My face cracked into a smile before I realized what I was doing.
“So how were things at casa Hallman?”
“Faaaabulous,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I managed to piss my mom off at least once a day.”
“Yeah, well I thought Trish and Will were going to kill each other over a simple game of Monopoly, so I get it.” No, she didn’t. Everyone loved Lottie. Even when she wouldn’t stop talking. It added to her adorably awkward personality.
I shoved aside my problems and we caught up. God, I’d missed her so much.
“So what happened with Stryker? With the whole apology thing?” I had been vague on the details of my little Thanksgiving stunt. Especially since it ended up blowing up in my face.
“I drove my ass back to his apartment and cooked him dinner in the middle of the night. Then we went to bed and when we got up he said he didn’t want to see me anymore, which is dumb, because we weren’t dating.”
Her expression was confused. I hadn’t told her I was dating him, but I hadn’t told her I wasn’t. It was exactly as Stryker said. I didn’t want her to think less of me.
“You weren’t?”
“Not really.” I sunk back into the mountain of pillows on my bed. I’d missed that too. There was nothing quite like falling into them after a shitty day.
“So you guys weren’t dating, but you broke up?”
“I guess. All I know is that he doesn’t want to see me anymore. So I’m not going to see him anymore.”
“By see him you mean…”
I started laughing again.
“I don’t even know what that means either.”
A loud and frantic knock put pause on that conversation. Audrey and Trish burst in, Will, Simon and Zan following along behind a little less enthusiastically.
I was hugged and I couldn’t help but hug and smile back. I’d missed them. I didn’t know how much until I saw all of them standing in front of me. Even Zan, who gave me a semi-hug and a smile. I almost asked him about Zack. Almost.
The words drowned in my throat and I wasn’t going to bail them out.
We all ended up sitting on our floor, passing around the leftover pies Audrey brought up, eating straight from the pans, all our forks fighting for the best bites, and swapping holiday stories. I sat back against a pile of my pillows and listened. It was such a relief to fall back into this life, into this place where I was surrounded by people who cared about me and missed me and wanted to share things with me.
Not that my family wasn’t like that, but this group was different. They didn’t have to like me. They chose to spend time with me. They showed up at the hospital and sat and waited for me. I still wanted to cry every time I thought about that.
“So what did you do to my brother?” Trish said, scraping the last bits out of one of the pie pans. “Because he’s like, so emo right now, I’m afraid he’s going to start painting his nails black and only listening to really crappy music.”
Every set of eyes swiveled in my direction and every voice went quiet. Fantastic.
“I didn’t do anything to him.” I readjusted the pillows behind my back so I wouldn’t have to focus on them all.
“Well, something happened because he drunk-texted me late last night telling me that he loved me. Actually, he said he “lobed” me, but that’s beside the point. Stryker never uses that word unless he’s wasted. So. What happened?”
“Trish,” Lottie said, making her name two syllables. “This probably isn’t the right venue.”
“Oh, whatever,” Trish said, tossing the fork in the pie pan and setting it on the floor. Will cleared his throat and Simon looked around, as if the room was really interesting. Zan just kept rubbing Lottie’s back. Audrey gave me a sympathetic look and I wanted to melt into the floor and sink into the linoleum.
“Just let me say one more thing. I know he’s my brother and all and I give him shit a lot, but he’s actually a decent guy, and I think you two are great together. Okay, I’m done.”
Will coughed again and the topic changed to bitching about how much we didn’t want to start classes the next day.
***
“What happened with Stryker? I know you didn’t want to say in front of everyone, but you can talk about it. You know, if you want. No pressure.” Sure there was pressure. There was so much pressure I could feel its hands around my neck, and its insistent voice in my ear.
“Okay, but this falls under the roommate umbrella of secrecy. No twindar, or any of that.”
“If there’s one thing that Will doesn’t want to know about, it’s other people’s relationship drama, so no worries. He’ll probably beg me not to tell him anyway. So, your secret is safe.”
“So I didn’t want to tell you this, but Stryker and I weren’t dating, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t having sex.” I paused, waiting for her reaction. I expected surprise, not for her to snort and say, “And?”
“You knew?”
“First, I’m not blind, and second,” she said, holding up one, then two fingers, “I’m not an idiot. We all knew.”
Now I was the one surprised.
“Everyone?”
She nodded. Well, shit. I guess we weren’t as covert as I thought.
“Great. They must all think I’m a slut.”
Lottie scoffed, making this little snorting noise.
“No one would think that.”
I gave her a look. “Not even after everything I did with Zack?”
She shook her head again.
“We just want you to be happy, and it seems like Stryker makes you happy. So what happened?”
I took a deep breath and went into the whole story, giving her every detail from the Thanksgiving dinner I cooked, to our kiss to when he told me he wanted to wait to have sex. She was uncharacteristically silent the entire time, and her silence reeled the story out of me, including tearing up the pictures with Kayla and writing on my wall and the fight I’d had with my mom. I kept talking and talking, the words spilling out of me and into the air, filling the room up with my voice and my insecurity and my confusion and my hurt.
“And I have no idea what to do. None,” I said, finally done.
“You, my dear,” she said, raising her hands above her head to stretch, “are in a pickle.”
“I guess that’s one way of thinking about it. ‘I’m fucked’ seems more appropriate.”
“Well, if you want my two cents, I’d say you give him his space. He’ll come to his senses.”
I inhaled and said the one thing that scared me the most. “What if he doesn’t want to be with me anymore and he’s trying to let me down easy?”
Lottie laughed, throwing her head back.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” she said, shaking her head as if I’d said something absurd.
“Maybe he realized that he just wants to be friends.”
“Listen,” she said, coming over to sit next to me on my bed and putting her arm around my shoulder. “No guy who looks at you the way Stryker does wants to be just friends. He looks at you like no one else is around and he wants to throw you down on the table, right there, right then. Like you’re the only girl in the entire world and he’s ready to worship you.”
If it wasn’t Lottie saying it, I would have thought she was mocking me, but she said it with such sincerity that I believed her.
“Well Zan looks at you like he’s dying and you’re standing there holding the cure to whatever’s killing him.”
She blushed and giggled.
“Listen, we can trade these back and forth all night, but we should probably go to bed.” Giving me a quick shoulder squeeze, she got up and went to her dresser to get her PJs.
“Speaking of Zan, why aren’t you staying the night with him?”
“Because I figured he could deal with one more night without me. I don’t want to be one of those girls who can’t breathe without a man around all the time. Even if I do find it hard to breathe without him.” She traced the edge of a picture Zan had taken of the two of them. One of those where he had to hold the camera at arm’s length and they had to squish their faces together to get them both in the shot.
Yeah, I wasn’t buying it. She was staying for me. She knew I knew, but I wasn’t going to say anything. So we got into bed and said goodnight and I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything but how much I wanted to call Stryker and talk to him. Even if he wouldn’t talk back.
Chapter Sixteen
Stryker
I knew I was going to see Zan the next day and I knew he would be able to see what I’d done written on my face, so I skipped class and stayed at my apartment. Not that I would have been able to go, even if I’d wanted to. “Hung over” was an understatement. I was still hanging. I was also still hating myself for the night before. I checked my phone, but there were no messages from Ric, which was good, and there were a lot of messages from Trish, Zan and the rest of the crew, which was bad.
I wasn’t going to be able to avoid them forever, but maybe I could get one more day.
That one day lasted until two in the afternoon when my sister burst through my door and slammed it shut behind her.
“You have got to be out of your fucking mind,” she said storming over the couch where I’d been tuning my violin. Hurricane Trish had arrived and she was pissed. Nostril-flaringly, violet eye-buggingly pissed.
“You
slept
with
Ric
?” That didn’t take long to get out. Trish came over and smacked me on the chest.
“Ouch,” I said, putting my violin back in the case. I didn’t want it to get damaged.
“That’s all you have to say, asshole?” She smacked me again and crashed down next to me on the couch.
“Who told you?”
“Well Ric couldn’t keep her mouth shut, and she told Zo and Zo told me. I wanted to believe it wasn’t true, but even Ric couldn’t make that up. Please tell me you’ve been to the doctor and that you have multiple personalities, or brain damage, or something to explain this excessively stupid thing you’ve done.”
“Nope.” I flinched back before she could hit me again. “Just doing what I do best.”
Trish glared at me so hard her eyes were just slits. I stared right back at her, not breaking eye contact. Her eyes widened suddenly, snapping open like shades being yanked upward.
“You have
got
to be kidding me.” She got a hit in this time. Her jaw dropped as I tried to figure out what had gotten her so shocked. It couldn’t have been what I just said. There was something else she’d seen that had shocked her.
“What?” I said, not sure if I wanted to know what revelation had made her look like that.
And then she opened her mouth and said the last thing I ever thought she would say. “Oh. My. GOD. You
love
her. You fucking love her.”
I nearly fell off the couch. It was a good thing I’d put the violin away because I might have crushed it in my hand.
“W-what?” I stuttered. Trish leaned over and grabbed my face between her hands and stared into my eyes, searching for something. I was too out of it to stop her.
“You. Love. Her.” Each word was like a punch she delivered to my brain with brass knuckles.
Those three words made me come to my senses. I shoved Trish away and got off the couch. I didn’t know where I was going, but I had to get away from her and what she was saying. I stumbled backward, nearly crashing into my standing bass.
“Aha!” Trish said, pointing my finger as if she was accusing me of a crime. “You love Katie. That’s why you slept with Ric. Oh, Stryk. You are in so much trouble.” She shook her head sadly and then grinned at me.
“I do not love her,” I said, nearly choking on the words.
“Yeah, you do, brother. We may not have twindar, but I I know you pretty well and I know what I see and I know how your mind works.”
“It’s not like that, Trish. I just fucked her a bunch of times and got tired of it. That’s all.”
She smirked at me and ran her fingers through her hair, which was fading and needed to be re-colored.
“Wow. You are so gone. I knew it. I
knew
it.”
“You can think whatever you want to think, Trishella, but you’re way off.” I knew using her full name would piss her off and might change the subject.
“You said you would never call me that again.” Her eyes had gone back to dangerous and narrow. “You swore.”
“Yeah, well, I lied. Look, I have somewhere to be, so if you don’t mind.” I didn’t, but even if I had to get in my car and drive somewhere random to get rid of her, I’d do it.
“Okay, okay. Don’t worry, bro, your secret is safe with me.” She got to her feet, and I could hear her laughing to herself as she walked out the door. “By the way, we’re doing a welcome back dinner this weekend, and your attendance is required. See yah.” She wiggled her fingers and vanished down the stairs.
“Son of a
bitch
,” I said.
Her laugher echoed until I heard the front door close.
I wasn’t in love with Katie. Okay, I liked having sex with her and laughing with her and that apology dinner had been so sweet. No one had ever done something like that for me. And I still couldn’t get the image of her wearing my shirt and boxers out of my head. But none of that meant I was in love with her.
I stared around my apartment, and I knew I had to get out of it. I didn’t know where I was going, but I had to get out. To a place that didn’t make me think of Katie.
***
I ended up at a park downtown. Mostly so I could smoke and walk around without people staring at me. A homeless man shivered on a bench, a woman walked her dog, and a mom played with her kids on the swing set. I huddled in my jacket, pulling the collar up and lit another cigarette.
My mind ran in circles, and more often than not, those circles led back to one thing.
Katie.
What Trish had said pissed me off. What I had done with Ric pissed me off. What Katie had written on my chest pissed me off.
Everything was pissing me off. One of the kids screamed as his mom gave him a big push. He threw his head back and his arms out, like he was flying. I remembered doing the same thing, only I didn’t have anyone to push me. I’d pushed Trish more times than I could count. Just like the little boy on the swing, she always screamed for me to push her higher. I always did and she’d laugh and pretend she was scared.