With a frustrated groan, I lean forward until my forehead is pressed against my open textbook. It’s Wednesday, which means it’s work study night at the library, but my mind is too preoccupied with thoughts of Damian to be of much use to anyone. A junior statistics major I’ve been tutoring since last winter asks me if I’m okay, and I make up some lame excuse about having a cold to get her off my back. Thankfully, she’s my final tutee of the night, so I don’t have to keep up the act for long.
Once she’s gone, I pull my phone free from my pocket and stare at Damian’s number in my contacts, turning over an idea that’s been taking root in me these last two weeks. It’s risky—Damian might think I’m insane or find the very suggestion offensive—but I can’t think of any other way to finally close that wound and slam the door shut on our past for good.
He needs this as much as you do,I tell myself, and that thought is all the encouragement I need to tap open our chat.
Me
Can you meet me in the library? I want to test a theory
Fuckboy
Color me intrigued I’ll be there in 10
As promised, Damian walks through the door ten minutes later. Since the library is closing in half an hour, most of the students have already left (of the small percentage of Conwick undergraduates who actually utilize the facility), and the librarian is occupied at her desk, so we should be fine as long as we’re quick.
Jumping up from my chair, I cross the atrium floor in a direct beeline for him.
“Hey,” he says as soon as I’m within earshot. “Are you okay? I?—”
“Come with me.” With a hurried glance around the almost empty library, I subtly grab his hand and then yank him behind me toward the stacks.
Damian lets me lead him through the path of bookcases without complaint, only breaking the silence once he finally registers where we’re going. Although I can’t see his face, I can hear the confusion in his voice as he asks, “Why are we?—”
But I don’t let him finish. The moment we step foot in the mathematics section, I whirl on him, rising onto my toes to kiss him.
I swallow his grunt of surprise as I push his back against the nearest shelving unit, sweeping my tongue inside his mouth with a lack of control—a desperate need—that’s entirely foreign to me. Damian kisses me back at first, one hand on my waist, the other creeping up my shirt toward my breasts, but almost as soon as we start, he pulls back.
“Wait, stop,” he says, breaking the kiss. He then plants his hands firmly on my shoulders and gently pushes me away a few inches, though whether that’s to keep me from kissing him again or to stop himself, I can’t be sure. “Just…wait a second,” he pleads, “and tell me what’s going on.” He searches my face with narrowed eyes, but when he doesn’t find the answer (and I fail to outright say it), he whispers, “Please?”
His breath is warm on my face, and it either robs me of sense or knocks some into me because I choke out, “I don’t know what this is between us anymore. But I look at you, and I don’t…” I step back, his fingers sliding off my shoulders, and gesture at him with a flailing hand.
Damian raises a brow. “You don’t…?” He trails off, prompting me to continue.
My mouth tightens into a disgruntled pout. “Hate you. I don’t hate you.”
Considering what he said to me in his car that day we came back from Mexico, I expected Damian to be at least marginally happy to hear this. But his face is unreadable, his expression unnervingly blank.
“I’m sensing a but,” is all he says.
I swallow, wincing at the sudden dry grittiness of my throat. “Butso much of this place, of…this”—I wave my hand back and forth between us—“is tainted by what happened last spring. I know you’re sorry,” I interject when he opens his mouth to cut me off, “and I believe that, I do. And on some level, after everything you’ve told me, I even understand why you did whatyou did. But,” I repeat, hating the sound of that word, “I think what I”—What we both,I silently add—“really need is to wipe the slate clean. Not a fresh start, exactly, so much as a…redo.”
The furrow in Damian’s brow deepens. “A redo?”
I nod.
But he just shakes his head. “I’m not following, Blondie.” There’s a note of exasperation to his tone, and I shrink back from it on reflex—at the memory of hearing that same exasperation in my father’s voice in the weeks, months, even years before he left.
The comparison makes my insides harden.
There it is. The real reason I’ve been so afraid to confront my emotions and recognize them for what they truly are. The real reason I told Damian he didn’t have to worry about feelings between us when we both know that’s a lie.
It was never about the bet or the video; it was about the fact that I had opened myself up to him, and he fucking ghosted me just like my asshole dad did when I was a kid. And part of me is terrified it will happen again, even though we’re nothing to each other. Even though I have no reason to expect him to stick around once our agreement ends. It’s a moot point regardless. Feelings or no feelings, Damian isn’t looking for a girlfriend, and he made it perfectly clear to me on Halloween that hasn’t changed.
Even if it had, would it make any difference? It wasn’t a lie when I said being his girlfriend was the last thing I want, and while that hasn’t exactly changed either, my reasoning for it has. If he put the offer before me now—for a real relationship, not a fake one—I don’t think I could accept, but not because I don’t feel something for him…but because I can finally admit that I do. Because despite those feelings, I had the nerve to tell him it’s okay to hold onto the things that matter when allIseem capable of clinging to are all the bad things that don’t. What right do I have to expect something real if I can’t even find the courage tobe real with him? To be honest about what I’m feeling, about my mom, especially when he was willing and brave enough to open up to me? About his parents. About his brother and the grief that’s still eating away at him. What right do I have to any part of him when I won’t show him all the damaged parts of myself?
Still, together or not—real or not—I don’t want things to stay like this, frozen, never acknowledging the truths of our lives, however ugly they seem. And while I might not be ready to face all of them, to unburden my mind and heart of the baggage constantly weighing me down, thereisone truth I’m ready to confront. One wall I’m finally ready to tear down.
“When we were here together in January, you only had sex with me for the sake of a bet, correct?”
