Authors: L.A Rose
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Humor & Satire, #Humorous, #Romance, #Contemporary, #New Adult & College, #Romantic Comedy, #General Humor
“Amber’s here too. She also wanted to apologize.” Sigrid glances over her shoulder and frowns. “She was just here a second ago, anyway.”
“That’s okay, I’m—”
“Would you mind coming upstairs with me for a minute? She was there earlier and I think she said she forgot her purse there. She probably ran up to get it. And I’m sure she’d like to apologize to you in private anyway.” Sigrid cups her hands around her mouth and says in a stage whisper, “She’s shy.”
Sure she is. Shy just like Hitler was shy. But maybe Iris is right. Maybe I need to try to be more forgiving, more open-hearted.
“All right.”
She leads me upstairs, through the crowd of people. I see Iris looking at me, startled suspicion written all over her face, but I wave a reassuring hand. Just as we reach the top of the stairs, someone starts playing a dubstep remix of Jingle Bells, the aggressive music thundering through the whole house. It drowns out every other sound.
“Looks like we escaped just in time,” Sigrid yells into my ear, and I can’t help but agree.
She brings me to the bedroom at the far end. The house is huge, so it’s a good distance away from the living room, where the party is throbbing. The only other person here is stoned out of his mind and half asleep on the stairs.
“She’s in here,” Sigrid says, pushing me into the bedroom, and right as a bad feeling pricks in my stomach and grows larger and larger, right as I start to think I probably should have stayed downstairs, the door slams and the lock clicks.
“Grow up, Sigrid,” I yell, pounding on the door, but the pound of the holiday dubstep remixes downstairs are even louder. There’s no way anyone’s hearing me over that.
I swear and turn around, thinking maybe I can jump out the window in a callback to the old days…but someone is sitting in front of the window.
It’s Damien.
His nose has healed, but it’s crooked. There’s a scar on his cheek where James’s knuckles split his skin. But he’s smiling.
“Do you know what I got put through because of you?” he says, still smiling. “Do you know what I lost?”
I back toward the door. Sigrid can’t be this insane. No way. But she is, and this is happening.
“I figure if I lost my full scholarship to the school of my dreams, I might as well do what I got kicked out for,” he says, standing up.
I flatten myself against the wall. He’s so much bigger than me. I always forget how much bigger some people are than me, and when I remember, it’s such a helpless feeling. It’s the reason I’ve always been kind to small animals. Damien looks like the type of person who would swerve out of the way for the sole purpose of hitting a squirrel.
“Stay away from me,” I warn him, though I’m trembling in my core. This is deadly familiar and I hate it, I want to run, but there’s nowhere to go.
He laughs and takes another step forward. “What the hell makes you think I’m going to do what you say?”
And then he’s on me, grabbing me, his hands everywhere, pushing me down down down. I batter him with my fists, but it’s like punching a tank. I am so small. But I have teeth.
He howls and jerks back, grabbing his bitten hand, droplets of blood shaking from it. I reach the door and slam myself in it, screaming to Sigrid to let me out, let me out. The one person in the world who hates me the most is the only one who can save me now. And she’s not opening the door.
Then he’s on me again, shoving me forward so that my head bounces against the wood. The pain is sharp and immediate and the salty wetness trailing from my forehead gets in my eyes, blinding me. He climbs on top of me and sits on my stomach. The crushing weight of him makes it impossible to breathe, and I gasp for air.
“I know this is how you like it. Rough,” he hisses, and reaches for my shirt.
I close my eyes. Maybe I can remove myself from my body. Just go somewhere else for a while, so I won’t have to be attached to what’s happening here—
There’s a crash, a grunt, and suddenly the weight on me is ripped off and I can breathe again, though my ribs ache. I open my eyes. For a second, all I see is the ceiling. Then I roll over.
James has Damien up against the wall, hand around his throat, lifting him off the ground. It’s a horrifying repeat of what happened before, except something deep in my gut tells me that this time is worse. It’s the way James’s fingers dig into his throat, the way Damien is choking and gasping, his eyes rolling back, his chest heaving.
This time, he’s really going to kill him.
I leap off the bed and grab James’s arms, but he doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t even look away from Damien’s face. Damien’s struggles are getting weaker, his lips purpling.
“James,” I gasp. “Let go. He’s not worth going to jail for.”
But he doesn’t move.
I wrap my arms around his waist and hug him tightly, like I did before, way back when I barely knew him and I hated him for no reason and I had no idea, no idea, what an incredible person he was. And no idea that he’s not only seeing Damien—he’s seeing Ben. “Listen to me, okay? I’m sorry I got mad and left. I understand why you thought I did it. It’s not your fault. It was never your fault—not with our fight, and not with what happened to Melanie. You can’t do this. I don’t want you to do this.”
He still won’t let go. I press my face into the back of his shirt.
“James. I love you.”
Those are the words that bring him back. Slowly, he uncurls his fingers from Damien’s throat. Damien falls to the floor, coughing furiously. But I don’t hear him. I keep my arms locked around James’s waist, ready to hold him together for as long as it takes.
~22~
Sigrid was the one who spilled the story about James, Melanie, and Ben to the media.
Once we’ve gone to the hospital, once we’ve spoken to the cops, Brooklyn shows up. Apparently, during their freshman year, Brooklyn got drunk and accidentally spilled the whole story to Sigrid. She swore she’d never tell, but Brooklyn was always afraid she would—it was part of the reason she agreed to get James to agree to the terms of the Games, and why she was so reluctant to stand up to Brooklyn’s hazing for all those years.
After we caught her, she had a breakdown. Now she’s taking the rest of the semester off, ostensibly to travel abroad. I hope she enjoys it. I hope she finds herself, out there in the world.
It’s been two weeks since the party incident.
“Can you put this angel on top of the tree? The tree needs an angel. It’s Christmas Eve.” I strain on tiptoes, a plastic golden angel at my fingertips. “I can’t reach.”
Instead of doing it himself, James elects to lift me at the waist, hoisting me up so that I can finally reach the top. There aren’t a lot of evergreens in California, but somehow James managed to buy one after I told him I wanted one. Aunt Caroline is on vacation in Hawaii this year, so I’m spending Christmas at James’s apartment.
The media hubbub has mostly died down. Every once and a while, some reporter will wander by, hoping for something spicy to earn himself a promotion, but we ignore them. After all, it’s a story about a show and actors who were popular years ago.
“Do you ever think you’ll get back into acting?” I ask him that night as we’re snuggled on the couch, watching a movie about a reindeer that’s apparently a classic. Yet another piece of embedded culture I’m only just now being exposed to.
“Maybe,” he says. “For so long, the idea of acting was tied up with all that guilt. But now…I did always like it.”
“You were good at it too. I’ve been marathoning your show.”
He groans, and I laugh. “If you ever want to get back into it, I’ll be there to support you.”
“That means a lot to me.” He plants a gentle kiss on my neck.
“I have a question for you.”
“Hmm?”
“Do you still believe what you told me in our first class together?” I murmur. “That life has no inherent meaning?”
He thinks about it for a while as a claymation reindeer with a lightbulb nose bounces around onscreen. “I still don’t believe that life has inherent meaning.”
I sink slightly in my chair.
“I believe that if you’re lucky enough, you find meaning.” He kisses my head. “And Fiona?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’ve found mine.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you so, so much to everyone who read ADRIAN LESSONS and encouraged me to keep writing. There’s no way I could have considered writing another book without their support.
And an infinite amount of thank-yous to the book blogs who shared the cover for James Games and helped to spread the word! I’ll never be able to thank you enough.
Questions? Comments? Interested in reading more about James and Fiona? Feel free to email the author at
[email protected]
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