Winter Jacket (26 page)

God, I was an idiot.  I should be at
Troian’s condo right now, apologizing with my heart in my hands, not begging my best friend to be Hunter’s keeper.

Troian sighed. I wondere
d if we were sharing the same thought. "Yeah. I can do that."

“Thanks, Troi.  You’re the best friend a girl could ask for.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, grumbling. “Just fix this, okay?  I don’t need all this drama.”

I ended up throwing away my uninspired dinner without touching it.  That night, while Nikole and Troian’s party raged on, I tried reading a book, but my mind kept wandering.
I was going crazy, continually looking at the clock while the party was going on, wondering what Hunter was doing at that exact moment.   I wanted to text Troian and demand status updates.  How was Hunter?  What was Hunter doing?  Was she making new friends?  Was she off in a room someplace getting felt up by a stranger?  On two occasions I even went so far as to grab my jacket from the front hall.  One of those times I made it as far as my detached garage.  Both times, however, I realized I was being obsessive and needed to take my punishment.

To make matters worse, Sylvia was in a bad mood.  I tried picking her up and putting her on my lap to cuddle, but she’d bit me and scampered away down the hallway.  I wondered if she knew what I’d done and was punishing me, too.

I spent the remainder of my night making gin and tonics, light on the tonic and heavy on the gin.  By the time I was ready to pass out, I reeked of a Christmas tree.

I stumbled to bed and grabbed onto the pillow Hunter usually slept on.  I don’t know if it was just in my head, but I could still smell her light scent on the pillowcase.  I hugged it against my body and tried to get some sleep.

+++++

The next morning I woke up abruptly when a noise exploded in my bedroom. I slapped at my clock radio, mistakenly believing it was my alarm that was making that horrible noise.  When the sound continued, I sat up in bed, unable to pinpoint what had snapped me out of a dreamless sleep. I sat up too quickly though and the room began to spin.  I swallowed down a wave of nausea and kicked my right leg out from under my covers. I let gravity do its thing and stomped my foot down on the floor and the room stabilized. It was a trick an ex-boyfriend had taught me in college to get rid of the room spins. I have no idea why it worked, but it always did. I hadn't had to use it in years though. Damn that hard liquor.

The mystery noise cut off as abruptly as it had started and I flopped back down in bed, my head hitting the pillow hard.
 My mouth felt like ass. My head was pounding. I'd fallen asleep with my contacts in and my eyes ached.  I wanted to die.

The same noise from before started up again.
 I got out of bed and played a solitary game of Hotter/Colder until I found the source of the obnoxious noise – my cell phone. I had specific ring tones assigned to the people who called me the most frequently and I didn't recognize the phone number and there was no way in hell I would have purposely chosen that noise.

I thought about letting the call go to voicemail because I wasn't done feeling sorry for myself yet, but something made me answer.

"Hello?"

“Hey.
”  It was Troian.

"What the hell is this num
ber?" I barked into the phone.

"
Good morning to you, too, asshole.  It's the phone my work gave me.  My cell died and I’m too lazy to plug it in."

"Stop it
,” I chastised.  I sat down on the edge of my mattress and cradled my head in my free hand. “You're scaring me. A house warming party
and
a phone just for work? It's like I don't know you at all."

“
Listen, Elle.”  Troian’s serious tone indicated there was an actual purpose to her call.  It was our pattern again – tease, be mean, get real.  “If you have any intention of making things right with your girl, then you’ll do it now before she moves on to the next warm bed.”

“She’s not like that,” I defended her.

“She certainly looked like she was last night.”

I gripped my phone tighter. “What?”  My voice came out little more than a choked whisper
.

“
It’s not my place to be telling you any of this,” Troian said, dropping her tone, “but I think Hunter fooled around with someone at the party last night.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”
My stomach soured and the previous night’s gin and tonics had nothing to do with it. "Where is she right now?” My worst nightmare was that Hunter had gone home with someone else after the party.

"She's in the shower.
We wouldn’t let her leave the party after she’d had so much to drink.  But if she pukes in there and clogs the drain, I'm billing you for the plumber."

That Troian let Hunter drink kind of surprised me.  It wasn’t just the under-aged thing, but u
sually Troian was Captain Sobriety. Nikole was the only reason they kept alcohol in the house and even then it had been an epic fight over what kind and how much she'd be allowed to store in their liquor cabinet.

“
Now before you jump to conclusions and go all self-destructive, I don’t know exactly what went down,” Troian revealed. “Hunter was pretty drunk and I saw her wander off with this girl Nik knows.  There were a lot more people at the party than I’d expected and I kind of lost track of her.”

“No, that’s okay.  I don’t need to hear the details,” I said, cutting her off from divulging anymore. “Thank you for telling me
, and thank you for taking care of her this morning.”

"
Sure.  The girl deserved to be a little irresponsible," Troian unhelpfully reasoned. "She's put up with dating you, after all.  I'm surprised you hadn't led the poor girl to drink earlier."

Troian had a particular talent for calling my bullshit and putting me in my place when I acted out. "Thanks."

“So what are you going to do?”

I sighed and rubbed at her face. “The only thing I know how to do.”

“I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

“Thanks for the heads up, Troi,” I told my friend.  “I’ll talk to you later.”

+++++

CHAPTER FOuRTEEN

The hallway leading to
Hunter’s apartment smelled like Indian food.  The lighting wasn’t the best either, kind of an unattractive halogen glow, but it wasn’t like there was anything I really wanted to see better in the hallway.  It was one of those places where you have to buzz at the front door to gain entrance to the complex.  But I guess I had an honest face because one of the neighbors had let me in on their way out.

I hadn’t been to her apartment before.  I’d dropped her off that once before we started dating
and I’d picked her up before the aquarium, but I’d never been inside. And for as long as we’d been together, I always preferred my own house and wanted to sleep in my own bed instead of coming back here. Hunter had never complained, but the thought made me realize just how horribly selfish I’d been. 

I straightened my shoulders as I stood outside her apartment.  I was going to fix this.
  I knocked and waited for the door to open.

"Elle."
Hunter stood, dumbstruck.             

I lowered my gaze. "Hi.
Can I come in?"

She hesitated, perhaps unnerved by my unannounced appearance, or
simply just debating if I should be admitted entrance. After a painful moment where I had begun to rethink this whole 'showing up uninvited' strategy, she finally took a few steps backward and lifted her hand, ushering me inside.

I followed her into the apartment, not yet knowing what to say or do.
I had rehearsed a lengthy apology, but the moment she had opened the door, the practiced, articulate words had abandoned me. I turned to close the door behind me, careful and deliberate with my movements. The heavy door shut and the lock latched with a solemn click.

When I turned back around to face her, my breath caught in my thro
at.  Hunter was invading my personal bubble.  She stood so close, I could tell she wasn’t wearing makeup because her eyelashes were blonde. Her breathing sounded strained as if she was holding back emotions bubbling just beneath the surface.

I opened my mouth to speak – to say what, I don't know.
 But before I could launch into some semblance of a cobbled apology, my words were cut off by her mouth crashing into mine.  She kissed me with such force that I stumbled backwards and my back hit against her front door.

She
pressed the full length of her body against mine, pinning me to the door.  Her tongue sought entrance to my mouth, which I could not deny her.  Her hands went to either side of my face, practically holding me by the ears. It took me a moment to figure out why my face was wet.  Her streaming tears were warm against my skin and showed no sign of stopping.  Her mouth tasted different to me.  I could taste the salty mixture of her tears and the lingering taste of tequila.

Her lips moved against mine, in a rapid, desperate motion. I realized she was t
alking to me through the kiss. “I couldn't do it,” she kept mumbling into my mouth. “I'm so sorry.”

“
Shhh," I hushed, stroking the side of her face. "You don't have anything to be sorry about, Hunter. I'm the one who messed up.  And you –.”

She cut me off. “I fucked up, too.”

She violently let go of my head and her hands went to the front button of my jeans.  She fumbled with the fasten just long enough for me to grab onto her wrists and gently pull her shaking hands away.

Her f
ace took on a hard, ugly edge. “Isn't this what you wanted?”

I didn't know what she was talking about, but I was too afraid to ask.
 I was too afraid to say anything.

“Just sex,” she spit out. “
Isn't that why you went running to Ruby?”

I opened and closed my mouth a
few times like a feeding fish. “I messed up,” I willfully admitted.  “But I didn't have sex with her, Hunter.  I didn't cheat on you.”

“
Why should I believe you?” Her voice had taken on a bitterness to which I wasn't accustomed. She always had a smile in her tone. Warm. Laughing. Joyful. As if life hadn’t yet broken her.  I suppose this is what I had done to her. “I know you cheated on your last girlfriend with her. Why should I think I'm any different?”

She spun
away from me. I watched her shoulders shake, but I couldn't tell if she was crying or simply vibrating in anger.  Maybe it was both.  I wanted to reach out to her, to hold her and console her.  But I had to get these words out.

“She tried to blackmail me,”
I said meekly. The words felt strange in my mouth.  It was like I was living out a
Lifetime
movie. I watched Hunter’s body intently, desperate to read her emotions. “She threatened to tell my Dean about you and me, so I went to her hotel to ask her not to.  But nothing happened, Hunter.  I promise.”

At my admission, she slowly turned in my direction. Her eyes
looked angry and red at the edges and her cheeks were blotched with tear tracks.  Her arms still hugged her own form, something I wanted to do for her.  “I thought dating me wasn’t a big deal now that you aren't my teacher anymore."

I
sighed and rubbed at my face. “Technically, it's fine. But this, I don't know,
concept
of a teacher being intimate with a student? They make bad porno about this kind of stuff.”

“So you didn’t cheat on me.
”

“No,” I said slowly, letting the word and syllable weigh on my tongue. 
I took a tentative step closer to her.  “I didn’t cheat on you.  But I know I should have just told you about Ruby.  I should have been honest and upfront about everything that was happening instead of trying to cover my ass and deal with it on my own.”

“You’re
right.” My heart ached in my chest; she looked so defeated and so drained. I had done this to her.  I felt like she had her fingers curled around the bloody, beating, mass of muscle and was slowly squeezing.

“
I know I messed up, Hunter. I kept secrets from you, and I betrayed your trust.” I could feel my own emotions start to well up.   Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes.  “I'm no good at any of this.”
Keep it together
. “Relationships. Monogamy.” I shook my head. “Being a grown-up.”