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I never asked him to be my teacher. It’s not what I want from him.
But on the other hand, I’ve found proof of West’s lessons scattered all over my life. Proof that what Nate did to me isn’t the only thing about me worth talking about. Proof that just as I could have walked in to the bakery any night, I can also walk in to a party or out onto a rugby field.
I’m still here. I’m basically okay. I don’t require coddling, and I’m not going to buy into any more bullshit.
I am overproofed, utterly sick of pretense. Because the other thing I’ve figured out since October is that West tells me nothing, and if there is nothing I can teach him, we’ll never be more than we are in this room.
He’s staying here over the break. It costs too much and takes too long to fly to Oregon for the paltry few days off we get, and, anyway, Bob needs his help.
West told me all that.
What he didn’t tell me is that he wants to go home—but I know he does, even though I’m not sure where home is, what town he’s from, what’s there for him. I don’t know because he doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell me why his attention is so riveted on his phone, why he’s distracted all the time lately, what he’s worrying about.
I know he’s worrying. I know something about him isn’t right. But I also know he’s never going to look up from the bread and say to me, Caro, can I tell you something?
An awkward sort of finality has settled between us tonight, and I think it must be because of that conversation at the apartment.
Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe it happened when he handed me the envelope full of money. The money changed something.
If West shared his own weed with friends, he’d be a guy who was fun to party with. Since he sells it to them, he’s a felon. That’s because of the money.
I’m sup
posed to be rich. He’s supposed to be poor. He gave me fifteen hundred dollars, and now something is different between us, but he won’t tell me what, and I won’t ask.
I’m not brave enough to push him, but I wish he would tell me. I wish he would need me. Because I’m not sure how much longer I can stand to be the only one in this kitchen who will admit to being vulnerable. And I’m not sure, either, how much longer I’m going to need this—these late-night drives to the bakery, these hours with West working and the mixers going.
There is so much more we could be saying to each other, and aren’t.
Tonight the mixer’s rattling song sounds like a dirge, and I feel nothing but grief. I woke up from a nightmare to come here—a dream where I was out on the rugby field in a nightgown, wading through a thick fog, and I couldn’t find something I needed, couldn’t hear anyone calling for me. I felt irrevocably lost.
This night—this moment—this is the end of something, and we’ve failed at it.
“I’m going to miss you,” I tell him.
He’s got his back to me. Without responding or even acknowledging that I spoke, he turns up the mixer to high. It bangs around so loudly, I can’t hear the music. I cover my ears and listen to the beating of my heart with my eyes closed. When I open them, it’s because his hand is on my thigh, and he’s standing right in front of me, filling my whole field of vision.
His eyes are silvery-blue, cast into shadow by his indrawn eyebrows, startling and intense.
Krishna and Quinn are right—West is always touching me.
I always feel it.
His hand on my thigh makes me throb. Between my legs. My heart. My throat.
Everywhere.
Stupid girl.
When he moves his hand, I clutch at it. I overlap our fingers, mine on top of his, and press down, hard.
West looks at our hands, and he sighs. “What am I supposed to do about you? I think you’d better tell me, Caro, because I don’t have a fucking clue. ”
I gaze at the knob of his wristbone. At the dark hair on his forearms, the divot of his throat, the patch beneath his lip where he missed a few hairs when he shaved.
His mouth. His eyes. His mouth.
Always his mouth, wide and smart-alecky, generous and withholding.
