“Confidence!” There, I said it. “You lack confidence, okay?’
He laughs then, loudly tossing his head back, black hair tussling. “Oh okay. I lack confidence. Ha ha, good one, Violet.” He moves back, pointing an accusatory finger in my direction. “You are out of your fucking mind. I’m the most…the most…”
He searches for the words but can’t find them. “You know what, Violet? You’re being a judgmental bitch. You don’t know the life I’ve lived.”
I stare are him incredulously.
The nerve of him. The nerve!
Blood rushes to my face and my fists clench at my sides.
“I don’t know the life you’ve lived? Me? How…how d-dare you!”
His lips begin to snarl. He opens that big insensitive mouth to speak, but I cut him off—something I’ve never done to anyone, ever. In my entire life, I’ve never interrupted anyone.
But my heart…my heart won’t let him speak.
“Be quiet! Shut up for once!”
Those stunning gray eyes widen with shock.
I’ve stunned him. Good.
“Oh my god, do you hear me talking about how shitty my life was growing up? Huh? Do you?”
Numbly, his head shakes back and forth, still stunned by my outburst.
“No, of course you don’t. Do you know why? Because wallowing about how lonely it was would be pointless, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?” This time I do shout, bracing my hands on two desk chairs for support.
“I didn’t have rich parents. I didn’t have any parents at all! They’re dead, you selfish jerk. Dead! I had no one! Not even family, because no one could afford to keep me.” The tears—all the hot tears—are rolling down my face, creating a path so wet I feel them dampening the collar of my shirt.
“No aunts and uncles to take me in like you had—there was no money to pay anyone off with. Poor as church mice, every last one of us. And my grandparents? They died before I was born. Yeah, poor Zeke, your parents travel.” I roll my eyes toward the ceiling, staring into the fluorescent lights and swiping at another tear.
“Go see them! Go do something! My god! I-Instead of standing there in your two-hundred-dollar jeans and driving around in your expensive truck and whining about how bad you feel for yourself. Ha!” I laugh, the sound almost maniacal. “At least you have a family. I’m not acting like an asshole because I spent my childhood being ping-ponged around between strangers. Did you know I can’t even go see my family because I can’t afford a plane ticket.”
My body is quaking.
And my hands?
I raise them up to stare at my fingers; I’m shaking so hard I can’t even gather up my laptop.
Zeke takes a step forward.
“Don’t come near me, I-I’m so done with you!” I’m shouting now and fighting to control my stutter, but it’s hard. So damn hard my chin trembles. “A-All I wanted was someone to treat me with respect, but you couldn’t even do that.”
His mouth drops open to argue.
“I-I’m done listening to you cut people down instead of building them up. I’m d-done listening to you condescend to your roommates and to Jameson. She is amazing! Did you know that? And you won’t even try to befriend her. You treat her like shit! Why Zeke? Why? What has she ever done to you but date your friend?”
My hands are balled into angry fists and I can feel my face burning up, to the roots of my blonde hair, and curse my pale skin.
Curse it.
Curse this whole miserable day.
“She’s going to fall in love with him. Watch, Ezekiel. Love! Love, love, love,” I repeat like a song, spreading my arms wide. “It’s wonderful and I’m sorry you don’t know what it feels like.”
His face…it’s hard to describe what it looks like in this moment as my words pour out on a wave of tears. Crestfallen and devastated. Furrowed black brows, heavy, but not from annoyance. Mouth downturned and sad.
Eyes?
I swear those sullen gray eyes are damp in the corners.
So achingly beautiful and heartbreaking and devastated…
Those eyes will haunt my dreams.
“You can’t let yourself feel it, can you?” I whisper.
A shake of his head.
No.
I nod, understanding. “Well then, you’re missing it, Zeke. You’re missing out on your own life, one that could be filled with happiness instead of resentment. Or do you just resent those of us who are happy?”
The path is blurry, the tears clouding my vision as I stalk to the door, but I find my way, yanking my arm away from his when he tries to take hold.
He lets me go.
His tortured, “Violet, Jesus,” might have given me pause any other day of the week, but today? This? What I’m feeling right now is too raw and real to give me pause.
I inhale a breath then draw it out. “You…y-you’re not a nice person Zeke Daniels.” I look him up and down, starting with the tips of his black running shoes. Black. Dark. Like him.
“I thought I saw some redeemable qualities in you, but I guess I was wrong. You are blind and I can’t make you see.”
“Violet, please.”
“No.” I shove through the door instead, lingering briefly, glancing over my shoulder at him, allowing myself one last look. “They say the bigger the man, the harder they fall. Well this is me letting you fall, Zeke. I can’t be there to catch you; I’m not strong enough to catch us both.”
His barely perceivable, choked out “I-I’m sorry,” is the last thing I hear as the door closes behind me.
Zeke
“So dumbass, how’d it go?”
Unfortunately for me, Oz is snacking at the kitchen table when I come crashing through the front door, so I have no privacy. No time to brood. I do my best to bypass him, but he’s cunning and annoying, blocks the hallway with a formidable, boxed-out stance he probably learned in sixth grade basketball.
He leans against the doorjamb to the hall when I try to wedge past.
“So?”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Zeke.” His tone demands attention, so I lift my head to look at him, his entire demeanor changing when he sees my face.
“Jeez, man. What happened with Violet after I left?”
I meet his eyes, swallowing the lump in my dry throat. “She doesn’t think I’m a nice person.”
Shit. It’s one thing for her to say it, but it’s another entirely repeating those fucking words out loud myself.
It actually hurts.
Sebastian Osborne’s insightful gaze roams to the pile of Violet’s things that I collected from Barbara, her boss, after she fled the library an entire twenty minutes before her shift was over. The crap I dumped next to the front door.
“What’s all that stuff?” Oz meanders over to the purple stack, giving Violet’s lavender laptop a poke and fingering a notebook that’s sticking out of her backpack.
The backpack she left at the library when she ran out in a fit of tears.
I might be an insensitive prick, but I will never forget the look on her face. The devastation. The sheer and utter—
“Stop touching it,” I snap at my roommate, who’s pulling a notebook out of the backpack.
“Whose shit is it? Did you bring someone home?”
“No, of course I didn’t bring anyone home.”
“Then whose shit is it?” Hungry, he abandons Vi’s stuff in pursuit of food, dumps his empty plate in the sink so he can rifle through the kitchen cabinets with two empty hands like a scavenger, even though he’s going to pull the same damn shit out of the fridge he eats every damn afternoon: bagel, butter, and cream cheese—the only bready carb he allows himself to eat in a day.
He plugs in the toaster. “Humor me with an answer.”
“No one.”
“Is it Violet’s?” He pins me down with a stare. “Just admit it. All that shit is purple for fuck’s sake.”
I hesitate, using the long stretch of silence to prepare oatmeal. I’m starving too and could go for a snack, so I add a cup of steel-cut oats and water to a bowl, pop it in the microwave. Let us sit in silence for the two minutes it takes for the water to boil.
“Yes, it’s Violet’s.”
The microwave dings and I take the hot bowl out.
“What’s going on with you two?” Oz asks innocently, yanking the fridge open with so much force the bottles in the door shake. He peers inside and asks, “Did she forgive you for being a giant prick?”
“No.”
He raises his brows. “Really? I thought maybe—”
My head snaps in his direction, eyes glaring, and I snap, “What’s with the twenty fucking questions!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Parlay dude. Time the fuck out.” He has his hands up in surrender. “I’m asking because you were a dick today, yet suddenly all her shit is by the front door. Christ almighty, give me a break.”
Is what Violet meant when she said I don’t let people in? Jesus, how did everything in my life get so fucking out of hand?
The steel-cut oats barely go down my throat when I swallow, so I take a chug of water. Count to five to gain back some of my self-control.
“Violet forgot her stuff at the library after…” I force away the memory of finding her crying—no, sobbing in one of the library study rooms. It isn’t something I’ll soon forget, pushing through the door and having those joyful eyes turn on me with despair.