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Somewhere in my chaotic thoughts, I latched on to something I’d pushed aside because it had been easier that way. Deacon’s door was open, so I went in without knocking. He was on his bed, laptop in his lap. He looked up, a smile beginning to form, failing halfway there when he got a look at me.
“What’s up?” he asked warily.
“How do you know Helen?”
“Who?” That ass was such a liar.
“Helen? The girl I had to haul out of your room so she didn’t beat your ass.”
“Ahhh.” He nodded as if it was just coming to him. “Helen, the little firecracker townie. She was my weed hookup for a while.”
That jolted me. I hadn’t known what to expect, but it wasn’t that. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what you think. She sold me weed.”
I had to tuck my hand in my pockets so Deacon didn’t see how tight I’d balled them into fists. “She told you no. I was there when you went into Savage Wheelz. She chased you out with a bat.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, bitch is wild. I approached her all wrong that day. I ran into her at a party last fall. We talked and made a deal. She gave me weed, I sold it to dudes in the house, we split the profit. It went swimmingly until the cops showed up at a kickback right before school started and I had to flush all that beautiful ganja. I didn’t have the money for her, of course. That’s what you walked in on. The little wildcat was quite pissed at me.” His face turned bright red as he laughed at the memory.
I interrupted his laughter with another question about the woman I thought I knew but was clearly a stranger. “Is she still selling you weed?”
He rubbed his mouth. “Are you kidding? If I see her on campus, I walk the other way. Bitch is crazy. She’d probably brain me with her skateboard. No fucking way she’d hook me up again. That’s why I need your dealer’s number.”
Amir, the dealer Helen happened to know. From high school, she’d said. I now saw what a load of bullshit she’d been serving.
“Not happening.” I slapped the doorjamb. “Good night.”
Deacon called after me, probably with questions, but I was in no mood to answer. Not when I had a thousand questions of my own. No one in this house could put my mind at ease. Nothing could.
By the time Helen came jogging out of Savage Beauties, a sweet smile on her painted red lips, my decision was made. It hadn’t been hard to come to it. If I had been less of a man, I wouldn’t have been here to pick her up. But I wasn’t a liar, and I didn’t go back on my word. I said I’d be here, so I was.
She slid into the car and leaned over the console. I always kissed her when she got in. That was done. I pulled out of the parking lot without looking at her.
“Okay, what’s up?” She turned sideways in her seat, her eyes boring into the side of my head. “I can feel you simmering. Just say it. Tell me now, Theo.”
“When we get to the dorm. I’m not talking while I’m driving.”
“So, there’s something to say? You know you can’t dump me when we’re not really together, right?”
Stonewall Helen was back, and just in time, reminding me this was who we were. Two strangers who fucked. We weren’t the people who fell asleep together on her couch. Not when she had this whole secret life—a life I’d never sign up to be a part of.
“Right.”
She rotated to face the window, leaning as far from me as possible. From my periphery, I could see her ready to flee. Hand on the door, body tense, focused on the outside. It was a long drive, the silence between us so thick it was suffocating. When I pulled up in front of her dorm, I idled at the curb instead of parking in a spot like I normally did. This wouldn’t take long.
“Say it, Theo.” She refused to face me.
“This is done.”
“Okay.” Just like that, her fingers wrapped around the door handle. “Thanks for the ride.”
I could have let her go, but I was too angry to end it that easily. I needed her to understand exactly why I couldn’t be with her anymore. And maybe I needed to drill it in my own head, because lurking on the other side of my anger was a world of regret that this had to end.
“You lied to me, Helen.”
She looked at me over her shoulder. “Did I? And I suppose instead of just dumping me, which again, is unnecessary since we’re not together, you feel it necessary to lay out my shortcomings?” She twisted around to fully face me again. “Have at it. I’m all ears, Theo.”
The full force of Helen’s stunning face tripped me up. She was seething. Her cheeks were aflame, eyes flared and coal black. That only served to enrage me further. She had no room to be angry.
