Put Me Back Together (16 page)

“Then you only go in if you want to,” Emily replied.

“What if he doesn’t try to take me into a room?” I said.

“Then you call me from the bathroom, where you’ll be hiding,” Emily said. Though I resented it, this was an accurate statement.

“What if he goes into a room with another girl?” I said.

“He invited you, Katie, didn’t he?” Anita said. “That means something. Even if he
used
to be a slut, he has good taste now. Maybe he’s changed.”

“Maybe he’ll surprise you,” Emily agreed.

“What if he leaves me alone?” I said, turning my head to the side so I was staring at the side of my sister’s face, a face that looked so much like my own and yet, not at all.

I saw Em stiffen. She knew what I was referring to. When she turned to face me, her expression was more serious than it had been all evening.

She said, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

An hour later I was sitting on a bench outside Ban Righ Hall waiting for Lucas, feeling a little less like I was going to throw up and a little more like I might live through the night, though I wasn’t positive about it. It was a mild night for early March, and I didn’t really need the gloves I was wearing but I kept them on anyway. They stopped me from twisting my fingers, which I desperately wanted to do right then. In the end the girls had said the clothes I was wearing were unacceptable, and after a near-fight with Emily over her insistence that I wear her red halter, I’d settled on a cute teal-coloured dress of Anita’s, a pair of patterned tights, and Em’s calf-length suede boots, proffered to me in a moment of real sisterly selflessness—which was only slightly ruined by her telling me that if I stained them she would stab me to death with one of my paint brushes. They’d piled my hair on top of my head and secured it there with a pair of black lacquered chopsticks. I’d even let them put a little makeup on me.

I looked good and that made me feel strong. What I liked even more about it was that I looked just slightly like someone other than myself, which made me feel like someone other than myself, which was a good thing. Maybe this other me could get through a university party in one piece. She was the one who’d gotten us into this mess in the first place, clearly, since I hadn’t been the one to agree to go to this party with Lucas. That was all her.

Lucas and I had gotten into a nice routine lately almost without my being aware of it. The Monday after our stay-in lunch he’d asked me if I wanted to grab some food after art class and I’d agreed, mostly because I was hungry and I’d come to realize that Lucas knew all the best cheap places to eat. We’d gotten poutine at Earl’s Kitchen and then he’d walked me back to my apartment. And then we’d done the same the next day after working in the studio, and then again on Thursday.

He didn’t mention the sketches or the moment we’d had outside my apartment, though several times it seemed like he wanted to. He seemed to be waiting for some kind of cue from me. But I was happy just to leave things as they were, the two of us buddies—although I had to admit he seemed to take every opportunity to touch me that he possibly could—our banter light even if our gazes were heavy. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t exactly easy to sit across from him watching him eat a taco in the messiest possible way and not lunge over the table and kiss him. Actually, it was pretty much agony. But nothing had changed. He was still a player. I still didn’t need a boyfriend, or a hookup, or a whatever. Having Lucas as my friend was a big enough change for now. It was a bigger change than I’d ever thought I would make—that was for sure. I didn’t need more right now. I needed strong and stable, and that was Lucas. I needed comfortable, and somehow that was him, too. I was getting used to him.

So when he asked me if I wanted to go with him to a party Friday night, I heard myself giving the comfortable answer, the answer I’d been giving him all week. I heard the casual, “Sure, sounds good,” flowing off my tongue, and I wondered who the heck I had become.

Who was this new Katie, friends with Lucas Matthews, going to games with him, and sharing fries with him and letting him take her to parties?

I understood the old Katie. I knew her limits. But what were the new Katie’s limits? What could the new Katie handle? And if the new Katie suddenly disappeared, leaving the old Katie in her place, what the hell was I supposed to do then?

My great look armor had basically started to disintegrate and I was about two seconds from running for my life when Lucas appeared on the path to my left. Slutty man-whore Lothario Lucas. But he didn’t seem slutty to me. Seeing him was a breath of fresh air and as I got to my feet I found myself drinking in the sight of him, every beautiful well-sculpted inch. It was weird the way just looking at him and knowing he was near made me feel strong. Maybe that was how the new Katie handled it all. She didn’t handle it alone. She had Lucas by her side.

“What are you doing out here in the cold?” Lucas said. “You should have waited inside for me.”

Reaching out, he ran his hand up and down the back of my coat, which only pressed me closer to him. I got the impression that was kind of the point.

“It’s not that cold; I’m wearing gloves, and it’s not even below zero. Why are we going to this party?” I said in one big rush, forcing out the question I didn’t even realize I’d been holding in. The validity of the question didn’t stop me from staring at the ground in embarrassment as Lucas barked out a laugh.

“I mean,” I continued—wow, the cement really was fascinating!—“I know you haven’t been going to a lot of parties…”

“You know that?” Lucas said. I could just picture the glint in his eye as he said it. “And how do you know that?”

“Well, you know, Em mentioned…”

This time I could see him bending down to get a better look at my face. “So you’ve been talking to your sister about me?” His warm, minty breath against my face made me shiver.

“Oh, shut up!” I said, looking up at last, narrowing my eyes at him. “Emily knows you and I are friends.”

Lucas stood tall again as we started walking down the path. “There’s that word again,” he said as he put his arm around my shoulder. “
Friends
.”

I chose to ignore this, even though being snug in the crook of his arm, my side pressed into his, was making my heart skip every second beat.

“But really,” I persisted, “what changed your mind? I thought you wanted to stay away from the party scene. What made you want to go to this one all of a sudden?”

“You mean besides the terrible free beer and awful conversation and, oh God, those friends of mine? They really are a miserable bunch,” he said. His tone was light and sarcastic, but I suddenly felt as though I’d stepped in something. Did he sense that I had no interest in meeting his friends or drinking their beer or talking to them? Was old Katie rearing her ugly head?

“I mean, no,” I said frantically. “What I mean is… I didn’t mean—”

He stopped and took me by the shoulders. “Katie,” he said softly, but firmly. “I was just kidding.”

I felt my whole body sag with relief. Jesus, we hadn’t even made it off campus and I was already exhausted.

“And to answer your question,” he went on, pushing a stray curl behind my ear, “I couldn’t think of a good reason to go to those other parties. That’s why I didn’t go.”

I nodded, eager to be agreeable, though I still didn’t really feel like I understood.

Then he took my chin in his hand and tilted my face up toward his. Unconsciously, I found myself leaning in. It was incredible, like he was the flame and I was the moth. I just couldn’t stop gravitating toward his touch.

He said, “I guess I was just looking for a good excuse.”

“So what’s your excuse?” I breathed.

“The chance to show you off,” he replied

And just like that going to a party with Lucas didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

We left campus, going north. I lived east of campus, but I knew the area—we were close to the Dairy Queen. (I mapped out all locations in Kingston by their distance to the Dairy Queen.) Though Lucas had told me the party was on Frontenac, I’d had no idea it would be so close by. We’d only been walking for about five minutes when we began to notice parked cars crowding both sides of the street. It was pretty clear which house we were aiming for. As we approached on the sidewalk, the three-story gray house on the other side of the street stood out not only because the porch was crowded with people, but also because the Christmas lights that lined the roof and wound up the porch columns were all lit. The booming music was also a pretty good indicator.

My footsteps started to slow as we came closer and I was surprised to see that Lucas’s did, too. By the time we were standing directly across from the house, we were at a standstill.

A guy on the porch spotted Lucas and called out his name. I examined his face for a reaction, but saw nothing. It had taken on that closed-off quality again.

He swallowed. “I guess it’s too late to change our minds,” he said, and my heart did a little pitter-patter at the idea that getting out of the party was still a possibility. I began to think of all the other things we could do with the evening: go to the movies, or out to eat, or to the studio, or maybe…

Another voice, a girl’s voice this time, joined the first guy in calling Lucas’s name, and then suddenly the whole porch was chanting, “Lucas! Lucas! Lucas!”

Wow. Yeah, there was no turning back now.

“Another thing Em told me about you is that you used to be a slut,” I said. I suppose I should have felt bad for being so blunt about it, but there was a porch full of girls chanting his name. Blunt was sort of unavoidable.

“Did she?” Lucas said. We were both still watching the house instead of each other. “She’s right, I used to be. But I’m not anymore.” He took my hand and squeezed it and when I glanced at him he gave me a friendly smile, dropping the stoic mask he’d been wearing.

He could easily have been bullshitting me. That was what players did, wasn’t it? My distrustful nature should have been telling me to run, but it wasn’t. The old Katie and the new Katie, both our brains and both our hearts were telling me that what he said was true. Who was I to argue?

“Let’s go in already,” I said. “It’s colder out here than I thought.”

We crossed the street and joined the party.

Entering a party—my first party—with Lucas was your basic terrifying experience. If I’d come in alone I would have been pretty much ignored, and could have slunk to the back and hid, clutching my red cup of beer. But I’d come in on the arm of Lucas Matthews, which meant all eyes were on us.

The house was pretty big, the entrance opening up onto a staircase leading upwards with rooms on either side, all of which were filled with partygoers in varying states of drunken splendor. There were people sitting and standing on the stairs, lining the hallway that led back to the kitchen, sprawled over the rug and on the couches and around the dining room table, where they seemed to be playing strip poker. One guy wasn’t wearing any pants, and another appeared to be down to his socks and underwear. It satisfied me to see that the two girls at the table were fully clothed. The scene matched perfectly the American college party sketch I’d drawn in my head with details I’d gleaned from various movies and TV shows and stories Em had told me, though I was glad no girls were wearing bottle caps as pasties. Although the night was still young.

Moving through the crowd was slow going, because everyone seemed to know Lucas and wanted to greet him. I couldn’t really blame them for wanting to be close to him. There was no chance in hell I was leaving his side—that was for sure. But dear lord, we’d barely moved an inch from the entranceway. At this rate we’d never make it to the keg, which I’d caught sight of sitting next to the fiWith, and which was looking pretty tempting right about now. And I didn’t even like the taste of beer. I’d already been introduced to so many people whose names I’d already forgotten and had gotten the evil eye from at least three girls, one of who actually tried to have a conversation with me—she’d asked me why I was wearing my hair “like that,” and made a face.

I was still watching her walk away when a big bear of a guy with a full beard came barreling toward us, his arms open wide.

“That’s Oleg,” Lucas explained moments before he was engulfed in his friend’s arms and lifted off the ground.

It was Oleg’s party.

“Lucas, my good friend,” Oleg boomed. “How wonderful of you to join us on this joyous March evening. Where’s your drink and who’s your friend? I think Taylor is looking for you, and she’s—”

The name “Taylor” triggered a memory that wouldn’t quite surface. I knew I’d heard her name before, but I couldn’t place where.

Lucas leaned forward and spoke quietly in Oleg’s ear, and then Oleg’s big brown eyes landed on me with a wide, merry grin. He looked a lot like a younger version of Santa.

“My lady,” Oleg said, taking my hand and placing a chaste kiss on my knuckles. I gave Lucas a puzzled look. What exactly had he whispered in Oleg’s ear? “You know, you look like one of my kin. Are you a fellow Jew? Maybe Moroccan?”

I sighed quietly while giving Oleg a warm smile. “Nope,” I answered. “I’m half-Danish, half-Indian.”

“Well that’s an interesting combination!” Oleg said.