Swallowing, I replied, “I suppose you could say that, up until recently, I was more of a quantity versus quality kind of guy.” Probably the gentlest way I could put it.
Her expression didn’t change as I’d expected it would. Her eyes held no judgment in them. “Sounds like you’re living the dream.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I used to think I was, but it’s my brothers that are living the dream,” I said, wondering why it’d taken me so long to see. Maybe it was because it had taken this long to find the woman I could feel I’d been created to find. “They get to crawl into bed every stinkin’ night with the women they flippin’ worship. Women they’d swallow a grenade for.”
“Flipping worship?” Emma repeated, mulling that over. “As demented as that sounds, I think that’s exactly the way I’d want someone to feel about me. I wouldn’t mind being flipping worshipped.”
“That’s what you deserve,” I said, insinuating something in my tone because I didn’t need her to confirm that the only thing Ty flipping worshiped was himself.
“You’re close with your family.” It wasn’t a question—something in my voice or in my words made it obvious.
“Closer.”
“A family man,” she said, studying me. “I like that. It’s a dying breed.”
“It’s not if you’re a member of my family. There’s this link of genetic code known as heart of gold that runs in all Haywards, born or married into the family. It’s impossible not to love their guts. However, that string of DNA missed me.”
“I wouldn’t say it missed you,” she said, looking at me like she saw past all my secrets. “So you have three brothers, and your dad who lives in . . .”
“Montana,” I answered. “With my brothers and their families.”
“How many nieces and nephews do you have?”
This was why it was going to be dead end followed by dead end if I let myself talk about my family or past with Emma. Clandestine was lurking around every corner in my past. “None,” I said, looking out at the water.
“With three married brothers I’m sure you’ll have plenty before you know it,” she said. “You’d be the kind of uncle that’s everyone’s favorite.”
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, spinning her in hopes of distracting her from the conversation at hand.
“So four boys . . .” Emma said, shaking her head. “Your poor mother.”
“And one girl,” I replied before I could insert my size eleven into my vortex of a mouth.
“You have a sister too?”
I shook my head.
“Does she live in Montana with the rest of your family?”
“No,” I said quietly, not allowing myself to travel back in time to the day I’d watched her die in front of my eyes.
“Where’s she at?” she asked, giving my arm a few squeezes. “As far away as she can get away from her brothers who I’m sure never gave her a hard time like mine do?”
There wasn’t a gentle way to put it.
“She’s dead.”
Emma’s body went stiff in my arms, her feet cementing to the ground mid dance. “Patrick,” she whispered, a hand covering her mouth. “Oh my god, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I said, unable to look anywhere but at the dark water. “It was a long time ago.”
“What happened?” she whispered, her frozen form cracking as she weaved her arms tighter around me. It was the most comforting embrace I’d been graced with in lifetimes of existence.
“That’s a story for another time,” I said, knowing sometime down the road I’d have to tell it if Emma became a part of my life in the way I hoped she would. I wouldn’t let secrets separate us.
Just then, the boat shuddered to a stop. Still trapped in Emma’s arms, knowing I’d fallen into a place there was no escape from and no hope of rescue, I couldn’t think of a time I wanted to delay the inevitable more. Incapable of words, I kept one arm curved around her and led her off the boat, not able to reconcile why I felt this would be the last time she’d step foot on it.
Despite adhering to the speed limit on our return trip for no reason other than having more time with her, our return trip to Stanford seemed as instant as if I’d used my teleportation to transport us. I’d never considered time my enemy before, but after two hundred and a handful of years, it had made a spiteful enemy out of me as Emma’s hand reached for the handle when we pulled up to the curb outside her dorm hall.
As I considered teleporting right outside her door to vanquish her damn twenty-first century feminism, she stiffened.
“Not good,” she said, biting her lip as she looked out the window.
I zoned in on what she was referring to. “Super,” I said under my breath. “I think you’ve got yourself something of a possessive boyfriend, Em.”
Arms crossed, eyes narrowed, jaw set, Ty loomed in the center of the walkway like he was a bull ready to charge. I wanted to kick his controlling, girlfriend-stalking ass, but more than that, I wanted to spend more time with Emma.
“Let’s just get out of here,” I said, cranking into gear, but for once in my life, I wasn’t quick enough.
Emma threw open the door and was out of the car before I could mutter a profanity I never thought I’d utter in front of a woman.
“Let me handle this,” I said. “Stay in the car.”
Emma glanced at me, shouldered up next to her, and gave me a look I’d been expecting when I decided to use my gift to get to her as quickly as I knew how. But it didn’t last long. The disbelief slanted in her eyebrows was erased as soon as she glanced back at the waiting bull.
“He’s drunk,” she stated, swallowing. Her face was blank, but I could feel the fear pulsing through her.
“Aren’t you just the regular college slut?” Ty said, making his welcome as he staggered our way. His words were as impaired as his walk, but not rip-roaring drunk impaired. Impaired just enough to have lost inhibitions and, in my experience with guys like Ty, that made them their most dangerous.
“Get in the car,” I said, trying to guide her back into the car.
He was fast, I had to give him that, and threw a punch like he wasn’t landing anything short of a TKO on his opponent. I barely had time to get Emma out of the way before I dodged Ty’s fist pounding into my temple.
“Keep your hands off my woman,” he yelled right as the realization his punch hit nothing but cool night air registered on his face.
However, mine did not.
I drove my fist into his stomach harder than I’d intended, but not nearly as hard as I was capable. It was powerful enough to knock him a couple body lengths away from us.
“Patrick!” Emma shouted, throwing me a look that screamed I’d done wrong in defending her, as she rushed over to where Ty adorned the Stanford lawn.
“Ty,” she said, kneeling down beside him with shaking hands. “Are you okay?”
“Get off of me.” Ty shoved her hands away as he sat up. “You cheap slut.”
“Watch your mouth,” I seethed, one word more from him away from grinding his head into hamburger. “Or I’m going to have to teach you a little respect.”
Emma had reassumed her crouched position beside Ty, running her hands over him like she was hoping to calm him. I had to fight every instinct not to grab her and run away.
Ty regarded me like my threats, hits, and nearing explosive demeanor were amusing. Keeping my stare, he grabbed Emma’s shoulders and shoved her so hard to the side she let out a burst of air as she crashed to the ground.
“Teach me some then,” he challenged, arching a brow in expectation.
I charged, fists, knees, and elbows ready to teach him respect all the way into his next life when a streak of red threw herself in front of me. My right fist was about to makes its debut on Ty’s cheekbone when a set of delicate hands wrapped around my other arm, trying with all her Emma might to keep me from landing my much-deserved punch.
“Enough,” she yelled, her breaths coming in short bursts. “Just leave.”
It took me a few moments of awkward realization to grasp she was talking to me.
Looking at her, I knew the hurt on my face was as easy to read as the fear on hers she was trying to hide. Fear of what, I couldn’t pinpoint, it could have been of the fight escalating, one of us getting hurt, her getting suspended for her involvement, I didn’t know, but one thing I did know was that I wasn’t going to leave her alone with Ty in his present state of rage.
Pulling the thoughts from my mind, her eyes begged me in time with her words, “Please, Patrick. Please go.”
It was a combination I was incapable of overcoming, I knew it, but I had to try, despite knowing I was doomed to failure. “He just threw you on your butt and took a cheap shot at me,” I said, pointing at the scum in question. “Why are you defending him like he’s the innocent one here?”
Lifting one sagging shoulder, she stated, “He’s my boyfriend.”
Not nearly a sufficient explanation. In fact, it only heightened the anger I was biting back. “Oh, my bad. I forgot that gave a man an excuse to shove his woman on her ass.”
She glared at me, but her glare was undermined by the hurt moving the corners of her mouth.
“She’s mine,” Ty said, trying not to sway as he rose to a stand. “And therefore mine to do whatever I want with.” Whatever was hidden deep beneath the surface that brought the malicious flicker to his eyes would have been enough to invoke a squirm from any lesser man.
Turning his attention to Emma, his jaw set. “Get yourself out of that tramp-stamp dress,” he said, a half smile cutting into his cheek. “I’ll deal with you later.”
“Ty,” Emma called out as he turned his back to her and walked away.
I was a fool to hope it was for good.
“Great,” Emma muttered, weaving her fingers into her hair. “Thanks for a lovely night.”
Her heels start clacking down the walkway after Ty, and it became too much. I’m not sure if it was her going after him or her leaving me, but my cocktail of emotions found its outlet verbally.
“Why are you with him?” I asked, not wanting an answer. “Are you a glutton for punishment? On a mission from God? So insecure to think that’s the best you can get?” I was short of a yell—I knew because my hands were joining the verbal explosion. “Or are you just another dumb girl with daddy issues who’s not content until she’s hooked up with the lowest piece of crap she can find?”
A hand clamped over my mouth, and then the other. The pain carved into Emma’s face went so deep I wasn’t sure it could ever work its way out. I couldn’t remember wishing I could rewind ten seconds more.
“That’s right, good for you,” she said, working her tongue into the side of her cheek, but it didn’t stop a tear from falling. “I do have daddy issues. Thank you so much for the reminder.”
And then she was gone. Turning away from me like the toxic piece of sludge I was. She ran off into the night, in the same direction of the man I’d just become before I could say sorry for something that was unforgivable.
Sunday was a blur. I couldn’t recall what I’d done other than self-flagellation and internal—and external—Patrick bashing. By Monday afternoon, I was eager and anything-but-eager to walk into Psychology.
Getting curious looks from everyone I passed in the hallway, save for one twelve-year-old looking boy with his nose all but glued to his scientific calculator, I zipped my leather motorcycle jacket up, double-checking my fly to make sure that zipper was all the way north as well. Stupid jeans. I don’t know why I’d let Cora talk me into them when I’d begged her last night to help me come up with some way to apologize to Emma.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in public with anything of a denim nature adorning me. This was a first, but I’d become someone else when I’d said what I had to Emma. Someone who said mean things to nice girls. I didn’t deserve anything better than an eternity of jeans—cheap, department store jeans—for what I’d said, so I suppose this was my way of imposing a smidgen of punishment on myself. Instead of a thousand hail Marys, I wore jeans. I could think of few worse self-inflicted punishments.
I knew before I opened the door she wasn’t there yet, the connection I’d forged with her was that strong, but that didn’t stop me from putting on my best game face. Shuffling down the aisle, I ran through my play-by-play of the apology I was about to deliver. Mainly a lot of groveling for forgiveness, putting myself down, promising to never, ever say something so idiotic again, and the rest was a lot of fill-in-the-blanks as I saw fit. I’d rehearsed it all last night, it was ingrained in my head, so why did my palms feel like they were sweating?
I slid into my seat, wiping the fleshy parts of my hands on my jeans since that’s all they were good for. Why was I so nervous? I knew it didn’t have to do with the apology per se. If I had to interrupt Professor I-hate-the-world’s riveting lecture I didn’t care. I didn’t care if the class, or the entire student body caught it on youtube, and I certainly didn’t care if Ty witnessed it. Hopefully he’d take notes.
No, my nervousness had nothing to do with the environment surrounding the apology or the words weaving it together. My knees were bouncing like a methhead’s because of what I had to lose if it wasn’t accepted. I had, for melodrama’s sake, everything to lose.
This wasn’t a
hey, sorry I left the toilet seat up for the millionth time
apology to one of my sisters-in-law, this was one of those apologies that could upend my world if it went shunned. So, round of applause, I’d identified the source of the nerves.
It didn’t make me feel better.
“Sit down. Shut up,” our esteemed professor called out, our cue to take his daily greeting as a time to do just that. Bitter as he was, and I was quite certain he wouldn’t let me squeak by with anything better than a D just on principle alone, I kinda liked him.
I sensed the door about to swing open in the back, so my eyes were already trained on the spot before a pair met my gaze, narrowing and darkening. Ty slid into the back row, flipping me off.
Taking the moral high ground—eye for an eye style—I flipped it right back.
Emma wasn’t with him, and it wasn’t like her to be late. Women may be a mystery to men, but they weren’t to me, and Emma was one of the easier ones to translate. Except, of course, for the way she felt about me. If she felt anything at all.
Other than annoyance.
She wasn’t with Ty. She wasn’t here on time. Logical string of thought was to conclude she wouldn’t be in class today. Therefore, neither would I.
No offense to Professor Camp, but the only reason I came to class was to see Emma.
I was out of my chair and down the aisle before I could let the responsible fraction of my consciousness surface. And by fraction, I mean next to non-existent. So fractional it was incalculable.
“Stay,” I instructed the mass of meat in the back row in passing, raising a hand. Steam was all but pluming from his nostrils, but I couldn’t miss the cherry on top. “Good boy,” I said as I shuffled through the door, receiving the second hand gesture that would have earned him a night out in the barn had my mother still been around to see it.
I didn’t possess the dignity left to jog towards Emma’s dorm room. I ran. Ran like it was the only prayer I had left of saving my life. Ran like a wanted man. Ran because I wanted a woman and I wanted her bad.
Earning a gaggle more curious looks by the time I reached the dorm’s front door, I made my best effort to look out of breath. After the look the next girl gave me in passing—something that said,
you’re certifiable
—I’m sure I looked more like a panting monkey. I cut the act altogether, attacking the three flights of stairs with equal fervor.
I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d explain to Emma how I knew what dorm room she lived in, she’d never given it to me, but I knew confessing I’d teleported into each room in the middle of the night until I’d landed inches from her smiling-in-her-sleep face wouldn’t be the top runner. Although honesty was my policy, I didn’t think she was ready for that. I’d have to scrub the truth with a little white lie about someone I’d passed on my way up telling me what room she was in.
Walking down the third floor hall, I was again stupefied as to why I was worrying myself about explaining how I’d known which room she was in. She might not care or even remember she’d never given it to me. She might not even be there.
I ran two once again clammy hands through my hair before rapping on her door, not having to guess which side of the door she’d decorated, even if her name hadn’t been put up in cut out pictures of her making funny faces. The other side was black, cryptic, and I felt like I might get cursed if I touched the welcoming, cheery artwork. Instead of Julia’s name, it said, “Death is the best we can expect from life.”
Somebody forgot to tell Julia that she’s no longer a sixteen-year-old drama queen.
The door swung open, well, it banged open, and the spreader of sunshine and cheer straddled the doorway. Her face didn’t give anything away, and that manic look in her eyes that confused the hell out of me was still there, so I didn’t know if she was going to invite me in for hemlock and frogs’ legs or if she was going to tell me to eff off.
“Go away.” The door slammed in my face.
Okay, that was the eff off expression. I’d have to make note of it for future reference.
A whisper so soft if I was a normal boy I wouldn’t have been able to hear it told me all I needed to know. “Who was it?”
Emma was here. Julia’s instructions be damned, I wasn’t going anywhere when two inches of man-made material separated me from her.
“Like you don’t know,” Julia replied in standard volume.
Emma hissed a shush at her.
“Don’t you shush me,” Julia said, hissing her own. “I’ll shush you right back.”
“Why did you tell him to go away?” Emma whispered, completely unaware I was listening to every word.
“Because he’s so good looking he’s got to be trouble. And trouble is something you don’t need,” Julia replied, lowering her voice a decibel. “And there was this other thing he did, what was it?” I didn’t have to see her to know her face was screwed together in a searching expression. “Ah, that’s it,” she said, snapping her fingers. “He said something that made you cry. That’s a death sentence where I come from.”
I didn’t want to know where someone like Julia came from, but a few possibilities jumped to mind, the least bothersome of them being the land of brimstone and Beelzebub.
Emma stayed silent for a second, long enough for Julia to get another word in. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot you had a thing for assholes. I’ll just invite him in and inform him it’s open season on your heart.” Julia’s boot clomping feet came at the door, but a scuffle ensued before the door opened.
“Wait a minute,” Emma whisper-laughed at Julia. “I haven’t brushed my teeth yet. Do you have a piece of gum or something?”
“Get your nasty breath out of my face,” Julia said, as things toppled and turned over inside the room like an earthquake was taking place. “Here, take this before you decimate our room,”—I was listening so intently I heard every note of the piece of gum sliding from its container—“although I’m now questioning just exactly what kind of tongue thrashing you had in mind for our man behind door number one. Because the kind he deserves doesn’t involve gum, frantic hair brushing, or deodorant.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Jules,” Emma whispered. “Grab the door and stall a minute. I’ve got to put a bra on.”
My brain heard everything she said, but my body only heard the word bra. When the door opened for the second time, I was blushing like a girl.
Julia slid the door open a crack, blocking the space with her black and violet clothing wrapped form that managed to be rather imposing for someone as tall as what I’d been when I was eight.
“Hey,” I offered lamely, my vocal chords playing the puberty trick on me. All thanks to the bra word floating around in my subconscious.
“You hurt my Emma,” Julia greeted, folding her arms one over the other.
“I know.” My voice was back to its manly self.
“Do it again, and I’ll rip each and every appendage from its socket. Starting with your dick.” It wasn’t an empty threat—this was the full meal deal.
Clasping my hands in front of me,
down
in front of me, I cleared my throat. “It won’t happen again.”
“Of course it won’t,” Julia said, casting a look behind the door. “They’ll promise anything if you threaten their manhood. That’s all they care about.”
“I promised that because I care about Emma.” It slipped out before I recalled the girl in question was hiding behind the door working her way into a . . .
Dammit. Red face alert. Again.
Of course the door thought this would be the ideal time to open all the way, revealing the lovely, bra-ified Emma.
“Hey,” she said, a small smile capping her greeting.
“Hey,” I answered back all witty-like.
I felt Julia’s eyes rolling in a big way. Before I could mess this up with any more comments of the “witty” variety, I unzipped my jacket, revealing the t-shirt underneath.
Emma gave me a look, waiting for me to say something, but that took away the whole point of the t-shirt. Taking an exaggerated look at my chest, I knew she’d taken the hint when she choked on a laugh.
“’I’m an idiot,’” she read, making a concerted effort to keep a flat expression.
“Obviously,” Julia mumbled.
Keeping my lips zipped, I raised my index finger, hoping the peanut gallery would repress further comments until my message had been delivered in its entirety.
“Although
idiot’s
a bit of an understatement,” Julia continued, establishing that, like her roommate, neither of them did what I hoped they would.
Sliding out of my leather jacket, I spun around and shoved my hands in my pockets to flatten out the second half of my message.
“’Forgive me,’” Emma finished, although I’d posed it as a question, not as a demand. Actually, if you read between the lines, I was more like begging than asking.
“Nice view,” Julia said. “And I dig the t-shirt, too. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that’s your slogan.”
“Jules,” Emma said, her tone of reprimand quite possibly the least reprimanding I’d heard. Pulling me into the room and closing the door, she said, “You’re forgiven. And you’re not an idiot.”
My jaw was hanging open, I knew this, but what other response could a man give when a woman forgave him after the first attempt?
“One more thing,” I said through the awe. I gathered her hands in mine, not caring that the man-eater in black was a witness to my male vulnerability. “I’m sorry. Really, really sorry,” I said. “More sorry than anyone in the history of screw-ups. And I promise I’ll do everything in my power to never hurt you again.”
Emma appraised me and, from the look of her face, my apology plan had worked. “I like that,” she said. “When Ty does something stupid—”
“Hourly.” Julia continued to add her one word interludes.
Ignoring glum motif girl, Emma continued, “He always promises to never do it again. But how can you promise with absolute certainty something like that?”
It didn’t look like she expected an answer, but I gave her one. “You can’t.”
“Exactly,” she said at the floor. “Don’t make me promises you can’t keep.”
“I won’t,” I vowed. Now that was a promise I could keep.
Something of a moment was being shared between Emma and me, I knew it from the way the world around us blurred and slowed just enough to make me take note. The slamming of a coffin-shaped clothes chest made sure to cut us off.
Glancing over at Julia, I made an effort not to glare.
“So the flowers are impressive, I’ll give you that,” Julia began, stalling her nail-polish chipping to take a quick inventory of the room that had been transformed into a greenhouse thanks to the no-limit account I’d opened at the local florist. “Acknowledging his wrongness—has to be a first in man history,” she continued, peeking up at Emma to make sure she was paying attention. “And he apologizes. Which may be only the second time in man history.” As she peeled off a chunk of witchy purple polish, I waited for her to exaggerate.
Most people, after noting a laundry list of personality traits, drew a conclusion. Julia wasn’t most people.
Breaking the bloated silence, I said, “When was the first time?” I didn’t know how else to reply, and I was intrigued.
Shrugging, she said, “The time I kicked my ex in the balls for cheating on me. I threatened if he didn’t apologize, I’d strap on my steel toes and have another go at them.”
That would have been funny if I didn’t have balls and knew what it felt like to be kicked in them. I withheld the wince at the memory.
“Weren’t you just heading to the library to study, Jules?” Emma broke in, subtle hinting obviously not one of her strengths.
Ceasing the nail polish massacre, Julia grabbed a ruck sack in her very favorite color and shouldered it. “If by the ‘library,’ you mean the graveyard,” she said, plugging ear buds into place, “then yes, I’m going to the
library.
”