“Come on, bro; let’s go back to your room.” I took his weight from her. Drunk, he was even heavier than normal.
“Why don’t you go ahead and see if anyone is around so we can get him to his room without him getting busted.” Mom would have a coronary, and then Steve would have to pull some strings and make it go away. I’d rather not have to go through all that in the first place.
She nodded and held the door for us and went on ahead, making sure the coast was clear. I swiped the card to his door and got him on his bed.
“I wanna go out. Let’s party,” Zack said.
“No, you need to sit down.”
“I don’t wanna sit down.” He gave me a good shove, but I was ready for it.
This was going to be a long night.
***
Zack finally passed out an hour later, after throwing whatever he could get his hands on, and slugging me in the stomach twice. Katie stayed, even though I told her I had it under control.
“I hate it when he gets like this,” she said as he snored with his mouth wide open. She brushed back some of his hair. Even though he was passed out, she was still under his spell.
“He’ll be fine. Just let him sleep it off.”
She covered him with a blanket, tucking it in as if he was a child. He certainly acted like one.
“Thanks,” she said as we closed his door and walked toward the stairs.
“He’s my brother,” I answered.
When we got to the second floor, she gave me a little tight smile and kept walking to her floor. To Charlotte’s floor.
I had a few more missed calls from Tate asking me to party again. And one that Miss Carole had left for me during the football game. I’d been avoiding her, and she was getting suspicious.
I paced my room a few times before I called her.
“Hey, Miss Carole.”
“Alex, hello.” The relief in her voice was palpable. The fact that she worried so much about me made my throat hurt.
“I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I’ve been really busy.”
“By the tone of your voice, I’m going to guess it wasn’t because you’ve been spending time with that girl we talked about. Alex, you don’t have to be ashamed to tell me anything. I’ll love you no matter what.” It was one of those things that parents said, but when she said it, I actually believed her. Miss Carole didn’t lie to me.
“I hung out with Tate.” She didn’t need details, most of which I couldn’t remember anyway.
“I’m not going to lecture you, since I’m pretty sure you’ve already lectured yourself. Did you learn anything from the experience?”
“It wasn’t what I thought it would be. It wasn’t the same.”
“See? This is why I say you need to make your own mistakes. You are the best teacher you’ll ever have.” She’d said it more than once to me.
“So you’re not mad at me?”
“No, Alex, I’m not mad at you,” she said, laughing. I loved her laugh. It always made her sound like a much-younger woman.
I went on to fill her in on everything else, including Stryker and my interactions with Charlotte, including the hand-holding.
“Well Alex, it seems that your mysterious charm wins out.”
“She says she still hates me.”
“Actions are stronger than words, Alex, but you know that.”
I did.
Lottie
“So you and Zan seemed pretty cozy. What the hell was that about?” Katie said that night when she got back from taking care of drunken Zack. The rest of us had gone out to get Chinese. I was prostrate on my bed, pretty sure I was never going to move again because I’d eaten too much.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“I saw you holding hands. I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t.”
She came and stood right next to my bed and looked down at me. “Then why were you holding his hand?”
I shrugged. “Because my hands were cold, and his were warm, and because I didn’t know how to say no.”
Katie smirked. “Well, you looked pretty into it. So did he.”
“What?” I finally sat up, making the food slosh uncomfortably in my stomach.
“Are you fucking blind? Zan is totally into you.”
“What?” I said again. Her words didn’t make sense. Zan into me?
“Will you stop saying that?”
“I’ll stop saying it when you explain what you’re talking about.” She made an exasperated sound and went back to her own bed.
“Just be careful with that one. You know what they say about the quiet types.”
I was saved from continuing the uncomfortable conversation by a call from Lexie. I hadn’t been able to visit since our zoo trip, but I’d been calling her on schedule, and she seemed better.
“Hey, Lex!”
“Hi Lottie, this is Kay.” Her tone told me instantly that something was wrong. I’d heard it to many times before.
“How’s Lex?”
She took a breath before she answered. “She’s not doing so well. She had an episode and she found one of the knives in the kitchen.” Her voice quivered and I wanted to beg her to stop. I didn’t want to know.
“She’s okay, but she’s in the hospital. I just wanted you to know. She’s going to recover, but we’re thinking about putting her in a facility for a little while. There’s an excellent one in Texas where they’re trained in to help people with injuries like hers. I wanted to thank you for all you’ve done for her the past couple of years. You’ve been the best friend she could have asked for and even though she has her moments, she always asks for you.”
My voice broke and Katie looked up from her phone. “Can I see her?”
“I don’t think so, honey. She’s having a rough time right now, and she needs to concentrate on getting better. You need to do your own thing. You’ve done so much already, and I can never thank you enough for that.”
“Can I talk to her?” The tears were coming soon, but I wanted them to wait until I got off the phone.
“She’s still asleep. Oh, honey. I’m sorry this is the way it has to be. I’ll let you know when we get her settled, okay?”
I had no choice but to say, “Okay.”
“Bye, Lottie.”
“Bye.” I stared at the phone in my hand and gave the tears permission to come.
“Is everything okay?” Katie said.
“No.” I didn’t want to be in my room anymore, but I didn’t know where else to go. I could go talk to Will and he and Simon would make me feel better. Or I could call Mom and let her give me a literary prescription. None of those sounded like good options.
“I’ll be back later,” I said, grabbing my lanyard from my desk.
“Where are you going?”
“For a walk,” I said, shoving my warm boots on.
“Alone?” It was starting to get dark, and it wasn’t smart to be walking alone at this time of night alone, especially on a Saturday night. I brought my phone with me and grabbed a jacket. My whistle and pepper spray were on my keychain in easy reach.
“See you later,” I said.
I shut the door and headed for the stairs, my eyes blurry with tears. I wasn’t looking where I was going and crashed headfirst into someone carrying a laundry basket.
I went flying. The clothes went flying. I waited for the crash of my body and the feeling of pain, but an arm pulled me and I ended up on top of something that wasn’t the floor.
“We should really stop meeting like this.”
I stared down into the eyes of Zan. His arms were around my waist and my body was pressed against his full length.
Zan moved, trying to slide himself out from under me and I was pressed against all sorts of areas I’d never been pressed against. It took me a second to realize there was a pair of boxer shorts on my head.
“You look good in my clothes.” As if this wasn’t a shocking enough situati
on, he smiled.
“You’re smiling,” I said.
“Yes, I’ve been known to do so every now and then.”
“We should probably get off the floor.” I was going to have to peel myself off him.
“Probably.” He pulled the boxers off my head and tossed them near the upended laundry basket. “You’re going to have to get up first,” he said. Our faces were so close our noses almost bumped.
“Oh, right.” I put my hands on the floor and sort of rolled off him onto my back. I thought about getting up, but my brain didn’t seem to think it was a good idea. Too much to process at once.
Zan sat up and looked down at me.
“Are you okay? You’ve been crying.” He pulled his knees up and rested his arms on them. The laundry had been forgotten. I finally sat up and found a sock on my foot. I took it off and handed it to him.
“I’m sorry” he said, and the apology hit me like a punch.
“Oh yeah?” I turned my head so I could look at him, my rage over the injustice of it all boiling to the surface. “Tell me how sorry you are.”
“Can’t we just talk?” he said.
“We are talking.”
“I’ve spent every single second of my life since I woke up in the hospital remembering that day and thinking about it and wishing it could have happened differently. It’s one of the last things I think about before I go to bed and one of the first when I wake up. I see the scars every day.” His eyes locked on mine and I couldn’t look away.
“Scars?”
“Yeah. I’ll show you.” He stood up and started pulling his shirt off. I almost put my hands in front of my face, but I didn’t.
In between noticing his stomach was toned, and he had those v things on his sides that dipped into his pants, my eyes traced the ropes of scars that covered his left side.
Since his skin was so dark, the scars were lighter, and thick with tissue. They covered the left side of his body from his stomach to his shoulders and partway down his arms.
There was one more thing that made me stare. Interweaved between the scars was a tattoo that covered most of that half of his body. A tree with gnarled and bending branches that reached out and down his arm. There was even a little bird perched on one of the branches.
I’d never seen something so heartbreaking and so beautiful at the same time. It made me want to cry, except I already was.
“Do you want to take a walk with me?” I blurted out.
Chapter Twenty-three
Zan
“It’s a little cold out,” I said after recovering from the shock of her asking me to go somewhere with her. “But I don’t want you going out alone.”
“You can put your shirt on,” she said, motioning to my bare chest.
“Oh, good.” I slid it over my head as she tried not to stare and failed. I held my hand out to help her up from the floor. She let go as soon as she was on her feet.
“Just let me get my laundry into my room and grab my coat. Looks like I’m going to have to re-wash everything.” I picked up my clothes, including several pairs of boxers.
She wiped a few more tears from her cheeks. I wanted to know what had caused them. Charlotte didn’t cry easily.“Are you okay?”
“I have quarters. You know, if you need some. My mom gave me and my brother a whole box of them as a present. Will’s barely used his. I have to bug him all the time to do his laundry. One of these days I’m going to have to do it for him,” she said, not answering my question.
I tried to think of something to say, something to get her to talk to me, but nothing came to mind as I held my laundry basket. “Thanks. I’ll be right back.” Bravo. I was a moron.
I threw my stuff in my room, grabbed my jacket and gloves and threw on my grandfather’s hat. I needed all the luck I could get.
She was swinging the lanyard when I got back. I smiled to myself as she put it away before looking up.
“Shall we?” I said.
She went in front of me, but I dived forward to open the door for her. Being a gentleman couldn’t hurt at this point.
The night air had a bite to it, and she immediately shoved her hands in the pockets of her coat. Forgot her gloves again. Silly girl.
“Here,” I said, handing her my gloves. “I figured you’d forget them again.” Another point in the gentleman column.
“Thanks.” She put them on and they dwarfed her hands. I got a weird kick out of the fact that her hands were in my gloves.
Sick, I was seriously sick.
I looked up, but there was too much light pollution to see the stars. There were only a few cars driving down the main road, but otherwise it was pretty quiet, except for a blaring bass coming from one or several dorm rooms.
I had to walk slowly, since my legs were so much longer than hers.
“Why were you crying?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. We walked a few more steps in silence before she said something else.
“Sooo…That’s a beautiful tattoo.”
“Thanks. My mother wasn’t very happy when I got home after getting it.” Her screams still reverberated in my brain. One month later Zack had come home from a visit with his own ink and she’d exclaimed at how beautiful it was.
She nodded in understanding. “I bet. My mother would hang me up by my toes if I even thought about getting one.”
“Mine just about did.”
A car drove by us and honked before shouting something suggestive out the window at Charlotte. Get in line, asshole. Charlotte ignored it. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time something like that had happened to her.
“So how did you skip a grade?” she said, brushing a stray hair from her ponytail back from her face.
“After I left the youth center, I was assigned a social worker who really cared about me. She didn’t put up with my crap, and told me I was better than what I was doing.” I didn’t know how much Charlotte knew about the trouble I’d gotten into after the accident. “She pushed me to do better in school and pushed me to apply here. I never thought I would get in, even though my grades were good.” I didn’t need to say the reason why. We both skimmed over that issue without diving into it.
We’d reached the football field, which was wide and empty now.
“You want to walk around the track?” I said. I wanted to know why she’d been upset, and I was going to walk in circles all night if that’s what it took to get it out of her.
“Sure.”
We walked several times, sometimes talking, sometimes not. She did most of the talking. I couldn’t find anything to say that didn’t involve talking about the one thing I didn’t want to discuss.
“Let me know when you’re ready to go back. I don’t want you walking on campus alone.”
“Why, do I look vulnerable?” she said with a small laugh.
“No. I just know that when guys see a pretty girl alone, he can get ideas, and not all of them are good.”
She stopped walking. “You think I’m pretty?”
“Oh, Charlotte,” I sighed.
Lottie
“What? You just said, ‘When guys see a pretty girl alone,’ so am I the pretty girl? Or were you talking about girls in general and not just specifically –”
It was stopped by a pair of lips on mine.
I froze for a moment, my brain trying to understand what was happening. There were lips on mine. Zan lips. Warm, soft Zan lips. Kissing, that was what this was called.
Only, I’d been kissed before. By Clark and… what was the other guy’s name?
The lips pulled away from mine, and he rested his forehead against mine. He was so tall, he had to bend quite a bit.
“Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” he said, moving his thumb across my bottom lip.
“All the time,” I whispered. “What was that for?”
“It was the only way to get you to stop talking.”
“So you wanted to shut me up and you thought that w
as the best way to do it? What is wrong with –”
There it was again. The lips. On my lips.
I froze again, and he pulled away.
“Stop thinking,” he said, before trying again. Persistent, he was.
My brain wanted to think about the fact that I was kissing the boy who was responsible for not only ruining my life, but the life of my best friend, but for once, I told it to shut the fuck up.
My hands placed themselves hesitantly around his neck and shoved themselves into his hair. My lips started working with his and he responded, pushing me farther, closer, hotter, more, more, more.
It was so easy to open my mouth and let him in. For the first time, he hesitated before sliding his tongue into my mouth. I’d tried that with Clark, but it was always awkward and weird and I felt like I was drowning in spit.
This was…He tasted like crisp leaves and rain and cinnamon gum.
I never wanted it to stop as my body sang. His hands caressed the sides of my face and stroked my hair and finally came around my neck, pulling me closer until I was pressed against the scratchy wool of his coat.
We broke apart and breathed in unison for a moment.
“Wow,” he said, wiping my hair away from my face. The wind had blown it all around. I hadn’t noticed the wind at all. I was on fire from my fingertips to the ends of my hair to my toenails.
“Uh huh.”
I held onto him and we stared at each other. This close, I realized his eyes weren’t just dark. No, they were blue and green and gold and brown and black and every color an eye can be. They were like a Monet painting that looked like one color from far away, but when you got close you could pick out all the little pieces.
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” he said.
“I haven’t.”
“God, I love how honest you are.”
Wait, love? Did he just say love? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold the phone.
I pulled back from him and reality crashed down. I clamped my hand over my mouth.
“Oh, shit.”