soles of her feet, Barry’s hand squeezed her arm, and his gaze tumbled her heart. She forced herself to just say it. “Zach is my son.”

  Barry’s jaw slackened, and his expression went blank. A professional side effect, no doubt, from years of listening to horrors and revelations while remaining sympathetic yet objective.

  He released her arm and, days after Halloween, seemed to summon the energy of a low-level spirit. For the first time, Barry reminded Katherine of her father, his eyes dark with disappointment, his face contorted with anger. “How could you have kept this from me? A—a son? How could you have lied to me?”

  Katherine’s pulse pounded in her belly, hollow sounding as a spoon against a stainless steel mixing bowl. But even though she’d wronged Barry, even though every bit of his anger was justified, she refused to absorb it. She took a deep breath and, in return, offered him love. “I’m so sorry. I was afraid if I told you I’d given away a child, you’d question whether I deserved to be a mother.”

  “Uh-uh,” Barry said. “Don’t you dare put this on me. You’re the one who thought you didn’t deserve to be a mother. I never would’ve entertained such a thought. You’re one of the most nurturing women I’ve ever known,” he said, and her eyes watered. Barry shook his head, sighed. “Zach’s father?” The tightness in Barry’s jaw and the slight widening of his eyes betrayed a hint of jealousy.

  Katherine forced herself to hold Barry’s gaze. “No one I knew especially well,” she said. When Barry didn’t blink, she answered his next logical question. Barry she did know especially well. “No one I knew how to contact.”

  Barry nodded. “This explains so much.” He sat down on the sofa, hung his head, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Katherine sat far enough away to give him space but near enough that he could choose to reach for her. She folded her hands in her lap.

  When Barry looked up, his eyes were wet. “I’m so angry at you.”

  “I know,” she said, and a tear slid down her cheek.

  “I don’t think you do. In fact, I don’t think you have a clue why I’m angry.”

  Katherine squeezed her hands together and rattled off her long list of faults. “I lied about never having a child. After years of suffering the stress and disappointment of IVF and driving each other up the wall, I insisted upon a divorce because even though I didn’t have the guts to tell you about the son I’d given up for adoption, I wanted to give you a chance for a family.”