Heartsick (4 page)

“That’s cool,” he says, as though there’s a permanent ellipsis on the end of his slowly drawn words.

The two glasses of wine, along with the pre-party drinks Mandy and I had, bubble in my head. Rashid bumps in my brain. He’s a serious sort of guy. The kind you want your parents to meet and you can imagine, possibly, way down the line, being with in a field on a checkered blanket, a boxed diamond ring tucked away in the picnic basket.

But Luke is raw and real and present. And he comes with a grade-A Sally endorsement. He’s the kind of guy I should mess around with. The kind of guy who it isn’t cruel to flirt with. I mean, he’s a townie. I’m just some college girl to him.

So that’s why I ask, “Do you want to try it?” I’m not usually a daring, bold sort of girl, but I place my hand on his shoulder. My thumb glides along his toned muscles.

Our bodies close in. He nods. “Yeah.” His breath is heavy.

“It’s at my apartment, but it’s just a couple blocks away.”

His hand moves to my hand on the bar. The condensation from his beer lingers on his palm and it’s cold. I shiver. He pulls away, forehead furrowed. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

We finish our drinks mighty quickly. I’m sure it has nothing to do with our plans. As Luke pays, I rummage around the bar looking for Mandy. But she is nowhere. She doesn’t answer her phone. I bite the inside of my cheek, but swallow any anger. She must have just forgotten to tell me she was leaving.

I walk back toward Luke. As he says goodbye to Sally, her playful expression winnows away. She reaches her hand to his. She holds it for a second, hard enough that the knuckles on her fleshy hands get a little white. He squeezes back. They’re clearly having a moment. I want to ask about it, but not as much as I want to leave it pure, unhindered. “God doesn’t give us anything we can’t handle,” Sally says. “You know that.”

“Yes ma’am,” Luke says. She releases his hand. She looks at me as she talks to Luke. “I’m sure you’ll like Quinn’s beer. It’s some of the best in Allan.”

We exit and Luke looks good in the moonlight. Despite the cold, warmth flushes through me. I swallow as his hand finds the small of my back. We pass the Methodist Church. There’s a large balcony three stories up, latched on to the sanctuary. “I’ve heard you can see the whole town from up there,” I say.

“You can,” he says, and laughs. “When we were little, my sisters and I used to crumple up bits of the program and throw ’em off the balcony after the service. We made it snow.”

“Sounds like a good idea. Who wouldn’t like snow?”

He shrugs and bares a bashful grin. “The old, serious sorts didn’t like it when paper bits got in their hair. Our mom would get real mad.” As he looks up at the church, the humor leaves his shoulders. His mouth is straight.

The rest of the walk is weirdly quiet. And, given how I thought it started off, oddly devoid of physical contact. The mood has slithered away.

When we get to my house, I usher him past the peeling red paint on the fence and the abundance of honeysuckle in the front yard. I push him quickly through the messy living room that has a bunch of half-spent candles and a shaggy orange carpet. In the kitchen, I open a bottle of the lager for us to split.

He points to a photo of Main Street during a sudden rainstorm my freshman year. Students are holding book bags over their heads, running to the cute shops and cafés for shelter. Some people are standing under awnings, clutching their valuables: recent purchases and small children. “Is this, the one with the crazy guy in the middle, another of your pictures?” Luke asks.

I remember thinking, before I pulled out my camera, how I loved that there was one guy who wasn’t fleeing. He just stood in the middle of the rain and let it fall on him. He spread his arms and looked to the heavens and opened his mouth as though only this sudden rainstorm would quench his thirst. After I took the picture, I ran up to him.

That’s how I met Conrad.

“Yeah,” I say to Luke, pointing at the crazy-looking guy in the middle as I grin. “We’re enjoying his beer recipe.”

Luke laughs. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay.” I step closer to him to show it. He looks at me as though I’m an abstract painting and he’s trying to discern the artist’s intent. He moves slowly but it feels quick. He puts the beer down. His hand is on my hip and his other hand runs through my hair. I place my hands on his shoulders and try to tame my breaths, until I realize his breaths are fast, eager too. We mirror each other again. Just as I close my eyes, ready to taste him, we hear it.

The crashing of glass. Outside. A muffled noise that sounds like a yelp. A scream.

Mandy.

Chapter Five

I push away from Luke and run through the kitchen to the back door, toward the sound. Luke’s heavy steps are close behind me.

The dim lantern on our patio table makes Zachary’s bewildered, madman expression even more off-putting. He’s usually so put together, so in control. Hell, he’s the kind of guy who actually follows the instructions on the side of frozen dinners. You know, taking it out and stirring it midway. But now, he holds a broken bottle by the neck as he shakes. The dim light punctuates the beads of blood that glisten off the jagged edges.

“Shit,” he mumbles when he sees me. “She’s bleeding.”

Mandy’s arm is red with blood, not just the lighter red blood you get when you scrape a knee, but the deep, dark maroon that comes when something has cut closer to your core. The patio is littered with glass shards and some brown liquid that must be liquor. As I step forward tentatively, Luke circumvents me.

“Are you all right?” he asks Mandy, before drawing back. “Your eyes...”

Her eyes aren’t just purple, they’re bright, like the moonlight has caught them at just the right angle.

“Yeah, yeah, they’re purple and my arm is bloody, but I’m fine,” Mandy says. Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary curls his shoulders, folds his arms and looks to the ground. Luke steps toward him, close enough that his height and the mass of his shoulders are a clear advantage. He doesn’t say it, but it’s clear:
I could fuck you up.

“It was an accident,” Zachary whispers. He sets the bottle on the table.

“We were just playing around,” Mandy says. “We were joking and then I got hurt. That’s all there is to it.”

Luke stares at Zachary. Zachary finally takes two steps back and runs both hands through his hair. Mandy sighs to the sky and Luke tenses his jaw. “Luke,” I say, “if Mandy says it was an accident, it was an accident.” Luke doesn’t know Mandy, so he doesn’t know
about
Mandy.

“Where is your bathroom?” Luke asks. He’s bobbing slightly on his feet, ready to sprint.

“Right after the kitchen,” I say as he lunges back inside.

The wooden steps up to Conrad’s apartment creak. He has hovered in the one-bedroom apartment above our two-bedroom since sophomore year. And he’s coming down. I’ll have to be quick. I say it hushed to Mandy, but not so hushed that Zachary can’t hear. It’s hard to keep my tone level. “It
was
an accident, right?”

“Quinn, you know I would never—” Zachary starts, but I raise a hand to him. I look at Mandy.

“It was an accident,” she says, her chin high and her eyes cold. But I had to press it.

Conrad pops his head around the corner. “Hey, I thought I heard...something. Everything okay?”

As he walks toward us, he sees that it’s not.

Luke bursts back onto the patio.

“What happened?” Conrad says, touching Mandy’s shoulder.

Mandy mumbles again how it’s nothing. But her flesh is still erupting in jagged lines. Conrad pulls out his phone. “I’ll call 911.”

“No!” Mandy, Zachary and Luke say in unison, but with varying levels of urgency.

Luke raises his eyebrow at the other two, then turns to Conrad. “She won’t need an ambulance,” he says. “But while you have that out, can you take a picture?” He gestures to Mandy.

“No...what?” Mandy says as Conrad aims and shoots.

Luke bends down, ignoring Mandy’s huffs as he dabs her arm with a wet towel. “I put some soap on this, so it might sting,” he says.

“Why did you ask him to take a picture?” she asks.

“You might need it later,” Luke says, his eyes shifting to Zachary.

“Okay, whatever,” Mandy says. “Thanks for all this, but I’m fine.”

Luke sets down the towel and picks up some bandages. I didn’t even know we had bandages. He wraps them around her arm with astonishing speed.

“You’ll be fine,” Luke says, swift and steady. “But you probably need stitches, and a doctor will need to get the shards of glass out.” He’s stiff. Stern. I barely recognize him for the guy he was back at Sally’s. All heavy, sexy breathing and playful eyes.

Mandy sighs. “I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“I don’t know, Mandy, that looks pretty bad,” Conrad says.

“Miss, you’re going to—” Luke starts.

“Miss?” Mandy says, the skin around her eyes rumpling as she stares at him. Then she turns to me. “Quinn, who the fuck is this guy?”

I close my eyes for a second. I crouch in front of her, putting my hand on her knee to steady myself. “This is Luke. He’s a guy who’s helping you. And you’re going to listen to him, and we’re going to the hospital.”

Mandy looks to the stars and sighs. She looks back at me. “Okay, let’s go.”

Conrad squeezes Mandy’s shoulder. “You let me know if you need anything, anything at all.”

Mandy nods.

We head out. Zachary follows.

“I think you’ve helped enough,” Luke says, flexing his knuckles.

Zachary clenches his fist, but says nothing. When we’re out of earshot of our house—

away from Zachary and making our way across the damp bricks and the four blocks to the hospital—Luke says, “I know it may be frightening, but when you’re ready, I would strongly urge you to file a complaint for assault. Guys like that rarely stop—”

“Oh my God.” Mandy holds both her injured and healthy arms out. I tap her shoulder and shoot her a “be nice” look.

She pinches her lips and looks at Luke. “I appreciate your help...but you don’t know what happened.”

“What did happen?” Luke asks, cool as butter.

“I told you, we were just playing around.” She crosses her arms.

This still strikes me as odd. I run my hands along my purse strap. But I won’t get anything out of her now, in front of a stranger.

When we get to the emergency room, a nurse processes her. He looks at her arm. He removes the soaked bandages. As they unravel, he frowns. He mutters something about it being a lot of blood for the wound. I ask him what he means. He won’t elaborate.

I rub my thumb along my lower lip as he cleans her arm. I don’t know if it’s because the blood is dissipating, but her wound does look better. Just streams of blood running along her skin, instead of a gushing mess. I remember a guest at one of my parents’ parties going on about war injuries while he shoveled caviar into his mouth between words. He said sometimes you think you’ll die, but it’s just blood and smear and your mind roiled. Maybe Mandy’s was like that. All bluster.

That must be it.

As Luke sits in the waiting room—he insisted—I go with Mandy into the examining room. She sits on the mattress and leans against the wall, specks of blood seeping onto the white paper spilling from a spool at the top of the bed. Her fingers twiddle against each other in her lap.

“What happened?” I’m prodding her when she’s already upset, but I don’t care. I keep my shoulders straight.

“Oh nothing.” She shakes her head.

“I want to believe you...”

Mandy stares at me, violet eyes bright and biting. “You know I’d never let a guy hit me. Not again. I’m not like that.” Her voice shakes. I imagine her past experiences jostling around in her throat. I’m one of the few people privy to those past experiences.

Dr. Brown enters the room with the nurse. “Back again?” She raises her eyebrows. “And on my shift too? Well, let’s have a look.” She wipes away the blood on Mandy’s arm with a sterile cloth. The cuts sprawl across her skin.

She pushes back on her wheelie stool. “These aren’t too bad. We’ll just clean them up and you’ll be on your way in no time.”

The nurse touches her arm. “That’s so strange. I swear it looked worse before.”

Dr. Brown shrugs. “Sometimes small cuts can cause a lot of blood.”

The nurse dabs on some ointment and crisscrosses a few bandages. We get some instructions for at-home care. We’re set.

Luke said he would wait for us but I didn’t really expect him to, so I’m surprised to see him leaning forward in one of the lime green chairs, reading his phone. He springs up when he sees us.

“Everything okay?” he asks. “How many stitches did you need?”

“None.” Mandy says it sharp and proud, like she is somehow to credit for not needing stitches.

Luke squints and rubs the back of his head. “Really? None?” He looks past us to the nurse. “Bill, what about the glass?”

Luke knows the nurse’s name? Do all townies just know each other? Bill responds, “She must have got lucky. The cuts are shallow and clean.”

Luke paces from one row of waiting room chairs to the next. “Well, you might still want to file a complaint against that guy.”

“No,” Mandy says. “I told you it was an accident. Anyway, what’s it to you?”

“Mandy,” I say, “he’s just trying to help.” I shoot a sideways glance at Luke with the most apologetic drippiness I can muster.

“Whatever,” Mandy says, giving Luke a good glare before she jerks her head to the door. “Let’s just go home.” Her footsteps pound against the tiles as she leaves.

My influence has runneth dry.

“I’ll be right there,” I say.

Once she’s out the door, I look back at Luke. “Thanks for your help.”

Luke’s mouth is twisted, and he’s looking past me as he scratches his neck below the ear. “I really thought she would need stitches.”

I shrug. “Well, it’s not like you’re a doctor or anything.”

He doesn’t respond. Maybe he is a doctor? No, he’s too raw, too working-class and rusty.

I
head
to the door.

“Quinn,” he says, his eyes finally focused on me. “I’d like to see you again.”

“I’ll be around.”

“I don’t like to rely on chance.” He holds up his phone. “Can I get your number? Maybe I could come back sometime to have a few more lagers.”

“You’re greedy, aren’t you?”

“Very.” He grins.

I don’t want to commit to anything. But I also don’t want to be rude. Whatever is going on with Mandy, he was helping. And I want to kiss that grin. Later. So I give him my number, but don’t ask for his.

He touches my shoulder before I can turn away from him. His voice is low, serious. “Be careful around that guy, Quinn. I know Mandy said it wasn’t what it looked like. But in my experience, things are usually exactly what they look like.”