The Fifteenth Minute (16 page)

We get out of the car and walk silently to the front door. It swings open suddenly, and when I take a quick step backwards, my back collides with DJ’s chest. He tucks me into his side almost absently, his arm circling my back. And while we wait for a family to make their way outside, he brushes a kiss against my cheekbone.

I was
this close
to having an ordinary lovers’ Morning After. But now we’re only acting those parts.

And the room is full of people. Too full. “Can we have that booth in the back corner?” I ask the hostess quickly.

“Sure, hon,” she says, grabbing two laminated menus.

I pull my hat down ridiculously far and follow her in a hurry.

DJ does the gentlemanly thing and takes the seat that faces the door to the kitchen. But that’s actually the seat I want, because then I don’t have to worry about making accidental eye contact with someone who will ask me to take a selfie with them. I take off Bella’s hockey jacket and my trusty baseball cap and toss them on the empty seat. Then I say, “Scoot in.”

After aiming a look of surprise at me, he complies, making room for me.

I sit down beside his big body. When I pick up my menu, our elbows touch. The fact that we had actual full-on, bare-naked sex last night is both weird and not weird. Here I am scanning the breakfast choices beside a man who was recently inside me. This idea heats me up, and I lose my focus between the western omelet and the quiche Lorraine.

DJ puts his hand on my knee, and I start to tingle.

“Um, what?” I ask after a beat, realizing that he’s asked me a question. I look up into his slightly amused face.

“Which do you prefer, blueberry or plain?”

It takes me a second to realize we’re talking about pancakes. “I don’t know. I haven’t had pancakes in a decade. I’m more of an egg-white omelet kind of girl.”

“Wow,” he says, dropping his menu on the table. “Scary revelations all around today.” He smiles, but it doesn’t make it all the way to his eyes. The boy beside me is drowning in his troubles. They’re here in the booth with us and sucking down all the available oxygen. I wish I could rewind twelve hours or so to when I didn’t know. But that isn’t really fair. DJ told me a couple of times he needed to keep his distance, and I pursued him anyway.

Now I tip my head to the side, resting it on his bulky shoulder. He turns to me and brushes a quick kiss on my temple. “What if we go halvsies?” I offer. “A big omelet and pancakes?”

He gives me a little elbow nudge. “An egg-white omelet? I don’t know if I can choke that down.”

“A real one,” I compromise. “But with vegetables in it.”

“Deal,” he says.

A
ll the food
is surprisingly good. Or maybe I’m just starved. But soon my mood is shored up by eggs, pancakes and the side of bacon DJ ordered. I check my phone and find a couple messages from female hockey players thanking me for my “all-chick playlist,” as one of them calls it.

When I show DJ, he gives my knee a squeeze. “You don’t have to do it. I know you’re busy. But if I get kicked out, they’d love to have you for the rest of the season.”

The coffee I’ve drunk goes sour in my stomach. “You’re
not
getting kicked out.”

“That’s my girl.” He gives me another sad smile. “
Feisty
Lianne. Maybe you should be my lawyer. I’d rather spend four hours with you than him, too. That’s where I was yesterday. He’s still hoping to get me a real hearing.”

“What if they don’t? What’s his plan B?”

DJ actually winces. “He wants to sue the college for violating my rights. I’m not allowed to set foot in the residences. You may have noticed that I, uh, never walk you upstairs.”

“That’s why you live in Orsen’s house.”

He nods. “I’m hanging by a thread, smalls. I’m sorry to dump the whole sordid tale in your lap. But I need you to know why I’m a shitty date most of the time. It’s not because I don’t like you.”

I grab his hand under the table and squeeze. DJ finishes his pancakes left-handed so that he doesn’t have to let go of me. And even though we haven’t had the most conventional lovers’ Sunday morning breakfast, it will just have to do.

When the waitress drops the check on our table, DJ snatches it up. And I don’t pull out my wallet and try to pay half, because I know he doesn’t want me to. Maybe I don’t date, but I watch films about people who do. I know the most basic rituals. The dude gets to pay sometimes, even if the chick got two million dollars for her last film.

“Thank you for breakfast,” I say as I slip out of the booth after he’s paid.

DJ gets out, too. Then he reaches for my things on the opposite seat. “It was nothing, smalls,” he says quietly, holding out my coat for me to put on.

That’s when I hear The Sound.

Sometimes it’s a sharp intake of breath. Sometimes it’s followed by laughter, or a little shriek. But after a while all the forms of The Sound are easily recognizable. Because you know you’ve been spotted, and the next ten minutes of your life have been rescheduled, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.

Today it comes from two tables away, where three teenaged girls and perhaps their grandmother are having brunch together. One of the girls has clapped her hand over her mouth, and the beads on the ends of several dozen braids are swinging around in her shock. Behind a pair of bright pink glasses, her eyes bug out and then light up.

She is adorable, and yet she brings out my inner sociopath. Because the timing? Not good.

“Omigod!” she yells, jumping up so fast that the glasses of orange juice on their table wobble. Her sisters’ eyes travel over to see what she’s staring at.

In their excitement, the girls practically leap their table to get to me. I turn to warn DJ and watch as his eyes widen in alarm. Then, in the span of a fangirl shriek, he moves with freakish precision, somehow sliding his body between me and the charging girls.

“Um,” I say, putting a hand on his back. “It’s okay.”

He looks over his shoulder with one eyebrow raised, as if asking how a thundering herd of girls could ever be okay. But he doesn’t know how it is with me.

“Omigod,” the girl with the pink glasses says again, peering around DJ. “I saw on the news that you lived in Harkness now and I’ve been looking ALL OVER THE PLACE! Please? Can we have a picture?” She whips out a phone, and DJ eyes it like it’s a rattlesnake in the desert.

I give him a gentle shove out of the way, because I know the only way out is through. I take the camera from the girl’s hand and pass it to my freaked-out-looking date. “Take a couple, please?”

The girls swarm around me, giggling and touching me. I smile as best I can and try not to think too hard about my unwashed hair and yesterday’s walk-of-shame clothes.
They don’t care that you’re not wearing any makeup
, I promise myself.

I’m almost free when someone mentions autographs.

Digging into my pocketbook for one of the Sharpies that I always keep there, I tell DJ that he can warm up the car if he wants. “I’ll just be a second.”

He eases toward the door, but his face is wary.

I sign a napkin, a phone case and a library card before making my excuses. By some miracle, nobody else stops me, and I’m shooting for the door of the diner a minute later.

DJ yanks it open and we’re free.

We hurry over to Orsen’s car and climb inside, slamming the doors. He cranks the engine and then lets it warm up. “Shit,” he says finally. “Does that happen a lot?”

I shrug, because it does, but I don’t want to admit it. That wasn’t even so bad—those girls approached me when I was putting on my coat. But people have sat down
at
my restaurant table
. They’ve followed me into the ladies’ room. They’ve gotten off the elevator at my hotel room floor just to see where I’m sleeping.

“People are really fucking scary,” DJ says suddenly, echoing my own thoughts.

“This is true.”

Our ride back to Beaumont House is subdued. I don’t know where DJ’s head is, but I’m wondering about a girl named Annie. Who she is. And why she’d accuse him.

“Are you okay?” he asks when we pull up outside.

“Yeah,” I say immediately. “Are you?”

He regards me with those dark eyes. At least now I know how he comes by his brooding. “Sure,” he says, fooling nobody. But this is a ritual too. The man says he’s fine. He has a big strong body, ergo he is not allowed to crumble.

Today I feel like telling ritual to go suck it.

Quickly, I lean over and kiss him. He makes a little, bitten-off sound of surprise. “Thank you for telling me,” I say.

“Thank you for being awesome,” he says, his voice all gravel.

“You owe me a couple of hours of Shakespeare,” I remind him.

“I’ll pay up.” I see the flicker of a real smile when he says it. There was even the ghost of a dimple.

“You’d better,” is the last bit of bravado I fling at him before getting out, waving and closing the door.

Inside the Beaumont gate, I take the flagstones two at a time. I whip over to our entryway door and then up the stairs. In my room, I throw Bella’s jacket on my floor and climb onto the bed where nobody slept last night. I put my face in the crook of my elbow and take a deep breath.

I don’t know what to think about the bomb DJ just dropped on me. I asked him to, of course. And before that, he’d tried to warn me away. Now I understood why he’d been holding that story in. To hear it
required
you to choose a side, and I kind of hated myself for thinking about it like that.

Every moment I’d spent with DJ I’d felt absolutely safe with him. And if anyone asked me right this second whether DJ was a terrific guy, I’d say yes in a heartbeat.

So what the hell happened last April eleventh?

My computers were just across the room, their screen-savers scrolling through a slideshow of my dragon corral. I know at some point in the next couple of hours, my curiosity will win, and I’ll be Googling the heck out of all the girls at Harkness named Annie. But first I will bathe.

I
’m humming
one of the DragonFire themes (it’s a sickness) when I shut off the water after my shower. Shoving the curtain aside, I’m startled to find Bella standing there. She hands me my towel, one eyebrow raised.

“Morning,” I say as my cheeks begin to heat.

“You are so busted. I knocked on your door an hour ago and there was nobody home.”

“That happens,” I try. “I had an early breakfast.”

She grins. “With who?”

Jeez
. I wrap the towel around myself and duck past her and into my room.

She follows me, of course. “Come on, babe. Did you or didn’t you?”

See, I’ve pictured this moment before. I’ve actually been looking forward to the time I’d finally have to confess to Bella that DJ had rocked my world. And he had, of course. But this moment isn’t sweet like I’d imagined, because it’s been overshadowed by everything I’ve learned since.

“Well?” Bella demands. “Look, I know you’re a private person, but the suspense is killing me. Did you do the deed? Wait—I know you’re shy. So you don’t even have to say it out loud. Blink once for yes or twice for no.”

That makes me giggle, because I love Bella to death. And nobody at Harkness has been more generous to me than she has. “We did it.” My smile fades, though, and she notices.

“Omigod.” Bella claps her hands to her cheeks. “Why aren’t you happier? Was it awful? No—it couldn’t have been awful. They’re a very talented family…” She’s pacing my tiny rug, then stops, a look of horror on her face. “Oh,
hell
. Does he have a fun-sized dick?”

“No!” I squeal. “And even if he did, I’d still love him.” Then it was my turn to clap a hand over my mouth. DJ wasn’t even my boyfriend. I’d basically seduced him after feeding him pizza. Listen to me, jumping the gun.

Her eyes widen. “Hold on, sister. So what’s the problem?”

“He’s perfect. But…” I stop. Can I even tell Bella? Was that betraying DJ’s trust? He hadn’t asked me to keep it a secret, though.

“Sweetie, you’re scaring me,” she says, sitting down on the bed. “Did something happen? Did the condom break?”

“It’s nothing like that.” I sit beside her. “DJ has a problem, and I don’t know what to think. But it doesn’t leave this room.”

Bella makes a heart-crossing motion in front of her chest. “I know that most of the time I have no filter. But I am capable of keeping my trap shut. Especially for you, shorty.”

“I know. There’s a weird story I need to tell you…”

Five minutes later, Bella’s eyes are bugging out. “I just can’t picture that at all.”

“Me neither.”

“I mean…” Bella stares up at my ceiling. “He’s such a good guy. Of course, I can’t really picture
any
guy doing that. Yet it happens all the time…”

Ugh. Bella’s twisty train of thought runs a lot like mine.

“And if he didn’t do it, why would anyone say he did? Not just
say
it either—say it to the dean’s office. That place intimidates the hell out of me. You’d have to be totally insane to waltz in there for fun and lie about something like that.”

The pancakes I ate earlier twist in my stomach. “It’s just weird, right?”

Bella gives me the side eye. “So who is this Annie?”

“No idea.”

“Really? You haven’t hacked into the college database yet to run a background check on her? You’re slipping, my friend.”

“You know I want to,” I say slowly. “But I shouldn’t stick my nose in.”

Bella chuckles. “You will, though. Have you met you?”

Indeed I have.

A
fter I drop off Lianne
, I fill Orsen’s gas tank to thank him for the loan of his car. The gray sky over the town of Harkness is a perfect reflection of my mood.

When I get home, my freaking brother is still sitting on the couch in the living room, drinking a cup of coffee out of my mug. I skirt him and head into my room.

But he appears in the doorway a minute later. Shit. The dude spends more time in this house than I do. If I get kicked out in a couple weeks, he can just take over my room. Maybe that’s his plan, anyway.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.” I wait.

It only takes him a moment to go right for the jugular. “Dude,” he says. “I didn’t know you and Lianne…”

“What do
you
care?” I ask through gritted teeth. “Are you going to tattle to Dad?”

“Whoa.” Leo holds up a hand in a sign of surrender. “Jesus, no. I don’t fucking care if you’re hooking up with her. No, that’s not true. I
do
care. Good for
you
, dude. I’m dead serious. If I was in your shoes, I think I’d have, like, chick-induced PTSD.”

“Who says I don’t?” I grunt, not trusting his enthusiasm. Not trusting
anything
.

Even though I wish he would leave, Leo sits down on the end of the bed. “You’re awful grumpy for somebody who got laid.”

“You think?” I push my hand over my eyes. “She’s probably running for the hills right now.” Last night was perfect, but I hadn’t done the math. This morning it’s so obvious that I’ve fucked everything up with Lianne. She was the best thing that had happened to me in months. But getting so close to her meant I had to confess my troubles.

So now she’s no longer the only person who won’t look at me like maybe I’m a terrible person.

“Why is she running for the hills?” Leo asked quietly.

“Because I told her at breakfast. You know. The whole ugly tale.”

“Nice timing.”

I give him a little jab with my foot. “Thanks, Captain Obvious. But I didn’t have a choice. I need to explain why I never walk her home. Why she was covering for me in the booth at the women’s game…”

Leo is so quiet that I check his face. “She didn’t take it well?”

“She took it fine over breakfast. But she’s probably in her room right now starting to wonder. Everyone does, right?”

My brother shakes his head. “Not everyone.”

“Don’t say that,” I hiss. “You
seriously
want to sit here and tell me that you never wondered whether I was guilty?”

“Danny, I never have.”

“
Liar
.”

His head snaps back as if I’ve punched him. “Look, jackass. I
get
why you’re angry. But save it for the people who are screwing you over. I never doubted you. Not for a second.”

Bullshit
. How could anyone
never
doubt? I know better than anyone what happened that night. And all I do is sit around wondering what the hell happened. And what I missed.

My brother nudges the calculus book beside him on the bed. “You got a lot of work to do today?”

“Does it matter if I do it? My semester is circling the drain.”

“Then let’s go to the rink. I need to loosen up before practice.”

“Nah.” I grab the book. “Don’t feel like it.”

“Danny, don’t be like this.”

He grabs the book out of my hand. And it’s such an annoying big brother thing to do that my blood pressure shoots up immediately. “Don’t be like
what?
You think I’m lazy?”

“I think you’re
depressed
, Danny. Like—the real thing.” He hands me the book again.

“Naw.”

“Yes
. This isn’t you. You don’t sit around in your room. You always have a thousand projects, a DJ loop you’re making, party to go to.”

“I have
seventeen days
until this meeting. What’s the point of anything if I’m not here? Do you not hear me?”

“I do hear you,” my brother says. “And I feel like telling Dad that you need help.”

“Help with
what?
” My voice cracks. “What’s Dad going to do, other than get on my case?”

“Maybe you need to see someone,” my brother says, his face grave.

Swear to God, the whole world has lost its mind when it comes to me. “Leo, I
do
see someone. He’s called a lawyer, and he costs three hundred an hour. And Dad reminds me of that every chance he gets. Just
go
already. You’ve done your duty as the good kid. Tell Dad you checked up on me and I’m fine.”

“Except you’re not.”

“Would
you
be? I seriously don’t know what you want from me.”

And maybe he doesn’t know either. Because at that, Leo finally gets up and leaves my room.

I shut the door behind him. The next couple of hours are hell as I try and fail to keep my head on homework. Finally I lie down on my bed and pull out my copy of the Scottish play, because it makes me think of Lianne. She and I never got around to reading any of it last night. I’m probably the only guy on earth who’s going to start associating Macbeth with foreplay.
Is that a dagger I see before me? Yeah baby. Hold my dagger
.

Smiling for the first time in an hour, I grab my phone and prepare to text her. But I stop myself before sending any dirty Shakespeare quotes. After what I told her this morning, I don’t know how she’ll take it. Does a dagger joke make me sound like a creeper?

Great. I can officially add her to the list of people who are likely to overanalyze everything I say.

I miss you already
, I text instead. Because it’s true.

T
he following week
, my father calls a lot. He wants to talk about the case. As if talking about it is useful. And I can’t even duck him, because my sister’s visit is coming up, and if she needs to reach me, I have to take calls from home.

Conversations with my dad have been tense all year, but lately they’re downright unbearable.

“We need to talk about this potential lawsuit,” he says. “Jack wants to do some groundwork so he’s ready to file if the hearing doesn’t go your way.”

“Bad idea,” I insist. “Why pay his hourly rate to plan a lawsuit we might not need?”

“Son, we need to be prepared for the worst.”

Great
. So I’m not the only one with a dim opinion of my chances.

“There’s something more. Jack shared a new idea with me.”

The wobble in the pit of my stomach suggests I won’t like it. “Such as?”

“He knows a group of lawyers who are trying to put together a class-action lawsuit that seeks to set a tough precedent for colleges who try to adjudicate their own rape cases. He thinks your case is perfect.”

Perfect
. The word bounces around inside my gut. Only an asshole would use that word to describe the hell that is my year. “No way.”

“Don’t say that until you’ve heard what he has to say,” my father snapped.

“Dad, I don’t want to be anyone’s test case. Ever.”

“You have to clear your name!” my father bellows.

When he says that, I just hear
our
name. His name. Shit. “I think you have
no idea
what would happen if we sued the college over this. The whole world is going to just assume that I did it, and that I’m suing to try to find a loophole.”

“But if you
didn’t
do it,” my father fires back, “you should never be afraid to say so.”

All I could hear was the word “if” in that sentence. It strikes me dumb.

“Danny,” he says. “Don’t ever be afraid to tell the truth.”

“I am not. Afraid. Of the truth,” I grind out. “But thanks for the show of support.”

Then, for the first time in my life, I hang up on my father. But it’s either that or lose it completely. He’s still convinced there’s a magic solution that makes the whole thing go away.

There isn’t. Yet I’m the only one who sees that.