Faking It (19 page)

Empty.

I tried the living room and the kitchen.

Empty.

I called her name, and it only echoed back at me.

Empty.

That was how I felt, too. I sat on the bed, numb, but not really surprised. I should have listened to what my brain had been telling me all along. It was obvious just from looking at Max that we came from different worlds. I was naive to think she could ever be happy with someone like me. And I was naive to think it had only been physical attraction. It was so much more than that. All I knew was that I was pretty damn tired of having my heart handed to me in a blender.

Eventually the emptiness was filled up by anger, and I ripped the sheets off my bed and threw them down. They still smelled like her, and I refused to let her linger in my life the way I’d done with Bliss. If she didn’t want me, fine.

I was probably dodging a bullet anyway.

I stayed calm as I stripped the bed. I grabbed a laundry basket and dumped the dirty clothes already in it to make room for the sheets. I checked the clock.

7:21 a.m.

That wasn’t too early to go to the Laundromat.

The sooner she was out of my life the better. I had to keep moving forward. One foot in front of the other.

But where was the damn detergent?

It wasn’t in the bathroom, where I normally kept it.

I checked the kitchen and my closet, and all the while the muscles in my neck and back grew tenser until they were as hard and unforgiving as stone. fingernails scrape

I searched my bedroom, but instead of finding detergent, I found Max’s sheer black tights.

I stared at them while my control unraveled. I wanted to throw them in the trash. I wanted to return them. I wanted to keep them. I was a mess of wants, none of which mattered, because
she
didn’t want
me
.

I picked up the lamp beside my bed and threw it against the wall. I watched it shatter, and wished I had the satisfaction of seeing myself break that way. It was worse, when you couldn’t see or touch the part of you that was in pieces.

The anger only made me feel worse. It gave way to guilt too easily, and after a few days, I was left feeling even emptier than before.

Over the next week, I didn’t spend much time at home. I couldn’t. Every time I touched my door, laid something on my table, or slept in my bed, I saw her. I could still smell her on my pillow even after washing my sheets. Or maybe the memory was so ingrained that I thought I could. I saw her behind my closed eyes while I tried to sleep at night. So I avoided home as much as I could. One night with her had tainted it.

I put in more hours at the library, stayed longer after class, and volunteered to help with random stuff around the theatre department.
You need someone to organize that storage room that no one has opened in years? Sure!

You need someone to build that prop? Gladly!

I made it my goal to be the best in every assignment, in every class. To be perfect. And as such I demolished my midterms. I just had to fill my mind with enough things that there wasn’t room for her. That was the plan at least, but Max was larger than life and tended to beat out the other stuff no matter how hard I tried. And when classes ended for the holiday, there was nothing left to keep my mind busy.

Near the end of the week, I came home to find Milo sitting on my couch, eating a bag of my potato chips. I hadn’t told Milo what happened because I didn’t want to relive it more than I already had.

I said, “You know . . . I gave you that spare key for emergencies, not so that you could come in here and mooch my food.”

He swallowed the graveyard of chips in his mouth and said, “Where the hell have you been all week, Winston?”

I threw my bag in a chair and shrugged off my coat. If he was going to try to get me to some bar or club or anything, I wasn’t up for it. I headed to the kitchen and said noncommittally, “Around.”

He stood but didn’t follow me into the kitchen.

“You all right?”

I opened the cabinet to get a glass, and said, “Yeah, why do you ask?”

“I saw her, Cade.”

My whole body tensed, and I nearly dropped the glass I’d gotten from the cabinet. I took a deep breath and opened the fridge to grab the pitcher of filtered water.

I let the fridge block my face as I asked, “Her?”

“Quit bullshitting me,
hermano.
Be real with me.”

My hand shook as I poured the water.

“What? We had sex. She left. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Not that big of a deal? I will fingernails scrape pushed owlmy call bullshit on that so many times that the word
bullshit
will lose all meaning.”

I sighed. “What do you want me to say?”

I took a drink and set my glass on the counter.

He shrugged. “Well, you could start by telling me how it was.”

I saw red, and was halfway across the room before he cried, “Whoa, man! Kidding!” My ears were roaring, and Milo was standing on the futon with an arm stretched out between us. “I think I’ve proved my point about this being a big deal.”

I exhaled slowly and rubbed a hand across my face.

“You want me to say I’m miserable? Fine. I’m miserable. Are you going to make me take some more dumbass shots? Because that’s not going to cut it. Just drop it.”

Milo whistled. “It’s about time you got angry.”

“And getting angrier by the second.”

He asked, “Did you go after her?”

I took a deep inhale and exhale, but that only made me think of Max.

“No, I didn’t go after her. What’s the point?”

“The point is to call her on her bullshit like I’m doing for you.”

I shook my head. “I think her leaving was a pretty clear indication of how she feels.”

She knew I wouldn’t go after her. She knew I didn’t chase people. And she’d left anyway. That was a pretty glaring indication that it was over as far as I was concerned.

I was done with this conversance, atand I knew I m

31

Cade

M
ax, wait!” I didn’t really know what I was saying until the words had already left my mouth. “What time do we fly out?”

She turned, and something I couldn’t decipher flickered in her eyes. I’d been trying so hard to remain ambivalent, to not let her presence get to me, but I just couldn’t.

The look of shock on her face was pretty spot-on for how I felt. The moment the words left my mouth, I regretted it. But for some reason when she asked, “We?” I didn’t back out.

I looked at her wide blue eyes and said, “If you still want me to go, I’m in. I made you a promise, and I’m going to follow through.” Even if it killed me.

She crossed her arms over her chest, and surveyed me. I kept my face passive and my body relaxed. I didn’t want her to think this was a ploy to get her back. It wasn’t. This charade had been really important to her, and if she thought she needed me to face her parents, I wasn’t going to let her down. I was afraid if I didn’t go, she’d keep right on pretending.

“You would do that for me?” she asked.

I was a little afraid to examine what I was willing to do for her.

I weighed my words carefully before saying, “We made a deal. I would do it for anyone.” I swear she winced, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling her the truth.

She swallowed and nodded. “Okay, then. Um, thanks. We fly out Sunday morning at eleven.”

“Okay. I’ll come early, and we’ll catch a cab to the airport.”

“Right, well, I’ll see you Sunday then.”

I watched her go for few minutes before returning to the rec center.

Bad idea didn’t even begin to describe what I’d just done.

Over the next few days, I kept finding myself being drawn back to that airline ticket. Sometimes I would just stare at the numbers—dates and times and flights—until they stopped making sense. Other times I would hold the ticket in my hands and concentrate, as if I might be able to feel her intentions behind it just by touching it.

Was it just a ticket? Or did it represent something more?

I was sitting on my couch, holding the ticket, when the phone rang.

I looked at the caller ID and smiled. Talking to a friend from back home was exactly what I needed.

I hit accept and held the phone to my ear. “Rusty, if you’re calling to bitch about how much being a grown-up sucks, don’t expect a pep talk because I’ve got nothing.”

Rusty laughed on the other end, and just like that, all the time and miles between friends had been erased.

He said, “Tell me about it. Can we go back in time and tell our past selves to flunk a few classes so we can go back to being in college?”

“Hey, I
am
still in college.”

“Ah, grad school doesn’t count. That’s like college 2.0—all of the work and none of the fun.”

“And?” she askedmpm, working full-time is so much better?” I asked.

“Hell no. Yesterday someone spit coffee at me. Okay, so on the counter in front of me, but still I watched liquid arch from a stranger’s mouth toward me. This is my life.”

We laughed, and then the line went quiet.

After a few seconds, he said, “Now that I’ve buttered you up with laughs, I’ll get straight to the point . . .”
And so the other shoe drops
. “Bliss. I heard about the engagement. I’m sorry, man.”

I picked the airline ticket back up, and held it as I said, “You and everybody else on Facebook.”

“How are you doing with it?”

I said, “Okay.”

And I was just fine . . . where Bliss was concerned anyway.

“Cade . . .”

“I am, Rusty. I promise. I mean, I saw them a week or two ago, and it was awkward as hell. And depressing, because I’m pretty sure my friendship with Bliss is DOA. But I’m okay. There’s actually this other girl.”

I hadn’t told anyone about Max. I’d liked feeling that she was this awesome secret that I refused to share with the world. But she had my mind so twisted up that I had to tell someone.

“Another girl, huh?” he asked. “What’s she like?”

32

Max

I
refused to be nervous about spending time with Cade. Not when I had so many other things to worry about, but thoughts of him kept creeping into my head.

He’d ruined me.

Before I’d been like ice—cold and cutting and solid. But for weeks, he’d been thawing me out, and I hated it.

There was no control like this, no protection. And I had fewer than twenty-four hours until the end of the world. Also known as family Christmas.

Home was the lion’s den. My scars were always more sensitive there because that’s where I’d gotten the wounds. Now more than ever I needed my armor.

So today was about strengthening my resolve.

My mom had called seventeen and a half times today already. The half because one of the phone calls lasted so long that classifying it as one call just didn’t seem fair.

My brother and his wife, Bethany, had arrived yesterday, and I could feel the pretentiousness creeping through the phone just hearing them in the background.

I still hadn’t packed my bags. I had two sets of clothes folded and ready to go—my traditional holiday garb of turtlenecks and scarfs . . . or my normal clothes. As much as I wanted to make Cade happy, this wasn’t a decision that I could make lightly.

When I came home from my shift at the tattoo parlor, I reached out to tug open the door to my building, and it didn’t budge. I blinked, and then pulled again, but nothing changed.

I stepped back and looked around my street to make sure I’d gone to the right building. There was the Laundromat next door, which meant I was in the right place. I stepped forward and yanked on the door again. Nothing.

The door was locked.

The door to this building hadn’t been locked in ages, almost a year, I was sure.

I fished out my keys fingernails scrapeed by owI wondered if , and it took me a few seconds to even remember which key worked on this door because it had been so long. What had made the landlord fix it now? I’d given up bugging him about it months ago because nothing worked.

Unless he hadn’t been the one to fix it.

I froze with the key halfway to the lock. Would Cade have done that? Even though we were . . . well, not whatever we had been.

I weighed the probability in my mind of who could have fixed the door. Between my bum of a landlord and Golden Boy—the choice was obvious.

My heartbeat sped up faster just thinking about the possibility.

Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it wasn’t even him.

But what if it was and what if it did?

I thawed a little bit more.

I shook my head, and focused on my keys. When I found the right one, I shoved it into the lock a little too hard. Then I went upstairs and faced my packing options. I took a few turtlenecks, just in case, but for the most part I packed my normal clothes, the clothes I thought Cade would have approved of.

When I couldn’t hold back my nerves about tomorrow or my fantasies about Cade being the one to fix my door, I went to bed for the night, hoping I could stay strong . . . against everything.

My head was pounding, and it sounded like I was underwater. The world was so far away and too bright after so long alone in the dark. A light shined in my eye, and I flinched. A face hovered over mine, and my heart turned over in my chest.

Alex.

It had to be.

I tried to say her name, but my tongue felt like sandpaper, and my throat burned with the effort. All I managed was a whisper.

“Don’t try to talk, Rest your vocal cords.”

I looked back at th class="x1BM" aid="10DJ5A">
The voice was male, not Alex’s. My world chose that moment to sharpen, to emerge from the blur of my vision. I licked my lips. They were sticky and tasted like pennies.

Two fingers pressed into my wrist, and the man startled rattling off numbers to someone else I couldn’t see.

I registered the steady rumble of an engine, and whatever I was lying on swayed slightly.