Falling for Seven (30 page)

ANGEL WASN’T AT ANY of the booths where she said she would be, but I recognized Kit from the back, slipping between a food truck and a ball game in a bright red dress. I chased after her and she slowed down when I caught up. “Have you seen Angel? She said she would be here.”

“She was,” she said stoically, her tapping foot against the dirt a restless habit.

“So where’d she go?”

“Once I told her how you stripped her of her dignity over a bet, she left. As you can imagine.”

“What?” I took a step closer, my fingers itching to stretch out and grab her.

“Someone had to tell the poor girl. She was disillusioned.”

“You are the only one who is fucking disillusioned. Where did she go?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.” Her tongue swept over teeth, her lips pouting. “You fucked me, and now I fucked you. The world not bending to your will anymore,
Seven
? Welcome to my fucking world. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Sucks to be bitter.”

“You made me this way!”

“Get out of my fucking sight.” I shoved her to the side and searched the carnival twice over, four miles covered in less than half an hour. Marilyn and Mario were on their way to the exit and I caught them up, my breath heaving from my chest. “Have you seen Angel?”

“Uh, yeah.” Marilyn balled up her candy wrappers and threw them in the trash. “She just called. She left already with her mom and dad. I thought you’d gone with them.”

I wiped my hand over my jaw, cussing silently.

“Yeah, man,” said Mario, his lips pressing together. “I know that look.”

I drove to Angel’s building and stood outside her door, my fist pounding the wood. Her roommate opened up, covered head to toe in green flannel. She narrowed in on me through her glasses and her mouth fixed into a taut, pinched scowl. “What are you? A flaming bulldozer?”

“Is Angel here?” I looked past her, but the modest room was empty. Still, she could be in the shower. Barging in seemed a bit drastic, though.

Mia pushed the door over, blocking my view. “She isn’t. Bye now.”

I put out my arm, pushing the door back open. “Has she been back here at all?”

“No,” she said with exasperation. “She was with you.”

I paused for an annoyed sigh. “Well she isn’t with me now.”

“Then I suggest you somehow learn to get over that. Now if you don’t mind, I was reading.”

“Will you tell her I came by when she comes back?”

Mia rolled her eyes behind her glasses. “I warned her hanging out with you was a mistake.”

“How nice of you to go out of your way like that.”

Her hostile gaze turned up a notch. “I’m closing the door now.”

I stepped back and the door slammed shut in my face.

<>

All my calls to Angel went ignored and however much I hated it, there was nothing else to do but go home. It wasn’t like I could stalk the girl. Her no-shit roommate would call the cops on my ass. I could go to Kit’s and let my crap out on her, but I’d got myself in the situation, all Kit was guilty of was blowing the lid on my sin-bin.

I went home, my mom’s date wiped from my conscious memory. I was soon reminded when I interrupted her and Gary drinking coffee on the couch in the dark, apart from a few flickering candles scattered on the coffee table. I flipped on the main light, the spotlight an instant regret on Gary’s unflattering figure. Mom looked like his care-worker, sitting next to him in black dress pants and an ivory camisole, and more make up than I’d seen her wear. Gary wasn’t so put together, his belly straining against the buttons of his—what was that?—purple or pink shirt, I couldn’t fucking tell. But it was doing zilch for his pink face. The only hair on his head had years-ago pulled away from his crown, hiding out around his neck and ears.

I flipped the light back off. I’d seen enough.

“Julian,” My mom said with an edge in her voice. “This is Gary Rollins, you remember Gary, my boss at Remy’s, don’t you,
Julian
?” I swear she was grounding out my name between her teeth in a threat. My face must have been portraying more that I meant it to.

“Hi, Julian. Nice to see you again.” He stood up, the couch sagging with the shift in excessive weight. He walked up to me and shook my hand. “Big time ball player, huh? I used to be one of those.” He rubbed his hand over his paunch, a repressed smile coaxing at his mouth. “This was once muscle. Can you believe that?”

I turned my mouth down. “Aren’t you a bit young to let yourself go like that?”

My mom jumped up and crooked a finger for me to follow. “We won’t be a minute, Gary.” She shut us in the kitchen, her voice lowered to a hushed anger. “You are going to back out there and find some way to excuse your inexcusable behavior. You don’t like Gary? Don’t talk to him, don’t be around him. But don’t you dare insult my friend in my own home.”

“He’s the guy you want to be seen with? You’ll be the laughing stock.” I rivaled her angry whispering with my own. “He’s wearing half a hairstyle. Where’s the other half? Safe keeping?”

“Is that really how I raised you?”

“No.” I sighed. She was right. I’d brought my shit home when I should have stayed away. “I forgot it was today you were seeing him. He surprised me, and tonight was a complete fucking bust. Has Angel been by here?”

“Oh, I get it. You do something to mess up your own night, so you come here and take it out on Gary because he will never be runner-up in the beauty contest? Julian, before you pick and dissect everyone else’s faults, do something about your own.”

The kitchen door opened and Gary stood on the other side. He coughed and a glittering layer of sweat prickled the top of his head. “Now listen, I know you may not have heard the most flattering things about me, and believe me, I know better than anyone that I am reaching for gold with your mother. But I want you to know, son, that I would appreciate one chance to prove you wrong and that I have her best interests at heart. No one knows how lucky I am to be spending this night with her more than me.”

Bit much, but hearing him say he basically knew what a class-A, office worm he had been made me feel better about him being here with my mom.

“She said nothing bad,” I said, listing all our past jokes about Gary in my head. “Sorry to ruin your night.”

That was my best attempt at an apology and I left the house and got in the car. Going to Nicky’s was fatal the way I was feeling, but I couldn’t go to bed with those two downstairs. And I liked the idea of staying close to campus and where Angel might be.

Nicky and Rocco were set up on the PlayStation, Madden 15 on the screen, and Dan was giving Dionne a lesson on how to build a joint. Her hot friend—I forgot her fucking name—sat playing with her cell on the floor, a candy necklace draped round her neck. “Hey, Julian,” she said when she saw me, her gaze travelling everywhere. “I missed you at the fair.”

“Yeah,” I said. There wasn’t much more to elaborate with on that. I went to the kitchen and poured a bottle of jack into a clean glass, adding some coke for color. I slouched down in the chair and took the joint when it was passed my way. The candy necklace blonde unfolded her legs and sat on the arm rest of the chair, her legs lying over mine.

“Bernadette,” I deadpanned, but pretty pleased with myself for remembering.

I offered her the joint and she took it, sliding it between her glossed lips. She sucked on it, blowing out a stream of smoke. She leaned down, showing off her emphasized chest, her fingers rolling the candied beads over her skin. “Wanna bite?”

My gaze dropped to her cleavage, cushioned just under my face. “Maybe later,” I said. “Actually, do you mind?” I lifted her legs off me, pushing them to the side. She was squashing my dick. “That’s better.”

I arched my back against the couch to make room, and take my phone from my back pocket. I called Angel’s number again and was sent straight to voicemail. I tried three more times before I accepted she’d turned her phone off.

I’d fucked up big time.

I looked up as Kit came through the doorway in the same skimpy dress from earlier. My fist tightened around my glass to stop from throwing it at her. I’d thought everyone that was here was in this room. She pretended not to notice me and prowled over to Nicky, curling up next to him. I watched as her fingers rubbed over his thigh, inching higher and higher up. He knocked her hand away with his elbow, his hands gripping the controller. “Kit, can you not see I’m busy?”

Her hands continued their mission and he moved over, squashing up against Rocco. “Watch it, man,” Rocco complained. “You trying to sit on my dick?”

Kit kept on acting like none of us were in the room with her. “What the fuck, Nicky? I have leprosy now?”

“You cause too much ag. Katlyn’s got me begging like a dog thanks to you. Let yourself out, yeah?”

“I didn’t stick my dick in myself, Nicky. I believe that was you.”

“I never knew you were using me then.”

Rocco paused the game, throwing a sideways look of disbelief at Nicky and Dan cracked up, mistaking it as a joke. Nicky sounded like a pussy, but he wasn’t wrong. The only reason Kit had sex with him was in the hopes I’d find them going at it. He wasn’t hurt, though. He could act like it, but if he could go back and do it again, knowing what he knew now, he would jump at it as quick as he did the first time.

“Laugh all you want.” Nicky pulled papers from a pack of Rizla and separated a bud of weed. “I’m deadly fucking serious here.”

“Go fuck yourself, Nicky.”

“Fucking bitch!” he shouted as Kit got up and left. “Don’t come in my house again. You’re barred.”

Kit banged her fist against the window from the other side of the glass. “I didn’t come the first time!” Nicky spun around on the chair and banged back against the window, Kit’s face moving away. She flipped him off with both hands as she backed off.

“Has Katlyn forgiven you for hooking-up with her friend?” Bernadette asked. Her legs were gradually falling back over mine but I’d finished my drink and I was too tired to get her off me a second time, and my dick was safely out of harm’s way.

“Not yet. But in a few days, it’ll be like it never happened. That’s why we ball, right, Seven? So we can get away with this shit?”

“Right,” I said, only half listening.

<>

I woke up on Nicky’s couch with Bernadette’s head on my chest and her legs wrapped around mine. I took a clump of her hair from off my face and pushed myself up, working my way from underneath her without waking her up. I freed my legs from hers and climbed over her, grabbing my shirt from off the floor. There was an insistent thudding in the back of my head and the time on my phone gave me an hour before morning practice. The rest of the house was silent apart from Nicky’s snoring rattling the walls from all the way upstairs.

I threw back a glass of water and changed in the washroom into sweats and a clean T-shirt from the car. My only hope was to catch Angel this morning when she wouldn’t be expecting me. The odds of her wanting to speak to me let alone give me another chance, were odds not worth dwelling on. I drove to the campus ice rink and waited in the bleachers for the figure skating club to show up. My muscles were stiff with apprehension and from a bad night sleep. I’d drank too much to remember how I’d fallen asleep wrapped up with Bernadette, but I was fairly certain it was all innocent. I twisted the cap on a bottle of Gatorade and guzzled the much needed energy boost.

Then the first few skaters filtered onto the ice. I couldn’t see Angel yet, though. I waited, watching closely, then I saw her. She skated onto the ice wearing a white leotard and tan, shiny tights, a white and pink team jacket over the top. A long French braid snaked down her back and black gloves covered her fingers. Her focus was so strong, I sat and watched her skate a while, every move she carved her body into fascinating to me. I was in a trance, the aching in my head unloading. She was engrossed, nobody there but her and the ice. No one else mattered, she looked peaceful and determined, and the thought of disrupting her private zone made me think whether I had the right to do that.

I didn’t.

But leaving before she knew the truth would be a cop-out on my part. I’d taken the bet, but it ended up not meaning a damn thing to me, and Angel had ended up meaning everything. She’d never believe it, why should she? But she needed to hear it.

The practice ended and I waited outside the ice rink. I’d seen her Mini Cooper in the lot so she had to pass by me to get to her car. She was the next person out of the main entrance with Calvin, the smile lingering on her lips just shy of reaching her eyes, the honesty missing. The lack of her usual depth had an irresistible pull on me to go to her and make her hear me out. I was the one who was supposed to make things better, not worse.

When she got close enough, I separated myself from the wall and into her direct path. She looked up, the fake smile burning out. She could scowl all she wanted, at least this was real. If she felt enough for me to be upset, that was something, and I was taking it. I’d take anything I could get.