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He turned back toward the road, and nudged me along. It was clear to me that he didn’t want to continue talking about this as he quickened his pace.
“And if I couldn’t overcome a bully,” he continued, to my surprise, “I had to join him.”
I was stunned. If anyone, Leo was just like me—by hurting others, he had saved himself. He had done what he had done in high school just to get by, just because he had to if he wanted to save himself some sort of mental sanity.
“But why are you still friends?” I said, almost angry that he was telling me all this just now. “You’re in college, Leo. I mean, what’s stopping you from branching out?”
Fuck, I probably sounded like his mother.
“Maybe I have been,” he said, like it was the most casual bit of information he cared to dispel.
“Okay?” I laughed, sounding a little more nervous than I needed to. So, Leo Borowski was making new friends, huh? Someone other than the host of the local diner?
Didn’t seem right. But then again, nothing in our lives ever did.
We continued walking for a few moments without saying a word. It was awkward for the both of us—knowing the fact that he was once in the same position as I had been, that Elliot had picked on his right-hand man. I had never considered the possibility that either Leo or Felix would follow in Elliot’s footsteps simply to avoid being crushed by them.
And yet, it made complete sense.
“Hey,” I said, turning to him again once we were a few blocks away from the building. “I have an idea. It’s gonna sound crazy, but hear me out.”
Leo nodded. “I love crazy ideas.”
We were on the sidewalk of a quiet residential street, the sound of the cars in the downtown area just a drone in the background. There was no one around. I stepped closer to him until my chest was pressed against his, my forehead grazing the tip of his nose. I let my hand fondle with the zipper of his jacket, then slowly tugged it down.
“Kat, what’re you doing?” Leo rasped, turning his head to glance over his shoulder. “We’re, like, in the middle of—”
“I’m giving you the option,” I said, my fingers, hot against his cold skin, now slipping underneath his shirt as I looked him dead in the eyes. “Do something not because Elliot wants you to, but because you can. Because you want to.”
I nodded past his shoulder, looking down the street. My apartment building was just a few blocks away from the high school, and since it was a week day, the school would be open. We could slip in without anyone noticing—we hadn’t gotten any older, might as well still have been seniors. Find a bathroom stall.
It’s not like we could go anywhere else. My mom’s eyes would be watching like a hawk’s.
“Where?” Leo asked. “At the school?”
I nodded, allowing my fingers to ghost lightly up his abs underneath his shirt. To any passersby, we’d just look as if we were having a tender moment. To me, however, this was anything but a gesture of romance.
I was mad at Elliot for the thousandth time—not because he had hurt me, not because he had hurt Pierre, but because he had hurt someone who was even closer to him than I was. Because it proved that he had been a bully from the start and that somewhere rooted in his human heart was pure selfishness. His bullying didn’t start with me, and who was to say it wouldn’t end with me?
Here I was, once again, caught in a struggle of reconciling his horrible actions with his ‘true’ self. It was starting to weigh heavily on me.
“Are you being serious?” Leo said, his lips curling into a hysterical smirk. He loved some good spur of the moment amusement, just like that time he had convinced me to climb to the top of the dorm building at Freeman. “If you are … then sure. Yes.”
With that, I grabbed his arm and started running toward down the sidewalk, dragging him after me. In a second, he had caught up with me.
“Race ya,” he said, and started sprinting ahead. Laughing like a maniac, I tore after him, and could start to feel beads of sweat forming in my armpit despite the cold. We sped past the apartment building, and as we turned the corner, the school came into full view. Students were walking around in small clusters, heading back into the building after lunch. It was perfect timing.
“Never thought I’d come back here,” Leo panted as we slowed down, whirling around to face me. He was a few yards ahead. “I think I won.”
“I think you did,” I laughed, my eyes tracing his dark eyelashes and the contrast with his honey-colored curls. He could’ve been a surfer if his skin was a little more sun-kissed. “Let’s see if we can make it in.”
We slowed our pace as we approached the building, trying our best to look like a couple of bored teenagers dragging our asses back to class after a less-than-thrilling lunch out on the town. Fortunately, we had years to master that look, but Pierre and I had never been cool enough to actually leave campus for lunch. Neither of us ever had our own car, and we were too lazy to walk.
Thankfully, none of the students recognized us—or if they did, they probably figured we were just back to visit some teachers. Either way, we breezed through the front doors of Woodman as if we had never left, or as if we had entered our past through a gate to some weird alternative reality. A reality where Elliot, Felix and Pierre didn’t exist.
A reality where it was just the two people who were victims. Leo and I understood each other because we had been Elliot’s original punching bags.
“Follow me,” Leo said, grabbing onto my arm and pulling me past the lobby desk. The security guard sitting there didn’t even give us a second look. “I know a good place.”
