You Make Me (21 page)

“She looked pissed. Trust me, her feelings are not hurt, she just doesn’t like to lose.”

“So why did you go out with her?” A thought that had never occurred to me popped into my head. “How did you know I was here, going to UMaine?”

“It’s all on your shit online. Go Bears. It wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

“Oh.” That made sense. Though not particularly reassuring to know anyone and everyone could figure that out about me. “Did you know I’d be at that fraternity party the night… that night?”

“No. That I did not know. Nor did I have a clue Frat Boy was going to pop the question or trust me, I would not have been there.”

“So why did you date Darla then? I mean, if you came here hoping to see me.”

“I came here knowing you were in a relationship.” He ignored his menu, but played with the empty coffee mug in front of him, spinning it in half circles over and over. “If I’m honest with you about Darla I’m going to look like an asshole and I’d prefer you not think I’m an asshole.”

“So don’t be an asshole then. Tell me the truth. Did you hook up with her?” I wasn’t sure why it was important or why I was pressing him. It was highly likely he’d had sex with her. And if not her, then someone before her.

Heath narrowed his eyes at me. “Yes. Did you have sex with Ethan?”

Damn it. I should have known he wouldn’t just reassure me or lie. He never lied. “You know the answer to that.”

“Yes. I do. Just like you knew to the question you just asked. Don’t ask if you don’t want to hear the answer, especially if you already know the truth.”

Sometimes I wished he weren’t so brutally honest. “Fine. Whatever.”

That just made him break into a slow smile. “Cat. There’s no comparison. You do know that, right?

I did. For him, anyway. I knew that I was to him what he was to me and that was irreplaceable. Everything. I wasn’t sure why I was pushing him so hard. “I know.”

“Then don’t let it bother you.” He shrugged. “She’s a nice girl, I don’t mean to imply she isn’t. But she’s not you. No one is you.”

Just hearing him reassure me made me feel stupid. Ashamed. I had never thought of myself as needy. I hated being jealous, suspicious, pathetic.

I wanted to cry. Was this what love always did? Made you an addict, always in need of another fix? Another compliment, another kiss, another promise?

I’d been more sure of myself, of us, at seventeen than I was now.

But we’d had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows together and it seemed to me that maybe I hadn’t figured out yet how to just be somewhere in the middle with him. I did trust his love though.

More than anything else in the world, I believed in that.

Chapter Seventeen

I needed to trust his love, because everywhere we went over the next two weeks, we ran into people we knew or Ethan knew or Heath knew. It wasn’t until we were trying to keep a low profile that I realized how small campus could be, despite having ten thousand students, or how judgmental people could be.

Heath had gotten a job bartending, a skill I hadn’t even known he had, and I had class, so we couldn’t spend every second together, but I was staying most nights at his place. We’d spent so much time apart, we wanted to make up for lost time, and we were filling in the gaps of what we’d experienced apart since high school. Inside his apartment, it was calm, easy, filled with laughter and intimacy. Sex like I’d never even imagined it could be.

But whenever we tried to go to the movies, or for a walk, or out to eat, we were watched. And everyone had an opinion.

Heath was restless, I could tell. He didn’t like the vibe of a college town. But I didn’t bring up the future because I was scared. He wanted to go back to Vinalhaven and I wasn’t ready to give up the vision of a life in Bangor or Portland, in an office. A house in the suburbs.

But we didn’t discuss it. We just tried to enjoy the now.

Unfortunately now was filled with people who wanted to discuss the future. “So where are you living next year?” Janice asked me one day. “Because there’s like five girls who want your room if you’re moving out.”

“I don’t know. It’s only November.” We were in the lounge, and I had been studying while Heath was at work.

“You have to decide by January. I know if you were with Ethan, you’d be staying since he’s graduating and going to law school, but now… I thought maybe there was somewhere else you wanted to be.” She gave me a pointed look and it wasn’t exactly filled with sisterly approval.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” I felt more than a little hurt. “If you want my room, just tell me straight up.”

“I want your room if you’re leaving. But of course you don’t have to leave. Most of us feel you’d be better off staying here.”

There it was again. That pointed look.

Aubrey came into the lounge and flopped on the couch. She and I weren’t fighting or anything, but we’d barely seen each other. We had texted a few times and that had been it. I’d been hoping that we could hang out, but in the middle of a weird conversation about my living arrangements was not when I wanted to see her.

“What’s going on?” Aubrey asked. “But before you answer I’m going to tell you all that I basically don’t care because I met this guy who is so completely hot and amazing that I find myself honestly uninterested in all of you right now.”

I was actually grateful to Aubrey for taking me out of the hot seat. “Oh, yeah? Who is this magical mystery man?”

“His name is Jared and he’s a grad student who I met at the coffee shop when I turned and ran him in to him with my caramel macchiato. He is foxy with a capital F and we’re hanging out tomorrow night.”

“Is that code for sex?” Janice asked.

“No. I’m trying something new,” Aubrey said. “The three date rule. I refuse to sleep with him until we’ve been out at least three times. I want a relationship, not a random hook up.”

“That’s awesome. I think that’s a great idea.” I was totally sincere. I knew she was interested in really building something with a guy. “What do you like about him? What is he studying?”

“I have no idea. Probably something like anthropology or art history. Something with zero income potential. Otherwise he wouldn’t be as dreamy and sexy as he is.” She pulled her knees to her chest, her blond hair falling down around her forearms as she lifted her eyebrows up and down.

That made me laugh. “I love your approach to life, Aub. I wish I had more of your nonchalance.”

“I think it’s more like defensiveness, so I would not be envious if I were you.”

Janice was scrolling through her phone but she asked, “If his name’s Jared, does he look like Jared Leto, by chance? Because I would hit that.”

“Which Jared Leto? He’s had like seven hundred looks.”

“Any of them.”

“No, he’s not that skinny sensitive artist type. So maybe I’m totally wrong on the anthropology call. He looks more like…” She stared straight at me. “Like Heath, actually. Wow. I didn’t even realize that. Apparently I think your boyfriend is hot. How creepy is that?”

I could feel the blood draining from my face. “I don’t know about creepy so much as it’s awkward.” I felt like there was an implication there that I wasn’t quite getting.

“It’s not awkward. It would be awkward if you were still dating my brother and I picked a guy who looked like
him
. That would suggest I need therapy. But this just means we both have good taste. It’s not like I’m actually interested in Heath.”

Even Janice looked uncomfortable and a little confused. “Um, I think maybe what you mean is that you both like the same type, right?”

“Exactly. The deep, dark, brooding type.”

Still unsure what I say, I just asked, “Is that what it is?”

Heath could be those things. I couldn’t dispute it. But what did Aubrey really know about him? She’d seen him for about ten minutes total.

“That and a few other things.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked, annoyed with all the innuendos and subterfuge.

For a second, I thought she was going to admit something, but then she just shook her head. “No. What would I have to tell you?”

“I have no idea.” I didn’t.

But I was left feeling completely uneasy.

That night I had another nightmare and I woke up, sitting straight up in Heath’s bed. I swiped my hair off my face and took a deep breath, shivering. He stirred and I quickly settled back down before he could wake up.

But it was too late. He didn’t open his eyes but he did reach for me, spreading his arm across my chest. “You okay?”

“Uh huh. Just had a bad dream.”

“‘Bout what?”

“I was falling,” I lied. The truth was I had walked into my room at the sorority house and had found Heath going down on Aubrey.

I shuddered, trying to shove the image from my mind. Neither of them would do that to me. Why would I even have that rattling around in my subconscious? It pissed me off.

“You’re fine,” he murmured, already drifting back to sleep.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” Though I was going to get Aubrey alone and press her, there was no question about that.

It wasn’t Aubrey I saw though. It was Ethan.

I hadn’t seen him since we’d broken up and I had to admit, running into him at the student union completely caught me off guard.

“Oh. Hey,” he said, when we made eye contact walking in the opposite direction from each other.

“Hey.” I felt my cheeks heat up. I gave him a nervous smile, not sure how to act. Not sure what he knew. I would have thought that I would have heard from him at some point, even if it was just a random text asking how I was, but there had been nothing since he’d walked out of my room, leaving me sobbing.

It seemed like maybe I hadn’t known Ethan as well as I’d thought. Any more than he had truly known me.

“How are you?” he asked, pausing in the hall, people moving past us.

I shrugged, palms sweating. “How about you?” It felt so strange to see him, to be so close to him for so long, yet feel so far away from him now.

“I’ve been better.” He pursed his lips. “Can we… can we sit down and talk for a minute? Are you on your way to class?”

“I have twenty minutes. Sure.” I didn’t think there was much to say that we hadn’t already said, but maybe I was wrong. Or maybe more accurately, it would be the opposite. That if we started talking, we would have to say everything, every thought, feeling, a torrent of emotions and accusations. It wouldn’t be easy or pretty. But I certainly did still want him to understand that I had cared about him. What I didn’t want to do was talk about Heath even though I knew he had to know. Aubrey wouldn’t have kept that from him.

He gestured to the yogurt place to his left. “There’s tables here. Let’s just sit down for a minute.” He sounded painfully polite.

It was awful. Sad. This is what we were after all we had been? It was so awful that when we sat down and faced each other I had tears in my eyes. “Did you get the ring back okay?”

“Yes. Thanks. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked for it back so soon. I was hurt and angry.”

“I… I…” My lip trembled. There were no words. There were too many words but I couldn’t figure out how to arrange them. How did I explain?

Ethan cleared his throat and leaned forward onto the table. “You look different somehow. Edgier.”

“Edgier?” That surprised me. It wasn’t an adjective I would use to describe myself. “I didn’t pierce anything.” I could hear defensiveness creeping into my voice. I wasn’t even sure why I felt defensive, but somehow his comments seemed insulting.

“That didn’t sound right. I’m sorry.” Ethan, who was always poised and smiling, was brooding, his gaze on his hand as he erratically drummed his thumb on the table.

“I’m sorry too,” I murmured. “When I said yes to marrying you, I meant it. It was absolutely sincere, I want you to know that.”

He nodded. “I believe you, Caitlyn. I just couldn’t compete, could I?”

“You broke up with me.” I had thought he wanted to talk to me because he was going to say nice, loving things. I had thought maybe he would make a plea for us getting back together, and I was horrified to realize that I had wanted him to say those things. It had hurt and still hurt that he had promised me love, stability, forever, then had taken it away. I had trusted him to be the one and only man who wouldn’t do that to me. It was how he had won over Heath.

Yet in the end he had been no different.

And it didn’t seem like he was going to backpedal on his choice either, and that hurt all over again. No matter what my current relationship was. It hurt.

“I know. And maybe that had more to do with me than you. I wanted to trust you, but it made me crazy, knowing that guy was walking around. Knowing you wanted him first, still wanted him, but had forced yourself to be practical and give him up. I knew it would eat at me, day by day.” His thumb had stopped moving and his hand had formed a fist.

I knew he was right, but I still resented it. He had betrayed my trust. “Everyone has a past.”

“Yes. But not everyone has the one that got away, if you want to call it that.”

I didn’t want to call it anything. I didn’t even want to talk about this anymore. It was exactly what I had feared- the same words, spoken with less anger, but the same frustration. “What did you want to talk about? Do I have some of your stuff still? I haven’t really looked around my room.” I hadn’t really been in my room much.

“No, I don’t think so. And if you do, it’s fine. I don’t care about a T-shirt here and there.”

I just waited, knowing there was more. He was wrestling with himself, whether or not to speak, that was obvious.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said.

Promising. Not. I raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not trying to sabotage your relationship with… him.” Ethan seemed to have the same problem saying Heath that Heath did saying Ethan.

“Okay,” I said, suspicious. That meant he was about to do just that.

“But the other night I went into the Tavern, not knowing he works there. And your brother was there, passed out on the bar. Your biological brother, I mean. Brian.”