In This Moment (14 page)

   
My eyebrows lift. “Just wait until we’re an hour into this one tough girl, and then you can tell me if you still think that you like scary movies. I’ve been taking it easy on you up until now. Let’s get started because I have to be out of here a little earlier than usual tonight.”

   
Behind me, Aimee’s soft voice cuts through the air. “Why? Do you have a hot date later?”

   
My head whips around.
Is she fucking serious?
Shit. I can tell by the look on her face that she is completely serious and it’s like everything in the room takes a ninety-degree swing.

    “No,” I grumble
, straining to move past the nastiness that’s lodged itself in my throat. I haven’t even
wanted
to look at another girl in weeks. Fuck. I’m completely pissed off. Aimee and I haven’t talked about this kind of thing before and I didn’t think that this was how we’d start.

   
“It would be okay if you did.” She looks mildly uncomfortable. Her skin is flushed and she pulls absently on the ends of her hair. “I mean—I don’t want to be the one sucking up all of your time. I know that you had a life before you met me and that you...” Now her cheeks go ridiculously red. “Have stuff that you might need to do sometimes.”

   
I’m racking my brain, wondering why she’s bringing this shit up now. Is she trying to ease me off because she’s met someone? Maybe it’s a guy from one of her classes? The thought worms its way inside of me and spreads like acid through my limbs.

   
“Trust me, Aimee. I still have a life and I can always find time for
stuff
,” I say, knowing that I sound like a real dick. That’s fine because I
am
a dick. I always have been. “But that’s not why I need to get home tonight. I need actual sleep because I’ve got a fucking early practice in the morning. Plus, I still need to pack because we leave tomorrow around lunch for that race up in Gainesville.”

   
This weekend is the triathlon that Quentin, Brady, Nate and I have been training for. I’ve been dreading it. Not because of the race—I love the rush and the adrenaline. The truth is that I haven’t been looking forward to so many days away from Aimee. And in light of the way that tonight is going, how fucking pathetic is that?

   
Aimee’s face is unflinching. She doesn’t wish me luck, or tell me that she’ll miss our movie nights. All she says is, “Oh.”

    That one word—that one gimpy
sentiment digs its way under my skin and stays there.

   
“Yeah, I would have asked you to come because we’re going to be going out afterward, but you don’t drive, do you?” Fuck. It’s like I’ve just jumped out of a plane without a parachute. I know that she doesn’t like to talk about this stuff and that I’m being a total bastard on purpose.

   
I know some of the
facts
but that doesn’t mean that I know the
story
. Daniel won’t answer my questions and Aimee sure as hell doesn’t want to talk. And up until this point, I haven’t forced any of the thousand and one questions going through my head. I’ve been happy to live in each moment—one after the other—like there’s nothing behind us, and nothing in front of us because I’ve been thinking… I don’t even know what I’ve been thinking.

   
I keep looking hard and Aimee tugs self-consciously on her hair. Her bottom lip is lost between her teeth. I should let it go, but I can’t stop myself. “Why don’t you drive, Aimee? Tell me. Is it about the accident last year because I looked up an article online and you weren’t even driving, were you?”

   
We’ve spent all this time together and I know so many things about her that I could fill up an entire book, but I don’t know any of the important stuff. I know that she prefers cherry pie to peach pie, and that her relationship with her mother is crap, and that she’s more of a dog person than a cat person, and that British humor makes her laugh, but those aren’t all of the pieces to the puzzle. Not by a long shot.

   
Aimee’s eyes are so wide and shiny it’s almost like they’ve taken over the rest of her face. Finally, she whispers so low that I barely hear her, “I don’t want to tell you.”

   
I’d been prepared for her to blow me off so it’s not like I’m knocked off my feet or anything. “Yeah fine,” I say stiffly. This conversation really couldn’t have gone worse. I’m tired and now I feel like everything is fucked. “That’s what I figured.”

   
“Cole, I—”

   
I put my hand up to cut her off. “You don’t have to explain. Let’s just watch the movie, yeah?”

   
Aimee is sitting up now. She lifts her hand to my shoulder and lets it slip all of the way down my arm until her fingers are wrapped tightly around mine. My breath hitches imperceptibly and it takes everything I have not to squeeze back.

   
“I don’t want to tell you,” she’s stumbling over the words, “because I’m afraid that when I do, you won’t understand and this whole thing will be over.”

   
“What the hell does that mean, Aimee?”

   
She is still looking at me, holding my hand, and I’m struggling to remember why I got mad in the first place.

   
“I don’t know how to explain, but will you just give me a little more time? I don’t want you to go anywhere just yet,” she says, her face clouding over.

   
“What are you talking about?” I sit down on the edge of the bed and pull her hand into my lap. “I’m not going anywhere.”

   
“Don’t say that.” She closes her eyes and I think it’s to keep from crying. “That’s what everyone says.”

Aimee

It turns out that I am not as tough as I proclaimed earlier and horror movies might not be my thing after all. I feebly tell Cole this and he ends up staying over. He actually seems pleased to be thrown into the role of my protector. Maybe it’s an alpha male thing.

    It’s uncomfortable
at first—with him on one side of my queen bed and me on the other, but eventually the weirdness is replaced by sleep. And we do, in fact, sleep.

   
His phone alarm goes off when my bedroom is still pitched in the slanting amber light of dawn. A high-pitched electronic whine jolts me out of a good dream and it’s a few anxious heartbeats before I remember why I’m so warm in my bed and whose skin is pressed up against mine. With a muffled moan and an unwelcome gust of cold air, Cole slips out of the sheets and stands by the bed. I hear him pull on his jeans and search around my desk for his keys and wallet.

   
Before he leaves, he hovers over my body for a long moment. He’s not touching me, but I can feel his heat and his breath on my skin even through the fabric of the sheets. I know that I should roll over to let him know that I’m awake. I should wish him good luck or positive vibes for the race or something. Instead, I let him place a quick kiss on my forehead and disappear without any words exchanged. Maybe it’s because I’m infamously bad with mornings. Or maybe it’s the goodbyes that I can’t seem to get right.

***

The rain starts out as a light drizzle when Mara is driving us to campus in the morning before class. By noon, it’s morphed into a full-on storm with harsh, pelting raindrops and ashy clouds moving quickly across the sky.

   
This is one of those rare times when I wish that I’d taken my mother’s advice and opted to keep that red travel umbrella she gave me last month stowed inside my bag. I’m supposed to meet Jodi and her new boy-toy, Kyle, at a little deli off-campus for lunch in less than five minutes.

   
Thunder rumbles overhead and a quick flash of lightning lights up the dark sky.

   
“Crap,” I mumble and step back under a curved overhang buffeting the steps of the building. I’ll have to wait this out for a bit.

   
A few like-minded students are huddled against the rough concrete walls—some of them pulling out phones or books to occupy themselves while we wait. I peer out again and sigh. I need to send Jodi a quick text to let her know that I’m going to be late for lunch so I reach into the front pocket of my bag to dig for my phone. I find it but as I maneuver my arm forward, the purple-encased iPhone slips from my fingers and takes a tumble down the steps to land facedown on the concrete walkway below.

   
“No-no-no-no!” I shout, hunching my shoulders in preparation for a sprint into the rain.

   
“Hold up.” The anorak-clad guy standing closest to me touches my arm before shooting past me into the rain to grab my phone.

   
A thank you seems inadequate but it’s all I’ve got. “Thank you. I-I—just—thanks—I—” Surprise halts the jumbled words in my throat as he pushes the bright blue hood of his jacket back and shakes out his coppery hair.

   
“No prob—”

   
The two of us stare at each other in silence. It’s strange how one bit of time and space can pull everything apart and be filled with so much emotion that it chokes you and spits you out. This is what I’m thinking as a dripping wet Daniel Kearns hands over my phone.

   
“Thank you,” I murmur shakily, wiping the screen of the phone with the bottom of my shirt. “It looks like it’s probably going to survive.”
Survive.
Why would I choose that word? It’s like I’m shoving things in Daniel’s face that he doesn’t need to see.

   
“Good to hear. I can’t stand to see perfectly good iPhones getting chucked into the rain.”

   
I clear my throat awkwardly and pull the ends of my hair over my shoulder. It’s a tangled mess from all the moisture in the air and the fact that I barely bothered to brush it this morning. “I thought that you guys left for the triathlon already.”

   
As soon as the words have left my mouth, I want to kick myself. I have no idea what, if anything, Cole has told Daniel about us and I’ve just admitted that I know what his travel schedule is. Unless Daniel is an idiot, I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to put two and two together.

   
Daniel looks at me and then out at rain-soaked campus. “I’m not doing it. It’s just Nate, Quentin, Cole and Brady.” He shakes rain from the bottom of his jacket.

   
“Oh. I just…” I just
what
? I shift on my feet and neither of us speaks for a moment.

   
Daniel breaks first. “So,” he says, and I can tell by his tone what’s coming next. “You and Cole?”

   
I shake my head. “It’s not like you’re thinking.”

   
Daniel’s face smooths out and his warm brown eyes get rounder. “You can tell what I’m thinking, Aimee?”

   
“No.” I shrug, half-embarrassed that I’ve given anything away. “I’m just assuming because it’s what everyone around us has been thinking lately and it’s not happening. Honestly. Cole and I are just friends.” I wonder how many times I’ll have to say that out loud to make it sound true.

   
“He’s asked me about you a couple of times. About… well, you know, but I haven’t told him much. I think that the story belongs to you.”

    “Daniel… I-I…” God. Why can’t I speak?

    “He likes you,” Daniel tells me like it’s the most natural thing.

    
I try not to let him see that my entire world expands and contracts with those three syllables. “I’m pretty confident that he likes a lot of people.”

   
Daniel pauses and I swear that in his silence I can hear the sound of my own heart over the thrum of the rain. There’s something different in his voice when he says, “Not like this.”

   
What does that mean?

   
“Look, Aimee,” he continues as he pushes his soggy hair away from his forehead. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you since I found out that you were enrolled here, and the night that we drove you home I didn’t really get the chance…”

   
“Uh, yeah. I feel like I should tell you that the behavior that you witnessed is really unusual for me. I’m not normally so… um, out of it.”

   
Daniel chuckles. “Out of it, blitzed, wasted, whatever you want to call it.”

   
“It’s not my usual thing,” I assure him.             

    Daniel lifts his
hand. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

   
“Honestly, Daniel, I feel like I do.”

   
Daniel looks at me with his sister’s eyes, not saying anything for a long time. I want to turn away but I’m frozen in place. I can see by the set of his shoulders and his jawline that he’s trying to censor himself. I should probably save him the effort and tell him that just because he doesn’t use Jillian’s name, it doesn’t keep her out of our conversation.