Someone Else (23 page)

I’m pretty sure the guy sitting across from me in the SUB right now is looking at porn on his laptop.

I smiled at this latest text, and then brought up some of the older ones, rereading them in order. There were seventeen of them now, all from this past week. All from Michael.

The texting started last Saturday, the day after our second conversation about his brother. This time, the news was good. After almost a week with no word from Josh, he’d finally called his mom. He’d been an hour away from home the whole time, staying with some woman in a seedy hotel room and doing vast amounts of coke. He was sick and thin but alive. Instead of letting him come home, his parents sent him straight to a ninety-day rehab. He’d hit rock bottom and lived to tell. Again.

After Michael updated me, I thought that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t. Texts started appearing on my cell, random one-sentence observations about his professors or dorm-mates or perfect strangers seated near him in the library or student union building. Why he did this, I didn’t know, but I liked it. Every day I watched the clock, counting down the hours until I could get away by myself, turn on my phone, and hear the little message-waiting chime that no longer aggravated me. And with no one around to see me, I’d let myself grin.

Dylan was right. I had been acting distant and distracted all week, and not just because of these texts. Plotting ways to break up with one’s boyfriend required a lot of concentration.

The moment I knew I had to break up with Dylan occurred two days before, when he accused me of flirting with Tim Hawkins, a guy I knew from art class. After our class that day, Tim walked with me to my locker because he happened to be going to the basement to pick up some French assignments he’d missed while he was out with the flu. While we walked, we talked about art and French. An innocent, polite thing to do, but Dylan didn’t see it that way. All Dylan saw was me walking with Tim, laughing at some crack he’d made about Madame Bedeau’s renowned senility. Somehow, this translated into me being hot for Tim’s body, which would have been funny had it not been so sad. First of all, Tim was short and pockmarked and purportedly gay. Second, I was not the flirting type, a fact Dylan would know if he ever emerged from his jealous haze long enough to have a rational thought. However, I knew by now that this was too much to ask, just as sure as I knew that I was never going to change him.

But I could still change me.

Looking again at Michael’s newest text, I hit save and then sent a text of my own, to Dylan.
We need to talk
, I typed.
Pick u up at 8?

His response came a minute later.
Going to Jess’s tonite. Meet me there? Sorry for before. I’m a prick.

I turned off the phone. His apologies meant nothing to me now.

****

On the way to Jessica’s house that evening, I pulled into a gas station/convenience store and called Leanne. She’d been my confidante, my sounding board, through all of this Dylan mess. Now, more than ever, I needed her wisdom.

“I’m breaking up with Dylan tonight.”

There was silence as she took this in. “Had enough?”

I filled her in on today’s fight. “Yeah, I’d say I’ve had enough.”

“Damn,” she said. “Sounds like a good time to get out.”

“It was the last straw, you know?”

“Yeah, I know all about last straws, remember? I’m glad you’re dumping his ass tonight, but promise me you’ll do it in public. I mean, around people. Don’t let him get you alone.”

“We’ll be at our friend’s house,” I assured her. “People will be there.”

“Good.”

“How should I do it? Break up with him?”

She paused, considering this. “Just rip off the Band-Aid. One quick motion. With guys like him, it’s the only way to go.”

Band-Aid. Right. “Thanks, Leanne.”

“Good luck, Taylor. You’re doing the right thing.”

Leanne’s pep talk made me feel more confident about what I was about to do, but I still found myself stalling. I took my time pumping gas, then loitered in the convenience store for a few minutes, deliberating over packs of gum. On the way back to my car I walked slowly, breathing in the smell of gasoline mixed with clean spring air. It was a clear night, the inky sky dotted with stars. I stood there gazing at it for a minute, spotting the constellations my dad had taught me to find when I was six. Some were easily visible, others were hiding.

Finally, unable to put it off any longer, I drove to Jessica’s house.

“Hallelujah,” Jess said when she opened the front door for me. “Come on in.”

I glanced around for Dylan, but he wasn’t there. “Where’s Dylan?” I asked Jess as she put her arm around me and steered me into the kitchen, where Lia and Mallory stood by the fridge, each sipping what looked like iced chocolate milk.

“He’s not here yet,” Jessica said, picking up her own glass of the same brown liquid. “The guys are coming later.”

“Want a mudslide?” Lia asked me, holding up her glass. Her eyes met mine for a second and then flicked away.

“No thanks.” I glanced over my shoulder at the living room, which was empty. We seemed to be only ones in the house. “So when are the guys supposed to get here?”

“Soon,” Mallory said, and all three of them nodded in unison. They reminded me of giant bobble-head dolls.

“It’s just us girls for a bit,” Jessica said. She squeezed my shoulder, the same one Dylan had bumped earlier. The pressure from her hand made my collarbone ache. “This’ll give us a chance to talk.”

“Talk about what?” I glanced at Lia, who suddenly seemed fascinated by her mudslide. She poked at the ice with her straw, avoiding my gaze.

“Dylan,” said Mallory, studying me from beneath her ever-present wave of hair.

“What about him?”

“He’s been acting a little…” She waved her hand around, searching for the right word. “…paranoid lately.”

Lately?

“He’s worried you’re going to dump him,” Jess said. “Which, of course, is ridiculous. Right?”

All eyes swung to me, even Lia’s. I swallowed before answering. “Well, I think that should be between Dylan and me.”

Their faces twisted in confusion. To them,
everything
was their business. Especially when it wasn’t.

“Taylor, you’re being impulsive,” Jessica said. “Stop and think about this for a second. You know Dylan’s crazy about you. He’s just tense because he knows your ex is coming home from college soon. For some reason he thinks you’ve never gotten over him.”

I thought about the seventeen texts still tucked away in my cell phone. Dylan had grounds to be suspicious, but that still didn’t give him a right to treat me like he did. Accepting texts from my ex and discussing his family problems didn’t exactly qualify as not being “over him”. But I had no desire to explain myself to three girls who were famous for taking only a part of the story, molding it into whatever suited them, and then presenting their version as fact.

“You guys have no idea how difficult Dylan can be,” I told them. It became obvious to me then, what was going on here. They had staged this…whatever it was. Break-up intervention?

“He’s a guy,” Jessica said, knocking back the rest of her drink. “They’re all infants. You just have to know how to handle them.”

I looked at Lia again. She’d been abnormally quiet since I got here, and I wondered if it was because she’d been the one vote against this ambush. Not that opposing views had ever deterred Jessica. Sometimes it was easier just to stand back and shut up.

The guys arrived then, cutting short our little kitchen summit. My relief over that was doused by anxiety when I caught site of Dylan. When I started toward him, Jessica grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

“He loves you, Taylor,” she said in my ear. “Don’t do anything you might regret later.”

Her words sounded more like a threat than advice. “I won’t,” I said, and slid out of her grasp.

I strode over to Dylan like I was on a mission. He didn’t look up at me until I was standing right in front of him, and when he did I could see the worry in his eyes.
He knows what’s coming
, I thought.

“Let’s go in Jessica’s room,” I said, and without a word he followed me across the living room and down the hallway. Jess shot me a reproving look as we passed, but I ignored her and kept walking.

The second I shut the bedroom door behind us, Dylan was on me, hugging me like the world would end if he dared to let go. He smelled like beer. My arms stayed where they were, limp at my sides. Hugging him didn’t feel good anymore. Nothing about him felt good anymore.

“I’m so sorry,” he said into my hair. “There’s no excuse for how I acted today. I can’t believe you even want to talk to me after what I said.”

I backed out of his arms and sat down on the bed. The only light in the room came from the fish tank in the corner. In any other situation, the soft yellow glow might have been kind of romantic.

“We need to talk,” I said, nodding toward the spot beside me. He sat down and laced his fingers through mine. I let him do this because it was easier than pulling away.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Up close, his eyes were red and bloodshot, either from emotion or large quantities of beer. “Nothing like that will ever happen again. I promise.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Nothing like that will ever happen again.”
Rip off the Band-Aid. One quick motion
. “I want to break up.”

His hand slipped away from mine. I heard him inhale deeply, as if breathing in my words, removing them from the air. “You don’t mean that.”

“This isn’t working. It hasn’t been working for a long time.”

“So we’ll make it work.” His arms snaked around my waist. “Please, Taylor. Don’t do this. I love you.”

I inched away from him. “Stop saying that. You don’t love me, Dylan. You never did. You don’t call someone you love nasty names or freak out when they talk to another guys. Telling me you love me means nothing unless you show it too. Otherwise, it’s just noise.”

He looked at me like he’d never seen me before, like an evil spirit had possessed my body and turned me into someone else. “Sorry I’m not perfect like
Michael
,” he said, bitterness replacing the panic that had permeated his voice only moments before.

“He has nothing to do with this.”

“Bullshit.” He stood up, listing a little to the right. “No matter how hard I try, I’ll never measure up to him. Your first love. Your first everything. And what the hell am I? Your second choice, that’s what. I never stood a chance with you.”

I was standing up, facing him, before I even realized I’d moved. “No? What have we been doing for the past three months, then? I gave you all kinds of chances and you managed to screw up every one of them. If you felt like second choice, that’s your issue, not mine.”

“Right. Nothing is your fault. You’re just as perfect as your ex-boyfriend. I’m amazed you even looked twice at a loser like me.”

“I never said I was innocent in all this.” I was vaguely aware that we were yelling, but was too fired up to care. “I never said you were a loser either. It’s just really hard to be someone’s only source of happiness. I can’t be that person for you anymore, Dylan. It’s too much pressure.”

He shook his head. “You’re all the same. The first sign of trouble and you leave.”

“First sign?” I choked out a laugh. “Hardly. And look, I’m not your mother, okay, so don’t compare me to her.”

Before the words had fully evacuated my mouth, his face was two inches from mine. “Shut up,” he said through clenched teeth. “That…is no one’s business but mine. I wish I’d never told you.”

My heart hammered in my chest as he slowly backed away from me, his eyes locked on mine. We stayed like that for a minute, staring holes through each other, while Jess’s fish tank gurgled beside us and voices mingled with music outside the door. Then, in a particularly impressive display of bad timing, my cell phone buzzed with a brand new text.

“Who’s that?” Dylan asked when I made no move to answer it.

“I don’t know,” I said, willing the damn phone to shut up. The only people who regularly texted me were Jessica, Dylan, and Michael, and only one of those people were not in this house with me right now.

“Don’t you want to look at it?”

“It can wait.”

I turned and pretended to study the fish tank, slipping my hands into my sweatshirt pockets as nonchalantly as possible. With my right hand I felt for my phone, my thumb blindly pushing buttons in an effort to silence the thing. But of course it kept buzzing, bound and determined to alert me of this new message. I felt Dylan come up behind me.

“Let me see.”

“Why?” I said, watching one of the fish, a rainbow one, as it chased another, bigger fish around the tank.

“Let me see,” Dylan said, this time with a sharpness that quickened my pulse. “Or do you have something to hide?”

I spun around to face him, hands still in my pockets. “It’s my phone. My private phone. I’m not showing it to you.”

His hand found mine through the material of my sweatshirt. When I pulled away, he retaliated by grabbing my wrist. His fingers dug into my skin as he forced my hand out of its protective compartment. The phone came with it, and I clutched it even tighter in my palm. It hummed again, oblivious.

“Let go of me,” I demanded.

Surprise turned to pain when he squeezed my wrist even harder. With his other hand, he got a solid grip on my phone and wiggled it out of my grasp. Then, still holding my wrist so I couldn’t stop him, he looked at my phone and read the text. Right away, his skin darkened to the same shade of red I’d seen in the Dungeon earlier.

“Jesus, Dylan, that hurts,” I said, partly in an attempt to distract him from what was obviously a text from Michael, and partly because it did hurt, a lot. For the first time ever, I was scared he might hit me.

But he didn’t. Instead, he dropped my wrist and squinted at my phone. “You lied to me,” he said, sounding vaguely surprised. My stomach plummeted when he started browsing through the saved texts. He had the same phone as me, so he knew exactly which buttons to press. “You lied to me a lot,” he added after reading all seventeen—well, eighteen now—of Michael’s texts.