Tangled Thoughts (26 page)

I wasn't sure why I did that. I wasn't drunk. I hadn't planned on removing clothing, not tonight, but in the heat of the moment, I realized
I didn't care
. I
wanted
to, and wasn't that reason enough?

Jack surveyed the new development with delight, grinning like he'd gotten away with something. “May I?” he asked.

“Please.”

His kiss was deeper this time, confident and eager. He pulled me onto his lap, crushing me to him, and I didn't resist. My arms twined around his neck as his hand slid up my stomach, fingers brushing my breast first over, then under, my bra until my breathing was ragged. He unhooked it neatly and I tossed it away.

I was desperate for this, for heat and closeness and touch. It had been so long, months, since I'd been with anyone—with Carter—and the only person I'd really wanted to kiss since then was kissing me now.

I kept kissing him until kissing wasn't enough. I shifted my hips, pressing against him, and he groaned. His lips broke from mine,
traveling down my neck, and lower, while his hands made the rest of me feel like I was on fire.

I did not want to put it out.

So I didn't.

Instead, I tugged on his shirt, unbuttoning it as quickly as I could between his kisses, and then his jeans, too. He stilled, just for a second, when my fingers found the button and undid it. He pulled back, looking in my eyes before slowly,
so
slowly, leaning forward until I was pressed into the couch and his solid body hovered over mine.

Jack cleared his throat lightly, one finger tracing under the edge of my waistband, as he asked, “Would you like to see my bedroom?”

“Yes,” I told him. “Please.”

Carter

H
angovers were worse than the fucking flu.

I woke early the next morning at my usual time, barely knowing where I was. I didn't remember getting there. I didn't get up and run. I didn't answer the phone. I didn't text Alexis. I didn't move from my bed until eventually I threw up.

After that, I found coffee and a few bottles of water and moved to the couch, watching the sky lighten outside. It was still early to most people. I felt not better, but less like I'd rather be dead. It was a different feeling, laying on the couch hating myself for something I understood. This was concrete. I drank too much, too fast. Lesson learned.

I did, however, remember seeing my uncle.

Thinking hurt, but it hurt less than moving. I could obsess in relative stillness. For once, though, it wasn't Lainey's words on replay in
my head. That alone was a miracle. Not the end, only the beginning. Not the end.

Not. The. End.

I laid there longer than I should have, past the point where it was time to go. But I'd been past that point for a long time, hadn't I? I'd wasted seven months on something I couldn't change, spent too many hours trying to understand when it would never make sense to me. I thought I'd lost The One, when she was only The Beginning.

I'd let myself become my father.

It was time to let go.

I used to send her signs all the time when we were together, to let her know I was thinking of her. Push her pen onto the floor in class. Move the pages of her notebook. Knock a favorite book off her shelf in her room. Maybe it was stupid, but I thought she liked it, this secret communication only we understood. Having this damned Thought Mover gift was probably going to get me killed one day, so I might as well get a
little
enjoyment out of it.

I wasn't sure if it would matter now, if she'd ever know. But she'd been wearing the necklace the last time I saw her and maybe she was still. I closed my eyes and pictured it, the perfect diamond resting against her smooth skin. In my mind, I followed the delicate chain up over her clavicle, under her heavy dark hair. Then to the sturdy clasp at the back of her neck, I Thought:
open
.

Finished, I let the necklace slip from my thoughts and disappear into the past.

Happy birthday to me.

Lainey

L
ater, I stared at the high ceiling of Jack's bedroom and imagined constellations in the pattern of its cracks. The noises of a waking city filtered in, mingling with the gentle sound of Jack's breathing. He looked younger when he slept. Maybe everyone did. I wished I could sleep, too.

I had, for a while, when I'd been warm and snuggled against Jack's even warmer skin after…just
after
, before my brain woke up. Now it would not shut up.

What had I done?

I mean, I knew what I—what
we
had done. I'd been
thinking
about it for weeks. Looking at Jack there, tousled and content in sleep, I wanted to wake him and do it again. I also wanted to rewind this night and make sure it didn't happen.

What happened to my mind-heart-body alliance? The one I'd been so faithfully devoted to in the past? My mind was punishing me now,
and my heart was thumping strange, erratic beats that sounded suspiciously like
Cart-er, Jack, Cart-er, Jack
.

I wanted so many things, and suddenly they all felt wrong.
Everything
felt wrong, except the weight of Jack's arm across my stomach, and I felt guilty that that
didn't
feel wrong. I still wanted Carter, and that felt the most wrong, wanting two men at the same time. But it
wasn't
. It wasn't wrong. It was human. I hadn't done anything wrong.

But I had, hadn't I? I'd done one thing wrong. I thought about the card I'd sent Carter and how I shouldn't have done it. I really, really shouldn't have done it. But much like visiting him at the end of the summer, I couldn't seem to stop myself, no matter how suspect my motivations. I wondered if he'd gotten it and hoped it had been lost.

Jack's room grew lighter by pale gray degrees. A slow turn of my head and I could see the clock, which told me it was still early, barely nine o'clock. I knew I wasn't going to sleep probably at all anymore, but definitely not in Jack's bed. Carefully, I slipped from under his arm and padded to the bathroom.

I was leaning over the sink, looking in the mirror and trying to figure myself out, when my necklace fell off.

I caught it easily, a reflex. It landed in my fingers and I stared at it. I shouldn't have been wearing it tonight, when I was with another man. Which was a joke. I shouldn't have been wearing it at
all
. Maybe the necklace knew that.

Inspecting it, I found it wasn't actually broken. The chain was intact and the clasp worked perfectly fine. I pinched it a few times between my fingers. Odd. It must have just opened, accidentally let go.

And that's when it hit me: Carter.

I knew it was him. I felt it, a zinging in my veins and cracking in my heart. It was a sign, the first one he'd tried to send me in months, the way he used to make books fall off my shelves. Carter
had
gotten the
card I shouldn't have sent and this was his answer. And I heard it, loud and clear.

Let go
.

Numbly and quiet as a ninja, I dressed in the living room and fled. Just as I was closing the door behind me, I heard a groggy call of, “Lainey?” I tugged on my boots and ran down the stairs.

I barely made it to a bus stop bench before the sobs burst out of me, choking my throat and squeezing the breath from my lungs. My heart pounded, hard, beating my ribs as the tears clogged my eyes and flooded over. I dropped my face into my hands and cried the ocean onto the sidewalk below.

I
WAS
HOME
at my apartment, trying and failing not to think about two men at once, when Amy finally called me. It dawned on me then that I was leaving for Mexico in less than twenty-four hours and Jack didn't even have my phone number.

“That text was pretttty early this morning,” she said by way of hello.

What could I say? “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

“So. Is it still a
Walk of Shame
if no one sees you, or if you didn't do it? Discuss.” I chuckled, but it sounded forced even to me. “Oh,” she said. “Um, so did you? Do it?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “We did.”

She paused. “Did he… pressure you?”

“What? No. Not at all.”

“Heh. So, I guess you
are
that kind of girl.” I could picture her, in her big, white bedroom on the third floor of her parents' house, leaning forward and smiling like I was the canary she'd just caught in her polished cat claws. “So then the question is, why don't you sound more excited about it?! Wasn't it good? Tell me it was good.”

Was it good? It was fantastic. It made me sorry I'd had to wait an entire semester for it to be possible. It wasn't
better
than being with Carter, or worse, or the same. It was new, and—
Jesus
. I should
not
be comparing them.

I couldn't stop thinking about them.

Finally, I said, “It was great.”

“Are you just placating me or what here?”

“No, I mean it. It was great.”

“So, then, where are the exclamation points?!” Amy huffed. “Why aren't you sighing and going on about tasting and stroking and what not.”

“What? Are you drunk?”

“No.” She sighed, and I heard the soft, squishy sound of her million pillows as she flopped onto them. “I've been reading romances in my loneliness. They're
always
going on about tasting him, tasting her, and what the hell? This isn't dinner. But anyway, are you going to taste that again, or are you one and done?”

“I'm not anything.” That was a lie. “I'm…confused.” I told her how I left and she whistled.

“You really are my heartbreaker, aren't you.”

“It was one night.”

“One you
both
waited for months to have—don't try to deny it.” I wasn't denying. “He's been following you around awfully faithfully if all he wanted was to ba—”

“Amy. It's not about him.”

She was quiet for a few, considering. Finally, “Is it Carter? Are you…regretting?”

“It's just…me.” And it was. I did regret everything in relation to Carter, but Jill had been right—ultimately, I'd chosen. I'd chosen everything, including last night. I'd been
thinking
about Jack for weeks and
weeks, but that was abstract, fantasy. A crush. Reality was scary. There was so much that could go wrong.

“Lane,” she said, paused, then started again. “Remember our conversation over the summer? I'm starting to worry again.”

On our summer “Yes Day”, the crazy day I got my tattoo and kissed a random stranger, Amy had been brave enough to ask me if I was fighting depression. And I'd told her the truth—I didn't know. Was it depression when the thing causing your inner-darkness had a name and a face and was running for president? And, now, worse, dating your mother-figure and fathering your brother or sister? But that wasn't what was wrong.

My problem was fear. Fear and sadness. I lamented what I'd given up and was afraid what I'd found would just be taken from me again. “I'm afraid,” I told her. “What if he's too good to be true?”

“Oh, Lane. What if he isn't?” she countered. “What if he's just…true?”

What if he was? Maybe I was afraid of that, too.

Carter

F
or the first time in—ever, the New Year felt entirely new. New city, new sites, new pressure of meeting your girlfriend's parents. I'd met them many times before, but never as Alexis's boyfriend, someone who should be worthy of her. I wasn't, but I was trying. More every day.

Uncle Dan had taken the birthday card from me, but I couldn't bring myself to destroy the note. The idea alone made me feel bereft, incomplete. Instead, I relegated it to a tiny slot in my wallet and left it there, untouched. Someday maybe I'd have the courage to let it go, too.

I thought about this as I sat alone drinking coffee and reading a newspaper at the approximate acre of Carrera marble that made up the Morrows' kitchen island. The room was all so much gleaming white and blinding chrome. It looked like no one ever used it because the staff cleaned it faithfully every day. I had never been in a home with a
full-time staff before. Uncle Dan's ranch in Montana had a staff, but I'd never been there.

“Up early again, I see.” My head snapped up to find Alexis's mother in the doorway and I nearly spilled my coffee. She was wearing what I believed was called a peignoir. Whatever it was, for certain it left too little to the imagination. Jesus Christ. “Alexis told me that about you.”

“Guilty,” I said, making sure not to look anywhere but her eyes or the counter. “It's a habit. I can't sleep late even if I want to.”

“Enterprising. Brendan sleeps like the dead. He never even knows when I come and go.” She moved past me into the kitchen, making her own cup of coffee, before settling next to me at the island. She stirred in a heap of some sugar substitute, took a sip, and closed her eyes, making a contented sigh, like it was the best thing she'd taste all day. When she opened her eyes again, she said, “My daughter hasn't brought a boy home in years you know.”

“I'm honored. And hope I'm not a disappointment.”

She smiled, flicking her eyes over me in a way that made me want to shift in my seat. “Not yet.” I held tight to my coffee and kept my eyes level. Barbie Morrow's job was to be beautiful and she succeeded. Her daughter had inherited much from her, despite her father's brown hair, but it all worked
better
on Alexis. I couldn't tell which Barbie was more, jealous or proud. “Dan coming to the city soon?”

There was a hopefulness in her voice that gave me pause. “I'm not sure. He offered me his apartment this week, though. Gave me the elevator code.”