Tangled Thoughts (5 page)

Jack grinned and relaxed on the couch, throwing his arms across the back so one was sort of behind my shoulders. “Is this another awkward TA moment?”

“No.”
Sort of
. I was having inappropriate thoughts about a TA, so did that qualify?

He nodded thoughtfully. “Then usually I'd say you were expecting me to say something like ‘
of course not, you're way more interesting than they are'
—you know, flattery—but I don't get that vibe from you.” I must have looked mortified because he laughed. “But seriously, you
are
more interesting than those guys. We play basketball together; I barely know them.”

“Oh.”

“Lane, remember how we've talked about
relaxing
before?” Amy deposited her already empty bottle on the floor and took the other one out of my hand. “Let's try that.” The main act played its first notes before I could glare at her. She squealed and grabbed my hand, tugging me to my reluctant feet. “C'mon! We'll work on relaxing on the dance
floor!” Over her shoulder she called, “Black sheep, meet us there with another drink!”

We waved to Jack's friends on our way down to the packed floor. I could see why Amy liked this band. They were good, and true to her word, the bass player was shirtless by the end of their second song. Being in a band was apparently a decent work out.

When fingers touched the inside of my elbow, I whirled around. It was an unexpected feeling, an intimate kind of gesture. But it was just Jack, with new drinks and a smile. He handed off a beer to a delighted Amy and made a decent effort at bopping along to the music.

I leaned closer so he could hear me better. “You're a good sport, you know?”

Jack nodded. “Anything for the cause.”

I laughed. “What's your cause?”

He lightly bumped me with his shoulder while he swayed. “Isn't the cause always to spend time with beautiful girls?”

“I'm not sure you should be saying that to me.” Despite that I was smiling like an idiot.

Amy, giggling, said, “Ignore her, Black Sheep.
I'll
be your cause tonight.” She danced toward Jack, sliding down the length of him, and shoving him closer to me as her breasts brushed his side. I wasn't entirely sure the second part was intentional. I started to count in my head the number of beers she'd had.

I got to four before Jack said, “Maybe I should have said
team
. We're a team, right? Not that you're not beautiful, best friend in the whole wide world,” and I lost count. The one in her hand was empty, when it seemed like it had been recently full.

Amy shimmied next to him again. “No one's more beautiful than Elainey, right? Ha! E-Lainey! Lane, that would be your Disney Channel show.”

That's when I started to get worried.

“Ame, maybe we should go soon…” I called over to her, loud enough to sound like the total buzz kill I, well, was. A couple people around us booed me.

Amy laughed and kept wiggling. I was starting to think the dancing was a byproduct of the drinks. “Consensus says no, Lame-y. C'mon be on the
team
. What's our mascot, Black Sheep?”

“Wolverines,” Jack provided promptly.

“Rawr!” Amy spun around. The band was getting louder and faster, and the crowd, except for me, more into it.

Wolverines
? I thought. “Where did you say you went to high school again?” I asked Jack.

“California,” he said over the noise. But did he look away when he said it? I was having trouble concentrating between the band, the alarm bell ringing in my head, and Amy's wild swaying.

But I knew that mascot. I could have sworn—“Didn't you say you were from San Francisco before? What was the name of your school?”

Finally, Jack looked at me, really
looked
at me, and said, “I went to Webber, Lainey.”

I went rigid.
This could not be happening
.

“Hey! Isn't that—?” The West Coast Sententia school? Yes. But Amy didn't get the chance to say it aloud. She was half turned back to us when she started to fall. “Whee!” she laughed—
laughed
!—as she headed toward the ground. Jack and I managed to catch her before she landed, his hand touching mine as we hauled her up, and I yanked it away as soon as she was standing.

“We're leaving,” I told her. “Now.”

“Lainey—” Jack said.

“I think that's a good idea,” Amy slurred as she started to tilt toward the ground again.

Jack caught her and propped her up with an arm around her waist. “Lainey, listen—”

But I was
not
going to listen. “No! We're leaving! Amy, c'mon.” I took her arm and started to lead her toward the door, but she stumbled.

“When did I get so dizzy?” she asked of no one in particular but Jack was there, holding her again. “Black Sheep! I'm so dizzy. Carry me home?” In the periphery, I could see a few people looking concerned, and a bouncer starting to watch us.

“
Shit
!” was all I could say. I repeated it a few times.

“At least let me help you get her outside,” Jack pleaded.

And though I couldn't look at him, I nodded.

I
F
I
W
AS
into understatement, I'd say the taxi ride to my apartment was tense.

Really, it was two miles of nightmare.

Amy was propped up in the middle. I busied myself by petting her hair and praying to every god I could remember that she wouldn't be sick in the car. The driver had already threatened us with the fifty dollar cleaning fee.

And I—I was trying not to throw up myself.

I wanted to. So badly. Jack knew about me, obviously. Somehow. He had to. He was one of us and he
knew
.

When Amy started singing a song about
feeling sentimental
, I basically wanted to kill her. But not as much as I wanted to get us out of the taxi, so I gritted my teeth and counted seconds in my head. We hit every stop light on the way.

At a particularly long one, Jack turned to look at me, saying, “Lainey, can I just—”

“
No
,” I gritted out. “So don't try.”

“We promised we weren't grading each other tonight.”

“I'm not. I'm just not speaking to you.”

Amy chimed in with, “Somebody's got a seeeeccrrreet. Oh.” The cab went over a bump, which mercifully made her quiet as she tried not to puke and I did my auntie's yoga breathing for the last thousand feet.

“Lainey, I—”

“No!” With a final jerk, the cab stopped at my apartment, which I'd never been more thankful to own than that moment. Dragging Amy up all the stairs of my dorm would have been an even bigger nightmare than this already was. I threw open the door and jumped out just fast enough for her to lean over and throw up next to a BMW parked at the curb. Before I could pay the cab driver, Jack gave him a bunch of cash and asked him to wait.

“I feel a little better now!” Amy called, seemingly proud of herself.

With difficulty, Jack helped her back out of his door without getting hit by oncoming traffic. Between the two of us, we got her into the building. Jack and Luis, the night doorman, nodded at each other as we went through. The tiny elevator took approximately a year to reach the fourth floor.

Amy broke into giggles as we went down the hallway with her propped between us, singing, “Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!” On the other side of her, I could see Jack laughing silently, but I couldn't find a single thing funny about the entire situation. After a few choruses, she swallowed. “Starting not to feel as good, Lane,” she warned, but we were—finally!—at my apartment. If unlocking a door had been a rodeo challenge, I did it with winning speed and tugged Amy through behind me.

With little more than a second glance, I said, “Thanks for your help,” and let the door slam in Jack's face.

Carter

M
y apartment was further outside my budget than I wanted to admit, but when Uncle Dan made the arrangements, I was in no shape to refuse. He wouldn't have accepted a refusal anyway. I was situated less than a mile from a vast park where I could run, close to a metro stop, and a few blocks from the one place that made me feel closest to home: a bookstore.

I suspected the store's proximity was in large part responsible for my current address. It was the first place Uncle Dan took me after I arrived, and they greeted him by name. Of course he was known there—he was a senator as well as a scholar with three books to his name—and he made sure they knew me too.

Inside was a coffee shop and I treated myself to coffee every day and books more often than necessary. It wasn't like Penrose Books at all, except for the scent. The particular smell of a bookstore in the morning was the thing I missed almost as much as…my hand strayed
toward my back pocket, but I caught myself. I shoved open the store's door with more force than necessary.

The coffee shop interior was warm and mellow. A glance told me the big chalk board menus were slightly different from the day before. If I thought about it for a few seconds, I could figure out exactly what was different, but I didn't need to. I always ordered the same thing. It was just one more image for the mundane collection stuffed into my brain's infinitely crowded filing cabinet. I wondered if one day my head would explode from it all and a million useless memories of menus and Lainey's goddamned note would flood the ground.

“Senator's Son!” The barista greeted me as she did every day.

“Nephew,” I corrected, like always. I tried not to touch my eye when I could tell she was looking at it. I tried to pretend it didn't hurt, too. Training, politeness, or possibly the fact that she'd seen everything kept her from mentioning it.

She was already pouring me a cup when she asked, “One or two?”

“Two,” I answered and she poured a second, setting it on the counter with a mountain of pink packets stacked on top.

As she made my change, she said casually, “Hey, saw the senator here on a date a few days ago.”

“I'm sorry?” I realized I was still holding out my hand with the dollar and few coins sitting in it, so I dropped them in the tip jar. To my knowledge, Uncle Dan wasn't dating anyone. He hadn't been with anyone seriously for years. And now, it was kind of difficult when you were running for president.

Her smile slipped a little. “Senator Astor. He met a woman here the other day. She was pretty. I've never seen him with anyone who wasn't obviously an aide or you. Who was she?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “Probably a reporter.” A line was forming behind me.

Her eyebrows went up in a way that said it hadn't looked like business. “They seemed awfully friendly. Must have been a good interview.”

“I'm sure,” I said, which sounded stupid even to me. “See you tomorrow.”

At my building, I met Lex in the elevator. She was clearly on her way back from the fitness center, wiping absently at her neck with one of their towels while scrolling her phone. She didn't even look up when I stepped in the car.

I leaned on the wall next to her, close, and I could see her readying her best
back off
when I said, “You could just run with me, you know.”

She squeaked, and her phone slipped from her fingers, but she caught it before it could hit the floor.

“Jesus. I thought you were some dickhead creeper.”

“Just the one who brought your coffee.”

“You're lucky I didn't knee you in the balls.”

“You're right. Then I would have dropped the coffee.” She took it and kissed my cheek in thanks. “You
could
run with me though,” I added. I tapped the cup in her hand. “It would be warmer that way.”

“I hate running.”

I swallowed my coffee hard. “You were
conference
in field hockey.”

“I know.”

Back in my apartment, I sat at the dining table and continued to sip my coffee.

“What's the matter?” Lex dropped into the chair across from me.

“What?”

“You just ran a zillion miles, it's nice out, you've got coffee and smelled books. Why are you so quiet?”

I picked up my cup and found it light, almost empty. I'd been sitting there for longer than I realized. “Do you know why my uncle is going to Arizona next weekend?”

“No? Politics? Because the best spas are there?” I told her about my conversation with the barista and her eyebrows shot toward the ceiling. “Well,
that
would be juicy news. Maybe he's taking
girlfriend
to L'Auberge. Scottsdale's pretty nice, too.”

“Don't you think he'd have told me if he was dating someone?”

“My dad doesn't tell me every time
he's
dating someone.”

“Lex, Jesus.” I'd been spinning my cup in circles and it clattered to a stop on its side. “That's not true.”

“Of
course
it is. Dad has more girlfriends than I do. Mom gets new jewelry every time he gets a new secretary.”

“Fuck.” Out of habit, I wiped a hand down my face and winced as I passed over my swollen eye.

“Don't pretend you didn't know.”

“I
didn't
.”

Alexis shook her head. “That's because you think everyone is sweet and good.”

“
I'm
not even sweet and good.”

“Yes you are. In here.” She leaned forward and tapped my chest. It felt warm under her fingers.

“I haven't always been.”

“Carter, seriously.” She stood and came to my side of the table, pushing it back with a scrape until she could settle herself comfortably on my lap. “I know I joke about it, but really, you're a good, good boy. I bet even all your love-'em-and-leave-'em townie girls still pine for you.”