Easy (2 page)

No more fight in
me, I nodded, reaching over to get my bag out of his way. He helped gather the
lip-gloss, wallet, tampons, hair ties, pens and pencils strewn across the floor
and return them to my bag. The last item he picked up was a condom packet. He
cleared his throat and held it out to me. “That’s not mine,” I said, recoiling.

He frowned. “You
sure?”

I clamped my jaw,
trying not to be furious all over again. “Positive.”

He glanced back at
Buck. “Bastard. He was probably gonna…” He glanced into my eyes and back at
Buck, scowling. “Uh… conceal the evidence.”

I couldn’t even
contemplate that. He shoved the square package into his front jeans pocket.
“I’ll throw it away—he’s sure as hell not getting it back.” Brow still
furrowed, he swung his gaze to me again as he climbed in and started the truck.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call the police?”

Laughter sounded
from the back door of the house and I nodded. Framed exactly within the center
window, Kennedy danced with his arms around a girl dressed in a gauzy, low-cut
white outfit, wings, and a halo. Perfect. Just perfect.

At some point
during my battle with Buck, I’d lost the devil-horned headband Erin had stuffed
onto my head while I sat on the bed whining that I didn’t want to go to a
stupid costume party. Without the accessory, I was just a girl in a skimpy red-sequined
dress that I’d refuse to be caught dead wearing otherwise.

“I’m sure.”

The headlights
illuminated Buck as we backed out of the parking spot. Throwing a hand in front
of his eyes, he attempted to roll to a sitting position. I could see his split
lip, misshapen nose and swollen eye, even from that distance.

It was just as
well I wasn’t the one behind the wheel. I probably would have run him over.

I gave the name of
my dorm when asked, and stared out the passenger window, unable to speak
another word as we meandered across campus. With a straightjacket hug, I
gripped myself, trying to conceal the shudders wracking through me every five
seconds. I didn’t want him to see, but I couldn’t make them stop.

The dorm lot was nearly
full; spots near the door were all taken. He angled the truck into a back space
and hopped out, coming around to meet me as I slid from the passenger side of
my own truck. Teetering on the edge of breaking down and losing it, I took the
keys after he activated the door locks, and followed him to the building.

“Your ID?” he
asked when we reached the door.

My hands shook as
I unsnapped the front flap on my bag and withdrew the card. When he took it
from my fingers, I noted the blood on his knuckles and gasped. “Oh, my God.
You’re bleeding.”

He glanced at his
hand and shook his head, once. “Nah. Mostly his blood.” His lips pressed flat
and he turned away to swipe the card through the door access, and I wondered if
he meant to follow me inside. I didn’t think I could hold myself together for
much longer.

After opening the
door, he handed me my ID card. In the light from the entry vestibule, I could
see his eyes more clearly—they were a clear gray-blue under his lowered brows.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked for the second time, and I felt my face
crumple.

Chin down, I
shoved the card into my bag and nodded uselessly. “Yes. Fine,” I lied.

He huffed a
disbelieving sigh, running a hand through his hair. “Can I call someone for
you?”

I shook my head. I
had to get to my room so I could fall apart. “Thank you, but no.” I slipped
past him, careful not to brush against any part of him, and headed for the
stairs.

“Jackie?” he
called softly, unmoving from the doorway. I looked back, gripping the handrail,
and our eyes met. “It wasn’t your fault.”

I bit my lip,
hard, nodding once before I turned and ran up the stairs, my shoes rapping
against the concrete steps. At the second floor landing, I stopped abruptly and
turned to look back at the door. He was gone.

I didn’t know his
name, and couldn’t remember ever seeing him before, let alone meeting him. I’d
have remembered those unusually clear eyes. I had no idea who he was… and he’d
just called me by name. Not the name on my ID—Jacqueline—but Jackie, the
nickname I’d gone by ever since Kennedy renamed me, our junior year of high
school.

***

Two weeks ago:

“Wanna come up? Or stay over? Erin
is staying at Chaz’s this weekend…” My voice was playful, sing-songy. “His
roommate’s out of town. Which means I’ll be all alone…”

Kennedy and I were
a month from our three-year anniversary. There was no need to be coy. Erin had
taken to calling us an old married couple lately. To which I’d reply, “
Jealous
.”
And then she’d flip me off.

“Um, yeah. I’ll
come up for a little while.” He kneaded the back of his neck as he pulled into
the dorm parking lot and searched for a parking space, his expression
inscrutable.

Prickles of
apprehension arose in my chest, and I swallowed uneasily. “Are you all right?”
The neck-rubbing was a known stress signal.

He flicked a
glance in my direction. “Yeah. Sure.” He pulled into the first open spot,
wedging his BMW between two pickups. He never,
ever
wedged his prized
import into constricted spots. Door dings drove him insane. Something was up. I
knew he was worried over upcoming midterms, especially pre-cal. His fraternity
was hosting a mixer the next night, too, which was plain stupid the weekend
before midterms.

I swiped us into
the building and we entered the back stairwell that always creeped me out when
I was alone. With Kennedy behind me, all I noticed was dingy, gum-adorned walls
and the stale, almost sour smell. I jogged up the last flight and we emerged
into the hallway.

Glancing back at
him while unlocking my door, I shook my head over the charming portrayal of a
penis someone had doodled onto the whiteboard Erin and I used for notes to each
other and from our suitemates. Coed dorms were less mature than depicted on
college websites. Sometimes it was like living with a bunch of twelve year
olds.

“You could call in
sick tomorrow night, you know.” I laid a palm on his arm. “Stay here with
me—we’ll hide out and spend the weekend studying and ordering take-out… and
other stress-reducing activities…” I grinned naughtily. He stared at his shoes.

My heart sped up
and I suddenly felt warm all over. Something was definitely wrong. I wanted him
to spit it out, whatever it was, because my mind was conjuring nothing but alarming
possibilities. It had been so long since we’d had a problem or a real conflict
that I felt blindsided.

He moved into my room
and sat on my desk chair, not my bed.

I walked up to
him, our knees bumping, wanting him to tell me he was just in a bad mood, or
worried about his upcoming exams. My heart thudding heavily, I put a hand on
his shoulder. “Kennedy?”

“Jackie, we need
to talk.”

The drumming pulse
in my ears grew louder, and my hand dropped from his shoulder. I grabbed it up
in my other hand and sat on the bed, three feet from him. My mouth was so dry I
couldn’t swallow, let alone speak.

He was silent,
avoiding my eyes for a couple of minutes that felt like forever. Finally, he
lifted his gaze to me. He looked sad. Oh, God. Ohgodohgodohgod.

“I’ve been having
some… trouble… lately. With other girls.”

I blinked, glad I
was sitting down. My legs would have buckled and sent me to the floor if I’d
have been standing. “What do you mean?” I croaked out. “What do you mean,
‘trouble’ and ‘other girls’?”

He sighed heavily.
“Not like
that
, not really. I mean, I haven’t
done
anything.” He
looked away and sighed again. “But I think I want to.”

The
hell?

“I don’t
understand.” My mind worked frantically to make the best possible situation out
of this, but every single remotely-possible alternative sucked.

He got up and
paced the room twice before planting himself halfway between the door and me.
“You know how important it is to me to pursue a career in law and politics.”

I nodded, still
stunned to silence and pedaling hard to keep up.

“You know our
sister sorority?”

I nodded again,
acknowledging the very thing I’d worried about when he moved into the frat
house. Apparently, I hadn’t worried enough.

“There’s a girl—a couple
of girls, actually, that… well.”

I tried to keep my
voice rational and level. “Kennedy, this doesn’t make sense. You aren’t saying
you’ve acted on this, or that you want to—”

He stared into my
eyes, so there’d be no mistake. “I want to.”

Really, he could
have just punched me in the stomach, because my brain refused to comprehend the
words he was saying. A physical assault, it might have understood. “You
want
to? What the hell do you mean, you
want
to?”

He bolted out of
the chair, walked to the door and back—a distance of a dozen feet. “What do you
think
I mean? Jesus. Don’t make me
say
it.”

I gaped. “Why not?
Why not say it—if you can imagine
doing
it—then why the
fuck
not
say it? And what does this have to do with your career plans—”

“I was getting to
that. Look, everyone knows that one of the worst things a political candidate
or elected representative can do is to become embroiled in some sexual
scandal.” His eyes locked on mine in what I recognized as his debate-face. “I’m
only human, Jackie, and if I have these desires to sow my wild oats or whatever
and I repress it, I’ll probably have the same desire later, even worse. But
acting on it
then
would be a career-killer.” He spread his hands
helplessly. “I have no choice but to get it out of my system while I can do it
without annihilating my future professional standing.”

I told myself,
This
isn’t happening
. My boyfriend of three years was not breaking up with me so
he could bang coeds with shameless abandon. I blinked hard and tried to take a
deep breath, but I couldn’t. There was no oxygen in the room. I glared at him,
silent.

His jaw clenched.
“Okay, so I guess trying to let you down easy was a bad idea—”

“This is your idea
of letting me down
easy
? Breaking up with me so you can screw other
girls? Without feeling guilty? Are you
serious
?”

“As a heart
attack.”

The last thing I
thought before I picked up my econ textbook and hurled it at him:
How can he
use such a piece-of-shit cliché in a moment like this
?

Chapter 2

Erin’s voice woke me. “Jacqueline Wallace,
get your ass out of that bed and go save your GPA. For chrissake, if I’d let a
guy throw off my academic mojo like this, I’d never hear the end of it.”

I made a dismissive
sound from under the comforter before peeking out at her. “What academic mojo?”

Her hands on her
hips, she was wrapped in a towel, fresh from a shower. “Ha. Ha. Very funny.
Get
up
.”

I sniffed, but
didn’t budge. “I’m doing fine in all of my other classes. Can’t I just fail
this one?”

Her mouth dropped
open. “Are you even listening to yourself?”

I
was
listening to myself. And I was every bit as disgusted with my cowardly
sentiments as Erin—if not more so. But the thought of sitting next to Kennedy
for an hour-long class three days a week was unbearable. I couldn’t be sure
what his newfound single status would mean in terms of open flirtations or
hookups, but whatever it meant, I didn’t want to stare it in the face. Imagining
the details was bad enough.

If only I hadn’t
pressed him to take a class with me this semester. When we registered for fall
classes, he questioned why I wanted to take economics—not a required course for
my music education degree. I wondered if he had sensed, even then, that this was where
we’d end up. Or if he'd known.

“I can’t.”

“You
can
and you
will
.” She ripped the comforter off. “Now get up and get in that
shower. I have to get to French on time or Monsieur Bidot will question me
mercilessly in
passé composé
. I can barely do past tense in English. God
knows I can’t do it
en français
at ass o’clock in the morning.”

I arrived outside
the classroom at straight-up 9:00, knowing that Kennedy, habitually punctual,
would already be there. The classroom was large and sloped. Slipping through
the back door, I spotted him, sixth row center. The seat to his right was
empty—my seat. Dr. Heller had passed around a seating chart the second week of
class, and he used it to take attendance and give credit for class
participation. I would have to talk with him after class, because there was no
way I was sitting there again.

My eyes scanned
the back rows. There were two empty seats. One was three rows down between a
guy leaning on his hand, mostly asleep, and a girl drinking a venti something
and chattering nonstop to her neighbor. The other open seat was on the back row,
next to a guy who appeared to be doodling something into the margin of his
textbook. I turned in that direction at the same time the professor entered a
side door below, and the artist raised his head to scan the front of the
classroom. I froze, recognizing my savior from two nights ago. If I could’ve
moved, I would have turned and fled the classroom.

The attack came
flooding back. The helplessness. The terror. The humiliation. I’d curled into a
ball on my bed and cried all night, thankful for Erin’s text that she was
staying with Chaz. I hadn’t told her what Buck had done—partly because I knew
she’d feel responsible for making me go, and for letting me leave alone. Partly
because I wanted to forget it had happened at all.