25. JT

CHAPTER 25

JT

With a few clicks, I’ve finished the multiple intelligences inventory that our Psych professor assigned. Fallon had hers done already, no surprise there. I thought Booker was the hardest-working person on campus, but his sister has him beat.

As a freshman, Fallon is also fulfilling her gen eds and we ended up in the same Psych class. We gravitated toward each other because hockey is an equalizer like that, even if you’re a player’s sister and not actually on the team. We sit together and partner up because we know we’re both reliable, but there’s more to it.

I have four years of ASL under my belt. As a fourteen-year-old kid, I put it on my schedule because it sounded way easier than French or Spanish, but I kept taking it because it’s a really useful skill. If I ever do have to hang up my skates and pursue a career as a physical therapist, knowing ASL will be just as handy as knowing any other language.

Fallon likes working with me and tolerates my general grumpiness because we can communicate easily. She doesn’t have to read my lips or type everything into her phone just to have a conversation with me .

We’ve become friends, for sure, which is cool, especially because it drives Ollie up the damn wall. He’s been crushing on her since he saw her at a game his freshman year, but Fallon won’t give him the time of day. Watching them go at it is one of my favorite pastimes.

I hit the Submit button and turn back to Fallon. “What’s next?” I sign. “Do you want to go over notes for the test next week or start the research project?”

Fallon taps her chin dramatically before signing back. “Research project. If we submit our proposal early enough, maybe we’ll get our first choice.”

I nod because she’s right. “You got something in mind already?” I sign.

“Oh, yeah. I want to do a comparison between Freud and Westermarck.”

“Have you been reading ahead?” I sign.

“Nope. But I’ve been fascinated by incest taboos since I read Oedipus in high school. He’s my favorite literary character,” she signs back.

“Are you fucking with me right now?” I sign back, laughing.

“No. He’s great. The original motherfucker.”

Her joke lands and I laugh out loud, momentarily forgetting I’m in a library. Fallon is the queen of dad jokes, and she does not share her brother’s aversion to swearing.

She elbows me and I’m wondering what the hell she’s going to come up with next. But instead of telling a joke, she points over her shoulder and signs, “Do you know her?”

I turn to look in the direction she’s pointing, but all I see is the back of a blonde woman as she hauls ass out of the room.

Luckily, I’m familiar with the sight of Maggie running away from me, so the pieces fall into place pretty quickly.

I start to sign that I need to leave just as Fallon shakes her head and shoos me off, but not before signing that this girl must be the reason I’ve been in such a good mood lately .

She’s right on both counts. I need to get to Maggie, and she is the reason I’ve been a goddamn delight lately.

It takes me longer than it should to catch up to the little blonde bombshell who’s turned my world upside down in the best way possible. . Her legs are a lot shorter than mine, but she’s dodgy, and her steps are fueled by anger and embarrassment, no doubt.

Fallon and I are just study buddies. That’s all we are and all we looked like to anyone in that room.

Except Maggie.

She likes to pretend we’re keeping it casual, but I know Maggie Baylor better than she thinks I do. My girl is jealous as hell.

As my feet swallow the distance between us, I have to hide the smile that fact brings to my face.

“Maggie, hold up,” I call. She’s two people and three feet ahead of me, and when those two people turn left toward the parking garage, I fall into step beside her. “Maggie, let’s talk.”

“About what?” she asks, not sparing me a glance as she speed walks out the doors and down the stone steps.

I blink before realizing she’s a few steps ahead of me again. Dammit.

“About what you think you saw back there and how it made you run away from me…again.”

Her steps slow for just a second, but she still won’t look at me. “I’m late,” she says.

The hell she is. I keep pace with her as she makes her way to the edge of campus. She’s headed to Viv’s place, I’m sure of it, and because we’ve met up there a couple times, I know right where it is. We’re having this conversation, one way or another, and the traffic light we’re standing at seems like the perfect place to start.

“That’s Fallon Zabek, Booker’s sister. We’re friends and we have Psych together,” I begin .

“That’s great,” she says, power walking away from me just as the Walk sign appears.

“I’m serious. We are just friends. I’m fluent in sign language and she’s my teammate’s sister. That’s it, Maggie.”

When we make it across the street, she finally turns to look at me. “That’s fine, JT,” she tells me, her tone making it clear that my friendship with Fallon is anything but fine. “Be friends with her, be more than friends, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you do.”

Her words feel like tiny, sharp little knives. They hurt, so I serve up the truth. “You have no right to care. No right to tell me who to sit with. No right to run out on me like you caught me banging someone on the checkout desk at the library. No fucking right, Maggie.”

“So do it,” she replies. “Go back and have checkout-desk-sex. It’s none of my business, right?”

Jesus . Christ . “Because you don’t want it to be your business, Maggie. Did you forget the part where I’m your dirty little secret? Did you forget the part where I’ve been sneaking into my own damn house before class in the morning because I’m spending all my time with you?”

She flinches at my words, but I don’t stop. “You need to face facts. If I’m just some guy you’re fucking, if there’s nothing happening between us, then why do you care who I’m sitting with? Why run through the library and half of campus like you’re being chased? Why do you care, Maggie? And when are you ready to admit just how much you care?”

I brace myself for the tears she’s about to cry, or the slap I’m going to feel when her hand connects with my cheek.

I was pretty much raised by TV. The moms and dads on the shows I watched became my surrogate parents because no one else was up for the job. The various relatives I stayed with always had wives or girlfriends, husbands or boyfriends. None of those relationships could be described as healthy, and I don’t need to take a Psych class to figure that out. There were a lot of tears, most of them fake and manipulative. A lot of hitting, too, on both sides. I’ve seen people fight dirty, and I guess that’s what I’m expecting.

It’s not what I get.

“It’s like quicksand,” she says to me as we walk toward Viv’s place.

I’m quiet at first, because I don’t have a clue what she means, but I’m smart enough to know that whatever she’s saying is really important to her.

“Like quicksand?” I prompt.

She nods and looks up at me once we get to Viv’s apartment. “You know how like when you’re a kid, you think quicksand is going to be a major problem in life. Or at least a problem, right?”

I crack a smile when I realize she’s right. It’s a plot device in at least half a dozen shows I can name off the top of my head.

“You know I’m right,” she says, the hint of a smile crossing her face as we step inside Viv’s apartment. It’s quiet, and no one comes vaulting out of anywhere, so it’s a safe bet that we’re alone. “In all these movies and TV shows, people are getting trapped in quicksand. But it’s not really a problem I’ve faced as an adult,” she says, sitting on the sofa and holding a pillow tight against her middle. “But assholes and liars? Turns out, they’re everywhere.”

I take the seat next to her, and the privilege is not lost on me. Maggie Baylor isn’t a woman who opens up easily or wears her heart on her sleeve. She’s too guarded, too jaded, I guess, for that. It’s something we have common, so I’m not taking it for granted that she let me in this apartment or that she’s talking to me now. Time with Maggie is a gift I won’t ever turn down.

“It’s not that I never thought I’d have to deal with jerks,” she says, looking at me with eyes so wide and innocent that I want to find every asshole she’s ever met and punch their fucking faces.

“It’s that I thought the jerks would be more obvious,” she continues. “Bad guys are supposed to have twirly mustaches and sinister lairs, and evil sidekicks. Even the ones who look like good guys obviously aren’t. No one’s hair is that perfect, no one’s intentions that pristine. They’ve got to be up to something. But the villains I’ve met in real life look just like everybody else. They aren’t wearing capes. They don’t have fancy facial hair or nefarious smirks. The people who have hurt me haven’t come at me guns blazing. They haven’t launched their attack right after meeting me. It’s a slow process, a quiet, deceitful one. Now, looking back, I can see it so clearly. The signs were there, but they weren’t huge, waving red flags like the kind you see at car dealerships. They were small and subtle, easily mistaken for something else or explained away.”

Who the fuck hurt you? I keep the words to myself, trusting she’ll explain if I give her the time to do so. My patience is rewarded, even if her story makes me shake with anger.

“I met my boyfriend—well, my ex-boyfriend now—the first week at college. Clay was a sophomore from L.A. He was so…experienced, so cool. He fit in so well and I felt like such an outsider. He took me under his wing right away. There wasn’t anything romantic between us, at first. He was just a nice guy helping a new girl adjust to life on the West Coast, you know. But it wasn’t just that. I was only eighteen when I moved there, but I’d already been through so much. My mom died when I was thirteen, but she hadn’t really been part of everyday life for years. My grandparents both died my senior year in high school. So, I was pretty much on my own at eighteen. In a lot of ways, I was an adult. But in so many ways, I wasn’t.” Maggie’s words trail off as she picks at a loose thread in the throw pillow she’s holding. Her fingers keep picking as he r story starts back up again. “Anyway, Clay and I just got closer. He introduced me to his friend Bella from high school and when I was ready to move out of the dorms, she offered to share her apartment with me. By then, Clay and I were officially together. I remember being amazed that someone like him wanted to date someone like me. Bella, my roommate, always rolled her eyes when I said stuff like that. She’d tell me Clay Ackerman never did anything he didn’t want to do, so if he was with me, I should take it at face value and enjoy it. So I did. For two whole years. The three of us were always together, and I felt lucky to be the one on Clay’s arm. I was in awe of Bella and her worldliness. They just seemed so polished to me, you know? Like they had it all figured out. I guess I thought I could figure it all out, too, if I stuck with them. That was a big lie,” she says, her laugh watery and mirthless. “Actually, all of it was a lie. We were on spring break in Hawaii with a bunch of friends. I was getting over a nasty cold, so I went back to our room for some medicine. That’s where I found them. In the bed Clay and I had been sharing. It’s so cliché, right? And I’m so dumb. How could I not have seen it? They’d been sneaking around for over a year. All our friends knew it. Half of them thought I knew about it. But I didn’t have a clue.

“I was stuck there, in freaking paradise, with the two of them. I probably sound spoiled as hell, but it was awful. I was trapped and they were smug, and I couldn’t do anything about it. The worst part of it was that they were the two people I trusted the most, the ones I turned to when life went to shit. But then the unthinkable happened and I couldn’t run to Clay to make it all better. I couldn’t vent to Bella about how absolutely crappy life could be sometimes.”

I haven’t said a word. I haven’t needed to. I’ve just been listening and silently plotting the demise of the two assholes who broke Maggie’s heart. My arms are open wide, one stretched along the back of the couch and the other resting along the side cushion. Maggie finds her way into my lap and burrows her head into my chest. Wrapping my arms around her, I hold on tight.

“Why is it that the people who hurt you most are the ones who are supposed to love you?” she asks, looking up at me.

I don’t have a good answer for that, and I have a feeling she isn’t only talking about her ex and her cheating friend. But if I tell Maggie I want to give her the kind of love that doesn’t hurt, I can guarantee she’ll jump off my lap, tear through the door, run the hell out of here, and never look back. She wouldn’t believe me. Too many people have lied and let her down, so it’s what she expects. My words won’t help, no matter how pretty they are, or even how true. So, I stay quiet and hold her close, hoping the warmth of my body, the strength of my arms, and the steady rhythm of my heart can speak for me instead.