One & Only (Canton) (21 page)

“Come on, Tess.”

The manicurist started clipping my toenail cuticles, and I stiffened, my muscles tensing in spite of myself. I fastened the pearls around my neck. They were bulky, heavy. Clunking against my collarbone in a way I wasn’t entirely sure I liked.

“Oh, they look so beautiful!” My mom exclaimed as a woman went after her heel with what looked like a cheese grater.

“Yeah,” I said awkwardly. “I’ll have to find someplace nice to wear them.” I unfastened them and set the choker gently back in the box. I didn’t think I was the kind of girl who wore pearls.

After our pedicures, Mom and I went our separate ways, and I tried to get homework done while counting the hours until I met my friends for my first legal drink.

I’m proud to say I never once called Dylan.

***

Tuesday morning, slightly hung over, I popped two Advil, drank a large glass of Gatorade, and went to Biotransport class in a blouse cut low enough that the double-helix T was on full display. As I slid into my seat, I caught sight of a bleary-eyed Elaine across the room. She gave me a halfhearted wave. Even though she doesn’t usually drink, she joined in on the margaritas last night. Guess she was still paying for it.

“Hi,” Dylan said as he sat down beside me. If he saw what I was wearing, I didn’t notice.

“Hi,” I said. “Thank you.” It hardly seemed enough.

“Looks good on you.”

“I love it.”

He faced me then, his blue eyes hard and piercing.

I love you. I love you, Dylan. It’s the most wonderful thing anyone has ever given me and I love you.
I tried to communicate it with my eyes, but telepathy, unfortunately, was not a real thing.

“I’m glad.” He turned to his notes.

I dropped my hands to my lap, rebuffed. Was he still mad about Thursday night? I’d thought, since the present he’d given me… I stole a glance out of the corner of my eye but he looked like the epitome of studiousness. My left hand migrated under the table to rest on his thigh. He put his hand under the table, too, and covered mine. Our fingers entwined. I squeezed.

He squeezed back.

We stayed like that for the rest of class, me taking notes one-handed on paper while he occasionally pecked something out on his laptop. It was worth it. From time to time, he’d brush his thumb in circles over the back of my hand, kneading that spot between my index finger and my thumb. I could hardly concentrate on what our professor was saying, but it was the best Transport class of all time. When the lecture ended, I reluctantly let go of his hand to pack up.

In silence, side by side, we put away our books and papers, not daring to look at one another. When all my stuff was put in order, I glanced up. “So, tonight? Lab?”

He nodded, his attention focused on his bag. “See you there.” I saw his forehead crease and then he looked up, and the force of his gaze almost blew me backward. “Tess?”

“Yeah?”

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. After a minute, he shook his head. “Have fun last night?”

“Yeah. Went out for Mexican.”

“Nice. How are you feeling this morning?”

Desperate. Impatient. Sexually frustrated. Crazy for you. “A little woozy, but otherwise good.”

There was a ghost of a smile on his face. “Yeah, that happens. Try to eat something greasy to soak it up. Do you want to go…?” He stopped himself. “I’ll see you tonight.”

And then he left. I stood there at the table, wanting very much to kick myself. All those stupid, high-and-mighty ideals of mine. I couldn’t see him, or I wouldn’t be able to control myself. Well, he was giving me what I wanted. Not even a hangover breakfast at a greasy spoon.

And he’d been right, last Thursday on the phone. It didn’t matter if I spent time with him or not. Especially not now, with the soft, T-shaped reminder resting over my heart. Maybe I hadn’t been giving my parents enough credit all these years. Lust you could ignore. Lust you could forget. But this was way worse. I was in love with him, and he was never, ever off my mind.

EIGHTEEN

At four forty-five that evening, a text appeared on my phone from Dylan.

Can’t make it tonight.

I wrote him back asking why, but there was no response, so I went to the lab and worked alone for a couple of hours. We were nearing the end of our project, and things were coming together nicely. With no decisions left to be made, the rest was just a matter of data compilation, analysis, and, of course, writing up our final report and presentation. I figured we’d be done in plenty of time for the December symposium—as long as my overenthusiastic partner didn’t decide we just
had
to include all kinds of extras.

I smiled, imagining it. That was the Dylan I’d always known, the Dylan of the 3:00 a.m. emails and the Eureka moments and the insistence on bumping whatever it was we were doing up to the “next level” by exploring a new avenue of research or upgrading our charts or including a whole bunch of unexpected extras. It was why I’d decided to work with him back at Cornell, when he was just a cute teenager in too-short pants. It was why I’d decided to work with him again here at Canton. He was a good partner, and it had nothing to do with how much I wanted him.

When I got home that evening, I sent him a short email, updating him on the progress I’d made at the lab. It was simple and professional, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t keep waiting for the ping of his response for the next few hours. It never came, and the next morning, when I woke up, there was still no new mail from Dylan.

I tamped down my confusion as best I could and headed to school, but no matter how loudly I played the radio in my car, worries crept in. This wasn’t like him, to not respond to a progress report. This wasn’t like him, to not respond at all.

The day passed. I took notes in Org 3, aced a pop quiz in Stats, and met with my advisor to review my plan for next semester. By noon, I was worried that Dylan might not make it today, either. Actually, I was worried, full stop. He’d never
not
replied to me. Never. Was he sick? Dead in a ditch? Lost his phone in a freak water buffalo stampede? I decided to text him, just to make sure.

We still on for lab tonight?

Fifteen minutes later, there was no response. Another half-hour had passed by the time I finished lunch. Before I left for my 1:00 p.m. class, I tried again.

If you can’t come, let me know so I can tell Elaine we don’t need the lab slot after all.

A minute later, my phone buzzed.

I’ll be there.

So here’s the thing. I used to pride myself on not being one of those girls who read into every single word a guy ever said or wrote. But I looked at those three words over and over, trying to figure out why he was being so terse and distant. Yes, we’d had an argument last Thursday, after the…closet. Yes, we hadn’t seen each other all weekend. But he’d come in with that necklace on Monday. If he’d been mad at me, he wouldn’t have gone out of his way to surprise me in Organic Chemistry.

He wouldn’t have held my hand like that all through Transport on Tuesday morning.

Right?

So it was with trepidation that I approached the Bio-E building that evening after dinner, prepared to start our lab session.

Dylan was waiting when I got up to our assigned room. Well, waiting wasn’t quite the right word for it. He was working, already set up with print-outs of results spread out on the tables, reviewing the slides on the big overhead projector hooked up to his laptop.

“Hey,” I said, setting down my bag.

“Hi.” He didn’t look up from the computer. “Did you get the readouts from strain seven last night?” He pointed to one of the green test tubes in the long row. “I don’t see anything here on that.”

“Let me look in my files,” I replied. Okay. No chit-chat. “I think it’s on the fifth page—”

“Found it,” he broke in, his tone terse. “We should really cross-reference that with specimen twelve, because they both showed a significant die-off after we introduced the ‘night frost’ variable…”

I nodded as he shifted slides on our presentation, talking about green levels and efficiency and all the other things that I could usually discuss with him for hours. But not tonight.

“Dylan—” I could barely get the words out, “—is there something wrong?”

His shoulders lifted in a shrug.

A horrible thought occurred to me. It had been a week since those tests. “Is it Hannah? Is she okay?”

His head still bowed over our work, he replied, “No, she’s really not.”

My heart stopped.
Hannah.
“What—what is it?”

He looked up at me, and his eyes were tired, wrung out. “I broke up with her.”

I leaned against a stool for support. “You—”

He let out a long breath. “I broke up with her last night, Tess. It was really unpleasant and I’m not…I’m not happy with myself right now. It’s not your fault. It just is.”

I didn’t understand. He’d sworn he wouldn’t break up with her until she was out of the woods. “But Hannah—her tests—”

He threw his pen down on the table. “She’s fine. Her results came back yesterday and she’s fine. The nodule on her thyroid is benign. They’re going to try her on a medication at first and if it continues to bother her, she’s going to have surgery to remove it…but the bottom line is, she’s going to be fine.”

I slumped against the table. “Thank God.” Hannah would be okay, my dad would be relieved, and Dylan and I—well, we were free.

And that hope, that anticipation, must have shown on my face, for he shook his head, disgust painted all over his features. “I…wish I wasn’t here, that I wasn’t seeing you. I know this is what we wanted, but right now, I feel like a real asshole.”

The excitement and relief curdled inside me and I forced myself to nod impassively. “I understand.” And I did. Mostly. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

He looked away. “I haven’t…been with Hannah in quite a while. I couldn’t. Not when all I wanted was to be with you. And last night, after she got her results back, she wanted to celebrate.”

I take it back.
I didn’t want to hear this. Hannah was healthy. They were broken up. That was all I needed to know.

But Dylan was always one to tell the truth. “And, of course, I didn’t want to. It was a betrayal of you, and then I realized that whatever else I’d been trying to be for the last week, I was betraying her, too. I couldn’t.” He shrugged, helplessly. “So I broke up with her. I told her that I cared about her very much, that I was glad she was going to be okay, and that I thought it best if we went our separate ways.”

My heart broke for Hannah right then, for my sister who was getting dumped. “What did she say?”

“What do you think she said!” he snapped. “She cried. I made a really sweet girl cry on the day she found out she didn’t have cancer. I’m a big jerk.”

For me. He’d done it for me.

“So if I’m a little grumpy today, you know why.” He bent back over his work.

I came around the table now and laid my hand on his arm. “Dylan—”

“Don’t.” He shook me off. “I just…I can’t right now, Tess.” He looked at me, the expression in his blue eyes stark and crossed with pain. “And I’m not here to collect my reward for hurting her, to just jump from her bed into yours like her feelings don’t matter.”

“I don’t want you to!” I cried. Her feelings did matter. That was what this past week had been about.

His eyes searched mine, looking for some kind of comfort. “I kissed her last night.”

I blinked as my stomach dropped to the vicinity of my knees. I knew he must have—on some level, I knew. But knowing it and hearing it was still different.

“I kissed her when she told me, because…I don’t know. Because of habit? Because she expected me to?”

I stepped back, and he flinched.

“Yeah, I thought so,” he said miserably. “I thought you’d react like that. I betrayed her with you, and now I’ve betrayed you with her, because she told me she didn’t have cancer and I was so happy for her I kissed her. Shit.” He stood there for a second, shaking his head, his face downturned. “And then I broke up with her because I realized what an awful thing I was doing. I understand now why you said you didn’t want to see me. And back at the party, why you didn’t want to kiss me. You were right, even though I wasn’t listening to you. It was wrong because it was a lie.”

My eyes began to burn. Dylan Kingsley had no idea what it was to lie. Not really. “I would have kissed her, too,” I said, honestly. “And I don’t even know her.”

He laughed mirthlessly.

“Do you think I’m
mad
at you?” I asked, incredulous. “Because you kissed your girlfriend when you were planning to break up with her?” Oh, boy. He had no idea who he was speaking to, did he? My dad had spent twenty years sleeping with my mother and his wife, and never once had he felt guilty enough about it to stop being with either one of them.

“No, Tess.” He turned to me again. “
I’m
mad at me.”

My heart pumped ice through my arteries. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong here. This whole time, I’d trusted Dylan to tell me that this would be okay. That he would break up with Hannah and get together with me and it was all possible. That this was something normal, healthy people with positive relationship examples did. How was I supposed to know—me, the dirty little secret who had no basis to judge—what was right and what was wrong?

He’d sounded so reasonable when we’d made our plan.
I don’t want to be with Hannah. I want to be with you. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I can’t lie to Hannah.
The path seemed simple: break up with Hannah, in the kindest way possible, and then we’d be able to be together.

Were we kidding ourselves? Were we poisoned now because of the way we’d begun?

“But it’s over now,” I said, nearly desperate. “It’s over.”

“Yeah,” he replied flatly. “But it’s not that easy.”