In Harmony (19 page)

It wasn’t often that I got into clothes, but I could imagine the outfit perfectly. “You should wear the spiky necklace—that’d be perfect.”

She looked bemused. “
Which
necklace?”

“The spiky one. The one with all the little crystals.”

She frowned and then all the color drained from her face. “I’ve only worn that for—”

Too late, I remembered where I’d seen it.

She lurched forward. “
Please
tell me you didn’t see it on the internet!” she whispered.

I could feel the heat rushing to my cheeks. “No, I—It was on your laptop,” I said in a tiny voice.

I saw the fear turn to anger in her eyes. “
Bathroom!
Now!”
she told me viciously, and stalked off towards it leaving me to catch up.

The bathroom, mercifully, was empty. She turned to face me and I actually took a half step back when I saw her expression. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly.

“How could you? My
laptop?!
That’s my
private stuff!
No one else was meant to see it!” She took a step towards me and I had to fight the urge to run. The thing about Clarissa is, she’s quite tall, and she was in killer heels. And I’m not, and I wasn’t. She towered over me, and I suddenly felt the tiled wall behind my back, my cheeks hot with shame and guilt.

“It was an accident! I was just going to Google for pizza, and it was open on your taskbar and I’m sorry!” I said in a rush.

She frowned. “So you only saw, like, a freeze frame?”

Something in my expression must have told her
no.

“You played it?!”

“I didn’t know it was you, at first! I thought it was just porn. Very tasteful porn!”

She’d reddened almost as much as me, now. I could tell she didn’t want to ask, but needed to know how bad things were. “But you only saw a second of it, once you realized it was us?”

I’ve never been good at lying. I looked at the floor.

“
Karen!
How could you?!”

“I don’t know! I was waiting for Natasha and I just sort of…watched some.”

“All of it?!”

“I sort of skipped through. Only, like…three or four bits.” I closed my eyes. “I’m really sorry.”

Clarissa wheeled away from me with a groan of frustration and went over to the sinks. She stood clutching the marbled countertop, staring at her own reflection in the mirror.

Very slowly, I edged over to her. “Sorry,” I said again.

She didn’t respond.

“How can I make it up to you?”

She kept staring straight ahead.

“Please?”

I finally saw her eyes flick to me in the mirror and then she sighed. “You’re on standby next time Jasmine calls drunk in a bar at three in the morning needing a pick up.”

I nodded frantically. “Absolutely.”

“And you have to let me get you into a dress next time you go out—no arguments.”

“Deal.”

She let out a long sigh. “Okay,
fine.
You’re forgiven. At least it means I can talk to you about Neil.”

She led the way out of the bathroom. “Wait,” I said, hurrying after her. “What’s wrong with Neil?”

***

We’d finished our entrées and were on our next glass of wine before she finally told me.

“We don’t communicate,” she said, turning the wine glass slowly in her hands. “It’s like I said before…we have the sex thing, and the sex thing’s great. Better than great. I mean, it’s hard to get across how good it is.” She looked at the table. “Have you ever had sex that’s, like…
beyond?
Not just the sex itself but everything—the buildup, the talking about it beforehand….have you ever had sex like that?”

For a second, I wondered whether to tell her I was a virgin. “No.”

“It isn’t that the relationship’s based on sex. That would be okay, because we could go somewhere from it—we could get to know each other and grow it. This is more like…the sex has given us a relationship, with roles and rules and things, and so there’s no room for a normal relationship. It’s like one of those things you read about with a contract. Masters and slaves.”

“You have a
contract?”
I could feel my eyes going wide.

“No! But it’s like that. Like we have very defined parts to play and we can’t go beyond them, and that keeps us at a distance. It’s not that we don’t want to communicate, it’s that we’re not allowed to, in a weird way, because that would spoil what we have. Does that make any sort of sense?”

I sipped some wine and tried to get my head around it. “You mean, like…if you were the secretary and he was your boss, and it was fun
because
of that, it would also limit it because you’d always have to be his secretary? If you married him, or even changed jobs, it might not work?”

She leaned forward. “Yes! Exactly like that!”

I frowned. “So what are
your
roles?”

She flushed.

“Sorry. Don’t tell me if—”

“No. No, I need to.” She took a deep breath. “Well, he’s a biker, obviously. I mean, he’s so many things. He’s a geek, in a way, and smart as hell—he’s at MIT for God’s sake. And he’s a hippy. But for the sake of the relationship, he’s a biker. A tough biker who”—she colored more—“knows what he wants. And I’m meant to be this posh, innocent”—she lowered her voice—“submissive.”

I nodded.

“And so part of it is, he’s all strong and silent and can just growl at me any time to take my panties off and follow him into a closet. And that’s great, but…we can’t talk about stuff because the people we’re playing wouldn’t do that.”

I nodded. “And you can’t just stop playing the role and be yourself….”

“…because I’m scared of breaking the whole thing. What if this is all we have? What if I push him away?”

I thought for long enough that I finished the rest of my wine. As Clarissa poured me another, I said, “But you can’t go on like this forever. Is the sex really good enough that you’d risk the long term, just to enjoy the short term?”

She just looked at me guiltily.

“
Really?
It’s
that
good?” I asked.

She shook her head sadly. “You have no idea. Seriously, he makes me feel things I didn’t think I could. It’s like being high…I actually have to come down again afterwards. It’s not like normal sex.”

A little stab of jealousy went through me. I knew it was wrong, but…I hadn’t even experienced
normal
sex yet.

Clarissa’s eyes were distant. “Have you ever just had…I don’t know how to describe it…just an automatic reaction to someone? Like you’d feel that way about them, physically, even if you didn’t like them?”

I blinked. “Yes.”

She barely seemed to hear me. “When I first met him—it was when I took Nat to Darrell’s place for the very first time—I thought he was this big, stupid, arrogant
lump
and yet…even then, even when we were yelling at each other, there was this…
thing
going on.”

I nodded, leaning in, my heart thumping. “Yes.”

“Later, I figured out how smart he was, and I really started to like him, but my point is that even when I thought I hated him, this thing was so strong that….” She sighed. “I’m sorry, I’m probably not making any sense at all.”

“You are,” I said faintly. “But with you, it was mutual. How did you know it was mutual?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t. I thought he hated me. I thought we were mortal enemies, and I cursed myself for being weak and wanting him even though I hated him.”

“So how did you…?”

“Well, the second time we met, we were fighting—again—and then he stepped right up to me and said that someone should teach me a lesson, and—” She flushed and looked down at the table.

“What?”

She shook her head.

“
What?”

“I can’t believe I said it.”

“What? What did you say?!”

She took a deep breath. “Bear in mind that it was in the heat of the moment. I said:
‘Well, why don’t you, then?’
”

The sound of the words hung in the air over the table.

“Oh,” I said.

“It just sort of slipped out. And then he kissed me and I kissed him back and he pushed me down onto the table—stuff went everywhere—and…well. At some point, Nat and Darrell walked past the door and saw, but she didn’t tell me until later. Though, honestly, Godzilla could have ripped the roof off the house and we probably wouldn’t have noticed.”

I nodded, deep in thought. If Connor felt that way about me, would I know? I wasn’t even completely sure how
I
felt.

“So?” Clarissa asked.

“Hmm?” I was still worlds away, my head back in the practice room.

“So what do you think I should do?”

I thought hard. “What is it you
want
to talk to him about? Specifically?”

“I don’t know…anything and everything. Our futures. Where it’s going. What he’s going to do after MIT. I’m a planner, Karen—like you. I’m not saying house or babies or anything—not yet. But I like to at least talk about the future. For Neil, even planning a vacation is too big a commitment. Sometimes I wonder if the sex thing is holding back the relationship…or if he’s scared of the relationship and he’s using the sex thing to fend it off.”

I pursed my lips and thought. My gut told me that she wasn’t being unreasonable, that maybe Neil just needed some sense slapping into him…but what did I know? I was a virgin, for God’s sake, the least qualified person possible to advise on a sexually-charged relationship. Just as when Natasha had asked for my advice, I felt that if I told her the wrong thing and it split them up, she’d never forgive me.

“I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “Give it time, maybe?”

“That’s just it…I get the feeling we’re running out of time.” I could see the worry in her eyes.
Tell him,
I thought.
Tell him what you need. Confront him.
But I couldn’t say it. I was someone who, at twenty-one, still had all her bills paid by her father. I couldn’t even run my own life—I shouldn’t be trying to run anyone else’s.

It broke my heart to do it, but I leaned across and gave her a hug instead of a solution. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” I told her.

She sighed. “Thanks.” She looked at me for a moment and frowned. “Wait: you said
with you.”

“What?”

“You said
with you it was mutual.
As opposed to with…?”

Help!
“No one.”

She relented, but the suspicion never quite left her eyes.

Chapter 14

I spent the next few days trying to work out what I felt. I’d see Connor in lectures, down at the front, and space out watching him, the lecturer’s voice turning into a distant drone. I understood, now, why he never took notes. Before, I’d thought he was lazy because he wasn’t scribbling everything down or rattling it out on a laptop. Now, I saw him sitting there frantically trying to memorize what he was hearing and I winced in sympathy.

I noticed he was there for every lecture, now. He’d turn around and smile at me and I’d smile back, and every time there’d be this weird flip-flop in my stomach...this
was
just physical, right?

Of course it was. Just physical.

When the lecturer announced the next essay—due in a week’s time—I locked eyes with Connor and gave him a solemn nod. I’d figure out a way to help him with it and, together, we’d turn around his grades. He looked skeptical, but gave me a nod in return.

That afternoon, I met up with Connor in one of the dusty passages right at the back of the music department. I indicated an ancient, outsize wooden door. “Behold.”

He looked up at it. “What’s behind there? The Fenbrook monster?”

“Storeroom. They had to get pianos in and out, back in the day.” I unlocked the door and put the key in my pocket, then slowly pushed the huge slab of wood inward.

Inside, pitch blackness. Towering shelves holding files of sheet music and countless instruments. Including, if the department secretary was to be believed, a couple of acoustic guitars we could use to practice on. Hopefully between us we’d be able to come up with some ideas that let the cello and electric guitar meet in the middle.

“There has to be a light switch somewhere,” said Connor, and he started feeling around the walls. There was, but when he clicked it, it did nothing.

“I don’t think anyone’s been in here in a decade,” I told him. I pushed the huge door the rest of the way open to let as much light as possible in from the corridor. It was harder than it should have been and, when I looked up, I saw why. There was one of those old fashioned chain-and-weight door closers at the top, trying to pull it closed. Dangling from it was a large cobweb. I shuddered—the whole place was dark, dusty and crawling with God-knows-what. “I’ll hold the door. You go and look.”