Just Like Me (15 page)

Mr. Nolan had texted me letting me know it was safe to come out, but I stayed holed up in my dorm the rest of the night. I’ll admit it…I was scared I’d run into Chris. I haven’t been able to face him in two years. After what had happened between us, especially what he had just done, how could I possibly look at him?

Soon my alarm clock was ranting and raving the next morning. It seemed to be laughing that I had to get up this early. Lisa rolled over and put her pillow over her head, drowning out the sound.

“Lisa.” I croaked, dragging myself to the closet. “It’s time to get up. You’ve got science or whatever.”

She groaned.

“I want to sleep.” She mumbled into the mattress.

“Me and you both. Now get up.”

In history everyone was there and accounted for. My history professor ranted and raved about everyone missing Friday (not everyone, I was obviously in attendance. And if he had gone ahead with class I wouldn’t have found Taylor Jett). But everyone grumbled apologies and class continued like normal. No one paid attention to me, and you have no idea how glad I was for that.

Class ended quickly and I stomped my way back to the dorm. I dragged myself up the steps and through the front doors. I saw a figure standing by the secretary; the secretary was there to sign visitors in and out. We can’t have boys in our room after midnight and of course they have to have a record of who is in what room. The hooded figure, I noticed, had a familiar lean.

“I just need to figure out when she’s getting back.” I heard Taylor’s voice echo through the halls.

“I’m sorry, sir. That is private information that we aren’t able to lend out to anyone. I have to follow protocol.”

He sighed and suddenly glanced behind him, surprised I was standing there. The sunglasses hid the surprise in his eyes, but his body jumped when he realized I was right behind him.

“I guess I need to sign him in.” I grumbled nodding my head towards Taylor. The secretary gave me a skeptical look, but grabbed her pen.

“Name?”

Right, he just asked for my information, how can you not know my name?
“Kale Delaney, 312B.”

“Alright. I’ll need some I.D. so I can sign you in, sir.”

“I don’t have a license.” Taylor said, putting on the best surprised face I had ever seen. “What else can I offer you?”

“I have to see your I.D. before I can sign you in.”

“It’s against my religion to have identification. If I died and had identification on me…I’d go to hell.”

I suppressed a giggle as the secretary glared at him.

“Fine. What name do you want me to write down?”

“Zach.” I answered for him. “Zach Coffee. Thanks.” I answered quickly and tugged him toward the elevator.

“Zach Coffee? I mean, I get the coffee part, but Zach?” He made a hurt face. “I don’t think I look like a Zach.” He feigned being offended.

“It’s something Lisa and I came up with.” I said as the elevator doors snapped shut. “I didn’t just want to throw your actual name out there around campus.” I pressed three. Taylor observed me doing this, seeming to catalog the information into his brain.

“Floor three, huh? That information would have been useful say…ten minutes ago.”

“I wouldn’t have been there.”

“I could have waited.”

When the doors opened I dragged him down the hall to our room, 312B. I unlocked the door and shoved him in. He glanced around, interested in our decorations.

His eyes followed Lisa’s side of the room first. Her pinkalicious princess themed bed and decorations along with her favorite hot guy pictures posted on her walls. Then he looked at my side, my favorite movie posters hung up along my wall and my bedspread was a bright tie-dye.

“Huh, I never guessed you to be such a hot guy hoarder. I’m impressed.” He teased.

He stepped in closer, looking at a picture of himself that I remembered Lisa tearing from a magazine a couple days ago.

“I think we both know that I’m a lot tamer than that.”

I sat down on my bed and watched as he observed all of Lisa’s boy cut-outs.

“This guy’s an ass.” He said, pointing at the Jude dude. “This guy’s ok.” He said pointing at a guy I didn’t know the name of.

“That guy’s an ass.” I said pointing at Taylor’s picture. He rolled his eyes and finally parked in my desk chair.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked after an awkward beat of silence. I fidgeted and glanced at my clock. When would Lisa get here?

“You didn’t text me.” He answered, studying my computer. Had it even been 24 hours since I had last seem him?

“You didn’t have to fly out here; you could have gotten my number from Jerry.”

“Yea…but that doesn’t seem as romantic.” He pressed the power button on my laptop. He had guts to just be messing with my stuff. I was thankful when the password screen came up. Taylor attempted my password code, but he didn’t guess it. He glanced up at me. “I mean, isn’t this a turn-on? The potential love of your life, soaring across country just to sit in your room and mess with your stuff?”

“I think the soaring across country bit is a tad exaggerated.” He continued to punch buttons on my computer, trying to unlock it.

“What’s your password?”

“Why are you here?”

He continued tapping keys.

“Nope, that didn’t work.” He sighed. I gave him a look. He let out a breath, leaning back in the chair and lacing his hands on top of his head.  “I heard you had some trouble yesterday with some guy. I wanted to check up and make sure you were ok.”

“I’m fine.”

He considered that, he nodded coolly and gazed at my computer screen.

“Can I cut you a deal?”

“Depends.”

“I tell you about Chrissie Fast and you tell me about Chris Tanning.”

“Funny how they both start with ‘chris’ huh?” He didn’t find it funny. I leaned against the concrete wall and dangled my feet over the side of the bed. I was surprised he even knew Chris’s name. Maybe he was genuinely worried.

Or maybe I needed to snap out of it.

“Why do you care about Chris?” I fenced.

He began wringing his hands and let out a frustrated sigh. “Because…I…” He rolled his eyes and looked at me. “…care about you, Kale.” He grinned and threw his hands up in mock frustration. “I care about you. And how dare you make me, a manly man, admit that. A man should never reveal his feelings. It is unmanly. I am tough and strong and confident and I shouldn’t have to act all…emotion-y.” He finished his spiel with his bottom lip protruding and his eyes big and sad.

“Yea, manly. Ok. You first.”

“How do I know you’ll tell me about Chris?” He accused.

“I guess you’ll have to find out, huh?”
              He turned back to my computer. “Your sister’s name is Nori?” He asked. I nodded. He spent a moment punching keys on my keyboard, and to my surprise my home screen popped up.

“What?! Lisa can’t even guess my password.”

“You said your sister’s name was Nori.” He said.

“Yea.”

“Nori is a seaweed wrap. Your password is seaweed. I tried ‘leafy green’ which is what kale means, but that didn’t budge. So then I tried your sister’s definition.” He shrugged, no big deal. “I have to ask how a mother names her two kids after food items. Come to think of it, leafy green items.”

“She named us both after what she was craving during her pregnancy but couldn’t have. With me, she wanted salad all the time. Something green…but my dad…well, he had control over what food items were in the house. So she had to stuff herself with snack cakes and chips. It made her really sick. She wasn’t about to name me lettuce, so she called me Kale. With Nori…she wanted sushi. All the time. But her doctor said she definitely couldn’t consume raw seafood.”

“So she named her after the seaweed wrap.”

“Yea.”

Taylor went on the internet, pulling up my social network site. I was automatically signed in. He went to the search bar and looked up Chris Tanning. Chris’s page popped up and he viewed a page that showed posts and pictures we had shared. He bit his lip as he went through pictures of us during my senior year. Us at the beach, at a play, at school. He looked at the posts we shared too.

“Jealous, much?” I teased, hoping to lighten his mood. But he was concentrating on posts we had shared.

I should probably be mad he was looking at that stuff, but I wasn’t. I didn’t have anything to hide. Most girls took pictures down that were ugly or made them look fat. I posted every picture I had. If someone judges me by the way I look in a picture…then maybe I shouldn’t be friends with them at all.

“Chrissie was on set during one of my movies.” Taylor finally breaking the silence, minimizing my page. “She was recording a song for the set and wanted to get a feel for the atmosphere. I saw her, liked the way she looked, so I struck up a conversation with her.” He drummed his fingers on my desk. “It was innocent enough, at first. We dated; let paparazzi take pictures of us together. But then she wanted to get serious. She wanted to move in together, maybe shoot a movie together. It was happening too fast. Those are the two things I won’t do with a girl if I’m not serious. And I’m never serious.” He cringed and watched my expression. “I mean, I’m never…sometimes I…”

I rolled my eyes and waved him off. He hesitated, but continued. “Moving in is big. And shooting a movie with someone…that movie is going to stick around for a long time. It’s better to shoot movies with someone you don’t know, that way when you look back and watch it you’re not regretting everything about the relationship. A relationship shouldn’t be in a movie, a movie should just be a fun memory to look back on. Anyway, she wanted that stuff and I didn’t. I kind of blew her off. Stopped calling her, stopping hanging out with her. I never really said it ended, so she kept hanging on. I finally started dating my costar to get it through her head that we were over. She couldn’t get over it, and she wrote that song ‘I’m Still Alive’ and put it out there as her new single. We don’t really talk any more, and Veronica and I didn’t last long. She had really wanted to date a props guy on set and I just wanted to get Chrissie off my back.”

He glanced down at his hands and even though he wasn’t looking at me, I nodded. I considered some of the lyrics in Chrissie Fast’s song.

I’m always broken,

From the words that are unspoken.

“That makes sense, some of the song lyrics, I guess.”

He nodded.

“So, tell me about Chris.” He demanded. His composure was much more relaxed.

I sighed, taking time to observe my bedspread. Taylor didn’t budge, his eyes fixed on me as he relaxed his hands behind his head.

“Chris…I met Chris my junior year in high-school. We were in the same history class together. He had been dating a girl then, so I just moved him out of my mind completely. Senior year came around…and he had broken up with her. So…I started falling for him. We had a lot of the same classes, and I started hanging out with this group he was in. We were pretty tight. We were always hanging out after school and stuff.”

“Was Lisa in this group?”
“No…Lisa and I…we had had a fight…and were kind of taking a break from each other.”

“Really?”

“Yea. So, I fell hard for Chris. He was always grinning, smiling. He would hold my hand during class or hug me afterward, tell me I was beautiful. I’d never had that, not really. When prom came around, I got nervous, I really wanted to go with him. I worked up the nerve to ask him, but by the time …” I bit my lip, remembering the heart break. “He had asked another girl. I…I was devastated. You’d think after that I would have moved on, but I didn’t. I was hopeful because his prom date was a bust. She had cried the whole time over an ex. It came out later that Chris had really liked her, but got over her fast after that. I didn’t even dance with anyone at my senior prom. That’s pretty sad, I guess. But Chris came back to me after that, kept holding my hand, hugging me, making me feel like I had a chance. He played harder for me than he had before, but it still was strictly platonic. We all went to the beach together and Chris insisted on taking pictures together, he even asked me to a play that was going on later in the summer. I was ecstatic. I thought that was it, I thought I would finally get what I wanted. That he finally realized…that he finally was ready for a relationship with me. But…”

“But?”

“But the beach trip ended. We went to the play together and he kissed me. I was on cloud nine. I didn’t hear from him for days, and I finally messaged him, fed up that he hadn’t brought up dating or anything. I was angry at that point. I messaged and asked him if he knew that I liked him. He said yes. He knew. He didn’t say anything else about it.”

“I felt ashamed. I felt like I still hadn’t gotten that closure I needed. So I posted a rant up on my social media page, pretty much calling him out on everything. He messaged me later apologizing for leading me on for so long. He said he was moving on to college and thought we were better as friends. I couldn’t take it, I couldn’t take the rejection. I had spent a year thinking I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t breathe after that. I had thought I loved him, had imagined a life with him. I should have realized though…he was never interested in me. No one ever is.”