Tangled Thoughts (13 page)

“There's nothing,” he said, “I wouldn't do for you.”

I snorted. “What
are
you doing here anyway?” We were alone in court four, though they were still going in the court next to us.

“Besides following you? Playing basketball.” Ah, yes. He'd mentioned that the night of the concert. And it explained the muscular legs, different from Carter's long, lean runner's legs. Jack was shaped for agility and bursts of speed. His clinging t-shirt made it obvious he spent regular time here.

“How'd you do?”

He chuckled. “I won the swearing portion of the game,” he joked, but I didn't actually believe him. “
You
, on the other hand, are clearly some kind of volleyball ninja.” He reached out, almost like he was going to touch me, but his hand kept going, just brushing my shoulder as he tapped one of the knee pads sticking out of my bag.

Right about then the lights went out.

I gasped. Because we were looking at each other, I watched Jack's eyes as they adjusted to the dark. His pupils grew large, swallowing up the warm brown of his irises. When I was younger, I'd stand at the bathroom mirror watching my own eyes change as I turned the light on and off. It was a game, something childish, but this did not feel childish. It felt…intimate. The kind of thing you saw in bedrooms right before you were kissed.

And I had the terrifying, thrilling feeling that he
would
kiss me. I leaned toward him, breaching the space between us. Close, closer now, and I was sure I could feel the gentle puff of his breath on my lips.

Click. The lights snapped on and I jumped back as if I'd been caught doing something I shouldn't. Which I
had
. Behind me, an escaped ball from court three bounced across the floor and a girl called “Sorry!” as she chased it down.

“No problem,” Jack said. Our eyes met again, but the moment had disintegrated. I became unsure it had existed at all.

The neighboring player retrieved the lost ball and breezed back by us with a “Thanks!” though we hadn't done anything to help her. “No problem,” Jack repeated and I laughed. He cleared his throat and a light fog of awkwardness drifted into the space between us. “So.” he said. “Are you supposed to meet your friends?”

“No,” I admitted. “The rest of the team is mostly seniors and they always go for beers.”

“Leaving you out after you save the game? That's shitty.”

I shrugged. “Wendell offered to get me in.”

“I bet he did.” A sly grin crested like a wave across his features and a flush appeared on my cheeks in response. I would have hated him if I didn't like that smile so much. It occurred to me that I might have had a thing for boys and their smiles. “How did you even end up on a team of upperclassmen?”

“They needed one more girl. At the meeting, Wendell came over to me and the other few looking for teams and said, ‘So, which one of you can jump serve?' When I said I could, he laughed, and I realized he'd been joking.”

“But you weren't.” I grinned and he matched it. “Full of surprises, you are.” Glancing away, he said, “Pizza, volleyball ninja?” When he looked back at me, he cocked his head to the side, adorably.

I opened my mouth, realized the word
Yes
was about to tumble out of it, and caught myself just in time. I bit my lip to keep my mouth from betraying me. Jack's eyes darted to the movement, and lower, to where my fingers furiously slid my necklace back and forth. I dropped the necklace and he met my eyes again with his pretty brown ones. My resolve felt about as strong as wet paper.

No, damn it.
No
. No TAs, and definitely no Sententia. Right?

“I can't,” I said finally.

“Can't?” he said. “Or won't?”

Damn him for knowing
. But this was my choice and I was keeping it. I stood up a little straighter. “Won't. I have homework, and also, boundaries. You're my TA.”

He nodded. “For now. But—just so you know—I looked in my handy TA handbook and there's nothing in it that says we can't be friends.”

“Well, I looked in
my
Lainey Young handbook and it says no, we shouldn't.” I threw on my sweatshirt and started walking toward the exit. Jack fell into step beside me. I should have told him not to follow me, but my willpower only went so far. It dawned on me then that I
was flirting and I didn't want to stop. That didn't hurt, right, flirting? Just flirting. I hadn't made any rule against that.

“Okay, not friends then. Got it. Purely professional. So,” he drawled, “out of professional interest only, if someone, like a dedicated TA for example, wanted to obtain a copy of the Lainey Young Handbook, how would he go about that?”

I looked at my feet to cover my stupid smile and muttered, “Don't you have somewhere to be?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He held the door open for me, and I stepped onto the sidewalk, only half prepared for the slap of cold air against my too-bare legs. It was late, and the autumn night had lost all the day's warmth and then some. “Thanks,” I told him, fighting a chatter in my teeth. “So, see you in discussion.”

“You're welcome,” he said, and fell into step next to me again as I hurried down the street.

“I thought you had somewhere to be?!”

I could feel the cut of his eyes over to me and hear the amusement in his voice. “And it can't be in this direction?”

“Where are you going?”

“Where are
you
going?”

“The
library
,” I blurted, and I could see the flash of his grin in the streetlights.

“Well, what do you know.” Jack hitched his bag higher and strode ahead of me like he'd been leading the whole time. Over his shoulder, he called, “Coming?”

I shook my head, flustered and amused and wishing I was neither. “You are
maddening
,” I told him as soon as I caught up.

He nodded, saying mildly, “So are you.”

“
Are
you following me?”

“I'm not,” he said and nudged me with his elbow. “I'm next to you.” I elbowed him back, harder, and he laughed while rubbing his arm. “Easy, killer.”

“You know what I mean.”

He rubbed his chin with his hand, and I watched his fingers scrape across the light stubble there. For a single second, I allowed myself to imagine what it would feel like to have his rough cheek brush against
my
skin. I shivered at the same time as he said, “I know
I
have grading to do.”

“Okay,” I said. I wasn't sure I believed him, but I wasn't sure I
didn't
either. I mean, I didn't really think he was
following me
. Surely he had better things to do.

We'd made it to the library, ugly as it was on the outside and tucked between campus and the river, much like my dorm. Inside though, it was bright and warm and had a few spots with surprisingly good views. As I pulled my bag off my shoulders to show the attendant, Jack spoke behind me, voice lower than before. “I know I'm not sorry I got to walk here with you either.”

Maybe I was imagining it just like earlier, but I swore I'd felt his breath move my hair and the heat of his body close to mine. I resisted the terrible urge to lean back until whatever small space was left between us disappeared. Twice tonight, I'd wanted him to touch me, though I knew he shouldn't, and I'd sworn not to let him. I was losing this battle so hard.

Did it really matter whether or not Jack was Sententia, whether
anyone
was? I'd told myself I'd given up Carter to escape the Sententia, but Amy was right. I never could, not unless I could be free of
myself
. What I'd thought was my meager reward was starting to feel like penance. One I was choosing to make myself pay. Had I just been forcing myself into an equally limited box?

The library attendant cleared her throat. “Thanks,” she said pointedly and I realized I was standing there, bag open, waiting for something that wasn't coming.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and moved through the gate, glancing at Jack as I went.

“See you in discussion, Lainey,” he said, stepping past me into the library. “Chapter eight,” he called over his shoulder, giving me one more smile before he slipped around a corner and was gone.

He didn't look back.

At the information desk, another girl in the ridiculous coats they made the staff wear was watching me watch him. She raised her eyebrows when I walked by and I looked away. And then I kept walking, past the elevators, past the stairs I usually took to the third floor, heading in the same direction as Jack.

When I realized what I was doing, I stopped. I closed my eyes and took three yoga breaths but when I opened them, I still didn't want to turn around. “Shit,” I muttered and kept going.

I rounded the corner but didn't see anywhere he would have gone. It was nothing but a few reference stacks and mostly display cases, housing the letters and artifacts of someone dead but interesting.

“Boo,” came from right behind me and I screamed. I whirled around to find Jack leaning there between the last row of shelves and laughing softly. “Shhh,” he said, holding a finger to his lips.

“You asshole,” I whispered, and he laughed more.

“See, told you—you
were
following me.”

“I was
not
,” I huffed. Lied. “I need to look at the Faulkner papers for my lit class.” I spun on my heel and headed in the direction of the display cases. I didn't have to look to know he was next to me again. “What now? Do you need to look at them too?” I hissed. I pulled out a notebook and dropped my bag at the end of the row.

“No,” he whispered. He leaned over the last case, propping his elbows on it. “And neither,” he added, “do you.”

I glared. “What would you know about my assignment?”

“Nothing,” he agreed. “Except I
do
know”—he tapped lightly on the case with one knuckle—“that this is a Marie Curie exhibit.”

“
Shit
,” I muttered again and closed my eyes in a long blink. I could feel the case shake with Jack's laughter. Why the hell did he know what this display was? Who even
looked
at these? Wait. I opened my eyes and peered at the case. “This stuff isn't from Marie Curie!”

He laughed out loud, loud enough that if there'd been anyone around it would have gotten us shushed. “No,” he admitted. “But it's not Faulkner either.”

I couldn't help it. I laughed too. Leaning next to him on the case, I said, “So, what is it?”

He squinted. “It's…” He shrugged, smiling. “Who knows? I'm no historian. I didn't even know these were over here.”

Historian
. I swallowed. It didn't mean anything. Or did it? Either way, it was a reminder: I had to get away from him. As soon as he'd said the word, visions of another boy's smile danced behind my eyes, kind of like sugarplums, except they tasted bitter, like baker's chocolate or heartbreak.

I took a deep breath, fortifying my crumbling wall of resolve.
No Sententia
. I'd had a moment of weakness tonight, okay,
several
moments, but it was over. Picking up my bag, I said, “I have to go.”

His smile faltered. “Wait. Don't you really have homework?”

“
Yes
.”

He straightened and gestured grandly back toward the main library, like a tux-clad maitre'd, not a TA in basketball shorts with sexy legs and messy hair. “So. You need to be here and, believe it or not, I need to be here. Want to share a table with me?”

I
want
to share a lot more than that with you
, I thought.
And that is your whole problem, Young
. “I have to go,” I repeated.

“Okay.” He nodded, resigned, and I turned. “But Lainey?” I looked back at him. “What are you running away from?”

“Trouble,” I told him, though that was only half the truth. The real answer was something more like the past. Like myself.

His lips curved again into that crooked smile, the one that chipped so mercilessly at the bricks around my heart. “Oh, Lainey. You know trouble follows you.”

Carter

I
t was no surprise the restaurant where my uncle asked me to meet him was posh and expensive.

The surprise was finding Tessa Espinosa waiting alone at the bar.

I saw her first. She was a woman who stood out, and not only because she was beautiful. She exuded a presence, a sense of being much larger than she was. Because she was tiny, except for her hair. The unmistakable tumble of deep brown waves spilled over the shoulders of a purple velvet jacket that was probably meant to be described as something like
aubergine
. I paused about halfway to where she sat, regarding her back while I took a few breaths. The smile I was trying to maintain felt brittle.

She must have felt my eyes on her because she turned around. A warm and genuine smile brightened her face. Her eyes teared, growing shiny and wavering in the light from the small candles lined up on the bar. I didn't know how to feel about that.

“Carter!” she called and I raised my hand in greeting, pretending like I hadn't just been staring at her. When I got close enough, she pulled me into a hug. It, too, felt genuine. Maybe even fierce. The high bar chair where she sat meant I didn't even have to lean over.

“It's so good to see you,” she said as she held me. There was a thickness to her voice that made me have to swallow before I could reply.

“It's good to see you, Tessa.” She released her grip on my shoulders, finishing with a kiss to my cheek before she pulled away. I smiled. “It's actually a surprise. I thought I was meeting my uncle. Are you joining us?” She really did look beautiful, in the carefree way that was always so distinct from Lainey. I wondered if Lainey had grown so reserved in contrast. She and her adoptive mother were like complementary angles.