Again (22 page)

Carter

Tristan sat across from me in the dining
hall at dinner. Everything about it was exactly like always, except I had
attempted to apologize to Jeanie.

And, of course, had incredible sex with
Kate and then lost her.

I was eating quickly so I didn’t have to
talk. I couldn’t tell him what happened with Jeanie. Hell, with Kate. They had
both proven what I tried to deny. My guilt was about me. I was carrying it
around like some kind of martyr.

I didn’t deserve to carry it around
anymore. Guilt was for people who could do something with their remorse.

I’d let mine fester, weigh me down, and
freeze me in place like an anchor chained around my neck.

Jeanie was right when she’d said that not
all girls were broken and not all guys were strong. But, when it came to her, I
was always an asshole.

There was only one way to stop being an
asshole and that was to talk to Kate.

 “So then,” Tristan said, “Coach says if
you guys keep pissing in the shower, I’ll have to start coming in there with
you.”

“Great,” I said, between bites. I was
responding, but barely, hearing to his letters but not listening his
words—aware enough so we could finish dinner and I could get the hell out of
there. And hopefully go find Kate.

“Maybe you can do that job,” he said.

“Maybe,” I replied.

“I can talk to myself all day,” he said,
staring at me, “I sit with you so I can talk to you.”

“Sorry.” Saying it immediately made me
ill. Sorry was such a shit word. What a fucking joke—five letters could never
be enough. I took a bite, then another, filling my mouth so I didn’t say it
again.

“Dude,” he said, watching me more
closely. “Have you not eaten in weeks or something?”

“I’m just hungry,” I said, my mouth full
of food.

“There’s hunger and there’s getting
ready for hibernation,” he laughed.

Hibernation, lucky bears. They got to
spend six whole months not dealing with shit.

I shrugged. “I don’t have someone
weighing me weekly like you, or watching me piss.”

“Oh,” His eyes widened. “So you were
listening.”

I had been, but then Kate walked into
the dining hall.

My ears thundered and the room fell away.
I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t speak. There was nothing but my heart banging. The
piece of hamburger I was chewing on was gummy in my mouth. I forced myself to
swallow as I watched her walk up to the entry station and pull out her student
ID.

I needed to talk to her. I had to tell
her everything even if she didn’t want to hear it. Tell her I loved her even if
I didn’t know if she could respond the same way anymore. That’s what I should
have replied when she said
I thought you liked me.

No, Kate, I love you. I might have a lot
of remorse I carry around, but I will never regret telling you that.

I pushed up from the table and was about
to head to where she was standing when a woman I didn’t recognize came up
behind her. Kate swiped her ID card twice and they both walked to the food line
together. The woman had jet-black hair and looked old enough to be a professor
or something.

Who the hell was that?

I forced myself to sit back down. For
something as important as what I had to say, I could wait until it was the two
of us. Considering I’d waited three years to talk to Jeanie I could wait
another day to talk to Kate.

Tristan waved, unaware Kate might not
wave back because he was sitting with me. To her credit, she did, but continued
moving toward the food line instead of walking to our table.

“Why don’t you ask her to sit with us?”
he asked.

I pushed my lips together. Tristan wasn’t
asking literally or anything but, if he had been, the list was too long to even
get into right now.

“Don’t tell me you’re shy again,” he
said, tilting his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” I whispered.

“You do realize when you tell me not to
worry, there is very little else I can do.”

“Your feelings can change like a
spinning kaleidoscope.” I stared at him heavily. “Pick another.”

“Wait a second—” He looked at me, then
turned to Kate, then me again. “You guys…oh my God, you guys…”  He leaned in
closer to me trying to force me to say what was clearly right under my skin.

I nodded slightly, but I was watching
Kate in line, her blond hair as bright as a flare, her delicate shoulders and
back that I had held were so far away it made my chest ache.

“But clearly something happened
afterward and now…”

“Let me try and fix it first.” I knew
our story. I didn’t need him to tell it. I needed to rewrite it.

I wouldn’t say it out loud until I had
the chance to.

Kate

After dinner I only lasted two hours
before I finally gave in to Veronica’s whining.

It was like she was one of the kittens
at the SPCA begging for attention—unfortunately the attention she craved wasn’t
from me.

It’s hard to keep to your rules when
you’re with someone who won’t give you crap for breaking them. It’s impossible
when that person wants you to be the way you used to be.

When you told the person who knew you
could be better to basically fuck off.

It was freezing when we left the dorm,
but like my “teachers” Steph and Alex, I made Veronica go out without a coat.
She requested the full college experience. If you were going out on a Friday
night in the middle of the winter, that came with the possibility of losing a
finger to frostbite.

“This is insane,” she said, her dark
eyes brilliant.

“I know, but freezing our asses off is
fitting in,” I explained. Maybe I was trying to make her suffer a little. I’d
had to work hard to get here. I’d suffered a broken heart to get here.

I was still here.

“I knew I should have brought a flask,”
she said, rubbing her arms against the cold, “but I was trying to respect your
new squeaky clean whatever.”

“It’s not whatever,” I replied, even
though to her it would seem that way. I mean, I was taking her to a party. My
outlook might have changed, but the blood running through my veins was the
same. It pulsed with the same needling want. No matter what
I
wanted.

I’d purchased a diet Pepsi from the
vending machine on our way out of the dorm, hoping it could be
my
flask.
Keep my hands and lips and mouth and throat too busy to drink anything else. It
was heavy in my hand.

 “No offense,” she replied, “but for a
college freshman, you are seriously boring.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Veronica
wasn’t being mean, she was being Veronica.

“Let’s just shove some alcohol inside me
before my organs splinter from the cold,” she pleaded.

“That we can do,” I replied.

We continued walking past the quad. I’d
heard about a house party right off campus. There was no way I was going to a frat
party. Not with the chance—scratch that, the certainty— Alex and Steph would be
cruising the salad bar.

I could hear the party before I saw it.
Music and talking and laughing and flirty screaming and macho hoots blaring
from open windows. Students were streaming in and out, the house seemingly
breathing with college life.

 “Now that’s what I’m talking about,”
Veronica said.

“Just remember—” I grabbed her wrist, afraid
she might start running toward the party like it was her long lost lover back
from war. “You’re my older sister.”

 “You think anyone’s going to ask?” she
said as she shook herself free and walked with long strides ahead of me.

No one had yet, out loud anyway. Their
eyes had, though. Someone Veronica’s age on campus was either a professor or
staff. Not someone who would eat in the dining hall, or stay in a dorm room, or
go to a party. No one had questioned her, but they also hadn’t been drunk yet. People
were a lot more likely to yell
who the hell is that old lady
, once
they’d had a few beers in their system.

“Three dollars for a cup,” the guy at
the door said, not glancing from his wad of bills.

“You got change for a twenty?” Veronica
asked.

He lifted his head, putting the cash
he’d been holding in his back pocket. His gaze slid from her jet-black hair, to
her high-heeled pointy black boots, stopping long enough to admire her curves
in between. “You’re not a cop are you?”

To her credit Veronica laughed. I guess someone
Veronica’s age hanging out on a college campus could be
three
things : a
professor, staff, or a cop.

“Why, are you breaking the law?” She
sucked on her pinkie, typical Veronica. She always left the accountant at home
on weekends except for her ability to make any problem her bitch.

He shook his head. His eyes were far away,
maybe fantasizing about if a certain part of him was her finger.

I’m pretty sure that was the whole
point.

“Good,” she purred, handing him the
twenty. “I’ll take seven.”

He passed Veronica a stack of red
plastic cups and we left him speechless on the porch, not even bothering to
request the extra dollar.

“You want one?” she asked, as we
continued through the commotion of the party.

I shook my head, opened my diet Pepsi,
and sucked down a long swallow because there was no way I could come out and
say the word
no.

“More for me I guess.” She shrugged.

She wouldn’t ask again. Veronica wasn’t
like some high school bully trying to get me to do drugs for the first time. She
was letting me fight my own battles.

I just hoped I could keep winning in the
middle of a college house party.

“Who needs a cup?” she yelled above the
music, holding them high like a torch. “I have six for the six hottest guys
here.”

I closed my eyes and pressed my lips
together in embarrassment. I wasn’t drunk enough to handle “party Veronica,”
but three guys ambled over to where we stood.

I assessed them quickly: cute enough and
fresh faced in the way freshman are. I mean, I figured they were freshman. I’d
been here long enough to know their look, almost like they’d been hatched—wet
hair, smooth skin that hadn’t already been weathered by three years of heavy
drinking and studying. The kind of guys who would appear when someone said something
like Veronica had because they never said no to anything.

Freshman year was all about
yes
,
until you realized that sometimes changed into
why? How? What now?

“So, you’re the hottest guys at the
party?” Veronica asked, her head tipped diagonally in a flirt.

Like I said, they were cute enough, but
it was hard for me to view them as hot even as college-take-two Kate. It was one
thing to be with Carter, who was twenty-two. It was another to be with someone
whose pubes had probably come in two years ago.

“Well,” said the one with hazel eyes and
red T-shirt that read LIFEGUARD in white, “We think you’re the hottest girls at
the party and your hotness averages ours up.”

It was brazen for someone so young to
say that to Veronica, but college was all about that too. Saying things and
doing things considered totally wrong outside were accepted here—encouraged
like a petri dish of debauchery.

Also he’d spoken to her in math language,
which meant that, regardless of his age, her brain would respond.

“The last time I was a girl,” Veronica
said with a light laugh and an even lighter hand on his shoulder, “you were
probably in fifth grade.”

“Good thing I’m a man now,” he replied,
not missing a beat.

Veronica handed him a cup, “For both of
us.” Her eyes traveled to his friends, “What about them, are they men, too?”

“They’re shitheads,” Lifeguard-shirt
said, pointing his thumb behind him, “but if you get them drunk enough, they’re
pretty cool.”

“In that case,” Veronica said, handing
over two more cups.

His friends took them, but were a little
confused about what was happening.

I knew. Veronica was a beautiful,
poisonous spider and this “man” she was talking to was a very willing and horny
fly.

“Anyone else?” Veronica yelled, holding
up the rest of her cups.

The little voice in my head went into
overdrive.
If she’s giving them away, you want one. What if you get thirsty
later?

The thing was, there was no
what if
.
I’d want one later. I wanted one now.

My hands were shaking, my stomach
knotted. It’s easy not to drink when you’re locked in the humane society with a
guy who makes you feel drunk just looking at him. Not so much at the ground
zero for drinking, a college party.

I held out my hand, my body operating
completely involuntarily.

She tried to give me two, so we would
both be double fisting, but one was all my guilty conscience would allow.

Honestly, it was more than my guilty
conscience should have allowed. Before I could change my mind, I dropped my
diet Pepsi to the floor. It bounced and rolled away as if it had been carried
by a wave.

She shrugged and kept the extra for
safekeeping. Maybe figuring if I got drunk enough I would take it eventually.
The sad thing was, if I did, I probably would.

Lady Temptation had nothing to do with
hanging out with Steph and Alex. It had everything to do with me.

We fought our way to the keg, the “hottest
guys at the party” leading the way.

I couldn’t help checking the corners of
the room for Carter, wondering if, even after pushing him away, he still felt
like he needed to take care of me. Clearly he did, or at least
I
did. Regardless
of the fight raging in my brain, I passed my cup to the keg with no hesitation.

Beers full and party-ready, we moved
back into the center of the fray. The other guys and I hung back while Veronica
and the “lifeguard” flirted. If she’d met this guy at a bar in the city, and he
was out of college with a cushy New York job, she would have gone home with
him. Here, I guessed, even if she did, she might lose her nerve once she got
into his dorm room and noticed his Vampire Weekend poster and care package
from his mom half unloaded.

I sipped at my beer, trying not to
wonder about the
why
too much. For, as slowly as I was drinking, it
might as well have been water. I was doing my best not to get wasted. I might
have a drink, but I didn’t need to slam it.

Like Veronica had said, I just needed to
learn how to drink better. Be more careful.

Sip. Count to one hundred. Sip. Count to
one hundred.

I’d told so many lies already, why not
force myself to believe another?

Veronica and her “man” weren’t counting between
sips. They’d finished their beers while I still had more than half of mine.

I was controlling myself, but I was
still drinking, so was I really?

Would I ever be able to?

The guys went to fill the beers again,
leaving us in the tumult of the party.

“This is turning out better than I
expected,” she said.

I nodded, more a reflex than a reaction.
“Are you going to sleep with him?”

“Wow,” she laughed, “non sequitur much?”

“Guess I’m moving a little fast.” I took
a longer sip of my drink. “But, I mean, that’s where this is headed.”

I needed to know if she was as bad as I
was. If she was as bad as me, I couldn’t have been
that bad
. Because
right now, beer in hand, even with my silly sipping game, I was pretty damn
unstable.

Her lip gloss shone in the half-light of
the party like a wink. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“I’m sure he has.” I mean, I had.

“Well, why wouldn’t he? Look at me.” She
was the darkest kind of radiant in her tight black sweater, as dark as her
hair. Her pale white skin glowed like moonlight.

 “If you want to go home with him I’m
cool with that. You can text me in the morning to come get you.”

“What are you, my pimp?” she asked with
a nervous laugh, “Let’s slow down for a minute. It’s a lot easier to fantasize
about than to actually do.”

I knew better than anyone. The fantasy
was easy, realizing you still cared the morning after was when everything got
complicated.

“I do like the living-in-the-moment vibe
of this place, though,” she said.

It was hard not to. That
vibe
was
what appealed to me about drinking in the first place. With alcohol and
meaningless sex there was only what was right in front of me. I never had to
worry about consequences.

Usually, I was too drunk to worry about
anything.

Now I was starting to care, and I
remembered why I’d avoided it for so long—because being accountable scared the
shit out of me.

But I couldn’t say all that to Veronica,
so I nodded and noted my beer was already half empty.

An alcoholic always views a glass as
half-empty rather than half-full. It’s not about optimism, it’s about demanding
more.

If I couldn’t stop thinking like an
alcoholic, how the hell could I hope to stop acting like one?

“Hmmm,” I heard Veronica muse, “Maybe I
should go have some fun with him.”

I stared at my beer, stuck on the word
fun
.
This wasn’t fun anymore. It hadn’t been for a long time. Sure, getting wasted
felt fun. Who was I kidding—it felt amazing, but…

“Am I keeping you awake?” Veronica
asked, snapping her fingers in front of me.