Easy (22 page)

“I understand. You
still need time.” He stood, and I stood, wanting out of this familiar room and
this conversation.

Time
would
not change what I was feeling—or not feeling. I’d had time, and though the ache
from his desertion hadn’t disappeared, it was decreasing. My future was blurry,
yes, but I was beginning to imagine a future when I would no longer miss him at
all.

“Let’s go find
Erin for you. And I’m going to have a talk with Buck.”

I froze, halfway
to the door. “Kennedy, I don’t expect you to—”

He turned. “I
know. Doesn’t matter. I’m handling this. Handling
him
.”

I took a deep
breath and followed him from the room, hoping his intentions sprung from a determination
to do the right thing, and not just because he wanted to win me back.

Erin and I watched
from the window as Buck and Kennedy faced off in the lot behind the house. It
was too cold for anyone to party outside, so they were alone. We couldn’t hear
the words, but the body language was unmistakable. Buck was taller and bigger,
but my ex possessed an innate superiority that refused to cede control to
anyone he deemed unworthy of it. Buck’s face was a veneer of annoyance
overlaying absolute fury as Kennedy spoke, stabbing a finger at him one, two,
three times, never touching him but showing no fear.

I envied him that
ability. I always had.

We turned away
from the window when Kennedy spun to come back into the house, but not before
Buck glanced at the window and fixed me with a look of pure hatred.

“Jesus H. Christ,”
Erin murmured, taking my arm. “Time for a
drink
.”

We found Maggie in
a group of people playing quarters. “Errrrrrin!” she slurred. “Come be on my
team!”

Erin crooked a
brow. “We’re playing teams?”

“Yes.” She grabbed
Erin’s arm and pulled her onto her lap. “J, you be partners with Mindi here!
Erin and me are gonna kick y’all’s asses.” Mindi was a petite blonde pledge.
She smiled and blinked big green eyes, unable to focus on me.

“Your name is
Jay?” Her drawl was very pronounced and her lashes fluttered up and down like a
cartoon character, making her seem younger and more vulnerable than eighteen.
She was the reverse of Maggie’s sarcastic demeanor and dark pixie looks. “Like
a boy’s name, Jay?”

The guys across
the table chuckled and Maggie rolled her eyes disgustedly. It was clear why she
wanted me to take her partner. “Um, no. J as in Jacqueline.” One of the boys
grabbed two folding chairs from against the wall, wedging them on either side
of Mindi and Maggie. I took the one next to Mindi and Erin slid into the other.

 “Oh.” Mindi
frowned and blinked. “So can I just call you Jacqueline?” My name was almost
unrecognizable between the accent and the drunken slurring.

Maggie started to
mumble under her breath so I said, “Sure, that’s great,” and looked around the
table. “So, are we winning?”

The boys on the
other side grinned. We definitely weren’t winning.

Chapter 18

By the time our designated driver
dropped us back at the dorm, Erin and I had quartered and beer ponged our way
to a night of spinning walls at best and toilet-hugging at worst. Neither of us
spoke above a whisper until after 3:00 pm Sunday afternoon. There was a scheduled
sorority meeting four hours later, and Erin cursed the lineage of whoever put
that on the calendar the day after the Brotherhood Bash.

“We won’t get a
damned thing decided—and at least half of us will kill the first person to bang
that gavel.” We were still conversing at half-volume.

I watched her wind
a purple scarf around her neck and pull on matching gloves while waiting for my
laptop to boot up. “At least your misery will have company.”

“Yay.” She pulled
a purple cap over her wild red hair and shrugged into her coat. “See you in a
couple of miserable hours.”

Lucas had already
sent Monday’s worksheet. Still no personal note.

I understood why
he couldn’t see me, and maybe why whatever we had been doing was over. But I
didn’t understand why our emails had to stop, too. I missed them, and wondered
what he’d do if I emailed him back. I wanted to tell him about last night and Buck,
about saying no and feeling scared to death and tough at the same time.

One week of class
remained, followed by a week of finals, and then the semester would be over. I
had no idea if it would make any difference to him.

I did the least
brain-pounding homework I could do—labeling a constellation chart due tomorrow
in astronomy lab—and hung the clean laundry that had been sitting in a basket
at the foot of my bed for three days… or four… maybe five. I’d missed my bass
practice times all weekend in addition to the ensemble rehearsal, so I would be
scrambling to complete additional hours of practice during the week.

By the time Erin returned,
I was seriously considering just going to bed and sleeping off the lingering remains
of my hangover. Yawning, I turned toward the door, “I was thinking about
crashing early—”

Erin wasn’t alone.
Under her arm was Mindi, my quarters partner from the previous night. At first,
I thought she was just way more hungover than me; then, I noticed Erin’s grim
expression, and I took in Mindi’s red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. She didn’t just
feel like shit from too much alcohol. She’d been crying. A lot. I swung my legs
off the side of the bed.

“Erin?”

“J, we have a
problem.” The door shut behind them and Erin tugged Mindi to sit on her bed. “Last
night, after you and I left, Mindi danced with Buck.” Mindi flinched and closed
her eyes, and tears started streaming down her face.

My heart began to
race. I imagined everything Erin could say next, and none of it was good. I
hadn’t prayed in a long time, but I found myself begging.
Please God let it
not have gone further than what happened to me. Please. Please.

“He talked her
into going to his room.” At this, Mindi’s hands flew up to cover her face and
she crumpled face-first into Erin’s shoulder like a child. “Shh, shh,” Erin
crooned, fitting both arms around her. We stared at each other over Mindi’s
head, and I knew there’d been no Lucas for her.

“J, we have to
tell. We have to tell this time.”

“No one will
believe me!” Mindi rasped. She was hoarse, and I imagined her doing what I’d
done—begging him to stop. I imagined her crying all night, and half the day,
and I was more pissed than I’d ever been, and scared. “I’m not…” Her voice
lowered to a whisper. “I wasn’t a virgin.”

“That doesn’t
matter,” Erin said firmly.

I gulped at the
knot in my throat and it slid down, but not without a fight. “They’ll believe
you. He tried to—he tried with me, a month ago.”

Mindi gasped, her
blotchy face and wide eyes turning to me. “He raped you, too?”

I shook my head as
chills spiked up in a wave from my neck to my ankles. “Someone stopped him. I
got lucky.” I had no idea how lucky until this moment. I thought I knew, but I
didn’t.

“Oh.” Her voice
warbled softly, and she hadn’t quit crying. “Will that count?”

Erin coaxed Mindi
to lie down, flapping a blanket over her. “It’ll count.” She sat next to Mindi
and held her hand. “Will Lucas corroborate your story, J? I mean, I’m guessing,
with what we know about him, that he will.”

Lucas had been irate
that I’d not let him call the police that night. It hadn’t occurred to me that
by not reporting what had happened, I let Buck think he was untouchable. That
he’d do it again. I’d assumed that what Lucas had done to Buck was deterrent
enough. Not that it had prevented him from what he did in the stairwell… or his
implied threats during the party, right in front of Kennedy.

I nodded. “He
will.”

Erin took a shaky breath
and looked down at Mindi. “We need to call the police or go to the hospital or
something, right? I have no idea what to do first.”

“The hospital?”
Mindi was afraid, and I couldn’t blame her.

“They’ll probably
need to do… an exam, or something.” Erin gentled her voice, but at the word
exam
,
Mindi’s eyes widened and filled with tears again.

Her knuckles
blanched, gripping the blanket. “I don’t want an exam! I don’t want to go to
the hospital!”

How could I blame
her, when reporting would bring more pain and humiliation?

“We’ll go with
you. You can do this.” Erin turned to me. “What should we do first?”

I shook my head,
thinking of the campus police. Some, like Don, would probably do well with this
situation. Some might not. We could go straight to the hospital, but I wasn’t
sure what the steps were. I picked up my phone and dialed.

“Hello?” Lucas’s
voice was wary, and I realized I’d never called him before.

“I need you.” It
had been over a week since we’d communicated outside of the worksheets he’d
sent, and the self-defense class yesterday morning.

“Where are you?”

“In my room.” I
expected him to ask what I wanted. He didn’t.

“Be there in ten
minutes.”

I closed my eyes. “Thank
you.”

He hung up, and I put the phone down, and we waited.

***

Lucas squatted on his heels just
below Mindi’s eye level. “If you don’t report it, he’s going to do it again. To
someone else.” His voice hummed through me, barely audible from across the
room. “Your friends will stay with you.”

Erin sat on the
bed, holding her hand. I barely knew this girl, but thanks to Buck, we were now
allies, associated in a way no one ever wants to be linked.

“Will you be
there?” Her voice was a whisper.

“If you want,” he
answered.

She nodded, and I tamped down a trace of jealousy. There was nothing to envy in this situation.

***

The television in the ER waiting
room was set at an earsplitting volume that was no help to my aching head. I
wanted to turn it off, or down, but an elderly man was planted in a chair ten
feet from it, arms crossed over his chest, staring up at the sitcom repeat. If that
noise was distracting him from his reason for being here, who was I to take
that diversion away?

Lucas sat next to
me, his bent knee angled toward me, brushing my thigh. His hand was so close to
mine I could have reached my pinky finger out to stroke his. I didn’t.

“Got something
against that show?”

His silly question
broke my scowl. “No, but I think I could hear it from across the street.” He
was wearing that ghost smile, and I wanted to melt into it.

“Hmm,” he said,
staring at the boot on his knee. “Are you a little hung-over, too?” When Erin
and Mindi filled him in on the details of last night, he’d quickly figured out
that I’d gone with Erin to the Greek event.

“Maybe, a little.”
I wondered if he would think I’d senselessly put myself in danger by attending
a party where Buck would obviously be present. His reprimand the night we met—
real
responsible
—still stung, mostly because it was true.

“So did he talk to
you? Last night?” He was still staring at his boot.

“Yeah. He asked me
to dance.”

A muscle worked in
his jaw, and his eyes were cold when he raised them to mine.

“I said no.” I
heard the defensiveness in my tone.

He took a deep
breath and turned more fully toward me, his voice low and menacing.
“Jacqueline, it’s taking everything I’ve got right now to sit here and wait for
law-abiding justice to take care of this, instead of hunting him down myself
and beating the
fucking shit
out of him. I’m not blaming you—or her.
Neither of you asked for what he did—there’s no such thing as asking for it.
That’s a fucking lie argued by psychopaths and dumbasses. Okay?”

I nodded, breathless at his declaration.

His eyes narrowed. “Did he accept your
no
?” What I heard at the end of his sentence:
this time?

I nodded again.
“Kennedy was with me. He noticed how weird I acted with Buck, so I told him
what happened. I didn’t say anything about you, or the fight. I just told him I
got away.”

A small crease appeared between his brows. “How’d he take it?”

I remembered
Kennedy’s uncharacteristic cursing outburst. “He was angrier than I’ve ever
seen him. He took Buck outside and talked to him, told him to stay away from
me… which probably made Buck feel weak, and that’s why…” That’s why he raped
Mindi.

“What did I just say? This is not your fault.”

I nodded, staring
into my lap, tears stinging my eyes. I wanted to believe it wasn’t my fault,
but Mindi was hurt after Kennedy had chewed him out. For me. It felt like my
fault. I knew better, but I couldn’t help connecting the dots.

Lucas’s fingers brushed under my chin and turned my face to his. “Not. Your. Fault.”

I nodded again, holding onto his words like they were redemption.

***

I parked in front of a neighbor’s
house, snapping the truck door shut as quietly as possible and tiptoeing down
the sparsely lit driveway toward the detached garage. It was late—hopefully
late enough that no one would be peering out a window at a girl sneaking up to
a guy’s apartment.

Lucas’s motorcycle
was parked under the open steps. I stood at the bottom with my hand on the
rail, heart hammering, and looked back at Dr. Heller’s house. I couldn’t see
any movement within, though there were lights on inside. Taking a deep breath,
I climbed the steps and knocked lightly.

There was a
peephole in the door, so I was sure he’d seen me standing under the porch light
by the puzzled expression on his face when he yanked the door open. An hour
ago, he’d left me at the dorm with Erin and Mindi, and after he’d gone, I
realized I hadn’t said what I wanted to say. And most of what I wanted to say included
a need to see him while I said it.