Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) (10 page)

Astoria kept sending me messages about Erich, which
wasn’t doing much to improve my mood. I kept giving
her one-word answers. She purposefully wasn’t getting the hint.

My phone vibrated on the table and I lifted it off and
flipped it open. John had texted me, telling me he
wanted to talk to me.

I held my phone under the table and typed a reply with shaky hands. I asked him why and where he was.
His response told me only that he was in his carrel, which
I couldn’t see from where I sat.

I turned back to my laptop with a heavy sigh. What
to tell Astoria?

I typed in several messages and deleted them before
deciding on,
I have to go
.

Go? Go where?
was her reply.

I’m not getting anything done here. I need to go home
, I
typed, purposefully avoiding her eyes.

H
m . . . Yeah, you gonna get so much more done around
loud Tia and cable television. Who just texted you?

Nobody.

Was it John?

I have to go.

WAS it JOHN?

I closed my laptop without replying and stuffed it
into its bag. I finally met the stare I had felt boring into
the side of my head. Astoria’s eyebrows were raised and
her lips were twisted to the side. She gave me a burning
look of disapproval as if I had just told her I was going to
rob a bank or something. Strangely, I think she would
have preferred that to the inference I let her make.

So it wasn’t smart. I didn’t need to hear that from
Astoria. What I needed was an answer. An answer that
only John had. At least that was what I told myself.

Since I was apparently hard headed and still hadn’t
learned my lesson, I agreed to meet John in the law
school parking lot. He walked up in black sweatpants and
a long-sleeve gray T-shirt. I stood there shivering in my
jacket and wondering where his was.

He rubbed his hands together and then rubbed them
over his arms before saying, “Hey. I’ve missed you.”

He smiled at me, but when my face remained a block
of stone, his smile faded. He hit a button on the remote on
his key chain and unlocked the car doors. We got in for a
silent and tense ride to a nearly empty mall parking lot.

John killed the engine and turned to face me. “So . . .
for someone who wants to talk for a living, you’re being
pretty quiet.”

I
continued to glare at him, shrugging. We had been
sitting there for a while, and that’s all he could think of to say.

“What am I supposed to say to you after that?” I said
finally. “You miss me. Right.”

He actually had the nerve to look surprised. “Well—”

“I haven’t heard from you since the party. You act like
you don’t know me in the law school. Then you go and
make some asinine comment like that. You miss me.
What do you want me to do? What do you want me to
say?”

“We talked about this at the party. And you said you
understood. Anyway, I invited you out here because I
want to talk to you about this. I don’t want things to be
weird like this.”

“Then you shouldn’t act like a freak,” I muttered
under my breath.

“I know I’ve been acting strangely, but I’m trying to
explain,” John said.

“You’re not trying to explain. You’re just sitting there.”
“I’m trying to think of how to put this.”

“Well, why don’t you just say it? If you’re trying to
spare my feelings, I think we’re way past that point,” I
said dryly. “You’ve already rejected me once.”

“I didn’t reject you. I have a girlfriend. You know
that. You knew that before.”

“Well, I’m not the one who kissed you and then
freaked out.”

“I’m trying to explain that now.”

“So explain.”

“I would if you would shut up long enough.”

“Go right ahead. Nobody’s stopping you. Please
explain to me why you’ve been a jackass for the past few
weeks,” I snapped.

John looked annoyed. I didn’t care. I turned my back
to him, staring out of the passenger side window. I
watched my breath fog up the window while we both
fumed in silence.

“I don’t even know what your deal is, Denise.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk. You with the girlfriend. At
least I’m single.”

“It’s complicated.”

“How?”

“I mean, I want to be with her, but—”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Would you let me finish?”

“Go on,” I snarled.

Dead silence again. I wanted to put my fist through
the glass.

“Whatever. Never mind. You wouldn’t even get it.”
“Yeah. You don’t get it yourself.”

“Okay,” he said shortly.

I whipped my head around to look at him. He was
staring straight ahead, his jaw set stonily. He didn’t even
start to turn his head in my direction. I knew he could feel me glaring at him.

“So I guess you’ve decided not to explain it.”
“You just said I don’t know how,” he said.

I was too angry to speak. His smart ass seemed to know it all anyway. I sat there, trying to figure out why h
e had drug me out in the freezing cold just to play mind
games with me. Not only was I angry at him, I was also
angry with myself for not being strong enough to turn
away and leave him alone.

I needed to get my head right. To take Astoria’s advice
and go about my business. Instead, I’d been all too happy
to go with him when he’d texted me earlier. Some foolish,
idiotic part of me had thought that would be the
moment. For some unknown reason, I thought I had
been about to hear that he legitimately wanted to be with
me. The fact that I had even contemplated it made me angriest of all. John was an idiot. And I was one to even
want him, let alone want him to want to be with me.

I suddenly wished I was outside of that car and away.
I just wanted everything to stop. My life was moving too
fast in a direction I did not want it to go in. When had I
decided to go after the impossible? And that it was okay
to think about a guy that way, and one with a girlfriend at that?

I hadn’t realized I was crying until I felt John’s hand
on my back. I jumped away from his touch even though,
deep down, I wanted to leap into his arms.

“Don’t you touch me!” I backed myself up as far as I
could against the passenger side door.

“Stop freaking out. I was just—”

“Just drive me home. Now!”

“Fine.” He muttered angrily under his breath as he
turned the key in the ignition.

“Evil jerk,” I muttered.

“Whatever,” he sneered.

T
hat was the best he could come up with? I wondered
what I saw in him while carefully not allowing myself to
answer that question.

He took his BlackBerry Storm out of his pocket, hit
a button on the screen and put it in the cup holder.
“Who’s that? Sasha?” I sneered.

“Well, she is my girlfriend. I guess it would make
sense that she calls me sometimes,” John said.
Apparently, she texted him because he picked the phone
up again, read something, typed onto the screen for a
moment, and then put it back.

“What did Sasha have to say?” I sneered.

“I don’t think you really want to know.”

“Take me home.”

“Be glad to.” He muttered something under his
breath.

“What was that?”

“I said this was a mistake.”

“Yeah. Whatever. ”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

He didn’t say anything else after that. He just started
the engine and turned the radio up.

AN UNEXPECTED TRUTH

Astoria and I had dinner together the day after I left
her in the library under shady pretenses. We went to the dining hall on the undergrad campus. Astoria had a meal
plan, and the food was surprisingly good, so we often
went there and I sponged off her guest meals.

Suse didn’t come with us. She’d been scarce over the
past few days. She was more than a little pissed about
what I’d said to her after the karaoke thing. I’d tried apol
ogizing, but she wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

That day, Astoria wasn’t much about eating. Her salad lay untouched on the plate in front of her and she kept
twirling her apple by its stem between her index finger
and thumb. “I just don’t understand you sometimes. Why
would you spend the night at his house? You know what
people are already saying about you.” She stared at me like I was a calculus problem and she was an English major.

“We didn’t do anything, and people should mind
their business.”

“You didn’t do anything. You spent the night, Denise. I don’t know who’s crazier, you or him.”

I told her mostly everything, heavily editing what had
happened on the roof. And I didn’t mention the kiss at all. I told Astoria most of the truth. The truth I thought she could handle anyway.

“Yeah. If everything was so great, how come he prac
tically runs away when he sees you coming?”

I said nothing, but my smile faded. I loved Astoria for
her bluntness. But I also hated her bluntness.

It was true that John avoided me, with the exception
of the past night, which I wasn’t going to tell Astoria
about and give her more ammunition.

I shrugged and pushed the spiral-shaped pasta around
on my plate. I wasn’t hungry any longer.

“I don’t see why you can’t just find a strong, black
man,” Astoria said.

I rolled my eyes.

“Please tell me what’s wrong with Erich.”

“I already have.”

“I don’t want to hear all those weak excuses. He’s cute.
He’s nice. He’s smart. He’s funny. I’ve known him for
years and I just know you and him would be perfect
together. I mean, do you even like black guys?”

“What kind of question is that?” That thing about black guys always got to me. I’d heard it way too much.
I was attracted to them. The ones I was interested in
were never interested back. And I got really annoyed
that everything had to be broken down like that. What
did it matter who I was attracted to? Whose business
was it?

Sure Erich was attractive, but Astoria had only been
shoving him in my face since I’d first shown interest in John. When I pointed that out to her, she had an answer
f
or it. Apparently, he’d been dating some undergrad from
VUU for a while.

Astoria didn’t get that it was my business who I was attracted to. And John was not an option anyway, so she
didn’t have to worry about it.

Astoria shrugged. “Just a question. I’ve never heard you talking about going out on a date with one.”

“I haven’t been on a date since I was in college. You
know that.”

“Your only boyfriend was white. I only ever hear you
talking about white guys like that.”

“That’s not true. I talk about a lot of different types of guys.”

Astoria kept it up. “You have so much going for you,
Denise. I don’t want to see you ruin everything.
Especially because of some white boy who doesn’t even
deserve your tears.”

So I had two racist best friends. Well, actually, Suse
was ambiguous on the issue. I did remember her saying
she was “relieved” when Burke left
Grey’s Anatomy
because “the whole situation with Christina was just too
weird.” Of course she didn’t have a problem with the gay
slur issue.