Volition (14 page)

“Today was a complete and utter failure,” I tell Catherine and Colin as we walk back to her apartment on Fifth Avenue. “I’m never going to be able to afford living in the city unless I want to live in a cardboard box.”

“Now, I bet you feel bad for that cockroach you killed,” Catherine adds.

I give her a look because she’s trying to make me feel guilty for making a mess of her room in the process. “Not really.”

“Well, you can’t sleep with Catherine forever,” Colin adds, blowing out a puff of smoke. “That’s my job.”

She shoves him to the side, but I can tell he loves every second of it.

“Colin, why are you here anyway? Other than to give us all lung cancer?”

I pull the cigarette from his mouth and put it into my own, but Catherine quickly dislodges it from my lips and throws it into a nearby trashcan.

“You’re both going to kill yourselves.”

“That’s the idea,” Colin says.

I’m thinking it.

We pass Catherine’s research building, and she ducks inside, leaving me with Colin.

“Have fun at dinner.” She winks and gives a quick kiss on Colin’s cheek.

With that, I’m alone with possibly the worst influence in the entire world. If New Tate wants permanent residence inside my body, today will be the battle to see if she can beat out Old Tate in the presence of Colin.

“I’m only here for one day to see you, stupid. Let’s make it count.”

“I can’t,” I tell him, stopping to wipe my brow. “I have dinner plans tonight.”

“Right,” he says. “With me.”

“No, with Hayden.”

“Hayden Rockefeller?”

“How did you know?”

“How do you think?”

Catherine.

“I can’t cancel on him. I’ve already made a huge mess of myself.”

He stops and stares at me.

“Who are you? And what have you done with Tate McKenna? The Tate I know wouldn’t give a shit about anyone, let alone the richest man in Manhattan.” He feels my forehead. “Are you sure this heat isn’t getting to you? Are you on drugs? Can I have some?”

I shove his hand away. “I’m trying to be New Tate.”

“Well,
New Tate
, you really are going to have to cancel your date tonight because I have something for you that I think Old Tate would die for.”

“Fine, but it’s not a date.”

Colin scoffs and puts his cigarette out on his arm, and I watch his face as he relishes the burn.

“If that’s what you really want to tell yourself.”

That’s what I want to tell myself. That’s what I
am
telling myself. But we all know that I am a liar, and liars can’t be unmade.

Then

THE THING I hated the most in life was having Jesse near me at all times. I hated the fact that he somehow got a scholarship to the school where I was the evil queen. I planned on wreaking havoc my entire senior year, and I was distracted because there he was, sitting in his chair, looking at me in all sorts of strange ways during class. He was there in the hallways. He was there in the cafeteria, sitting all by himself. He was there in the dorms. I didn’t know where he lived. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him, but I didn’t have a choice because Jesse Elliott had crawled inside my skin and would most likely reside there for the rest of my existence.

“Tate?”

I hated her voice.

“Tate?”

Shut up.

“Tate?”

I wanted to slap her across the face.

“What, Jasmine?” I didn’t make any effort to hide my disdain.

“Well, I was just wondering if you could read over my article.”

I snatched the paper out of her hands and started to read. Without looking at her face, I made a motion with my hand that told her to walk away, but she didn’t.

“Tate?”

“What?”

“Why is Jesse looking at you like that?”

“He’s not looking at me in any special way. He’s staring off into space. Mark’s looking at me, too.”

I nodded directly at Mark, the entertainment editor, who quickly averted his gaze and went back to his work after being caught.

“See?”

She shook her head.

“Kara, don’t you think Jesse’s looking at her a little weird?”

Kara sidled up to Jasmine. “I think he looks at me like that, too.”

“Ew, Kara.” I looked up from Jasmine’s article. “You’re despicable.”

I took a red pen off my desk and slapped Jasmine’s article down on it.

Ick.

I handed it back to her without a word and walked out of the room to go find Colin for a cigarette. As I walked out of the room, I could feel Jesse’s eyes burning holes through the back of my school-issued cardigan. I pulled it off and threw it on the floor without looking back. At best, maybe someone would trip on it during passing period.

When I found Colin’s classroom, I walked in without looking. The professor was still speaking as I stalked across the room, grabbed Colin, and led him out the door. He didn’t miss a beat, and neither did the professor. No one was surprised that we were ditching classes. No one cared. So long as our parents—or grandparents, in my case—paid the bills, we could do whatever we wanted, except stay over summer break.

Colin handed me a cigarette because he knew I needed it, and that held the tears at bay until we got outside to the parking lot where we got into his car.

“Let me have it, sunshine.”

I was all for the irony because
sunshine
was the last word anyone would ever use to describe me.

He threw my cigarette out the window and pulled me close as I started to sob.

“I can’t do this. I can’t do it anymore.”

He rubbed my back as I started to shake, and my stomach felt like it was going to escape from my body.

“I don’t understand what this is that you have with him, Tate. It scares the hell out of me.”

“I know.” I sniffled. “I want to be free of it.” I knew I would never, ever be free of Jesse Elliott.

“Colin?”

“Tate?”

“Do you think Catherine is your soul mate?”

He nodded. “Yes, but so are you.”

“You can’t have more than one.”

“Not like that, stupid. I’m not in love with you. I just love you. You’re my best friend.”

“I know.” I sighed. “I just want this to end.”

“We all want it to end.”

“I don’t think love is supposed to hurt like this,” I told him.

“It’s not. I think it’s supposed to hurt in a good way, but this isn’t good. This is like a virus taking over your whole body, and he’s just sitting there. He hasn’t even said a word to you, and you’re a mess. You don’t love him.”

“I don’t?”

“Nope.”

We sat there for two more classes until I finished crying. Then, he waited while I reapplied my makeup.

“What am I supposed to do, Colin?”

My entire body felt like it had been ripped from my bones and reassembled by a blind person.

“Just get through it, Tate. Just get through it.
This too shall pass
, and all.”

I wanted to start sobbing all over again. My entire life, I’d wished for someone who would share the same space as I did, on more planes than one. I wanted that one person who I’d feel everywhere, infused in my very existence. I’d asked for this, and now, I wanted to give it back.

Jesse apparently hated me, and I wanted to hate him with everything I had—except that I couldn’t. I would have to fake it until I actually did.

I stood on the sidewalk and threw up my lunch as Colin held back my hair.

I’d damned myself in selfishness, and now, I had to drown in it.

I decided right then and there that if Jesse Elliott was going to kill me, then so be it.

The bile burned my throat.

So be it.

Now

HAYDEN ISN’T ANSWERING his phone, so I have to cancel my date in person.

“Just walk right up and tell him you have plans with another dashing suitor,” Colin tells me.

I’m walking down the stairs to the subway, and I throw my phone in my bag before he can say anything else.

I wish it were that easy.

The hot air hits me, and it’s humid and stale and irrevocably vile. I love it.

I take a deep breath, and then I make my way to the train that will take me to Hayden. I’m not sure why I’m traveling this many blocks uptown just to tell him I can’t go to dinner tonight even though I was the one who did the inviting.

Yes, I do.

There’s something about him.

It’s not the same as Jesse.

Nothing will ever be the same as Jesse. I want to roll my eyes from just thinking about him, and something tugs at my stomach.

I’m not attracted to Jesse physically. He just feels necessary.
Felt
.

Feel.

Felt.

Feel.

I can’t stop feeling.

How unfortunate.

I don’t know anymore. My head and my heart want very different things.

Hayden is a much more pleasant visceral reaction. I don’t hate myself every time I feel his name on my tongue.

The train lurches, and I wade through all the people trying to get up the stairs first, so they can breathe oxygen that hasn’t been in the underworld for the past half century—breathed in by half the world, exhaled into oblivion, and then taken up again.

I reach Hayden’s building, only to be disappointed.

“Mr. Rockefeller is out.”

I open my mouth to ask when he’ll be back, but this doorman is worse than the first and won’t entertain even the look of me.

Lara would have his head.

But I would have Lara’s.

“Can I leave a message?”

A message would be good. It would prove that I was here and took the time to cancel. I braved the sun for him.

Colin’s date had better be worth it.

Colin:
Wear comfortable shoes. Bring a flashlight. There aren’t any restrooms. Leave your phone with Catherine. We both know she’ll be asleep by then. See you at 11:46, darling.

I read Colin’s text and throw my phone on Catherine’s bed.

This is the most ridiculous outing he has ever proposed, and this is Colin Conrad we’re talking about. Nevertheless, at 11:46, I leave my phone next to Catherine’s sleeping body and walk downstairs to meet Colin. He’s standing in the street, wearing all black, and he’s holding an unlit flashlight.

I hear a man whistle at me from behind, and I hate him. I’m wearing dark jeans and a black top with sneakers, which is nothing to whistle at.

“Don’t worry,” Colin says as he slings his arm around my shoulders. “That was for me.”

He’s smoking a cigarette again, and this is the last one I’ll see in his mouth for a while.

“I swear, if you ever smoke another one of those, I’m going to put it out on you,” I tell him as we walk.

“Do it.”

So, I do. I take it out of his mouth and plunge the lit end into his arm. He doesn’t even miss a step.

“That hurt so good.”

“You’re a masochist.”

“So are you.”

“It’s a shame I’m not in love with you, Colin Conrad.”

He pulls me into a dark corner.

“Oh, Tate McKenna, all of night is in love with you.”

Only Colin and Juliet Capulet can say words like that and get away with it.