Harder (12 page)

When I sit on the bed in my rented room and look out at the alley behind the house, an apple core three feet from the garbage can, I see West resting his forehead against the steering wheel of Bo’s truck, shuddering by the side of the road.

None of what I feel is as simple as anger or betrayal or disgust, because there’s always this other thing.

The thing that makes me do a U-turn when I spot his truck.

The thing that pulls me out of my car when he emerges from the store with a carton of cigarettes, free arm swinging, keys glinting in the bright light of this sunny September day.

I can see how angry he is from twenty feet away.

He can be as angry as he needs to be, and I’ll still feel like this whenever he comes near. I can’t help it.

He stops when he spots me. I don’t wave or speak or beckon to him. All I do is watch. Witness him.

You exist. I exist. Here we are
.

He gets in his car and drives off toward campus, and I track his progress until he turns the corner.

I’m smiling for no reason.

I just feel so alive.

Some things can’t be unseen once you’ve seen them.

This is what I’m thinking the next morning, standing stock-still on the threshold of our kitchen, clutching a water bottle in my hand and transfixed by the unexpected sight of Bridget and Krishna making out.

It’s seven-thirty in the morning. I was, prior to this moment, barely awake.

Now I am
so
awake.

Awake enough to notice a lot of things other than the obvious thing, which is my teeny little freckled redhead best friend tongue-wrestling with the resident campus manwhore.

Like, I notice that they’re both in their running clothes, and they smell ripe. After two years of rooming with Bridget, who runs track, I’m more than used to the odor of warm armpits and high-tech fabric, but this time it’s coming off both of them together.

Their mouths are making this wet smacking sort of noise. Krishna is
owning
Bridget. One-hand-on-the-back-of-her-head, one-right-above-her-ass, bending-her-backward-over-the-counter
owning
her.

His hair and shoulders are wet. Her thighs. Their arms.

Rain. It’s raining out there. The rain is drumming against the house, and Bridget is kind of … squeaking? She’s making a noise that’s so obviously compliant that it makes me
think of animals,
mating
animals—like, hamsters, maybe, which I wish it didn’t because I once actually saw hamsters mating and it isn’t something I want to see again, or think about, and Jesus, neither is this.

And yet I can’t move.

I can’t move, because this isn’t a first kiss or a fourth kiss or an eighth kiss. They have done this many, many times. This has been
happening
.

When?

When did this start happening?

Krishna’s hand is sliding beneath Bridget’s back, rucking up her shirt, his skin so dark against hers, and my brain is just hammering at me,
when, when, when?
Last school year? Over the summer, when Bridget took more than one long weekend to visit Krishna in Chicago for reasons that now seem flimsy as tissue paper?

As flimsy as her sports bra, which presents no obvious barrier to Krishna’s hand. It’s working its way around to the front. It’s going to get there, and no. No.

This is wrong. It’s wrong in the way things are wrong when you don’t expect them, but it’s wrong in other ways, too, that I can’t even get a handle on because they hit me in one big mass, a cumulous cloud of emotions, foggy and cold, impossible to sift through, especially because
it keeps happening
. His hands are over her breasts now. They’re moving, they’re
tweaking
, and she likes it. So much.

I have to clear my throat against the possibility that Bridget’s hamster noises will actually kill me.

Bridget
leaps
away from Krishna. Her hand flies to her throat. “You scared me!”

I lift my water-bottle hand, now frozen into a claw. “I just wanted a drink.”

This is the worst thing to say, it turns out, because it makes
them step farther apart, clearing a corridor to the sink that I have to walk through.

I have to not-look at Krishna so hard. And not-hear the way they’re breathing. And not-consider how wrong it is that none of us seems to have anything to say at this awkward moment to end all awkward moments.

Bridget. Krishna. The two talkiest people in a whole universe of talkers, now totally silent.

The water running into the bottle is louder than any running water has ever been.

I can feel them looking at each other behind my back. I can feel the conversation they’re not having, the frantic exchange of messages through hands and eyes.

I turn off the tap. Set my bottle in the sink. Pivot to face them and say, like it’s no big thing, “So this is a surprise.”

Bridget is the color of beet juice. “It’s not what it looks like,” she says. “Because, you know, it looks like we were going to—”

“It’s exactly what it looks like,” Krishna interrupts.

“It’s
not
,” she insists. “Caroline’s going to think we were sneaking around and we didn’t want her to know, but that’s—”

“We were sneaking around,” Krishna says. “We didn’t want you to know.”

Bridget punches him in the arm. “Stop it!”

“Stop what? Telling the truth?”

“No! You’re making it sound like we’re—like I’m—and it’s just not …”

“Not what?”

“Not like
that
. Dirty. And sneaky. And … I don’t know. Convenient housemate hookup.”

Bridget’s expression is searching, earnest in a way that’s painful for me to take in.

Krishna aims his can’t-give-a-shit grin at her. “Nothing wrong with a dirty, sneaky, convenient housemate hookup.”

It’s ghastly. She stiffens. The flush drains out of her face.

She gets smaller.

Krishna claps her on the shoulder like they’re old army buddies. “I’ll leave you girls to it. I need to grab a shower.”

We listen to the stairs creak underneath his climbing feet. “Oh my God,” I say when he’s traversing the hallway over our heads. “Bridge.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t make me talk about it.”

“I kind of think we should talk about it.”

“Yeah, I know. I just …”

She covers her face with her hands, and I wrap my arms around her, hoping that’s the right thing. It feels like the right thing, even though I’m having trouble switching gears from my own reactions to caring about hers.

It gets easier when I realize she’s shivering.

“How long has this been going on?” I ask.

“I don’t know if it’s going on.”

“It looked like it was going on.”

“It’s complicated. I would have told you, but it’s so complicated, and I could never tell if we were on or off or neither, so I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to say. At all.”

“Can I say what it looks like?”

“Ugh. No.”

“You sure? Sometimes it’s good to hear what it looks like.”

“It looks like I’m in love with Krishna and he’s just fucking me because I’m around all the time, and he’s going to break my heart and then pretend he doesn’t care because he’s a guy and that’s what guys do, and meanwhile I’ll be moaning about how he has hidden depths and you just don’t understand,
but you’ll know better because you think Krishna’s only good to be friends with but not someone you can count on, and you’ve never really been able to like him as much since he let West get arrested, because you’re hopelessly in love with West and you’re always going to take his side in everything forever.”

Her hair drips on my neck.

I give her a squeeze.

“Okay,” I say. “So at least you know what it looks like.”

“I am fully aware, on every level you can possibly imagine, exactly what it looks like.”

“And you’re saying it’s not like that?”

“Unfortunately, no. It is like that. Sometimes.”

“What’s it like when it’s different?”

She inhales deeply. Bites her lip and casts her eyes at the ceiling, searching for words. “It’s like falling into …”

She shakes her head. “It’s like …”

A chill runs up my spine. I’ve known Bridget for over two years. I’ve never seen her at a loss for words. “Bridge—”

“I can’t describe it,” she says with a shrug. “But it’s good enough to be worth all this other crap, apparently, which I can’t even tell you the epic amounts of crap I’ve been dealing with. What he just did, walking out of the room like that? That’s
nothing
compared to what he’s been dishing out every time he gets spooked, which is fucking constantly, and if we weren’t—”

“Constantly fucking?” I interrupt.

She hides her face behind her hands. “Yes. God.”

“Go on.”

“If we weren’t constantly fucking, I would have
so many bad things
to say about him.”

“You can say the bad things and also fuck him constantly.”

“I know, but it feels so disloyal. I
like
him.”

“You maybe love him?”

She hides her face against my shoulder. “Don’t say it. It’s too stupid.”

“I have the market cornered on stupid.”

When she looks at me again, her eyes are bright with tears, but she’s smiling. “You know what I used to think? It’s awful. You’re going to think I’m awful.”

“Probably not.”

“I used to think only stupid people made mistakes. Like, people who were too stupid to know what the right thing to do was, so they did the wrong thing, and I was smart enough to see all that stupidity coming, so I would never be like them. I thought my mom was stupid for not knowing my dad was having an affair, and my dad was stupid for having one. And, God, I’m sorry that I’m saying this, but I thought, after what Nate did—”

“You thought
I
was stupid?” I blurt out.

“Kind of? I mean, not across the board, but about that one thing, yeah. Like, I thought I’d never let a guy do that to me, and I couldn’t see why
you
had unless you’d just sort of stumbled into a pit of stupidity temporarily, and then stumbled back out.”

“I can’t believe you thought that.”

“I know. But what I’m starting to figure out with Krishna …”

“… is that it’s possible to be smart and still do really stupid things?”

“And know you’re doing them the whole time,”
she says. “That’s the worst part.”

“It is,” I say, nodding. “I’ve had this exact same thought.
Oh my God, I am being so fucking stupid. I should be arrested
for containing this much stupidity in one person
. And then, like
, God, he’s hot, I love him, I am totally going to do this anyway
.”

“It
sucks
,” she says.

“Donkey balls.”

“Ginormous donkey balls.”

“It sucks ginormous
hairy
donkey
scrotums
,” I confirm.

“Hoovers them up.”

“Deep-throats them.”

“While they take pictures and post them on the Internet,” Bridget says.

“And go down on other women to drive you away.”

“And
tell you about all the women they’ve fucked while they’re taking off your pants
.”

“He did not.”

“He did too.”

“What a vile excuse for a human being,” I say. “You should totally ditch him.”

And then we’re laughing, leaning into each other, holding on tight, and I’m glad I saw her with Krish, even if it was kind of gross.

I’m glad I see West all over Putnam, even if he’s living in his little bubble of isolation.

It would be great if I had godlike powers to make the world less cruel. I could change everything. I could bend West’s life toward mine instead of away from it, make everything different so he never would have chosen to do what he did, never
could
have chosen it.

I bet Bridget feels the same way—like she’d change whatever went wrong in Krishna’s life to fuck him up, and then he’ll stop jerking her around and admit they have something. But who would Krishna be if he weren’t … well,
Krishna
?
And who would West be if I changed his whole life to make it so he never disappointed me? Not West.

I don’t want anyone but West.

I’d rather fuck up and have something—some messy undefinable not-quite-relationship that feels awful but also transcendent, electric,
important
—than keep away from him and have nothing at all.

I’m going to figure out a way to get him back. Everyone can think I’m stupid if they want to, and tell me I shouldn’t, and say I’ll regret it. Everyone can believe it’s a bad idea—even me.

Maybe it is a bad idea.

I don’t care. I’m doing it anyway.

My phone rings at the library that same afternoon, drawing nasty looks. It’s four o’clock, a quiet time for serious study, and I forgot to set it on vibrate.

I fumble in my bag until I find it way down in the pocket where I don’t usually put it, and by then it’s been ringing so long I’m hot with embarrassment. I decline the call, a local number I don’t recognize, and go back to my response paper.

A minute later, the phone starts to vibrate in my pocket, and I feel … I don’t know. Weird.

Weird like the hair is standing up on the back of my neck.

Weird like when people say they
just have a feeling
. That déjà vu thing.

I accept the call, shutting my laptop and shoving it in my bag.

“Ms. Pia … Pia …”

“Piasecki,” I say.

“This is Jeff Gorham. I’m the counselor at Putnam Elementary,
and I have Frankie Leavitt here needing a ride home. I haven’t been able to reach her brother. I’ve got you listed as an emergency contact on the ride form, is that right?”

I have no idea. But as I push out the library door and into the overcast fall afternoon, I say, “Uh, yeah. Did you try his cell?”

“Frankie did.”

I hear a garbled voice on the other end of the line, and then the counselor again. “Would you be able to swing by and pick her up?”

I glance at my watch. I have a meeting in an hour, but the elementary school isn’t far. “Sure. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

My car is parked on the east side of campus. I find myself rushing to get to it. Jogging, impatient, freaked out. Those words—
emergency contact
—set off some kind of alarm in the back of my brain.