CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There he is. The love of my life.
Right there on the television screen.
He's the star basketball player with shaggy brown hair, tan skin, and a secret passion for singing musical theater.
He's the over six feet tall, chocolate skinned, muscles on muscles football player who's a terrifying stone statue on the outside, but a soft cuddly teddy bear on the inside.
He's the quiet kid that sits in the back of the class who wears all black and sketches the surreal.
He's the boy next door who's constantly pushing up his glasses and has a brown leather journal filled with poetry.
He's the class clown whose plaid shirt is always too baggy, black high tops are always untied, and the most crooked smile.
He's even the tall, brooding man with larger than life sideburns, a fitted coat, and a bow tie, who always gives you irritating curt replies but somehow, someway always locks eyes with you across the ballroom.
I don't have a type.
I fell for them all.
I love them all.
Which is why I hate them all.
For making me fall for them.
For making me desire the simplest kind of affection, holding hands and pinky promises, staring contests and forehead kisses, fingers that tease and tickle, but arms that ground you when wrapped from behind, and late night snacks turned deep conversations until eyelids get too heavy and drift to sleep.
For making me believe in the most unrealistic kind of love.
For making me crave love.
For making me yearn for someone somewhere to love me.
"That's enough," my sister says, aggressively swiping at the few traitor tears that trickle out of her eyes. "I'm too hormonal for this sh*t." She snatches the remote off the coffee table before turning her red cheeks to face me. "Horror movie?"
"Horror movie." I nod with a laugh.
****
My phone pings. I hear it from where I hid it underneath my pillow. It only reminds me that I'm no longer home on Spring Break, chilling on the couch watching movies with my sister, but instead back caged inside the dull white cement walls of my dorm room. It's my fault for forgetting to put my phone on silent, yet I'm also thankful because my eyes are starting to burn twenty pages into my reading assignment, and my teeth are close to making my thumbnail nonexistent.
Hey, wanna come over? Jack's signature text.
I shouldn't. I really shouldn't. I should be focused on finishing this assignment. I should be focusing on studying for the last of my midterms and preparing for the last six weeks of the semester.
But my fingers close my laptop and push it off my lap. My legs stand up and walk into the small bathroom beside the door that conjoins the quad. My hands brush my teeth and hair. My arms fling my hair up into a ponytail before my feet carry me back into my room. My fingers latch around some deodorant, perfume, my cell phone, my cross body bag, and my black sweatshirt before reaching for my sneakers.
It's like I have no control over my body the same way I have no control of Jack's lips as they curve around his pen when he cracks open the door to his apartment. He lazily pulls it back and stretches his arm out, gesturing for me to come inside, as if there is a grand ball in his living room instead of a black leather couch.
I take three big steps. One, two, three heel-toes before whirling back around. Jack sandwiches my face between his hands as he kicks the door closed and replaces his pen with my lips. I gently shove him back the few steps, and he momentarily removes his left hand from my face to secure the locks on the door before nudging me forward again.
I stumble a little as I kick of my shoes. "Ow," I gasp when he accidentally steps on my big toe.
"Sorry." He chuckles between kisses.
Our feet match the pitter patter of the rain outside the far window as we continue to inch further and further into his apartment. The zipper of my sweatshirt clinks against the hardwood floor. Jack transfers the giggles over to me when his foot slips on the arm of it and propels him forward, making my hip bump against the back of the couch. But it doesn't derail us from continuing to try and maneuver our way to his room without detaching our lips.
Jack's fingers feather over the hem of my t-shirt, gently pushing it up against my stomach.
"Whoops," I breathe when I go to lift my arms but end up shoving my knuckles into his nostrils. It doesn't help that the collar of my shirt gets caught on my ear and then my ponytail before Jack tosses it over his shoulder in hopes it'll land on or in the vicinity of the couch.
His hands burn into the bare skin of my abdomen as his arms circle around me. He yanks me forward, and his forehead falls on mine as an all too lopsided grin breaks out across his lips. "We're not even drunk."
My laugh is breathless and tipsy as I wrap my arms around his neck, but I don't stop there. I can't stop there. The magnets click on, and I have the sudden urge to mold every inch of my body flat against his, all the while thinking, who needs alcohol when I have him?
The powdery scent of his laundry detergent that wafts through the air when his shirt goes flying. The almond coconut scent of soap mixed with the spices of his cologne or maybe even his deodorant. I don't know. The feathery feel of his hair that seems to get longer and longer on top every time I run my fingers through it. The way our noses often have a terrible habit of bumping together, and yet he holds my chin between his palms, I hold the tops of his ears, and the puzzle is completed by the connection between our lips, even the tiny step forward he always seems to take when he deepens the kiss.
Jack pulls away to pull me along as he takes the last few steps backwards into his room. My feet stutter and stumble against the white fluffy rug, and Jack's chest vibrates with his chuckles, but this time I don't reciprocate. This time the air gets caught in the back of my throat. The same way your heart sinks into your chest at the top of a roller coaster peak. It drops all the way down into your stomach before slowly crawling its way back up. It eats away at every rational before settling inside your throat, and you know that if your lips were to part, it would come tumbling right out because what is life right now?
Who, what, when, where, and how has my life come to this very moment?
Because for once everything has been so easy—too easy—so questionably easy—that it's uneasy to believe because nothing ever is.
I want him. I want him. I want him.
But do I need him?
The answer is no. The answer should be no. I shouldn't even be asking that question the same way I shouldn't be here skimming my hands down his chest and nodding along to the song of his lips.
And then there's big question word number five: why?
Nothing else matters. No who, what, when, where, or how. Just the why.
Why is it so easy?
Why is it so easy with him?
Why him?
But as my back hits the cloud that is Jack's bed and his warmth falls over me, I decide to deal with it the same way you deal with a hangover—in the morning.
****
My sneakers scuff against the stairs as I trek up the two flights to my dorm. All the people I passed on campus, lingering outside the dorm buildings or walking to and from the student center and the library, dissipate into their own weeknight routines, making the dorm building hallways mostly eerie and vacant.
The flat blinking yellow ceiling lights over my head are almost blinding, especially when compared to the dim glow of Jack's apartment, as I skim past all the tan doors broken up by white cement walls, but my steps falter a little when I spot Taryne sitting on the floor next to our door. Her back is resting against the wall and her jean covered legs are stretched out in front of her. The closer I get the more still she appears. Her sock covered toes don't even wiggle as her ankles and feet remain tilted away from each other in a relaxed v-shape, and her eyes remains fixed on the door across from ours.
"Hey," I say, gently nudging her leg with my toe, right where she cuffed the bottom of her jeans, before stepping over her legs. "Did you forget your I.D.? You could have called me." I laugh as I go to grab mine out of my bag, but quickly dart my head back down to the left when she still doesn't respond. I hold my own breath as I wait for the slow expand of her white t-shirt covered chest before I nudge her leg again. "You okay?"
"Yeah," she sighs. It takes another second for that sigh to turn into a mocking scoff. "You know you're a piece of sh*t." She holds her right hand up and brands the words into the air like a skyline. "You're a piece of sh*t." Her shoulders shake as she scoffs out a laugh again, her gaze fixed upon her long white nails, before she drops her hand. "That's what my dad used to say." She finally cranes her neck and flashes me with glassy eyes. "But you know he was a piece of sh*t."
"He was," I agree as I wrap my fingers around my I.D. card while wrapping my arms around my chest.
She turns back to face the void in front of her as a result of the slight redness I also saw hiding in the whites of her eyes.
I step back over her legs and slowly slide down the wall to sit beside her. The leftover fumes of whatever's high in her veins lingers in her hair. I mimic her position, stretching out my legs and leaning my back against the wall, but I cross one ankle over the other and keep my bag and hands tucked in my lap.
"He's the piece of sh*t who would leave me home alone all the time to go become a drunk piece of sh*t," she spits, skimming her fingers over the layer of grim and dirt on the white linoleum floor underneath us. "He's the piece of sh*t that would forget to pay the bills because he's the piece of sh*t that would steal my paychecks to go buy more booze. He's a piece of sh*t, and yet he would always stumble into my room at night and call me"—she points her hand at her chest— "a piece of sh*t." She shakes her head slightly as she drops her hand back down to her lap. "Maybe I am a piece of sh*t."
I finally tear my thumbnail away from my lip. "No, you're not."
"I know," she agrees, and I'm glad because it means sober Taryne is poking through the fog. She keeps her gaze glued to the university flags and bumper stickers littering the tan door across from us as another sigh escapes her lips. Another sign that sober Taryne is clawing her way back up. "But I feel like a piece of sh*t."
My empty stomach starts churning with who knows what as I fall into my own void. Her white socks are stained with brown, sitting next to my sneaker covered feet. Her shoes are nowhere to be found.
"You can ask why, you know."
"Do you want me to ask?"
"Well . . ." She shrugs. "Do you want to know?"
"Do you want me to know?"
Taryne pauses. I inhale, but hold it for an extra second in my chest before slowly letting it out through my nose. It may be a stupid thing to keep asking, childish even, responding with question after question, but it's not because I don't care, rather it's because I do. But boundaries are important. Especially, when it comes to reasons as to why you would walk home without shoes.
"Yeah . . ."
"Okay." I nod, once again, pulling my finger away from my lips and my current target cuticle. "Was it . . . Was it Jared?"
She nods.
"Did he . . .?"
"No, but like . . . I'm a piece of sh*t."
"No, you're not."
Her laugh isn't really a laugh. More like a choked up sigh. "Yeah, I am."
"No . . . you're not."
"Bastards. All of 'em. Freakin' bastards."