True (4 page)

Clearly I had to toss my preconceived notions about him out the window. Thousands? The thought made me break out in anxiety-inspired sweat. “Sounds time-consuming. And expensive.”

“Oh, but I have a secret weapon.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. Picking through it, he withdrew and held out a very battered card. “Da-dum. My library card. Sexy, huh?”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. There was something really charming about him, I had to admit. It was like he knew exactly who he was, and he wasn’t afraid to show himself to anyone. And while, yes, he was the bad boy who smoked and was tatted up and wouldn’t hesitate to punch someone in the face, he also liked to read. I admired that. “Awesome. So are you an English major?” I would have never guessed that, but maybe he wanted to be a teacher or something.

“Oh, hell no. I wish. I can’t afford four years of school with no guarantee of a job. I’m getting an associate’s degree as an EMT.” He made a face. “All the anatomy and phys classes suck. But I know if I can push through it, I can get that piece of paper and have a job right away. Only eight months to go. If I don’t fuck it up.”

I felt sympathy for his stress. “If you need help studying, you can call me. That stuff is easy for me.”

“Seriously?” There was a thoughtful expression on his face, and I wondered if that had sounded too conceited.

So I added, “Now if I could figure out what anything means in
A Streetcar Named Desire
. God, I’m so bad at it. Today in class I felt like I was listening to a foreign language. Symbolism sucks.”

“Maybe we can trade off, because I can help you with that. That’s my thing.” He pulled out his phone. “Give me your number, and we can study together sometime this week.”

“Okay, cool.” I wasn’t sure if that was actually cool or not. It seemed like maybe it was actually a bad idea, but I couldn’t pinpoint why that would be bad. Other than the fact that I still felt awkward that he knew I was a virgin, and he had seen me on the floor fending off Grant. But maybe if we hung out, none of that would seem important anymore and I could relax around him.

So I gave him my number and he immediately dialed it, so that I would have his, too.

“How does Thursday look for you?” he asked.

“I should be free.” My heart was beating faster than normal, and I wanted desperately to wipe my hands on my jeans.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later.” He picked up his bag and turned to go. Then he paused and asked, “Hey, do you sell condoms here?”

I blinked. The change of subject caught me off guard, but I also felt a sudden tight pit in my stomach at the realization that he had, was, and would continue to have sex with my roommate, and possibly any number of other girls. It made me feel rejected and jealous, which was stupid.

Angry at my own reaction, I just shook my head. “No. The closest place is probably Walgreens across the street.”

“Thanks.” He winked at me, yanking the tank top back off the rack on his way past. “I’m buying this. Catch you later, Rory.”

I didn’t even want to think about who he was buying that for. Suddenly I wasn’t sure that tutoring with Tyler was going to be healthy for me.

But I also knew I wasn’t going to cancel.

I was too curious.

And oddly attracted to him.

***

Walking across campus with Kylie after our mutual calculus class on Wednesday, I kicked the leaves with the toes of my black riding boots, pushing my hands into the pockets of my peacoat. It had been an unusually cold October, and I could almost smell winter in the air. When I had first come to school as a freshman, I had missed the small-town feel of where I’d grown up, an hour out of Cincinnati. Our campus was urban, built in a depression in the geography, so the whole layout felt a bit like a bowl, with the stadium right in the center, buildings rising around it in a circle. But I was used to the constant press of architecture now, and there were still green spaces to hang out in.

“So what should we wear on Saturday?” Kylie said, walking beside me in skinny jeans and fuzzy boots that looked like an acrylic sheep had died to produce them. She had an equally fuzzy cap on, yet half of her chest was exposed to show off her cleavage. It seemed like a meteorological oxymoron to me. Then she added, “I want Nathan to see me and jizz in his pants,” and I forgot all about her conflicting wardrobe pieces.

I laughed. “Eew. Why would you want that?”

“I don’t mean literally. I just want him to see me and instantly want to bone me.”

“I don’t think that’s a problem. He pretty much looks at you like that all the time.” Nathan was actually a really nice guy as far as I could tell. He had grown up with Tyler and Grant and shared an apartment with a guy named Bill who drove home to Columbus every weekend to visit his high school girlfriend, giving Nathan and Tyler the run of the place.

Sometimes I wondered if Nathan wanted to be more than just a hook-up for Kylie because he was always kissing the top of her head and trying to hold her hand. She brushed him off with teasing words and laughter most of the time, and he took it good-naturedly, but I felt kind of bad for him. Kylie wasn’t at the point in her life when she wanted to be committed—she was having too much fun snagging male attention everywhere she could, and I didn’t blame her. If I could pull it off without vomiting, I would love to flirt with more than one guy at a time.

“You think so? Well, I was trying to decide which costume I should wear. Last Halloween I was a sexy cop and I was thinking about being a sexy nurse this year, but that seems so expected.”

“It does,” I said quite honestly. The only options that seemed available to girls for Halloween were sexy fill-in-the-blank. You could be anything from a sexy zombie to a sexy schoolteacher, but if you wanted your tits and ass covered in any real capacity, you were out of luck. Of course, sexy anything suited Kylie. But I still felt like being creative was at least a little bit important. “Why don’t you be a sexy Roller Derby girl? You can wear skates, and it will set you apart from all the other girls at the party.” I knew that was important to her, to not just blend in with the sea of gorgeous and tanned blondes on campus.

“Hm. Maybe.”

“Plus, you can elbow Nathan just for fun. I bet he’ll actually think that’s hot. Guys like bitches.” Why was a mystery to me, but again, it was a logic issue. I pulled my coat tighter and sniffled. I felt like I was getting a cold, and I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to go to the party after the football game on Saturday. I certainly wasn’t going to wear a sexy anything if I did.

“I bet Tyler doesn’t like bitches.”

Ugh. I so did not want to talk to Kylie about Tyler. I didn’t even want to think about Tyler.

“You should go as a sexy scientist,” Kylie said. “And you can offer to experiment on him.”

I laughed. “You do know me, don’t you? There is no way those words would ever come out of my mouth.”

“I know,” she said cheerfully. “But I can only live in hope.” She hooked her arm through mine. “Shit, it’s cold.”

“It would probably help if you covered your breasts.”

“God, so practical all the time. Prude.”

“Slut.” This was an affectionate exchange we had established early on in our freshman year when we had in fact realized we did like each other, for no discernible reason.

Kylie and Jessica had been friends in high school in Troy, and they had requested to room together. There had been a dorm-room shortage and so they had randomly placed me as the third in their room, and we’d been together ever since. I had only had a couple of friends in high school and they had been like me, quiet and studious. But I liked to think that the three of us balanced each other out a little, and I had certainly learned to respect differences.

“So if you could have sex with anyone on campus, who would you pick? Because we’re going to make this happen. You cannot go through life a virgin—it’s just too sad.”

“I don’t know.”

But I was lying.

A face had already popped up in front of me, though I would never have admitted it, even under threat of forcing me to become a literature major if I didn’t respond.

Chapter Four

“I think your problem is memorization,” I told Tyler as we sat in the back of a coffee shop, his cup of black coffee drained, my latte cooling quickly. His anatomy book was spread out in front of us, and I was going over his last exam with him—he’d gotten a 76. “You understand the principles of how the parts function, you just don’t have the terminology down.”

His head was propped on his chin, and he was sprawled across the table. His leg had been inching closer to mine over the past half hour, and I had repeatedly shifted to the left, wishing we weren’t sitting on the same side of the booth. “Has anyone ever told you that you have pretty hair?” he asked, completely ignoring what I’d just said. “Because you do.”

My hand had been on its way to my cup, and with his words, I jerked, shooting the cup across the table and onto the floor, coffee dribbling out. “You’re not even trying to study,” I accused, leaning over to pick up the cup, my palms sweating a little. Where the hell had that ridiculous line come from? I could see his legs under the table and he spread his feet even farther apart, his thigh brushing mine. I swallowed hard.

“Sure I am. I heard every word you said. I need to do more memorization. And it is anatomy.” He was watching me, intently, not smiling. “I’m studying your anatomy, so I’m still on task.”

For some reason, I felt like he was making fun of me. I couldn’t figure out how exactly, but it just felt too rehearsed, trite. “That’s the dumbest line I’ve ever heard,” I told him flatly.

The corner of his mouth tilted up. “You’re a tough one. I like that.”

“I’m not tough. I just don’t want to be here all night and you haven’t learned anything.” I sounded like his mother and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. He made me flustered, and I had no tools to deal with his odd, flirtatious behavior.

“I’ve learned that your hair is beautiful.” He reached over and lazily pulled a strand out, stretching it toward him.

The touch made me shiver. I considered my hair my best asset. It was long and thick and glossy, with a baby-soft fine texture. That he would choose to point it out confused me. Torn between wanting to be flattered and feeling that he was just avoiding studying, I yanked my hair away from him. “You need to stop lifting your lines from pornos. Not all girls are going to fall for that crap.”

“What do you know about pornos? You have a secret addiction to sex videos?” He still didn’t sit up, but he drew his textbook closer to him.

I had backed myself into a corner with that one. “No, of course not! I am just making assumptions about the behavior in them.”

“You’re too smart to make assumptions.”

He was right. I felt neatly put in my place, but at the same time, I felt like he was complimenting me.

“Step outside with me for a second. I need a cigarette and that’s why I can’t concentrate.” He stood up, nudging me to leave the booth. He made no move to collect his books or his bag.

“We can’t just leave our stuff here,” I said, though I did stand up to move out of his way. “I’ll just stay.”

“No one is going to steal your textbook. You probably couldn’t give it away.”

“Someone could resell it.”

“For five bucks?” Tyler held his hands out and looked around the coffee shop. There was one guy asleep in the opposite corner and a couple of girls who were both buried in their cell-phone screens. “This isn’t a crime wave waiting to happen.”

Because I knew he was right, I was tempted to force my point just on principle, but I didn’t want to look belligerent. I did grab my nearly empty latte and took it with me to throw away. “Five minutes, that’s it. We need to go through all your muscle groups.”

He turned and I realized exactly where his thoughts had gone by the twitch of his mouth and his raised eyebrows. “Sounds kinky.”

I wished. “It’s not.”

“God, you’re so in control,” he said, pushing open the front door and digging in his pocket to retrieve a pack of Camel cigarettes. “I can’t break you. I keep trying, and nothing.”

“What is it that you want me to do?” I asked, genuinely curious. I wasn’t sure what I was failing to produce, and while I had no intention of changing in any way, I did want to understand. Maybe it would give me insight into how other people related, into why it was so difficult for me to establish relationships.

Tyler pulled a cigarette out of the pack and stuck it in his mouth. He held the pack out to me in offering, and I shook my head no. Lighting it, he took a deep drag, then blew it out to the side.

“I keep trying to direct our conversations and you won’t follow me. You’re just like . . .” he pushed his hands down toward the ground. “Firm.”

Firm
. A guy I thought was actually hot with a capital
H
was describing me as
firm
. I didn’t even know what that meant, but it certainly wasn’t something a guy would want to date. No wonder I’d never had a boyfriend.

I stared at him as he stood there in the cool night air, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and not looking even remotely cold, his biceps cut and well-defined. When he lifted his cigarette to his mouth again, I saw there was another tattoo on the inside of his wrist. His movements were confident, casual, and as the smoke rose in front of his chiseled face, I suddenly wondered what he looked like naked.

Firm
. That’s what I imagined he would look like. For a guy, that was an awesome word, with several positive implications. But for a girl, unless he was talking about your ass, not so much of a compliment.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told him honestly.

“I know you don’t. That’s what I find so cool and interesting. You’re just you. You’re real.”

He might as well have said that
real
was a synonym for
freak
. But there was nothing fake about me, that was true, and there never would be. I had no ability to fake it, to lie and giggle and flirt my way through conversations with guys. So maybe that was the truth of it—unless I chose to do that, I was going to be alone because I was too honest. Too unflinching. Guys wanted to be flirted with, stroked, coaxed.

“Thank you,” I said, because I wanted him to understand I appreciated that he got me. It made me feel like maybe we could actually be friends if he wasn’t put off by my directness and occasional failure to follow social protocol.

For some reason, my response made him grin. “Rory.”

It didn’t sound like a question, but I still asked, “What?” when he didn’t continue. “And your five minutes is almost up.”

“You’re cute.”

Cute like puppies are cute when they’re running along and wipe out for no reason, an adorable clumsy ball of not-so-bright. It was a compliment, and I believed he meant it. It just wasn’t the one I wanted.

“You’re down to thirty seconds. You’d better suck harder.”

He laughed. Then he stepped forward, cigarette hands-free in his mouth, and touched both of my shoulders. He rubbed me vigorously, the motion making my head jerk back and forth. “Relax. It’s all good, babe,” he said, words mumbled from around the filter.

The tangy sweetness of his cigarette rose between us, and I was cold from the wind, yet his hands were warm on my shoulders, heating through my sweater. They were bigger than I had expected, two large masses wrapping almost entirely around my upper arms, and I was aware of how tall he was, how broad his chest. He filled the space, enveloping me without even being that close, and I wanted what I couldn’t have. I wanted to be the girl who could flirt, who could hair-flip. If I were her, I would go on my toes and pull that cigarette out and toss it to the ground, then kiss his mouth, running my hands over his chest, and he would kiss me back.

In reality, none of those things would happen.

“Do you know what the latissimus dorsi and rhomboids are?”

His right hand pulled away from me and he removed his cigarette from his mouth. Smoke filtered out with his words. “I have no fucking clue.”

“My point precisely.”

“God, you’re hard-core.” But he didn’t sound at all annoyed.

An hour later, our positions had reversed. I had refilled my latte twice and was jittery with caffeine, and I wanted nothing to do with selfish characters. “If you need to smoke, we can break at any time,” I told Tyler, trying to sound generous. “I don’t mind.”

His eyebrow shot up. “I bet you don’t. But forget about it. I can wait until you’ve at least created an outline for your essay.”

I was tempted to thunk my head on the table. “I don’t get it. I mean, not a single one of these characters is likeable. Stanley is a douche bag, Stella is a doormat, and Blanche is a drunk.”

“The point of
Streetcar
is not for you to want to be buddies with these characters. It’s to explore relationships.” Tyler was looking at my professor’s description of the intended essay on my tablet, his lips moving as he read the instructions. He had the book propped open with his forearm, and I didn’t even care that he was cracking the spine. The book was cracked, in my opinion.

“All their relationships are delusional, from what I can tell. Blanche hides in the dark so men don’t guess her real age, she and her sister pretend that nothing bad has ever happened, Stanley doesn’t do anything but play poker and boss Stella around. If they would just like communicate with each other, they could resolve all their issues in ten minutes.”

“That’s what makes the book so realistic,” he told me dryly. “Real people don’t discuss shit with each other.”

He had a point. I didn’t really discuss my emotions with anyone, either. I had spent most of my life being a silent observer. “Oh.”

In one fell swoop, I got it. Literature wasn’t intended to be about perfect people, it was about flaws, very real and very deep human flaws.

“What’s that? Did you hear that?” Tyler cocked his head to the side and cupped his ear. “It’s the sound of the lightbulb clicking on over Rory’s head.”

“Ha ha. Okay, I guess I get it. But I don’t know, shouldn’t there be like a lesson or something from a story?”

“Why?”

Shifting on my seat, I tried to find the words to express my frustration. “I guess what is the value of a book if there isn’t a lesson?”

“That’s the scientist in you speaking.”

It was, but I still wanted to prove my point. “For example, Stella is being abused by her husband, yet not only does she tolerate it, she seems to enjoy it on a certain level. Is it healthy to perpetuate that kind of abusive fantasy to female readers? Why would she think it’s sexy to have her husband throwing shoes around and breaking things in the height of passion?”

“I think that may have something to do with your, you know, status.” He flashed his fingers in a
V
to me.

Really? He was not talking about Victory or Peace. He was referencing my virginity.

“You haven’t, um, experienced how hot getting a little rough can be.”

Stunned, my cheeks burned with embarrassment. The image of Tyler picking Jessica up and tossing her onto the bed in a fit of overwhelming lust crowded out my rational thoughts, and I felt nauseous.

“You’re right. I don’t.” I probably never would either. “But hitting a woman is never okay.”

“Of course not!” He looked offended. “Hitting her and throwing a shoe are two totally different things. Any sort of direct physical contact is not cool. Neither is forcing her to do anything she doesn’t want to.” He gave me a long look. “I think you’d know my feelings on that.”

He was talking about Grant. Humiliation washed over me, and I was back on the stained carpet, shoving ineffectually at Grant’s chest, trying to break his hold. I was grateful to Tyler for his actions on my behalf, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be reminded of them. The truth was, he knew far too many personal details about me.

“I’m done studying.” I yanked the book out from under his arm and shoved it into my backpack. Snapping the lid shut on my tablet, I jumped out of the booth.

“Wait, Rory, I didn’t mean . . .”

“I know.” I cut him off, because I would be a hypocrite if I stood there and refused to be reasonable after I had just complained about characters behaving the same way. But that didn’t mean I wanted to go into any detail.

“Sit down. Please.” His hand reached out and grabbed my wrist.

If he had left it like that, I probably would have jerked away. But he slid his fingers down across my sensitive skin until they were entwined with mine. The feeling was so intimate, so unexpected, that I plunked down on the wooden bench, speechless, all embarrassment driven right out of me.

He squeezed my hand and stared at me intently, his knee bumping mine. “We’re good?”

I nodded. “Yeah. We’re good.” I wasn’t sure why or what
good
actually meant, but I didn’t really want to leave.

***

“Hey, Rory, how are you today?” Joanne asked as she passed by me with a cat cradled in her arms.

“Good. How are you? How are the kids?” I was on the floor at the animal shelter Friday afternoon, running a brush across a Yorkie named Licorice. His eyes were watery, the left one cloudy from a cataract. He sat patiently between my legs and closed his eyes each time I stroked the brush through his fur. The longer we sat there, the closer his warm body leaned toward mine.

“Driving me crazy. Back talking and going over on their texting allowance. Then Heather had the nerve to sneak out of her room, steal ten bucks from my purse, and meet up with that loser gangbanger at the bowling alley.” Joanne was in her forties, curvy, with blond hair that she still rolled and sprayed in the way she probably had in high school. She was supersweet and great with the animals, affectionate with me. Yet every time I saw her, it seemed like one of her kids was off on a rebellious streak. “I don’t know what to do. You’re young. What the hell is going through their heads?”

I shook my own head. “I have no idea. I never did any of that stuff. One time I got mad and told my dad to shut up, then I cried and apologized for the next two hours.”

She set the cat down on the table and scratched him behind the ears. “I wish you were my daughter.” Looking around the room, she added, “Have you seen Lois? I need to give this guy his insulin and his chart is missing.”