Harder (Caroline and West) Page 12

  I love the confirmation and the hit of truth, lust spiking like nicotine through my blood.

  It feels like a game, although I know for West it’s dead serious. It’s just that we’ve played this way before. The Caroline who played this game last year was scared and damaged and cautious, but I’m not any of those things anymore. I’m winning, and we’ve barely even started.

  “Keep it to once or twice a week, all right?” he says. “You’ve got your own shit to be taking care of. And I don’t want you spending money on her. Leave me your receipts and I’ll pay you back.”

  “Really? We’re going to do accounting on this?”

  “Cut me some minuscule fucking piece of slack. You’re getting your way on everything else.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Caroline.” He recrosses his arms.

  “West.” I cross mine.

  “What do you want me to say?” he asks.

  “I’m going to be around. You’re going to have to deal with it. Deal with me. Stop pretending I don’t exist or that everything’s going to be fine if you say so.”

  He makes me wait for his reply. It drags out of his chest, rumbling and low. “Fine.”

  I lean down to pick up my bag. My knees threaten to buckle. I’m a cocktail of adrenaline and desire, my body dangerous and stupid.

  When I return to standing, he’s still looking, and it’s worse. Better-worse.

  Always better-worse, with West.

  “What?” I ask.

  “I’m trying to figure out your strategy.”

  “Who, me? Why would you think I have a strategy?”

  “You’re a politician, Caro. You’ve always got a strategy.”

  “You make me sound so sneaky.”

  “No, not sneaky. But you gotta admit, you’re not always direct.”

  “Maybe that’s because you’re not so amenable to the direct approach.”

  “Amenable, huh?” His smile races through me.

  “Don’t even pretend not to know what it means.”

  He shakes his head, slow and weary. “I’m not the one who’s pretending.”

  “Being indirect isn’t the same as pretending. Especially when you know if you ask straight up, you’ll get shot down.”

  “Why don’t you try it and find out?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “You already got what you wanted tonight.”

  I readjust the strap of my bag on my shoulder. Rise up on my toes, bringing my face a little closer to his. My mouth a little closer. “Not even close.”

  The breath explodes out of him. He turns his head away. “There’s no reason you have to hang around till I’m home, you know.”

  “I can’t lock the door behind me.”

  That gets me another smile, slower and wider, though he still won’t look my way. “Now you’re gonna tell me you need a key.”

  “I don’t mind hanging around until you get back.”

  “Some nights I’m on till two.”

  “I know. Frankie said.”

  Now he looks me over, head to toe. “You sleeping bad again?”

  “Sometimes.” Most of the time. I stay up late, sleep a few hours, wake up and work, take a nap late in the day if I don’t have meetings.

  My vampire schedule. It was one thing West and I used to have in common.

  Still do, I guess.

  “I’ll get you a key,” he says. “You can leave when you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  I brush past him, hyper-aware of his body and the narrowness of the staircase. Conscious that he could reach out, put his hands on me, touch me anywhere, and I’d let him.

  Does he feel that, too? He must. It’s right here between us, that knowledge, that love song our bodies never stopped singing.

  Even mad at him, I’d kill to be able to go with him to his room, help him get his boots off. I’d die to be able to crawl into the crook of his arm so he could sleep and I could keep him safe.

  Keep vigil over him.

  “Goodnight, West.”

  “’Night, Caro.”

  I hold that image of us in my head when I get into the car and start driving through the tunnel of my headlights down the deserted country road. Me and West in his bed together.

  Me and West, wandering through a wilderness of stars with our hands clasped.

  Me leading him out.

  PATHFINDER

  West

  The morning after Caroline told me she was back in my life whether I liked it or not, I quit smoking.

  She was just going to keep hounding me if I didn’t.

  I missed the hit I got from those cigarettes, though, and the way the smoke went all the way down to the bottom of my lungs and made it possible for me to breathe when it felt like I couldn’t get a full breath in Putnam any other way.

  After she left that night, I stared after her taillights until they winked around the corner and disappeared. I locked up the apartment and ate leftovers from the dinner I’d made my sister.

  I thought about Caroline spending afternoons and evenings with Frankie.

  Thought about her in my place, in my kitchen, in my life.

  I pulled the rest of my cigarettes out of the freezer, opened every pack, broke them apart, and threw them away.

  Then I leaned a hip against the counter and sparked my lighter in the dark.

  Spark. Spark. Flame.

  The whole time, I was trying to convince myself that the flame didn’t look like hope, didn’t feel like it, but I’ve never been any good at that kind of self-deception.

  That spark in the dark, that wavering flicker – Caroline. Hope.

  For me, they were always the same thing.

  Impossible girl. That’s what I thought when I first met her. She was exactly what I wanted, everything I wanted, and she was impossible.

  What made her impossible was only my fear.

  Last time I came to Putnam, I fell in love with her. I claimed a life for myself, then lost it. I didn’t want to take that kind of risk again – not with my sister, and not with my own heart.

  But Caroline lost her future once. She lost everything she believed about herself when her ex put her pictures online. Then she fought to reclaim it. She bit and clawed and scrabbled and took it back. It was the most beautiful thing I ever witnessed.

  So how stupid was I to think after what I did to her, she would just let me go? Caroline doesn’t let things go. I was the last person on earth she should have wanted anything to do with, but try telling that woman what she’s supposed to want.

  Just try it. I’ll be over here laughing.

  She wanted me, so there she was on my porch. There she was with my sister.

  There she was destroying my cigarettes and pissing me off, telling me I was going to give myself cancer like I didn’t fucking know it already. Like I was supposed to care.

  She was trying to make me care, and I resisted for no reason.

  Except that’s not true.

  I resisted because I was afraid.

  What if I couldn’t fix what I’d done to her?

  What if I fixed it and lost her anyway, and I found I couldn’t come back from losing her a second time?

  What if I claimed Caroline and discovered all over again that hope is a luxury I don’t get to claim?

  I was afraid.

  But it didn’t matter.

  Me and Caroline – it was going to happen anyway. I was going to let it. That last week of September, that first week of October, I tried to keep my distance, stalling, when all the while I was trying to remember how I’d ever done it in the first place.

  How I’d given myself permission to take what I wanted.

  It sounds easy – telling yourself you deserve good things. Letting yourself want them. Letting yourself claim them.

  It sounds easy, but it’s not. For a guy like me, it’s right next door to impossible.

  I was stuck in Silt. Not just the Silt on the map, but the Silt in my head. The Silt t
hat made me, trained me to survive, and taught me my life was worth precisely nothing.

  The path that led out of Silt was the one that took me back to Caroline. Once I found it, it was easy.

  All I had to do was follow the flame.

  Halfway through the next week, I stand outside the art building before class.

  I lean against the windows, listening to the smokers talking, joking around. I chew gum to keep my mouth busy, shove my fists in my pockets so I won’t bum a smoke off anyone.

  Half the class is out here.

  There’s a guy named Raffe, short for Rafael. He’s got dark skin and wild black hair like an afro except it comes to all these points, and he wears a motorcycle jacket but he doesn’t seem like a poser.

  He and this blond girl named Annie smoke and argue about art.

  Surrealism. Dadaism. Warhol. Avedon. Turner. People I’ve never heard of.

  I listen to them talking about some exhibit in Chicago, realize they actually drove all the way to the city, six hours in the car so they could see this exhibit at a gallery, six hours back, and they’re still fucking arguing about it.

  Off across the quad, I see Caroline coming. She angles my direction and fetches up in front of me as though the wind just blew her here by accident.

  She’s picked my sister up twice already since the last time I talked to her.

  I’ve talked myself out of buying cigarettes six times.

  “What do you think about art?” I ask.

  “I don’t think that’s a question I can answer in one sentence.”

  “You ever been to Chicago?”

  “Sure. Lots of times.”

  “Maybe I’ll take Frankie sometime. Show her that bean. Go to a baseball game in the spring, or take her by the Art Institute to look at the paintings. She’s never seen anything like that.”

  Caroline’s gaze sharpens. “Have you?”

  “No.” I’m embarrassed to admit it.

  “You should go, then,” she says.

  Raffe and Annie are looking at us. I glance down and realize Caroline’s standing close. We’re talking low. She’s rubbing her hands over her arms in her sweater. It’s long and bulky, tied at the waist. It looks warm, but obviously it’s not warm enough for the chill.

  “You should get going,” I tell her.

  She looks at her watch. “I should. See you.”

  She waves goodbye to Raffe and Annie. Calls them by name. Caroline knows all kinds of people. Everybody likes her.

  I watch her cross the quad. The wind blows her hair around and catches the panels of her sweater, whipping it open with every stride.

  If I ever learned to paint, I’d paint her just like that.

  Halloween’s on Friday. When I get home from work, Caroline’s in my kitchen, asleep at my table at three in the morning.

  Next to her elbow is a case of Monster energy drinks like the ones she used to bring me at the bakery.

  “Rise and shine,” I say.

  When she lifts her head, she smiles. All the way, like the sun coming up. Rise and shine.

  Then her elbow bumps the Monsters, and a cloud drifts over her expression.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  “Nothing to be sorry about. Unless you destroyed some other property of mine?”

  Her nose wrinkles. “Yeah. I was feeling bad about that.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, the money part. Krish told me how much a carton of cigarettes costs. I brought you these to make up for it. I figured if you’re going to get addicted to a stimulant because you’re running yourself ragged, energy drinks are a better choice.”

  “Thanks.”

  She gets to her feet. I don’t want her to leave. “What’d you and Franks do today?”

  “I took her to the Student Senate meeting.”

  “You on the senate now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is it?”

  “Scintillating.”

  She tosses her hair behind her shoulder. It’s a lot longer than it was last year, almost halfway down her back. I want to gather it up in my hands and feel if it’s heavier. Feel if it’s different.

  She’s too skinny, I know that much. And in this light, the circles under her eyes are obvious.

  When she was with me, I’d help her get back to sleep if she woke in the night.

  “You talk to her yet?” she asks.

  “Who, Franks?”

  “About the bus.”

  “No.”

  I need to. It’s not just Caroline saying so – I get these emails from the counselor at Frankie’s school, who’s got her coming in to his office once a week so he can make sure she’s “settling in.” He keeps suggesting we get together for a little chat, but I can’t imagine anything good coming out of that.

  Bottom line, I go in to see him, he’ll find out something I don’t want him to know. Something about murder and mayhem, something about my work schedule leaving Frankie alone for hours on end, something about me being twenty-one years old, too young to have complete responsibility for a ten-year-old kid.

  I read his emails, then delete them.

  Caroline’s frowning. “She’s having a hard time at school.”

  “Everybody has a hard time at school.”

  That makes the little V-shape between her eyebrows deepen. “No, this is worse than that. Something shitty happened today. She was crying in my car after I picked her up.”

  “What about?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Fuck.” I shove my hands in my pockets, rocking back on my heels. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “If you want me to try to talk to her, I could —”

  “Let me deal with my own shit.”

  I say it too harsh, then wish there was a way to take it back.

  “God forbid anyone should try to help you with your shit, West.”

  “I don’t see why you’d want to.”

  “Yeah, so you’ve said. Forget it.”

  “I’m trying.”

  She shoots me a glare, which I deserve, and starts packing up her stuff. The light gleams in her hair. I soak up the green of her sweater, the way her jeans hug her ass.

  I’m a dick.

  I’m a dick for ogling Caroline’s ass, but mostly I’m a dick because I haven’t talked to Frankie. I don’t want to know what’s going on with the bus because I haven’t got an alternative. Either she takes the bus or I quit my job.

  I should quit the job.

  The hours are convenient, though, and the pay is good, so instead I’m a dick to Caroline, whose car my sister’s crying in.

  I don’t know how to do this. Any of it. Not Frankie and school, not work and having a kid and keeping up with classes, not Caroline in my kitchen in the middle of the night trying to help me when I can’t hardly look at her without wanting to apologize to her or kiss her or both.

  Most of the time, both.

  I wind the new spare key off my key ring and hold it out. “So you can lock up.”

  “Thanks.” She steps closer to take it. “Are you all right?”

  I’m drowning. I’m exhausted. I miss you.

  I’m such a fucking mess, I feel like people can smell it on me – incompetent panic, guilt, worthlessness – and then she’s here, and I don’t get it.

  I can’t make her leave.

  I can’t figure out what to say.

  “I’m fine.”

  Caroline takes another step toward me.

  I shove my hands into my back pockets and look at the floor, because if I don’t —

  “All right,” she says.

  All right.

  After she leaves, I heat up lasagna in the microwave. I check the heat before I go to bed.

  Even under the covers, I can’t seem to get warm.

  At breakfast the next morning, Frankie tells me, “I need different clothes.”

  “We just got you different clothes in September.”

  “They don’t fit me
anymore.”

  I look her over, trying to figure out if that can possibly be true. It hasn’t even been two months, but maybe she’s changing without me noticing.

  “What doesn’t fit, your pants? Shirts?”

  “All of it.”

  “You’ve got nothing that fits.”

  She nods her agreement.

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with Caroline telling me you had a real shitty Halloween, would it?”

  “No.”

  “Because she says —”

  “I just need new clothes,” Frankie insists. “I’m too fat for all the clothes you bought me.”

  Then she dumps what’s left of her breakfast in the trash, sets the plate in the sink, and walks out.

  I watch her go. Her pants fit just fine. The shirt’s maybe a little shorter than it was when we bought it? She’s got hips now. Boobs I try not to look at, because I can’t get used to them on my kid sister.

  “Where do you want to go?” I call to her back.

  “The thrift store.”

  “I can buy you new clothes,” I say, exasperated. “It’s not a problem, only I’m trying to understand —”

  “Just drive me to the thrift store, okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Great.”

  I have reading to plow through for Russian history first. Frankie spends the morning on the couch watching cartoons and drawing pictures of horses.

  After lunch, we go shopping. She piles my arms high with jeans and sweatshirts. Everything she picks out is huge. Leggings she has to roll at the waistband, Putnam College hoodies that come down below her butt.

  “This shit doesn’t fit you,” I say.

  “You’re the one who’s always telling me my clothes are too slutty.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You said I couldn’t wear my costume without a coat over it.”

  “That was a costume, not your clothes,” I tell her. “And it wasn’t your fault – all the costumes are like that now. I should’ve looked before we bought it.”

  She pushes a sweatshirt into my arms. “This is what I want.”

  I’m trying to make eye contact. Trying to connect with her. “If something’s going on with you at school, we should talk about it.”

  “Nothing’s going on.”

  “Don’t treat me like I’m dumb. You cry in Caroline’s car, you tell me out of the blue you need all new clothes that cover you up like a tent, something’s going on.”