ReCAP: A NORMAL Novella (16 page)

Rory cuddles into
me, and it isn’t long before I feel her breathing even out, and she
relaxes into sleep.

I watch her for
along time, studying her every feature, wanting to memorize every
moment of this afternoon, of our first times, doing whatever it was
we just did, though I’m pretty sure even
making love
would be an
understatement.

I love
you
, I tell her wordlessly, and
eventually I drift off to sleep as well.

****

You
With Him

I
listen to the lock click on our adjoining
door, and stare after her, trying to process what the fuck just
happened.

After the most
incredible afternoon of my life, I couldn’t get Rory’s past out of
my head. I tried to focus on the positive, but her pain consumed
me, and I couldn’t channel my rage in any productive way. So I
looked him up. What’s the big fucking deal? I wasn’t really going
to go after him.

So what if I
checked out her hometown on a map. If I know it would take seven
hours to drive from Miami to Linton – that I could leave tonight
and be back by morning.

It doesn’t mean I
was actually going to do it.

Was
I?

Maybe.

But it wasn’t like
I was going to kill the bastard. I just wanted to see his face… and
to beat it to a bloody pulp.

But would that
have been the worst thing? To teach him a well-deserved lesson? To
punish him for what he did to Rory, and to make sure he knows
better than to bother her ever again.

I wasn’t really
going to do it. I was just going to think about
it.

I
think.

But fuck if it
backfired. I never meant for her to see his
picture.
God
, she looked so
stricken, and because of
me
. That was my fault – I
know that. But doesn’t she know how badly her words gutted
me?

It’s got nothin’ to do
with you
.

As if I’m nothing
to her. As if I’m just some guy she’s screwing. And I don’t get it,
because a few hours ago, she was telling me she was basically
giving me her figurative virginity, and then suddenly, I’m not even
relevant to her life.

Shit did that
sting.

I wasn’t going to
ask her about Cam. My mind was reeling with fears and suspicions,
but I wasn’t going to ask. Even though I couldn’t find anything
about him on any social media sites – and trust me, I checked them
all.

But then she said
that her past has got nothing to do with me, and I needed to know.
I couldn’t stop wondering if there was something between them. If
something still is.

And her reaction
when I did ask didn’t help either.

But I don’t
understand why she couldn’t just tell me the truth – whatever it
is. I would understand…

I rake my hand
through my hair and sigh. No, maybe I wouldn’t.

I sit on the couch
and try to get ahold of my thoughts.

Fuck, am I in the
wrong here? Am I being a dick?

I took her silence as a
confirmation, but a confirmation of what exactly, I have no idea.
Because I'm pretty sure they aren't even in touch.

This whole thing is far too complicated, and
it's my own fault. Because I'm the one who fell in love. I'm the
one letting my emotions get the best of me.

I should never have pushed her.

I drop my head in my hands.

I can't believe I put her
on the spot like that because of my own pathetic jealousy. I clench
my eyes shut, trying to rid my mind of the memory of her
panic-stricken face, the sight of her fingers feeling for her
pills, because of
me
.

I'm the one who's supposed to fucking
protect her!

But the worst part is the memory of the
sound of her desperate voice uttering the one word I never expected
to hear, not tonight.

Calculus.

I'm such a fucking bastard. It was me she
spent all afternoon in bed with, me she would have spent the night
with again, I know it. Why couldn't I just leave well enough
alone?

I take a deep breath and pat my hair back
into place. Now I have to go out to dinner with my boys, and
pretend like my heart doesn't feel like it's been run through a
fucking blender. But pretending everything is okay when I feel
anything but is something I learned at a young age. Hell, I learned
to tell my first lie about a bruise by the time I was seven.

Still, it kills me that I upset her, and I
resolve to fix it in any way I can. All I can think of is to
apologize, and if that doesn't work, maybe begging will. Maybe
groveling on my fucking knees will get her to forgive me.

Because it's hard enough
to see her hurt, but to be the cause of it… I'm pretty sure I've
never felt worse.

I meet the boys downstairs and mutter a
cursory apologize for making us all late. Tucker gives me an
inquisitive look, but he's the only one with even the slightest
inkling of suspicion that something is up.

Dinner is a long, rowdy affair, and my
virtual silence is overshadowed by my friends' exuberance. Dave
gives details about his hookup with Lily, and I roll my eyes. It's
so damn disrespectful. Even when I hooked up with girls who didn't
matter, I never talked about it, and if I wanted to for some
reason, it would only be to Tucker. Not to a fucking group of guys.
As if we all need to know about Lily's overactive gag reflex.

We arrive at the bar
before the girls, but they're on their way, according to
Andrew.

And then the one thing
that can cheer me up, at least marginally, strolls into the
bar.

"There she is," I announce
as Thea, my cousin and one of my closest friends, saunters up to my
group of boys without an ounce of hesitation.

She kisses my cheek and then greets my
friends, all of whom she's known for years. "Hello, boys," she says
with confidence.

Her red curls are wild as
ever, and I roll my eyes as my friends check her out.

"Couldn't get a single person to hang out
with you?" Dave teases.

"Fuck off," Thea replies without missing a
beat, and I laugh despite my mood.

Dave pushed Thea in my family's pool when we
were freshman and they've traded insults ever since, but Thea's wit
tends to win out over Dave's immature bullshit.

Thea's in Miami with her
mother, and I invited her to come out with us whenever she could
make it. I want to introduce her to Rory since they'll be at school
together next year, but now I don't even know if Rory is fucking
speaking to me. I feel that emptiness in my stomach, and it just
reminds me that I need to fix things with Rory as soon as fucking
possible.

I order Thea's corona and lime, and she
launches into some story about some girls she met by the pool
yesterday that my friends and I "should totally hang out with".

I have no interest, of course. But I don't
bother mentioning that I'm in love with a girl I pissed off so
badly she fucking safe worded on me barely a couple hours ago.

Some guy knocks into Thea and I step forward
to react, but Thea grabs my arm. She knows me too well, and I take
deep breaths until I can let it go.

I sling my arm around her shoulders, so at
least no one else will knock into her, and listen to her tell a
ridiculous story about my aunt and their experience arguing about a
forty five thousand dollar handbag at the Hermes boutique. The
story is ridiculous, as is my aunt when it comes to luxury items,
and we both laugh at her expense.

The girls walk in and I look around for
Rory, peering through the crowd, but I can't find her.

Carl acts standoffish to Tucker, and I
wonder what their deal is tonight, but I suspect it's just another
one of their games, because I catch her looking at him out of the
corner of her eye.

"Where's Rory?" I finally ask her.

She scrunches her brow and looks behind her,
then back toward the entrance. "Um, I thought she was behind me,"
she says, and my stomach unsettles. "But we went to the bathroom
when we came in." She turns to Lily. "Have you seen Rory?"

Lily shakes her head. "She didn't walk in
with me, I don't think."

My breath catches. I have a terrible
feeling, and I scowl at Carl. What the fuck kind of friend is
she?

"You just left her
fucking
alone?!"

Carl's jaw drops, but I
don't wait for her bullshit excuse, I turn and push my way through
the dense crowd until I reach the exit.

It takes me a moment to spot her, but when I
do, my anxiety morphs into raw, bitter jealousy.

Rory is fucking hooking up with some
stranger.

What. the fuck.

Nausea unfurls in my gut,
and I swallow down the acrid taste of bile rising in my throat. His
mouth is all over her fucking neck, his hands are all over the rest
of her. She sees me, and she stares like a deer in
headlights.

That's right, I fucking
caught you.

I look at her with utter disgust, trying to
process the cruel realization that she isn't who I thought she was.
Because the Rory I know wouldn't do something like this.

We have one fucking little
fight, and she decides to find some random guy to
what?
Get payback?

Well she fucking got it, because I am so
fucking disappointed in her, so fucking betrayed, that I can't even
look at her for one more second.

I turn and head back into
the bar, where my
real
friends are waiting for me, and order a double shot of Patron
Anejo. I down it quickly and order another.

This
is who I fucking
love?
A girl who values me about as much as yesterday's
goddamned trash?

But that's the fucked up
part. This
is
who
I love. I can't undo it. My brain can't just tell my heart she
doesn't deserve it, because it doesn't fucking matter. It doesn't
change a goddamned thing. No matter how merciless her behavior, my
heart can't just
forget
her. It can't forget her beauty and her wit, her
intelligence and her loyalty...

And that's when it hits me
like a fucking eighteen-wheeler.

"Tuck!" I bellow, not even making sure he's
following before I race for the exit, shoving people out of my
way.

Of
course
Rory would never do
something like that!
Fuck!
Recognition slaps me right in the face. His blond
hair is buzzed shorter than it was in his Facebook photo, but it's
him. It has to be. She wasn't frozen like a deer in headlights
because I caught her; she was frozen in fucking panic!

My heart is squeezed in a
vise and my throat swells.
I
am panicking. I can barely breathe, but I run. I
scan the spot across the street where I last saw her, but she's
gone. Fucking vanished.

"Cap?" Tucker is behind me.

"Find Rory!" I order, and then sprint across
the street, and then toward our hotel.

Suddenly I hear her – she
screams,
my fucking
name
, but it's coming from behind me, I
think, so I turn around and race back in the other
direction.

But she's fucking
nowhere!

Oh, God, Rory, where are
you?!

I point ahead for Tuck to run ahead of me.
He obeys immediately and I follow behind him, terror gripping my
heart.

And then I see it.

The alley is barely five feet wide, so dark
I ran right past it, but I see it now.

I can make out figures, but there's no
relief yet.

"Yes!" Rory shouts defiantly.

"You
fucking whore!
" a male voice
snarls.

I reach them and the sight
in front of me fills me so much rage I'm practically blinded with
it. He slams her against the brick wall by her fucking throat,
strangling her, her eyes wide with absolute terror, as he paws
under her skirt and tries to force her legs apart.

I grab his head and slam it into the wall
next to Rory, and while he's disoriented, I swing. He fights back,
and he's not a small guy, but I've got at least twenty pounds on
him, and I know how to fight.

He hurls curses, but I slam my fist into his
face straight on, and he stumbles.

"Tuck, over here!" I call out as I land
another solid punch to the piece of shit's jaw. But my pure,
unadulterated fury makes me unbeatable, and though he gets a couple
in, I have him down on the ground in barely a couple of minutes. I
pounce, throwing hit after hit, not giving him even a moment to
breathe.

I hear Tucker, but I don't stop. I am
enraged, and I've never wanted to do damage like I do right
now.