Finding Dell (12 page)

Robert Rocco’s thick arms dwarfed the keg as he pumped beers for Helen and Ruby. His brown hair was carefully styled and his shirt was again a crisp, university-issued royal blue. It struck me that I only saw him in school colors, as if he didn’t know how else to fit in as a transfer student.

Helen wore a pale blue Cinderella costume; its short petticoat barely grazed her thighs. Ruby dressed as an angel. The innocent naïveté fit her well. When a cool breeze snuck in as the front door opened, a few feathers loosened from her wings and she laughed as she tried to catch them like a kid popping bubbles.

I edged closer to their conversation just as Dean got up from the couch to join, too. I was nervous about what Rocco might say to me after everything that had happened outside his apartment last week, so I didn’t want to call attention to myself.

“. . . A girl in one of my classes kept telling me I needed to get one,” Ruby said in a bubbly voice that carried over the music, “so, finally, I figured, why not?”

She reached into her bra, where her credit card and ID were bundled with a twenty dollar bill. She unraveled the bill and waved her ID in the air.

“And, silly me, I give her eighty bucks—the premium package—for a fake ID. Premium rates guarantee the girl in the photo will have the same color hair as me,” Ruby said with a wink. “Why don’t you take a look and tell me what’s wrong with it?”

Helen took the ID from Ruby and examined it. “Well, this is about as useful as a trap door on a canoe,” Helen laughed. She
handed it to Rocco. “You paid eighty bucks to be a year older, which is still not old enough to drink legally.”

Rocco shook his head. “I can’t believe you paid for an ID of a twenty-year-old. That’s so gay,” he said.

Dean’s eyes narrowed to angry slits on his shiny blue greasepaint face and his chin jutted out.

I remembered his story about his dad and knew that he was capable of a quick move to action when he took offense to something.

With a cautious step back, I assessed the situation. Ruby placed a pale hand on Dean’s forearm and as she held it, the throbbing vein in his neck lessened. He may not have told her about his dad, but her concern was instinctual. In that moment, I knew why Dean liked her, and it wasn’t all that different from what attracted me to Will. She was cheerful, almost too easygoing. He saw in her what he wasn’t, just like Will’s spontaneity complemented my anxious need for control.

Ruby took the ID from Rocco and tucked it back into her bra. “I’m not mad or anything. In fact, I keep it with me as a reminder not to be so flighty,” she said with a laugh.

“When life gives you lemons, put ’em in your sweet tea,” Helen said, punctuating the words with a honeyed twang.

Dean didn’t speak, but I could tell he was simmering hotly while Rocco chugged his beer obliviously.

Something tugged on the handcuffs clipped to my holster and I turned away from their conversation in surprise. Alex hooked a finger around the dangling cuff and pulled me closer.

“Need ice for your drink, officer?”

We locked eyes and I nodded, moving closer to him. Alex opened the freezer door, blocking our faces from view of the party. With the door shielding him, he brushed my hair off my neck roughly and bent to kiss me. Cold air rushed out from the
freezer, but his breath was hot on my ear as his lips trailed along my neck. I gasped and tilted my neck, giving him more room for his mouth to roam.

He reached up and dislodged the ice cube tray from the freezer. There were three clinks as he dropped ice cubes into my cup. In the next moment, the vacuum seal sucked the freezer door back into place, and I was left with flushed cheeks and an overflowing drink.

“Just a preview,” he breathed before he left the kitchen.

My drink was fizzing, bubbling over the edge. I felt the same way.

Alex broke up the crowd in his apartment, turned down the music on his stereo, and ushered people out the door. I stumbled out with everyone else, still wearing his aviators. I started to float down the sidewalk with the crowd of people when Dean grabbed my arm and pulled me aside.

“Remember what I said last month about you and Alex,” Dean whispered harshly.

“I’m on my best behavior.” I giggled and started to pull away from his grip and move to the allure of the bars on the Pass.

Dean’s grip tightened and he didn’t budge. “There are too many cops out at the bars tonight and you’re underage. You’ll get a drinking ticket.”

I teetered in my heels in the soggy grass and braced myself for a standoff. The lazy whirl of indigo and red police lights sauntered down an adjacent street and Dean raised his eyebrows at me, gesturing to his front door with a drumstick in his hand.

I sighed and stomped to Dean’s porch while he held my arm, kicking up clumps of mud in my wake.

“You’ll thank me later.” Dean pointed to the couch.

● ● ●

With a hand over the hinges to muffle the creaks in the screen door, I snuck out to the porch when I heard the faucet turn on in the bathroom. It would take a long time for Dean to wash the last specks of paint from his face, so I told myself he wouldn’t notice if I left my spot on his couch.

I sat on the rattan chair and watched the silver bugs beat blindly at the misty cloud surrounding the porch lights.

It wasn’t long before I saw Alex, alone, walking down Massey Avenue. I vaulted from the chair with an eager clatter, scattering the apathetic flies by the light. On the sidewalk, I took hold of Alex’s elbow and leaned into him heavily. I asked him about the bar, but I inched my fingers across his chest and toyed with the buttons on his shirt so he would know my words didn’t matter.

At his door, he fumbled with his keys while I stumbled in my heels into the door frame, throwing the door open. Alex and I looked at each other in surprise and burst into laughter.

Alex’s laugh was throaty and deep and couldn’t be faked. I loved when he laughed.

“Guess I forgot to lock the door after the party.”

We stumbled into his apartment in a tangled heap onto the futon where we grappled at each other, kicking off shoes and wrestling with clothes.

Untangling our limbs, I pulled away and stood above him as he sprawled on the futon. I twirled the toy and tipped his sunglasses to the bridge of my nose.

“Mr. Connor, I have a warrant for your arrest here. I think you’d better serve your time with me.”

Alex smiled in a lazy, satisfied way and pulled himself to his feet.

Familiar with the path, I started down the hall to Alex’s room dressed in nothing more than a lacy thong and black fishnets with a severe run down the left leg.

With a tug to my hand, Alex stopped me. He walked backward down the hall, away from his room, leading me with a trail of kisses.

“I’ve never showered with anyone before.”

His voice was raspy. He smiled mischievously and backed into the bathroom door, the tiles cold on the floor. We hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights yet.

Alex turned on the hot water and I closed the door behind us. The mirror began to fog and Alex pulled me into the bathtub, urging me to watch my step over the porcelain edge.

The water was too hot and I winced and cowered directly under the showerhead, where the burning water hadn’t thought to explore yet. I turned the tap and sent an icy chill onto Alex’s lean body, and he responded with a jump back to the opposite end of the tub. We stood a world apart in the slippery bathtub, sulking in our respective corners while I waited for the water to heat up again.

Alex took a tentative step forward, leading with his arm to test the water, and when he approved, he pulled me into a watery tangle with him. The water plastered my hair to my head in an unflattering way, leaving my long hair dripping in my eyes. I wiped the skin under my eye, where I was sure my mascara was running down my cheek in an unattractive black stripe, but I elbowed Alex in the chin instead. He stumbled backward and fell down heavily.

“Sorry,” I said over the rush of water.

I looked down helplessly at Alex, who looked especially naked and vulnerable from this angle. He rubbed his chin distractedly and stayed seated on the bathtub floor. I knelt down carefully and reached behind his head and gave him a tender kiss.

“Maybe we should just kiss,” I whispered in his ear over the streaming, steaming water.

● ● ●

After our failed shower experience, I curled into Alex’s bed still damp and naked. I’d ripped my fishnets, now torn and dangling from his overflowing bookcase.

As my breathing slowed and my eyes grew heavy, I heard Alex’s throaty whisper in my ear. I kept my eyes closed but raised my eyebrows in a sleepy awareness and murmured for him to repeat what he’d just said.

“Was that a bad idea?” he asked again, his body warm against my naked skin.

I didn’t respond. My skin crawled with the brittleness of dread. I waited, hoping to feel his breath on my skin slow to a regular pattern to let me know he fell asleep.

“We shouldn’t be together again,” he murmured.

Beside him, I held my breath. A small gasping snore started in my ear and the images of the night started to swirl together. My thoughts were imprecise, blurred around the edges, and I felt like one of the flies purring around the porch light as I tried to grasp an idea.

My mind settled on a single question: if I couldn’t count on Alex to want to be with me, who could I count on?

CHAPTER 13

I SAT IN
Georgian Grande by myself long after I finished my meal the next afternoon, my geology textbook open on the table. Every few minutes I plucked a grape from a bowl on my tray and popped it in my mouth.

With my back to the room, out the window I watched a few ducks teetering into the water of Magnolia Banks Lake, and I wondered why they hadn’t flown south yet; the wind had picked up and the air had a distinct reminder of winter in every gust.

I thought about Alex’s words as I watched the water ripple on the lake. Even
he
thought it was a bad idea for us to be together.

I highlighted a random passage in my textbook. In my head, I heard Alex’s raspy whisper over and over.

We shouldn’t be together again
.

I sighed and dropped the highlighter on the table.
Maybe I’m a bad influence on the guys in my life
, I thought.

First, Will. Now, Alex.

Will moved off campus to an apartment because I was so distracting he couldn’t live in the dorm and pass his classes. Alex
considered being around me to be a bad idea, too.
I really
am
Hurricane Dell. I’m destroying everyone
.

I munched on a grape and stared out the window. The patter of the dining hall had died down and I realized it must be the lull between lunch and dinner. On the table, my phone rang. I nudged it closer to see the screen. Cam.

“’Lo?”

“Dell?”

“Hmm?”

I felt choked up and didn’t want to say too much into the phone in case I started to cry, thinking about my failed relationships.

“We never talked about what happened during Capture the Flag. I told you I had feelings for you and you ran away. And we didn’t really get to talk when I saw you after you got the tattoo.”

My eyes widened. It was bold of Cam to meet my avoidance of him head-on.

“And I realize that your non-response should be my answer, but I don’t want things to end like this,” he continued.

I exhaled noisily into the receiver.

“Let me take you on a date. We’ll go to the movies. We’ll have a good time, I promise. Please, just let me take you to the movies.”

For a brief moment, my mind conjured an image of what I thought Cam’s girlfriend back home might look like. I pictured her finding out that her boyfriend was taking another girl on a date. Then I thought about Will and Alex. They considered me to be a bad idea, and neither wanted to take me on a date half as much as Cam. With a small stab of guilt, I pushed thoughts of Cam’s girlfriend from my mind.

“We’ll meet at the theater on the Pass?” I asked in a small voice.

● ● ●

Rain bulleted from the sky outside the theater. It was cold, colder than when we had entered the movie. I clutched my umbrella as Cam and I stood under the glittering awning.

“Do you have an umbrella?” I asked, looking at his hands jammed into the front pockets of his black sweatshirt.

He gestured to skeletal remains of the shrubs lining the sidewalk. “I stashed it over there, by those bushes. I hate to have this dripping, wet thing with me when I’m indoors.”

“What if someone steals it?”

“Then they have an umbrella now. It doesn’t matter; I’ll find another one outside. That’s how I found this one in the first place.”

Laughing, I said, “Fair enough. So, I guess this is where we part ways. I had a good time tonight.”

Cam rocked gently on his heels and nodded. “Me too.”

He opened his mouth again, and then closed it quickly. I waited for him to say more but when he stayed silent I started to walk away. I left the theater with my head bent to the ground and my body angled to brace myself against the wind as it whipped my long hair in my eyes. I glanced backward and saw Cam hunched over near the bushes in front of the theater, searching for his stolen umbrella.

In a dim section of sidewalk near the engineering building, I heard something louder than the pounding rain. Firm and consistent steps sounded behind me. Someone was running toward me.

I glanced around the grounds of the engineering building, littered with modern sculptures and innovative benches, for another person, someone to run to for protection. I started to run, glancing backward to see how much of a lead I had.

A weak streetlamp lit up Cam’s pale skin as he raced toward
me, holding a broken umbrella in his hand. I stopped, incredulous, and turned to speak to him.

Cam slowed to a stop and panted for breath. The black umbrella dangled limply from his shivering hand. Cam’s eyes were wide as he stared at me with quiet desperation.

“I like you, Madeleine Hewitt.”

I inhaled sharply. He looked so cold and sad that I wanted to step forward and shield him with my umbrella. I wanted to walk home with him, cuddle in bed, and let him drown me in adoration. But instead I kept still and silent, waiting.