Again Read online

  The only time we’d ever talked was when she complained about the beer cans and liquor bottles in the trash room, not because people were drinking, but because they didn’t recycle.

  I cleared my throat and ran my hands along my thighs waiting for the room to silence. Only fifteen people showed up. Not surprising since it was second semester and everyone already knew the rules. Doubly not surprising since no one followed them anyway.

  “I guess some of your floor-mates still haven’t learned what mandatory means,” I said, my voice booming out above freshman heads.

  I heard the room groan and glanced at Kate. Her blond hair was as light as spun sugar, her eyes wide and waiting.

  I swallowed air.

  They say when you talk in front of a crowd you’re supposed to picture people in their underwear but, when it came to Kate, that was probably not a very good idea. Maybe Tristan was right. Maybe I couldn’t stop thinking about her because she was new. Because when she looked at me she didn’t see what everyone else saw.

  Rapist, Liar, D-bag, the words must have flashed like a neon sign above my head even though they weren’t entirely true. I’d admit to being a D-bag, but I’d left the frat house before anyone had hurt Jeanie and I’d never lied about it. The thing was, I hadn’t stopped it, either.

  That was why I wore the D-bag scarlet letter. Why I still told people to call me Chazz, as Kate had already noted, the D-Baggiest name I had.

  I deserved to have people view me that way. So why couldn’t I help being excited that for now at least Kate wasn’t?

  “Anyway,” I said, putting my hands in my back pockets, “wanted to go over the campus housing rules quickly.”

  I highlighted the big ones, No Smoking, No Drinking, No Pets, and Considerate Volume Levels. “Just remember as long as I don’t see it, I don’t have to report it.”

  Everyone shifted and squirmed, impatiently waiting for me to shut the hell up and let them leave, but Kate didn’t look away once. She was either really into following the rules, or really into me. I shook the thought away—she was probably being polite, a maturity seriously lacking in most freshman.

  As if proving my belief, two girls trolled into the lounge and drowned me out with their cackling laughter as they stumbled drunkenly trying to sit down.

  Stephanie and Alex. They were pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside. They hung out on frat row. Were the kind of girls the frat brothers in TKE would have called “frat rats.” Of course, if someone tried something with them they didn’t choose to do, drunk or not, they probably would knee him in the balls. I had to admire that at least.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Stephanie said.

  “Not really,” Alex murmured.

  Usually I left them alone because, even though they never said anything directly, I could tell they knew the rumors most everyone eventually heard about me. The thing was, they weren’t making a fool out of me in front of the whole floor when I’d let them be in the past.

  “A reminder because it seems like some of you have forgotten,” I said, my attention tight on them, “there is no drinking anywhere in the dorms.”

  “We’re not drunk,” Stephanie said.

  “Just happy to be here,” Alex added.

  “You didn’t even have to force us,” Stephanie said, her words pointed.

  “Or anything,” Alex added, laughing so hard she spit.

  I started to sweat, my ears singed. I should have written them up for being drunk right then, but it was the closest they’d ever come to calling me out on the past I dragged behind me like a ball and chain. I swallowed and glanced at Kate who was too embarrassed for me to even scan up from her lap.

  I made myself breathe, reminded myself I was in charge. It was what Tristan was always telling me: drown out everything but the certainty that you are a good person who made a mistake.

  The problem was the mistake I made proved I was the opposite of good—and what I’d done hadn’t only hurt me.

  “Okay, any questions?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes from twitching, my body from trembling. I wasn’t expecting any, and I definitely didn’t want to hear from Alex or Stephanie. I hated that their little performance had now made sure I would continue to let them be.

  “Going once, going twice,” I continued.

  I glanced at Alex and Stephanie; they had the satisfied smirk of someone who won on their faces. I forced myself to flash a smile. My heart might be close to exploding on the inside, but I’d smile on the outside.

  I couldn’t show they were getting to me.

  The room stayed silent, as I suspected.

  “No, okay then; if you need anything my door is always open, except when it’s closed,” I said, clapping my hands together, they were clammy.

  The room started to empty out. Tristan was right, I was rusty with girls and, even worse, I told awful jokes because I was nervous around them. Even more awful, I let girls like Stephanie and Alex mess with me when I was in front of them.

  I had to at least try to salvage my total crash and burn. I went to catch Kate and Dawn as they were leaving. “You guys settling in okay?” I asked, standing straighter and forcing my chest out. The only good thing I learned from my father was to exude diamond-hard confidence regardless of how things really were.

  Dawn looked at me, then Kate, rolled her eyes, and left. At least she hadn’t lodged a formal complaint.

  At least she hadn’t asked if I would force them to settle in okay.

  “How does it look like we’re doing?” Kate asked. Her hair was in a high ponytail so her neck was visible. It was so soft and milky I made myself turn away. I wanted to ask her to dinner, but I couldn’t. That was coming on way too strong and I didn’t come on strong anymore. Truthfully, I didn’t come on at all anymore.

  Besides, she lived on my floor.

  But even with that rule between us, I couldn’t help hoping she’d continue standing there talking to me, at the very least to avoid going back into the room with Dawn.

  “Well, if you need anything,” I said, trying to ignore my pulse blasting in my neck. Was I seriously so rusty I couldn’t even come up with anything but a repeat of what I’d said to everyone else?

  Kate wasn’t just everyone else, but there was no coming out and saying so without verging on stalker.

  “Your door is always open unless it’s closed,” she grinned mischievously.

  “Terrible, right?” I winced.

  “It’s not the worst thing I’ve heard someone say on the first day,” she said, holding her smile as she repeated the words I’d thrown her way in the bathroom earlier.

  “Hilarious,” I said, my pulse slowing to a manageable tempo. At least she wasn’t running away this time.

  “It’s not like you told a knock-knock joke or something which, considering you were talking about doors…”

  “What am I, your great uncle?”

  “You don’t have to be old,” She paused on the word, practically rolling it against her tongue like a sourball, “to tell a knock-knock joke.”

  “No,” I said, “you have to be an asshole.”

  She laughed, her whole face brightened, her brown eyes shining. “Now that’s a good joke.”

  “I’m here all night,” I said, opening my hands wide. My body relaxed—the sound of her laughter was like a salve.

  “Until you’re not,” she retorted.

  We turned to the deafening noise of a few of the guys on the floor skateboarding down the hallway and hooting.

  “I’m pretty sure they are breaking like three rules right now,” she said, indicating them with her chin.

  I sighed, but didn’t stop them. They were having fun. They weren’t hurting anybody, except maybe themselves if they fell and broke something. “At least they aren’t naked.”

  “Something you’ve seen before?”

  I nodded. “And hope to never see again.”

  “So naked is the stepping over the line point?” she asked.

  I c
ouldn’t stop looking at her lips. My knees almost gave out at the sound of her throaty voice around that word. “If you’re a guy on my floor, absolutely.”

  “What about a girl?” she asked. Her skin was so dewy, so soft, and so female.

  I hadn’t been this physically close to someone so beautiful in years. I wanted to kiss her, make the plump lips she bit at playfully waiting for my answer, mine.

  “It’s not easy being an authority figure,” I said; for a lot of reasons.

  “I don’t know why the hell you’d want to be; keeping people who are out on their own for the first time following any kind of rules seems impossible.”

  I had no choice. I had to be an RA and keep my nose clean until I could finally leave this place and not be the guy who stood and “watched” the night Jeanie Pratt was sexually assaulted.

  Even though I hadn’t stood and watched, I’d run away like a chicken and hadn’t done anything.

  It didn’t matter how you considered what I’d done, or hadn’t done. It was all bad.

  “I’m more of a puppet regime than anyone with real power,” I said.

  “So you can call a floor meeting, but you can’t make anyone come,” she said.

  “I’ve made some people come,” I replied, before I could stop the words.

  What was this girl doing to me?

  We stood in uncomfortable silence. Me watching those lips, the way her teeth made small indents in them, her tongue wetting them. The way they seemed to be inviting me at the same time they were pushing me away.

  This was the place where I could have asked her to dinner, could have said something to make her stay. But keeping thoughts in my head was safe, acting on them was where things would get complicated.

  Especially once she found out who I really was.

  “I should probably get back to wielding authority,” I said.

  “We wouldn’t want anyone getting naked on your watch,” she shrugged. “Or maybe you like to watch,” she added as she walked out of the lounge.

  My whole body exploded in goose bumps. What kind of freshman talked that way? What kind of person talked that way?

  I liked it.

  I wished her parents were still alive so I could thank them for making someone like her.

  Though, in some ways, Kate was lucky not to have parents to deal with. I’d meant what I’d said about wishing mine were dead sometimes. My father wanted the charges against me to go away, so he paid off Jeanie’s family just like a bunch of other guys from the frat had. He also paid off the college.

  Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough money in the world to bring me relief for what I didn’t have the balls to stop my frat brothers from doing.

  Was one hundred thousand dollars enough to make what those guys had done to Jeanie okay? Or should the ones who’d held her down, who’d put their hands over her mouth, be in jail?

  Was living the last three years as a monk enough justice for not having stopped them?

  Was three years of loneliness enough of a punishment to finally allow myself to touch someone like Kate?

  Chapter Five

  Kate

  The next morning I was up early, headed to the shower before anyone else would be awake. My face might have been young, but my body was aging. Sure, not in ways anyone would notice unless they looked closely, but why give them the chance?

  Why let them study me, especially in the fluorescents of the dorm bathroom?

  Even without unforgiving lighting, I had the beginning of varicose veins, the jiggle in my thighs only twenty-nine years of gravity can bring, and the whisper of cankles.

  It was best to keep that under wraps for as long as possible.

  I also hoped to avoid the inevitable bumping into Carter in a towel scenario for as long as possible. Thinking about it was bad enough and, after last night at the floor meeting, it was all I could think about.

  I still couldn’t figure out why he was getting to me the way he was. Why I was talking to him like we were in some kind of college co-ed porno. Maybe it was because he’d been the one person besides Dawn who had spoken to me for more than five minutes, and yet he still hadn’t laughed me back to the city.

  He believed I was nineteen, and it was intoxicating. It changed me into a sultry, flirty freshman whenever he was around.

  I needed to do my best to try to not have him around.

  I’d skipped dinner last night, deciding instead to read through the thick books I’d purchased with Grandma’s stocks for my new Legal Studies life. Dawn didn’t go to dinner either. But in her case I guessed it was because she didn’t eat anything that wasn’t still breathing.

  She did, however, continue to listen to her suicidal music with earbuds, which I considered progress and enough proof she would do her best not to kill me in my sleep.

  I headed out into the cold winter morning equipped with a travel mug of coffee and munching on a cereal bar. I moved with the kind of purpose only a Hail Mary can create toward Thompson Hall for my Civics class. Class one of twenty-five I would need to complete my Legal Studies degree.

  My time here had to be about who I would become when I got out, not about enjoying myself while attending. It was about leaving here with a degree instead of a swollen liver.

  Sure, by the time I graduated and then graduated law school, I would be thirty-eight, but at least I’d be doing something with those eight years. I’d have something to show when I was through besides a crooked neck from answering the phone and carpal tunnel from typing.

  College-take-one had only given me a wickedly high tolerance. College-take-two needed to bring me something better than a dead-end desk job and an even deader-end relationship.

  It needed to be my second chance.

  Attending class without a hangover, hell, waking up sober, was a good start.

  The snow crunched under my feet as I continued across campus. It was fitting. Everything I was wearing seemed to creak and crunch too because it was so new, bought for the part. A few key designer pieces and the rest purchased at Forever 21.

  Forever 19, was more like it.

  I wore black leggings and a knee-length heather gray cable knit turtleneck sweater, with my new Uggs and puffy purple North Face jacket. It was like I’d stepped out of Seventeen magazine minus the latent anorexia.

  I thought about law school and smiled easily, even with my mouth tight from the cold. Living the fantasy of my new college career, I let myself imagine meeting a new man there.

  I’d be able to admit my real age by then. It wasn’t weird to go to law school as a thirty-four year old. What I was doing now though, I thought, surveying the snowy, gray campus sprinkled with students bundled up in brightly colored coats, was definitely weird.

  Sure there were those movies where the main character wishes they could be older or younger when they blow out their birthday candles, or when they are in front of a fortune teller machine, or while they are holding a possessed totem, and then magically overnight they are, but I didn’t have time to wait for magic.

  I had to make my own.

  When I reached the lecture hall, I tried to quiet my mind, slow my stampeding heart as I sat down at the back of the auditorium. I hoped it was far enough away to avoid suspicion. Sure, I’d made it into the dorm, somehow convinced Carter and Dawn, but this was my first class. All I needed was the professor asking me where my AARP card was.

  Or someone from the administration barging in with my doctored transcripts and kicking my ass all the way back to New York City.

  I opened my laptop and sat at attention, ready to learn, learn, and learn when Carter took the seat next to me.

  Was he following me?

  I hadn’t counted on a stalker, especially on day two, although, if there was anyone who I would want to stalk me, I would definitely choose him. I couldn’t help but sniff the air around him as he settled into his seat, filled with the sharpness of the type of body spray they advertised on MTV.

  I might have been trying t
o avoid the inevitable bumping into him in his towel fresh from the shower, but his scent made me picture it immediately: his sculpted upper body, the taut lines of his stomach, and the damp towel around his waist covering the rest…

  “Legal Studies too, huh?” he thankfully asked before I could go any lower. A waft of freshly brushed peppermint breath hit me.

  “I thought you were a senior?” Even as a freshman I would have understood he should not be in this class. As an adult I definitely understood it.

  “I failed some classes my freshman year,” he explained. “I’m going back and making up the required classes this semester.”

  “How stereotypical,” I said, which I had every right to because it was basically what I was doing. Of course, with a ten year gap instead of his three and the whole lying to everyone thing.

  He leaned in closer to me, so close I sensed dampness coming off his hair. “Less than you think.”

  “I’m not going to fail,” I said, even though he wasn’t asking. I was trying to convince myself. My real freshman year, I absolutely would have bombed this class. I mean, I failed Rocks for Jocks back then. But not now; not this time.

  “I wasn’t talking about you,” he said, breathing out. “Things can happen you never plan on. That’s all.”

  “Why, what happened?”

  His eyes went dark, his skin blanched white. He shook his head. His silence was suffocating.

  “Never mind,” I said, trying to cut through it.

  “Sorry,” he sighed. “The point is, I graduate at the end of this year or I pay my own way.” He paused. “I guess that is kind of stereotypical, huh?”

  I bit my lip. My picturing the hot RA in his towel was, too, just like his smothering sweet attempts to help the lost freshman girl—the lost freshman girl who he seemed to keep finding.

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’m working on being less predictable. For instance, I was probably the only twenty-one-year-old in the world to have been sober on his birthday.”

  “You’re only twenty-one?” I asked before I could stop myself. Only—I was supposed to be younger than him.

  He stared at me for a minute before answering, “Twenty-two.”