“What would you call it?”
“I don’t know what to call it. Maybe you should tell me what you’re chasing me around for.”
“I’m not chasing you. I just—”
A pissed-off male voice says, “Shh.”
Fourth floor. Shit.
When I open my mouth again, my thoughts have scattered like marbles, and I can hardly even look at West. He’s crossed his arms. His split knuckles are wrapped around his biceps. It looks hard.
Everything about West is hard.
Talk, Caroline, my brain urges. Words. Sentences. Go.
“I wanted to, um … About earlier. See, I heard from Bridget that—”
“Shhhhh.”
The same irritated voice again. I lose my words, flustered and ready to bail on this whole thing.
West says, very calmly, “There’s three other floors, buddy. Pick one or shut the fuck up.”
“This is the quiet floor,” the invisible guy complains.
“Show me where it says that.”
“Everybody knows.”
West shakes his head. “I’m not everybody.”
There’s silence for a moment, then the resonant sound of a chair being pushed back. A backpack zipper. Footsteps announce the approach—a student glares at West with angry eyes—but he keeps going, and I hear the stairwell door opening.
A beat later, just before the door slams shut, the words stupid slut drift through it.
The ugliness of those words cuts into my hurt place, deep.
He’s not the first person to call me a slut, but he’s the first one to say it so I can hear him. And honestly? It doesn’t help that he says it right after I let West push me against the stacks and stick his knee between my thighs.
It doesn’t help that my panties are wet. I feel like a slut. I feel like I’m rattling apart, unable to stick to a direct line for more than five minutes.
Stupid cunt would spread for anyone, the men inside my head say.
I’d like to see him fuck her. I’d pay good money to watch that.
I look up at West. I feel despised and powerless, and it’s so frustrating that he’s seeing me this way—that he’s watching so intently and really seeing what I try not to let anyone see, ever.
That I am right on the verge of falling apart. All the time.
His eyes soften, gentle with pity, and that makes it a hundred times worse.
Stupid, pitiful slut.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ve heard it before.”
“It’s not fine.”
I wave my hand in the air, pointlessly, because I have no response. It isn’t fine. But it’s my life now.
“Caroline, it’s not fine.” West puts his hands on my shoulders.
I shrug him off and step sideways to get out from under him. “I know, okay? You don’t have to yell at me. I know. He’s going to tell everyone, and then the whole campus is going to be whispering about how we were practically screwing on the fourth floor of Hamilton. I get it. I’m sorry, all right?”
I think his eyes could burn holes through me, they’re so fierce. The little flecks seem to flash. The grooves beside his mouth carve themselves deeper. “What are you sorry for?”
What am I not sorry for? I regret everything I’ve ever done with a guy. My first kiss, which took place after an eighth-grade dance, with a boy named Cody. My first French kiss, which was with Nate. Letting Nate take off my bra, put his fingers inside me. Sleeping with Nate and thinking we were making love. Buying lingerie for him, going down on him, letting him take the pictures when I thought it would bring us closer.
West, too. I regret what just happened with West.
“Everything,” I whisper.
It’s the wrong thing to say. His hands push into his hair, clenching. “Christ. I can’t even—what’s the matter with you, huh?”
“Nothing you can fix.”
“So why are you here?”
I take a deep breath. I can do this. “I need to know it’s not going to happen again. That you’re not going to go around punching people because of me.”
He frowns, a deep slash between his eyebrows. “Who said it was because of you?”
The question catches me off guard. “I heard—I heard you guys were arguing about me. Sierra told Bridget.”
“I don’t know a Sierra.”
“I guess she knows you.”
His face goes even darker. “It’s not her business. Or yours. It’s between Nate and me.”
“I think we’re way past the point where you can play the none-of-your-business card.”
That makes him even more agitated. He wheels away, stalking to the end of the row. Then he comes back and grabs the cart with both hands. He looks like he wants to shove it at me. “He pissed me off. That’s all you need to know.”
“Yeah, but—”
Head lowered, he kicks the toe of his boot against the cart. Not hard, but hard enough to make way too much noise.
“You have to tell me what happened,” I say, as calmly as I can manage. “Then I’ll leave you alone.”
His head comes up. “You think that’s what I want? For you to leave me alone?”
I don’t know what he wants, so I keep my lips pressed shut.
“He pissed me off because he’s a smug, arrogant prick,” West says. “And I was fucking sick of hearing him talk, all right?”
“So it had nothing to do with me.”
He rakes his hand through his hair again. Turns away.
“West?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
I wait.
It occurs to me that I am good at waiting, and maybe that’s one thing I have on West. He’s more worldly, more confident, but he’s volatile and I’m not. I’ll stand here until he’s done throwing his tantrum, and then he’ll have to tell me.
I wait some more.
He turns back around. “I didn’t do it for you, okay? I just couldn’t take it anymore. He deserved to get beat down, and nobody else was doing it. But if you have some kind of hero fantasy, you can forget it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know. If you’re getting your rocks off thinking I hit your ex because I’ve got a thing for you.”
“Are you serious?”
“Why wouldn’t I be serious?”
For a few seconds, I can’t speak. He’s just yanked me so rapidly from ashamed and awkward to righteously pissed off, my brain is having trouble keeping up. “That’s so … conceited,” I finally manage. “I mean, so, so conceited. After what you just—why would you even say something like that?”
He steps closer. He’s vibrating with emotion, and I can’t sort him out. I don’t know what he’s thinking, how he feels. I only know he feels it a lot. “Why did you touch me?” he asks.
“I was trying to get your attention.”
“People tap when they’re trying to get someone’s attention. That wasn’t a tap.”
“It was …”
I’ve got nothing. I groped him, and we both know it. The only thing I can do now is lie. “It was an accident.”
I hate when he does this. Looms over me this way with those eyes and that face. Looks at me. It is my new least-favorite thing: being looked at by West. Like he’s trying to sex me to death.
“Honey,” he says finally, “that was one hell of a long accident.”
“Don’t call me honey.”
“I think you like it.”
“I think your ears are too small.”
I nearly groan after I say it. Stupid blurting mouth.
But I had to say something, because honey is degrading to women, totally inappropriate, utterly unexpected. And I do kind of like it.
West exhales a laugh through his nose, smiling. “You have a gap between your front teeth.”
“It’s useful. I can spit through it.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“Well, you won’t get to.”
“Won’t I?”
“No. We’re not going to be friends. We’re not going to be anything. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”
He doesn’t like that. His mouth doesn’t, and his eyes don’t. “It’s not what it seemed like you wanted to tell me a minute ago.”
“I don’t care what it seemed like.” If he keeps leaning closer, I’m going to pinch him.
He leans closer. I pinch him.
Okay, I try. But my hand gets near his arm, and lust sucks me in, and then I’m just kind of groping his sleeve.
His biceps is as hard as it looks. I take my hand away before it can declare its allegiance to the enemy.
“Looked to me like you wanted me to kiss you,” West says.
I cross my arms and examine the books on the shelf behind his shoulder, a neat row of thick blue spines that say PMLA.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “I can’t afford it. If people think we’re together, or that what happened between you and Nate was about me, they’ll keep talking about it, and this whole mess will go on and on. That’s not what I want. I want it to go away.”
“You want it to go away.”
The doubt in his voice fires up my anger again. I hate that some people think I published those pictures myself, just for the attention. I hate that he might think it.
“Yes.” The word comes out a little louder than I intend, so I say it again. “Yes.”
“Rich Diehms called you a slut three minutes ago, and you didn’t say anything to him. You said it’s fine.”
“What do you want me to do, chase him down and punch him in the mouth?”
“Maybe,” he says. “Yell at him, at least.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Does everything you do have to be about accomplishing something?”
Here, at least, is a question I can answer easily. “Yes.”
“So what are you trying to accomplish now?”
“I’m trying to get my pictures off the Internet, and I’m trying keep a low profile so people will forget it ever happened.”
He laughs at me.
My hand comes up so fast, I don’t even realize I’m about to smack him until he catches my wrist.
“Honey—”
“Don’t call me honey.” I’m struggling against his grip, so angry that he caught me and won’t let go. Caught me easily. I’ve never tried to slap someone before. I’m breathless and too emotional, balanced on the brink of tears. “Let me go.”
“You gonna hit me?”
“Maybe.”
“Then no.”
I wrench my wrist, then try pounding at his chest. He captures my other wrist.
“It’s a lost cause,” he says. “Trying to get at me. Just as hopeless as the idea you can erase something from the Internet or make people forget what you look like naked. Completely hopeless.”
Once his words sink in, I stop struggling, and he lets me go. I spear him with the iciest glare I can muster. “Thanks for the pep talk, but you are the last person on this campus I would ask for advice.”
Something in his eyes shuts down. “Oh? Why’s that?”
Because you’re a drug dealer.
Because you’re the kind of person who punches people when they piss you off.
Because you’re trouble.
I can’t tell him any of that. I can’t make myself sound like an angel. I suck dick on the Internet.
“Because I was with Nate. And you’re …”
When I trail off, he lifts one scarred eyebrow. “I’m?”
“Not Nate.”
This time, his laugh is bitter. “No,” he says. “I’m not Nate.”