Third Degree (14 page)

“Very creative,” Ken says, then turns to Lance, on my other side. “What about you, Lance? Do you agree with our guest?”

“Totally,” Lance says.

Oh my God, does anyone in this class own a spine besides me?

I keep my mouth shut for the remaining torturous minutes, but once class is over, it’s obvious that Marshall and I are not anywhere near being on the same page.

“Why does it look like smoke is about to come out of your ears?” he asks.

“There is no way smoke will be emerging from my ears.” I push past students in the crowded hallway. “And you’re not coming to class with me ever again.”

Marshall dodges some shirtless guys running through the hall with red letters painted on their chests. “Why not? I thought that went well. I even took notes.”

We finally make it outside into the fresh air. I was suffocating in that classroom, sitting beside Marshall for an entire hour. I inhale the slightly humid air and take in the scent of freshly mown grass. “You wasted your time, then. That poem isn’t worth remembering. Especially if your memorization capabilities are limited to one passage every nine years.”

And this is why I don’t have any real friends. Elevated intelligence allows me to know exactly where to hit and cause the most damage.

“I wasn’t taking notes on the poem,” Marshall says, ignoring my jab. “I was taking notes on you.”

Maybe I’m not the only one who knows exactly where to hit.

I close my eyes, draw in a deep breath, and turn around to face him. “As endearing as your desire to advise is, I don’t think I can handle being a science experiment any longer. Keep your notes to yourself.”

His face tightens. “I didn’t think failure was something you were willing to accept. Guess I was wrong.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I snap. “You think one single professor would dare give me a grade below an A? I was the key component to the University of Chicago’s huge PR stunt. I’ve never even been allowed the opportunity to fail.”

The words are out of my mouth before I have a chance to process this brand-new revelation.

“Except you
failed
to get into Johns Hopkins. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

Yes, but now I feel a thousand miles from that goal. “What do you want from me, Marshall?”

He takes the books from under my arm and sets them on a bench beside us. “I want you to admit that you’re pissed off because I gave that girl in my class my number.”

Jesus Christ
. He’s either really arrogant or way more perceptive than I gave him credit
for. I squeeze my hands into fists. “Are you actually that full of yourself?”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “But I’m right. I know I’m right. And nice job with Mr. Chocolate Milk, by the way. I think he’ll be sleeping with his curtains closed and door locked from now on. Have you listened to anything I’ve told you? Be relatable. Offer up some piece of yourself that people can connect with.”

“I did, you idiot.”

He steps closer. “No, you lied. Your parents don’t care if you get a C. As far as I know, you’re not planning on missing class next week.”

“I am now!” Not exactly the best comeback, but he’s really getting to me, though I’m not sure why.

“You’re confused, maybe a little jealous of the hot blond chick from anatomy, and instead of dealing with it …” Marshall lays a hand on my upper arm, like he’s trying to prevent me from running away. “You’re going to give up trying to be a normal human and blame your failure on everyone else.”

I want to ask why I don’t have his number and if he’d rather sit with that other girl at the game on Saturday even though he invited me. But my gaze travels to his fingers wrapped around my arm, the bare skin of him touching the bare skin of me, and my pulse quickens. I refocus on the logo of the band in the center of his T-shirt, and then my gaze travels upward and I can feel his eyes on me, the shift in him—all serious discussion turning to lips and mouths and tongues and heartbeats loud and throbbing in my ears.

His fingers loosen on my arm and I think he’s about to release me and take off, but instead a trail of heat moves up my arm, across my shoulder, and eventually to the back of my neck.

He’s focused on my mouth, and I’m focused on his eyes and the way the blue surrounding his pupils grows larger as he moves closer. His warm breath is already hitting my skin, the hand on the back of my neck drawing me closer.

Do it, please—

The second I absorb the feel of his lips on mine, it’s like a giant knot inside me unwinds. I reach for his shirt, tangling my fingers in it, pulling him to me. Our lips part and his tongue is in my mouth. My eyelids flutter shut and I fall hard into this feeling. Two minutes ago I’d wanted to punch him, and now I can’t get enough of the softness of his mouth, the strength of his arms around me, the scent of soap and deodorant, the annoying weight of our clothes between us.

Kelsey was so right—he’s a gifted kisser. I should have tested the theory a long time ago.

Chapter 11

I’m making out with my RA out in the open, with hundreds of students milling around. Does this make me normal?

Both of us jump apart at almost the exact same moment. I stare, first at the newly acquired two feet of space between us, then at the Marshall’s wide eyes. He swipes the back of his hand across his mouth and I do the same.

“Okay, I totally didn’t mean to do that.” His gaze flits around us, taking in the surroundings again, and then he’s back to looking at me.

“Me either,” I say, my chest still rising and falling quickly.

Not that I didn’t want him to kiss me …

I reach for my books on the bench and then decide to sit down instead of picking them up. My limbs are like Jell-O. I remember the feeling of the knot unraveling just moments ago. It’s almost like post-orgasm relief. I can think clearly now. I don’t have all that anger and tension clouding my thoughts.

Marshall sinks onto the bench beside me. “I’m sorry.”

I glance sideways at him, fighting a smile. “What for? I kind of enjoyed that.”

“Me too.” He lifts an arm, wrapping it around the back of the bench. “I meant that I’m sorry for what I said about you. That was pretty harsh and judgmental.”

“Definitely harsh.” I lean back and close my eyes, my head now resting on Marshall’s arm. “But also true.”

I’m constantly bouncing between being afraid that there’s something wrong with me and then convincing myself that it’s not me, it’s them.

“Izzy …” Marshall looks straight ahead while I stare at the side of his face. “If you were really as cold as you try to be, I wouldn’t want anything to do with you.”

“You would have hated me a couple of years ago.” After that in-depth analysis of Poe’s life, it feels good to confess this. “I was the world’s biggest brat. I deserved to be smacked many times, but I’ve never been punished in my life.”

“Maybe your parents didn’t know what to do with you,” he says. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”

I laugh. “Thanks.” The amusement dissolves as quickly as it came, and a darkness I’ve experienced only a few times in my life sweeps over me, pressing its weight onto my shoulders. “Maybe they’re scared, too. Maybe they’re working hard to deny the fact that their only child
might not be a very good person.”

“Izzy—” He’s looking at me now, so I shake my head to stop him. I’m not fishing for reassurance.

“They’re getting divorced,” I admit. “I drove home last week and I wasn’t going to come back, but then there was a
FOR SALE
sign in the yard and my dad’s office furniture was gone. They ended their marriage without even telling me.”

“I’m sorry,” Marshall says. “But maybe they’ve been unhappy for a while. Maybe it’ll be better this way. Did they seem unhappy?”

I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “That’s the thing … I didn’t notice any difference. What the hell is wrong with me? I didn’t notice my parents’ marriage falling apart.”

Marshall hesitates, then squeezes my shoulder with one hand. “People are good at hiding the ugly parts of their lives.”

My gaze drifts to his face for a second, studying his features, trying to figure out if he’s speaking from experience. Can I tell him about the ugly parts of my life? Will he get it? Can I tell him the ugliest part, the part I’m not even sure my parents are aware of? The fear that brews inside me and sneaks up on rare occasions, catching me off guard?

“Not noticing my parents’ relationship issues isn’t the only thing I’m worried about,” I say, releasing the biggest breath of all. “I really do think there’s something wrong with me. My first week as an intern—last fall—a whole group of us started at the same time under Dr. Rinehart. She’s basically my boss. Well, she
was
my boss. We had this car accident patient that Rinehart and four of us interns evaluated. The guy was talking to us, joking around, his wife and his kids were bouncing all over the room, and then Rinehart gets called away to emergency surgery and the guy crashes—completely flatlines.”

“Did he have like internal bleeding or something? I’ve heard about people with sticks through their heads walking and talking from adrenaline …”

I want to smile, lighten the mood, but all I feel is dark and heavy. “He had internal bleeding. He stopped breathing, his heart stopped. There were two other interns in the room with me—both of them seven years older than I. I’d been eighteen for eight days, which means I’d been legally allowed to practice medicine, supervised, on patients for eight days. Both the girl and the guy intern panicked when the patient crashed. All they could think to do was yell for a nurse to page Rinehart. Of course they knew it was probably internal bleeding, but we had to address the not-breathing, no-pulse issue first.” The sun is warm, but goose bumps spread all over my arms and I have to rub them away. “Both of them completely froze up. And me … I didn’t have even a second’s hesitation. I grabbed the paddles and proceeded to follow textbook procedure for a code blue. By the time Dr. Rinehart returned, I’d not only restarted the guy’s heart, I had a breathing tube in place.”

“That’s good, right?” Marshall asks.

I shrug. “I thought so. Actually, I didn’t really think about it being good or bad. I knew what needed to be done, so I did it. But when everything calmed down, after Dr. Rinehart was back in control, there was a moment where I looked around the room and I could see that everybody in the room—the nurses, the guy’s wife, his screaming kids, the other interns—thought my reaction was abnormal, and not in a good way. Afterward, I asked to scrub in on the surgery, and Rinehart told me no, but then she let Dara and Caleb into the OR—and this was after they’d completely frozen up in the ER, and one ended up puking her guts out in the locker room and the other one was sobbing like a two-year-old in the stairwell.” I take a deep breath and look up at Marshall. “I think that I was supposed to be scared that he was going to die, and I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t anything.”

Marshall’s fingertips brush my cheek and then our eyes lock and he’s leaning in. My heart rate increases again, my breath catching in the back of my throat and my stomach getting that awesome flip-flop feeling. And I want this so bad. I want his mouth on mine again. I want to go back to his room, lock the door, and tug each other’s clothes off. My eyes begin to close and I can practically feel the weight of his fingertips gliding across my breasts, my stomach, moving south …

But I’ve done this before. I’ve been here before.

The revelation hits me like a brick falling from the sky. My eyes fly open, and my hand reaches out and presses against Marshall’s chest.

“What—?”

“You’re right,” I say, sliding farther away from him on the bench. “I’m not really trying, am I?”

Marshall’s eyes are still half-lidded, his brain not quite shifting gears as quickly as mine. “Huh?”

“What are we doing?” I ask him. “We’re in this bubble, and it’s become an excuse for me to not really try to assimilate here.”

“Right.” He straightens up and wipes any trace of confusion or desire from his face.

“And I’ve done this routine before.” I gesture between me and him. “Competing with someone, fighting, then making out in the on-call room.”

Justin. That was the foundation of our “relationship,” and really we never got beyond that foundation. I have no idea what I want with Marshall, but I know I don’t want our parting words at the end of the semester to include him slapping a hundred dollars into my palm and telling me he’s glad I failed.

Marshall runs his fingers through his hair and then over his face. “Why does it feel like you’re in the middle of a game of chess, moving people around to figure out how to win?”

I release a frustrated breath. I can’t answer that question because I agree with him—it does feel like that, but I don’t know why. I grab my books and stand up. “I think I’m gonna skip the game this weekend. It’s probably best. Go have fun with the leggy blond girl. I’m sure you could use some normal in your life after three weeks of being around me.”

I walk away without giving him a chance to reply. I need a new game plan. And I really need to know what Dr. Winifred James, Ph.D., wrote about me in her evaluation. I’ve flirted with the idea of illegally getting my hands on that report for long enough. What if I’m not capable of being a decent human and now I’ve dragged Marshall down this hole with me? He’s the type who cares, and, well … I don’t know if I am or not. And more important, if I’m not, can I become better?

As I’m walking away, I pull out my phone to call my mom. She picks up on the third ring. “Hey, Mom … so, have you sold my room yet, or is it available for lease this weekend? I’d like to book a room tonight.”