The Opposite of Nothing (6 page)

She dragged a milk crate into the center of the room and used it as a makeshift entertainment center. While the movie started, she hit the lights and hopped back onto the futon. She hooked her knees over the armrest and scooched forward so her head wasn’t quite behind his. They both had a clear view of the screen.

“Why do you watch this crap?” He shifted, his ass going numb on the hard floor.

“Shhh.”

“No, really. Why?”

“The adrenaline rush. I like knowing something horrible is just about to happen, but not being sure of the when. I’m hanging there, waiting for I don’t know what. A jump, a gasp. And then, at the end, the bad guys are almost always defeated. It’s comforting.”

“Horror is comforting?” He laughed. It made a strange sort of sense. They were predictable.

“I’m twisted, aren’t I?” She leaned closer, a zealot looking for converts. He could feel her breath warming the back of his neck. It wasn’t unpleasant.

“You and millions of moviegoers.”

They slipped back into silence. He watched the screen without really watching the movie. He floated, half-asleep, lulled by the rhythm of shifting light and Callie’s hushed sounds behind him.

“I feel twisted sometimes.”

Something in her voice, something quiet and thready, sent a cold burst down his spine. He needed to see her face. The pale light from the screen cast her in shadows. She had her hands wrapped around her body in an awkward self-hug, like she was trying to keep from flying apart. She studied the cracks in the ceiling like they were a map to the Holy Grail.

“Callie? Tell me.”

“It’s nothing.”

He might be obtuse about mathematical theory, but he knew without a doubt that when a girl said ‘it’s nothing’ it was almost always something. Callie’s own words echoed in his mind.
Everybody wants something, and everybody lies.

When he touched her arm to get her attention, just a squeeze to let her know he was still waiting for an answer, she jolted.

“You need to tell me what the hell has you so wound up. Is it that guy?”

The sound she made in response to the question was sharp and pained.

“It is. Jesus. Do I need to kick some ass? I will.”

“No.” She turned to face him again. His hand slipped away with the movement, but she caught it in her own. Her fingers were cool against his palm. “I’m being weird. I am weird. Don’t pay any attention to me.”

She scrunched her face up into a grimace, clamping her eyes shut and crinkling her nose.

“You’re being a girl again.” He was teasing, but it worked like clipping the green wire when he’d meant to clip the blue. She gave a little shudder, dropped his hand, and then, more terrifying than any horror movie he’d ever seen, tears. Not ugly, gasping sobs, just a shiny trickle from the corner of her eye.

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head and covered her face, forcing out a few ragged breaths. He didn’t know how to fix this mess. He wasn’t even sure how he’d made it. If he’d made it. He knelt beside the bed and drew her hand away from her face. “Tell me what to do. Cartwheels? Armpit farts? Hamlet’s monologue in Pig Latin? I’ll do it. Ootay ebay—”

“Stop. Don’t look at me. I’m all snotty.” But her mouth had already quirked into a wobbly smile and she was pushing herself upright. His stomach unclenched.

“You’re not.” He leaned in and smoothed over the tear trails with his thumbs, capturing her face in his hands. “You’re just a little damp around the edges.”

She tilted her face into his touch and he reacted on reflex. Like breathing. He closed what distance still remained. A feather-light brush of lips at first, then deeper. So soft. He darted his tongue against the seam, parting her lips, tasting salty sweetness. He slid his fingers into her hair, loosening her ponytail, and pulled her even closer. Callie made a strangled sound in her throat, shocking him back to reality. He scrambled back.

“Oh, God. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay.” It came out muffled. She had her hand over her mouth, probably to protect herself from further assault.

“No. It isn’t. You’re my friend. And you have a boyfriend, even if he is being an ass. And I’m—I don’t even know. I just wanted you to feel better, and I reacted. It was an accident.”

“It. Is. Okay. I swear. But if you don’t stop apologizing, I’m going to get a complex.”

She didn’t look completely okay. She looked pale and rumpled and frightened with her fingers still splayed over her lips. And a little like someone had mauled her. Which was what he’d done.

“I’m sorry.”

She flinched at his reflexive apology. He just kept making things worse.

“I’m tired. I don’t think we’re going to get any more studying in tonight.”

“No, you’re right. I’ll go.”

He stuffed his notes into his backpack. The closing zipper was impossibly loud, despite the movie still screeching on the chair. He forced himself to look back, to make sure she wasn’t rocking herself in a corner. She flashed a
say cheese
smile, all effort no emotion, and waved him out the door.

He lingered in the hallway. What was Callie hiding? Not one fucking thing made sense anymore. The universe was pounding him into the ground. He grabbed for the door handle but pulled back like it might burn him. Thumping his fist against the wall, he pushed off into the night. It was like kicking off from the pool wall at the city rec center when he was a kid, eyes shut tight against the chlorine, rocketing forward in a straight line.

Aaron was the one who’d taken him to the rec, taught him to cup his hands on the stroke, turn his head to breathe. He would fling him into the deep end and follow behind. Their bare chests had heaved with laughter as he’d tried to dunk his big brother. Eventually, Aaron had always let him, his body going limp as Tayber shoved down on the top of his head.

He pushed his fists against his eyes, against the burn behind his eyelids, like he’d spent the day underwater. Fucking chemicals.

* * *

S
he quavered in the center of the apartment, bereft and detached. She recognized her rug and her lamp and the silly stuffed chicken she’d won at first year carnival but didn’t understand how any of it could still exist in a world where she was such a cataclysmic failure. A giant black hole should have swallowed everything up. She tapped her fingers against her lips in a vain attempt to recreate the delicious shock of his tongue. She’d been so damn close to having exactly what she wanted that she could literally taste him. His mouth was warm and sweet, like Fireballs or Red Hots. And she’d blown it. So overcome by the incongruity of a wish fulfilled that she’d frozen. A terrible, choking laugh bubbled to the surface.

“I need a do-over.”

She grabbed her stuffed chicken and crushed it against her chest before curling into a ball on the futon. She slept, fitfully, for a few hours. One dream barreled after another. Her teeth fell out. She stepped into an elevator and fell down the bottomless shaft. Every radio she touched only played static. She woke gasping and sweaty, mouth dry from an endless, silent scream.

She padded barefoot to the fridge and grabbed a soda. Caffeine and sugar were exactly what she needed.
No rest for the wicked, I guess.
A do-over wouldn’t help anyway. He didn’t want to kiss her—that had been pity. A song she’d heard recently tickled at the back of her brain. She’d tweak a playlist for her next show.

Blip.

Tayber.

Or a message from a professor. Possibly Viagra spam.

Tay: I’m an asshole.

Only the most heart-crushing asshole on the planet. Wanting to know why he thought he was an asshole, what he felt about what had almost happened between them, she swallowed the hard knot of panic that always grew in her throat whenever she started down this path and let her fingers hover over the keys. She couldn’t resist. Couldn’t even pretend to resist.

Sasha: No you aren’t. Well, maybe. What did you do?

Tay: Took advantage of someone I care about.

He didn’t take enough advantage. Talking to him about herself was almost as painful as the long moments she’d spent stretched out behind him while the movie played, watching the back of his head instead of the tiny screen. She’d restrained herself then.

Sasha: How?

Tay: Kissed someone I shouldn’t have kissed.

Tay: Shit, I shouldn’t talk to you about kissing other girls.

Tay: I AM an asshole.

His concern for her feelings, for Sasha’s feelings, acid-etched guilt into her dirty soul.

Sasha: It’s cool. You can talk to me about anything.

Tay: Good.

The wrongness welled up, a boil she refused to lance. She had to do this. Had to know. And pretending was the only way. The pained expression on his face when he’d realized who he was kissing, like he’d made some horrible mistake, she couldn’t see that again. And he’d wear it if
she
asked him. Sasha, on the other hand, could ask him anything.

Sasha: Why did you kiss her?

Tay: I don’t know.

Liar.

Sasha: You just fell on her lips?

Tay: No

Sasha: She was convenient?

She gnawed the ragged cuticle at the corner of her thumb. Waiting, waiting, waiting for confirmation. She knew it. He’d felt an urge that had nothing to do with her. She was simply the collateral damage of his indiscriminate libido.

Tay: No. She was hurting. I wanted to fix it, and it just happened.

A rush of breath escaped her lips, as if his words had jumped off the screen and pelted her in the chest.

Sasha: Doesn’t sound like you took advantage of her to me.

Tay: She’s my friend. It was wrong.

Sasha: You shouldn’t be friends with the people you kiss?

Tay: Usually I’m not.

A mental slide show looped endlessly in her head, Tayber’s greatest kissing hits. The blonde up against the jukebox at The Brick, one hand splayed on her waist, the other cupping the back of her head, his leg wedged between her thighs. The redhead straddling his lap in the quad, his face buried in her neck.
Jesus.

Sasha: How was it? The kiss?

When she read his answer, it was like he’d rung a bell inside her body.

Tay: Right before I realized I shouldn’t be doing it, it was amazing.

* * *

“T
his is CJ Evans with Random Nonsense on WCCC, The Cube, bringing you some gorgeous girl rock. And I don’t just mean pretty girls. Or even rock, in the traditional sense. I’m talking about capital M music. Lush vocals, arrangements that will drown you, and lyrics that heal while they hurt. Right now, I’m gonna let Ellie Goulding fill up the whole of our souls.”

Jessa flashed an exaggerated eye-roll, exposing so much white it had to hurt, and pulled her headphones down around her neck. “
This Love Will Be Your Downfall
? Really?”

“It’s a great track.”

Jessa wrinkled her nose. Her dreads were knotted on top of her head, poking in every direction as she shook it. “It’s pablum, and you know it.”

“You’d rather I play some crunchy Ani D.?”

“Better. But you don’t need to wallow in that either. An infusion of classic Riot Grrl might do you some good.”

It was how they’d bridged the gap from wary strangers to sort of friends. Dancing on the tiny isthmus of their barely overlapping eclectic tastes, sparring over music choices, debating the merits of indie cred over slick, corporate packaging until Jessa had caved with a huff, “Fine. It doesn’t have to be indie to be cool, but it sure helps.”

Callie ignored the impatient click of Jessa’s tongue stud and braced for the inevitable backlash as she queued up her next selection, a local band’s punk cover of Fiona Apple’s
Criminal.
She held her hand up in protest as soon as the intro hit the sweet spot where Jessa would realize exactly what song she’d chosen. “Don’t.”

“Oh hell no. I hope this streak of what-have-I-done music isn’t about last Friday night because you shouldn’t even worry—”

“No, that’s not it at all.”

“I’m sorry things got so intense. I thought we were having a good time, but Tim was being an ass. I told him I’d eat his balls for breakfast if he ever got that aggressive again. And what was with Tayber dragging you out caveman-style? You two hooking up?” Jessa’s voice was all curiosity and zero venom, but Callie’s palms still prickled, slick with sweat.

“God, no.”

“Don’t hold back on my account. We enjoyed a hot minute, but it was only a diversion. I never even let him past second base.” She spun in her chair, a tornado of mischief, an un-bottled genie. After almost two years, she was finally wearing down Callie’s reserves. She hadn’t understood at first that Jessa always meant what she said. For all her counter-culture trappings, she completely lacked artifice. The idea that Jessa and Tayber had
diverted
each other made her belly flip in an altogether unpleasant way. It wasn’t wrong. It was just so empty.

Callie turned back to her laptop and cross-faded
Criminal
into an alt-country torch song that made her break out in gooseflesh every time she heard it. Random Nonsense was really living up to its name today. She shivered with the opening notes, her throat tight with longing and maybe hope. “So it meant nothing?”

“I wouldn’t say nothing, exactly. But it wasn’t important. It was about feeling good, not about feelings.” Jessa’s mouth opened wide with surprise, like she’d solved a million-dollar puzzle. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”

“I do not.” Callie touched her cheek. Her face flamed hot with shame. She considered crawling under the soundboard. Her pulse sped up in terror of what would happen next. There would be mocking and ostracizing and—

“Oh. My. God. You so do. You’re blushing purple.”

Shit.
Hurt and anger warred with fear. How could she be so stupid? Thinking she finally had a friend she could open up to, just a little. “Please don’t say anything.”

Jessa’s smile faltered and slipped back into place. She pressed her thumb to her forefinger and drew them across her lips. “Zipped.” She wheeled herself closer and squeezed Callie’s knee. “And you have to know by now I would never do that to you.”