Beautiful Things Never Last (18 page)

             
“No it’s not, Ben.
Not as close as you and your family are.”

             
“Were,” I interject.

             
“The thing is, Quinn never did a single thing to them.”

             
“But she hurt you.”
Linney reaches across the table and rubs my arm. It’s a simple touch, nothing more than I’ve done to her since I’ve been back in town, but it
feels
different. It
feels
like maybe Quinn might have been right all of the times she said Caroline was still after more than just a friendship with me.

             
“And I’ve hurt her, too,
”
I qualify.
I’m hurting her right now by being here. So why am I doing it?
I try to be nonchalant when I pull my arm away and grab the tent-shaped desert menu off of the end of the table, and stare at it harder than I really need to.

             
Caroline
shifts in her chair
.
“Is she—”

             
I don’t even let her finish whatever question she’s about to ask.

             
“Linney, listen, I know you mean well,
I do. B
ut I really don’t want to talk about Quinn,” I say
.
“With you
.”

             
“Of course. I understand,”
she says. Her lips form a tight, irritated line and she has a look of
anything but understanding.

             
“Do you want to leave?” she asks.
Her eyes glisten with what might be tears forming and the last thing I want to do is leave and spend the next half-hour in the car apologizing for upsetting her more than she already was when I got here. No, maybe I can turn this around. Change the subject.

             
“No, let’s stay and eat.”

             
Caroline purses her lips and give
s
a quick bob
of
her
head.

             
There’s a pause that stretches into a lengthy
,
awkward silence. I flew all the way out here thi
nking that I could do some good. But
things with Linney feel strained, like she’s looking for something more than I can offer her. She and I could always talk, but
since I got here
, it feels like she wants to focus on Quinn, and I can’t do that. Not right now. Not when I know I’m totally fucking things up with her
by being here
.

             
“How’s school? I mean, what are you going to do now that you’re out here? How long are you staying?”
             

             
“I’m not sure, honestly. It was a quick move. My mom panicked and didn’t know what to do with me, so she m
ade arrangements to have me stay with your family…and…here I am. I don’t know if I’
m supposed to enroll in school here…or if this is just a temporary move… I guess I’ll just wait to hear what Mom and Dad say.”

             
“They aren’t coming in for Christmas?”

             
Linney shakes her head and swirls the straw in her drink around some more.

             
“No, dad couldn’t take any more time off of work. He’s missed a lot lately with…everything. And I told them it’s not even a big deal, really. Christmas is just…it’s just not a big deal, you know?”
             
I really don’t know. I’d give anything to be with Quinn right now.

             
“Mom is probably going to come in the first week of January, though. Once prices on flights go down a little.”

             
We each another slice of pizza in silence before I finally get the nerve to ask her outright.

             
“Alright, Linney. We’ve known each other since we were fifteen,” I say. I think about
how
the first time I talked to Linney was when I was defending her in our class full of assholes, and how that need to protect her has never really completely gone away.
That it’s what brought me back here today.
So I need to know. I need to know what she’s up against so that I can help her. Because right now, I’m thinking any number of things, and none of them are good. I’m hoping that my mind is just preparing me for the worst case scenario, that it isn’t actually anything bad. I slide my hand across the booth and clutch her dainty fingers. Her touch is familiar in a way that it shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t remember it this clearly.
And after pulling away from her earlier, I shouldn’t be instigating anything. So why do I do it?
“Here’s the part whereyou tell me what the hell is going on.”

             
“I feel like it’s been built up too much now, and you came all this way because you were worried about me and now I just feel stupid.”

             
“Don’t,” I say. “I came because I wanted to.”

             
“
I don’t know what I did to deserve a friend like you, but it’s really
nice to know that you cared enough to fly all the way out here, not even knowing what you’re walking into. I meant it earlier when I said you were a good guy, Ben. The best.”
She squeezes my hand like she’s latching on to a life raft. Frantic and needy. And it makes me so damn glad that I came.
So glad that it’s my hand she’s grasping onto.

             
“Linney, what happened?”

             
She takes a deep breath, and then lets it out slowly.
“
Nick
, you remember
Nick
Barker, right?”

             
I nod. “Sure.”

             
Nick
went to the same high school as Linney and I before I moved to Atlanta. I hadn’t really been friends with him, but I knew of him.

             
“I started seeing him not long after the time that I saw you last year, when I was here looking at colleges.
” It’s impossible to hear her talk about the last time that she was here in town and not think of the fall-out with Quinn.

             
“
And things were great for a long time. I started classes over the summer at the University of Kentucky, and he was at the University of Tennessee.
It was okay being apart because we were both so busy with school, and he’d come in on weekends so that was good.”

             
Linney looks around the deserted restaurant.

             
“Two weekends in a row I had plans with the Chi Omega girls and I couldn’t get together with
Nick
.
I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but h
e freaked. He showed up at my dorm
in the middle of the night, convinced I was with someone else there. He was
screaming
outside of the building
because the girls wouldn’t let him in. He kicked the door in, Ben.” Linney’s cheeks turn the deepest red I’ve ever seen on her pale face. “I was humiliated.
These girls were new friends, and he made a fool out of me.
Of course he apologized, but mama told me I wasn’t
allowed
to see him anymore after that.
I didn’t care. I was so angry and embarrassed. I didn’t
want
to see him.”

             
I can’t imagine someone as quiet and polite as Linney being yelled at by some prick. The thought of her holed up in her dorm while he beat the door down doesn’t sit well with me. I involuntarily clench my fist with anger.

             
“Well, staying away from him…t
hat didn’t go over well at all.
Nick
started showing up during the week when he should have been in class in a different state.
I mean, who does that?
He would just sit in h
is car and watch us while we painted signs for events,
or stare at my dorm.
He was calling my phone so many times a day
,
I ended up getting so frustrated that I threw it in the garbage and bought a new one.
”

             
“So, that’s why you changed your number?” I ask, remembering the quick, cryptic text that Linney sent me a while back from a new number. I didn’t reply to it. What an asshole.

             
Linney nods. “
It was just crazy. Mama and the counselors told me that if I just kept ignoring him, he’d get bored and leave me alone. But he didn’t.”

             
I feel a twisting in my gut watching Linney retell the story, the fear present in her eyes even hundreds of miles away from
this douche
and sitting here with me
, where she knows I’d do anything in the world to protect her
.  I want to beat the shit out of this clown.

             
“I started finding cards from him under my windshield wipers, gifts outside of my dorm room, it was all just creepy.
One day when I came back from class, there were dozens of roses outside my door room door. He must have spent a fortune. I threw them all away. The more he tried to do ‘nice’ things, the more creeped out I got.
”
             
“Did you call the police?” I work my jaw back and forth.

             
“Yeah, Dad did. They had us fill out a report, but he hadn’t really done anything harmful, you know? It was just more annoying than anything.”

             
“Then why’d you come here?”

             
Linney takes a deep breath. “I came home from a party one night. A bunch of the girls
wanted to stay late, but I was tired, so I left alone, which was stupid.
I know that, please don’t tell me again.
My dad never misses an opportunity to tell me how stupid that was, especially with everything
that was already g
oing on.”