thirty-six
"Alex? That was your cue," Wyatt sighs, as he begins pacing the confines of our secluded corner in the library. It was practically vacant this time of day. The distaste in his tone isn't hard to miss considering I'd shown up two hours past the time we originally scheduled to rehearse our lines.
Since arriving, my mind forbade a single thought that hadn't belonged to Trevor, or my meeting his daughter. It was mythic. The sensation of our liplock still erupted through every nerve ending in my lips as I sought to concentrate on the script. His hands around my waist—mine around his neck as the world ceased to exist around us. I yearned for more of him. The euphoric sensation of his skin pressed against mine and the enticing potency of his scent. Though truthfully, nothing between him and I had changed. Our circumstances, predicaments—nothing.
After realizing an hour had passed between the time my call with Wyatt finished and the start of our tea party slash puppet show at Trevor's, I realized lingering around much longer would affect our study time even more. Trevor sent me away with a smile and an embrace he used to whisper in my ear that no one could find out about our illicit behaviors.
"Right!" I say, snapping myself out of thought. "Sorry, I'm just really trying to channel Hester's aura."
According to the events playing out in my life at the moment, it technically wasn't a lie. I thought.
"Touche," he says. "I'll begin again from my last line. "'Do not deny that wholesome cup to him, perhaps without the courage for himself to take it in his hands and drink it down this bitter draught presented to thy lips!'"
"I will not name the man," I say, clutching a sack of flour meant to resemble a crying Pearl.
Though despite the lingering distaste spread on Wyatt's face, I'm fully aware that nothing has changed with my delivery of the lines. Flat and emotionless. As much as I willed myself to focus on this script, I couldn't. Especially not with the adrenaline surging through me. Trevor lit a blaze within me that felt difficult to conceal. Something I no longer cared to resist and while I've been pretending to care about this stupid play—that I did care about—he plagued my thoughts.
"Can we try more emotion this time?" he contends, placing his script across the table. "Imagine being ridiculed in front of your peers, a religious council—essentially an entire town of people meant to judge you for your discretions. Being forced to recall moments of intimacy before the crowd. Reduced to a fate brought about by one lousy decision—if it could be genuinely referred to as that. She assumed her husband was dead. Was she expected to wait the rest of her life for him to return? It's pressure even the best would collapse under."
Ignorance is bliss, they say. It was. Up until now, I would've shrugged my shoulders at his suggestion and found some way to move on from the lack of emotion I'd been exhuming. Now, I truly understood a shred of Hester's predicament. Granted I wasn't pregnant, nor in a sexual relationship with Trevor, but his position made the possibility of us working out slim to none. Not to mention the revelational shock it would have around campus. Even though we wouldn't be doing anything illegal, It wouldn't change the way a situation like this would be interpreted by an outsider looking in.
I trembled.
The reality of a scandal like the one between Trevor and me spreading around campus flashed before my very eyes. Putting myself in the shoes of Hester Prynn shouldn't have been difficult considering I'd been stumbling along the wrong side of acceptability myself. Imagining the reactions of my peers, my professors, my family, and friends could've paralyzed me where I stood.
Way to spark the emotions, Wyatt.
Before attempting the line again, my eyes latch in concentration, channeling every ounce of emotion in me, and grasping the bag of flour in my arm as if it's the last time I'll ever lay eyes on it.
"'I will not name the man!'" Even without the stamp of approval brewing on Wyatt's lips, unsettling nausea scoundrel its way up my belly. Perhaps it was too unduly.
"Now that," Wyatt pauses, fighting back a grin. "That was convincing."
The script continues as Wyatt rushes through the bits and pieces that belonged to characters we choose as a backup in case we hadn't gotten our first choice. Auditions and casting would be established during our upcoming lecture. It's why our scenes had to be flawless if we wanted these roles. Luckily after I'd forced myself into character, we were able to read through the play in its entirety.
By the time we've packed up our things and left the library, darkness has already fallen. Tonight's air isn't as frigid as I recall since returning from Minnesota— for that matter, I'm grateful. Unfortunately, some things couldn't be abandoned in Dreycott. The thought of my father's fate still plunged at my conscience every opportunity it had. As erroneous as it seemed, up until now, dad hadn't crossed my mind. Not because I wasn't thinking about him, but because I had forced myself not to.
Only now, as we proceed closer to my resident hall, the broken expression on his bandaged face as he lies limp in his bed is all that remains. Being home alone was the absolute last thing on my mind right now. If Taylor had been there, I wouldn't have minded. Instead—she and Leonardo were spending the night "getting to know each other" she told me over text message on my way to the library to meet up with Wyatt.
"So, what are you doing tonight? Any parties I wasn't invited to going on at the fraternity?"
Wyatt turns from his deadpanned stare of the road towards me with a smile spread across his face and laughs. "If there were a party—you'd be one of the first to know. Especially after what I heard went down at the last party I threw," he pauses, as a smug smile spreads across his lips. I suppose it makes sense that Wyatt heard about what went down between Rachel considering it happened at his fraternity. Although it's the urge to confront him about the girl he took to Hoa's parlor that yet beseeched me, mute I remain. "Why? Are you looking to get into something tonight?"
"More like everything, anything. I don't want to be home alone tonight. Too much shit on my mind."
My remark unmistakably disrupts the stillness of the atmosphere. As a way to deflect, Wyatt replies with a lame joke querying whether or not I'd invited him back to my place—which isn't the case. Amidst the clearing of confusion, it takes little to convince him to spend the rest of the evening with me. Which ironically still leads us back to the topic of going to my dorm in pursuit of the answers to our current predicament of boredom.
Laying tucked in the drawer of my desk is the bucket list Taylor and I seemingly tossed aside after our last conquest. We only managed to accomplish a few things on the list since I brought it back. Even if I had to do it with Wyatt, or alone for that matter, I intended to do them all. After pulling the notebook from the drawer, I change into a pair of boots far more comfortable than the pair of leather ones I decided to wear today. Our dorm is vacant and has still provided little interest in my current mood along with the urge to stay. On the way out the door, a glimpse of my reflection pulls my eyes towards the mirror and the frail appearance I'd been lugging around frightens me.
I'd been unrecognizable.
There's no denying the sleep deprivation wreaking havoc on the bags underneath my eyes. The fissures coating my lips can attest to their lack of care. My hair which had been stuffed messily in a bun from a week ago began matting to the center of my scalp. Even the tone of my complexion had sunken dull due to exhaustion. Wyatt's willingness to be seen with me in a state of clear decline was astonishing, but being aware now meant something had to change. Returning to the internal abyss my mom depleted valuable energy on me couldn't have been without a cause. Going back to that place would only contradict that.
It's no easy task tussling the handle of a brush until I've freed each coil from a kink. From there, a much presentable bun livens my appearance. A layer of gloss temporarily seals the cracks in my lips. Once I've dabbed concealer underneath my eyes and am satisfied with my appearance, I ride the elevator down to the first floor of the residence hall and into the parking lot. Ushering into the car, several apologies hit the air on account of my time spent in the dorm.
"No worries," Wyatt affirms as his eyes scan my appearance before he strikes the engine to life. "You look stunning nonetheless. What's inside the notebook?" His comment prompts a smile before I recite the list to him. He's free-spirited enough to abide as we part ways from my resident hall. "That day in the dining hall when you and Taylor sat at our table, were you marking something off of this list?"
"Guilty as charged, and I plan on doing everything on this list."
Before our thirty minutes ride off-campus to the town near Hoa's ice cream parlor commences, Wyatt warns me of the long journey ahead of us. Luckily I've already concluded that it would entail a lot of talking. If not that—an extensive period of silence that no one wanted. It's then that it becomes apparent that keeping my father's secret would no longer suffice. Lying to Wyatt was something I didn't want to do anyway. Especially not when he'd been so nonchalant about spending his time trying to appease me and my codependency. He was too good of a gentleman to be dangled around.
The conversation begins with my father's suicide attempt, but from there, it takes on a life of its own. Before I know it, I'd already made him aware of my mother's death, my and my brother's brush with death in New York, and the post-traumatic stress and depression that devoured me after both of those incidences. It's no surprise the car held an impenetrable silence for as long as it had.
When Wyatt finally does decide to speak, he first apologizes to me for his lack of patience in the library this evening, claiming that no one would be able to concentrate on a play when they'd been juggling something as horrific as I had. Though I accept his apology with grace, it stung. Because my reason for being distracted in the library had little to do with my dad. Wyatt continues with a few things to say about his challenges.
His palms tense around the wheel as he recalls the years of abuse he and his mother entailed at the hands of his father. An alcoholic, no good of a man, Wyatt referred to him as. His mother, on the other hand, didn't possess the same determination for escapes as Wyatt. The night Wyatt decided to flee, he intended for his mother to follow after, but she couldn't—or wouldn't. He calls her as often as he can—terrified of the day his father escalates to murder. It's no reason he pours his all into everything he does like throwing a party to provide less fortunate children with toys for Christmas. Or the fact that the guys in his fraternity confided in him the way they did.
It was the first time my eyes were truly open to him. Whereas before I'd only reduced him to any other privileged, immature frat boy, behind it all was a young man who endured hardship and fought his way to greater opportunities. Someone who knew at least a fraction of the pain harboring inside me. Someone who turned all the misfortune and hurt into something beautiful for everyone else around them.
He proceeds forward with his eyes fastened on nothing but the road ahead of us.
The car glides to a stop, and as it does, my gaze finds him before taking the time to analyze our surroundings, but Wyatt is focused on gathering his belongings to notice. An apology only felt necessary. So much time was wasted because of a foolish impression of him that was furthest from the truth.
"I'm sorry," I breathed. My words are enough to break him from his gathering long enough for his brows to furrow before his eyes eventually find me.
"Don't be," he tells me. "I've been surviving just fine on my own for years now. I live each day with expectations and intentions to prosper in the future. My father is the least of my concerns and you never have to apologize for him."
I don't have the guts to explain to him that his father isn't the purpose of my apology, but my lack of respect for him was. Regardless of whether he was aware of it or not, he didn't deserve the immaturity I brought to the table. Dangling him around like a toy, leading him on knowing good and well that I had no intention of ever making us something more. I was wrong, but instead of correcting him, I nod and give him a toothless smile before finally focusing my attention on what surrounded us. Though the sun has long set, the moon and stars illuminate the night with specs of light brightening the sky.
By its lonesome at the end of a dead-end road, stands a quaint building with a flickering neon sign posted in the window advertising its services and twenty-four-hour availability. Tattoos, removals, and piercings. The name posted above the door reads InkIt! I hadn't had the heart to tell him that of all the quests on the bucket list, this particular one was reserved for my brother and I who hadn't heard much from him since our return back to campus. Unlike Hoa's, the parlor is lined with several vacant cars.
There's an uneasiness in my stomach that refuses to dissipate even as the passenger door swings open with Wyatt's outstretched hand reaching for mine. Inside the parlor is engulfed in syncopated hums of machinery. Blaring through loudspeakers, shouting deeming socially acceptable as it blares through the speakers.
A white man clothed in sleeves of ink and prodded with metal in his face approaches us with a smile that's devoured by facial hair. His belly protrudes the waistline of his belted jeans and his hair spikes every which way in a neon green mohawk.
"What brings you youngin's to these here parts?" He asks, training his focus only on me—which would've caused me to crumble any other day, but with Wyatt by my side, the man's demeanor only prompts me to latch onto Wyatt's arm. "If you're looking for the university, it's about ten miles south."
Instead of shooting back a rebuttal negating our obvious disposition, the man proceeds to move us towards a massive glass counter encased with endless options of jewelry. He introduces himself as Ryder—the lead tattooer—then proceeds to explain the requirements and stipulations of being tattooed in his parlor. Age verification, birth certificate, etc. Ryder recites the verbiage of a contract we skimmed over and signed verbatim. It takes him little to nothing to zip through the logistics before were able to choose a design.
As we trout down the corridor behind Ryder, the hum of tattoo guns intensify. On either side of the wall as we carry on down the hall contain separate booths concealed with a curtain. Many of them are pulled closed for occupancy but the rest are open and stocked with equipment for the next client. Wyatt and me follow him into a booth—prepped and ready for service. On his desk lays a laptop and printer for transparent templates.
"Well, whatcha gettin'?"
With little into the thought of our intent, we'd forgotten to choose something fitting for both of us. To save Ryder and his thinning patience any further frustration, it's me that suggests what we eventually chose to settle on. Smiley faces on the palm of our pinky finger. The pain was minimal which is more than can I say for the level of pain I was expecting and we were both out of his chair within fifteen minutes. We pay our dues and once Ryder has explained our aftercare, we make our way back towards campus.