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“Can I—can I set up an appointment for you, with my therapist? Or one of her partners, if you’d rather?”
I’d forgotten Mom’s occasional therapy sessions. She’d been diagnosed with an eating disorder when I was really young. I didn’t even know what it was—bulimia, anorexia? We’d never really talked about it.
“Sure. That would be good.”
She sighed, and I thought I heard relief. I’d given her something to do.
***
After we finished several cartons of Chinese takeout and a conversation about how we chose our respective majors, Lucas fished his iPod from his front pocket and handed me the earbuds. “I want you to hear this band I just found. You might like them.” We were sitting on the floor with our backs to my bed. Once I was plugged in, he pushed play, watching me as I listened.
His eyes locked with mine as the music swelled in my ears. I couldn’t hear anything outside of it, couldn’t see anything but his eyes on me. He leaned closer and I inhaled the soothing scent of him. Cupping my face in his hand, he moved his mouth to mine, kissing me at a leisurely pace that somehow matched the rhythm of the song. He tasted like the wintergreen Tic Tacs he’d been sucking on.
Handing me the iPod, he picked me up, deposited me on the bed and lay next to me, drawing me into his arms and kissing me until the first song bled into the next, and the next. When he pulled back to trace a finger over the edge of my ear, I removed an earbud and handed it to him. We lay side-by-side on my narrow dorm bed—the length of which only just accommodated the length of his body comfortably—listening together, immersed. He opened a new playlist, and I knew that the song he chose was something for me—beyond a band he wanted to share, or something for us to discuss musically.
My heart reached for him as we listened, staring at each other, and I felt the threads of connection between us—fragile filaments, so easily snapped. Like the poem etched into his side, we were each curving to fit inside the other, and this melting and reshaping could be deeper, more resilient. I wondered if he felt it, and when I listened to the lyrics of this song that he chose, I thought maybe he did. Now don't laugh ’cause I just might be… the soft curve in your hardline.
The hallway outside my door was mostly silent, finally, after a day of people packing up and moving out that had begun early. We talked—recent history only—and Lucas relayed the story of how Francis came to be his roommate. “He showed up at the door one night, demanding to be let in. Napped on the sofa for an hour, then demanded to be let out. It turned into a nightly ritual, with him staying longer and longer, until at some point I realized he’d moved in. He’s basically the most brazen squatter ever.”
I laughed and he kissed me, laughing, too. Still smiling, he kissed me again, hands wandering over my waist and hip. As we started to make out, I panted out the fact that Erin wasn’t leaving campus until tomorrow—and therefore could walk in any moment.
“I thought you said she was leaving today.”
I nodded. “She was. But her ex-boyfriend is charting a relentless campaign to get her back, and he wanted to see her tonight.”
His hand wandered under my shirt, exploring. “So what happened with them? Why did they break up?”
My lips parted when his hand cupped one breast, molding it to his palm as though it was meant to fit there.
“Over me.”
His eyes widened slightly and I smiled.
“No—not like that. Chaz was… Buck’s best friend.” I hated how my body clenched when I thought of Buck, how my teeth clenched when I said his name. Without even being present, he triggered responses I couldn’t quell, and that infuriated me.
“He’s gone now, right?” he asked. “He’s left campus?” Transferring his arm to my back, Lucas pressed me closer, his hand at the back of my neck.
Closing my eyes, I burrowed my head beneath his chin, nodding.
“I doubt he’ll be allowed to come back next semester, even before the trial,” he said.
I breathed him in, closing my mouth tight and inhaling the scent of him through my nose. I felt sheltered by him. Safe. “I’m always looking over my shoulder. He’s like one of those jack-in-the-box clowns… I never told you about the stairwell, did I?”
I wasn’t the only one incapable of suppressing physical reactions. His body stiffened, and his grip on me was suddenly less gentle, more charged. “No.”
Mumbling the story into his chest, trying to stick to facts and nothing else so I could temper my own response, I ended with, “He made it look like we’d done it in the stairwell. And from the looks on everyone’s faces in the hall… from the stories that circulated after… they believed him.” I forced the tears back. I didn’t want to cry over Buck anymore. “But at least he didn’t get into my room.”
Quiet for so long that I thought he wasn’t going to comment, he finally pushed me onto my back, wedging one knee between mine and kissing me roughly. His hair tickled the side of my face, and I wrenched my hands—trapped between us—free, plunging them into his hair as though I could pull him closer.
The way he kissed me felt like a brand. Like he was tattooing himself under my skin.
He knew all of my secrets, and I knew his.
But that seeming reciprocity was a lie—because he hadn’t been the one to reveal his own. I’d excavated them, and worse, he was unaware of it.
My guilt mushroomed between us, along with my longing for him to share that part of himself. To trust me with it. I was going home in three days. I couldn’t bring this up with miles and hours between us, or keep it to myself for weeks longer.
When we slowed again, wrapped up in each other and allowing our libidos and heart rates time to decelerate, I saw an opening.
“So you sort of live with the Hellers, and they’re family friends?”
He watched me and nodded.
“How did your parents meet them?”
Turning onto his back, his teeth slid over the ring in his lip and he sucked it into his mouth. I recognized this as his stress-disclosing equivalent of Kennedy’s neck-rubbing.
“They went to college together.”
The earbuds had been dislodged sometime during the last half hour. He turned the iPod off and wound the wires around it tightly.
“So you’ve known them all of your life.”
He pushed the iPod into his front pocket. “Yeah.”
Images of what I’d read, and what Dr. Heller had revealed, flashed in front of my eyes. Lucas needed comforting—I’d never known anyone who needed it more—but I couldn’t console him over something he hadn’t shared.
