Chapter 19

CHAPTER

19

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO

It started with texting.

I still didn’t see Teddy right away after our New Year’s exchange; he left the second week of January to move into his dorm at Cornell. I probably wouldn’t get to see him until spring break at the earliest, and I texted him to complain about it—a conversation that was quickly derailed by his innocent-not-so-innocent inquiries as to why I wanted to see him, and what I planned to do with him when I did.

Long-Distance History Club quickly fell by the wayside. Mostly because he was swamped with schoolwork, because there was a whole new breadth of subject matter to explore together, and—for a brief, fleeting window—because I found something that eclipsed my interest in history. I wanted to know everything. How to kiss, where to touch. I wanted to learn what he thought about in the shower, whether he ever used his hand and pretended it was me, and when he told me that he did, I realized how badly I wanted it to be my hands on him. My mouth. Me.

A part of me must have known that this was a bad idea, that we were blurring the lines between friendship and a relationship, but I never brought it up. And neither did he, after the phone call on New Year’s. Maybe this was how it was always meant to be between us, or maybe we were just so caught up in the discovery of it all, we didn’t let ourselves consider the consequences. It felt good, talking to him like this. And that was all it was. Talking. It soon progressed to phone calls, hushed conversations while lying in the dark. But we didn’t send any more pictures because we agreed that we’d rather see each other in person.

But spring break didn’t go as planned. Teddy drove down to Pennsylvania to stay with his parents, but a couple days into his stay, he got into a pretty heated argument with his dad—the elder Theodore Harrison didn’t understand why his son was buying into college and all that stuffed-shirt nonsense when he could be learning the auto body trade, the family business that would eventually land in his lap. Teddy called me that evening to let me know that his dad had kicked him out, ignoring his mom’s tearful protest.

“It looks like I’ll just have to head back to school early,” he said. “I’m sorry, Clara. I know we had plans.”

But I wasn’t willing to accept defeat so easily. I tried and failed to arrange for him to come stay at my house for the remainder of the week.

My mom was still dressed in the long-sleeved black shirt and jeans she wore beneath her Bath they’d sent me contact information for my roommate in mid-July, but I was more focused on my job at the sandwich shop and getting ready for the semester than I was in making friends, so I hadn’t bothered reaching out. Teddy was back home in Allentown until his fall quarter started in a few weeks, so he drove down to UMD to help me move in, despite my insistence that I could handle it myself.

I stood in front of the trunk of my Volvo, hands planted on my hips. Everything I needed for the school year had been loaded into the trunk: clothes and a stack of three-ring binders and a couple Kirkland boxes filled with books. “Like I said, it’s really not that much stuff.” I pointed at one of the boxes of books. “If you want to get that, I can—”

Teddy stacked two of the boxes on top of each other before hoisting them up, and I watched his arms, mesmerized. His biceps strained against the sleeves of his gray T-shirt and a vein trailed up his forearm. He’d always been on the lean side, tending toward athletic, but during the spring, he’d started to make use of the gym on his campus.

He followed my gaze, glancing down. “I could use the workout,” he said, a little sheepish, and I couldn’t tell whether he was just being modest or if he genuinely thought there was room for improvement.

I turned back to the trunk. My clothes I’d just tossed in on their hangers, so I hooked as many of them as I could on my hands and we marched up to the second floor. The room was vacant when we arrived. I bumped on the lights and tossed the clothes onto the bed. Teddy deposited the book boxes over by the dresser. “Your new roommate?” he said, only half a question as he nodded in the direction of the Joy Division poster that was taped above an empty bed. Whoever she was, she’d clipped Instax pictures on a clothesline and assembled a collection of tiny, potted succulents on the windowsill. A stress ball shaped like a hamburger sat in the middle of the nightstand, its surface wrinkled with use.

“They said in an email that they paired us up based on personality, but…” I shook my head faintly, not really trusting UMD’s vague understanding of whatever they thought my personality was. I had to resist the temptation to squint at the Instax pictures to get a better idea of who I was dealing with here. Spying on my roommate straight out the gate was probably a bad idea.

We headed back downstairs to grab more stuff out of the trunk. It was evening, the sky all cotton candy clouds and the weather surprisingly dry and cool for late August. Teddy hoisted another heavy box of books into his arms. “So you never did tell me how your last year at camp went.”

“Oh,” I said, a little surprised. We’d talked about a thousand things between then and now, but talking about the day-to-day had been moved to the back burner. I collected a stray bottle of nail polish remover and a can of dry shampoo that had rolled around loose in the trunk. “It was fun, I guess. I enjoyed catching up with Izzy.”

He gave me a curious look, like he knew I was dodging the question, and I was. There was something expectant, seeing him today, a sort of tightly coiled tension that I was eager to dispel, and talking about camp wasn’t the way to dispel it.

We finished hauling everything upstairs and then we walked to get iced coffee and sandwiches from a nearby café. By the time we made it back to the dorm, it was dark out, but my roommate hadn’t made an appearance. I invited Teddy to stay and hang out for a bit, in part because I knew he had a long drive back, but also because this was our first time alone, in a room that conveniently had a bed. My heart pounded in my ears as we settled onto my new bed, watching The Twilight Saga: New Moon on my laptop, a movie choice that Teddy had accepted with a mixture of bemusement and reluctant interest.

“Jesus, why do they have to make it so complicated,” he mumbled, dragging a hand down his face when Alice said she had the vision of Bella jumping off the cliff. When I didn’t say anything, he glanced over at me. “You’re being awfully quiet.”

I lifted my shoulders. “I’m watching the movie.”

“Hm.” He turned back to the computer, but I could see by the glossy look in his eyes that he wasn’t really registering the plot anymore. His glasses reflected the shifting light of the screen. After a few seconds, he said, “Just normally you have more commentary. You analyze things.”

“I’ve seen it before. Anyway, I guess I’m just sort of…” I peered at him sideways. He was leaned back against my pillows and his T-shirt had ridden up his stomach a few inches, so that a trail of dark hair beneath his belly button was visible, leading down into his boxers. “… distracted.”

Now he didn’t bother pretending to be engaged in the movie. He turned to look at me, giving me his undivided attention. “By what?”

My heart clambered up into my throat, lodged itself there. “You.”

He didn’t say anything, but he held my gaze. We were both reclined, and somewhere in the midst of our fragmented conversation, we’d angled our bodies toward each other. The air crackled with anticipation. I scooted closer to him, shutting the laptop and nudging it down the bed with a knee. His gaze dropped to my lips.

“Kiss me?” I whispered, grazing my hands over the firm, muscular planes of his chest. His heart hammered beneath my fingertips, a steady rhythm that reassured me I wasn’t the only one who was nervous.

He pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes fluttering closed. “I want to.”

“Then—?”

I didn’t get a chance to finish the question, because his mouth sank into mine. I let out a surprised mm before returning the kiss. We’d kissed only a handful of times, the last time well over a month ago, but the mere memory of those encounters had enough staying power that there was nothing tentative or exploratory this time around. His tongue moved against my own and he swallowed the tiny moan that escaped me. My hands skated down his flat stomach until my fingertips brushed against warm skin and hair. I traced the waistband of his boxers with shaky hands, teasing. Testing.

With a growl of approval, he flipped me onto my back and his hips settled between my legs. Near the foot of the bed, something clattered to the floor—something that, in my haze, I knew was probably my laptop, but any concerns were smothered by Teddy’s weight pressing into me. Heat bloomed between my legs, spreading like wildfire. He rocked his hips against mine and I arched off the bed in reply, wanting to feel more of him. He broke the kiss and pressed his mouth to my neck, running his tongue over my skin. His hands burrowed up the sides of my sweatshirt, fingers digging into my ribs, but they stopped there, like he wouldn’t let himself take this any further.

“Touch me,” I said, but it came out sounding more like a sob. He lifted his head to look at me, his hair tousled and any traces of brown in his eyes swallowed by black. Holding my gaze, his hands skimmed the sensitive skin of my ribs, nudging my sweatshirt higher until it was pushed up over my lace bralette. We dropped our gaze together, staring at my hard nipples beneath the sheer lace fabric. “Please,” I whispered.

He swallowed hard, hooking a thumb in the lace and tugging it askew, freeing a breast. “They’re so pretty,” he rasped before flicking a tongue over me. I sucked a breath through my teeth, my hips rolling involuntarily. Seeming pleased by this reaction, he took my nipple into his mouth. It was warm and wet and the sensation was almost too much to bear—I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from making too much noise.

Teddy moved back up and pulled my hand out of the way to cover my mouth with his, his other hand massaging my breast. His erection pressed into me, hindered by my spandex leggings and the denim of his jeans. I reached for his zipper, fumbling ineffectually with the button. I’d never taken someone else’s pants off before. My hands were shaking. I wondered if I even remembered how to undress myself. I broke the kiss. “I want you,” I muttered, and I pressed kisses into his jaw, up to his ear, where I sucked on his earlobe. “I know you’re worried about hurting me, and maybe it’ll complicate things, but I need—I want it to be you.”

At this, he jerked back like I’d bitten him, just far enough for his eyes to search my face. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m—” I hesitated, embarrassment rising, because what did he think we were talking about? I might have been inexperienced, but I knew enough to understand where this was obviously going. There was only one place it could go. “I thought we were talking about sex. And I don’t want to start college without ever—”

“So what, I’m just the free trial?” He pushed himself off me, kneeling between my thighs. “Take me for a test drive before trying other cars?”

“We agreed that we’re not ready to date,” I said, but even as I was saying it, I was aware that we hadn’t agreed to that. Not in so many words. We’d touched on the idea of fooling around while staying friends, but we hadn’t laid down any ground rules, hadn’t set clear boundaries for what, exactly, we were doing.

“I can’t stand the thought of you doing this sort of thing with other guys while I’m not here,” Teddy said. “It’s not—” He broke off, shaking his head. “This doesn’t feel right.”

“I’m not going to,” I insisted.

“So we’re exclusive, then?” he asked. “What, exclusive friends with benefits? Because that kind of sounds like a relationship to me.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. We sat like that for a moment, him kneeling, me on my back, propped up on my elbows. It seemed we were at a sort of impasse. Nothing about our situation had changed; we both had a whole future ahead of us, we weren’t in the position to be making promises. But maybe, if it came down to it—

The door banged open.

I shoved Teddy backward with a foot. It was pure instinct—the somebody slamming into the room had set my heart racing, activating my fight or flight, and having nearly two hundred pounds of muscle on top of me hindered my ability to fight or fly.

A girl strolled in. She had a large denim jacket thrown over a floral-print dress and a Patagonia beanie tugged low over short, yellow hair, all of it eclectic in a way that somehow managed to look intentional. “So,” she said with flourish, “which one of you is the roommate? No offense”—she inclined her head toward me, apparently to indicate that I was the one who shouldn’t take offense—“but I’m sort of hoping it’s the Clark Kent look-alike.”

I stared at her, this total stranger, and shook my head faintly, because what? Teddy looked back and forth between the pair of us, rubbing his chest where I’d kicked him. “Actually, I was just leaving.”

“What?” I asked, taken aback.

“Don’t leave on my account,” the girl said, staring as he scooted to the edge of the bed and tugged his tennis shoes back on. “I’m cool with just watching. You know. Whatever you guys are into.”

Teddy shot her a quick, vexed look before pushing to his feet. “I need to get going. Long drive.”

I grabbed him by the T-shirt sleeve to stop him from walking away from me. “Hey, wait,” I said, trying to instill meaning in my words while also keeping my voice low, because my new roommate was hanging onto our every word. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d unveiled a bag of popcorn from under her skirt and started munching on it. “We weren’t done talking.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t—” He shook his head with a tired look. “I’ll call you later?”

A lump the size of a baseball had formed in my throat, so all I could do was nod. I let go of his sleeve, and he left.

“Whoops,” my new roommate said, flopping down on the bed directly across from mine. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

I wanted to flip her off, but then we’d really be getting off on the wrong foot, so instead I grumbled, “Don’t worry about it.” I stood to collect my laptop from the floor. It had landed face down, the whole thing lying flush against the vinyl flooring. Just looking at it, it was clear that it was broken, but I picked it up anyway. The screen flapped uselessly; the hinges connecting it to the keyboard had snapped, and the whole thing had gone dark. I tapped the space bar a few times, but it was no use. It wouldn’t turn on.

“What’s your major?” my roommate asked, oblivious.

“History.” I tossed the broken laptop on my bed and just stood there, not sure what to do with myself. “Yours?”

“Undeclared, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll major in psychology.” She lay with her boots still on her feet, crossing one ankle over the other, and grabbed the hamburger stress ball off her nightstand, tossing it up into the air and catching it. “Or business, maybe. I like anything that deals with people.”

I didn’t say anything. My mind was stuck on Teddy. I turned to my bed so that my new roommate wouldn’t see as I swiped the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand.

“That guy that just left,” she said slowly. “He’s your boyfriend?”

I sniffed once, hard. “No.” I busied myself with hanging my clothes up in the closet, needing a task to keep me from dwelling too heavily on whatever had just happened.

“Why not?” she pressed. I released a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, because of course I couldn’t have a roommate that allowed me to wallow in peace—that would be too much to ask for. She must’ve picked up on some of my irritation, at least, because she added, “Sorry if I’m being nosey. I’m just saying. I’d climb that like a tree.”

“Yeah, well…” I scratched an itch at the base of my skull, where my braid was thickest. My hair was a rat’s nest after rolling around on the bed with Teddy. I searched for an excuse to change the topic. “I don’t think I caught your name?”

“Oh, dude, my bad.” She sprang off the bed, tossing the rubber hamburger aside, and made short work of the room, thrusting a hand at me. “Miranda Schooner,” she said, chipper. “But my friends call me Mindy.”

I tried calling that night to talk things through, but he didn’t answer. I told myself that he was just busy driving, that we’d talk about it later and everything would be fine. My phone buzzed the next morning when I was in the middle of freshman orientation, seated in the top row of a massive lecture hall. But it was a text, not a call, and my heart sank as soon as I opened it.

Teddy: I think maybe it’s best if we go back to just being friends.