Compliments (12 page)

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This part of the country doesn’t get frigidly cold, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel the chill as mud cakes my feet and ankles. The blanket of fog has made my T-shirt damp, causing me to shiver.

My
T-shirt. It isn’t, though, is it? It’s his. The disgust at that thought makes me want to rip it off of me and discard it right where I stand. However, considering that’s on the edge of a parking lot at midnight under the flood of a fluorescent light with nothing else on my body but my underclothes, I stop myself. I kick myself mentally for not trying to grab at least my clothes or maybe my cell phone as I fled the room. Then I remind myself of what I just endured, and know I didn’t have a choice.

A few blocks from the conference property I finally find a pay phone. Just a few weeks ago, I was telling one of my classmates how ridiculous it was that in the cellular phone age, these relics still endured. Now I think I’ve never seen such a beautiful sight. A flood of relief fills me when I pick up the receiver and hear the monophonic buzz of a dial tone. I tell the operator the phone number for the collect call and wait to see whether or not he’ll accept.

A few moments later, there’s a click. “I’m sorry, miss, but your party isn’t accepting the charges.”

I nearly break down in tears. “No!” My teeth dig into the flesh of my fingers as I bite, trying to quell the dramatics. “Please, try again. Tell him I really need to talk to him.”

“I’m sorry, miss, I can’t do that.”

“Please!” My voice cracks. “You don’t understand what I’ve been through. What he tried—” I cut myself off, knowing the public line is probably being recorded somewhere and not wanting to put anything on record that might come back at me someday.

There’s a pause before the operator’s concern-drenched voice sounds again. “Are you okay, honey? Are you in some kind of trouble? I can patch you through to 911 if you’re hurt.”

“No, don’t. Just please, try again? Tell him …” A thought strikes me, and I hope it doesn’t backfire. “Tell him he was right about the professor, and I need to talk to him.”

“I … I …” She sighs. “Okay, I’ll try one more time. Just a minute, I’ll have to ring him again.”

“Thank you.”

A few seconds later, there’s a click again, and Hawk barks over the line, “What the hell did he do, Robin?”

I want to answer. I want to cry out that he was right. I want to admit defeat and ask him to forgive me. I can do none of those things. The sound of his voice, the weight of all of his warnings come back to me, and I’m smothered underneath them. Utterly embarrassed and seized with regret, I sob into the phone. “Hawk,” comes out as a trisyllabic, airy appeal.

“I’m coming to get you.” His tone makes it clear there is no negotiation on that point. “You’re down at that conference center in Miller’s Valley, right?”

I nod, and though my logical brain kicks in and reminds me he can’t see me, he seems to understand through my snuffles.

“I can be there in a little over an hour if I take the bike, and if I don’t get caught by the police for speeding. Are you somewhere safe?”

“An empty parking lot at a shopping center down the street,” I manage to tell him. “There’s a sign that says Miller’s Hardware.”

“Hold on.” I hear a click-clacking of a keyboard in the background. “There’s a twenty-four hour diner near there called Shantzy’s. Just go two more blocks up, make a right. Get there and wait. I’ll be there as quickly as I can be.”

“Hawk, I’m so sorry.” Tears burn hot down my cheek before chilling in the night air as they pool over the rim of my chin.

“We’ll worry about that later,” he says, the sound of jingling keys in the background. “I’m on my way, Robin.”

All eyes in the diner are on me. Which, honestly, aren’t many, but I think that I expect them to stare, and so I feel the weight of it all the more. At this time of night, there’s only two waitresses and a short order cook running the place, and the patrons are limited to an old man reading a newspaper at the counter, and a few high school kids at a corner booth tossing out enough four-lettered words to show they’re all edgy and rebellious and shit.
That was me not too long ago, before I fucked up my life
, I think. My attention turns to the lone girl in the group, a beaming black-haired beauty who looks as if she might be Native American. Part of me wants to write a note and sneak it to her when the two boys who are obviously vying for her feelings aren’t looking.
Be smarter than me. Be safer than me. Be better than me.

I look up when the older of the two waitresses—a pudgy, stout woman with artificially red hair and redder lipstick—sets a cup of coffee down on my table.

“I can’t pay for it,” I say in an apologetic tone.

A smile flitters across her face. Leaning over, she gently taps one of my hands. “Don’t worry about it, honey, you look like you need it. You have someone you want me to call?”

“My boyfr—
friend,
is coming to pick me up. I’ll borrow some money off of him to pay for this, I promise. Thank you.”

“Hush now, I told you not to worry. I’m not giving you coffee, I’m giving you a cup of care. You sit here as long as you like, okay, honey? You just let me know if you need anything. My name’s Patty and that other gal behind the counter over there is Mary Lea.”

I feel a tear prick the corner of my eye as I take the mug to my lips. The aroma fills my senses in tangent with the taste. It’s the stalest cup of coffee I’ve had in years, but at the same time, it’s also the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.

We both look across the diner when the ring of bells signals someone’s entered. Hawk looks to the other end of the room and scans quickly, his feet moving with his eyes as he catches sight of me. I leap up and throw myself into his arms. For the first time in two hours, warmth permeates my spirit, and I feel the burden of what’s become of me fall away as Hawk nestles me against his body.

Patty takes a step closer. “Tell me you’re the boyfriend, and not whoever did this to her.”

Hawk nods. “I am. I’m her boyfriend.”

Just hearing him say it, something I’ve felt for a few weeks but never dared say aloud, melts me. The tears come rushing out now as I lose my strength and fall against him. Hawk clutches me even tighter, holding me up.

“I’m sorry it took me so long. I came as quickly as I could,” he says as he weaves his fingers into my hair. “I ended up bringing the car. Took me a little longer, but I figured it was more comfortable than the ride back to Manderson in this fog.”

Even the teenagers have grown quiet now. Hawk turns to the waitress.

“Is there a bill? I don’t have much cash on me, but I can mail—”

“Just like I told her,” Patty says, cutting him off. “Don’t you worry about it. You just promise me you’re going to take care of her and we’ll call it even.”

Hawk thanks her as he takes off his coat and wraps it over my shoulders. I pull it close around me, loving how it both radiates with his body heat and scent. A moment later I find myself in the front seat of his RAV-4 as he pulls us away from the diner and turns down the main road heading north. The moment we’re away, his demeanor shifts. Hawk grows quietly intense, his hands strangling the steering wheel and his jaw working. I can see the anger building within him, and I can’t even blame him. How many times did he tell me to avoid Harrison? How many possible ways did he try to tell me there was something about him not right? And I didn’t listen. I just assumed the hatred for the professor was born of his spite. Spite for having been caught, spite for having his dreams put on hold. Spite for being less than perfect.

I inhale deep into my lungs, drawing as much breath and strength as I can, preparing for a vindictive outburst. “I know what you’re going to say,” I start in a tiny voice, “and you’re right … I should have listened. I’m so, so sorry, Hawk. Please don’t be angry with me.”

His eyebrows knit as he dashes a look my way. “Angry at you?” he says. “Angry at
you?
Let’s get one thing straight right now, Robin. I’m pissed as Hades, but it sure as hell ain’t at you. First things first. Is the blood yours?”

“Blood?” I look at my hands, my arms, but see nothing.

“On your shirt and chin,” he says.

The horrific fact that stares up at me when I look down actually makes me writhe back in my seat. Red splotches are dotted all over my chest. Reaching up to my chin, my fingers slip over sticky, congealed remnants. The stares from those in the diner and the waitress’s sympathy suddenly makes a lot more sense. Without another thought, I unbuckle the seatbelt and take off Hawk’s jacket, pulling the T-shirt off like it’s a poison burning me.

“No, it’s his! Ew.” I roll down the window and start to throw it out, but Hawk grabs my arm and pulls it back before I’m able.

“Don’t. That could be evidence, especially if he committed a crime.”

That word hangs in the air:
if.
Did he? It’s not like he raped me. I told him no, and he was pressing me further, but he didn’t actually hurt me or succeed in getting me to do anything. And I ripped a piece of his chin off. With my teeth. My stomach drops to China as I realize that
I
might actually be guilty of a crime. I feel my insides liquefy and my arm folds across my stomach, as though I can hold them in by mere will and pressure.

“Don’t!” Hawk wrestles my arm from its grip and forces me to shake out the tension. “Don’t you dare. You didn’t do anything wrong, you got that? You didn’t do one goddamned thing wrong.”

“You don’t even know what happened!” I bark out on automatic.

“I know who it happened with, and I can tell you right now, Robin, it’s not your fault. It’s his. It’s always his,” he says.

My head whips to the left. “Always?”

I see Hawk grow tall in his seat as he sucks in a deep breath. He lets it out through a cylindrical configuration of his lips. “The reason I’m expelled right now is because of him. I know what you heard, and what everybody thinks: that he caught me cheating. I’m not a cheater, Robin. I would never do something like that. But … it looks like that on paper.”

“Looks like it on paper, what do you mean?”

He exhales, the tension easing from his shoulders. “There was this girl.”

“Sophia Blake.”

Hawk’s head whip in my direction. “How do you know it was Fi he did this to?”

“I don’t,” I admit, but who else could it be? “I know you were with her for a while.”

“Three years,” he says, a smile flickering over his face. “Fi was … brilliant. She had a big future before her. God willing, she still does. We dated as undergrads. We went to different colleges, but in the same area of the country. We met at math Olympiads, and just kind of clicked. When it was time for her to apply to grad school, I convinced her to try Manderson. She was convinced it would be too hard for her, but wanted to be with me, so she applied. She barely got in, so it really wasn’t a big surprise when she had trouble finding an advisor. I was really starting to think she was going to end up getting disqualified from the program toward the end of the term, then suddenly one of the faculty took a very intense interest in her.”

“Let me guess, Harrison?” I ask.

“Harrison,” Hawk confirms. “I still don’t know if it was coincidence or consequence, but our relationship sort of fizzled about the time she joined his group. It had become obvious to both of us it wasn’t heading anywhere, but Fi and I stayed friends. When second term started, Fi changed. She became a different person. She was always busy, didn’t ever want to hang out, claimed that Harrison was keeping her too occupied with research and that he had high expectations. Toward midterm, she’d cut off all communication with not only me, but all of her friends in the department. Every time we’d see her, she’d plaster on a fake smile, but it was just that: fake. You could see through it a mile away. When her birthday came around in late June, I thought I’d do something special for her and see if I could cheer her up a bit. I stopped by her apartment without calling first and heard a commotion inside. What can I say, I got worried. I knocked, but she wouldn’t answer. I knocked harder, and when it finally opened, Harrison was standing there, all sweaty and with blood on his face.”

“Oh my God!” The words jump from my mouth before I can harness them. “What was he doing to her? Was she okay?”

“She was fine. Physically, anyway.” Hawk shakes his head. “Harrison tried to tell me Fi wasn’t available, but hell if I was going to find him looking like that and not get to the bottom of it. I pushed past him and found Fi in her bedroom, naked and handcuffed to her bed. There were deep gashes over her stomach and it was then I noticed a whip sitting next to her. I freaked, told Harrison I was calling the cops. Fi broke down, trying to convince me that she was letting him do those things to her willingly. One of the neighbors called the cops, however, and when they arrived Harrison told them I’d entered without permission. As the tenant, it was up to Fi to press charges, but she refused to. Harrison didn’t like that I’d found out about them. He tried to get Fi to threaten me, to report me to the chair for having threatened her and broken into her house. She could have, too. The police had to force me to leave when I walked in on them that day. I’m sure there’s a report some where recording the whole horrific incident.”

“I guess I can understand, but what could he do about it?” I ask.

A wry chuckle comes from Hawk’s mouth. “What, indeed.
What
he did, or at least, what I’m trying to prove he did, was get Fi to make it look like I had stolen her research when we were dating and that I broke it off with her when I’d gotten what I was after.”

“Okay, but I don’t understand how he could do that—”

“A simple mistake,” Hawk says. “I left one of my notebooks at her apartment. She copied parts of her research notes into it, then claimed she’d discovered it all in my office.”

“That … bitch!”