Forever Innocent (4 page)

We had this back window in the bedroom, big as the wall and no curtains, since it faced a crazy tall fence and nobody nowhere could see in. In the mornings, light would stream in. I’d wake Corabelle up for school, give her a glass of water, and a cracker if she was feeling queasy, but by then she was better, not as sick.

Some mornings, she would look at me a certain way, and I’d know she was feeling all right, and I’d kiss her, and that connection would just charge through us like the sun blasting across the bed. It all got tied up together, loving on her and the beams of light on her hair, the swell of her belly and having all her skin to touch and look at. Mine. She’d been mine. We’d been crazy with it.

Enough.

I slung my pack over my shoulder and shoved sunglasses on my face. Keep it down. Even if she had dropped my class, she probably was walking to some other morning course. Seeing her would not improve my mood.

The jaunt to the engineering hall was mercifully short. I skipped the stairwell where we talked two days ago and hustled all the way to the other end of the building. Then I realized I was being stupid and went back down the hall, opened the damn door, and went up the damn stairs. I was acting like a sentimental ten-year-old girl, and I knew what they were like. My little sister had been ten when I took off.

My jaw tightened as I passed the spot where I caught Corabelle on the rail. She felt so different, lean and strong. The last months we’d been together she’d been pregnant. I’d forgotten her body.

Like hell I had.

The door yielded to my shove and swung open with another slam. At least there weren’t any moon-eyed girls this time. The classroom door was propped open, so I headed in and plunked down at the end of a center row.

“I don’t think that one’s yours,” a girl said, raising her eyebrows at my sunglasses.

“What do you mean?”

“We got assigned seats by the TAs.”

Shit. I stood up and looked around. Students dotted random chairs. Up at the podium, one of the TAs pointed a guy to a row. She must have the chart.

I strode up to her and yanked off my sunglasses. “Mays,” I barked.

She jumped a little. “What?”

“Mays. Where do I sit?”

Her face bloomed red as she consulted the page. “Fifth row, tenth seat.”

I turned away to head back, but then stopped. Corabelle was in the doorway, watching me with anger and disgust. My fist clenched, then relaxed, then clenched again. She’d seen me acting like an asshole. Whatever. I’m sure it made ditching me easier.

She took tentative steps along the back aisle, and I could see in her face how much she didn’t want to be here. I guessed she wasn’t able to drop the class. Didn’t surprise me really. Of all the years I’d been enrolled at UCSD, this one had been the worst in terms of getting the classes I requested.

I sank into my seat, unable to take my eyes off her. So much for lying low. She seemed a little lost, but some girl with pink hair pointed her toward the podium. Corabelle took the long way around to the other side of the room rather than pass me again. She asked the blond TA about her seat.

The pink chick watched me with distrust the whole time. I figured she had to be a friend of hers. She held that stare so long that I finally waved.

Corabelle looked at my row, and I realized we were going to be close to each other. My last name and Corabelle’s were only six letters apart, and in our hometown, we often were seated close together in school. With barely a hundred people in the class, I wasn’t surprised when she ended up just a few seats down.

She didn’t look at me, and I knew I had to stop staring. I shoved my sunglasses back on my face, not caring if it made me look emo or that the room was really too dark to see.

The professor came in and powered on the projectors. Students began piling through the door, wandering around, some forgetting exactly where they sat and having to shift around. The girl with the chart straightened everyone out. It looked to be the way she was taking roll, also typical. My enthusiasm for the class was all but gone.

Robert, the TA for my group, went up to the girl TA and they compared lists to the chart. Robert crossed a name off his list and the girl wrote it on hers. That gave me an idea. If I told Robert I had to work on Thursdays, maybe he’d put me in another group. That way, Corabelle and I would only have to suffer being near each other during lectures. And who knows, maybe I could skip half of them and still pull a decent grade. It would be a lot easier going to the star parties knowing I wouldn’t have to be up there with her.

I’d catch up with the TA after class and make that happen.

Chapter 7: Corabelle

I tied my Cool Beans apron around my waist and yanked my hair into a serviceable ponytail. With a year’s worth of seniority, which at a coffee shop was plenty, I’d been able to take off the first two days of class, but now work beckoned.

Jenny dumped the tip jar onto one of the tables, sorting through the change to trade for paper. “I forgot how cheap the students were.”

I nodded, snagging the empty tip jar on my way to the counter. “We’re bottom-feeders.”

The shop was mostly empty, just a couple students with noise-canceling headphones working on laptops in the corners. One of them was a big-time regular, a clearly impoverished student who always bought one tea bag then asked for so many mugs of hot water that he had to be drinking nothing but wet sugar in the end. A couple of my coworkers teased me about him, saying he only came for me, but I didn’t see it. He always ordered, then asked for more water, and that was it. Not like it mattered. Dating was out, and with Gavin around, I’d be way too riled up to pay attention to anyone else.

Jenny came up behind me to the register, dumping in a pile of pennies. “First star party is tonight! You ready?”

“I’ll have to bust my butt to get there.” Now that my labs were on Wednesday, I had to take morning classes, put in my afternoon shift, and race back to campus. “Thank goodness it’s only every other week.”

“Tomorrow is my date with destiny and the lumberjack.” Jenny braced her elbows on the counter.

“You mean Robert?”

“I like him better as the lumberjack.” She stared up at the ceiling. “I like to think beneath those plaid sleeves lies raw muscle.”

Hardly. I had more bulk than that boy. But it was Jenny’s dream. “Did you break it off with hipster dude?”

Jenny popped up and untied her apron. “No way. Never jump ship until you have a lifeboat.”

I dropped some change into the empty tip jar to get it started. “Jenny’s life axioms. They are my favorite thing about you, you know.”

She stuffed her apron in the cabinet below the register. “Good. ‘Cuz I’ve got a million of ‘em. Are you excited? Tonight you will be at one of the most romantic spots in San Diego, on top of a building overlooking the ocean, gazing at the stars.”

“If we can even see them in the city.”

Jenny shoved me playfully. “Can’t you be romantic for at least a minute?”

“You wouldn’t want me romantic. I’d steal all your men.”

“As if!” Jenny laughed, then sobered. “Actually, maybe I do like you because you are a safe wingman. You never look at them.” She snatched her purse from the cabinet and slammed it shut. “You HAVE to call me and tell me what it’s like up there. I’ll want to know exactly how to dress.”

“Lumberjack will be busy, you know. Instructing.” I sorted through the customer numbers on little wire stands, organizing them into neat lines.

“I’ll make sure he notices me.” She headed for the door. “You better text me!”

The shop seemed quieter after she left, less colorful and bright. I didn’t think I ever lit up a room quite like Jenny could. I sank onto a stool, knowing I should get to the tasks I had to perform before a rush hit, but really, for the first time, I let it sink in that I was still in class with Gavin.

He looked so different with his sunglasses and black clothes. He’d changed since high school, no doubt. I didn’t know him anymore.

Tea-bag boy got up from his table and brought his empty cup to the counter. “Can I get some more hot water?”

I nodded, turning with the mug. As the steam curled up toward my face, I wondered if maybe I had been wrong to stay completely away from dating. If I had some other person in my life, Gavin probably wouldn’t have such an impact. This guy seemed normal.

Smile. Turn around and be nice. Give yourself something else to think about. I picked up the mug and carried it back to the counter. The boy wore a white shirt and cargo shorts. His hair was shaggy and dirty blond, his eyes hazel. When I didn’t let go of the mug, he raised his eyebrows. “You okay?”

“Sorry. Here you go.” God, I’d messed up already.

“Thanks.” He took the mug and headed back to his seat.

Some start. I watched him walk away, a little on the lean side, but intriguing and deep, like he could be an indie musician or maybe someone who wrote dark stories. There was an intensity in him, just below the surface of his laid-back ease.

He sat down and looked back at me, catching my stare.

I whirled around. Hell. I was mucking this up something awful. I sat on the stool and began a mindless task, picking up a bottle of syrup for Italian sodas and wiping it down with a damp cloth.

Fact was, I’d never dated, ever. Gavin was my best friend from before I could remember. We grew up together, and our relationship transitioned from talking about cartoons and games to who was starting to pair off and how far they were going.

My first kiss had been when I was twelve. We watched
Hello, Dolly!
and I was full of romantic expectation. I asked Gavin what it must have been like for those couples to kiss, and he hadn’t said a word, but took my hand and led me to my room, then my closet, shutting the door behind us.

A little light came in through the slats, crossing his face with fine lines. “What are we doing?” I whispered, even though I had known, my belly fluttering.

He placed a palm against each of my cheeks and leaned in, brushing his lips against mine.

The closet burst into color like the Fourth of July, sparks flying behind my eyes. I closed them without knowing I should.

Gavin leaned back. “Do you think we did that right?”

I put my hands on top of his and nodded. Something started that day. This happiness I always felt around him changed from something simple to a yearning, and I didn’t know what for.

But we kept kissing, a lot, more and more. In fact, with that head start, we jumped ahead of the curve for most of the things boys and girls did together.

“Miss?”

My head snapped up. Tea-bag boy was back.

I hopped off the stool and set the syrup bottle down. I had never gotten past the first one.

“Yes! Can I help you?”

He didn’t answer right away, and I could see he only came up to talk to me. “I just thought,” he began and looked back at his table, as if it might give him a clue to what he was after, then turned back to me. “You seemed…something.”

Panic rose in my chest. Jenny and the others had been right about him, and now I’d given him a reason to think I was interested. I had a hard time breathing, and I wondered why I had considered seeing anyone. It had just been too long since I felt this way, this crazy horrifying fear that I might be attracted to someone, that I might rely on them, and that they might just disappear.

The boy tipped his head. “Are you okay?”

“I —” Crap. I what? “I have to go turn something off.”

I raced along the counter and burst through the door to the back room. God, god, god. What was wrong with me? Would I be ruined forever? I leaned against a wall, one hand to my chest. My coworker Jason was supposed to be here, to help. Where was he? I wasn’t up for being out there. I should be doing my setup work in the back.

My chest had gone all tight. I knew what I should do, breathe slowly and relax, but instead I did the same thing as always and held my breath, making it worse, watching the spots flash in front of my eyes. Everything started going dark and my knees buckled. Without anything blocking my airflow, I knew I’d just sink to the floor, conk my head, and then come back around. I’d done it a thousand times in the last few years. It helped. For a few minutes, I always felt like I knew what it had been like for baby Finn, after the ventilator went off, and his little chest stopped moving up and down —

My head hit the floor.

The cold of the concrete against my cheek started bringing me back. The room returned in degrees, first dark, then lighter, then slowly gaining color and sound. I sat on the floor, my back against a wire rack of mugs. Stupid. I shouldn’t have done this here. I could have brought down a whole pile of dishes and lost an entire paycheck.

Or someone could have found me and seen just how crazy I could be.

I heaved myself up and headed to the sink. The water splashing on my face and neck helped me relax and regain control. I didn’t know any other way to cope.

I didn’t have to accept or reject that boy out there. I was going to be fine.

When I walked back out, another customer, a girl, was in line behind the boy. I couldn’t believe he was still standing there.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Did you need something?”

He looked confused and anxious. “I just — you seemed —” He stopped talking and stepped to the side so the girl could come up.

“I need another mocha latte,” she said, casting a quick glance at the boy.

“No problem,” I said and whirled away. The moment was gone. The boy would move on. I would never look at another one again, not until I knew I could handle it, whenever that might be.

When I turned around, the girl was pulling out one of those digital cigarettes. “We don’t allow those inside,” I said and pushed her latte across the counter.

“It’s not a real cigarette.”

“I know, but still, we ask you to take those things on the patio.”

The girl frowned. “I know my rights. There is no ban on these right now.”

This was making my day even better. I took in a deep breath, still feeling the constriction in my chest from my episode. “I don’t make the rules. I just get fired if I don’t enforce them.”