Bend Me, Break Me (3 page)

“Uh, no,” I sputtered. It took me a second to regroup.

“No? So what do you want from me?” She crossed her arms and I saw a hint of fire in her eyes that I’d never seen before.

“I just want to buy you a cup of coffee. Or tea. Or whatever you might want to drink. That’s it.” I held my hands up and then dropped them to my sides.

She narrowed her eyes and studied me for what felt like an eternity.

“You want to buy me a cup of coffee.” She didn’t phrase it like a question.

“Yes,” I said. She uncrossed her arms and looked over her shoulder.

“If I do this with you, will you do something for me?” I nodded even before she told me what it was. She could have told me to set myself on fire and I would have done it.

“After we have coffee, you never speak to me again.” I agreed before I had time to think about it.

She took a deep breath and shrugged.

“Okay then. Let’s have coffee.”

She kept giving me darting glances as we walked the short distance to the little coffee shop next to the library. I wished we were walking slower, so I could have more time with her.

“Aren’t you going to talk?” she asked.

“I wasn’t sure if that was allowed,” I said and she shrugged again.

“I don’t know what this is about, or what your motive is, or why you’re doing this. I’m not…” She trailed off and then shook her head as we reached the door. I held it open for her and she paused for a second before walking in, ducking her head so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone.

Luck was in my favor as we found a table for two in the very back corner. Quiet and private, which was what I needed.

“What would you like?” I asked her as she set her bag down and raked her hair back from her face with both hands.

“I don’t care,” she said and for a moment I thought about calling it off. She just looked so tired, resting her head on her hand and closing her eyes for a second.

“I’ll be right back,” I said and walked around the corner to the counter to order, hoping she’d still be at the table when I got back.

I thought about leaving. Something about this whole incident seemed off. He didn’t appear to care about my name or anything else about me. Perhaps he was on some sort of mission; to reach out to the lost. Maybe he thought I needed saving. Little did he know, I was far beyond that.

My curiosity got the better of me, so I waited for him to come back with the coffee. I didn’t plan on drinking whatever it was he brought me. My agreeing to come here with him was enough. He would have to live with that.

He came back a few minutes later and in addition to two cups, he had a muffin and a scone on a plate.

I wasn’t hungry.

“I got you a green tea,” he said. Surprising. “I also got a latte, if you’d prefer that instead. And if you want something else, I can go get that.” I took the tea from his hand, our fingers just barely brushing. I almost jerked my hand back, but then the cup would have fallen and made this already awkward encounter worse.

He set the plate down between us, as if he was waiting for me to choose what I wanted and then he’d take the leftovers. So I pushed the plate toward him and took a sip of my tea. It was perfect. Not too sweet and not too bitter.

“I’m not hungry,” I said, but he didn’t touch the plate. Silence fell between us, punctured by the hum of everything around us. Plates and cups clinking. Laughter and conversation.

“I’m guessing I should probably introduce myself,” he said after taking a sip of the latte.

“That might be a start. Since you asked me to coffee without even asking me my name.” His eyes went wide and he coughed.

“Right, of course. Well, I’m Coen LaCour.” He stuck his hand at me across the table. As if I was supposed to shake it like this was a normal meeting. I looked at the hand and waited for him to drop it. If I was too friendly, I was going to give him the wrong idea. He’d agreed to leave me alone after today, but I didn’t think, given his previous persistence, he would stick to the deal.

I had to admit, I did like his name. It was unusual. Something you didn’t forget easily.

Thinking I could at least give him the courtesy of my name, I spoke.

“Ingrid. Ingrid Alexander.” He smiled a little. As if my name pleased him. He finally dropped his hand and then reached for the muffin.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ingrid.” It was strange, hearing someone use my name. I didn’t hear it often anymore.

“What do you want from me, Coen LaCour?” I asked, wrapping both hands around the cup. I wasn’t cold, but I needed something to do. Something to hold onto before I could get out of her and be alone again.

He opened his mouth, thought better of it and then took a bite of muffin, chewing thoughtfully, as if deciding on the right words. I didn’t like that. I didn’t want him telling me words he thought I wanted to hear.

“Right now, I just want to have coffee with you, Ingrid.” That didn’t answer my question.

“Why?” I asked, looking directly into his green eyes. They were bright, even in this darkened corner.

“Don’t you ever feel like doing something nice for someone?” Just as I suspected. I got to my feet, the chair scraping horribly against the slate tiles of the floor.

“Where are you going?” he asked, a hint of desperation in his voice. I didn’t like this. Not at all.

“I’m leaving. I don’t need some stranger buying me tea because he feels sorry for me. Or he’s got a savior complex, or he’s trying to get extra karma points. My life is
none
of your business.” Standing there and looking at him just made me angrier. I had to get out of there.

I stumbled away from him, but he grabbed my arm.

“Let go of me!” I screamed. I was causing a scene, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be left alone. Why couldn’t he leave me alone?

“I’m sorry, Ingrid,” he said, raising his hands as if to surrender.

“Fuck you,” I spat in his face and rushed out of the shop and straight back to my room, slamming the door behind me.

If there were an award for fucking things up with Ingrid, I was sure to win it. I just couldn’t seem to figure out what to do to break through. She had walls built on top of walls and for good reason. I understood why she insulated herself. Kept others away. I just… I needed to find a way to get through to her. I had to, or else all of this would have been for nothing.

After the disaster at the coffee shop, I went back to my room and got on my computer. I spent the next few hours just staring at her Facebook page. She hadn’t updated it in months. The last few posts had been pictures of her with friends, or funny memes or jokes.

She’d been… normal. A normal eighteen-year-old girl with hopes and dreams and insecurities and a whole life planned out.

I clicked out of the tab and rubbed my face with my hands. It might be time to ask for some help.

“So you’re asking me, since you know I have game and you don’t,” Marty said that night. I’d bribed him with going off-campus and getting burritos at our favorite Mexican place. They were big enough for three people, so the bang was worth the buck.

“I guess.” I’d told him I saw a cute girl in one of my classes, but that all my attempts to get her attention had been ignored. It was mostly true.

He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

“Well, well, well. This explains why you were all emo and weird last week. Okay, so tell me about her.” I didn’t want to, but I was desperate.

“She’s shy and her name’s Ingrid and she’s in my economics class and she likes tea. That’s about it.” I knew a hell of a lot more than I was telling him, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

“That’s it?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “I mean, I’d thought at least there would be something that made her stand out.” Oh, there were plenty of things that made her stand out.

“She’s just… You know how you meet someone and you just feel like you’ve known them for a long time? Or that you have so many things in common, it’s hard to believe? She’s like that. I just know.”

“You’ve got it bad, my friend,” he said, finishing his soda and waving to our server for another.

“I don’t have anything. I just want to talk to her. Maybe be friends. She looks lonely.” Ingrid wasn’t lonely. Or I didn’t think she was. She chose to be alone, which was going to be far more difficult than lonely to overcome.

“So how about bringing her a tea next class. You don’t say anything. Just hand it to her and walk away. You have to make her want to come to you. Going after her over and over is only going to push her further away.” I nodded, because it all made sense. Talking hadn’t worked well for me so far. Maybe it was time for actions instead of words.

I was so angry after the incident in the coffee shop that I stormed around my room for nearly an hour. Stormed isn’t quite the right word, because my room was so small that you could only take a few steps in any direction.

The hot feeling boiled inside me and made my head feel like it was going to burst. I just wanted to make it stop. Make it stop, make it stop.

I threw myself on my bed and was shocked to find there were tears on my pillow. I hadn’t cried in a long time. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time.

How was it that this stupid boy had brought tears to my eyes? How dare he?

I sat up and wiped my face. I had two options. I could either ignore him and keep taking the class, or I could email the professor and drop it. There was still time for me to do that without it penalizing my GPA. As if I cared about that, anyway.

I wanted to drop the class. That would be the easiest thing to do, but my anger stopped me. I’d asked him to leave me alone and he was going to do that. Or face the consequences.

I was so early to class on Wednesday that I was one of the first students seated. I sat in the upper left corner of the lecture hall, which had views of all of the doorways and aisles.

He was late. He was late, or he wasn’t coming. Just a minute before class started, he finally showed up, his face flushed and his hair blown back from his face, as if he’d been rushing. There was a disposable coffee cup in his hand. I put my head down and tried to sink in my seat.

Of course, he found me anyway, in the sea of nearly a hundred students. As if I was a beacon that he followed.

He made his way over to my seat and held out the cup. I looked up at him in surprise. Before I could do or say anything, he set the cup on my desk and walked back down the steps to another seat near the front.

“Let’s get started,” the professor said, picking up his chalk.

The cup contained green tea again. I was apprehensive about drinking it, but then it smelled so good. I should have thrown it away, since taking and drinking it was probably a signal to him that he could continue to bother me. I’d lashed out at him yesterday and it hadn’t deterred him. I decided to try something different if he came up to me today.

He didn’t. The moment class ended, he was up, taking the stairs two at a time, and out the door without another look at me.

I sat there, shocked.

Coen LaCour was messing with my mind.

I finished my tea and went to my next two classes in a bit of a confused haze. We’d started working on
Frankenstein
in English, which I was thrilled about. It was appropriate, given that Halloween was coming up.

But even that couldn’t force my mind to focus on anything but Coen LaCour.

Even when I was back in my room and working on a new poem, he was there in my thoughts and he started to spill out into the ink of my pen.

The way you said my name.

The line repeated over and over in my head. I refused to clutter up my notebook with something so ridiculous, so I closed my notebook and went back to re-reading
Frankenstein
.

On Friday, he was there again with tea, but this time he stood in the doorway for me. Without a word, he handed me the cup and walked into the room without another word.

It was the same the next week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Three cups of tea with no words. Not even a smile. I thought about walking by him. I thought about throwing them in his face. I thought about screaming at him. I thought about doing a hundred other things.

But I took them. Every time.

He changed things up on me the following Monday. I took the tea, as usual, but then he also pushed a box into my other hand. I opened my mouth to ask him what was going on, but he folded my fingers around the box and then he was off again.

Hoping it wasn’t a bomb, I took the tea and mystery box to my seat. No one was watching me and the chatter was loud enough to cover the crinkle of me unwrapping the box.

When I got it unwrapped, I opened it to make sure what was in it was what it said on the outside.

A Slinky. A silver Slinky. The kind of toy you could find at a shop that sold vintage things. You didn’t see many of them anymore.

A Slinky. Why had he given me a Slinky? Such an odd present. I didn’t know what to make of it, which was perhaps part of his plan. I shifted it from hand to hand and then put it in my bag without looking up to see if he’d watched me open it.

On Wednesday, there was another tea and another present. This time, it was a small Etch A Sketch. Once again, I didn’t know what to think. It was just so… strange. I put it on my desk when I got back to my dorm, right next to the Slinky. On Friday, a Rubik’s Cube was added to the collection.

The following Monday, I had to say something. He had another present.