Find Me in the Dark (8 page)

“She got some. She should tell us how it went,” Dolly replies.

“We don’t know she got some,” Cassie says.

“She was with Derrick,” Dolly whispers back.

“You know I can hear you guys, right?” I remind them. Listening to my friends refer to sleeping with a guy as ‘getting some’ was really creepy.

They both glance up at me.

“Well, you didn’t answer my question,” Dolly says. I guess she took my comment as fair game.

I sink back further into my seat. “Let’s just watch the movie.”

“Well, at least it was good,” Dolly winks.

“How can you tell?” Anna asks, breathless.

Cassie tries to shush them as Dolly pats my leg. “Oh, I can just tell.”

It was a long movie. I had to look away during the sex scene, which wasn’t lost on anyone.

The next morning, I wake again before anyone else. When I creep downstairs, I find a letter.

I’m too afraid to open it. After last night, I feel like there is no place secret enough to read his words.

My fingers tremble even before I’m opening it. It’s hard to get a grip on anything. The dark feelings of the night before—that breathlessness, that desire—pool up in my stomach and drip down to my legs. For a moment I grip the cement bench and just breathe.

But even my nerves can’t prevent me from reading it for very long.

My words have always felt trivial. At times I’ve wanted to destroy every letter I’ve ever written to you because all of them are such a pale imitation of how I feel about you. I kept writing only because not doing so would mean losing my only connection to you, at least up until recently.

I didn’t want to write to you today. I thought doing so would trivialize that moment between us, and I didn’t want to do that. Last night I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake thinking of you. I thought of you next to me. I wanted to go to your home and climbing into your room and lay down beside you. To remove my mask and touch your lips with mine. To be as naked before you as you were with me.

But I couldn’t do those things, and so I knew I had to write. You’d think I’d abandoned you if I didn’t. That it wasn’t important to me. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It doesn’t matter what happens in the future. I will cherish last night always.

When I finally walk back up to the room, Dolly is making pancakes in the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” I yawn as I enter. My slippers scuff the floor until I trip over a shirt. “God, Cassie needs to clean her shit up.”

“Yeah, she does. I don’t know how we put up with her.” Dolly plops a plate of pancakes on the table. “Here.”

I scowl. “What’s the occasion?”

Her eyes soften as she watches me wince as I sit. “You’re probably sore, and deserve something sweet. David would have made you pancakes, you know.”

“What?” Why was she talking about David again?

“Nothing.” She smiles a little bit to herself. “I’m just saying you deserve to wake up next to a guy who’ll make you pancakes.”

I feel myself blushing. Can’t help it. The image of masked man making me pancakes is silly and…makes me feel warm for some reason. I’m not comfortable with this feeling.

I grab the plate and cut off a piece of buttery sugary goodness with my fork.

“Well, at least it was good, right?” Dolly probs.

I stuff that piece of buttery sugary goodness into my mouth. I take my time chewing.

Unfortunately, Dolly is patient.

“Come on, Laura.”

“I already told you it wasn’t Derrick,” I whisper.

She raises a brow. “Who was it, then?”

I can’t answer that, so I answer her last question. “You’re right. It was good. And so are these pancakes. Yum yum.”

Dolly sighs. I suppose she realizes if she wants more information she’ll have to beat it out of me, and she’ll probably wait to do that until she has her morning coffee. “Well eat up while I start on the next batch.”

After pancakes, the rest of the morning breezed by without incident.

Then came lunch.

“What a fucking pig!” Cassie growls as she slams her basket of burrito and tortilla chips on the table.

Dolly reaches across and touches her wrist. “Come on, girl.”

“No, I will not come on,” Cassie hisses as she spins her head back to focus on her target. “I can’t believe him!”

Dolly sighs. “That’s just the kind of guy he is.”

“Yeah, a fucking pig!” Cassie repeats.

“If you know he’s a pig,” Dolly notes, “don’t expect him to do anything more than to stick his nose into any trough that offers food, roll around in the mud, and get you dirty and covered with someone else’s scraps.”

“Ugh.” I push my tray away. “I can’t eat anymore.”

“Sorry Laura,” Dolly says.

I glance at Derrick. He’s peacefully eating and chatting with friends. For a while he had some girl in his lap. Cassie and Dolly, of course, think it’s the pinnacle of rudeness that he passed me in the lunch line without at least saying hello.

Well, of course he wouldn’t say hello. I didn’t know who the masked man was, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t Derrick. Derrick wouldn’t woo a woman behind a mask. I knew he could read music, but I wasn’t even sure he was literate. And even if he was, he wouldn’t follow a woman around the shadows for years and write her letters. He wasn’t that creepy or desperate.

My heart twinges. I just called my man creepy and desperate. And I liked him that way. What exactly did that make me?

“That’s it,” Cassie says, standing. “I am not going to sit here and let that asshole get away with this.”

“Uh, Cassie, what are you doing? Sit back down,” Dolly warns.

Cassie’s eyes are gleaming when she turns back to us. “I’ll be right back.” And then she’s off, straight across the cafeteria, for Derrick’s table.

Shit.

I jump up and Dolly does the same. Anna looks at us like we just ran over a puppy. “Is she going to do what I think she’s going to do?”

“Afraid so,” Dolly says before marching off in Derrick and Cassie’s direction.

“Oh no,” Anna says, stumbling to her feet. “We have to stop her.”

Dolly and I are already running over. We don’t know how Cassie started the conversation, but it doesn’t look good when we get there.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Derrick squints. “Who are you?”

“I’m Cassie,” Cassie says as I stop by her side, panting. Then, she takes my arm and yanks me in front Derrick. “Her friend.”

Derrick frowns. “Okay…”

“Okay? Is that really all you got? Okay?” Cassie snaps.

Derrick leans forward and waves a hand between us. “Uh, who are you guys?”

“Oh!” Cassie waves her hand around and snaps. Uh oh, the snap. She’s gone. “No. No, you do not do this. You do not hook up with a girl and not even have the fucking courtesy to say hello to her when you pass her in the lunch line. You do not sit some skank down on your lap just a few feet away and make her watch.”

Derrick is obviously still confused. “Dude.”

Dude?
Who even says that anymore? How could this guy be considered the hottest thing in school? How could my friends think I slept with him?

Dolly tugs on Cassie’s arm. “Hey babe, I think we should let these guys work it out. He’s not worth it.”

“I know he’s not worth it,” Cassie shrugs out of Dolly’s grip and stomps towards him like it’s her first night at Fight Club. “But he’s got to own up to his shit.”

Derrick just frowns. “Look, I don’t know what you think I did babe…”

“Cassie,” Cassie bits out.

“Oh sorry, Cassie,” he replies sweetly. “But I’ve never seen that lying skank before—”

Oh no, did he just say that? Does he have a death wish?

“My friend is not a liar, and you’re the skank,” Cassie says.

Dolly rolls her eyes. “Come on Cass.”

“Listen to your friends, Cass. I’ve never seen you or that chick before, thank fucking God.”

But Cassie’s not going. She grounds her teeth. “Her. Name. Is. Laura.”

Dolly looks at me. Anna arrives looking like she’s about to cry. This has to stop.

And then my prayers are answered. I see a brilliant crown of golden hair from the other end of the dining hall, more luminescent than an angel’s halo.

I don’t look at anyone. I just start running.

“David!” I yell, waving my arms like they’re wings.

David turns and smiles. “Hey…” he frowns when he notes my expression. “Laura, what’s wrong?”

Everything!
“Cassie thinks I slept with Derrick.”

“Derrick? You mean
Derrick
Derrick?” David’s eyes widen with concern. “Wait, did you? Did that asshole hurt you?” He grabs my shoulders. I’m not ready for it. It’s strangely…manly. I don’t think of him that way generally. He doesn’t seem like that kind of guy. But right now, it looks like all I have to do is say the word and he’d go to war for me.

“Of course I didn’t sleep with Derrick! Why does everyone think I slept with Derrick?”

David’s grip softens a tad. “So you didn’t sleep with Derrick?”

“No!” I groan. “But Cassie thinks I did. And now she’s chewing out Derrick because he didn’t say hello to me, which isn’t surprising since he’s never even met me before…”

David nods.

“And I need you,” I finish lamely.

David’s eyes widen again. I don’t recognize the emotion that fills them. “You need me?” he repeats softly.

“Yes, badly! Please tell them I was with you last night.”

David doesn’t move for a moment.

Oh shit, he’s not going to do it! “Just tell them we went out for coffee, and tell them that I kissed you. No, tell them that I came onto you. And that things just kind of…I don’t know. That I was embarrassed after and ran away.” That actually sounded like something I might do.

“Where were you last night?” David whispers.

I open my mouth, but there’s no way I can tell him. “Practice went long, I was just thinking some things over, and they got some ideas in their head and…and I don’t know, it’s a mess.”

David studies me a moment longer. I feel like he’s seeing right through me. But in the end, he just nods. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

He takes my hand leads me back to Derrick’s table. I can’t believe how firm his grip is, and for the first time, notice the width of his shoulders…

What the Hell?

Luckily it doesn’t take long for us to reach the others. “Hey,” David says.

Cassie glances over at us and momentarily stops chewing Derrick out.

David puts his arm around me, slamming me into the side of his muscular stomach. “She was with me last night, not him.”

Everyone’s mouth opens as they stare. Well, everyone except Derrick. “See? Didn’t even know her. Never seen her before. Would remember if I’d tapped that.” He glances at Cassie with a big smile. “And I’d definitely remember if I tapped you, babe.”

Cassie’s face curls with disgust. “You’re a pig.”

“You already said that,” Derrick murmurs as a strange sort of heat lights his eyes. Is this guy a masochist? Seconds later, he tries to press a folded paper into Cassie’s hand. “So Cass, call me if you want to get dirty.”

“I am not Cass to you,” Cassie growls.

“You prefer babe?”

Cassie wads the paper he gave her into her fist and throws it at Derrick’s face.

Derrick doesn’t even blink. He picks up the paper and tries to hand it back to her.

Alright, he’s a masochist.

Cassie’s hand wavers in the air like she’s about to slap him.

“He’s not worth the assault charge,” Dolly says, catching Cassie’s hand.

Cassie reluctantly backs up. “Shit!”

Derrick plays with the paper and leans back with a smile. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll still give it to you if you ask nicely.”

“Just walk away,” Dolly murmurs softly as she pats Cassie’s back. Cassie balls her hands into fists and reluctantly replies. “Laura, why oh why didn’t you tell me it was David?” she cries.

I put my hand on her arm and give her an awkward pat. “It was awkward, alright? And it doesn’t even matter because it won’t happen again.”

At that second I look up and instantly regret it, because David’s looking at me like I’d just hit him.

My life becomes a blur of sex and shadows. I think of him when I shouldn’t. Even the strangled tree in the courtyard covered with trembling leaves that should have fallen weeks ago reminds me of him. I don’t know why. Maybe they’re the color of his eyes…but no, that can’t be it because I’ve never seen them.

I feel empty when I practice cello or go to class. Even when I speak with my friends I feel like it’s someone else laughing and talking. I’m avoiding David for reasons I don’t fully understand. I finally joined
Bruigh na Boinne
just so I’d have something other than thoughts of him to fill my time with.

It doesn’t work. I don’t feel alive until I hear his voice from a corner, or until I get a letter that tells me where to meet him.

He used to write me all sorts of things. Now, he often just scribbles down a place and a time. Sometimes it’s a cheap hotel with a rough coverlet that scratches my hands and knees. Sometimes it’s not even that—a university closet with brooms and buckets that knock against us and constrain our movements, or an an empty classroom. Often, we don’t even make it that far. He hikes my legs up around his body in the stairwell, and our stifled moans echo under the buzzing overhead lights.

He almost never writes down his thoughts anymore. I don’t know if it’s because of what he said the morning after the first time—that words feel cheap or silly because they can’t compare to the reality—or if it’s because he doesn’t need to now that he’s already ensnared me. I have a feeling it’s the second reason, but I don’t ask. I don’t do anything but give in.

I’m giving too much of myself away. I feel as if he’s a different person from the one who wrote me those letters. Yet I keep going back, and even if I didn’t, he’d find me. Sometimes I shut my locker and I feel him pressing into my back. His hand slides up my stomach and my heart beats again as I lose myself in that rough passion.

It doesn’t make sense, and I don’t care anymore, if I ever did in the first place. The more I give into this addiction, the more I need it. I feel myself bleeding out, into all the cold, unfamiliar, and uncaring places in the city, but I’m not afraid because his hands are always there, pulling me in.