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After he’d driven away, I stared up at the windows of the building. Music was spilling out of many open ones despite it being December. Probably the radiators were broken, and the studentswere trying to regulate the temperature by letting in the chilly outdoor air.
My own room was lit up by the twinkle lights I always left on. Others were decorated for Christmas with tinsel around the frame. It was a busy, active dorm dressed up for Christmas joy. I passed through the lobby, ignoring the stares I got every time, wondering how I could be so endlessly interesting to these assholes. I wasn’t even wearing a skirt or dress today.God.
Upstairs, safe in my dorm room, I locked the door behind me and pulled off my coat. I hung it up on the hook on the inside of the closet, and then crossed the room to press play on my answering machine.
There were thirty-one new messages.
Two of them were from my mother. Twenty-nine of them were from Kyle.
I listened to them all. Then I listened to them all again. My heart pounded.
I sat down on my bed, sweating, trying to breathe through it.
I played them a third time.
Blackness rolled in.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‡
Minty
Iwasn’t beingsmart. I knew that.
And yet hearing the increasingly frantic tone to Kyle’s messages as they’d transitioned from threats of violence to pleas to rageful whimpers to disturbingly vivid fantasies had plucked at a knot inside me until it’d come undone. I needed to see him. One last time. To help him.
Fuck, Kyleneededhelp.
By the fountain outside the campus theater, I watched as Kyle loped toward me in the darkness, hands in his coat pocket and a baseball cap pulled low. I’d insisted on meeting here because it wasn’t exactly high traffic, but it wasn’t entirely private either. There would be people coming and going from time to time, and if I could convince myself to run, my dorm wasn’t too far away.
“Hey,” Kyle said, stopping in front of me. His broad shoulders and thick arms looked even bigger in all that winter clothing. He could manhandle me like no other self-loathing queer I’d ever been with. He could be brutal.
“Hey.” The wind stung my cheeks as I took him in. His square jaw and thick neck. His cheap haircut. His wide lips that had never once kissed me. He wasn’t half as gorgeous as Luke, and the way he looked at me was full-on predatory. Not a hint of affection or love. Just rage, lust, and hate.
To think I’d ever imagined I could make him care.
Kyle tried to morph his face into something less terrifying. It didn’t work. “Thanks for coming.”
I shrugged.
“I, uh…” With a tight swallow, he checked to see if anyone was around watching or listening, and after seeing that we weren’t entirely alone—a couple sat on a bench a hundred yards away—he indicated the stairs leading down to a covered area next to the theater. “Can we talk down there? It’s more private.”
He’d never been so deferential to me before. It was like he was afraid I’d leave before he could satisfy his needs.
I understood that feeling. I’d been living it since Luke had gone away.
Still, I almost made a comment about Kyle being happy enough to shoot a load down my throat, but being too terrified to be seen with me. I held my tongue. I didn’t want him to run off either. I needed to see this through. I had to…
I studied him carefully, measuring his strength and reflecting on how I was ready this time. My Aikido defensive skills were rusty, and I hadn’t gone back to Sensei Junior’s kickboxing class often enough, but I wasn’t going to be caught off-guard. If it came to it, if I decided I didn’t want to do this after all, or he came on too strong, I could always bring Kyle down and run.
“Please,” he whispered, nodding to the stairwell again. “I just need to talk to you.”
The pleading note made my heart hurt. He was as lost as I could be. He needed me just as much I needed him. We were sick together in the same ways. We both had a sweating, aching, horrible need for something that would ruin our lives… Why? Why did he need it? I wanted to find out.
I followed Kyle down into the darkness.
At the bottom of the stairwell, his eyes glinted in the low light,and I stood carefully with my arms loose at my sides, ready to move quickly if I wanted to. I stayed on the balls of my feet, keeping quiet and giving him a chance to talk first. Eventually, he did.
