I got up and tried to help her, but she put her hands out to stop me. “Don’t touch my stuff.”
“Jesus Christ, Katie. I’m doing what a stranger would do if you were in a public place and this happened.”
I crouched next to her and waited patiently until she looked at me. She chucked some makeup into the bag and I saw a tear drop into the bag along with it.
“I’m such a bitch to you. Why are you so nice to me?”
“I could be a douche if you want. I have a pretty good track record of douchery.” I also had a list of witnesses that would swear to it under oath.
She giggled as another tear fell.
“Get your shit together and get the f**k out of my apartment,” I said, standing up and kicking her wallet out of my way. “I don’t want all that shit on my floor.”
She looked up in shock and then I smiled.
“See? Now get your pink ass out of here.”
She shoved the rest of her stuff away and hurried to get out the door.
“I’ll call you. Asshole,” she added at the end.
I laughed after she shut the door and I swore I heard her laughing as she jogged down the stairs.
Katie
After much begging, Lottie finally agreed to my makeover idea. I was looking forward to it until Trish started grilling me about Stryker.
I didn’t know how much of what we were doing she knew, but from the way Lottie and Audrey talked, they’d put him in my ‘boyfriend’ box already. I didn’t tell them it wasn’t like that because, to be honest, I didn’t want them to think less of me. They were both so sweet and innocent when it came to that. I couldn’t imagine Lottie ever having a strictly physical relationship and Audrey had been engaged for Christ’s sake. Commitment wasn’t one of her problems.
They’d been treating me with delicacy ever since the whole Zack thing. If I thought they talked about me behind my back before, that was nothing compared to after, especially when I was always going over to Stryker’s.
So I settled on the ‘it’s complicated’ box and let them think what they wanted. They always thought the best of me, which was part of the problem. I hated that they saw the best in me, expected the best, because inevitably I would disappoint them. It always happened.
I was having trouble sleeping, and kept waking Lottie up from nightmares about Zack. I had a voicemail from his mother saying how sorry she was for everything. I wanted to delete it, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t really her fault her son was an abusive, psychotic d-bag.
Stryker honored my request that our relationship be ‘just sex.’ I would text him or call him, we’d meet somewhere, f**k and then one of us would leave. Sometimes we wouldn’t say a word. I liked it better that way. No talking, no music, no soul-sharing. The one thing I wished I could get him to stop doing was look at me. Those damn green eyes had this way of searing into me like a searchlight. I never felt more nak*d than when he was looking directly at me.
The therapist, Dr. Sandrich, turned out to be a pretty decent guy. He didn’t push me to talk about anything I didn’t want to, so I was free to make things up and pretend I was talking about my feelings. He knew, but he just listened and after my hour was over he shook my hand and let me go. I was always waiting for him to call me on my bullshit, but he never did.
I had to go to court to talk about what Zack did to me. It was humiliating and traumatic and all the worse because my parents were there and they both cried and all I wanted was for the courthouse to catch fire and destroy us all. The only good part was seeing Zack in handcuffs. Of course, his stepfather had bailed him out so he was free from jail for now, but on a tight leash, and he’d been kicked out of school. I took comfort in the hour of driving that separated us now.
One way or another, Zack and I were done, period. I was moving forward, or at least taking one step forward for every two steps back, until I saw that I had a missed call from Lottie after my anthropology class one afternoon. I’d started getting involved in my classes again, and I’d come to find I actually enjoyed most of them. There was something comforting about sitting in a lecture hall, listening to someone else speak, taking notes, letting the information wash over you. I didn’t have to think about anything else. Just listen.
“Hey, what’s up?” It wasn’t like her to call me in the middle of the day for something silly. She usually just texted me for stuff like that.
“Hey, I just wanted to let you know what’s going on. Zack called Zan and he’s drunk and he’s in a park somewhere and Zan called the police so Zack is getting arrested. Again.” I stopped walking, causing a pileup on the sidewalk that got me nasty looks and more than a few curse words thrown at me.
“What?”
“Yeah, I debated about calling you, but I didn’t want you to be out of the loop. We’re going back to the dorm now. Where are you?” I heard Zan and Will talking in the background. Arguing, it sounded like.
“I just left anthro. I’ll be there in five,” I said, picking up my pace. That guy just didn’t know when to say when, the f**ker. Maybe this time they’d put him in jail and he’d stay there, where he belonged. The Zack I knew, the one who pointed out the constellations and made me all knee-watery wasn’t real. I’d probably known that all along, but it took him punching me in the face for me to really see it, once and for all.
No wonder my parents thought I needed therapy.
Lottie hug-attacked me the second I opened the door to our room, nearly knocking the wind out of me.
“Are you okay? I know you’re probably not and that’s a stupid question to ask, but I have to ask because I care about you and I’m your friend.” I patted her back and she let me go.
“I’m fine,” I said in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. In reality, I didn’t really care. He could rot in jail for the rest of his natural life. I didn’t know why they’d involved me, honestly. I was trying to move on, and this wasn’t helping. I almost said something to Lottie, but she looked so concerned that I swallowed my bitter words.
She kept rubbing my shoulder and sat down with me on my bed. Will was furiously texting Audrey and Zan was staring at me with eyes that burned almost as intensely as Stryker’s. They were two of a kind. They saw what you tried to hide, but at least they kept their mouths shut about it. Most of the time.
“I think we need to go out,” Lottie announced, standing up. We all looked at her as if she’d lost her damn mind, me included. A second ago, she’d been whispering soothing things like I was going to have a mental breakdown or something.
“Now?” Will said, his fingers still flying. “You really think now is a good time?”
“Well, not right now. Tonight. If we all sit around here thinking about this we’re going to go crazy. Am I right?” Zan put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her cheek. How was it that he and Zack shared so much DNA, but they’d turned out two completely different people? The more I lived, the more I decided life didn’t make any sense.
“I think it’s a good idea. You in, Will?” Zan said, putting his arm around Lottie.
Will nodded, not looking up from his phone. “Just let me ask Aud.”
“And we can bring Simon. He’s been dying to show off his new boyfriend. And we can have Trish and Stryker.” Lottie looked at me when she said his name, and emphasized both syllables. Not this again.
He was the last person I wanted to see right now, but I shut my mouth and let them chatter away. Maybe it could be good. Going out in a group. Normal. I could be normal. Or at least pretend. Just because we were going out in a group and there would be talking, didn’t mean our relationship would change from our current “just sex” arrangement. No, we would put on a show for our friends and then go back to the way it had been.
“Sounds great,” I said with a smile that felt almost real. I waited until after Lottie told me was coming and then escaped to the bathroom to call him.
“Hey. I’m not calling you for sex. I just want to set some ground rules for this group thing,” I said before he could get a word in.
“Hello to you, too. If you’re going to ask me to be a douchebag in front of my friends, the answer is no.”
I took a breath, hoping he didn’t take it the wrong way. “I wasn’t going to ask that, actually. I was going to ask if we could put that on hold for tonight. You can be nice to me in front of everyone. I don’t want them to know that we’re just hav**g s*x, even if that’s what we’re doing.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“Because you don’t want them to think less of you. I get it, Katie. Jesus, you drive a hard bargain. What if I wasn’t so compliant to your wishes? I mean, you say, ‘Jump,’ and I ask how high, and then you say, ‘Stand still,’ and I stand still. Not that I don’t get anything out of it, but damn.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“I’m still figuring that out. Can’t the sex be enough of a reason right now?”
“Sure. Fine. Just don’t think this is an invitation to change our current arrangement. I’m fine with it.”
He paused for a long time before he said, “Me too.”
The door to the bathroom opened and I stopped talking.
“Katie?” Lottie’s voice echoed off the tile floor.
“Yeah?” I said, hoping Stryker would get the hint. I could hear him listening intently.
“You okay? Are you talking to someone?”
“My mom just called. I was just filling her in. She’s freaking out.”
He laughed a little and I had to fight the urge to shush him. “Oh, so I’m your mother now, am I? I can handle being a douche, but that’s a stretch, even for me.”
“Shut up,” I hissed at him and he laughed again.
“What?” Lottie said.
“Nothing. Bye, Mom. I’ll call you later.”
“Bye, sweetheart. Make sure to do your homework and eat all your vegetables,” Stryker said in a falsetto that sounded scarily like my mother. I rolled my eyes and hung up on him.
***
Lottie let me do her up for our little evening out, which gave me a distraction from thinking about everything I didn’t want to think about. That didn’t mean that I could completely stop, because everyone else was talking about it.
“I hope they put him in jail for the rest of his life. That’s where he belongs,” Trish said as I braided Lottie’s hair back from her face.
“Trish, maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this,” Audrey said, glancing at me. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” I said with a smile. The guys were all down in Will’s room playing Minecraft and the girls were in ours “getting pretty” as Simon said. He was practically gleeful about inviting his new boyfriend on our ‘group hang’ as he called it. I just hoped Stryker would play his part. I was just pinning one of the braids to Lottie’s head when my phone buzzed with a picture message from Stryker. I hesitated a second before I clicked on it.