In This Moment (5 page)

   
Brady just laughs at me. “What the hell does that mean?
Magnana-what
?”

    I
feel Aimee shiver underneath my left hand and that pisses me off even more. Swallowing hard, I level a steely gaze at Brady. “Seriously, fuckwad, you need to walk away from this right now.”

   
Brady tilts to his left and I can see that he’s had more to drink than I initially thought. “Dude… Cole, I swear that I had no idea that the chick was here with you.” He chokes on a laugh and slaps my shoulder. “You never bring girls to this kind of thing. I thought that you liked the room to play a bit?”

   
My eyes meet Aimee’s. She blinks nervously and opens her mouth. “It’s not—”

   
I cut her off by applying gentle pressure to her neck because she does not need to clarify the situation for this asshole. If she does, he’ll only see it as an invitation and he’ll be right back to ogling her tits and imagining what it would be like to get her in a dark corner. Brady Samuels is one horny dude. He’s like a fourteen year old running rampant in a porn shop.

   
“It turns out that you don’t know shit, Brady, which is why I’m just giving you a warning that she’s not available. Got it?” My hip brushes Aimee’s arm as I move into the space beside her.

   
Brady shakes his head and I can tell that he’s not going to be a problem anymore. He stalks off toward the inside bar and he doesn’t look back. I’m guessing that he’s going to find the guys on the team and ask them what the fuck is up with me tonight. That’s fine. Let them try to analyze it because I sure as hell can’t figure it out.

   
Breathing heavily, I turn back to the bar and see that Aimee has closed her eyes. It gives me a chance to study her—to soak her in—which is something that I’ve wanted to do since the first time I saw her. Everything about this girl seems ridiculously delicate. Even the pink scar that weaves across her pale skin looks like it was drawn on her body with a fine-tip paintbrush.

   
My eyes slowly follow the outline of her small mouth and the slope of her nose and cheeks before moving over to the thin skin of her eyelids. She’s got these insane dark spiky lashes that magnify her light eyes like she’s some kind of doll or anime character. And that freckle…

   
“Are you okay?” I ask, yanking myself away from my thoughts. Damn it. Does my voice sound as scratchy as I think it does?

   
She doesn’t answer right away and I worry that Brady really upset her. I press two fingers under her chin and force her eyes up to mine. “I promise that he won’t bother you again, Aimee. I’ll make sure of it.”

   
“It’s not that,” she says, sucking her bottom lip in between her teeth. She blinks rapidly and I’m afraid that she’s about to cry. What the hell will I do if she starts crying? I’m not one of those guys who understands what it takes to be comforting.

   
She pulls away from me and squeezes her shoulders in around her body. “I-I’m just completely embarrassed and sorry that you had to pretend to be here with me. What a joke.” She grimaces. “Is that guy one of your friends?”

   
“I wouldn’t call him a friend. He’s on the track team with me so, yeah, I have to put up with his shit pretty frequently, but it’s damn sure not out of choice.” I flex my jaw and push my hands back through my hair. What is it about this girl that has my emotions all over the place?
“And, Aimee, you have nothing to be sorry about. Brady should have left you alone the first time that you said that you weren’t interested.”

   
“It wasn’t anything—just harmless flirting. I’m the one that let him buy me the drink and fries so I don’t think I can get too angry about it.”

   
My eyes dart to the glass in her hand. I make a low sound of disapproval in the back of my throat. Why did she let that asshole buy her anything? “You really shouldn’t go around accepting anything from random guys that approach you at bars. He could have put something in your drink. It’s not safe and—”

   
The expression on her face stops me cold. Shit. She looks like I just ran over her puppy and then I want to kick myself in the balls because I remember who this girl is and what she’s been through.

   
“It’s only a soda and trust me—I’m always careful. It never left my sight, and anyway,” she shakes her head lightly, “it was an apology.”

   
I take a deep breath and soften my voice. “For what?”

   
She shrugs. “He bumped into me when I first got here.”

   
I don’t want her to think that I’m a dickhead like Brady, but I do want to lighten the mood and I’ve just found my opening. I brace my elbows on the edge of the bar. “Why didn’t you say so? You can buy me a Jack and coke—lots of ice.”

   
“What?” She sputters and her mouth twitches. It’s not a real smile, but it’s damn close so I’ll take it.

   
I straighten my spine and raise my eyebrows. “Well, you fell on me the other day so I guess by your own logic that entitles me to a free drink.”

   
Aimee rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but she must be playing along because she lifts her hand to get the bartender’s attention.

   
Gently, I push her arm back into her lap. “Not now,” I say, leaning in and catching the sweet smell of her shampoo. I don’t know what it is, but it has me thinking about fresh-baked cookies and long afternoons at the beach.

   
“When would you like this so-called apology drink?” She asks, tilting her face up toward mine. She’s so close that I can feel the warmth of her breath moving over the cracks on my lips. Her skin is creamy and fucking perfect and her mouth is a delicious pink.

   
I move one arm and graze the back of her hand. “I was thinking that you could buy me the drink on our date.”

   
Her blue eyes widen and my stomach clenches. I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something about blue eyes so light and clear that they seem to go on for miles. “Our
date
? Are you joking?”

   
I don’t know. Am I joking? I don’t think so. Just because I haven’t asked a girl to go out with me in years doesn’t mean that I can’t, right? “I’m not joking,” I say and it feels more like the truth than a lie.

   
Aimee’s words are careful, decided. “I don’t date.”

   
I brush a few loose hairs away from her face and bend to her ear. She really does smell amazing. Absolutely amazing. “I don’t date either, so I won’t tell if you don’t,” I whisper.

   
Her forehead creases and I can tell that she’s thinking it over. That’s probably a good sign. At least she didn’t flat-out turn me down which is kind of what I’d been expecting. And then I almost laugh because here I am, happy that some girl I barely know is
thinking
about saying yes to a date with me.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

   
Aimee stares down at her fingers splayed open on the bar. “I-it’s just—”

   
“Please don’t overthink it.”

   
This snaps her eyes back to mine and I can see a change in them. The difference is minor, but I catch it and it makes everything in my chest turn over. I can tell that she’s wondering about me the same way that I’m wondering about her.

   
She starts to speak, but her gaze zeroes in on something over my shoulder and her entire body stiffens. What the hell? I look behind me and see Daniel over by the rear entrance talking to Chad Moody.

   
Shit.

   
I thought he had a date with that chick from Colson’s class. Maybe it fell through, or maybe he brought her here, or maybe he figured out that she’s the raging bitch that she seemed like and he took her home early.

   
When I turn my head back, Aimee’s gasping like she can’t get enough air into her lungs. “I th-thought you said that he wasn’t going to be here tonight. I can’t—”

   
I grab both of her hands, but she’s already pulling away and I’m just clutching the fabric of her shirt like some creep. “Wait. Aimee, please wait! You haven’t even gotten your fries yet.”

   
She doesn’t wait. Of course she doesn’t.

Aimee

I feel her before she
opens the door to my bedroom.

    “Aimee?” Her voice is hesitant. “Are you okay?”

    “Yeah,” I croak into the darkness.

    The door widens and a stream o
f pale light finds me. Mara comes into my room and sits on the bed. Her hand finds the shape of my foot through the comforter and she cups her palm around my toes. “You’re crying?”

    I half-laugh. “Yeah… I saw Daniel Kearns tonight.”

    Silence. “Do you want me to call Mom?”

    “No.”

    More silence. Mara clears her throat. “Do you want to talk about… her?”

   
Do I want to talk about her?

   
I wouldn’t even know where to start. “No.”

    After a few minutes of quiet, my sister lies down beside me and wraps her arm over
mine. “I wish that I could make this better for you,” she says softly.

    “But you can’t,” I answer. “No one can.”

***

Sometimes it’s easier to think about her in pieces.

    She loved Lemonheads. She dipped her fries in ranch dressing. When we were fourteen, she drew a swirling mustache on her face with a black Sharpie and wore a sombrero to her parent’s Christmas party and spoke with an accent the whole night. In general, she talked too much, laughed when she got nervous about something, and she never passed up an opportunity to sing karaoke. 

   
She decided that she wanted to be a vet when her cat swallowed a nickel and had to have surgery to remove it. We were eleven.

   
Her nails were a mess. She bit them down to nothing but would still paint them with glitter nail polish before a big race because she swore up and down that it brought her good luck in the water. On special occasions she tended to overdo it in the perfume department.

   
Pixar movies always made her cry. She was allergic to scallops. She had a birthmark shaped like Idaho on her lower back.

   
Those are the things that you don’t get to read in an obituary—the memories and bits of a person that make up a whole life.

   
My best friend, Jillian, was sixteen when she died. If she had lived for another nine days she would have made it to seventeen.

   
I try not to picture her on that last day—in the blue top with the light purple flowers embroidered around the collar and those shorts that she made from her favorite pair of jeans, but sometimes I can’t help it and the memory gets inside my head and my heart and it’s all I can do to keep breathing air. I wonder all kinds of things and I want to cry and I want to yell until my throat hurts and I want to pull all of my hair out. But, mostly, I want to go back to that night so that I can grab her hand and lace her fingers through mine, fusing us together.

   
“Hold on,” she’ll say to me. “I don’t want you to let go.”

***

“So then I was all, ‘you have got to move on because like I’ve told you a hundred times already—we are done and there’s no going back.’ And he started whining and sniffling and begging, the big baby.” Jodi rolls her eyes dramatically. “I just don’t know how to make things any clearer for the guy without completely killing him.”

   
I nod my head as I tear the top of the sweetener packet and dump the powdery contents into my Styrofoam coffee cup. It’s Wednesday and Jodi and I are getting coffee in the Student Union before our last class of the day. So far I’ve seen her hopped up on Indian food and live music, and on a sugar high from one too many Twizzlers, but I’ve never seen her on a caffeine rush. Just the thought of it is intimidating and I wonder if I should have a tranquilizer on hand. Just in case.

   
“So, what happened after that?”

   
I follow Jodi as she navigates through the crowded tables to a set of oversized chairs and a sofa arranged in a sunny corner. She plunges herself into one of the chairs and pries open the lid of her coffee cup.

   
“Well,” she says, blowing on her coffee and looking at me sideways. “After two decent orgasms and a container of Moo Shu Pork, he went home. I haven’t heard from him since, but Jason’s like clockwork. Even though I keep telling him to leave me alone, the poor guy can’t make it ten days without showing up at my front door begging me to take him back.”

   
“Wait.” I blink slowly, adjusting myself on the sofa. “You had sex with him? After you told your
ex-
boyfriend all this stuff about moving on, you had sex with him?”

   
“And Chinese food.” Jodi nods. Today she’s got the blue streaks in her hair wound into tiny braids and pulled back from her face. Her eyes are heavily lined with dark kohl and she’s switched out the little silver stud in her nostril for a gold one.

   
“I don’t understand. I thought you said…”

   
“I said that Chinese isn’t my
favorite
, but in a pinch I can totally deal.”

   
“That is not what I meant and you know it.” I shoot her an exasperated look. In less than a week, Jodi and I have fallen into an easy pattern. She was annoyed with me when I stood her up last week at Dirty Ernie’s, but she told me that she’d get over it if I bought her an ice cream cone after the concert we went to on Saturday. Just to be on the safe side, I bought her a sundae with a mountain of whipped cream and three cherries on top.

   
I look at her hard. “I don’t understand why you had sex with him if you want him to leave you alone. Maybe I’m crazy, but that seems counterintuitive.”

   
“Oh.” Jodi leans in with an impish smile on her lips. “Well, Jason is too much of an idiot to make for good boyfriend material, but his, umm,
eggroll
is… well, let’s just say that it’s supersized. So from time to time I make an exception to the terms of our ‘strictly friends’ agreement.”

   
I flush red. “And that’s not confusing? Don’t the lines get blurred?”

   
Jodi rests her head against the wall above her chair and sighs. “Well, yes it’s confusing, Aimee, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. And Jason can be very persuasive when he wants to be. He does this thing with his tongue and it’s so—”

   
I lift my hand to stop her. “I really don’t need to hear about what Jason can do with his tongue. Seriously.”

   
Jodi’s smile widens. “Aimee Spencer, are you blushing? Is this conversation embarrassing you? What if I were to… I don’t know… tell you that Jason has a name for his penis? And it’s very descriptive.”

   
“Shhhh,” I murmur, my eyes scanning the nearby tables.

   
Jodi smacks her lips together. “I can see that you’re not a fan of the word
penis
. How about if I were to say…
nipple
? Or
orgasm
?
Penetration
?” Her voice is dangerously loud and the people around us are starting to look. “
Scrotum
?”

   
“Jodiiiiii!”

   
“Aimeeeeee!” She mimics my whiny tone then bursts into her signature breezy laughter. For someone so incredibly petite, the girl can make some noise. “I wish that you could see your face. You’re like this.” She crumples her forehead and contorts her mouth into a scowl.

   
I roll my eyes and take a sip of my coffee. It’s not that I’m a prude. I’m not. It’s just that I haven’t talked to another person about this kind of stuff in a long time and it feels strange.

   
“So,” she says, catching her breath and dropping her eyes. “How about you? Any secret
lovahs
to disclose?”

   
“Nope. No guys for me.”

   
Jodi narrows her gaze. “Girls then?”

   
“No girls either.” I laugh and twist my hair around my finger. “I already told you. I decided over a year ago not to date because I wanted to focus on school and keep a clear head.”

   
The thing about Jodi is that I like her. Being around her makes me feel almost normal. I can pretend that I’m what everyone wants me to be—just a regular college freshman making a new friend. I want to tell her things about my past—about Jillian and why I am the way that I am—but I’m not sure how much honesty is too much honesty. So far she hasn’t asked about the scar on my neck, or why I don’t drive, or why my mother texts me practically every hour to check up on me.

   
“I had hoped that was a bad joke because that is possibly the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. What college freshman doesn’t date and wants to focus on
school
?” Jodi bows her head toward me. “Is it herpes?”

   
It takes me a second to register that she’s asking me whether or not I’ve got herpes. “What?” I shake my head. “No, I don’t have herpes!”

   
“Well, that’s a relief.” She twists her mouth to one side. “Aimee, you have… you know…
dated
before, right?”

   
It’s true that I haven’t gone
out
with a guy in recent memory, but that doesn’t mean that I’m Amish or was ever on the fast track to becoming a nun.

   
I clear my throat. “There have been a few
eggrolls
.” Well,
one
eggroll really… “Just not recently.”

   
Jodi claps her hands in front of her body. “Thank God! If you were going to confess to being a college freshman with her virgin status still intact, I was going to lose my shit over here.”

   
“I am not a virgin.”
Not technically.
I tuck my hair back behind my ears and lift my chin. “I’m familiar with penises, scrotums and all kinds of penetration.”

   
“I’ll be sure to lock that important information up for a rainy day. You never know when knowledge like that will come in handy.” A new voice says.

   
My heart gives a wild kick.
I know that voice…
I spin around and Cole is there—standing beside the sofa with his head cocked to one side and that increasingly familiar dimpled grin on his face. My mind runs over my conversation with Jodi.
I’m familiar with penises, scrotums and all kinds of penetration.

   
A quick glance in Jodi’s direction proves that she isn’t going to be any help. Her bottom jaw is resting in her lap.

   
“That was completely out of context,” I murmur faintly. I know that every available inch of me is flaming fire engine red.

   
It’s obvious that Cole notices my mortification, but instead of giving me space to breathe, he steps closer and his smile only gets wider. “Of course it was,” he replies casually, swinging his backpack to the ground by my feet. When he sits on the sofa next to me, my heart races and my skin prickles. “And I certainly didn’t mean to put a stop to such a fascinating conversation—especially one about penetration and penises—but I saw you sitting over here and I wanted to let you know that we’re having a party at my place Friday night. You should come.” He turns to Jodi. “You should come too.”

   
“Th-that sounds great,” Jodi stutters, shaking her head and blinking like she’s just waking up. I would roll my eyes, but I think that’s the exact same reaction that I had the first time that Cole spoke to me. “I’m Jodi.”

   
“Hi Jodi. I’m Cole.”

   
“Oh, I know who you are.” Jodi smiles suggestively.

   
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

   
Jodi shrugs. “Well, I haven’t heard many complaints…”

    “Ugh,” I moan. “Please don’t feed his ego.”

    Cole laughs and steeples his fingers. “Now, Jodi, can I trust that you’ll get Aimee to the party on Friday night? Because I know that she’ll come up with an excuse, but this girl is in definite need of some fun in her life. Don’t you agree?”

   
God. Jodi’s nodding her blue-tipped head and batting her eyelashes vigorously—a clear sign that she’s fallen victim to a brain fog induced by Cole’s quasi-magical green eyes. I understand it. I’m quite familiar with the symptoms myself.

   
I cough. “Actually, I won’t be able to make it to your party,” I say, trying to ignore the fact that Cole’s leg is touching mine and that every time I catch the scent of him all sorts of crazy, swoony thoughts dance around my head.

   
“See…” Cole hesitates, shares a knowing look with Jodi. “I told you that she’d have an excuse.”