Underneath It All (18 page)

The beat of the song grew more intense, and Eve then turned around and began to grind her back into him.

“Would you like a drink?” I heard that familiar husky tone of Red’s voice. He stood beside me and offered me a drink. I greedily grabbed it and sipped the cold liquid, letting it soothe the burning in my throat.

He offered me another and I took it. “Thanks,” I smiled at him.

I suddenly felt too light-headed. The room spun and I realized it was nearly impossible to stand on my feet. Arms immediately came around me before I fell on the floor.

“Agata, look at me. Are you okay?” Red’s hand framed my face, forced me to open my eyes. Next thing I knew, he was dragging me away from the crowd. I was blinking harshly to get rid of my blurry vision. I could see Reeve from afar. He was visible, but the edges were blurred. His back was to me. Eve was restraining him from looking backward. I wanted to scream but I could hardly talk.

“Red…” I groaned.

“We’re almost there,” he soothed. After a while, he grabbed me by my shoulders and pinned me against the wall. He was about to kiss me. I didn’t even have the power to jerk my head away. His lips crashed on mine, and then both of us stumbled to the floor.

There was Reeve, knocking the hell out of Red.

“Come on.” He tried to pull me to a standing position, but the room spun and my stomach heaved so violently that I had to lean heavily on him, gasping for breath. He immediately slipped a hand around my back to hold me up. “Can you walk?”

Before I knew it, I was swept off of my feet and cradled in Reeve’s arms. If I had any sort of grasp on reality, I would have tried to force him to put me down. Instead, I simply snuggled into his warm body and drew from the heat that radiated off him and the strength he held me with.

He carried me out of the house and made our way past some guests that gasped and murmured.

He tucked me into his car, leaning over me to strap me in. “I’m taking you home.”

Everything around me was hazy; my head felt as though it had detached from my body. I wasn’t sure what was real and what was not. I clung to Reeve in my attempt to grasp reality.

He started the car and the anxiety that was making my heart race finally began to subside. With a sigh of relief, I settled back into the leather seat and drifted to sleep.

Chapter XX

Think Out Loud

I woke up to a loud banging at the door. I grimaced; my head was pounding in pain.

“Help! Help, please! Open the door!”

I knew that voice; it was my mom’s. Her voice echoed through the thin walls.

“I’m coming!”

I sighed heavily and tried hauling myself out of my bed. It did feel like my bed but how did I get here? I stood shakily on my legs, taking baby steps to open the door and peeked through it; there stood my mother.

She looked anxiously at me. “They are arguing downstairs. Please help me stop them.”

“Mom, what are you talking about? Who is arguing?” I asked while yawning and rubbing my eyes as I followed her and stumbled into the kitchen, where I heard raised voices—my dad’s and Mik’s.

“I can’t believe I wasted my money on both of you!”

I leaned against the door frame, looking at them both in frustration. “What is going on here?” Both of their heads turned in my direction.

“Agata, get your ass in here now,” Dad ordered. He was casually dressed in his long sleeve and khaki pants. “We need to talk.”

I had never seen Dad that mad. It was creeping me out. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I was scared out of my wits.

I didn’t move. Did he find out what happened last night? The unknown of it all made me sweat and felt even more nervous. “C-can’t it wait? It’s early in the morning. Can I just go back to sleep and we’ll talk later?”

I eyed Mik, who was still in his suit and chucks outfit from last night. He looked like he already endured Dad’s first wave of rage.

“It’s already 1:00 in the afternoon for it to be too early in the morning,” Dad scoffed. The serious look on his face scared me to death.

Fuck. I overslept.

“He said sit down.” Mom motioned to me to take a seat. She was nervously shaking like a teenage brat about to be scolded by Dad.

The moment I was seated, Dad put a piece of paper down in front of me. “This came in the mail this morning, express delivery from Gates University.”

Mik let out an exasperated sigh, shaking his head and turned his back on us.

“Brandy, honey, why don’t you stay in the living area and go watch your favorite TV show?” Dad walked Mom out of the kitchen.

I thought the soothing and calming voice of Dad toward Mom would eventually carry over to me but it didn’t.

I looked down at the paper. It read:

Your son and daughter, Mikael and Agata Ferrero, have been expelled from Gates University.

My hands were shaking as I held the letter in my hands. Shit.

Dad stepped back into the kitchen and sat down right across from me. His face rested on his hand and he looked at me with the most disappointed look I’ve ever seen. He stared at me waiting for an answer.

“Care to explain the meaning of this?” Dad glared at me.

“She’s not explaining anything. She didn’t do anything wrong. That’s bullshit!” Mikael butted in.

“Shut up, Mikael! I’m not talking to you!” Dad was quick to point a finger at his face. Mik’s face seemed to drain of all color; the reflexive anger on his face went with it.

“We’ve been e-expelled?” I couldn’t even finish that word.

“What happened,
Agata?
” yelled Dad and I almost fell off my seat.

“I…I’m s-sorry, Dad,” I mumbled, tears started to fill my eyes.

“That’s what you get for being in a relationship with your dean. He’s going to be your downfall.”

Fresh tears sprung in my eyes but I impatiently blinked them away.

“I thought you two knew better than being expelled when you are about to graduate! Damn it!” he shouted as he banged the wooden kitchen table, then rubbed his hands over his eyes.

“Yeah, that’s what you thought, Dad, and what we thought was parents should be taking care of their kids. Unfortunately, that’s not the case; the kids took care of themselves instead.” Mik’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.

“What did you say, Mikael?” Dad’s head jerked up in his direction.

“Mik, shut your mouth, will you?” I told him.

Mikael took a step back until he was backed against the wall. He bit his lower lip and tried to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over.

Silence. It took us a moment to absorb everything. Until finally, Dad broke the awkward silence.

“I went to the university this morning to clarify this thing. President Gates issued the expulsion and it’s irrevocable.”

“For what grounds?” I inquired, sniffing.

“Student misconduct. Committing an act of obscenity. Kissing your dean inside the school premises. Is this true, Agata?” Dad gritted the words out between his teeth.

I responded with an embarrassed nod. I began to sob, hating the fact that I disappointed my parents.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” I choked out through tears.

“Do they have evidence that it occurred?” Mik asked.

“The president showed me pictures of you and your dean kissing inside his office,” Dad said through his clenched teeth while staring at me.

“What?” Mik shrieked. “Fuck them! They are clearly spying on Agata.”

“She shouldn’t be having tongue fights with your dean in the first place,” Dad remarked. “I thought you’re intelligent, Agata; you should have used that brain inside your head!” Dad stood up from his chair and pointed a finger against my temple, repeatedly with sheer force, jerking my head backwards so I almost lost balance from where I was seated. “You clearly disappointed me.”

“Wow, Dad, you thought a lot of things about us. How about knowing us?”

“Shut the fuck up, Mik! It’s our goddamn fault we were expelled,” I hissed.

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s my fault; I deserved that academic dismissal, but you don’t!” He walked closer to Dad until he was facing him. “I’ve been ditching classes. I’ve been gone for several weeks for a gig in another state and I was jailed for marijuana.” Mik paused, swallowing the lump in his throat after his voice got a little higher with each sentence. “I almost got expelled every year but she always saved my ass. All of it you know nothing about!” The sudden rush of memories was enough to spill the tears he was trying to hold back.

“I’ve always been there for the both of you,” Dad’s voice had dropped.

“Yeah, you were.” Mik let out a sarcastic laugh. “That’s why it was either Uncle Ken or Uncle Gin, sometimes Marge or Elena who were always attending our school affairs. There was a time I failed one of my subjects when I was a sophomore. You know what Agata did for me? She went out with my dirty old professor just for me to pass. It was a pretty decent dinner with an indecent proposal, though, that shouldn’t have happened in the first place if at least one of my parents was available.”

I stood up from my seat to stop Mik from saying anything far more hurtful to Dad. “Mik, stop it.” I held his arm but he shoved me away.

Dad continued to stare at him. His face that stared back had an ill pallor about it, hollow cheeks, and sunken tired looking eyes ringed with dark circles.

“Don’t you know Agata has a phobia with thunderstorms? Don’t you know she loves photography so much, but she sacrificed what she loves and stomached biology just to make you hap—”

“Mik, stop please,” I pleaded.

“I’m not done yet, sister.”

“You thought you were there for us, Dad, when all you did was take care of Mom!”

Dad, slumped back in his seat, kept shaking his head. “That’s not true,” he mumbled repeatedly. I saw his face, weighed down with all the pain and emotion and I felt something heavy and sharp twist in my chest.

“You’re so busy taking care of her you have forgotten you also have children who need you.” I felt my heart constrict and my chest hurt more as Mik spoke again. “You’ve always been our father but never our Dad.”

Dad wept in front of us and it broke my heart right in two.

“I…I’m sorry,” Dad muttered.

The dam broke, then, and I was weeping, silently and my shoulders were shaking.

“I have to go.”

“M-Mik wait.”

Mik was about to leave but he was halted to a stop when Mom appeared in the kitchen door crying.

“I’m sorry,” she uttered whether coherently or incoherently but the sight of her standing in front of me crying shattered my heart.

Mik pulled her forward into his embrace and held her close for a while then he left.

Mom cried on and off all day. Her blood pressure went up; we got scared and took her to the hospital.

“I’m at St. Croix right now. Mom has been hospitalized again. Are you mad at me? Call me, please. I need you right now.” It was the second voicemail I left on Reeve’s phone. Again, he had disappeared off the face of the earth.

I didn’t know if he was mad at me. Was he massively embarrassed at what happened at Rogue’s party? For the love of God, I didn’t know what happened. I was hoping he could give me some answers but for the nth time, he was gone.

I sat on the curb outside of the hospital and lit up a cigarette.

“No smoking this close to a hospital.”

Reeve sat down next to me and took my cigarette, crushing it with the sole of his shoe.

Although I couldn’t deny it was a good view, it was nicer just having him around again.

“How’s your mom?”

“She’s critical.”

Reeve smiled sympathetically and put his arms around me.

“You guys had an argument today?” Reeve asked.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Mik was out of line. I think Mom heard our conversation and had some nervous breakdown.”

“Mik was just thinking out loud.”

“How’d you know?” My head jerked up to look at him.

“Mik called Rogue, and then she called me and told me what happened.”

The mentioned of Rogue’s name brought another wave of sadness, guilt, and embarrassment in me. “I didn’t mean to ruin her party,” my voice trembled mildly.

“It’s not your fault,” Reeve replied firmly, his husky voice still low and soft.

“Where have you been? I’ve been calling you all day but all my calls went to your voicemail.”

“I took care of something.”

“What is it?”

He just smiled at me and kissed my forehead.

“I heard about the expulsion.”

“Yeah, President Gates expelled us both. That’s when the argument started. Dad confronted us about the expulsion and it stretched on and on until it got out of hand.”

He held my hand and caressed it with his cheek. “No one is going to be expelled. I’ll make sure it won’t happen.” He held me tighter in his arms, my head resting on his chest. I felt the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. It was right there in his arms where I found blissful, peaceful, and loving relief.