We talk for a little longer, and drink even more, and half an hour later, I’ve got quite the buzz going on. I can’t stop looking at her bra strap. This girl is seriously hot. I wonder if it’s because she’s a college girl. But that really makes no sense, since until a few months ago, she wasn’t in college, and it’s unlikely that she’s morphed into a hottie in just a few months.
“Hey,” she says, leaning into me. “We can probably get out of here now, if you want.”
Her lips are a few inches from mine, and I can feel my body responding to hers. She smells like beer and perfume and something sexy. “Yeah,” I say, leaning back into her. “What did you have in mind?”
“We could go back to my place,” she says.
“Go back to your place?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “And watch movies. I have a flatscreen and tons of DVDs.” For some reason, Courtney’s face flickers across my brain, but I push it away. Fuck Courtney, I think. This chick is hot. The thing with Courtney is over. I take another sip of my drink, figuring if I can just get a little more buzzed, I’ll be fine.
“That sounds cool,” I say. “Just let me tell Ricardo.”
I start making my way through the crowd, and finally find Ricardo standing by the keg with his arm around a brunette. I’m impressed. Anyone who comes to a party and then hooks up with a different girl than the one he brought, has to have serious game.
“I’m leaving,” I say. “I’m going back to Chelsea’s apartment.”
“Sweet,” he says. “Nice one, bro. I’ll catch you later.”
But when I turn back around, I see Courtney in the corner, talking to that guy she was with at orientation. She’s leaning against the wall, and he leans in to whisper something in her ear. She throws her head back and laughs, her hair falling down around her face. My stomach feels like it’s in my throat, and then someone walks in front of me, blocking my view.
“Hey,” Chelsea says, grabbing my arm. “There you are. I was wondering what was taking you so long.” She leans into me again. “Are you ready to go?” I can feel her breath against my ear, and her chest against my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Chelsea. “I…I can’t go with you.”
And then I walk out of the party, down the street, and back to my dorm.
courtney after
Two Days After the Trip, 1:53 a.m.
I get home from my first college party to find a voice mail from Jordan on my cell. He left it earlier this morning, but I left my cell phone in my room all day, in an effort to not have to deal with anyone. “I’m done,” the message says. “I don’t want anything to do with you, so you don’t have to worry about it.”
Good, I think. I don’t have to worry about you. In fact, I was just at a party with Ben, the guy I met at orientation. The sophomore I met at orientation. The older guy who doesn’t listen to rap music, and who went out for pizza with me afterwards.
Although, his friends were kind of obnoxious. One spilled beer on his hand and then wiped it on my sweater. And I think Ben might have laughed. But I’m sure it was about something else. And then, at the pizza place, I had to pay. But whatever. I’m not materialistic or anything. I don’t need guys to pay for me. And besides, it wasn’t even that much money. Although Ben and his friends all got extra cheese without even asking me, which was two dollars more. But whatever. The point is, I went to a college party. And I’m meeting guys. Better, mature guys. I don’t need Jordan anymore.
My newfound freedom should make me feel good, but instead, I am starting to get angry. What is he talking about, he’s done? I’m the one who’s done with him. I’m the one who decided never to talk to him again. Not the other way around.
The door to my room opens and a girl with shoulder-length brown hair walks in. She’s wearing a cute jean skirt and a navy blue zip-up hoodie. “Hey!” she says. “You must be Courtney. I’m Emma.” She holds her hand out, and I take it. “I got here late,” she says. “My flight was delayed.”
“Oh,” I say, looking around the room. I was so caught up in Jordan’s ridiculous voice mail that I didn’t even notice there’s someone else’s stuff in the room. There are clothes in the other closet, a computer on the other desk, and the other bed is made up.
“I’m sorry, was it okay to leave all my stuff?” Emma asks, looking worried. “I didn’t have a chance to completely unpack because I didn’t want to miss orientation, and I tried to move it out of the way, but—”
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” I say. “It wasn’t in the way.”
“Oh, okay,” she says, looking confused.
“I’m sorry,” I say, realizing I’m not being the most friendly roommate. “My psycho ex-boyfriend just left me a message, which really pissed me off.”
“Really?” she says, looking interested. She plops down on her bed, and lays upside down, with her feet on the pillow. “What’s the deal?”
“He did something really mean to me,” I say. “And I told him to screw off.” Emma nods. “And then…Then he leaves me a message saying ‘I won’t be contacting you again.’”
“Okay…” Emma looks confused. My roommate thinks I’m crazy.
“Like it was his idea that we don’t talk anymore! That’s ridiculous! That’s insane! That’s…” I feel myself starting to get madder and madder. “Do you have your student directory?” I ask her.
She reaches over and pulls it out of her night table. “Thanks.” I open it to the Rs and slide my finger down the list until I get to Jordan’s name. Good, he’s not that far from here. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I say.
“Okay,” Emma says again, still sounding uncertain.
I march down the hallway and out into the night. I don’t care that it’s two in the morning. I don’t care that his roommate might be sleeping. It’s about time someone let Jordan know he can’t just treat girls like this, constantly using them for his own agenda. I need to stand up for myself.
When I get to his dorm room, I can hear music coming from inside. Rap. Of course. I knock on the door. Loudly. I hope he gets a noise complaint, and his RA throws him out of school.
“Jordan!” I say. “I need to talk to you.”
I hear a rustling sound in the room, and for a second, I lose a little steam. What if he has a girl over? What if he left me that message to make himself feel better, to make it known to me that it was over, so that he wouldn’t have to feel bad if he thought he was cheating on me? What if he thinks I’m the psycho one? I guess showing up at his room at two in the morning isn’t the best way to combat that, but whatever.
I knock on the door louder. “I know you’re in there!” I’m practically screaming.
He opens the door. “Hey,” he says.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I don’t know,” I say. I cross my arms. “First night of college and all. Figured you’d want to christen the room.”
“Yeah, well, I figured I’d take the night off, slowly settle into college. Unlike you.” He looks pissed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
A door opens across the hall, and a guy in a pair of gray boxers pokes his head out into the hall. “Hey,” he says. “Could you keep it down? I’m trying to sleep.”
“Sorry,” Jordan says. He motions to me as if to say “Psycho girls, what can you do about them?”
“Don’t even,” I say. “This is your fault, and you know it.”
“What’s my fault?” he asks. “And if you’re going to be yelling at me, would you like to come in? I don’t think my neighbors want to listen to this.”
“No,” I say, throwing up my hands in exasperation. “I do not want to come in.”
“Then why did you come over here?” he asks, crossing his arms. He’s wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of red-and-black mesh shorts. He looks like he was laying around in bed. Must. Not. Let. Hotness. Distract. Me.
“I came over here,” I say, “because of that ridiculous me
ssage you left on my voice mail.”
“What was so ridiculous about it?” he asks. “That’s what you wanted, right? For me to leave you alone.”
“Yes,” I say. “I did.”
“Did? Or do?”
“Do!” I say. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Then why did you come over here?”
“Because!” I say, throwing my hands up at his obvious stupidity. “Because I want to make sure you know that it’s my decision.”
“What is?” He frowns.
“The decision to not talk anymore. It my decision.” I cross my arms and tap my foot.
“Sure,” he says. “Whatever you say.”
“It is.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
I turn on my heel and start walking down the hall, but he yells after me, “Be careful about Upperclass Joe, there.”
“Who?”
“The guy you’ve been all over all day.”
I swallow. How does he know about that? “How do you know about that?” I ask. “And I haven’t been all over him all day.”
“Well, whatever,” he says. “Just be careful.”
The door across the hall opens again, and the same guy pops his head out. “Seriously,” he says, sounding really annoyed.
“Sorry, dude, “Jordan repeats, not really sounding it. He looks at me. “Look, do you want to come in? Because for someone who’s not talking to me, you certainly seem to have a lot to say.”
“You do,” the guy across the hall agrees. “And you should go in and talk about it. Otherwise I’m not going to get any sleep.”
“Fine,” I say. I push past Jordan and into his room. He shuts the door behind me. His room is a little smaller than mine, and he still hasn’t unpacked his stuff. His comforter is thrown over his bed, and it looks like he was laying on top of it. Probably because he didn’t pack extra-long sheets.
He sits down on the bed. “Do you want to sit down?” he asks, motioning to his desk chair.
“No,” I say. I stand in the middle of the room. Neither of us say anything.
Finally, he sighs. “You can’t keep running away from things, Court.”
“I’m not,” I say. “Just because I don’t want to deal with you, doesn’t mean I’m running away from things.”
“Oh, really?” he says. “Have you talked to your dad?”
“No.”
“Lloyd?”
“No.”
He raises his eyebrows at me.
“That doesn’t mean I’m running away from things,” I say. “It just means that I don’t want to talk to anyone right now.”
“You’re talking to me,” he says. I don’t say anything. “Courtney, I need to know if there’s a chance. If you can forgive me, if there’s…” he trails off, and I look at him. He’s looking at me with this genuine expression on his face, and I can hear in his voice that he really means it. Just like the first night he called me and wanted to hang out and it made no sense to me, but I could still hear in his voice that he really wanted to.
“I can’t,” I say, shaking my head. “You lied to me, Jordan. If you loved me, you wouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s not always that black and white, Courtney,” he says, running his fingers through his hair. “It’s not.”
“It is to me,” I say. My heart’s beating fast now, and I can feel the adrenaline racing through my body. “I would never have done what you did to me.”
“Maybe not,” he says. “And I’m not trying to say that what I did was right. But I freaked out. I’m in love with you. I thought you were going to hate me. I thought you were going to blame me for not telling you. I had just found out my mom was cheating on my dad. It was fucked up, Court.”
He looks at me then, and I feel something soften inside me.
“You didn’t handle it the right way,” I say, and I can tell I’m going to start crying.
“I know that now,” he says. He takes a step closer to me, and this time, I don’t pull back. “And I wish I would have handled it differently. I wish I could have seen through all the insanity and just talked to you. But I don’t want to make that mistake again. I want to talk about this.” He’s close to me now, and he reaches out and puts his arms around me.
“I’m really upset right now, Jordan,” I tell him, being honest for the first time. “You really upset me. With everything. Breaking up with me, keeping things from me.”
“I know,” he says. “And I’m sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose, Court. I couldn’t stand the thought of you hating me, so I just chose not to deal with it. But I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m going to deal with it. We have to deal with it.”
“How?” I ask, and his arms are around me now, and I’m crying and my eyes are making wet spots on his shirt but he’s not pulling away.
“By doing whatever it takes,” he says simply.
“Do you know…I mean, do you know what they’re going to do? About things? My dad and your mom?” I pull away for a second and look at him, knowing that whatever the answer is, it won’t be good.
“I’m not sure,” he says. He hesitates. “My mom told my brother she was leaving my dad, but I’m not sure if she’s really thought it through, or if she’ll really do it.”
I nod.
“We’ll get through it,” he says, pulling me close again.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know if it’s going to ever be the same.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “That you don’t know, I mean. But if there’s even a chance, then I want to try.”
I look at him then, and I see how hurt he is. I think about how awful it must have been for him to find out his mom was cheating on his dad, and even more awful that he felt he couldn’t tell me. I think about how people make mistakes, and how I lied to him about the Lloyd thing, and how emotions and heartbreak and love can really screw with your head. Most of all, I think about how it is to be with him, and how if there’s even a chance we can be together, I can’t be afraid to find out.
He kisses me then, softly on the lips, and I lean into his body. “You’re going to be okay, Court,” he whispers into my ear, and I know he’s talking about the stuff with my family, not with him and I.
“I know,” I say. “And I wish you had known that, too. You can’t always protect me from everything. I can be strong, too, you know.”
“I know that now,” he says. “And isn’t that what matters?” He looks at me then, and we’re kissing and his hands are on my body. We fall onto his bed, and he pulls away for a second to look at me. “I love you, Court,” he says.
“I love you, too.”
And then he holds me until I fall asleep.
courtney after
Two Days After the Trip, 10:01 a.m.
“Hey,” my roommate says the next morning when I get back to our room. She’s sitting at her computer, messing around on MySpace. “I take it things either went really, really well or really, really bad.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Well, you never came home last night. Which means you either made up with your boyfriend, or you didn’t make up with him, and spent the rest of the night trolling around the streets, looking for mischief. Or holed up with some other random guy. Or crying your eyes out in an alley.”
I giggle. “It went…well, let’s just say I’m being cautiously optimistic.”
“Good,” she says, smiling. “Cautiously optimistic is good.”
“Hey,” I say. “I’m sorry about last night. I’m not crazy, I swear. I just have a lot of stuff going on.”
“Not a big deal,” she says. She shuts down her computer and picks up her purse. “I’m heading over to the financial aid office, because they screwed something up with my forms.” She rolls her eyes. “But do you want to have breakfast together? We could meet at around eleven? You can tell me about last night.”
“Sure,” I say. “I have some phone calls to make now, so t
hat works out perfect.”
“Cool.” She smiles.
Once the door shuts behind her, I pick up my cell phone and take a deep breath. I have to call Lloyd. I have to call my mom, my dad, and Jocelyn. I told Jordan he had to stop protecting me, and now I have to stop protecting myself. I decide to go for it, to jump right into things, to make the hardest call first. I dial my dad’s number at work. The sun is shining through the window, casting stripes of light on the floor. “Hey,” I say when he answers. “It’s me.”
about the author
Lauren Barnholdt was born and raised in Syracuse, New York, and currently resides in central Connecticut. She is the author of The Secret Identity of Devon Delaney, and her first novel for teens, Reality Chick, was a Teen People “Can’t Miss Pick.” When she’s not writing, Lauren likes to read, blog, and reorder her Netflix queue three million times. Although she’s been on numerous road trips, none of them have been with a guy who dumped her. Visit Lauren’s website at www.laurenbarnholdt.com or her MySpace page at www.myspace.com/laurenbarnholdtbooks.
Lauren Barnholdt, Two-Way Street
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