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Frozen on the screen of Krishna’s phone with my hair falling all around my face, my T-shirt scooped too low, askew, sweat shining on all that exposed skin—I look like a mistake waiting to happen.
Then I see Nate, and I remember I’m a mistake that’s already happened.
He’s between me and the door. By the time I realize it, he’s looking at me, and there’s nowhere to escape to. I can’t dance now. I have to get out. So I keep going, chin up, hoping my mascara isn’t streaky and pretending the men in my head aren’t shouting at full volume.
Let’s see that dirty pussy, baby. I want to eat it out. I’m going to rail the living fuck out of you.
“Caroline!” Nate props his hand in the doorway so I can’t get past. He smiles his drunk smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you here. ”
I think of West, leaning in the doorway at the bakery as he walked me out. Telling me to text him when I was home safe.
I look at Nate, blocking my exit. His eyes crawling down my shirt.
Was he always this way?
He’s got a beer in his other hand, and his sandy-brown hair is a little long, curling around his ears. He wears a polo that brings out the blue of his eyes over these horrible navy pants with tiny green whales on them that he loves to put on for parties. He insists he wears them ironically, but I always used to tell him it’s not possible to wear pants with irony. You put on whale pants, you’re wearing whale pants.
Douche, West says in my head.
“Why shouldn’t I be here?”
“You haven’t been around much. ”
“I’ve been busy. ” I try to look like West when he’s gone blank. Like I could give a fuck about Nate.
“Josh said he saw you with that sketchy guy from across the hall last year. The dealer. ”
“So?”
“So I’m worried about you, Caroline. First those pictures, and now you’re hanging out with him. … What’s going on with you?”
I’m speechless. I mean, literally, I can’t make words. There are so many, they jam up at the back of my tongue, and I don’t know which ones I’d say even if I could shake them loose.
The nerve of him. The nerve.
He hitches his arm up higher and takes a sip of his beer, as though we’re going to be here awhile, shooting the breeze. “We’re still friends,” he says. “We’ll always be friends, you know that. I just don’t want to see you getting hurt. ”
That’s the thing that unlocks my throat. We’re still friends.
He betrayed me. He broke my life, then pretended I was the one who did it. He lied, because he’s a douchebag, and douchebags lie. And now he’s standing here, blocking my exit, telling me we’re still friends.
“You know what, Nate? Fuck you. ”
I duck underneath his arm, half expecting him to hip-check me and pin me in place. Half certain that he really hates me enough, wants to hurt me enough, that he’d do that.
He doesn’t, though. I get past him, run down the hall to the bathroom, lock myself in a stall, and climb up on the lid of one of the toilets, feet on the seat so I can drop my head down between my knees.
I keep it there until I can breathe.
I keep it there until I figure out that the low humming sound I hear isn’t inside my head. It’s my phone. In my pocket.
When I pull it out, there’s a message from West. Are you ok?
I’m not okay. Not at all. But seeing West’s name on my phone—seeing that he’s asking, when he’s never texted me before except to type out one- or two-word replies to my home-safe messages—it helps.
I’m fine, I type.
Well, actually I type, im gun3. But somehow the miracle of autocorrect sorts it out.
