Chasing Serenity (Seeking Serenity) (14 page)

“Yeah, and you’d be a freakin’ Slytherin.”

Ten

“Did you get the corset?” The phone rests on my shoulder as I listen to Sayo’s naggy little voice. My fingers tap through the page on the screen, Cavanagh U’s logo a bright red crest with swirling loops of white and silver.
  

She’s going to bitch at me.
  “I ordered it Tuesday.”

“Autumn! Halloween is next week and we still have to do a dry run.”

“Friend, you are a perfectionist.”

“Because of you we didn’t get to compete in the costume contest last year. Do you really want to ruin our chance at winning?”

Man, has my best friend got the Catholic guilt thing down to an art form. I suspect she’s also somewhat grumpy from our training early this morning. When I tell her that, she accuses me of being the grumpy one since Declan had to miss it in favor of his forced rugby practices. Mullens wanted him training despite his suspension. He’s been so tired he even pushed back our date until after Halloween. But I was not grumpy.

“No one in this town reads great fiction, Sayo, unless it’s got something to do with Ireland or rugby. They won’t get our theme.” I’m not particularly eager to get on with Halloween. I love the series we’re basing our costumes off of—the steampunk “Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences” and their core characters, Agents Wellington Books and Eliza Braun—but my breasts are large, much larger than my friends' are. A corset will make me look like some exaggerated comic book pin up.
 

“It’s not just the Ministry. We’re steampunked. It’ll be cool, you’ll see.”

The fitting at the costumers had been embarrassing. The old man at the shop had to tug and pull and bend me in between the brown leather and sharp steel boning and I felt like a sausage busting out of its casing. “But a Braun without a Books? Makes no sense. Unless you’re going as Wellington.”

“Sophia del Morte, dahlink.”

“She’s Italian, not Hungarian.”

“Whatever. Besides, um, Books is handled.” Oh God. She’s up to something. Her voice always gets clipped and shrill when she’s hiding something from me. That was definitely shrillish.

“By whom?”

“Oh, sweetie I’ve got to go. There’s a Library Science class coming in. I’ll call you later.”

“Sayo, I smell a lie.”

“Huh? Of course not, sweetie. See ya.”

Then line goes dead and I replace my office phone on the receiver. Those sneaky little tarts. They are clearly up to something, but then the college’s Admin screen on my computer opens and I forget about what my friends are planning behind my back. I type “Fraser, Declan” in the search box feeling somewhat like a creepy stalker. My door is shut; still, I can’t help but glance over my shoulder to double check. Nope, it’s closed, but just to make myself feel better I stretch over the ancient radiator and pull my wood blinds closed.

I hear the small beep from my computer as the file uploads and Declan’s transcripts immediately fill the screen. That smug jackass has been holding out on me. His GPA is nearly perfect. Other than one semester at his last university, Declan has had a near flawless academic standing.

I click over to his admissions form and see his SAT scores. Wow. 1800s. Then I scroll through his current classes. Huh. He’s a computer science major. When I hear footsteps coming down the hallway, I exit the database and minimize the screen. If Declan can’t control his temper then he’ll be booted off the squad. It gives me some comfort to know that he could likely swing an academic scholarship. Just as the thought enters my mind, I curse myself for being nosy. It’s not my place to worry about Declan. I’m not his mom. Or his girlfriend, so why do I care what happens to him?

Two sharp taps on my door shake against the paper thin frame and I slide my chair over my tiny office to open it, the door swinging out. Tucker stands in my doorway with a bundle of flowers in his hands. Instantly my temper flares. “What do you want, Tucker?”

He walks inside, then steps back when I stand, clearly noticing that there isn’t room for his tall frame in my office. “Okay, I know I deserve the attitude.”

“You think?”

He extends the flowers out to me and I grab them, only to chunk them in the trash. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. Autumn, I am, but you can’t stay pissed at me forever.”

“Watch me.”

“Come on, babe.” My eye twitches at the endearment. He knows I hate being called “babe” by anyone. I’m not a talking pig.

My worn leather chair pinches my thigh when I sit back down. I grab a stack of empty manila folders and sit on them. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t call me that.”

“Sorry. I forgot.” Tucker kneels in front of me, lays his hand on my leg, but I push my chair back, hitting the radiator. His face hardens. “Fine. I won’t touch you.”

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to check on you. Your father was…”

“Tucker, that was a week ago.” I don’t tell Tucker all the things Joe had to say about him during our visit. Warning me away from Tucker is something he’s continued to do in the brief phone conversations we’ve had since that day at my apartment.

“We had away matches, remember, and I didn’t think you’d pick up if I called you.” He scoots closer and despite my anger, I can’t help but enjoy the sandalwood smell he gives off. My knee bumps against the metal desk when I turn away from him to click onto my email. When I wince, Tucker tries to rub my knee. “Careful.”

“I’m clumsy.”

His hand goes to his pocket when I slap it away. “You’ve never been clumsy, Autumn.”

“People change.”

“I see that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask

He grabs my hand and I get an odd sense of déjà vu. I’m reminded instantly of why I want to avoid him. To put him off further, I grab a pen from the holder and drum it against my desk.

“When I saw you in your classroom and your face got all flustered and you were spitting mad, well, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone more beautiful.” His face inches dangerously close to mine.

“Are you crazy?” I say, jumping up. I suppose Tucker didn’t expect my quick reaction, because he jerks back and lands on his butt, knocking his head against the metal trashcan.

“Shit!” he says and I immediately feel guilty. Pulling him up, I touch the back of his head. There is already a small knot forming.

“That was my fault.”

His laugh is low, barely audible. “I’m the fucking clown with the flat balloon.”

My own laughter is instantaneous. It’s just like him to bring me back to the past. As a surprise, when we were first dating, Tucker took me to the circus. I’d never been fond of clowns, they truly freaked me out and reminded me of horror novels and my father for inexplicable and ridiculous reasons—had since I was eight years old. Tucker seemed eager to show me the fun of the circus and how harmless clowns were. 

We’d gone in the afternoon and, at first, avoided the clowns, but typical of Tucker, he pulled me into the Big Top to watch the main event. There were lions and elephants being whipped around the Big Top, dirt and dust mingling with the fire rings and the ferocious sound of loud music and the “ohs” and “ahs” of the crowd and then, the clowns emerged. Dozens of them, running through the crowds, dosing everyone with glitter, their horns squeaking.

There was one clown, with orange pants and a polka dotted shirt that was too tight across his round belly. His hair was purple, his make-up poorly brushed onto his face so that it seemed like his wide, fake smile was melting. He was sweaty and clearly new to his job. The clown caught my eye and must have sensed my ridiculous fear. He approached and I kept my face buried in Tucker’s shoulder.  The guy kept throwing confetti on me, kept squeaking that damn horn.

When I still wouldn’t pull my face off Tucker’s shoulder, the clown tried balloon animals. He tried and failed miserably. The giraffe he attempted to make looked like some perverse version of a crocodile. His snake looked like a swollen penis and suddenly, I started to laugh. The clown was god-awful and the louder my laughter got, the more nervous he became until, finally, every balloon he attempted to inflate raspberried into a flaccid mess. We left the circus laughing and my unwarranted fear of clowns stayed behind.
 

Tucker nudges my shoulder and I return his smile, still thinking of the pathetic clown whose first day at the circus hadn’t gone very well. “Not everything was bad with us, was it?”

“No. Not everything.” I help him to his feet and grab a towel from my file cabinet and two small cubes of ice from my mini-fridge.  He flops in my chair and I hand him the ice. “But we can’t go back. There’s been too much that’s happened and I really don’t think you’d like who I’ve become.”

“Will you let me find that out for myself?”

Shoulders falling, I sit on my desk next to him. “God, Tucker, I don’t want to date you. I don’t want to date anyone.”

“I never said I wanted to date you.” At my confused expression he laughs. “Okay, I totally want to date you, but since you seem to be opposed to that, do you think we could at least try being friends? We were good friends once.”

We were. I remember that. We were undergrads screaming our heads off at McKinney’s at the New Zealand vs South Africa match. That night I drank him under the table and he told me that I was the perfect woman.

“You wouldn’t be trying to distract me from the bet, would you?”

“Would I do that?”

“You would absolutely do that.”

He reaches for my hand. This time, I don’t jerk away from him. “What about you and Fraser?”

“What about us?”

“You like him. I know you. I can tell you like him.” His eyes take on a small glaze, but I try not to focus on it. He’s trying to make me feel bad.

My hand comes up, away from him and I cross my arms, not willing to let him touch me again. I don’t want him encouraged in the least. “Maybe, but it’s not anything serious.”

The familiar hand-on-the-back-of-the-neck returns and I know Tucker is trying to calm himself. It annoys me that he has to purposefully calm himself. 

“Stop,” I say. “We’re getting along. Don’t start with the caveman, jealous ex-boyfriend shit.”

“He’s a punk.”

“And you’re an asshole. Under normal circumstances that would make you two the best of friends.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m honest.”

“I’m serious, though. I want us to be friends again.” 

Could I be Tucker’s friend again? I don’t see how. That would lead to other things, to us talking like normal people, to us laughing together. That’s what friends do. But friends don’t punch guys you flirt with just because they don’t like them. Friends don’t also make you feel like an idiot for your opinion, or for the things that you enjoy.

Sophomore year comes to mind. We were playing cards with some of his squadmates and someone mentioned Edgar Allan Poe. Tucker picked a fight with me over “Annabel Lee.” He claimed Lovecraft wrote it. I stared at him for two full minutes, then politely explained that, no, it was Poe.

When he shook his head and looked down at me as though I was an insipid dumbass, I quoted the full poem.

Flustered and clearly embarrassed that I’d proven him wrong, he said “Whatever, Autumn. It’s not like it matters anyway.”

“It matters to me,” I’d said, annoyed that he’d dismiss me so quickly.

“It doesn’t matter to people who count.”

Tucker always had a way of ridiculing everything I did, the books I read, the movies I liked.
  And, he refused to watch “Doctor Who”. How could I be friends with anyone like that?

When I don’t immediately answer his query about us being friends, Tucker stands up, throws the impromptu ice pack on my desk. “I know that things with us got bad. I know I didn’t always treat you the best and I’ll be honest, I came back hoping that we could give it another shot.” Tucker pulls my hands apart, rubs his thumb over my wrist. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you I don’t want you when you know I do, but if all you can give me right now is your friendship, then I can wait.”

If I’m not perfectly frank, then he will persist. Tucker is many things: confident, independent, fiercely diligent and above all else, stubborn beyond belief. Letting him believe that I will simply get over being angry with him won’t be enough. Brutal honesty is essential. I straighten my shoulders and force myself to keep my face indifferent.

 
“You don’t get it, do you? I’m not the same. You left me and I thought I’d die from it. But other things happened to me. More important things. I stopped focusing on you, on what you did because I was trying to heal, from the wreck, from my mother’s death.” I don’t smile when his fingers squeeze against my hand, don’t give him any indication that I’m touched by his sympathy. “You weren’t the most important thing in my life anymore and I realized that was a good thing.” I pull my hand away. “I spent this past year putting myself first, something I never did when we were together.” He starts to argue, but I shake my head. “It was something you never did for me either.”

There is a moment, a brief second where I see all that runs through his mind fracture across his face. He is shocked. His eyelids curve. Then, by the slope of his bottom lip and the paling of his cheeks, I know that what I said has usurped everything he believed was true about our relationship. A small voice whispers against the firmly guarded emotions in my mind. It tells me I’ve hurt him, I have been cruel, but then I close my eyes and ignore the guilt I feel.