Fissure (6 page)

     More laughter. This time, the real kind. The only person who did not seem into this whole mad scientist experiment was Emma. She couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if she’d come to class naked.

     “I need to stress that in order for this project’s findings to be accurate, I need you to spend every other waking minute with your partner. The only way to prove or disprove if love is nothing more than a result of time and familiarity is to . . .”—his eyes circled the room—“you guessed it, spend time with each other. Simple enough? Any questions?” he asked, eyes on his sheet of paper and wasting no time, obviously unconcerned if there were any questions.

     I didn’t need air, so it wasn’t any big deal that I was holding my breath, but when I started to feel dizzy, I knew it wasn’t a result of the lack of oxygen. It had everything to do with the anticipation of hearing my name called out with Emma’s.

In a class close to one hundred, it was what I suppose you could call a forlorn wish, but those were the best kind to hope for. The absolute unlikelihood of them coming to fruition made the personal angst that much more intense. I could feel it pulsing through my blood.

     I leaned forward in my seat as Professor Camp called out the first pair while Emma seemed to slink so far back into her seat it was like she was melting into it. What was she so uneasy about? The assignment itself, being told to break up with Ty the bonehead, who she’d be paired with . . . wondering, hoping, guessing it could be me? Or praying it wouldn’t be me?

     I couldn’t tell, and I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I did anyways.

     “What’s wrong?” I whispered over to her as the announcement of names continued on at an agonizingly slow pace.

     She waved me off, working her tongue into the side of her cheek and wringing her hand in her skirt.

     I felt something then. Seeing her so uncomfortable, but it went beyond seeing. I could
feel
her discomfort, with such clarity it could have been my own. It was jarring and intimate . . . and a first. Setting all of myself aside, nothing else was on my mind but easing hers. I was just reaching for one of her hands and searching for the right words of comfort when I heard her name called out from down front.

     “Emma Scarlett, your partner is . . .”—I sucked in a breath; she did too. I had just enough time to send out another prayer into the waiting universe before the good professor finished, “Patrick Hayward.”

     And then, I did something I had no control over. Something that had the whole class busting a gut. I leapt from my seat, threw both arms in the air, and screamed, “YES!”

When I realized what I’d done, I didn’t blush, I didn’t sit back in my seat and duck my head like anyone who had a shred of self worth would. Too late to worry about my delicate male ego. Way too late.

     Instead I turned around and gave a bow, which was followed by another round of laughter with some applause tossed in.

     “Glad to have made your day, Mr. Hayward,” Camp said, trying his best to look irritated. “Happy love making . . . errrr . . . finding,” he edited before going on to the next pair on his sheet.

     I’d been so caught up in the moment I hadn’t noticed Emma’s reaction, and now that I was thinking about it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to look because I knew if she was grimacing or shuddering or anything that indicated she was dreading what I was dying for, I would have melted where I stood. The bad kind of melting, the water doused Wicked Witch of the West kind of melting.

     I sat down first, giving myself a few more moments to let it all simmer in. Chancing the shortest of glances her way, I didn’t see any lines of dismay or eyes narrowed in aggravation, so I mustered up some courage and did a full-on body turn so I could look at her straight on.

     She kept her face forward, not allowing me to read anything in her eyes. Her face was expressionless, as unreadable as an empty book. Her shoulders were relaxed, as was the rest of her. No more hands wringing the hell out of her skirt, no more looking so uncomfortable she could have been seated on a hot burner.

She could have been elated, she could have been devastated. I didn’t know.

     I didn’t think there could have been anything worse than finding her cringing at the thought of spending the quarter together, but I’d been wrong. This was worse.

     She was so still and flat faced she could have been a mannequin.

     “Emma?” I whispered, contemplating reaching over and shaking her a little.

     When she didn’t respond with even a blink, I did just that. “Emma?” I repeated, wrapping my fingers around her arm. “Partner?  What’s going on up there?” I tapped her temple, eliciting a reaction from her this time. Her eyes blinked a few times, followed by a few shakes of the head, like she’d been caught in a dream and had just woken up.

     I only hoped she didn’t leap to the conclusion she’d woken up to a nightmare.

     “Are you all right? I think you blanked out on us for a few minutes.” I was genuinely concerned. I didn’t need to have the framed certificate on my wall like my M.D. brothers did to know this wasn’t normal, or healthy, behavior.

     Clearing her throat, she ran her hands through her hair in quick fits. “I’m fine. Sorry. I was just getting caught up on my meditation. It’s been awhile and since I just found out I’d be spending the semester with you,”—the corner of her mouth fought the upward movement—“I figured I’d need as many moments of calm as I could get.” She tore her fingers through her hair a few more times before twisting it into a fat bun and stabbing it through with the pencil held between her teeth.

     The woman was a pencil welding, bun stabbing samurai.

     “Why, Miss Scarlett,” I said, flicking my ear at her, “was that an attempt at humor I just detected coming from you?”

     “No,” she said. “That was my attempt at honesty.”

     I put on my most injured face. “
That
was an attempt at humor.”

     “Yes, it was,” she said, grinning. “Thank you, thank you very much. I’ll be here all week,” she said, bowing her head.

     “From what I hear,” I said, leaning in again. Pressing my luck, but that’s what I did. “You’ll be here”—even closer. She didn’t back away—“all quarter.”

     Her cheeks colored. Not instantly, but a beautiful, smoldering journey to muted crimson. She was blushing. She was blushing at something I’d said. Something I’d done. I didn’t need to be the ladies man I was to know this was a
very
good sign. Girls didn’t blush at boys that didn’t make them go, somewhere inside, pitter-patter.

     I very nearly leapt from my desk again shouting praise to the skies.

     “All right, everyone,” Professor Camp called out. “Now that you know who your partner is, the first matter of business is to assign your first project. Other than spending copious amounts of time together, this weekend’s date will be—because I like to think of myself as a traditionalist on the dating front—the man’s choice.” The girls all groaned, Emma loudest of all as she threw me a look and an elbow, like boys were positively hopeless when it came to the date planning department.  

     They were right. Boys were. Good thing I happened to be a man.

     “Word of advice, boys,” he said, pointing around the room, “leave the condoms in your nightstand.”

     “Damn,” I said under my breath, which was promptly followed by a sharp elbow to the side, compliments of Miss Scarlett.

     “This is a project, The Luh-ove Project, not a one night stand,” he said, letting that hang in the air. “Try to go against your hormones hitting hyperdrive at this time in your lives and act accordingly. I don’t need the blame for being the catalyst for bringing an illegitimate child into the world.” Stepping around the lectern, he tapped his head. “Fight nature and think with this, not with this,” he finished, tipping his hips.

     There were a few nervous laughs, but mainly just a lot of faces frozen in varying shades of red.

     “Friday or Saturday night?” I asked her, wasting no time. The professor had just given me carte blanche for dating Emma Scarlett, and I wasn’t going to waste a second of it.

     She looked over at me with an expression that said,
eager, much?
I shrugged, not denying her silent accusation. I was nothing if not eager. “Friday night I’ve got an away game, and Saturday night I’m supposed to be going out with Ty to some Monster Truck rally,” she said, like she was reading from a calendar. “How about Sunday afternoon?”

     I didn’t need to fake a look of insult. “Sunday afternoons are for family dinners, last-minute studying, or catching up on cartoons. They are not for dates. No can do, Em,” I said, liking the way the nickname came out of nowhere and seemed just right. “In case you missed it, Professor Bitter ordered we break up with our significant bothers”—that earned me a glare—“if we wanted to get a good grade. I don’t know about you, but I won’t accept anything less than an A+.”

     She laughed a few notes. “I’m sure someone with your attendance record has been blessed with report cards punctuated with nothing but A+s,” she said, her sarcasm the blatant, not even an attempt at subtle, type. “And I think it was more of a
suggestion
than an order that we break up with boyfriends we’ve been together with for six years,” she enunciated, giving me a knowing look. I already knew where she was going with this. “Or deleting the phone numbers, addresses, and bra sizes of every sorority sister on the west coast from our phones.”

     Specific, no hint of remorse in her delivery, scarily accurate in her conclusion. All in all, I’d have to give her an A+. That’s just the kind of girl she was. I knew she’d settle for no less in this class.

     “Saturday night,” I said, no room for negotiating in my voice and expression.

     She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she relented. “But Ty is going to be really, really . . .”

She fumbled for whatever the right word would be to describe him, so I saved her, guessing there weren’t enough descriptors for a butt-wipe of that level.

     “I’ll pick you up at seven,” I said, not bothering to hide my elation. I’d fought a lot of battles, won a lot of wars, but I’d never felt the victory in my veins, or tasted it on my tongue, like I was this one. “I can’t wait.”

      When she smiled back at me, its tip echoing my sentiments, I almost wished Ty had gotten his hung-over butt to class to witness the first wall of their relationship fall.

     I hadn’t talked to Emma since Monday when we made our original plans to confirm we were still on for tonight, but I wasn’t going to let a two hundred pound amoeba get in the way of a first date with Emma Scarlett. He might have been under the impression that his macho man crap would be enough of a deterrent to keep me away from Emma, and maybe it would have for some guys. But I’d never fallen into the category of
some guys.

     I rolled up to the curb outside her dorm ten minutes early, having no problem with parking in the fire lane. If a man trying to convince the woman he was falling for to join the free fall wasn’t considered an emergency, I didn’t know what was.

     I grabbed the bouquet and the shiny silver box and walked-slash-jogged up the walkway to her dorm. My stomach felt like a family of angry chimpanzees were tearing it apart from the inside out. My palms were wet, long surpassing the clammy stage. I was jittery, anxious, expectant, and about ready to burst from the cacophony of emotions eating me from the inside out. Basically, I felt like a virgin on prom night. Walking down the hotel hall.

     This was crazy. This girl, in barely one week’s time, had managed to take the smooth out of my game, the gusto out of my sail, the confidence out of my stride. She’d rendered my bravado useless at exactly the time I needed it. The one time for decades past that I’d needed to show up with every last soldier in my firing squad, I’d shown up to the front lines with a pubescent drummer boy.

     Attempting to put a lid on the negative self talk, I reached for the door handle, ready to launch myself inside with all the smooth, suffocating swagger of which I knew I was capable. My fingers hadn’t even wrapped around the handle when the door thrust open, slowing only after it collided with my face. I was pretty sure the sound I emitted sounded anything but smooth. Or manly.

     “Patrick?” a familiar, sweetest sound I’d ever heard after being slammed in the face, voice shrieked. “Oh my goodness gracious. Are you all right?” She squeezed up against me, running her hands over my face, knowing something should be broken or gushing. Other than my ego, everything was just as intact as it had been two seconds ago.

     “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I reassured her, taking a step back and smiling with exaggeration so she could see we didn’t need to spend our first date in the waiting room of minor emergency. “However, if you promise to run your hands all over me like a nun who’s fallen off the wagon every time I get hurt, I’ll be faceplanting into every door I pass.”

     Her lines of concern drew tighter into an expression of amused accusation. A girl had never looked so beautiful while giving me a pointed look. And pointed, next to swooning, was the majority of looks the female masses sent my way.

     “You’re early,” she said at last.

     I could have lied as to why, but I didn’t. “I couldn’t wait,” I answered, shrugging.

“And unless you were running away from Ty, you’re early too.” 

     Shrugging, she mimicked my expression. “I couldn’t wait.”

     Yeah, I’m pretty sure that bang I just heard was my heart hitting the floor. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show. Especially since the warmest interaction I had with you this week was the cold shoulder,” I said in a teasing tone, although I wasn’t really.

     Ty made it to class Wednesday and Friday and, with his presence, caused Emma’s absence. She was there physically, but not in spirit, I guess you could say. She hadn’t said a word to me, nor replied to any of my best attempts at making conversation. In fact, she hadn’t even acknowledged me. It was a dark form of torture.

     I wanted to ask her if this shell of Emma had been created because of something I’d done or because of something Ty had done, but since she wouldn’t even spare a sideways glance my way, I lulled myself to sleep analyzing the hell out of that puzzle.

     But here she was, smiling at me like I was one of her favorite people on the planet.

     “Yeah, about that,” she said, her eyes drifting to the side. “I’m sorry I ignored you all week. It’s not that I wanted to, but Ty—” she caught herself, but I didn’t need her to elaborate. The question mark that was Ty was a one word answer. “It’s just that . . . it’s, it’s . . . it’s complicated,” she finished, looking like she’d just had a molar removed without Novacain.

     “Really?” I said with sarcasm, feeling bad for her. Emma didn’t strike me as the girl to stutter over her words—whatever Ty had said, bribed, or threatened her with must have been convincing. “Uncomplicate it then,” I said, once her eyes drifted back to mine and I was able to talk. The force of tongue-tying was strong with this one.

     She laughed. “Now why didn’t I think of that? Because uncomplicating the complicated is the easiest thing in the world.”

     Leaning in, I said, “Want some advice as to where you should start with your uncomplicating endeavor?”

     “Why not?” she said through a sigh.

     I leaned in closer still, so close I could feel the beat pulsing in her neck. “It’s exceedingly uncomplicated over here. So why don’t you dump the baggage and come fly the friendly, uncomplicated skies?”

     Leaning back from me, her eyebrows flew the friendly skies. “It’s anything but uncomplicated there,” she said, doing a full body scan as her face fell. “And I’m just now realizing how uncomplicated you’re making this for me.” Her hands pointed at me, flapping around in accusation. “Not only am I underdressed, I’m embarrassingly underdressed,” she said, looking down at her jeans and sweater combo like it had betrayed her.

     “Ah-hah,” I said, balancing the box in one hand as I motioned with my head she should open it. “I’m so five steps ahead of you.”

     Eyeing me like she knew I was up to trouble, she slid the lid off.

     “I didn’t take you for the roses and flashy red dress kind of girl,” I said, handing her the so-large-it-was-almost-obscene bouquet of orchids.

     She gave me a look while she fingered the watery silk gown in the box.

     I chuckled, sending a silent thanks to Cora for being such a fashion goddess. A dress this smokin’ should be illegal in all fifty states. “But this is my date, and I’m a rubber necking red dress kind of guy.”

     Her eyes rolled, but it was softened by a smile as she clutched the box against her chest. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be right back. Adorned in a dress that could only be conceived, designed, and selected by a man.”

     “Guilty on all counts,” I said, feeling my chest pulling tight as she turned to head back into the building, away from me, like she was taking a vital organ with her.

“Oh, and thanks for the flowers,” she said, stopping abruptly like she’d forgotten something important. “I’ve never had a guy bring me flowers before.” She glanced down at the bouquet spilling out of her arms and a smile that was too personal to be interpreted spread.

     “You’re kidding me, right?” I said, not able to comprehend that Ty was an even bigger loser than I’d thought.

     She shook her head. “Nope, you’re the first. Besides, they’re ridiculously overpriced, an awful cliché, and their short lifespan is cut in half whenever they wind up in my care.”

     “Hold up,” I cut her off, raising my hands. “I’m familiar with this act. Seen it a billion times, delivered a million different ways. You’re playing the part of the girl who’s saying only what she thinks we guys want to hear. Am I right?” I asked needlessly. They didn’t call me the female BS detector for nothing.

     Her inability to make eye contact confirmed my assertion. “That’s what I thought. Come on, you girls were made to love flowers. You were made to sigh when your man arrives with them in hand, you were made to fret over arranging them, you were made to smell them every time you walk by them, and you were made to turn them upside down and dry them when they wilt.” I was getting a little too touchy-feely for my own good, so I did something out of character and clamped my mouth shut.

     “Two words,” she said, her eyes lighter than normal. “Soap. Box.” It was followed with a yawn.

Emma Scarlett could throw it back at me as fast as I could toss it. Yes, that was me just falling harder.

     “Hey, I’m just an honest guy. Brutally honest,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything more severe than
brutal
. “You can get a reference from any one of my three sisters-in-law if you don’t believe me.” I suddenly realized that this was the first time I’d referenced, or even thought about, Bryn in days. And it was only in a round about, inclusive, sister-in-law kind of way. The Bryn bus was finally leaving the station. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. “I’m not going to tell you what I think you want to hear, so please don’t do that to me. Sound simple enough?”

     She looked a little shell-shocked from my additions to my
soap box
. “Sounds anything but simple,” she answered, staring at me like she didn’t know what to do or say to me. This was a predicament I was happy to help her with.

     “I’m wrong then,” I said, reaching for the bouquet. “I’ll just take these filthy things off your hands and deposit them into the nearest trashcan.”

     I’d never seen a girl grip flowers like she had a ninja hold on them, but that was what Emma did. “Mine,” she said, spinning away from me and charging through the door.

     I smiled from her excitement over a simple bouquet of flowers. If she reacted this way to flowers, she was going to bust something when she experienced what I had planned for the night.

     “You know, I really do love flowers,” she announced, tilting her head back my way as she stopped mid-stride. “I was always secretly jealous of those girls who would get flowers delivered to them in the middle of class. There’s something incredibly sexy about a man who doesn’t give a flying fart what anyone thinks about his romantic notions.”

     I choked back the laughter right before it burst. “Mental note posted,” I said, glad I’d put the local florist on speed dial earlier today. Better make it a favorite contact too.

     “I’ll be right back,” she said, jogging down the hallway, the orchids and her hair bouncing to the beat of her stride.

And I was mesmerized. Completely stupefied until she disappeared around the corner. I didn’t need an official diagnosis to know I was crossing into the land of a heartbreak that was unrecoverable.

     Shaking my head, I turned around to find Mr. D-bag of the Decade all but lunging up the walkway at me.

     “You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up on a fake date with my girlfriend with flowers that cost more than the first bill you’ll get from the emergency room after I teach your disrespecting ass a lesson.” Ty’s face was bursting with angry veins, like he was ready to erupt any second.

I wasn’t worried that I’d have any problems taking him, but I didn’t want to wrinkle my tux and, in my experience, brawling with a no brains and some brawn grizzly bear like Ty was more wrinkle inducing than I cared to entertain tonight.

     “Whoa there, big guy,” I said calmly, hinting with my hands he should take it down a notch or twelve. “Put the anger monkeys back in their cage and give them a tranquilizer while you’re at it.”

     His nostrils started flaring. Not in the way you mean to when you show off to your friends, but in the anger spilling over way.

     “Listen, I just thought since I was her boyfriend for the quarter and you’re her boyfriend for real,” I pricked my muscles to life, realizing this next comment was going to earn me a swing, “that one of us should get her flowers.”

     I was right. The swing came at me fast and like he didn’t care if he nailed me so hard he went to prison for manslaughter. However, I had speed, countless battles fought and won to anticipate every move my enemy was about to make, decades of experience as a legendary (and no, I don’t mind saying so) strength instructor, and this one other little thing—Immortality.

     His fist caught nothing but air as I ducked. The ungrounded power sent him toppling forward—as expected, of course—and I was there waiting for him. I rose from my crouched position just as he was falling over me so he could experience this virtue I had very little knowledge of—humility—a bit more extensively.

     My shoulder ramming into his gut sent him somersaulting over me, falling to the ground with such force it shook the proverbial rafters. You would have thought I’d just launched a steel ox like Nathanial over my back instead of some adrenaline and testosterone driven Mortal.

     “That’s your freebie,” I said, my voice just as calm as it had been pre-punch. “You come at me a second time, it’s open season on hot-headed assholes.” I glared down at him, wanting to squash him out like a smoldering cigarette. And I could have done it.

What Emma saw in this pond feeder was beyond me, but the only thing that kept me from making sure he spent the rest of his days sipping his meals from a straw was her. Whatever it was, she was with him. She
wanted
him.

     It made me sick acknowledging it, but it made me even sicker to think about the pain I’d cause her if I did what instinct instructed me to do with Ty. I forced myself to take a step back and then one more just to be safe.

     “You catch my drift, cowboy?” I asked, staring unblinkingly at him. I wanted him to catch the message, along with the threat, beyond a shadow of a doubt. “I won’t start it with you, but I will happily end it with you if you take another cheap shot at me.”

     “That’s awfully tough talk for some metro in a pretty, shiny suit,” Ty said, his jaw clenching around the words. He lifted himself from the ground, holding my stare the entire way up. “And here’s a little quid pro quo for you. Keep your eyes and hands off my girl. You got that? Because if I even sense your thoughts turning in a heated direction, I won’t hesitate to show you the consequences of your actions.” His mouth twisted up, overdone so it was more comical than it was threatening.

     I had to work really hard on not smiling so as not to beg another raw swing to the surface from him. “No offense to your superior school yard fighting tactics,”—I made a purposeful look down his body—“but I think I can take you. Actually, correction,” I said, raising my index finger, “I know I can obliterate you.”