Again Read online

  I watched her leave, pushing through the front doors of the library so quickly it was almost like she’d never even sat down.

  I was pretty sure Dawn had her own laptop, considering she’d been here for almost a semester before Kate even arrived.

  I guess I wasn’t the only one who had secrets they wanted to keep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kate

  The next day after class I got back to the dorm and could hear Dawn yelling through our door.

  I remembered the lie I’d told Carter about her needing my laptop, and my ribs tightened like a vice. Luckily, no one had come to drag me out of any of my classes today. I guess I’d covered up what I’d started to say well enough that Carter wasn’t suspicious enough to talk to anyone about it, or ask anyone about it. For example, the administration I was lying to and defrauding with my fake transcripts and ID.

  I waited on the other side of our door. I hadn’t talked to Dawn since our fight and I was avoiding walking in on what sounded like another one. I stood at the door and listened, hoping no one would walk by, especially not Steph and Alex.

  Who was I kidding? Especially not Carter.

  A weird disappointment crept in and I squashed it down. Avoiding him was a good thing. I should have been thrilled not to have to deal with the complications he caused. Should have been relieved instead of hurt when he’d said we should just forget everything that had happened. As much as I’d told Professor Parker he was just my RA, Carter was my only friend here—my only friend who I kept lying to. Who, when I let out a smidgen of truth, I ran away from rather than being caught.

  When I thought about his kiss, recalled the need that surged through me, I knew I would wear his lips as permanently as a tattoo for the rest of my life.

  So what did that make him?

  “Nothing has changed.” I heard Dawn yell through the door. “I’m not interested in what you have to say.”

  I waited to hear another voice, but none came. She must have been fighting with someone on the phone.

  “I don’t want to listen to you,” she said louder. “I’m sick of listening to you, sick of you.”

  Another pause, the person on the other end of the line stating their case; I didn’t hear even the faintest sound. It made me wonder who she was talking to that wouldn’t yell back, wouldn’t match her octave for octave. Only someone who knew they were wrong.

  Dawn played a good game, but even she had people who cared about her, people she cared enough about to fight with. People who loved her enough to let her fight.

  She tried as hard as I to become someone without attachments, but there wasn’t enough black and makeup in the world to keep the people you cared about from getting to you.

  Continuing to stack lies when you finally found someone who made you feel like your truest self was no use either.

  “I’m hanging up now,” I heard her say.

  I guess it was someone she wouldn’t hang up on.

  “Then stop sending the checks,” she said solidly. “It’s just because you’re guilty. This call is finished.”

  I heard her jump onto her bed and let out a scream loud enough to break the eardrums of a bird flying over the building. Then she started to cry. She didn’t care how paper-thin the walls were. Though why would she when she didn’t seem to care about anything—except this person she couldn’t hang up on.

  She probably also wasn’t expecting me to be listening at the door like a creeper.

  I should have left, given her time before I walked in, but Dawn seemed like she needed someone, and even though she’d given me shit the whole time I’d been here, I understood.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked as I entered. I closed the door behind me quickly, stood blocking it, giving her less of a chance to run away.

  She wasn’t trying to. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, breathing so heavily her nostrils were practically flaring. If she would have been the skull she was drawing the other day flames would have been coming out her sockets instead of goo.

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Her eyes were wet and she wiped them hastily. Even with her tears, not one streak of makeup had slithered down her cheek. I’d have to ask her what kind of mascara she used when she was in a better mood.

  “You just seem upset,” I said, pushing even though it was the last thing I should be doing, especially with Dawn.

  “When am I not upset?” she asked. “This is like my standard.”

  I waited for her to click on her music, stick in her earbuds, and drown me out, but she didn’t. She lay back on her black comforter and stared at the ceiling.

  I stepped away from the door, threw off my coat, dropped my bag, and sat on my own bed. “So who were you talking to?”

  “Oh,” She squinted at me. “So you heard me?”

  “I think the state of Florida heard you.”

  “It’s way too sunny there,” she said.

  I didn’t respond. Maybe she was building up to tell me. Give me her real answer, the true reason for everything she kept inside with black and death and fear. It was a lot to expect from someone I barely knew.

  Even Veronica never got my real answer. The reason I kept everything inside with alcohol and men like David. She got the answer she could handle because she was my friend. She got the answer I wasn’t embarrassed to give because she was my colleague. She got the answer I could live with saying.

  My real answer: it was what I deserved; I’d made too many mistakes in my life to ever hope for better.

  “I was talking to my asshole father,” Dawn said, her back tight against the mattress. “He cheats on my mom and thinks I’m supposed to have respect for him after that.” She breathed out evenly again and again, like she was trying to keep a black feather from falling against her lips.

  “How do you know he cheats on your mom?”

  She turned, an I wasn’t born yesterday mask hijacked her usual fuck the world mask. “My mom might deny it to herself, but I’m not stupid. He’s been doing it for years.”

  “Sorry,” I said. There was nothing else to say. Was a cheating father better than a sperm donor? At least a sperm donor couldn’t disappoint me. At least I’d never disappointed him.

  “He’s the one who should be sorry. Really my mom should be.” She sighed. “She knows, but stays with him.” She shook her head.

  “Adults can be stupid.”

  “People can be stupid,” she replied. “It doesn’t matter how old you are. If you’re an asshole you’re an asshole.”

  “Now I understand why you really think your Dad’s an asshole, aside from the whole lawyer thing.”

  “He wasn’t always, but he is now. He could stop but he keeps getting someone new, from the gym, or his office, or the country club we belong to, or his office,” she repeated, her lips pursing as she thought of each woman that place represented.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Because I’m not stupid, also he doesn’t hide it. He keeps pictures and texts and stuff on his phone.”

  “That sucks.”

  She exhaled her agreement. “He’s an enormous asshole and my mom’s a wimp and I’m the result.” She sat up and pointed at herself. “He says I should be grateful since he helped get me into school here because of some professor he’s friends with on staff. Like I even care. I just wanted to get the hell out of the house.”

  I nodded.

  “What about your parents?” she asked, watching me.

  I wished I didn’t have to lie to her. She was actually opening up to me, but I had a cover to keep.

  “They died,” I said, hating I had to tell her that. I wished I could tell her I never even knew my dad’s name. I’d pretty much been a disappointment to my mother from day one. When someone goes to scientific lengths to make you they expect something super-human. I was human. I made mistakes.

  I kept making them.

  I still was.

  “Lucky you,” she said, crossing her arms.


  “Sometimes,” I swallowed. She had no reason to think I was lying. Maybe everyone was a disappointment to their parents. Maybe you kept being one until you were no longer a disappointment to yourself.

  “He’s coming here soon without my mom,” she said, spinning the studded cuff around her neck. “He wants to talk. I have nothing to say.”

  “He’s not having an affair to hurt you.”

  “That’s what he says,” she scoffed.

  “Which means it’s true.”

  “Truth doesn’t change the way it makes you feel.”

  I absolutely understood. “Maybe you should tell him how it makes you feel.”

  “Maybe he should know,” she said, her words piling on top of each other. “Maybe he should divorce my mother instead of treating her like a fool.”

  David had a wife and a kid—a daughter. I wondered if she was aware of our affair. If she was in a room somewhere bitching about what an asshole her dad was too.

  All I ever cared about when I was with David was making him happy, not what I was doing to his wife or his family. He never talked about them, so I never thought they mattered to him, but that didn’t mean they didn’t matter.

  “I’m sure he hates what he’s done to you,” I said.

  “Then he should stop.”

  That was what everyone said when you did something destructive. It was easy to tell someone to stop. It was a hell of a lot harder to be the person who had to do it.

  I knew about the damaged parts of a person. The pieces you wanted to hide that people close to you always found eventually. They were the rawest parts of you, which usually made them the hardest to let go of.

  David would never stop. He’d proven that by finding someone new as soon as he’d dumped me. Maybe Dawn’s father wouldn’t either.

  What did that logic mean for someone with a past like mine? As hard as I might try, as much as the people around me kept asking, the destruction had already been done.

  I was me no matter where I was, no matter who I pretended to be.

  Maybe it was time to stop pretending.

  Chapter Twenty

  Carter

  “What are we doing here?” I asked as we’d parked in the lot at Scandals, Kingston’s one and only gay bar.

  I didn’t have anything against gay bars, but Tristan had told me we were going out for dinner. Though I suppose coming here might be meant to turn “dinner” into a euphemism.

  Tristan was big on euphemisms, especially concerning sex.

  He shut his car off and stared at me, rubbing his gloveless hands together against the cold. “Since you’re having so much trouble with girls, I thought maybe you’d want to give guys a try.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  He paused and blew out a breath. If he had bangs they would have flown up. “Fine, I didn’t want to drink alone,” he admitted, his whole body deflating, “and I wasn’t in the mood to see guys slobbering all over girls trying to decide which one was the right combination of hot and drunk to talk to.”

  “You’d rather watch guys do that, I guess,” I replied, acting like we were still matching each other quip for quip.

  “Of course I would.” He opened the car door and stepped out. “Thanks a lot for not asking why I need a drink,” he added, slamming it behind him before I could respond.

  My only choice was to follow him or sit in his car like a freezing cold asshole. Tristan never came out and requested help, which might have been why I didn’t even think to ask.

  Regardless, that didn’t mean he wasn’t as messed up as me when it came to relationships. Maybe everyone was. Maybe my past didn’t make me any less equipped to deal with dating than anyone else.

  At least helping him with his guy problems might get Kate off my mind. What would have happened if she’d stayed and studied with me, if I’d walked her back to the dorm?

  No matter what I claimed about wanting to forget everything that had happened, I would have kissed her again. I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.

  I hated that I had to keep stopping myself.

  I found Tristan inside the bar at one of the only empty tables already signaling a waitress. She was all nose ring and asymmetrical blue hair. She indicated she would be with us in a minute.

  “So why do you need a drink?” I asked as I sat down.

  “How nice of you to inquire.” He tapped his hands against the table. They were still wrinkled from swim practice. I could smell chlorine. “Unlike you, I attempt to connect with people and sometimes they rebuff me.”

  “That is just like me,” I said. But he was right. I used what happened with Jeanie as an excuse. Clearly it was a good plan considering Tristan’s sad eyes. They reminded me of two empty wells, waiting for wishes.

  “My latest rebuff occurred last night,” he explained.

  The waitress arrived and before she could pull out her pad, Tristan blurted, “Midori Sour. And for you?”

  “Sprite, no ice.”

  “Wow dude, thanks for the solidarity.” He rolled his eyes like only he could.

  “Fine,” I groaned.

  “Two Midori Sours,” he said.

  The waitress walked back toward the bar.

  “Actually make it four,” he yelled to the back of her head.

  “I don’t want whatever the hell you ordered,” I said. If I was going to drink, which I never did, I wanted to have a beer.

  “You’ll like it. It tastes like candy,” he said.

  “That seems indecent.”

  “The best things always are,” he said with a half-smile.

  “So what happened?” I leaned in toward the table.

  He sighed. “The three date implosion.”

  This happened to Tristan a lot. I never understood why. He was great. But after having had a long-term boyfriend sophomore and junior year he tended to come on a little strong.

  He was like my exact opposite. Put us together and you might have someone who could actually handle a healthy relationship.

  I guess it wasn’t his fault, though. Having had something so special, he probably expected a lot. He imploded as many guys as imploded him. I wasn’t sure if any of them sulked as much about it as he did, though. He wanted what he’d lost.

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  He hunched over and rested his hands on his thighs. “I’m getting to the point where I worry I won’t find anyone like Patrick ever again.”

  Our incredibly green drinks arrived, dotting the table like tiny vats of nuclear waste.

  “Don’t say that.” I reached for a glass and held it to the light.

  “Without proof otherwise how can I not?” he asked, reaching for two glasses. He drank one down in a big green gulp and sipped at the other.

  Tristan was a statistics major. It made him in equal parts epically practical and annoying as hell.

  “So that means you believe there’s only one person out there for each of us,” I said, taking a small sip. It was sickly sweet and stung my throat as it went down. I took another and that familiar alcohol warmth hit me, like a good long shower, like sleep.

  “Why, you don’t?” he asked, the ice in his glass clinking.

  I wasn’t sure. If it was true and I was statistical like Tristan, I’d taken myself out of the running for three years, which probably lowered my chances exponentially.

  “Well, considering I haven’t met her yet, no.” That was a lot easier to admit than that my actions may have made me miss her, were still making me miss her.

  “I think you have,” he smirked.

  I dipped my head slightly. “We haven’t even had a one-date implosion, let alone three.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “This night isn’t about me, it’s about you.”

  “Sorry, you’re right,” he said, holding up his hands and sitting back.

  “I mean, I’m drinking something that’s going to turn my piss into Easter egg dye.”

  He laughed—his long, loud, full mouth
laugh. “You seriously don’t like it?”

  I took a contemplative sip and licked my lips. “I actually kind of do—please never tell anyone.”

  He took another drink; the muscle of his jaw quivered. “Maybe you have the right idea. Hide in the dugout instead of continuing to strike out.”

  “Eventually you won’t strike out anymore.” I shrugged.

  His gaze was steady with mine. “Eventually you’ll have to come up to bat.”

  “Jesus.” I finished my drink and reached for the other one. “We are not drunk enough to start spewing out baseball clichés yet, are we?”

  He glanced around the bar. “I took the only guy who I could talk to about my relationship problems, who is straight, to a gay bar. I’d say we already are a cliché.”

  I checked out the karaoke machine in the corner. “No,” I said, “Once we sing, we will be.”

  He smiled and it said a million things, like one of those words in another language that translates to hello, peace, goodbye, and beautiful.

  “I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” he said.

  “My stunning singing voice.” I fluttered my eyelashes.

  He tipped his chin in my direction. “You remind me of the kind of person I should be looking for.”

  I nodded. Tristan was always there to do the same for me. I guess it was why he kept bringing up Kate. She could be the person.

  “What are we singing?” I asked, drinking down the rest of my Midori Sour so quickly it made my voice gravelly.

  “You’re serious?”

  “When in Rome,” I shrugged.

  “It’s better than sulking I guess.” His face creased into a smile.

  “So what are we splitting everyone’s eardrums with?”

  “I Will Survive, of course,” he said, regarding me like I’d just come out of the womb. He jumped from the table. “Because, we will survive,” he said as he headed over to add us to the list.

  Maybe it was the Midori, but I was starting to want to believe it.

  Chapter Twenty-one