Definitely, Maybe in Love(42)

           



       

Reviewing some history notes from a class blog took up the next hour or  so of our journey. My phone vibrated. I'd purposefully not checked  messages for days, but it was probably time. I snuck a glance at Mel,  who was yammering on her cell. My left temple began to throb as I tapped  my Stanford e-mail icon then quickly scanned down the messages. There  were plenty from friends, classmates, and even one from Professor Masen.  I didn't have the stomach to read that one yet.

I jumped when my phone vibrated again. This time a calendar prompt  popped up, alerting me of an event that was to take place in fifteen  minutes. I stared at the screen. It wasn't something I'd entered into my  calendar. Knightly had put it in there, obviously. Though it wasn't the  event I'd seen him enter, our date to work on my thesis-that wasn't  until next week. This was something else, something … personal.

He must have entered it when I wasn't looking, when we'd been next to  each other in the backseat of Tyler's car, me momentarily distracted by  someone's hand up my shirt. Sweat pooled in the palms of my hands, under  my hair, across my forehead, as I read the short event again and again,  wanting-almost desperately-to be where it said I should be, with whom,  and doing what it said we should be doing.

After I'd read it a fourth time, everything in me dropped. Then spun.

"What's so captivating?"

Mel's voice startled me. When I turned to her, she took one look at me and winced.

"Crap, Spring! What's wrong with you?"

I didn't know what she meant. Had all my hair fallen out? Was I bleeding from the ears?

"You look like death."

Funny, because I felt like death.

I lowered the sun visor to look in the mirror. There she was again: the  same girl I'd seen when I locked myself in the bathroom at Henry's  house, and again just a few days ago, alone in the spare bedroom, pacing  around like a lunatic. My eyes were bloodshot with dark, puffy bags,  nostrils white and flaring, lips pale, brows heavy and lifeless. My face  was completely void of color except for the red splotches marbling my  neck like a funky rash. But the expression in my eyes … that was the  kicker. It wasn't that I looked shocked or sad, it was worse than that.

My face was exactly like Julia's on that day she discovered Dart was gone.

Oh, sweet, fracking irony.

"Spring?" Mel shrieked, still gaping.

When I opened my mouth to reply, my stomach heaved and I doubled over, a  gasp of pain exiting from my throat. I felt the car swerve then slow,  the sound of gravel under tires. When we stopped, my window was suddenly  rolling down. I sat up and hung my head out the side.

"If you're going to be puking again," Mel said from what sounded like  several million miles away, "you should at least have food in you. You  haven't eaten in two days. Dry heaving is bad for the esophagus."

My right cheek was pressed against the outside of the car door, and my  braids twisted over my eyes as the top half of my body hung upside down,  suspended by my seat belt.

"Keep breathing, babe." Mel's hand was on my back, rubbing and patting  in comfort. As blood pooled in my brain, I was able to breathe easier,  and my stomach settled. When I pulled my head back inside the car, Mel  had a Diet Coke in her hand, holding it out to me. I pressed it against  my forehead. The coldness of the can felt nice.

"Thanks," I whispered. "I'm fine." I attempted to smile after I took a few sips. "I'm just tired, I guess."

"Tired, right," Mel said, rubbing my arm. "We'll sit here for a sec."

"No, it's okay. I know it's a long drive." With alarm, I searched for my  phone, which had fallen to the floor in my jostling. I grabbed it and  pressed it against my chest.

"No hurry," Mel said, eyeing me. "There's a restaurant up ahead. We'll  stop for a while." She started the car and we pulled into the parking  lot.

The restaurant wasn't crowded, and we sat in a corner booth. When I  insisted on only a salad that I knew I wouldn't touch, Dr. Melanie took  over, ordering an array of vegetable sides, soup and bread.

My cell was on the table, the calendar event still showing. I picked it  up and held it between my hands. Then, I couldn't help glancing one more  time at what Henry had secretly scheduled for us to do:

Subject: My mouth

Location: You

Notes: Don't move. My mouth is on your fingers, eyelids, your face. My  mouth, your neck. Your mouth. My hands, your back, skin. Your mouth. My  mouth, your tongue. Your mouth, my mouth. Your stomach, my mouth, my  hands. Under your hair. Under your shirt. My mouth on you.                       
       
           



       

When the phone pinged another reminder, my heart made a mighty thwap and I grabbed for my glass of ice water.

Mel was watching me closely, elbows on the table. "We don't have to talk  about it. I mean, I know you think I'm a gossip and everything." She  rolled her eyes. "But this is you." She kicked me under the table. "You  know you can tell me anything and it goes no further."

I lowered my eyes, reading his words again, need and misery hitting me like a tsunami.

"Take another drink," she ordered, scooting my glass over.

"Mel," I began, staring down, "there's something I have to tell you."

"I'm listening, babe."

"I kissed Henry when we were camping."

Well, it was a six-hour kiss, but who's counting?

"Uh-huh."

"The next day, I found out something … bad. That's why I didn't go with  you guys to Portland. Did you know Henry never left? He stayed behind at  the house after you and Tyler took off."

"Really?" Her expression was smooth, no scheming grin, eager to hear the latest scandal. She looked like my best friend.

"He came barging in." I swallowed, feeling pukey again. "He told me … " I lowered my eyes. "He told me he loves me."

"Poor Henry."

"Why do you say that?"

"You obviously threw him out," she deduced. "And now you feel guilty."

"Guilty," I echoed. "You don't know what I said to him."

"He probably deserved it."

"Probably." I laughed bitterly. "What I thought I knew about him, then after what Tyler told me-"

"Tyler told you something about Henry?" she cut in. "That little gossip."

I had to bite my tongue about the whole pot calling the kettle black.

"Henry did deserve what I said, but … " Suddenly, tears built behind my  eyes and a huge lump blocked my throat. "Is it possible to feel so  strongly about someone, to be so overwhelmingly attracted and connected  that you want to forgive anything? How healthy is that? How stable?"

"I don't know." Mel shook her head. "I've never felt that way about anyone. But you and … "

I lowered my hand that was holding the phone. She stared at it, then at  me. "I don't know what to do," I said, my bottom lip quivering. "I'm  such an idiot."

"Careful," she warned with a kind smile, taking the phone from my open palm. "That's my best friend you're talking about."

While she read the subject line of the event and then the subsequent,  rather detailed, description that Henry had entered, I was busy staring  down at the plate before me, my fork scooting the carrots and rice from  one side to the other. A few seconds later, my cell was being pushed  across the table.

"Steamy," she offered, pointing at the screen. "And is that part even  legal? Why aren't you with him right now?" She glanced at the phone.  "Doing that."

So I told her everything.

Of course she'd heard Alex's story floating around campus, but she knew nothing about Henry breaking up Julia and Dart.

"Who do you trust more?" Mel asked, running her finger along the rim of her glass. "Henry or Alex? Or Tyler?"

"Henry didn't deny the Julia thing," I said, feeling miserable.

"Okay, okay." Mel moved her plate and glass out of the way and placed  her hands flat on the carved up wooden table. "Let's go over this  logically. First, what's this about Lilah?"

"Oh." I shuddered and shook my head. "He just slipped up, so to speak.  You know guys … a pretty face throws herself at him, and he loses all  ability to think logically. I assumed Henry had a higher threshold, but  we're all susceptible at some point."

As proof, I almost added that I'd fallen prey to Alex.

"I don't know if it was a casual thing between them last summer," I  continued, "or if he thought there was more to her back then. He's  probably known her for almost as long as he's known Dart. So it wasn't  like a one night stand."

"They hooked up?"

I nodded. "Pretty sure."

"Ew. She's such a gnarly hag."

"I agree. But think about it. If you only saw her and didn't know the evils of her inner soul, she's, ya know, beautiful."