I glanced at Mel, who was watching the freeway, occupied by her own thoughts. It was strange and unsettling. New territory. It was the first time in our life-long relationship that I knew more about something than her.
The remaining few days of spring break had consisted of me in the guest bedroom under the pretext of studying. I’d turned off my cell, unsure of what to tell Julia, but also dreading any other communication.
Nothing was said on the subject of Henry Knightly the rest of the time in Vancouver. The only thing Mel probably suspected was that I’d kissed a guy then refused to talk to him a day later.
You stay classy, Spring.
I didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to think about it. My blood pressure was already skyrocketing as we headed back to California, flying south on I-5. I ran my fingers over my forehead and pushed back against the head rest, staring out the window.
It was my own fault. I’d stepped into the mouth of the beast and had to live with the stench till it wore off. Served me right for getting close to a guy like Knightly. When would I learn that men, all men, were the enemy?
This reminded me of the card I’d received from my father a few weeks ago. An invitation to his midsummer wedding, sent in the guise of a birthday card, the first card he’d sent in five years. Ha! There was no way I was going to any wedding, even if my brothers swore Dad had changed, that he was reaching out to me. I wasn’t ready to believe that. Especially not now.
Reviewing some history notes from a class blog took up the next hour or so of our journey. My phone vibrated. I’d purposefully not checked messages for days, but it was probably time. I snuck a glance at Mel, who was yammering on her cell. My left temple began to throb as I tapped my Stanford e-mail icon then quickly scanned down the messages. There were plenty from friends, classmates, and even one from Professor Masen. I didn’t have the stomach to read that one yet.
I jumped when my phone vibrated again. This time a calendar prompt popped up, alerting me of an event that was to take place in fifteen minutes. I stared at the screen. It wasn’t something I’d entered into my calendar. Knightly had put it in there, obviously. Though it wasn’t the event I’d seen him enter, our date to work on my thesis—that wasn’t until next week. This was something else, something…personal.
He must have entered it when I wasn’t looking, when we’d been next to each other in the backseat of Tyler’s car, me momentarily distracted by someone’s hand up my shirt. Sweat pooled in the palms of my hands, under my hair, across my forehead, as I read the short event again and again, wanting—almost desperately—to be where it said I should be, with whom, and doing what it said we should be doing.
After I’d read it a fourth time, everything in me dropped. Then spun.
“What’s so captivating?”
Mel’s voice startled me. When I turned to her, she took one look at me and winced.
“Crap, Spring! What’s wrong with you?”
I didn’t know what she meant. Had all my hair fallen out? Was I bleeding from the ears?
“You look like death.”
Funny, because I felt like death.
I lowered the sun visor to look in the mirror. There she was again: the same girl I’d seen when I locked myself in the bathroom at Henry’s house, and again just a few days ago, alone in the spare bedroom, pacing around like a lunatic. My eyes were bloodshot with dark, puffy bags, nostrils white and flaring, lips pale, brows heavy and lifeless. My face was completely void of color except for the red splotches marbling my neck like a funky rash. But the expression in my eyes…that was the kicker. It wasn’t that I looked shocked or sad, it was worse than that.
My face was exactly like Julia’s on that day she discovered Dart was gone.
Oh, sweet, fracking irony.
“Spring?” Mel shrieked, still gaping.
When I opened my mouth to reply, my stomach heaved and I doubled over, a gasp of pain exiting from my throat. I felt the car swerve then slow, the sound of gravel under tires. When we stopped, my window was suddenly rolling down. I sat up and hung my head out the side.
“If you’re going to be puking again,” Mel said from what sounded like several million miles away, “you should at least have food in you. You haven’t eaten in two days. Dry heaving is bad for the esophagus.”
My right cheek was pressed against the outside of the car door, and my braids twisted over my eyes as the top half of my body hung upside down, suspended by my seat belt.
“Keep breathing, babe.” Mel’s hand was on my back, rubbing and patting in comfort. As blood pooled in my brain, I was able to breathe easier, and my stomach settled. When I pulled my head back inside the car, Mel had a Diet Coke in her hand, holding it out to me. I pressed it against my forehead. The coldness of the can felt nice.
“Thanks,” I whispered. “I’m fine.” I attempted to smile after I took a few sips. “I’m just tired, I guess.”
“Tired, right,” Mel said, rubbing my arm. “We’ll sit here for a sec.”
“No, it’s okay. I know it’s a long drive.” With alarm, I searched for my phone, which had fallen to the floor in my jostling. I grabbed it and pressed it against my chest.
“No hurry,” Mel said, eyeing me. “There’s a restaurant up ahead. We’ll stop for a while.” She started the car and we pulled into the parking lot.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded, and we sat in a corner booth. When I insisted on only a salad that I knew I wouldn’t touch, Dr. Melanie took over, ordering an array of vegetable sides, soup and bread.
My cell was on the table, the calendar event still showing. I picked it up and held it between my hands. Then, I couldn’t help glancing one more time at what Henry had secretly scheduled for us to do:
Subject: My mouth
Location: You
Notes: Don’t move. My mouth is on your fingers, eyelids, your face. My mouth, your neck. Your mouth. My hands, your back, skin. Your mouth. My mouth, your tongue. Your mouth, my mouth. Your stomach, my mouth, my hands. Under your hair. Under your shirt. My mouth on you.
When the phone pinged another reminder, my heart made a mighty thwap and I grabbed for my glass of ice water.
Mel was watching me closely, elbows on the table. “We don’t have to talk about it. I mean, I know you think I’m a gossip and everything.” She rolled her eyes. “But this is you.” She kicked me under the table. “You know you can tell me anything and it goes no further.”
I lowered my eyes, reading his words again, need and misery hitting me like a tsunami.
“Take another drink,” she ordered, scooting my glass over.
“Mel,” I began, staring down, “there’s something I have to tell you.”
“I’m listening, babe.”
“I kissed Henry when we were camping.”
Well, it was a six-hour kiss, but who’s counting?
“Uh-huh.”
“The next day, I found out something…bad. That’s why I didn’t go with you guys to Portland. Did you know Henry never left? He stayed behind at the house after you and Tyler took off.”
“Really?” Her expression was smooth, no scheming grin, eager to hear the latest scandal. She looked like my best friend.
“He came barging in.” I swallowed, feeling pukey again. “He told me…” I lowered my eyes. “He told me he loves me.”
“Poor Henry.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You obviously threw him out,” she deduced. “And now you feel guilty.”
“Guilty,” I echoed. “You don’t know what I said to him.”
“He probably deserved it.”
“Probably.” I laughed bitterly. “What I thought I knew about him, then after what Tyler told me—”
“Tyler told you something about Henry?” she cut in. “That little gossip.”
I had to bite my tongue about the whole pot calling the kettle black.
“Henry did deserve what I said, but…” Suddenly, tears built behind my eyes and a huge lump blocked my throat. “Is it possible to feel so strongly about someone, to be so overwhelmingly attracted and connected that you want to forgive anything? How healthy is that? How stable?”
“I don’t know.” Mel shook her head. “I’ve never felt that way about anyone. But you and…”
I lowered my hand that was holding the phone. She stared at it, then at me. “I don’t know what to do,” I said, my bottom lip quivering. “I’m such an idiot.”
“Careful,” she warned with a kind smile, taking the phone from my open palm. “That’s my best friend you’re talking about.”
While she read the subject line of the event and then the subsequent, rather detailed, description that Henry had entered, I was busy staring down at the plate before me, my fork scooting the carrots and rice from one side to the other. A few seconds later, my cell was being pushed across the table.
“Steamy,” she offered, pointing at the screen. “And is that part even legal? Why aren’t you with him right now?” She glanced at the phone. “Doing that.”
So I told her everything.
Of course she’d heard Alex’s story floating around campus, but she knew nothing about Henry breaking up Julia and Dart.
“Who do you trust more?” Mel asked, running her finger along the rim of her glass. “Henry or Alex? Or Tyler?”
“Henry didn’t deny the Julia thing,” I said, feeling miserable.
“Okay, okay.” Mel moved her plate and glass out of the way and placed her hands flat on the carved up wooden table. “Let’s go over this logically. First, what’s this about Lilah?”
“Oh.” I shuddered and shook my head. “He just slipped up, so to speak. You know guys…a pretty face throws herself at him, and he loses all ability to think logically. I assumed Henry had a higher threshold, but we’re all susceptible at some point.”
As proof, I almost added that I’d fallen prey to Alex.
“I don’t know if it was a casual thing between them last summer,” I continued, “or if he thought there was more to her back then. He’s probably known her for almost as long as he’s known Dart. So it wasn’t like a one night stand.”
“They hooked up?”
I nodded. “Pretty sure.”
“Ew. She’s such a gnarly hag.”
“I agree. But think about it. If you only saw her and didn’t know the evils of her inner soul, she’s, ya know, beautiful.”
“Gross.” Mel made a gagging face.
“He seemed shocked that I even knew about it.”
“That’s because he knows how you feel about Lilah, and obviously knows how Lilah feels about you. That was probably why he was so engrossed by you at the party. Make no mistake, Lilah told him crap, so he assumed you’d be some wheels-off psycho demon chick and not a smokin’ hot super-class super-babe.”
“Whatever,” I muttered, trying not to smile. “Regardless, I think I kind of overreacted about the Lilah thing. You’re well aware of some of the road kills I’ve paired with in the past, without so much as an iota of feeling, so I can hardly get bent out of shape about Henry hooking up with Lilah. I actually feel sorrier for her.”
“Okay, so the Lilah thing is vile but forgivable,” Mel stated. “Let’s move on. What about Alex?”
I didn’t speak for a moment, taking the time to properly hate myself. “I fell for everything he told me hook, line and sinker. I didn’t think twice. And what if everything he told me—told everyone—isn’t true? I still don’t know what happened between them. Henry didn’t tell me.” I bit my lip. “Well, I guess I didn’t give him a chance to explain. But you know what, Mel? I told him neither of those things mattered: what he did with Lilah”—I shuddered again—“and what I thought he’d done to Alex. I told him I didn’t care, because…I…” I exhaled slowly, pressing my palms against my burning cheeks. “But what he did to Julia, I just can’t…”
“Yeah.” Mel groaned. “That’s tough to swallow. When you called him on it, he didn’t sound remorseful?”
“No. Because he isn’t. He thinks he did the right thing butting in like that. I have no idea why. What could possibly justify that?” I pounded my fist on the table. “I can’t be with someone who treats people that way. He says he loves me, but then he does that to one of my closest friends.” My throat felt tight, tears stung my eyes. “I don’t know how to forgive him for it,” I whispered.
Mel didn’t say anything. She probably sensed that I couldn’t talk about it anymore. I leaned an elbow on the table and planted my face in my hand. “So much drama,” I said. “A year ago, I was free and focused. I was happy.”
“Were you?” Mel asked skeptically.
“Well, I was cynical and hardcore and full of crap, too, but at least I had a plan.” I twirled a braid around my finger. “Now I don’t know what I am.”
