“Play… what?”
“A song. I want to hear one.”
“Um… maybe. If you can do me a little favor.”
He crossed his arms, and I became momentarily distracted by the curved shape of his forearm muscles. “Favor? What’s this going to cost me?”
“Well… could you stop calling me Stalker?” I knew my objection to his nickname was a little silly. But the past year had made me sensitive to anything even remotely creepy.
His eyebrows went up. “Sure. That’s it?”
I nodded.
“No problem, Miss Scarlet. Now play me a song.”
My hands felt a little sweaty, and I had to wipe them on my jeans. I shouldn’t have been nervous, because I spent a lot of restless hours last year playing the living crap out of my guitar. When nobody at school will speak to you, and there’s a full drama playing inside your house, there is really no better way to spend time than practicing music. But still, I was anxious to impress.
I cleared my throat. “Okay. What do you like? Give me a basic genre.”
His smile lit up the whole room. “Classic rock?”
I put the guitar strap over my head, checked my tuning, and then launched in to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama. With its distinctive opening riff, I knew it would sound impressive. And I’d played it a hundred times before.
I kept my eyes on the fret board, not because I needed to look, but because I felt shy. After the first few bars I began to relax, the music pulling me in.
When the song was done, I waited until the last note died away. And then I couldn’t avoid his face any longer. Bridger was looking down at me with big eyes, dark green, the color of the sea before a storm. “Damn, Scarlet,” he whispered. “You amaze me.”
My cheeks did their thing, becoming hot. I busied myself with removing the guitar strap from around my neck. But I fumbled it, twisting my hair in the strap. “Ouch,” I swore.
Bridger reached up to untangle me, and I felt my status tumble quickly from “possibly cool” right down to “dork.” But just as I was beating myself up about it, I noticed something peculiar. After Bridger pushed my tangled hair off my shoulder, his hand stayed there, warming my skin. Then, his fingers cupped my cheek. My gaze flew to his, and I found him studying me.
Ever so slowly, he leaned in. Then his lips barely whispered across mine, and I felt myself break out in goosebumps. But he didn’t kiss me properly. Instead, his lips came to hover over the corner of my mouth, a spot on my body which I’d never guessed was so sensitive. “Is this okay?” he whispered, his lips so close that I could feel the words vibrate on my skin. “I find you a little hard to read.”
Hell yes. But I didn’t trust my voice to answer him. Instead, I turned my face the tiniest distance towards his, hoping he’d understand. My heart slammed against my ribs as his mouth found mine. Bridger’s lips were gentle and soft. As he pressed his mouth onto mine, a happy warmth bloomed in my chest.
One of his arms slipped around to encircle me, but then his mouth withdrew. “I’ve wanted to do this,” he whispered, “since the first day you sat down to lunch.” When he kissed me again, I slumped into him. His lips parted, and then his tongue slid slowly over mine. A little mewl of pleasure escaped from the back of my throat. I decided to be embarrassed about it later.
In my happy haze, I barely noticed when Bridger moved the guitar from my lap onto Katie’s bed. We were still sitting side by side on my bed, but Bridger scooped a hand under my knees, lifting them over his, so that we could almost face each other. His broad hands warmed my lower back as he kissed me again and again. I let my fingers explore the hard muscles of his shoulders, the velvety skin on the back of his neck, and then wander into his thick hair.
And then his alarm went off.
Bridger broke off our kiss with a groan. He pressed a button on his watch to silence the beeping. Then he wrapped his arms around me, his chin on my shoulder. “And then real life intrudes,” he said in a low voice.
I said nothing, just threaded my fingers together behind his broad back, holding on tightly.
“I have to go,” he said.
I swiveled to slide my legs off of his. “I know.”
“Not that I want to…” He stood up. “Can I call you later?”
I nodded up at him.
He bent down, gave me a tiny kiss on the lips, and then turned and left my room.
Alone, I flopped back on the bed, a quivering, grinning mess of a girl. My lips were swollen from his kisses, my palms damp.
At least something went right that day.
He called at nine thirty. I made myself wait until the second ring to answer. “Hi,” I said, suddenly shy.
“Hi Scarlet.” His voice was hushed. “Are we still cool?”
“Yes,” I said. “In fact, we’d be even cooler if you came back over here.” And after I said it, my heart took off galloping like a pony. Because there was always a chance Bridger was about to say something that started with “about this afternoon… I didn’t mean to do that.”
But he didn’t. Instead, he gave a warm chuckle into the phone. “I wish I could.”
“You’re at work?” I asked. “At the warehouse?”
“Always. You know…” There was a pause, as if he was deciding whether or not to say something. “Scarlet, I really like you. But I’m not around very much.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “You’ve got a lot on your plate.”
“This year… I’ve been told that being friends with me is kind of a drag.”
“I never thought so,” I said.
“Not yet anyway,” he sighed. “I’ll see you Thursday?” he asked.
“I’ll be there.”
Thursday’s statistics lecture was about ten years long. Bridger ran into the room at the last minute, sitting somewhere behind me. It was a torturous ninety minutes spent squinting at the professor’s hastily drawn examples and wondering whether things would be awkward with Bridger now.
When the infernal class finally drew to a close, I leaned down to put my notebook back in my bag. Just be cool, I coached myself. If only I knew what that meant. I had very little experience with boys. I was a bit of a late bloomer, with hockey dominating a lot of my early high school years. It’s difficult to figure out the boy/girl scene when you’re driving to Concord or Bedford every weekend for a game.
And then came senior year. And while other girls were planning romantic prom night festivities, I was alone in my room, hiding from satellite TV trucks three deep in front of my house. I spent those months honing my guitar skills and ticking off the days until I could escape to college. The result was that I knew the chord progressions for a great many songs, and almost nothing about how to act casual around a boy I liked. A lot.
But when I stood up after class, he was right there waiting, a slightly lopsided smile on his rugged face. He held out his hand, palm up. “Shall we?”
I took his hand. And when the warm fingers closed around mine, I wanted to do a happy dance.
After music theory, where we sat next to one another, he held my hand on the way to lunch, too.
“So, where’d you learn to play the guitar, Scarlet? Are your parents musical?”
This made me laugh. “God, no. I’m self taught. There’s nothing a girl can’t learn at the University of YouTube.”
“Did you play in a band?” he asked. His thumb stroked my palm. I’d never thought of my hand as a sexual organ before, but the sweep of his skin across mine felt positively electric.
“A band?” I tried to keep it together. “No. I guess I’m a solo act.”
“You are a very interesting girl, Scarlet,” he said. Then he let go of my hand so that he could pull out his wallet at the lunch counter, and I missed our connection immediately.
“You never say very much about Miami Beach,” Bridger said as we lingered over our coffee. “Or your family.”
I didn’t bother to hide my flinch. “Miami Beach is the best. My fami
ly… not so much. I don’t really talk about them. It isn’t a nice story.” The truth was, I didn’t want to lie any more than necessary to those deep green eyes.
Bridger’s face flashed with sympathy. “Okay. It’s exactly the same for me, but I didn’t expect that. Because you look like someone from a family with a nice story.”
“And you don’t?” I countered.
He put one hand on his own cheek and covered mine with his other. “You make a good point. Maybe there’s no look. I should probably stop thinking that everyone else in this room has it easier than me.”
I turned my head, and together we both scanned the laughing, eating, bustle that was the student center at noon. It sure looked happy out there. For just a moment, I was a goalie again, analyzing the play, scouting for trouble.
“Nah,” I said finally, turning back to Bridger. “I still think most of them have it pretty good.”
Bridger grinned. “This is the cynical table,” he said, tapping his fingertip on the wood grain.
“Party of two,” I agreed.
Chapter Five: Where There's Smoke
— Scarlet
I was happy.
Now there was a word I hadn’t used in the longest time. Even though I knew that Bridger and I would probably still only see each other twice a week, my entire attitude brightened. For the next few days I walked around in a giddy fog.
Which is probably why I didn’t see it coming.
On my way out of the dorm on Monday, someone called to me. “Shannon! Wait!”
My head snapped up at the sound of my old name. I saw Azzan, my father’s security man, leaning against a statue of Abraham Harkness. Running toward him so that he wouldn’t call me “Shannon” again, I was already wondering what I’d say if anyone had heard.
“What do you want?” I snapped.
“Good morning to you, too,” he said. His smile was thin and not the least bit welcoming.
“I have a class now,” I told him.
“You need to set up a time for your interview. Soon.”
“No, I don’t. I don’t have anything to say.”
“That’s for your father’s lawyer to decide,” Azzan said, dropping any pretense of a smile. “You name the afternoon, and we’ll have the whole thing over in two hours.”
“I can’t be involved,” I insisted, hiking my backpack higher onto my shoulder. “I don’t know a thing, and I won’t do the meeting.”
“Shannon, you will do the meeting. If you want to be a rebellious teenager, pick a different way. This is nonnegotiable.”
Unfortunately, I felt the same way. “I have class,” I repeated. It was hard to believe that Azzan had driven more than ninety minutes to talk to me. That meant he wouldn’t be shaken off very easily.
“You have one week to call me to set up a meeting.” At that, he turned and walked away.
I was happy to see him go. But he hadn’t said what would happen if I didn’t call. I had a feeling that I would soon find out.
The encounter darkened my weekend, and then a newspaper article positively blackened it. It was on the front page, above the fold. There were three brand new complaints against my father.
“A year later, they’re still coming out of the woodwork.” I scanned the story, the familiar ache of dread in my heart. Like the others, the new accusers were young men who’d taken part in my father’s charitable foundation for underprivileged boys.
I squinted at the low-resolution photo on the news website. Only one of the victims was pictured. He had a strong face — cut cheekbones, a prominent forehead. Had I seen him before? I didn’t think I had. Or was that just wishful thinking?
For more than a year I’d been doing this — staring at grainy pictures, trying to jog my own memory. There were some days when I could convince myself that all of it was bullshit. I’d never seen my father do anything strange. Also, I’d spent a lot of time in locker rooms. They were big, echoing places where people were constantly walking in and out. How could a semi famous coach in his fifties spend a lot of time with fourteen year olds, and nobody noticed?
And yet…
My gaze was always drawn back to the boys’ photos. This picture showed a young man’s face. He was nineteen now. According to the teachers interviewed for the article, he’d become aggressive and self destructive during his early teen years. Nobody knew why his grade point average slipped from A- to barely getting by.
He told his mother that one of the hockey coaches was scary. But when pressed, he refused to explain.
He stopped eating.
God.
The newspaper accounts made my father look very, very guilty.
Unlike my mother, I could never be satisfied by the idea that the boys invented their stories. Even if there was a potential paycheck involved, my gut said that the cost to a young man for making these accusations was just too great. Even after everything that had happened to me last year, I wasn’t jaded enough to think it was all a conspiracy.
The articles always portrayed my father (accurately) as an egomaniac. There was an endless supply of old photography of him screaming at his players, or alternately grinning with victory.
In real life, Coach Ellison was the most closed-down, silent, prickly person that you’d ever meet. He doled out affection with an eyedropper, always saving his approval for well-played hockey games.
The man had very few character witnesses rushing to his defense.
Today’s article featured a press photograph from the Sterling College hockey program. In the photo, my father wore a designer suit and a smile.
My father never smiled, unless a photographer asked him to. Or unless his players won a tough game.
The Steel Wings charity had gotten off the ground when I was five, right after we’d moved to New Hampshire. A group of NHL players contributed the seed money for ice time and the equipment. Hockey was an expensive sport, and Steel Wings gave boys who would otherwise never own a pair of skates a chance to play.
But now the world knew that the charity’s founder may have had a sinister goal in mind, too.
Last year, not a single person ever asked me the obvious question. Did you know? Nobody asked it out loud, which is too bad, because I would have liked to answer.
No, okay? No. I had no idea.
What I wouldn’t like to admit, though, is that I often found myself puzzling over the inconsistencies. If Coach Ellison did all these things, why did it take ten years before he was caught? This bothered me. And what’s more, I was bothered by the fact that it bothered me. Because it wasn’t out of love that I hoped there could be some mistake. And if my father did all these terrible things, I hoped they’d throw the book at him.
But how could I have missed it? Was I really that stupid? Or selfish? Or unobservant? If he did everything they said he did, what did that make me?
I threw the newspaper face down on the floor.
The last line of the article had said that the jury would be seated in December, and that the trial would begin immediately afterward. My parents had already told me that I was expected to sit there next to them in the courtroom.
The very idea made my stomach go sour.
— Bridger
Tuesdays and Thursdays were the best part of the week. They were my little vacation from reality. I lived for those few hours with Scarlet.
She and I abandoned the pretense of studying together. Our time after class was too valuable for music theory or statistics. We used the time to eat lunch and hang out.
And make out.
On Thursdays — when her roommate Katie had a noon seminar — we often ate a take out lunch in Scarlet’s room. Sometimes, she played her guitar for me. But invariably, we would end up tangled up with one another on her bed.
It was always up to me to make the first move. Scarlet was shy. Her idea of a “come hither” look was to study me out of the corner of her hazel eyes. And then her cheeks would flush, and she’d look away. But when I pulled her into my lap a
nd kissed her neck, she melted like warm butter. And when I laid her back on the bed, she reached for me, kissing me as though she was dying of thirst, and I was the last drink on earth.
And when two o’clock came around, my watch would chime. Then I’d apologize and leave, always with regret.
We never got any other time together. Sometimes she asked leading questions like: “so, what are you up to this weekend?” And I would have to make my usual empty excuses. “My babysitting gig is Friday and Saturday nights.” Then I always changed the subject. She took the hint and left it alone. Scarlet wasn’t a clingy person, thank Christ. I think she understood that I was giving her all I could.
It was a strange arrangement. But it was our strange arrangement.
One cool October day, carrying our lunch back to her room, we got caught in a downpour on Fresh Court. The sky opened up as we walked past the big oak trees, their leaves golden on the stone path. When the first giant drops hit us, we ran. But it quickly built to a deluge, and running became pointless. Soaked to the skin already, we stopped in the center of the courtyard, the heavy drops slapping the slate flagstones underfoot.
Laughing, I caught Scarlet by the hips and kissed her, my mouth hot, the rain cool. The storm had chased everyone else away, leaving just the two of us there, lip locked, on the flagstone pathway. When I pulled her body in tight, she groaned.
“Let’s go inside,” I said, my voice husky.
We ran, holding hands, up to her room. Our soggy bags and take out lunch got dropped to the floor, and we fell, laughing, onto the bed.
Then, in a move that surprised me, Scarlet gathered the fabric of my sodden t-shirt into her hands and peeled it upward. I ducked my head to get it off. And when I could see her again, I got a look at Scarlet’s face. The expression said: Sweet Jesus. And then her hands began to skim over my body eagerly.
My pulse soared. With hands that were actually trembling, I eased her top over her head, too. Kissing her, I unclasped her soggy bra. And then I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her back onto the bed.