The next girl’s name is Raine, then Scarlett, then Maggy, and quickly the faces are blurring together because, really, I just want to talk to Nora alone. I want to ask her things like what she’s been doing since she came out here from Washington, how she likes her coffee, what season she prefers—basically get to know her a bit more since, even though we met a while ago, we never really hung out.
I notice that the friend of Nora’s named Maggy says something and taps the shoulder of the girl next to her—and realization strikes me like a damn match.
Maggy is Maggy.
Maggy . . .
Which means . . .
The girl whose shoulder she taps turns around, and her face twists in confusion when she sees me. Surely my mind is playing games with me.
Dakota is staring back at me; her eyes immediately widen and her lips tighten into a bewildered frown.
“Landon?” she says, wide-eyed. Still, something about her tone of voice seems off, and I get the feeling that she noticed my presence much earlier than I noticed hers.
Her eyes are tight on me, draining out every ounce of excitement I was feeling when I walked through the door. This is when I would desperately love to have a portal to jump through, to take me anywhere but here. I would even take being zapped into the middle of the Battle of Helm’s Deep. Unfortunately for me, I haven’t found a way to portal into my favorite movie series.
When I was sixteen, my aunt got me a Lord of the Rings LEGO set and I attempted to put together that exact battle scene. It was too complicated, and I gave up. Dakota lasted longer than me, putting little bows and arrows on at least fifty elves. She was better at LEGOS as a kid than I was, and now, as an adult, she’s much better at coming up with words to say when words are needed. So, here I am, and here she is, staring at me and then at Nora, then back to me. I watch as she pieces it together, the fact that Nora brought me here.
Her almond eyes narrow into slits and she turns to Nora with a huff. “This is the hot guy you were talking about?”
Hot guy? What? I look toward the bar, wanting to crawl behind it. This gathering isn’t going to go well.
Nora rolls her eyes at Dakota with a quick laugh and sticks out her tongue. “Way to bust my balls, Dakota.”
Oh no. She doesn’t even understand what’s happening here. And there’s something odd about Nora’s tone with Dakota; something unpleasant is threaded through her words.
Tessa approaches us, and when she notices Dakota sitting at the end of the table from Nora and me, she freezes, and looks just as confused as Dakota. My problem-solving skills have suddenly evaporated and I’m sitting here like an idiot with nothing to say.
Dakota turns her attention back to Nora and I try to think of something to say to get all of this to make sense. I don’t want a scene. I want one thousand other horrible things to happen before I’d want to cause a scene here.
“So, how long have you been seeing each other?” she asks.
“We haven’t been,” I say just as Nora, her voice louder than mine, says, “Just a little while, it’s a new thing.”
Nora looks at me and my chest caves in. She’s confused by my answer.
A little while? What does she mean, a little while? Are we seeing each other? Is that what this is?
She’s only kissed me once, and outside of a few minutes while Tessa was in the shower or on her way home from work here and there, we haven’t spent any time alone together. We’ve really barely talked, I’d say.
Dakota’s eyes begin to water and I can see her loading her guns. She’s building up accusations, brewing some theory to make sense of the situation. I’ve rarely been on this side of her anger, and for some reason, a part of me feels satisfied. We hardly fought when we were together. She yelled often, but not at me. Never at me.
“We aren’t dating,” I feel the need to tell her again.
The other three ladies at the table begin to whisper, probably creating their own version of the live soap opera that’s unfolding in front of them.
I look at Nora and she’s beginning to catch on. “You two know each other?” she asks.
“Know each other?” Dakota’s voice is deep now, guarded, as she waves her hand back and forth between Nora and me.
Come on, portal. Pull me in and get me the hell out of here.
Dakota is eyeing me like I’m some kind of predator, something she has to escape from. I hate it. She’s several seats away, but I can still see how upset she is. Her fingers grip the edge of the table and she bulges her eyes at me, probing for my response.
“Yes, we know each other. We’ve known each other for a long time.”
Dakota’s putting on a show. She’s detached herself from this. She’s trying to remain cool and calm, trying not to let anyone know how much this bothers her. She grabs one of the glasses in front of her and doesn’t look to see what it is before she downs it in one quick motion.
Nora’s shoulders rise and fall with deep breaths and she doesn’t say anything. Everyone is looking at me now.
One glare.
One expectant look.
Two more glares.
Tessa is looking at her phone now; she’s no help.
Make that three glares . . .
. . . and an eye roll.
Dakota grabs her purse from the back of her chair and pushes past me. I try to reach for her shoulder, but she jerks away, nearly tripping over the chair next to me.
I watch her go. And when I turn around, I’m face-to-face with Nora.
“You’re the fucking guy. You’re the nerdy ex from Michigan.” Her voice is flat, unimpressed, with a splash of embarrassment. I stand up.
Nerdy ex? Is that what Dakota thinks of me?
Is that how Dakota refers to me? Is that how she describes me to the new friends she’s made in this city?
I look back toward the door and spot Dakota’s hair just as she pushes the door open and disappears.
I can’t imagine how she must feel. She thinks I’m dating Nora and I lied to her earlier about having to study.
This is exactly why I never lie. I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea to lie, I should have known it would backfire, nothing good ever comes from a lie. Aside from a few times when I pretended to know what she was talking about when really I didn’t, I never needed to lie to her.
A hand grabs my shoulder, spinning me. Face-to-face with Nora again, I can see she’s challenging me, making me choose. Her brow is raised above her sharp eyes, eyes that I thought I would be staring into all night. I thought I would be getting to know the woman with enough confidence to fill this bar, enough spark to light the city.
How can I choose? I barely know her.
Nora is completely silent and still; only her eyes speak to me. If I leave with Dakota, will she ever speak to me again?
Why does the idea of that bother me so much?
But I can’t let Dakota leave this place alone, this late at night. She’s upset and I get the feeling that I have no idea just how volatile she can be. Her self-destructiveness is her greatest enemy.
“I’m sorry,” is the only thing I have time to say to Nora before I follow Dakota out into the night.
chapter
Fourteen
WHEN I STEP OUT OF the bar, Dakota is standing on the sidewalk, raising her hand to hail a cab. I run up to her side and push her hand down.
“Don’t touch me,” she spits, a cloud of smoke puffing out of her mouth from the chilly fall air. I drop my hand and step in front of her. She keeps her arms down, crossing them in front of her chest as if to protect herself.
I immediately begin to explain myself. Or try to.
“It’s not what you think,” I say in a rushed voice.
Dakota turns away from me. She’s not going to let me explain. She never has.
I gently grab her arm, but she wrenches her whole body away as if I’ve burned her. I ignore the judgmental glances of the people walking by and step in front of her.
“Bullshit!” she shouts. “Are you kidding me, Landon?”
The liquor on her breath and the way her bloodshot eyes are focusing, I can tell she’s had more than a few. Since when does she drink like that? Or at all, really?
In my mind, she’s sixteen again, her curly hair pulled up into a bun. She’s wearing gym shorts and high socks, the kind with the red stripes around the top, sitting cross-legged on her bed. We’re flipping through college applications over pizza. Her house is quiet for once. Her dad is gone. Carter is out with Jules. She’s talking to me about how she’s never been drunk, but wants to be.
Her first experiment didn’t work out the way she expected; alcohol doesn’t taste as good as the characters in Gossip Girl make it seem. Ten minutes and three swigs of eighty-proof vodka later, she was hugging the toilet and I was holding her hair while she swore to never drink again. Before I put the bottle back into her dad’s crowded freezer, I dumped out half and added water, figuring in a naïve way that maybe if the alcohol were diluted, his temper would be, too.
Apparently, vodka doesn’t freeze—but water does. And the next morning Carter came to school with a black eye and a sore rib cage because of my mistake.
I never made that mistake again.
“She’s Tessa’s friend,” I say. “I barely know her. I know what it looks like—”
Dakota cuts me off, not even looking at me as she speaks. “She’s been talking about you for weeks now!” Her voice is loud, cracking at the end like a whip.
“He’s sooo sweet,” she croons, mocking a sultry female voice.
Passersby on the sidewalk stare at us as I try to calm her down. One guy in a beanie gives me an I-would-save-you-if-I-could-bro look as he passes with his girlfriend. His quiet girlfriend, who doesn’t seem to hate him. Lucky guy.
I attempt to defend myself, but it comes out as babble. “I don’t know what she’s been saying, but I didn’t—”
Dakota raises her hand in front of my face, waving for me to shut up. Her dress is bunched at her hips, exposing the line of her tights underneath. The more she moves, pacing on the sidewalk, the higher her dress rises. She doesn’t even notice as she continues to stew in her rage.
After a few more seconds of pacing, she turns back to me, her eyes alight as she seems to remember something. “Oh my God! She kissed you! She told us!”
She takes a few steps across the sidewalk and bumps shoulders with a man walking a Saint Bernard. “That’s who she was talking about! It’s been you this entire fucking time.”
Jesus, has Nora been giving Dakota a play-by-play of our every encounter?
Dakota raises her hand to hail a cab again. “Get away from me,” she warns when I touch her elbow to steady her.
I haven’t said anything and I know to be careful about how I approach this. I hadn’t expected the two of them to be sharing stories about me. I didn’t think Nora liked me enough to even mention me to her friends, and if she did, I would have never imagined that Dakota was one of her roommates. How can the world be so small?
“I’m coming with you. How much did you have to drink?” I ask her.
She shoots fire at me; her eyes are damn near glowing red now. I get no answer. Not that I expected one.
Regular cabs being fairly rare in this part of Brooklyn, I say, “I’ll order an Uber. I’ll have it drop you off at your place,” and reach into my pocket for my phone.
She doesn’t stop me, which I take as a good sign.
While we wait for the car, I decide to keep my mouth shut. Dakota’s not going to be very reasonable until we can get away from the crowd. This is all one huge misunderstanding and I need time alone with her, and some quiet, in order to be able to explain.
After three minutes of complete silence, Daniel of the blue Prius and five-star rating pulls up to the curb and I put my hands on Dakota’s shoulders to guide her to the car. She twists herself away from my touch and stumbles off the sidewalk to get to the other door. A car is passing at the same time and I rush to her, pulling her out of the way and guiding her into the car. She grunts, mumbles something about not touching her, and I walk back around and climb into the other side.
This is going to be a long night. I put my address into the app, not hers, since I’m sure she won’t want to see Nora, although I’m pretty positive she will be pissed about this, too.
“How are you guys tonight?” Daniel asks.
Dakota ignores him, presses her cheek into her hand, and leans against the window.
“We’re good,” I lie.
No need to drag him into the mess; he seems like a nice guy and his car smells like caramel.
“That’s good to hear, it’s getting chilly out. I have some waters back there if you’re thirsty, and chargers, too,” he offers.
Now I see why he has a perfect five-star rating.
I look at Dakota, thinking she might want some water, but she doesn’t seem interested in much of anything at the moment.
“We’re good . . . thank you, though,” I respond.
Our driver looks into the rearview mirror and seems to take the hint. He turns his music up slightly and drives in silence the rest of the way. He’ll be getting a five from me.
“Where do you have him taking us?” Dakota finally decides to talk to me a few minutes into the drive. I stare out the window. We’re about halfway to my apartment, having just passed Grind.
“To my apartment. I don’t even know where yours is,” I remind her.
The reason I don’t know is because she has barely kept in contact with me since she moved here, and certainly has never invited me over. Does she really have the right to be this mad over my seeing Nora—if you could call what I’ve been doing “seeing her”? Even though it seems to me that Dakota’s being completely irrational, I wonder if I actually deserve the cold silence.
She huffs but doesn’t fight me on it. I assume that’s because I was right and she doesn’t want to deal with Nora or the other roommates who witnessed the entire awkward exchange at the bar. I get the feeling that their living situation is one of those weird frenemy types of relationships Tessa explained to me once while we binge-watched Pretty Little Liars.
Tessa. Ugh, I just left her there. I pull out my phone and send her a text, apologizing. When Dakota gives me the side-eye, no doubt wondering if I’m texting Nora, I sheepishly say, “Just wanted to let Tessa know I left . . .”
Five-star Daniel pulls up to my apartment building and gives me one last sympathetic glance before I step out. I quickly pull out my wallet and hand him a five-dollar bill. Dakota is quick to climb out of the car and slams her door as I step onto the sidewalk.
“Let me help you.” I hold my hand out for the big purse she’s wrestling with.
The straps are wrapped around Dakota’s shoulder in a tangled mess of brown leather. She shrugs and stands still, allowing me to help her. I quickly untangle the straps, trying not to actually touch her, and when it’s free, I carry it for her. I don’t think she wants to, but she leans into me as we walk toward the door of my building. The moss growing on the brick walls of my building seems thicker tonight, more strangling.
Dakota lets go and stumbles to the front entrance. I pull it open for her and she sighs in relief when we step into the warm hallway. My apartment doesn’t have a doorman or any fancy security, but it’s always clean and the hallways usually smell like chemicals. I’m not sure if it’s a good thing, but it’s better than some of the alternatives.
As we walk in silence down the hall, I realize that she’s never been here before. When I first moved to Brooklyn, we were supposed to get together for dinner at my house, just to catch up, but she canceled an hour before our meeting. I had made a full meal, four courses—with Tessa’s help, of course. It felt like I had searched nearly every corner store in Brooklyn for Dakota’s favorite drink, blue cream soda in a glass bottle, finally finding it after an hour. I even stopped myself from drinking any of the six-pack before she arrived. Well, I had two, but I
left four for her.
Dakota’s flat shoes squeak against the floor, and I can’t remember it ever taking so long to walk to my apartment. The elevator seems to be taking forever.
When we finally reach my door and I unlock it, Dakota pushes past me and enters. I lay her purse on the table and kick off my shoes. She takes a few more steps until she’s in the center of the room.
The living room feels much smaller with her in it. She’s a beautiful storm, all waves and anger as her lungs fill with air. Her chest rises up, then down, in a ragged pattern.
I step toward her, right into the eye of it all. I shouldn’t know how to approach her. I shouldn’t remember the exact way to talk to her, to cool her temper.
But I do.
I remember how to slowly step to her and wrap my arms around her waist. When I do, they fall into their protective place, trying to shield her from anything and everything. In this case, from myself.
My fingers should have forgotten how to gently raise her stubborn chin and let me look into her eyes. But they haven’t, they couldn’t.
“We have to talk about this,” I whisper through the heavy air between us.
Dakota takes a breath and tries to look away from me. I bend at the knees, leaning down to her height. She looks away again and I refuse to give in before she listens to me.
“I met Nora a while ago, back in Washington,” I begin to explain.
“In Washington? You’ve been seeing her that long?” She hiccups at the end of her question and pulls away from my embrace.
I wonder if I should offer her something to drink. I don’t think this is the best time, but when an inebriated person hiccups, it sometimes means they’re going to get sick, doesn’t it?
Where did I even hear that?
This is one of those times when I wish I knew more about drinking and the effects it has on your body. Dakota’s toe catches on a pile of textbooks on the floor and she stumbles, taking a few unsteady steps toward the couch. Better safe than sorry, I’ll get her that water after all.
I shake my head. “No, no, no. She came over a few times because her parents live close to my mom and Ken.”