Put Me Back Together (17 page)

Then Oleg looped an arm over each of our shoulders and began to guide us down the hall, his considerable girth creating a kind of battering ram effect in which people were either mowed down ahead of us or forced to get out of the way.

“Let’s get the two of you a drink!” he said, depositing us in the kitchen, at which point he was instantly distracted by a game of quarters taking place on the stove—it really was just like the movies!—and abandoned us.

I pressed my stomach into the edge of the kitchen counter as yet another friend came over to greet Lucas. We were in the very centre of the party now, surrounded on all sides, and with no jolly Oleg at my side and Lucas distracted, I really started to feel claustrophobic. I tried to remind myself to breathe. But it wasn’t easy. It was sort of like being at The Limo again, that panicked feeling of being packed in a room with so many people, that feeling of being so incredibly out of place. I’d never felt safe in a crowd, not in six years. I’d always thought it was because it reminded me of school before and during and after the trial, all those kids watching me, wondering when I would break, their eyes judging or pitying—it didn’t really matter which—and watching, always watching, as I disintegrated in front of them. But now, as yet another girl walked by and gave me a puzzled once-over, I realized it wasn’t a flashback to high school misery I was having. It was the trial itself I was remembering, that very particular feeling of being in a fishbowl, those moments when I’d taken the stand and I’d known I wasn’t just imagining all their looks; it was really happening. All eyes had been on me. All ears had been directed at that microphone as I’d opened my mouth and spewed one lie after another after another.

That’s what this crowd was doing to me.

It was making me relive my shame.

Covering my burning cheeks with my hands I cast around desperately for a place to hide. I was going down for real this time. I was going to collapse. I needed to get out of here, not in a minute, not in a second,
right now
.

I didn’t even notice Lucas talking into my ear or feel his arms go around me until suddenly I was being lifted into the air. My arms shot forward, grabbing hold of his shoulders. He set me down on the kitchen counter and, keeping his arms around me, moved forward, gently ungluing my knees with the pressure of his body so he could stand between them. Even then, with Lucas literally between my legs, I wasn’t really paying him that much attention—although now that I was sitting on the counter, we were exactly the same height, his eyes perfectly level with mine. Only when he leaned in and pressed his forehead to mine—this seemed to be his signature move—did I find myself focusing on his face, and specifically the details of it. The little scar above his right eyebrow that sort of looked like an arrow, his longish nose, and those remarkable dimples that were so deep they were like caves.

Without realizing it, I found myself reaching up and placing my thumbs into each perfect dimple, my fingers splayed over his neck.

“Katie,” Lucas said, “are you poking my dimples?”

“Mmmhmm,” I answered dazedly, until all of a sudden his words rang a bell in my head and I realized that I was doing something that seemed incredibly intimate in
a room full of people
while Lucas was standing
between my legs
.

For a second I actually stopped breathing.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Lucas said quickly, his hands holding me firmly around the waist as I tried to wiggle free and escape this horrifying moment. “Just pretend we’re alone. It’s just you and me alone in a room. There’s nobody else here. Just imagine it.”

Guided visualization had never really worked for me before—it was something Dr. Lepore and I had tried—but this time, in Lucas’s arms, it sort of did. With his forehead resting against mine, the rest of the room kind of disappeared and it was as though it was just the two of us in our own little bubble.

“That’s better, isn’t it?” he whispered.

I nodded. “Better,” I said.

“Now, instead of trying to run away, why don’t you tell me what the problem is?” he said kindly. “Are you disappointed to be at this party with me now that you’ve seen all the other dreamy guys in the room? Is that what it is?”

What other guys
? I wondered.

“It’s just…” I squirmed under his hands, trying to get the words out. “It’s just that everyone is looking at me, at us. I just…don’t like to be looked at.”

He jerked his head back, breaking our little forehead teepee and filling me with alarm, but he didn’t go far. He seemed to have pulled back just to stare at me.

“You don’t like being looked at,” he repeated, saying it as a statement, not a question. “You don’t want all these people looking at you.”

“I just don’t like feeling like—” Lucas interrupted me before I could finish, which was a good thing, since I had no idea where I’d been going with that.

He brought his hands up to cup my face, so delicately, making sure I couldn’t look away. “Katie,” he began, “I’m going to tell you something now that will probably shock you, but I need you to believe me. Can you promise me that?”

“I guess,” I said. I really had no idea where he was going, and the way his fingers were brushing against the skin of my face so gently was getting a little—no, a lot—distracting.

“You are beautiful, Katie,” he said.

I rolled my eyes and tried to turn my face away, but he held me in place with the slight pressure of his fingers.

“No,” he said. “You promised you’d believe me. You need to know this. You need to know how beautiful you are. Everybody else does.”

“Oh, give me a break!” I said. “I think you’re mistaking me for my sister.”

“Your twin sister,” Lucas said. “Your sister who has the exact same face as you. If you can admit she’s beautiful, then why can’t you admit that you are?”

I gave him an exasperated look, though I wasn’t sure he could see it, given how close his face was to mine. “Emily knows how to do it,” I explained, as if it weren’t obvious. “She has charisma and she knows how to dress and she has so much personality it’s impossible to ignore her. I’m…not like that.”

“I hate to tell you this, Katie, but you’re more beautiful than your sister,” Lucas said, and this time I was the one to pull away just to scowl at him. “I’m not saying Emily isn’t a knockout; she is. But you’re beautiful without even trying, without even realizing it. You’re the most fucking gorgeous girl in this room, and everybody knows it.”

The way he said it, swearing like that—and Lucas really wasn’t one to swear—somehow got the message through to me. I didn’t believe everyone in the room thought I was gorgeous—that was ridiculous. But I believed that Lucas did.

Lucas thought I was the most fucking gorgeous girl in the room.

I nearly swooned.

“I said this to you once before, but I’ll say it again,” Lucas said, his words uttered so close to my mouth that it was like he was breathing them into me. “They’re only staring at you because you’re so beautiful. Got it?”

“Got it,” I said weakly.

And then he leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.

My hands were trembling as I slipped off the counter, my cheek stinging in the exact spot where he’d placed his lips. I glanced around quickly to see if anyone had noticed the mind-altering moment we’d just shared but nobody was looking at us. The party had gone on around us while we’d been in our little teepee and nobody seemed to care about what Lucas had been saying to me. It seemed incredible.

Lucas’s cell buzzed and he slipped it out of his pocket to check the text. He shook his head as he placed it back in his pocket.

“One more thing,” he said, slinging an arm around my shoulder.

“Anything,” I said. Wow, I’d really drunk the Lucas Kool-Aid.

“Can you ask your sister to stop threatening to cut off my balls if I don’t treat you right?”

“What?” I cried out in alarm, grabbing for the phone in the front pocket of his shirt. He covered it with his fingers. “Did she really write that? I don’t even know how she got your number. Oh my God!”

“It’s okay, I understand,” Lucas said. “It’s natural for her to be overprotective when her sister’s out on her first date ever.”

I literally felt all the blood drain out of my face. “She said
what
?” I said, though I wasn’t sure it even came out. I might have just been silently mouthing it like a goldfish that had been flung out of its bowl, its little fishy lips opening and closing as it died. Because that was exactly what this felt like. Slow and painful death.

Lucas’s eyes were full of mirth as I worked overtime to salvage my dignity.

“Emily is deranged, okay? She says these things just to mess with me and you, because you’re a guy, and she likes to tell lies and create chaos where guys are involved,” I prattled. “I’ve been on plenty of dates. Lots of dates. I just can’t say no. It’s a real problem. Just because I don’t post pics of my bad dates on Facebook doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. I can’t even tell you the number of times I—”

“Katie!” Lucas said all of a sudden, jarring me out of my monologue. “I’m pretty sure she just meant your first date with me.”

“Oh, right,” I said, biting at my bottom lip, hoping he’d ignore the heap of lies I’d just emptied on his head. “Wait, so…does that mean…I mean…did you want this to be…”

I looked at him hopelessly. Was he really going to make me ask if we were on a date?

“Let’s avoid labels for the time being. I don’t want you to hurt yourself,” he said diplomatically, steering me toward the keg.

I couldn’t help but feel a little let down. Not that I wanted this to be a date. Except that I kind of did.

As we stood waiting for our turn, Lucas standing behind me, he put his chin on my shoulder and whispered into my ear, “But for the record, if it was up to me, this night would have the label of ‘date’ all over it. I have one of those label makers. It’s very high-tech. I’d make a label that says ‘Lucas and Katie’s first date’ and make us both wear them as nametags. I just wanted to make sure we were clear on that.”

I beamed as I drank down my cup of mostly warm beer. I’d never tasted anything better in my whole life.

For the next half hour, Lucas and I crept around the periphery of the party. His hand remained planted on my lower back and he was very attentive, always grabbing me a seat and giving me most of his attention, which didn’t seem to be entirely for my benefit. Though coming to the party had been his idea, he didn’t seem ready to participate in it fully, happy to chat with me about our final assignment for art class instead of playing beer pong. A dance floor erupted in the middle of the living room and I was glad to find he didn’t want to drag me onto it. He didn’t even really seem to want to talk to anyone. I noticed him trying to end every conversation as soon as it began, even one with his roommate Eric, who I wouldn’t have minded chatting with a little longer; he looked a little like Ryan Gosling.

We were talking about maybe cutting out of the party early and getting some ice cream—be still, my beating heart—when a familiar girl came up and nudged Lucas with her hip. I couldn’t help but stare as Lucas smiled widely at the sight of her, set down his beer, and picked her up in an Oleg-style bear hug.

“I’m so glad to see you,” Lucas said, and I could tell he genuinely was. His eyes brightened when he looked at her in a way they hadn’t all night.

As he set the girl back down on her feet, she giggled and tossed her long hair over her shoulder.

It was the girl with the blonde hair, the one I’d seen sitting on the bench with Lucas, the one who’d been so angry with him and whose cheek he’d touched.

My stomach sunk like a rock-filled rowboat.

I didn’t know exactly where to look. Watching Lucas’s absorption in this girl was like pushing razors into my eyes, but at the same time I couldn’t look away. A part of me seemed to feel that I deserved this punishment for thinking I could judge a guy’s character, that I could trust a word Lothario Lucas said to me. I’d always been a terrible judge of character, that’s what had gotten me into all that trouble when I was younger. Guys were always liars, and I was always so eager to believe them—that was my weakness, that was why it was so much better to be alone. At least I didn’t come out looking like I’d been duped. At least alone I still had my pride.

I was just about ready to disappear out the back door without a word—I could just see it out of the corner of my eye, over beside the fridge—when I accidentally bumped into Lucas’s elbow and he turned and blinked at me as though he’d forgotten I was there.

Most gorgeous girl in the room, my ass.

“Oh, Katie,” he said breathlessly. “I want to introduce you to—” but before he could finish, there was a tap on his shoulder and another girl was waiting to talk to him.

“Jennifer,” the blonde girl finished, holding out her hand for me to shake. “I’m so happy to meet you. Lucas talks about you all the time. You’re exactly like he described you, except maybe even prettier.” She smiled sweetly at me as I tried not to look like a deer in the headlights. Had she just called me pretty? And it didn’t even seem like she was being sarcastic. But why would one of Lucas’s girls be so happy to meet me and so eager to give me a compliment?

“Oh, thanks,” I managed to get out before Jennifer barreled on.