Heartsick (2 page)

Chapter Two

Fall air nips at our thighs as we try to pull our too-short dresses down, not out of modesty, of course. Just, well, it’s chilly. We hand over our IDs to the bouncer who likes ogling all the college girls. Every night it seems to be the same interaction. Sometimes I wish I could wear a sign that says, “Yes, I am really over twenty-one; no, a wink is not going to earn you a fuck.”

Once we get in, I linger next to the wooden bar as Mandy makes her usual lap, checking out our options. I nod to Sally. She’s big and warm and Jell-O-y with cheeks that look like she sat too close to the fire in the back of the pub. I don’t need to tell her what I want. She also knows that my face will turn green if I so much as smell a Jägerbomb. But that’s another story.

“Here’s your glass of pinot grigio, milady,” she says in a posh voice that’s especially endearing because she can’t quite kick that Virginia mountain accent nestled deep within her vocal cords.

“Why thank you, bar wench,” I say. It’s cool. I can say things like that to Sally.

She laughs and pops the top off Mandy’s Yuengling. Before I turn back around, glass crashes in quick pricks around my ankles. I set the drinks down and swivel. A girl has dropped her wine. Glass shards and liquid surround my feet.

“Shit, sorry,” the girl says before darting toward the bathroom. I get it, she’s embarrassed. I bend down into a careful crouch, given my short skirt. The wine soaks into the wood floorboards, becoming part of the bar. But the glass bits can’t just linger. I reach for one, ready to pluck it and its friends off the ground, when a man squats next to me.

“No.” He grabs my hand. “You could cut yourself. Let me get that.” His sharp green eyes match his shirt. Despite his crisp button-down, I can tell he’s a townie, an Allan original. It’s not any one thing, but the combination. He has a toothpick sliding out of the corner of his mouth and there are light grass stains on his knees, as though he’d been playing outside with a dog or small child. He smells like crickets and fire pits. He also has a sliver of dirt under his thumb, which presses into my hand as he pulls me up. I let him. I hold his rough palm for too long and he has to gently pull it away.

“Hey Sally,” he says. “Where do you keep your dustpan?” He’s got that Allan cadence too. It’s languid. There is no rush.

Sally fusses about how he doesn’t have to do anything, but he insists and leaves to retrieve the necessary tools. I’ll wait for him and offer to help. We can bend over the broken glass together.

“Quinn, come here,” Mandy calls. “We’re celebrating! Zachary’s going to be published in some super important science journal.”

I stare at the glass guy for a bit too long, imagining myself playing the role of a good little helper, until I rub my forehead and turn to join Mandy. She stands next to Zachary, her fling. Although maybe you can’t call it a fling if it’s lasted more than a year. He’s Rashid’s roommate (super smart science grad students stick together), and we met them out one drizzly, drunken night last fall.

Rashid is with them too, and when he sees me, his lips twitch into a grin. His gaze is deep. Penetrating.

Maybe that’s it. The way he looks at me? When I’m around him, I feel like the world is compressing. I haven’t figured out why.

Then again, odd things make me feel that way. Like small talk that crosses from harmlessly tedious to suffocatingly desperate. Or fluorescent lights in stores with heaps of useless products. Or that spray you get when you walk into a cosmetics department. Here’s perfume. It will make you a better person.

It’s those things that make me want to sit on the bathroom floor, cross-legged, letting the cold tiles infuse my legs with reality. I would run my fingers along the grout just to know it’s there, it’s real. I am real.

But nice, cute Rashid shouldn’t make me feel that way.

“Hey,” Rashid says. “How are you? Need a drink?” He nods to my wine. I haven’t taken a sip. It isn’t quite brimming, but the liquid is flirting with the edge, threatening to make a run for it.

“No thanks, I’m fine.” I turn to Mandy to make it a group conversation, but she and Zachary have shuffled over to a corner and started making out. Already.

“They’re confusing,” Rashid says.

They aren’t confusing. Not one bit. Mandy is about a 10 to Zachary’s 4-4.5 on an overcast day. And she likes him because, unlike some previous jerks, he adores her down to the last drop. He’s a fan of 100 percent of Mandy, not 76 percent and-can-you-please-work-on-that-last-24-percent? That trumps a lot of things—his rank of semi-cute nerd, if you squint, (as opposed to Rashid’s full-on hot nerd); his inability to hear the word
tampon
without snickering; and his habit of stating unnecessary facts. “The wall is painted blue.” Why yes, Zachary, it is.

But he brightens whenever Mandy’s around. And he can crack a joke about mullets like no one else.

Mr. Genius Smart, I mean Rashid, starts to say something with gooey eyes. “Why don’t we—”

He is blissfully cut off.

“Hey Rashid!” A girl bops me out of the way. A molecule of my wine slips to the floor. “Dr. Ferris said a few of the infected wood rats seem to be getting better.”

He nods. “Well, it’s too early to tell anything. We’re seeing some negative reactions with group D, though that is to be expected, considering the unusual nature of the project. Still, it was exciting to see a few improving.”

The girl starts to say something else, her shoulder sharpening, creating a wedge between Rashid and me, but he interjects. “Quinn, this is one of my students.” He puts some extra emphasis on
student
. Of course, she couldn’t care less about meeting me. As Rashid describes his research, she hangs on his every word, most of which I don’t understand. They’re the kind of words that would be italicized in text.

Back at the bar, the grass-stained guy has finished cleaning up the glass. He looks at me with those sharp eyes as he slowly drinks his lager. No rush. He listens to Sally, who points in my direction and says God knows what. She’s not only my friend, she’s my bartender, so she knows the best parts about me, like how I tip well (I may be a student, but my parents aren’t) and that I remember the names and birthdays of her three cats, two dogs and one ferret. But she also knows the worst parts about me. You know, like that Jägerbomb thing and how badly my mascara can smear on her sweater when I’m a crying drunk of a girl.

Rashid’s fingers touch my lower back and stretch toward my hip, sending a not entirely unpleasant shiver up my spine. The girl pulls her head back, like a turtle under attack. The composure leaves her face and she turns away, mumbling something about needing to catch up with a friend.

“So, you’re saving wood rats?” I ask.

“Sort of,” he says. “A bacteria has been causing a lot of problems among the population. They’ve been getting sick. We’re trying to see how we can prevent it.” His chin is high and his shoulders are back. “We may be on to something.”

“What’s the problem? Are they are all catching a cold?” I ask.

“No, a cold is a virus,” he says. “Viral infections, now that’s Zachary’s line of work. Well, mostly.”

“Mostly?” I tilt my head. His smile is thin but his eyes are wide. They swallow me up.

“There can be connections between bacteria and viruses. For example, some bacteria can fight viruses,” he says. “Some have been shown to strengthen immune systems, or fight off other kinds of infections, or even help destroy cancer cells. For example, scientists found that when they gave Wolbachia to mosquitos...” His mouth stays open for a moment before he shrugs. “It’s not really worth trying to explain.”

Scientific translation: he’s not willing to dumb it down for me.

I look at the ground. He probably thinks my daily schedule consists of frolicking among tulips and splashing paint against white backgrounds, but I could understand the dumbed-down version of his scientific escapades. Probably.

“Well,” I say, pushing my hair back and facing him again. “It’s nice to see you so happy. Sometimes I worry about you—walking around campus you look like you’ve got dozens of chemistry problems bouncing around in your brain.”

The corners of Rashid’s lips curl up. “You worry about me?”

I try not to smile but it prickles on my warm face. He continues, “Anyway, anyone can do the kind of stuff I’m doing.”

Right.

“But you,” he says. “Figuring out what to paint, knowing all those modern dance moves...”

“Yes,” I say. “Those are important skills. Much more marketable than, say, knowing how to cure cancer.” People like Rashid are useful to the whole world. He can save thousands, maybe millions. At least I’m useful to Mandy. We save each other.

“I’m not trying to cure cancer.” Rashid grins and rubs the back of his head. “Are you working on anything new? I still haven’t gotten to see the piece that’s a mash-up of toothpaste and toothbrushes all ‘swirled and swumbled together.’” He quotes me exactly, made-up word and all. I told him about that project six weeks ago, the first night of my senior year, when Mandy and Zachary “retired” to her bedroom early. We sat on the porch and drank pumpkin beer like it was fall, even though the Virginia fireflies were still out, blinking all around us.

“Yeah, well, it’s coming along. But mostly I’m focusing on my senior solo in my dance troupe. The recital is next week.”

“Oh, right. I have to teach a class that night, but if I can find any way out of it, I will.”

I wave my hand. “Nah, it’s nothing.”

He nods. Agreeing. This is good. But then he touches my elbow, directing me to some newly open seats in the corner. “I’ll get you another drink,” he says, noticing my wine is almost drained. “Just sit tight.”

Yeah, he says things like “sit tight.”

I wait in the dark corner and push away the corroding stress tied to the recital. My solo. It’s been hard to get it right. Our staff adviser, Rachel, has missed a lot of rehearsals to take care of her sister who has ALS. Their parents died last year in a car accident, and Rachel’s her only family left in town, so I understand that her sister really needs her, much more than I do. It has just meant that I’ve had to do even more to lead the troupe and bring out everyone’s talents. But it’s been fun to get creative. A few nights ago we wore glow-in-the-dark bracelets as we danced barefoot on the football field at midnight.

The nook I sit in is so narrow that when Rashid comes back with our drinks, our knees knock if one of us shifts. He crosses his legs, putting his ankle on his knee, and some dirt from his boot gets on my bare thigh.

“I’m sorry,” he says, planting both feet on the hardwood floor and using his hand to rub the mud off my leg.

“Smooth, Rashid, smooth,” I joke.

“What?” His grin is broad. His teeth look good.

“You did that on purpose.”

His hand is still on my thigh. “I swear I didn’t.” His grip goes from perfunctory to on purpose. “But I’d do it again.”

I’m too caught up to resist when his lips meet mine. Our tongues glide ecstatically against each other, until I check myself. I pull back and push his collarbone with my thumb. “I don’t think we should do this.”

His deep brown eyes digest his surroundings. Digest me. His body is tense. “I don’t understand.”

“Rashid, I just...I think we want different things.”

He sighs and his muscles relax. He leans in. “You’ve got me all wrong,” he says. “I’m not just messing around. I’m serious about you.”

Yeah, and that’s the problem. It’s my senior year. All I want to do is mess around. If Rashid wants more, I should let him go.

“I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.”

See, I am not cruel.

I am, however, weak.

I haven’t removed my hand from his shoulder. He takes that for the not-so-subconscious sign it is. He slides me closer to him. “Fine, let’s go out for a non-serious dinner this week. Maybe at Geni’s?”

Shit, not Geni’s. It’s Allan’s only French bistro. Candles, tablecloths, waiters who put their hands behind their backs as they methodically describe the specials. It’s the only place my dad can stand to go when my parents visit.

“I don’t think Geni’s is—” Before I can finish, Rashid is kissing me again. I’m caught up in his mouth and his fingers in my hair when Mandy’s voice breaks my concentration.

“Quinn,” she says. I pull away. Her face is like stone. I spring up, downing my wine. Waste not, want not.

Rashid gets up too. “What’s wrong? Can I help—”

“No. Zachary’s just being a jerk,” Mandy says. But softly. That’s bad.

“See you later,” I say to Rashid. His previously firm shoulders fold in on themselves. I occupy myself with rubbing Mandy’s back. We enter the cool night.

“Things were fine, normal,” she says. “He was looking at me, just staring at me, you know, and then he stopped smiling and he looked like I’d said I ran over his cat or something. I asked him what was wrong, and he said he needed to go. I tried to ask him why, but he just walked out on me. He left me, Quinn.”

“He can be an idiot sometimes,” I say. While he isn’t always the most socially aware, something gnaws at my throat. Just getting up and leaving? That’s not like Zachary.

Mandy stops and looks at the sky. She closes her eyes. “He just left.”

I clutch her shoulders. People are walking around, the semi-late crowd still barhopping, the responsible partiers getting a hot dog at Joe’s before turning in. A few kids rubberneck to see why we’ve stopped.

“Look at me,” I demand. She focuses. “He’ll probably apologize profusely tomorrow. Until then, don’t you give another thought to him, you understand?”

She laughs. “Yes, sir. Aye aye.” She often jokes, when I get all no-nonsense, that I should have been an army captain. You know, one of the ones who can’t hold a gun to save her life and would much rather have paint all over her trousers than mud and grass and shit.

“That’s right. Now give me fifty and meet me in the canteen at 0500!”

“Thanks, Quinn.”

As we walk home, she nudges me in the ribs and gives me a hard time about making out with Rashid, despite all of my proclamations to her that the other night had been a one-time thing.