Channel 20 Something (17 page)

“Are you referring to when you
kissed
me? I doubt it. She and Dennis were all the way across the field… why?”

Because I’m eaten up with jealousy
. I shrugged. “The policy. You know.”

He smirked. “Right. I should’ve known
that’s
what you were worried about.” His tone had hardened.

“Well, what if she did? What if she goes to Janet?”

“Janet wouldn’t care.”

“But Mr. Aubrey…”

Aric turned away, walking back toward his desk as he answered, clearly bored with the conversation. “I wouldn’t worry. She’s not going to tell. Who would do that?”

Okay, so, uncomfortable day ahead. After I left Aric’s place last night I’d decided it was for the best that things had stopped where they had. Yes, there was crazy mutual attraction between us, and we’d given in to it momentarily. But he knew as well as I did—with both of us in this transient business—there was no future for us. It would be stupid to get too attached to each other. And I was already flirting with danger in that department. Knowing myself, if I did sleep with him, I’d have a hard time
not
getting seriously attached.

I looked over the day’s assignment log—packed for both news and sports. Aric and I still had to work together, so I guessed we’d just pretend last night hadn’t happened. I took a deep breath, put on a pleasant expression, and went back to the sports office. He was watching the sports feed online.

“We should probably get started,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to cover.”

His eyes didn’t leave the monitor in front of him. “Yeah. I don’t really need a photog for my stuff today—I’ve got to run from town to town grabbing video—no standups. If you have a busy day, you might be better off just going it alone.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure, yeah, that’s fine.” He still didn’t look at me. I continued speaking to the side of his face. “Okay, well, have a good day then,” I chirped, the sound as forced as my smile.

He threw a lazy wave over his shoulder. “See ya.”

So, that was it. He’d finally had enough of my running away and my unexplained hot and cold behavior. He and Colleen would start
working out
regularly, while he and I went back to being just co-workers. And that was good. Good.

Breaking things off with Hale had been hard enough, and I hadn’t even made that officially official, wimp that I was. If I were to let myself really fall for Aric, if I admitted the extent of my feelings to him, to myself, how would I ever deal with losing him when the time inevitably came? Better to just avoid the whole thing and go back to life as usual.

Worst. Day. Ever. If being pursued by Aric had been nerve-wracking, being ignored by him was excruciating. I’d been basically useless on my shoots, cranky, distracted, picturing the way Colleen had stood so close to him, hanging on his every word, the way he’d looked at her and laughed at some asinine thing she’d said.

And then of course there was the non-stop looping memory reel of last night, the way Aric had touched me, the way he’d tasted. God, why couldn’t I just stop wanting him?

Back in the newsroom later, we stayed in our separate areas, not speaking except to say “excuse me” when we’d both had to go to the printer room at the same time. During the newscast, Aric came out onto the set, we did our happy chit-chat for the viewers before the sports segment and more of it at the end of the show. Fake, fake, fake. At the first notes of the closing music, he simply stood up and walked off the set.

I followed him to the newsroom. “So, any big plans for your days off?”
Other than assisting Colleen as she tones her teeny-tiny glutes?
I made my voice light, trying to somehow break the unbearable impasse between us.

Aric walked back to his desk, grabbed his bag, and turned right back around, heading for the newsroom door in long strides. “Good night, Heidi.” And then he was gone.

Okay. So, not interested in small talk. He was obviously angry or hurt or both. He wanted some kind of explanation for my bipolar sexual behavior, and I couldn’t blame him. But what could I do? It wasn’t like I was going to tell him the whole sordid story.

I pulled my car into the Deering’s driveway around eleven-thirty, half-hoping Aric’s truck wouldn’t be there. It was. His windows were dark. The night air was chillier than expected as I crossed the drive on shaking legs and stood in front of his door. I raised my hand to ring the bell and froze. What was I doing? If Aric even answered the door he was likely to ask, “What do you want?”

I wasn’t sure I knew the answer to that.

In a perfect world, you found the right guy, recognized him instantly, fell in love, and he fell in love with you. Happily. Ever. After. But life wasn’t perfect. No
guy
was perfect, no matter how great he might seem on the surface—I’d learned that lesson thoroughly.

Maybe the best you could hope for was mutual attraction, and Aric and I certainly had that. So much so that I was standing on his doorstep in the middle of the night, ready to bare my soul. If all we ever had was happiness-for-now instead of happily-ever-after, wasn’t that a good thing? It was better than nothing and far more realistic than the fairy tales, anyway.

I pushed the button and waited. The stairwell light came on inside the fan-shaped window at the top of the door. A flash of blond fur zipped past the window, followed by a quick glimpse of long male legs and a blue shirt.

“Heidi.” Aric’s face and tone registered surprise when he opened the door and saw me. He’d changed out of his work clothes into a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. His feet were bare. He did not invite me inside but stood looking at me, waiting.

“Um, hi. Could I come in for a minute?”

Aric stood back and held the door out of my way. I stepped inside, and he followed me wordlessly as I climbed the stairs and walked into the living room. It was only one night after my first visit to his place, but the feel of it was so different. Last night it had seemed cozy and welcoming. Tonight it was dark and a little forbidding, with only the light of the muted television illuminating the room. For a minute I considered turning around and running back down the stairs.

Aric switched on a lamp and folded his arms across his chest. “So, what can I do for you?”

“I’d… like to talk to you. Can we sit down?”

He picked up the remote and turned off the TV then sat in the chair we’d so thoroughly enjoyed last night. He gestured toward the sofa angled next to it.

I crossed the room and sat down, grabbing the throw pillow next to me and pulling it onto my lap. Scotty dogs. Definitely Mrs. Deering’s decorating. As much as I’d rather have kept my vision trained on the pattern, I forced myself to look at Aric’s face. It was stoic, almost bored. He was going to let me have my say, but he definitely wasn’t trying to make it easy for me.

“So last night,” I began. “…that wasn’t about you.”

Aric said nothing, just waited, though his unrevealing expression had sharpened slightly.

“I told you my first… boyfriend, Josh, cheated on me, and that I hadn’t slept with anyone since him. But I didn’t want to go into detail because it’s so embarrassing—I worried you’d look at me differently if you knew everything. And I just wanted to forget about it. I thought I was over it, that I could move on… with you. But then I freaked out and ruined everything, and you deserve an explanation. That’s why I’m here.”

He nodded. “I’d really appreciate that.”

I took a breath and let go of the pillow, wrapping my arms around my middle to keep my trembling stomach from shaking me apart. My jaw trembled as well, though the room temperature was warm.

“I met Josh at a party a week after I got to Brown. He was funny, charming,
too
good-looking. He got me a drink, stayed close to me all night. My roommate and the other girls I came with were jealous because he was so hot and because he was a junior and obviously popular, like a big-man-on-campus type. Later on, I learned his dad was a diplomat and his family had a big apartment on Park Avenue and a flat in Paris.”

“I kind of hate this guy,” Aric said in a flat tone.

I nodded. “Join the club. Basically, I fell hard. Josh was so… I don’t know… so everything. I’d never met anyone with such…”

“Game?”

“Exactly. And, well, I told you I was a virgin.” I blushed at the word and looked down at my lap again. The perky little Scotties pranced across the pillow, oblivious to the impending death of my dignity. “Like I said, I had no intention of sleeping with him or anyone before I got married, but after two weeks of dating Josh, he told me he loved me and wanted to spend his life with me. He persuaded me to sleep with him.” I swallowed hard. “He said
it had never been like that for him before
.”

Aric groaned and covered his eyes with one hand. “Shit.”

I shook my head and kept going. “I believed him. He was so sweet, he said all the right things. We were together every day, and it all seemed so… real. I was in heaven. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have met my soul mate so soon in life.”

“And then the bastard cheated on you. How’d you find out? Did you catch him with someone else?”

“Worse.”

Aric appeared to think for a second. “I can’t come up with anything worse.”

I took a deep breath. “One of my friends from my hall ran into my room with her laptop open, screaming for me to look at something. I thought she was going to show me some stupid You Tube video or maybe a shirtless picture of Chris Hemsworth or something.” I paused and swallowed before continuing, wondering if I’d actually be able to say the words. “It was a webpage, a blog. Josh had made it. It had pictures of girls, arranged like in a yearbook, with names and captions and some stats under each photograph. It looked like he’d copied and pasted the photos from our freshman directory. There were so many pictures. So many. My roommate counted, and there were fifteen. My picture was there, of course.”

Aric’s expression turned stony as he waited for me to finish my pathetic tale.

“The title of the page was Freshmen I’ve… Fucked.” I had to swallow a lump in my throat and blink back the threat of tears. “I hate that word now. I don’t even like to say it. He didn’t spell it out at the top—maybe you can’t have a blog with that word in the title—it was F and then those star thingies, asterisks? And then the letters E-D. All the pictures were of girls who were freshmen
that year
. Like, he’d already had sex with that many of us, and it was only October. So, he was, you know, sleeping with all or most of us during the same time frame. I don’t know if the other girls were one-night stands or if he was also making them feel all special and telling them they were the ‘love of his life.’ I didn’t know any of them, and I didn’t want to. At first I was in shock. I didn’t want to believe it meant what it had to mean. I kept looking at that word, looking at the pictures, willing it to be something other than what it was. Then I looked at the captions and numbers. He’d rated us, described our, um, assets and flaws. I guess as a public service to anyone who might have been interested in picking through his leftovers. Apparently I have a nice ‘ass’ but only so-so ‘tits.’”

Shaking his head, Aric exhaled harshly.

I tried to evaluate his expression. Did he pity me? Was he embarrassed for me? His face was serious, but otherwise unreadable. Undoubtedly he’d had many an unwanted lovesick girl follow him around. Would he see me the same way Josh had—worthless, pathetic, disposable?

Finally he spoke, his tone dark. “That is so fu—I mean, so—unbelievably messed up.” He leaned forward, grasping his knees. His gaze and voice sharpened. “What’s this guy’s last name?”

“Why?”

He rose from his chair, looking around the room as if searching for something to punch. “Because I’m going to track him down and drop his ass, that’s why.”

I blinked, surprised and, yes, a little pleased he’d feel a desire to avenge my honor, or whatever, especially after the way I’d treated him. “It’s ancient history.”

Aric paced the living room. “Not to me—I just found out about it.” He looked over at me. “So, that’s why you left Brown then?”

I studied the Scotties again. “Yeah. I mean, I felt like the stupidest girl in the world. I didn’t
want
to let him defeat me. I stayed in bed a few days, went through a few thousand boxes of tissues. But then, you know, I was going to try to go on with life. I got up and got dressed. I went to class. But everywhere I went, people stared at me. Sometimes they even pointed and whispered or laughed. The school made him take the website down, but it was already out there. People had gotten screen shots. All the anxiety didn’t do my grades any good. And I saw Josh
all
the time—it seemed like he was everywhere—like it was his campus, you know? He wasn’t sorry at all. He came up to me in the dining hall and told me he missed me. He actually asked if I wanted to come back to his room so he could ‘make it up to me.’” Here I squeezed my eyelids tight, too mortified to look at Aric. “The most humiliating part was… I missed him so badly I considered it. It was all too much. I couldn’t take seeing him anymore or being known as one of the Fucked Freshmen Fifteen.”

Aric blew out a long breath and came to the sofa, sitting down beside me. He reached over to cover my hand with his. His tone was calm now, though his free hand clenched into a fist on his thigh. “I don’t blame you for wanting to leave. What I can’t believe is he could get away with it. It’s not a crime?”

“No. My dad checked, believe me. He’s an attorney.” My face dropped into my palms. “God, that was mortifying.” I lifted my head and tented my hands in front of my nose and mouth, exhaling a shaky breath through my fingers. “Seeing his face when he found out… anyway… we were all legally adults, there was no pornography on the site, and there was no rape. As sad as it was, the sex was consensual. Fooling a stupid girl isn’t something you can prosecute in a court of law.”

He rubbed my back gently. “You weren’t stupid. You were trusting. And I completely understand how that would make you gun shy.” Shifting so he faced me straight on, Aric tipped my chin up, forcing me to see his eyes. “Thank you for telling me, Heidi.”