“Which is … ?”
I try to think of a diplomatic way of putting it, but Bridget beats me to the punch with: “That she wants to climb into his pants.”
Yes. Those words actually come out of her mouth.
“I am going to kill you,” I whisper.
I can’t look at Quinn. I might possibly never look at Quinn again.
She clears her throat. Taps her foot.
God. I have no choice. I look.
She’s still got that eyebrow up. There is no tiring her eyebrow. It is an endurance athlete.
“Do you?”
I don’t know how to answer the question. I mean, yes. Yes, of course I want to climb into his pants.
And no. No, no, no, I don’t want her to know it, or for West to, or for anyone alive to, basically, up to and including Bridget.
I say something that comes out a lot like Hnnn?
She grins. “I’ll be sure to tell him that.”
“I will hurt you if you do.”
“Man, you are all over the threats. First that guy Nate—oh, shit, is he the one who published your naked pictures?”
She says it straight out, without any sense of shame or the least hint that it’s a thing we’re not supposed to talk about.
It shocks me so much, I just say, “Yeah.”
“No wonder you’re so full of rage. You know what you should do? You should play rugby. Are you fast?”
“Um, no?”
Bridget says, “She is so fast.”
Quinn is smiling. “You can tackle people to the ground. It’s awesome.”
“That sounds awesome.” Bridget again.
“We practice on Sundays at eleven. You want to come, too? We could use a new hooker.”
“Thanks, but I have to save my athletic awesomeness for track.”
“Oh, right. I’ll settle for the blow-job queen here, then.” Quinn says this completely without malice. She rubs her hands together. “Now, are we dancing or are we going to stand out here jerking off for the rest of the night? Because you know if we don’t get back in there inside of two minutes, Krishna’s going to have his tongue down some poor girl’s throat.”
Bridget wrinkles her nose. “He is. And I want him to dance with. He’s so pretty. Like a Christmas decoration.”
“He would make the world’s most beautiful gay boy,” Quinn agrees. “Let’s go reclaim him.”
I’m not really done with the rugby conversation, but Quinn sticks out her elbows, so we link arms and kind of half-run, half-skip down the hallway like drunken Musketeers. We wave our wristbands at the security guy, who is so, so bored with his job and utterly unfazed by us.
By the time we get back on the dance floor, I’ve got another beer in my hand, and I’m laughing, thinking of Quinn and Bridget and Krishna.
Thinking of my phone in my back pocket and that screenshot I took.
I don’t have one thought to spare for Nate.
“I brought you a present.”
West looks up from the floor scale, where he’s dumping big scoops of flour into the largest mixing bowl. “Yeah?”
I shake the white plastic bag I’m holding. “Corn nuts, Mounds bar, two Monsters.”
“You know the way to my heart.”
“I know the way to keep you from turning into a little bitch on Wednesday nights.”
West smiles and takes the bag. He cracks an energy drink right away, closing his eyes as he takes a swig from the can.
He looks tired. Wednesdays are his worst, because he’s got lab in the afternoon. Most days he naps after class, but on Wednesdays he has to get through all his classes on four hours of sleep, then go to lab, work his library shift, and head straight to the bakery again.
“What are you mixing, the French?”
“Yeah. You want to start the dill?”
“Sure.”
I check the clipboard hanging by the sink to see how many loaves Bob needs. West comes right up behind me, flattens one hand against the cabinet where the clipboard is hanging, and rests his cold drink against my neck.
“Aaagh! Don’t!”
He exhales a laugh and moves it away, but he doesn’t stop caging me in.
If I shifted over a few inches. If I pressed into him. His whole body, solid against mine.
“You have a good day?” he murmurs.
Gah. What is he doing to me? I don’t even think West needs to check the clipboard. It’s all in his head already.
He’s wearing this red plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned. The sleeves are turned up, cuffs loose, and they flap when he uses his hands. I think about running my palm up his forearm. Feeling the soft fuzz of hair, the satiny skin underneath.
I think about turning around to face him.
But I just breathe in. Breathe out. Keep my voice normal when I answer, “Yeah, not bad. I ran into Quinn at lunch, and me and Bridget ended up sitting with her and Krish.”
“Second time this week you had company at lunch.”
I get up the nerve to turn around and smile as though I don’t want anything from him, expect anything from him, need anything from him. “I know. I’m practically a social butterfly, right?”
West is sort of almost smiling. I feel like I’m an experiment he’s running. What will she do if I do this? “You get any sleep before you came here?”
“A few hours. And I took a loooooong nap after class, too. See, look.” I turn my cheek to show him the imprint from the throw pillow. “I was trying to read for English, but I fell asleep on the couch and permanently branded corduroy into my face.”
He steps even closer to see the faint lines that remain all these hours later. He lays his fingers lightly along my jaw, using them to tip my face up toward him.
This is how he’d kiss me. Just like this, with a drink in one hand and a casual half smile, competent fingers putting my lips where he wanted them.
I inhale. Don’t get too excited, Caroline. He’s just looking because you told him to.
“Nice,” he says. “I’m jealous.”
“Of my nap?”
“Of your pillow.”
I stand there with heat crawling up my cheeks, breathing through my open mouth, trying to convince myself he didn’t mean it.
Yeast, idiot. Dill and onion flakes and poppy seeds. Focus on the work.
I can’t, though, because it’s impossible to look away from his eyes. They’re gray-blue today, storm clouds and tiny sparkling flashes of lightning.
What do you want from me? Take it. Whatever it is. Please.
He swigs the rest of his Monster drink, and I watch the column of his throat. He’s all stubbly, like he always is on Wednesday nights. No time to shave. With his head tipped back, his eyes closed, I notice how blue and bruised the skin beneath them looks. I notice how the brim of his black ball cap presses into the back of his neck, how his dark hair’s longer than it was last month, curling behind his ears and up into the fabric of his hat. He looks weary and … I don’t know. Precious. I wish I could give him something other than snack food I picked up at the Kum and Go on my way here.
I wish I could give him rest. Ease.
I wish he’d stop torturing me like this, where I’m so tuned in to him I feel like I might explode, and he’s so mellow I can’t even tell if he’s doing it on purpose.
His forearm tenses when he takes the drink away from his mouth, then contracts when he crushes the can. My attention catches on what looks like a black leather cuff on his wrist.
“What’s that?”
He looks where I’m looking. “Bracelet.”
“I know, doofus. Is it new?”
“Yeah.”
Abruptly, he turns, tosses the can across the room into the recycling bin, and goes back to measuring out ingredients.
I don’t even think. I just walk to where he is and grab his hand while he’s got the honey container tipped upside down over the bowl. “Careful!”
I don’t think he’s warning me about the honey.
“I want to see.”
It’s the kind of bracelet you can buy at a booth at the county fair—a stiff strip of leather, with an embossed pattern of a few red and blue roses, and his name pressed into it and painted white. The black dye has turned his wrist slightly blue.
“Fancy.”
He tugs against my grip, and I look up into his eyes. I want him to tell me where he got it, because someone must have given it to him. It’s new. He’s wearing it to work, even though it’s kind of cheap and tacky, so it must mean something to him. But I can’t just come right out and say all that, and I feel like I shouldn’t have to.
“My sister sent it.” He pulls his wrist away.
Even though there isn’t really room between us, he squats down, forcing me to take a step back so he’s got enough space to pull the bowl off the scale and carry it over to the mixer. I can’t even lift those bowls when they’re full, but West makes it look easy. He turns the mixer on. The dough hook starts its banging, rattling song.
He has a sister.
“How old is she?”
“She’s nine. Ten in the spring.”
“What’s her name?”
“Frankie.”
“Frankie like Frank?”
“Frankie like Francine.”
“Oh.”
When he looks up from the machine, his eyes are full of warning. “You got any other questions?”
I shouldn’t. I know better. The more I ask him right now, the faster he’ll shut down.
“Why didn’t you ever say?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“If I’d asked, would you have told me?”
West shrugs, but he’s scowling. “Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t believe you.”
He shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything more. I watch as he goes over to the shelf, flips the top bread recipe to the bottom of the pile, and starts working on whatever is next on his list. His lips move in a whisper, words he’s making only for himself. He could be repeating the ingredients on the list, except it’s just like the clipboard—I know for a fact he already has those recipes memorized.
I go back to the dill bread, furious and hot, my heart aching.
He has a sister called Frankie. He’s wearing her love for him on his wrist, and I’m glad for him. I’m glad there’s someone else in the world who cares about him enough to press the letters of his name into leather, word into flesh, an act of memory.
I do it sometimes, in the dark. Lie in my bed, staring at the crosshatched pattern of springs supporting Bridget’s mattress above my head and drawing the letters of West’s name on my body.
W-E-S-T across my stomach, around the side. I use my fingernail, only my fingernail, and bring up goose bumps.
W-E-S-T along my sternum. Over my collarbone and down the swell of my breast, tripping and catching on my nipple.
His name feels like a secret, and now he’s wearing it on his wrist. I want to know all about this girl who put it there. What she looks like. If she’s got freckles, fair hair or dark, like his. If she’s scrappy or ethereal, funny or serious, scrape-kneed or ladylike.
I know that she loves him, so I want to know everything else.
But West doesn’t want to share her with me.
I shouldn’t keep trying to scale these walls he puts up. I’m a terrible climber.
I don’t like arguing, and he doesn’t owe me a thing.
“Get down on your hands and knees,” Quinn says, pointing. “And put your arm over Gwen’s back.”
The grass is cold. Dampness soaks through the knees of my sweatpants more or less immediately, but I have a feeling it’s not the worst thing that’s going to happen to me in the next few minutes. I’m tacking myself on to what Quinn calls the “scrum”—a word that sounds enough like scrotum to make me uncomfortable.