Pieces of Me (19 page)

    “
You don’t need to
act
like a dick, you
are
a dick.” I gave myself an internal high-five for that one. “And I would prefer not to be here at all, but if you remember correctly, I was an idiot and gave you the bulk of my financial aid this semester so that you could upgrade your stupid car without asking your parents for the money. Now that I’ve had to move out, I’m in what you might call a bit of a bind.”

   
He leaned in, expression earnest. “You didn’t have to move out, Gwen. If you’d just let me expl—”

    “
I hope you weren’t going to ask me to let you explain,” I said, laughing under my breath and shaking my head so that my bangs fell across my eyes. “Because attempting to rationalize what you did is only going to piss me off even more.”

    “
I just want us to talk about it. You’ve never been unreasonable before.” He reached his hand across the table and rested it on top of mine. 

    “
Unreasonable?” I huffed.

    “
You know what I’m trying to say,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

    “
No, I don’t know what you’re trying to say. I
do
know that I don’t want you to touch me. Ever again.” Ignoring the warmth that slid up my arm, I snatched my hand back. “You lost that right the first time I saw the video of you having sex with my best friend. Who does that?”

   
Matt’s head fell to one side. “To be fair, I didn’t know we were being recorded.”

    “
Gah!” I felt my blood pressure spiking and a burble of indignation from the bottom of my stomach. “Did you actually say that out loud or did I imagine it?”

   
At least he had the decency to wince. “You’re right. That was a stupid thing to say.” He hesitated briefly. “I deserve everything you want to throw at me, but you have to at least know how much I miss you. Please come back to the apartment so we can work on this, babe. I know it’s my parent’s place but you live there too.”

    “
Not anymore. Not since you and Leanne carved my heart out and publicly humiliated me.”

   
His eyes closed. “Leanne was a drunken mistake I wish I could take back. I swear that I’ll never look at her again.”

    “
It sounds like you’re trying to explain,” I said blandly.

   
He blinked, exasperated. “Because I want you to know exactly how I—”

   
I cut him off. “You’re doing it again.”

   
Puffing out his cheeks in frustration, Matt tipped back until he was balancing on the two back legs of his chair. He stared at me in silence for a minute, his green eyes moving over my face, searching for a chink in my armor.

    “
Fine. I won’t try to explain to the love of my life why I fucked up, but don’t think I’m giving up on us, Gwen. Because I’m not.”

   
I snorted. “Baseball and politics are the twin loves of your life. I’m just a filler in between games and political rallies.”

    “
That’s not true and you know it. You’re everything. You…” Matt stopped himself and glanced down at the table. “This has been hard on me too. Since the video went viral on campus, I can’t even walk to my classes without being harassed by people I don’t even know. And Coach? You should have heard the way he tore into me. You would have loved it.” He was right. I would have eaten it up. “He thinks this could affect my chances for next year. Instead of being the best pitcher in college baseball, I’m now the bathroom-sex guy. It’s a fucking disaster.”

    “
You can say that again.” I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth and stared out past the window, scummy with condensation, to the chaos unfolding on the sidewalk. A young mother pushing a stroller dodged a skateboarder and a man in slick business attire gestured wildly with his hands as he talked into his phone. In the background, a car honked impatiently and an elderly man dressed in head-to-toe linen shouted back in furious Spanish. 

   
Matt looked down. “My dad and I aren’t even speaking. He had my mother inform me that ‘my little stunt’ could actually keep him from running for Governor next year.”

   
Absently, I tapped my painted fingernails against the tabletop. “What are you doing? Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you?”

    “
I don’t know what I’m doing! You haven’t been answering your phone and you didn’t show up to any of your classes. I know because I waited for you.” He sighed and moved his mouth soundlessly like he was searching for the right words. “I miss you, Gwen. I miss the way you alphabetize the food in the freezer and color-code your books. I miss making popcorn and snuggling up on the couch to watch your corny movies. Life was predictable and perfect and I know I blew things to shit, but I miss us and I want us back. I love you and I figured if we just talked, you’d start to remember that you love me too.”

   
I was silent. This is the speech every jilted girl wants to hear, right?
I love you. I fucked up. I want you back.

   
Over the past week, I’d imagined this exact conversation and I’d always had a good response—I’d slap him, I’d scream obscenities into his perfect face, I’d rip my clothes off and we’d start having wildly passionate makeup sex on the table. All were scenarios I’d played out in my head a thousand times. But sitting there in that coffee shop with Matt Parkhurst’s piercing green eyes on me, I couldn’t make myself say or do one single thing.

    “
Say something, Gwen. Please.”

   
Say something.

   
I released a deep breath and hitched my body forward until the ends of my blonde hair pooled on the scuffed surface of the rectangular café table. “I don’t want to talk, Matt. I don’t to hear about your parents, or be some sounding board for you to work out how cheating on me is going to affect baseball or your father’s political future. I don’t want to discuss Leanne or what the guava pastries taste like or make casual conversation about the weather or how I think the Lakers are doing this year. I want to figure out how you can pay me back the money you owe me. I’ve been staying at a motel and that can’t go on. I need a plan. That’s all I’m here for.”

   
He sighed deeply and I felt an answering twinge of unease snake up my spine. “Well, to be honest with you, I’m not much better off.”

   
I clamped down my jaw. “Don’t lie to me.”

   
He threw his hands up. “It’s not a lie. I’m tapped out, Gwen.”

   
Willing down the soupy anxiety swishing around in my gut, I shook my head and asked, “Can’t you ask your parents for help?”

   
Matt’s eyes widened. “I just told you that my dad isn’t speaking to me. I wasn’t kidding around. I’m as good as cut off right now. He cancelled my credit cards two days ago and he won’t take my calls,” he said, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. “My trust fund could be at risk.”

    “
What do you expect me to do? Now I have no place to live and you know there’s no one I can ask for help. I’m completely on my own.”

    “
Gwen, I know you probably don’t want to hear this right now, but Leanne’s been trying to reach you for days. Maybe if you talk to her, she can—” 

    “
Maybe she can what? Help me? Let me bunk up with her at the sorority house so we can have pillow fights, make friendship bracelets and compare notes about you?” I shook my head firmly. “I don’t think so. There’s absolutely no way. Not after how w-we…”

   
Matt blinked his green eyes at me. “Gwen?”

    “
Yeah. I-I’m just trying to think.” It was weird—that moment. Everything was suspended, like the entire world had skidded to a stop and decided to hang there for a bit. I went cold as a deep winter. My breathing changed and my heart sank low in my chest. I closed my eyes and felt my body swaying to one side.

   
All of the turmoil was catching up to me and the burning pressure of tears was piling up beneath the thin skin of my eyelids. I tried to make myself swallow but my tongue was bloated, dangerously swollen.

    “…
after baseball season….put this whole thing behind us… slightly overextended but we’ll work on… ” I knew Matt was talking to me but his words were lost in the ragged rise and fall of the blood whooshing around my head.

    “
Gwen? Are you even listening to me?”

    “
Huh?” I blinked twice and the blurry lines of Matt’s boyishly handsome face slowly came back into focus. It was obvious he’d asked me the question more than once.

   
Matt glanced down at his iced coffee. “I know this isn’t ideal.”

   
I almost choked.
Not ideal?

   
“Not
ideal
? I think we both know that’s the understatement of the century. This is like… like…” I waved my arm above my head, searching for inspiration. “A bad dream. A nightmare. It’s like I fell asleep and woke up as the newest cast member on some terrible reality show. I can’t trust anyone or tell up from down, truth from rumor. In the past week, I feel like my whole world has gone supernova.”

    “
And I know that it’s my fault. I promise I’ll figure something out about the money you lent me for the car. I’ll get it for you, okay?”

   
I made a dismissive sound.

    “
In the meantime, if you’re not going to come home with me, I have to know where you’re going to be staying.” He leaned in until I could feel the warm kiss of his moist breath against my face. “Babe, I’ll worry about you too much otherwise.”

   
Crossing my arms over my chest, I shifted back in my seat and rolled my eyes. “You’ll worry?”

   
Matt’s head dropped and his broad shoulders sagged. “You know I will. I’ve been sick about us and it’s affecting my game, Gwen. I need to know where you are.”

    “
Well, you’re going to have to figure out a way to pull it together because I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet or where I’m going to go.” I was trying not to think of how few options I had in front of me. My social circle over the past year had pretty much been limited to Matt and Leanne and our joint friends. “I’ll double up on my tutoring jobs. And I guess I can look into dorm availability or maybe Julie would let me stay with her for a while.”

    “
Julie, the girl from the French department?

   
I nodded.

    “
She seems like a head case,” Matt said bluntly.

   
My skin prickled with irritation. “Excuse me?”

    “
You know what I mean.” Matt looked at me and took a massive bite of the guava pastry on his plate. A little bit of the red oozing center dripped from the corner of his mouth down his chin. “I just don’t like it when you hang around her.”

    “
You don’t like me hanging out with Julie Groff?” I repeated numbly.

   
He licked his lips and winged an eyebrow at me in the arrogant way of his. “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

    “
Are you really this big of a jerk or are you trying to make me hate you even more?”

   
His face changed. “I was simply pointing out that—”

    “
Stop it!” I interrupted, my voice lifting and an unfamiliar heat spreading across my torso. “You were
simply
trying to tell me what to do.”

    “
I was giving my opinion. That’s all. You’ve always wanted me to—”

    “
Newsflash: you forfeited your right to an opinion when you screwed my best friend!” I shouted, indignation surging through me. “In the bathroom of a bar. On my birthday!”

   
Matt looked around the coffee shop, clearly embarrassed by my loud outburst. “Gwen, please…”

   
I release a bitter, humorless laugh. “Don’t even try to talk me down, Parkhurst. I’m not interested in anything you have to say.”

   
I mentally gave myself a high-five
.

    “
Fine, but—”

    “
No
buts,
” I snapped, reaching for the strap of my purse and pushing to my feet. “Talk to your parents, sell the car, donate plasma or sperm or a vital organ… I don’t care. Just figure out how to make this right, Matt.”

   
He started to stand and knocked his chair over. “I will, babe. I’m going to get this all straightened—” 

   
I didn’t let him finish. I was high on my own anger. I moved away from the table and slung my purse over my shoulder with a little more force than was necessary. “Oh, and if I were you, I’d plan to be out of the apartment all day tomorrow because I’m coming to get my stuff.”