“I really missed you,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine. “You know what I thought when I first saw you?”
“Do I really want to know?”
“I thought that we would never get along. I thought that I should have just sucked it up and lived with one of those bitches from high school. How crazy is that?”
“You know what I thought when I first saw you?” she said.
“I bet I can guess.”
“It was, ‘fuck, that’s a lot of pink.’”
“Surprise, surprise.”
I whacked her with a pillow, being careful not to upset the ice cream. She grabbed one and hit me with it and we laughed.
“I got used to it. The pink,” she said, gesturing.
“You want to know something else? You were a better friend to me in a few weeks than any one of those bitches were in three years. Wanna talk about something crazy.”
“Trish always says that normal people are boring, that normal people don’t get remembered. It’s the crazies who make history.”
“Here’s to being crazy.”
I raised my spoon and we clinked them together again and fought for the rest of the ice cream.
Chapter Twenty-three
Stryker
I could count the times I’d run into Katie on campus on one hand. Of course, one of those times had to be on Thursday after she’d gotten back. I’d thought in the spirit of our newfound friendship that she would come see me, or want me to see her, but she didn’t. That girl gave more mixed signals than the government.
I was just coming away from the Starbucks after having caved and bought a crazy expensive coffee to try to give me a jolt. I’d had a hard time sleeping lately. Guilt didn’t make a soft pillow.
“Hey, friend.” A voice said from behind me. I turned and was met by a tired, but beaming Katie. It had only been a few days since I’d last seen her, but it was almost like seeing her again for the first time. God, she was beautiful. Had I ever appreciated that before?
Her brown hair was up in its usual high ponytail, but it was a little messier than usual. As if she really didn’t care. Her pink shirt was loose and I could see her bra straps resting on her shoulders. She wasn’t wearing makeup, either, and she had her glasses on.
“Hey, friend,” I finally said. I wanted to touch her. Hugging her would be a completely appropriate friend thing to do, right? Yes. There were people glaring at me to move along, but I just gave them a glare back. That made them back off a little.
“What do you want? It’s on me.” I moved aside so she could order. She looked like she was going to protest, so I said, “Friends can buy each other coffee, can’t they?”
She smiled, just a little.
“Sure they can. I’ll have a Vanilla Spice Latte.”
While we waited for our drinks, she stood next to me and I thought this would be a good time for that hug.
“I’m glad you’re back. I’m sorry we left on a weird note.” I leaned and put my arms around her. She hesitated, and then her arms went around me. I’d held her so much during those days I spent at her house. That closeness had been so easy, so effortless. It was a reflex. She needed something to hold onto, and I just happened to be there.
I tried not to hold her too tight, or notice how hard her heart was beating, and how her head fit against my chest as if someone had carved a place for it, just for her.
I tried, but I failed.
“I missed you, friend,” she whispered as I closed my eyes and breathed her in.
“I missed you.”
Our drinks were ready so I had to let go, but I slid my arms down her shoulders, wanting to make the touch last.
“Listen, I have to get to class, but I’ll see you later? We should hang out. That’s what friends do, right?” she said.
“Right.”
“Bye, Stryker. Thanks for the coffee.” She touched my shoulder and then turned away and left. I stood there, watching her go, and realizing I could never, ever be just friends with her.
***
Ric sent several more threatening messages, but I ignored them. She was just waiting for me to lash out, which is what I normally would have done in a situation like this. She’d known me for long enough to know my patterns.
Trish showed up at my apartment again, saying that she’d had a fight with her roommate, but I knew it was because she was checking up on me.
“You know, we could always push her down the stairs,” she said, looking up from her homework. I was busy writing a paper, so I didn’t hear her right away.
“Push who down the stairs?”
“Ric,” she said, closing her book with a snap. “You know, just to scare her a little.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’d get arrested for that, and I’d rather not, thank you.”
“It was just a suggestion.”
“Why do you care so much?”
She made a sound as if I was being a moron for not being able to read her mind.
“Because I don’t want evil to triumph over good, and Ric is pure evil.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, Trish. I think you’re being a little overdramatic.”
“I don’t think I am. Can you imagine how much it’s going to hurt Katie right now if she finds out? She’s my friend. My concern for her can never be dramatic enough.”
Trish didn’t make friends easily, she never had. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her get so close with someone before. Her pattern was to push people away with sarcasm and rudeness before they could push her away. But somehow Lottie and Katie and the rest of them had gotten through to her, and now Trish’s fierceness was going in a different direction.
“I know, I know. I have to tell her, but not now. Not like this.”
“We, my brother, you are in a pickle because of your pickle.”
“Jesus, Trish.” I threw a pencil at her and she ducked. “You don’t have to be in this with me.”
“Yeah, I do. You’re all I’ve got.” She said it casually, but we both knew it was true. We’d clung to each other since we were very young. We’d been through a lot, and that bonds two people, even more so when they’re blood.
“Lucky me,” I said, throwing an empty soda can at her.
“Screw you.”
My phone buzzed. A message from Katie.
Want to come hang out, friend? My place?
The tiniest part of me wanted to say that I was busy. That I couldn’t. It had been hard enough being around her this afternoon, and that was only for a few minutes. Being in her cramped dorm room, surrounded by her? Astronomically more difficult.
But it was only a tiny part.
When?
***
She was wearing an old frumpy t-shirt and shorts when I opened the door, and she wasn’t wearing her contacts again. Of course. The universe was setting me up for pure torture.
She looked like the girl who had wrapped her legs around me and kissed me and then fucked me. Only the difference was that this time, I didn’t want to fuck her. I wanted to kiss her and touch her stomach and her fingertips and the backs of her knees and everywhere in between. I wanted to memorize every inch of her, every freckle. I wanted to know the map of her body, what made her sigh in pleasure, what she liked, what made her beg for more. I wanted taste her.
With all that running through my mind, I didn’t notice that her wall was covered in white sheets of paper. Extra large sheets, like teachers used to draw gigantic letters on for kids to teach them how to read.
“What happened to the pictures?” I assumed they’d met their demise like the others from her room. She’d already gotten rid of a lot of them after Zack had attacked her, but this time she’d cleared them all.
She pointed to the trash can and then held something out to me. A marker.
“I think my wall needs a little decorating, don’t you? It’s all yours.” She flopped onto her bed as if she were waiting for me to get to work.
“You aren’t going
to help?”
“I’d rather watch you. Did you know that you do this thing with your mouth when you draw?” She demonstrated by biting the side of her bottom lip. It probably wasn’t nearly as sexy when I did it.
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
Fuck, I wanted to kiss her so bad.
“So you thought you could play the friend card and I’d just come and decorate your wall for you without getting anything in return? You drive a hard bargain, sweetheart.”
“Do you want another turkey dinner?”
“God, I’m still dealing with the leftovers from the last one.”
“Yeah, I think you should probably throw those out.”
“Some of it did grow legs and start forming an army to plot my death, so you’re probably right.” She even made talking about leftovers into something sexy. Or maybe that was just me.
She laughed and there was a beat of silence that stretched longer and longer. I finally took my eyes off her and put them on the blank wall.
“Get to work, Picasso,” she said, kicking her leg out and hitting me in the stomach.
“Hey, no violence. I can’t work in these conditions.” I grabbed her foot when she lashed out again. I held on as she struggled. Fuck the blank wall.
“Let me go,” she squealed as I grabbed her other ankle and yanked her toward me.
“I think I’d rather have another canvas,” I said, pulling her closer. Her eyes were wide with shock and surprise. “You.”
“Stryker,” she said, but it was more of a whisper. “We’re friends.”
“Friends can’t wrestle each other?” I knew I was pushing it, but I was having a hard time stopping.
It wasn’t until I was nearly on top of her that I realized what I’d done.
“Oh, shit. I am so sorry.” I backed away. “I shouldn’t have done that, Katie.”
She pushed herself up on her elbows, her cheeks a little red.
“No, it’s my fault. I was teasing you.” She got off the bed and went to turn on some music. “I was flirting with you. I’m sorry.”
“Is that what that was?”
“Oh, Jesus. I should not be flirting with you.” She put her face in her hands as “Never Let Me Go”, by Florence and The Machine came through her iPod speakers. “I should be dealing with the fact that my dad is dead. I shouldn’t be thinking about you. Like that.”
“Hey, hey.” I put my hands on her shoulders. She turned and I wrapped her in a hug again. Effortless. As easy as breathing.
“I’m a horrible, terrible person,” she said.
“You know, most of the horrible, terrible people in the world don’t believe they’re horrible and terrible. You think Hitler looked in the mirror and told himself that? I don’t think so.”
“What does Hitler have to do with it?”
“Nothing, I was just trying to make a point and screwed it up.”
She pulled back and looked up at me. The brown eyes behind those glasses would be my undoing.
“I don’t know how to do this anymore,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Be.”
“Be what?”
“Just…human, I guess. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to do everything. Talking and eating and even breathing. None of it is easy anymore.”
“I think that’s normal.”
“How would you know?”
“I just do.”
I smoothed her hair back from her face with both hands and put a kiss on her forehead. It was a friend thing to do.
She held onto my forearms locking me in place.
“Fuck me. Please.”
Katie
I didn’t know what made me say it. I just knew that I wanted to forget for a little while, like we had before. Those times with him, when we’d been naked and sweating and together, I hadn’t been thinking about anything. I wanted that again.
He was shocked for only half a second and then I watched his face, waiting for his response. I held him there and begged him with my eyes and my mind and everything else.
Just fuck me.
He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to mine and then yanked his arms out of my grasp.
“No.” Stepping away from me, he shook his head, swiping his hand through his hair. “Jesus, Katie. Why do you do this to me?”
“Do what?”
“You just…You say you want to be friends and then you ask me to fuck you and it’s back and forth. I never know where I stand and it makes me so fucking crazy I can’t even think about anything else.” He started pacing the room. “You drive me insane because you never know what you want and you expect me to just accommodate you. And I do it. Every time. You say jump and I get out a goddamn trampoline. When I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about you and wanting you. I want to walk across this room and do what you want, but I can’t. I can’t fuck you anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t just fuck you because I love you!”
I loved going on roller coasters. The moment I lived for was when the car slowly clicked its way up to the very top of the highest point, and then there were those breathless moments when it raced to the bottom and your stomach dropped into your feet and you couldn’t catch your breath.
This was just like that, only worse.
“I love you, Katie.”
Katie
I’d forgotten how to speak. How to take words and put them together in my mind in an order that would make sense and convey what I was feeling. Maybe because I didn’t know what I was feeling.
“I know this is the wrong thing to say, at the wrong time. It’s all wrong.”
Something Lottie said came back to me. Something about how maybe Stryker and I were so wrong for each other that it was right.
“I just…I had to tell you. I had to say it out loud.”
Words, words would be good right about now. Some words. Any words.
“Are you fucking serious?” Not the best choice of words, but it was a start.
“Yeah. I know, I know. It’s…crazy.” He started pacing again, as if he had to keep moving. “You know what’s even crazier? I knew that first time I saw you. In that pink dress. I just…I knew. I was watching you during the entire party. You didn’t see me, but I was. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. I kept trying to find your flaws, to convince myself you weren’t attractive, which backfired because I only wanted you more.”
“My flaws?”
“I told myself that your eyes were too big, and you were too short, and…well, that was as far as I got.”
“Oh.”
My stomach still felt like it was going to fall out my body, through the floor and into the room below us.
“But, Katie, there’s something you should know.” Other than the fact that he loves me? What more could there be?
“I haven’t said it back,” I said, interrupting whatever thing he’d been about to tell me.
“I know. I didn’t expect you to. I didn’t expect to say it, but I can’t take it back now.”
“Do you want me to say it?”
“I want you to say whatever you feel. I always want you to tell me the truth.”
What was the truth?
“I can’t breathe right now. And I can’t feel my fingers or toes. Is that weird? I also feel like I swallowed my heart and it’s beating in my throat.”
“I’m familiar with the feeling,” he said, finally standing still. “I kind of feel like I’m going to die.”
“Yeah, me too.”
There were several feet of space between us. The truth was that I wanted that space to go away. I wanted to push it aside and not let it come between us. I wanted to beat the shit out of any space that would dare come between us. Was that love?
I made my legs take one step. It was like trying to walk through waist-high water. I took another. He didn’t move, waiting for me to come to him.
“I feel like I want us to b
e friends, but not just friends. I feel like I want us to be best friends. I feel like I want you to be the person I tell everything to. I feel like I could see you every second of every day and it wouldn’t be enough. I feel like you are the sexiest, kindest, most wonderful person I’ve ever met and that I will never be good enough to deserve you, but I’d like to try anyway. I feel like if you weren’t there when Dad died that I would have died too. I would have gotten sucked down, like Mom. And loving you is one of the only things keeping me afloat right now.”
The words were easy, once I started saying them. They came as if I’d memorized them and recited them hundreds of times, like a favorite song that I would always know the lyrics to.
I stopped with that one last foot of space between us.
“The truth is that I love you too.”
His green eyes consumed me, pulling me closer.
“Are you sure?” he said, as if he didn’t believe me.
“Yes, you idiot, I’m sure.” I tried to smack him in the chest, but he caught my wrist before I made contact and brought my hand to his mouth, kissing my palm.
“Just checking before I did this.” He yanked me toward his mouth and our lips crashed together. Like the first time, only so much more. “You ever loved a guy with a lip ring?”
“Nope, this is a first,” I said as his hands went into my hair, pulling the clip out and letting it tumble over my shoulders.
“Good.”
Instead of consuming my mouth again, he held my face still while he trailed kisses across my forehead, and then down the left side of my face, and around my chin and back up the right side. Tracing my face with kisses. Then he went down my nose and across my eyelids and finally, to my mouth. I held still, my hands on his back. It was torture, being that still and letting him do it. Exquisite, burning torture.
Before he could kiss me again, I took my hands and put them in his hair, holding his face still. My turn.
I went for his eyebrow ring first, and then I used my lips to draw his face, stopping at last with his lips, kissing the ring that had grown warm with the touch of our skin. To his credit, he stayed still, only trembling a bit. His hands did start working their way up my shirt, which made it hard to concentrate on what my lips were supposed to be doing.