Forgive Me (22 page)

“What the hell?” I say as I grab my neck. Wes is laughing, having been hysterically thrown across the room.

“Oh hey, Charlotte,” Rob says. “Sorry I didn’t see you there.” I haven’t seen Rob since May. He’s one of Noble’s closest friends from Rutgers.

“I think something cut me,” I say still holding my neck. Wes crawls over to me and looks, practically through his eyelids, at my neck as he moves my hand away.

“Shit, Charlotte. Something did cut you.” He looks down at his chest and then over his whole body. He holds up his arm and his oversized watch now has several strands of long blond hair hanging from the crown.

“Come in the bathroom and let me take a look, Charlotte,” Rob says, and although he’s nice I know his offer has nothing to do with the scratch on my neck.

“It’s fine. I’m sure it’s fine. I’m going to bed. You guys have a good night.”

“You sure you’re not mad?”

“Certain.”

I open the door to Noble’s bedroom and turn on my phone to provide some light. He’s passed out on the tiny bed. At least it looks tiny with him in it. There’s just enough room on the floor between the bed and the wall for me to lie, but he’s hanging off the side of the bed, not even under the covers.

Just this once…

I climb into the bed and the soft mattress and pillow under my head are like heaven. I roll toward the wall, not touching Noble at all. I can hear his deep breaths and know he’ll be asleep for a while. I set my alarm for 8 a.m., netting me four hours of sleep and text Jason:

Just this once…

Is all I get back and I happily drift off to sleep.

Noble stirs at my alarm, but doesn’t wake up. I crawl out from under the sheets and quietly sneak out of the room. I rouse Julia, who is now lying like a princess with men at her feet everywhere I turn. After a few minutes, I drag her tiny body out of the cottage. We walk the nine blocks home still half asleep. We change into our bathing suits, brush our teeth, and head directly to the beach, where there’s room to sleep and I let the beach heal me until 11:30 a.m. Until Sydney can no longer take it, and wakes me up to tell her every detail of my night after the last point she saw me.

The second day is more of the same, with the exception of our sleeping arrangements. Violet and Blake are staying at Violet’s dad’s partner’s house in Spring Lake and Julia, Sydney and I quickly relocate there. Even with all three of us sharing one bedroom we still have 800 times the room we had at Julia’s. The house is magnificent. After happy hour at the Parker House, we grab food and head back to the patio to finish our Rutgers weekend. I get a text from Noble:

He texts and I happily fall asleep next to Julia and Sydney in our four-post bed at the corner of Luxurious and Breathtaking in Spring Lake, New Jersey.

After breakfast I drag Violet from Blake and we head home laughing about the weekend the entire way. It has literally been months—how many, maybe six months—since I’ve had this type of fun. These girls are hilarious. We ride with the windows down to smell the ocean as long as possible, and switch to the air conditioning when we hit the highway. I smile the whole way home, and if it weren’t for being completely exhausted I’d call Julia and relive every minute of it all over again.

Jason’s truck is absent from the driveway. Maybe he went to church. I laugh a little at the thought of it as I climb into our bed and let exhaustion have me.

When I wake his robotic arm is around me and he’s spooning me; two things which never happen. He missed me. And I missed him. I delicately roll toward him and he’s smiling at me. I kiss his lips and savor the taste of him. I love having Jason Leer in my bed.

“You never need a nap after a Saturday night at the rodeo,” he says, and I kiss him again, letting him feel my need for himself. I gingerly roll him on his back and rest on his chest. I take in his beautiful face and kiss him on the cheek and on his neck right below his ear. The wind blows the sheers from my window and I look up as they float out from the windows. Jason tenses beneath me. “What happened to your neck?” he asks with eyes that are turning black.

I reach down and cover the cut on my neck. It’s really just a scrape. He’s being ridiculous.

“It was an accident,” I say weakly. “Wes scraped it with his watch.” I watch as Wes’s name registers with Jason and when I think he’s fully digested my statements, I return to his neck.

“We’ll talk more about this later,” he says.

“That’s fine, as long as we do what I want right now.” I reach down and grab his already hard-on. The mechanical man laboriously rolls me back over and devours me, to my delight.

The campus is buzzing. Halloween is one of the biggest parties of the year. Jenn is pissed she can’t come this year because it’s also my sorority’s date night. No outside girls allowed; strict rules. Unlike rules, Jenn does not like to break traditions. She took it well. She’s headed to Margo. Part of me wishes they were both coming here. Our moments together are fleeting. By this time next year we’re going to be all over the place. Jenn is determined to find a way to Hawaii and Margo keeps talking about skiing. Neither of them mentions settling down in Oklahoma. I guess that’s too much to ask.

Jason’s plane gets in at 7:30 p.m. We’re going to be late for the date night, but at least it’s right downtown. Noble drops me off at the airport around seven, giving himself plenty of time to get back to College Avenue and change before the party. He and Julia are going as friends, not romantic dates tonight, which is perfect for me. Jason will have another person he knows there.

I’m already in my cowgirl costume, or as Violet likes to call it, my slutty cowgirl costume. It’s chilly, but even if it was ninety degrees out, I would have this parka pulled up around my neck. Jason would flip to see me in the Newark Airport in the slutty cowgirl costume. I laugh just thinking about it. A group of passengers fills the baggage claim area and I can tell it’s his plane. I’ve already seen three ten-gallon hats and two sets of overalls.

Within seconds he comes into sight and I run to him before he clears the doorway. He catches me and picks me up with his good arm as if I’m only ten pounds. He holds me until I get my fill of his scent, having buried myself near his kiwi hair. He lowers me to my feet and kisses me. I could spend the entire night right here in his arms, but we’d probably get arrested.

“Ready?” I ask, and turn toward the exit marked
GROUND TRANSPORTATION
.

“Are we taking all the trains again?” he asks, wary from our prior New Jersey Transit adventures.

“Tonight we are taking a cab. I want to get to the party as soon as possible.” Jason seems unenthused, but happy to climb in the back of a cab with me.

“Nice boots.” He pulls my coat up and examines the boots he bought me for my birthday. When he notices the absence of pants he continues to raise my coat until he gets above my knee, pushing it up with his hot hand on my leg. It’s driving me insane. “Annie, what are you wearing?”

“My Halloween costume. I’m a cowgirl.”

“A naked one?” he says, and the words falling off his lips make my mouth water.

“No. In fact, I’m wearing the shirt you left here last time.” Jason looks confused. “I altered it a little. Hope you didn’t want it back.”

“What I want is to see your costume.”

“You have to wait until the party.” Jason’s hand squeezes my thigh and he raises it higher, still not encountering any fabric. His face is a cross between anger and obsession and I’m suddenly very hot.

“We need to stop at your house first.” I look at him through my eyelashes. “I have to drop off my bag.” He runs his hand up and down the inside of my thigh and the muscles in my stomach clench.

“Just a quick stop,” I say, slightly out of breath.

When the cab stops on Hamilton Street a police cruiser is double parked in front of my house with its lights on. There are several people on the stoop and the front door is wide open. Julia’s in her flasher costume giving the officer information. I pay the driver and run out of the cab without a word to Jason.

“Are you okay?” I practically yell at Julia.

“Someone broke into the house,” she says, and I look at the door. It’s fine. “They came up the rear fire escape and broke the window.”

“The one by our room?” I ask, and imagine someone in my room.

“You live here?” the officer asks.

“Yes,” I say, and Jason’s hand lands on my shoulder.

“I’m going to need you to try and figure out if anything’s missing.”
Try?

“Of course. When did this happen? Were you home?”

“Nick and I walked in on him. He ran out the front door while we were in the downstairs kitchen. It wasn’t until we walked upstairs we figured it all out.”

“My God, Julia. You could have been hurt.”

“Or worse,” the officer says. “We think he was watching the house, waiting for everyone to leave.” At this, Jason’s hand tightens its grip on my shoulder. This is going to be a long conversation.

I walk into the house with Jason a half-step behind me. His breath on me, angry still, is the ominous music accompanying this horror film. The back window is broken and shattered glass covers the floor. Noble is hammering a piece of plywood over the hole.

“Noble,” I say, and he stops hammering and turns around. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Julia’s pretty shaken up. I know she wants to go to the party. It’s her last one, but she’s kind of a wreck,” he says, and I still can’t believe someone was in our house. “I’m going to nail this window shut until we can get to the hardware store tomorrow, so pray there’s no fire.”

I take two steps back and turn into my room. Both mattresses are flipped off the frames, the lampshades are crooked and the framed pictures on my dresser are in a pile, including my parents’ wedding picture. I run my fingers over the shattered glass still covering their faces. When I look up Noble and Jason are staring at me. Noble’s sweet concern is written all over his face. Jason may soon kill someone. I carefully place the frame back on my dresser.

Every single item in the room is now on the floor. Every piece of clothing, every purse, lies inside out, every wallet open, everything thrown violently in a search. I raise both hands to my mouth and breathe heavily through my nose. Jason’s eyes are screaming at me, but I can’t fit his issues in with my own right now.

I open my purse and thankfully find my license, credit card, and insurance card are with me. Julia and Noble follow the policeman into the room and we all stand in the thirty inches of floor that’s uncovered.

“He did a number on this place. Can you tell if anything’s missing?”

“My student ID,” I say, and realize it has my name and my picture on it. I shiver as a chill runs down my back. I walk to my bed and drag it away from the wall. I untape the envelope from the bottom of the headboard and count the money inside. Fifteen hundred dollars. It’s all here. When I look up, they’re all looking at me. “What? My grandmother was crazy. She hid stuff all over the place.” My heart necklace is in Oklahoma and my rowel necklace is around my neck. “I don’t have anything else of value here,” I say, and Jason looks like he might kill someone. I wish we were alone.

“Are you sure you still want to go to the party?” Noble asks Julia and she nods.

“I don’t want to be here,” she says, and I take out my phone and Google the name of the hotel the party’s at. I step into the hall and book two rooms. We’re not coming back here either.

We all use my cash stash to check in. Noble takes Julia to her room to get high and try to forget about the break-in for a few hours. Jason and I check in to our room and I take off my coat for the first time since I picked him up. My costume, meant to turn him on, does nothing to make him feel safe. It’s shorts, cutoffs that barely cover my bottom, a giant silver buckle, and his plaid shirt hiked up to my ribs and tied in a knot. It’s covering my white bikini top and my hair is in pigtails popping out from under the cowboy hat he gave me when we first got together. It would have been perfect, but now it’s a blinking neon warning sign.

“I brought other clothes to change into,” I say, and begin pulling things out of my bag that I found on the floor of my bedroom. I know there’s a pair of yoga pants in here, somewhere. Jason puts his hand on my own to stop the search.

“Annie.” I ignore him and look out the window, his hand still on top of mine. “Annie, you can’t stay here.” I close my eyes.
Not tonight, Jason. Not tonight
. “You have to know that. After seeing your house the way you just did, you know you can’t stay here, right?” New Brunswick has betrayed me, but I’m still not leaving.

“Annie, answer me!” He’s yelling now. Frantic at the thought we’re not seeing this the same way, I search every corner of my mind for the words that will avoid this fight.

“I love you, Jason,” I say, and turn to him. “Will you take me to the party?” I ask, and he thinks I’m deranged. His eyes seek some recognition of severity from mine, but he’ll find none there. Avoid, avoid, avoid. “I want you to take me downstairs to the party and later, we’ll talk about all of this. I promise.”

“There’s nothing to talk about, Annie. If you think there’s a chance in hell of you ever stepping foot in that house again without me, you have completely lost your fucking mind.” I put both hands on his chest and rub them up and down, trying to soothe him. He holds my wrists and pulls them away. “I’m serious, Annie. I’ll take you to this party because it’s the last one you’re going to at Rutgers.”

We take the elevator downstairs in silence, standing three feet away from each other and never breaking eye contact. If only this were a staring competition—although, he’d probably win that too.

We head straight to the bar and find Julia and Noble downing tequila shots and telling the rest of our roommates about the break-in. The girls from the upstairs triplet plan on sleeping in the basement. They’ll all be in the downstairs apartment and lock the door to the upstairs. Julia and I agree it would be easier to go back if our room hadn’t been ransacked. The entire time Jason stands near me, his eyes the color of a winter battle.

“Sydney still needs to be told,” I say, remembering she’s working at Stuff Yer Face tonight.

“I called her and told her we’d come get her after date night. She’s going to stay downstairs, just needs a walk home. I don’t want her going into the house alone.” Julia’s words make sense, but there are ten of us. At some point, someone is going to go into the house alone. I avoid looking at Jason. I already know his plan for working this out and it includes me throwing all of my belongings in a bag and flying back to Stillwater with him. Isn’t there crime there?

I am becoming an expert at separating Jason’s anger from the task at hand. His enormous control over my emotions cannot be the definitive factor in every situation. I move through the crowd and note all the costumes. Some of them are just hilarious. Noble has doctor’s scrubs on with a button that says “Free Breast Exams,” Julia’s a streaker complete with a naked body suit. There’s a black widow and her corpse man, the president and first lady, and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. And then there are the cowboy and the cowgirl. As the twins, dressed as the Olson Twins, come up and turn me around to slap my ass for a picture, I look up to see Noble watching me and laughing.

I look to the side and Jason is watching Noble watching me. Fear runs through me. This night cannot get worse. I wink at Noble and he turns to order yet another drink as I see Jason approach Noble and say something. Whatever it was, Noble seems unconcerned. He puts his hand on Jason’s shoulder and speaks calmly in return. If anyone can handle Jason, which no one can, it’s Noble. They have known each other since the day they were born. Noble puts a cigarette behind his ear and Jason follows him out the side entrance of the hotel.

I order myself and Julia another drink and we watch as Violet and Blake argue in the corner, not all that inconspicuously.