6. Theron

6

THERON

NEW PERSON, SAME OLD MISTAKES - TAME IMPALA

What's drizzle when I start my drive back toward the art festival quickly spirals into cold, wet bullets pelting down. The windshield wipers blur across my windshield as they attempt to keep up with the downpour.

Streetlights blot into fuzzy dots, and the glass fogs up from the cold air. I lean closer to the steering wheel, squinting at the road ahead.

Evergreen Road turns into Manchester turns into Castlebury Drive.

The occasional straggler car passes me by on the opposite side of the road, high beams bright enough to blind.

I keep squinting. Keep searching.

Scanning the sidewalks for the slightest sign of Nyssa. Where could she be? Did she make it home that fast?

It couldn't have been more than five, ten minutes since I drove by with Theo. Unless someone else spotted her and gave her a ride.

Someone she knew. Someone who would ensure she made it safely home .

Not someone with nefarious intentions. Not someone of the psychotic-serial-killer-picking-up-a-vulnerable-young-woman-on-the-side-of-the-road variety… right ?

A thousand possibilities unravel inside my overanalytical mind. Dozens of potential scenarios of what could've happened and where Nyssa could've gone. After Kane Driscoll's recent death, some in town are worked up into a frenzy at the rumor the long elusive Valentine Killer has returned. He's slowly about to start picking people off like he'd done twenty years ago.

What if he'll target vulnerable young college students next? Someone like Nyssa?

And then there's the most sensible thought of all—the possibility she's already warm, cozy, and dry at her apartment.

I shake off the rampant thoughts spiraling beyond my control, my grip tightening on the wheel as I come to my senses.

This is ridiculous. Not just ridiculous.

This is stupid.

I drove all the way home and then proceeded to drive back toward the festival in the pouring rain to look for a student. All because I happened to see her walking home in stormy weather. What business of mine is it if she was?

Scoffing at how irrational I've behaved, I flick on my turn signal to make a U-turn. In the second before I do, Nyssa materializes out of the sheets of rain. She's half a block up, the umbrella she's walking with flapping inside out due to the hostile winds.

As I initially thought, she hasn't made much traction in the few minutes since I drove by. My pulse picks up, returning to the same level it had reached once I'd made the spontaneous decision to come back for her. I switch off my turn signal and push down on the gas to drive by.

The abrasive honk of a horn sounds from the lane to the right of me. The truck it belongs to comes barreling down the road, whizzing by me, halting on a dime as it pulls over against the sidewalk where she's walking.

She spins around in surprise, and I duck behind the steering wheel as if expecting to be seen.

But really, she's turned toward the gas-guzzling pickup truck that's just stopped at her side. Her startled expression melts away as the driver's door springs open and out hops Wicker.

Otherwise known as doucheface in my head.

Of course.

He jogs over in his letterman jacket like he's a superhero swooping in to save the day. Never mind the downpour and the way it soaks him as he steps onto the sidewalk and they come face to face. He takes her umbrella from her to hold it higher over the both of them and their lips move, exchanging words I can't make out.

It would be convenient to be a skilled lipreader right about now…

I squint, my windshield wipers still whooshing back and forth across the glass view I'm afforded. You'd think I hadn't stopped in the middle of the road the frivolous way I'm idling, staring at them from half a block down.

If anyone else were out in this weather, they'd care.

Whatever Wicker says to Nyssa cancels out his doucheness from earlier in the day. A small smile breaks onto her face as she tosses her arms around his neck and he lifts her off her feet.

By the time he sets her down, his meaty hand has drifted lower, sweeping down her spine toward her backside. He's so tempted, it couldn't be more obvious—he wants to go for a grab.

A real handful.

He doesn't do it, possibly because he knows she'd slap his hand away. But his temptation is palpable enough that I deem it provocation.

His desire to is problematic enough.

Mr. Doucheface has college date rape written all over him. The fact that rumors have swirled around him and his jock friends for a while now only strengthens my suspicions. Does Nyssa know what she's doing being involved with him?

He opens the passenger's side door for her to climb in. Once she's crawled inside, he slams it shut and trots back toward the driver's side. His obscenely large pickup lurches forward with rubber squealing against the slippery asphalt.

I stay put, still half a block down, stopped in the middle of the street like an imbecile. I'm not sure why other than it's my brain's way of processing what I've just witnessed.

A bright, promising student and gifted artist like Nyssa Oliver shouldn't be anywhere near the meathead oaf she's attached herself to. If they're truly together, why would he let her walk halfway home in the rain? Shouldn't he have picked her up from the get-go, once the festival was over?

I'm no award-winning-quality boyfriend by any stretch of the imagination—and I'm sure Veronica has a long list of complaints—but I'd never let my girlfriend walk home alone so late in the evening.

Much less in the rain.

My fingers drum against the steering wheel, on the cusp of another turning point. Another pivotal fork in the metaphorical road. The literal road ahead of me.

Both options come into focus amid the blurry, raindrop-speckled car windows. The taillights of Wicker's pickup truck shrink farther down the road. Behind me is the path home.

Atticus is probably waiting by the door with his favorite tennis ball, tail wagging nonstop.

The book I started is still sitting on the seat of my armchair by the window where I left it. Theo had called me complaining about leaving her. I had leaped up to grab the keys.

It's dark out and the rain won't be stopping anytime soon. Any other Sunday evening I'd be content at home with my books, my dog, my solitude. I detested the times Veronica would try to drag me out to some concert or social event. She complained I was about as interesting as a senior citizen in a retirement home.

But as Wicker's truck slips out of view, I decide for the second time tonight to go against my usual routine.

My foot presses down on the gas. My BMW jolts forward in Nyssa and the meathead's wake.

The moment warps like it had earlier, where I'd made a snap decision to swing out of my driveway and seek Nyssa out on the rain-soaked streets. Pulse beating in my ears, I'd searched the streets with eagle eyes.

Now, I'm speeding like a madman. I'm gripping the wheel and rushing through a light that blinks from yellow to red. I'm at one end of the next block while Wicker is at the other. So long as I keep him within my sight, it's good.

I'll know where he's headed.

Where is he taking you, Miss Oliver? Is he driving you home? Or… somewhere else?

A wise philosopher once said curiosity is the lust of the mind. There is no harm so long as its pursuit serves some benefit.

I rationalize that there is.

Sure, there's a chance following your student and her boyfriend late on a rainy evening wasn't what Thomas Hobbes had in mind, but I prefer to think liberties are allowed.

All I need to do is make sure he drops her off at home, safe and sound. No frat boy antics. No douchebag tricks. Nothing harmful or dangerous in any way.

Then I'll head home.

Since when do you care about what your students do in their off time?

My inner critic hisses at me like I'm a petulant child. Rightfully so, all things considered.

"Since I heard him laughing about bedding her. Since I witnessed what that meathead is like and how he treats her," I answer myself aloud. "I might be hands off with my students, but I'm still a professor. I have a code of ethics to abide by. A moral obligation if I believe something's amiss. Something nefarious might happen. And I do—he has permanent doucheface!"

I end my tangent with a triumphant nod of my head, as though I've perfectly illustrated my point.

My secret pursuit carries on for another handful of miles. As a row of apartment buildings emerge, the pickup truck slows down and pulls over. Both Nyssa and the jock step out, with him glancing at the street.

I recognize the building at once. It's the same apartment building Theo manages for the university.

Nyssa lives here.

"Shit," I mutter under my breath, ducking behind the steering wheel. I've pulled over too, keeping distance for plausible deniability should I be spotted.

Nyssa grabs the front of his letterman jacket and lays a goodbye kiss on his lips. This time he takes the risk—his catcher's mitt of a hand gropes her ass. He squeezes a handful, then gives her a spank, as if he's pulled off the most romantic play since Casanova.

My face tightens in a scowl. It's no surprise he'd go for the cheap, easy cop-a-feel route. Doesn't Nyssa realize how degrading it is?

Her reaction is too obscure to tell. She dashes up the front path that leads toward her apartment building, disappearing inside.

Wicker hardly waits before he's revving his engine and barreling off somewhere else. A keg party, perhaps? Some juvenile fraternity hazing? A night of vegging out to sports like the meathead jock he is?

None of them seem particularly farfetched.

But I'm past the point of caring once he's gone. I'm more preoccupied by the sudden realization that I'm sitting outside Nyssa Oliver's apartment. I know where she lives.

Even which window is hers.

On the fourth floor, the far left window lights up and she briefly appears in full view before she draws the curtains closed, shutting me out.

I sit for a while, torn on what to do next. While the private lives of my students are none of my business, Nyssa clearly doesn't grasp who Samson Wicker truly is. She doesn't understand the trouble he'll bring her or how risky it is for her to date him.

You don't see it yet, Miss Oliver. But you will. I'll make sure of it.