If Only (20 page)

The poets are right.

I know that phrase. Not only that phrase but what comes before and after it. It’s Forster,
A Room with a View
. The book Noah wanted to argue that day in class, the day I gave him the scar on his hand, and the day he told me he had to honor his commitment to Hailey.

Mr. Emerson tries to explain to Lucy that if she flees to Greece, she can’t escape her love for his son, George:

It is not possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.

I scribble down the entire passage in my journal as I recall it. I don’t understand. The phrase can’t be meant for me. He had that done before anything happened between us. The only other explanation is Hailey, and the thought makes me nauseous. I remind myself of the last two nights, of the things he said. I have to ask him. I’ll go fix my registration, and then come back, and when he wakes up I’ll expose my insecurity and ask him. End of story.

Noah rolls over in bed so he faces me. I throw the journal on the desk as he picks his phone up off the floor. It takes him a few seconds for his eyes to focus on mine.

“Hurry back,” he moans in a whispered morning voice.

I smile at him and tiptoe out the door.

There’s a line for the computers at the union, and I fidget as I wait, my hands tugging at the bottom of my shirt. The class I was supposed to take, for which I registered way back last spring from Illinois, was a course on Victorian-era female writers spanning from Austen, to Shelley, to the Brontë sisters. When I received notice that the class was full and I didn’t make the cut, I briefly lost the ability for rational thought. I told Elaina I was going to say “Fuck it” and go home. I don’t toss around f-bombs lightly, so she knew I was a little distraught—crazy, but distraught. I was notified by letter in early December, and as I half feigned packing up my room immediately upon reading the missive, Elaina sat me down and handed me my phone.

“Open that app,” she said, “the one that lets you read the books.”

I shrugged. “Which one? I have three.”

“Exactly!” She triumphed. “Do you have the Austen books and the Brontë books on the apps?”

“Yes.” I have hard copies of the books at home as well, but I don’t tell her this.

“Can you read these books if you do not take the class and do not write the papers?”

“Yes.”

“Then put your shit away and stop all the crazy.”

And that’s exactly what I did. But now, after calming down enough to put off the schedule fix until now, I’m nervous where I’ll be spending three hours a week for the next five months.

I follow the log-in information from the letter and find three courses listed that still have openings. The first is The British Novel in Film. Doubt I’d get credit for taking it again, though I loved it. The second is a Shakespearean Tragedy Class. I do enjoy the bard’s tragedies. Clicking on the link I am surprised to see that along with the class description, the database lists how many spots are left in the class
and
the current roster. I guess it’s not a total invasion of privacy as registrants are only listed by first name and last initial, but still. Before I add my name to the list, I let curiosity get the best of me and check the roster for the Shakespearean Comedy class. Both classes are rather intimate, topping out at fifteen, so it’s easy to glean the entire roster in seconds. Midway down the list, there it is. Noah K. In our short time together, we have not discussed whether or not we share any of the same classes this semester. Now, at least, we’ll share one.

I kiss the paper that once held news of my impending doom and thank it for booting me out of the Victorian Women’s class. I stop at the Hillhead store and pick up a loaf of bread and some jam, the only thing I’ll have to offer Noah for breakfast other than a cup of tea or Elaina’s coffee. When I walk back into the flat, my bedroom door hangs wide open, and Noah sits fully clothed, wearing his jacket, on my bed. If it were possible for one to pace while sitting still, that’s what he would be doing. He is the picture of agitation. And he’s holding my journal.

My hand loses its grip, and the bag of food falls to the floor.

“What are you doing with that?” I swallow hard, my question a tremble of words.

Noah answers through gritted teeth. “Are you still seeing him, Jordan? Are you still with Griffin?”

Jordan?
He called me
Jordan
.

I shake more now because I can’t think of a forgivable reason for him to read anything in the journal, nor can I imagine what he would have read that has him so on edge. The air in the room grows thinner, like it’s been sucked away along with any sense of trust that was between us. He’s still holding the journal, the line of his jaw tight.

“Noah.” My eyes sting. “What are you doing with my journal?”

“I didn’t know it was your journal, Jordan.” His words are calm, but his voice breaks slightly on my name, my first name. “It was sitting open next to my toothbrush, and it was kind of hard not to see what was written in there by your friend.”

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. I closed it when I finished, but the binding has come loose from how often I write. And Griffin folded the freaking corner of the page—when I threw it on the desk it must have fallen open. I know exactly what Griffin wrote on that page.

It was the night before I left for London when Griffin spent the night, a fucking platonic night, but Noah misconstrues the message. Underneath the directive to meet him in Amsterdam in March, Griffin scribbled, “I’m glad I spent my last night with you. Maybe again in Amsterdam?” He even dated the fucking entry.

I open my mouth to protest, to explain, but instead I start to shake. He violated my privacy. And judged me without even thinking he could be wrong.

“Can we keep in mind for a second here that you had no right to read my private thoughts?” He stares at me in silence, his only response. Noah’s eyes storm, and it’s all I can take not to drop to my knees and plead with him to listen. Instead I root myself in place and steady my tone. “No. I’m not still seeing Griffin. I never officially was.”

The words pass through him, the storm in his eyes transforming to ice.

“What about us, Jordan? Are we officially seeing each other? Or are we going to fill the time until you make it to your spring-break hook-up?” Noah’s hand runs through his hair. “Why didn’t you tell me about seeing him again?” He breathes a heavy sigh. “I came here that night to tell you Hailey and I were through.” He shakes his head and lets out a bitter laugh. “Elaina said you’d already left for London, but you were right here, with him. And you never said shit about it.”

My stomach turns. Noah at the door. Me asleep in Griffin’s arms. No, no, no. I grab the journal from his hands, anger trumping horror, but he won’t meet my gaze. “How can you judge me, Noah? Maybe you should have violated the entirety of my privacy and read the whole thing. Then you could have seen how I felt about that first kiss on the train, how I felt about
you
.” I shake at the realization of what he thinks of me. “But thanks for calling me a whore.”

Every extremity trembles. If I don’t sit, don’t grab something to stabilize, my knees will fail me. My right hand bears the load, pressing against the wall. I swallow a sob as I think about all I’ve been holding back for two years, waiting for someone like Noah. When I finally find him, he’s no less judgmental than I was of Griffin when we first met.

His eyes come back to mine, but I can’t hold his stare. I can barely hold myself up.

“That’s not what I meant, Brooks. I never called you a whore.”

He stands, hesitating for a few seconds, but my eyes don’t betray me. They stay trained on the window behind him, just past the shoulders I kissed last night, when he was mine, and I was his, and all of the bullshit was over. But here we are, now, and Noah brushes past me heading for my door.

“You didn’t have to,” I say to his back as he exits. He stops but doesn’t turn. “It’s in your eyes, your damn hypocritical eyes. I guess we were stupid for trying, huh? Everything this year has an expiration date anyway. Maybe we hit ours before we got started.”

I don’t mean the words as cruelly as they spill forth, but I’m grasping to defend my pride, to defend who I am despite what he sees. After everything he’s said in the past two days—everything that led him to me on New Year’s Eve, he has such little faith in who I am.

“Maybe we did.”

That’s the last thing he says before walking out of my room, my flat, and, seemingly, my life.

Chapter Eighteen

“Jordan, open the door now. I can make the man-child break it down.”

“She can’t make me break your door, Jordan,” Duncan assures me. “But it would be nice if you let her in.”

There’s a small pause.

“I can make you break the door,” Elaina insists.

“I beg to differ.”

There is a moment of hushed whispering before I hear Duncan again.

“Jordan, I would like to amend my earlier statement when I said Elaina couldn’t make me break your door. She has promised to do something to me that she’s not done before. It’s something I’d really like her to do, so if you could be a love and open the door, that’d be great. Otherwise I’m going to have to break it.”

Ha! Promising sexual favors so she can barge in and hear how talk of sex sent my boyfriend of twenty-four hours running—the irony is not lost on me. I wouldn’t be in a possible door-breaking scenario if I hadn’t slammed said door and screamed when Noah walked out. I guess I have some explaining to do.

I get up from the bed where I’ve been lying with the pillow pressed to my face, partly to drown out Elaina’s demands but more so to inhale whatever is left of Noah’s scent. I’m not sure which emotion to let win—anger, frustration, or devastation. If I don’t hold on to the anger, I will collapse into sobs, so I let anger take the lead as I quietly unlock the door and then resume my position on the bed, head under pillow.

“It’s open!” I groan.

Elaina bursts in with Duncan hot on her heels, but she shoos him out.

“It doesn’t count if she opens it herself. The favor was only if you broke the door down. Go back to the boy house, and I will come over after I take care of Jordan.”

Though I’m in no mood to laugh, Elaina always gets me to crack a smile. This time she will not know it because all she can see is a body with a pillow for a head.

“What did you do?” she asks with sharp accusation.

I spring up to sit. “Why do you assume it’s me? Maybe Noah did something reprehensible that made me throw him out!” He did, though. Didn’t he? If he never would have read that stupid page, Elaina and I wouldn’t be having this conversation.

“Jordan.” She lets up on the accusation, but only slightly. “I saw the way that boy was looking at you last night, like you were the only thing that existed for him other than the air he breathes. Why would he leave like that?” She holds up a scolding finger. “Remember? Thin walls. I hear things. He was angry.”

And hurt, I think. I replay our conversation from last night, when I kissed his scarred hand. I admitted to hurting him, and all he asked was for me not to do it again. I didn’t think I’d have to ask the same of him. I hand Elaina the journal, already opened to Griffin’s entry.

“Here. You might as well read it, too.”

She reaches tentatively for the journal, and I can’t help but laugh. Elaina doesn’t do tentative.

“You are letting me read this? You always close it when I walk in the room. Now you want me to read?”

“This one page. That’s all it took.”

She opens and reads it in seconds, handing it back to me matter-of-factly.

“Wait a minute. He read the book? I thought that was against the rules.”

“It is. And I’m not happy about that, but it’s not entirely his fault. I accidentally left it open on the desk. What Griffin wrote is pretty hard to miss.”

“But this happened before. And besides. I know you did not
sleep
with him. I would have heard the whole thing, you know.”

“True. But that entry makes it seem like we have actual plans to meet up. It was just something for him to write, a way for us to not have to say good-bye. I don’t think we really expected it to happen. And why didn’t you tell me Noah came here that night?”

She grabs my chin in her hand, which is freakishly strong.

“Ow!”

“Shhh!” she scolds. “What would you have done? Answered the door with Griffin in your bed?”

I consider this.

“But nothing happened!”

Still, I think about how it would have looked. What would I have done if I was in his place, coming here to tell me he and Hailey were over only to find me spooning another guy in my bed.

“The boys and their stupid egos. They bruise too easily. He is a shite for reading that page, but you are a shite for letting him go with no fight.”

I think of Griffin’s words from Thanksgiving and of how much easier it is to give up rather than risk losing.

“Go to him.
Now
. And fix this.” She pushes me off the bed.

“But what if I already lost?”

She pushes me out my open bedroom door.

“I’m going.”

Yoga pants, tank, fleece, tennies, and a headband. Yep. I’m rocking the please-remember-that-you-might-be-falling-in-love-with-me look. But now that I’m moving in his direction, I don’t care. I need to see him, to forgive him, if it will give us a chance not to end before we begin.

“Thank you,” I say. She still sits on the edge of my bed.

“Go! And then tell me everything when you return.
If
you return. I will understand that things went very well if I do not see you before I go to work tonight. Remember, by the way, that you start your training on Saturday. With me.”

“Yes, ma’am!” I confirm, not able to get out the door fast enough now that I have a plan. Sort of. It’s been an hour since he left. He’s had time to cool down as have I, hopefully time to realize everything that has happened, everything that’s been said in the past two nights is more real than anything that happened two weeks ago.