Page 26

TWENTY-SIX

lenni

The last few weeks have been a heady blur of Cam’s lips, his scent, and the feel of his arms around me. We spend almost every night together, usually at my place but sometimes at his. The occasional uncomfortable interaction with Reeve comes with the territory; I can feel how much he doesn’t want me around, but he keeps his mouth shut. Cam and I cook cheap meals in my apartment, sit together in class and hold hands around campus. If I wasn’t me, I’d hate us.

Tuesday evenings are the only ones we always spend apart because it’s pizza and Pretty Little Liars night for me and Jade. But with winter creeping closer and the sun setting early, Cam likes to walk me home on these nights, coming by the newsroom on his way back from practice. I pretend to find this annoying even though I secretly relish his little shows of chivalry.

Tonight he’s still in his workout clothes when he shows up, his skin covered by a thin sheen of sweat that makes me swallow hard. I still can’t quite believe that when he smiles that wide smile, he’s smiling only at me. Will it ever feel real? I kind of hope not.

“Sorry,” he says, wrapping me in a hug. “We ran late in the weight room, so I skipped the shower. Didn’t want to make you wait.”

“Don’t apologize.” I breathe him in, salt and muscle and hard work, and run my hands up the firm muscles of his back.

“Come on, Handsy, better get you home. Jade’s gonna have my ass if there’s not still steam coming off the pizza when you walk in.”

Recently, Cam has been concerned with winning Jade’s approval. Again, the chivalry aspect is cute, but I’m pretty sure his mission has less to do with me and more to do with the fact that he can’t fathom a woman not falling head over heels in love with him. “By the way, has she started calling me by my name yet?”

“Sorry, Number Eleven, you’re still a jersey number to Jade. But don’t I say your name enough for both of us?” I gaze up at him to see if he catches my drift.

His smile is liquid. “Say my name? More like moan.”

I can’t argue.

When he kisses me outside my door, I let my lips stray to his jaw and neck, the salty taste of his sweat drawing me in.

“Girl, don’t start something you can’t finish.”

“Sorry,” I say, not sorry at all.

Cam takes my hand and lays it on his crotch. Crude move but he makes it so damn sexy. “You sure I can’t come in? All I need is five minutes.”

“If Jade sees you cross that threshold on pizza night, you can say goodbye to your dick.”

He glances appreciatively at my tight sweater. “But look at you, baby. Even Jade couldn’t blame me.” He skims his hands over my waist, his eyes dark with desire. That look is the reason I’ve added fitted clothing back into my wardrobe rotation.

For the first time ever, I wish pizza night didn’t exist. No one has ever wanted me like Cam does, or made me feel half as sexy. Maybe this is how sex addicts start out, on the receiving end of Cam Forrester’s lips.

But Jade has never ditched me for a boy, and I won’t do it to her. “Save it for later, Forrester. You can come over after Sam picks up Jade tonight.” I unlock the apartment before I can change my mind and close the door on him, watching him watch me until the very last second.

Lord help me if he ever loses interest.

Inside, the lights are off, and there’s no inviting smell of hot pizza. Jade’s door is ajar, her room dark. I reach for my phone, expecting to find a text from her saying something came up, but I have no new messages.

I scan my memory—did she tell me she’d be late tonight? No, I’m sure she didn’t. And there’s no way she forgot; Tuesday nights are written in stone. Something is wrong.

I flick on the lights. Jade’s purse and backpack are by the front door like always. My heart thumps as I approach her bedroom door. Now I wish I’d invited Cam inside.

“Jade?”

No answer.

I push her door open all the way. From the dim kitchen light, I can see her lying on her bed, her back to me.

“Jade?” I say again.

Moving with strange slowness, she rolls over and sits up, her face alarmingly puffy and wet with tears. “Lenni.” Her voice is so anguished that I run to her side.

“What is it, sweetie? What happened?!”

Her face crumples as she starts to cry. Oh, god, someone’s dead . Her mom? My mom? “Jade, tell me! What the hell happened?”

She takes a long, shuddering breath. “Sam broke up with me.” Then she starts bawling.

This is more shocking than anything she could have told me—and a massive relief compared to what I was imagining. But I don’t tell her that. I sit on the bed and pull her close to me and hold her until she’s ready to speak.

“He told me he’s tired of feeling like a second-class citizen when he’s with me,” Jade says when her sobs subside, her voice bitter and hoarse. “Like, what the fuck does that even mean?”

I shake my head.

“And of course you know Sam, he couldn’t just tell me to fuck off like a normal guy. He has to be all high minded about it, saying we both deserve time to think about what we want out of a relationship.” She sniffs. “I’d respect him more if he just told me he wants to fuck other girls and that he’ll let me know if I ever drift back into his jerk-off fantasies.”

“I doubt that’s what it is,” I say gently.

But she’s not listening. “He grows a little facial hair, and suddenly all twelve girls in his engineering program are throwing themselves at him. I never thought he’d be the guy who follows his dick through life, but here we are. And you know what? He won’t even talk to me. He asked for a fucking month without contact. And I still don’t know what I did wrong.”

Jade dissolves into tears again. I stroke her hair and think about what a shitty friend I am because instead of hating Sam, I just keep wondering, what did she do wrong?

Sam worshipped her. Healthy or not, it was the kind of one-in-a-million love I know I’ll never have because, well, it’s one in a million. Sam always used to say that love at first sight was the first and last New Agey bullshit he’d ever believe in because he fell in love with Jade the instant he saw her face.

Eventually we get off Jade’s bed and I order pizza. Jade cries. We watch two episodes of Pretty Little Liars . Jade cries again. I put her to bed and get in beside her and rub her back until I think she’s asleep. I send Cam a quick text to tell him not to come over.

I’m almost asleep when Jade speaks, her voice thick. “Do you know why he did it?”

I blink away sleep. “Sam? Why he ended it? No, of course not.”

“Because if you do, you can tell me. If you know what I did wrong, you have to tell me.”

“I don’t know why, sweetie, but I know you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Jade makes a snuffling sound. “I can’t do this for a month.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find out.”

I decide to ambush Sam at his most vulnerable: leaving his Thermodynamics class. I’ve heard him lament that it’s the only class where he’s not among the top three students, and now I’ll use his weakness against him. As Jade’s best friend, it’s only natural.

I have forty-five minutes to kill after my own class ends so I do a mini lifting session at the gym, smiling to myself. It feels so good to have a plan. I’m banking on finding Sam a shell of a man, even more broken than poor Jade is.

But when he steps outside the engineering building, he’s actually...glowing? Goddammit. And he has a cute girl smiling at his side. My stomach drops.

“Sam!” I call, moving quickly to meet him.

He winces visibly, recognizing my voice before he sees me. I can’t help but smile. I adore Sam, but after the way he hurt Jade, his discomfort spells my joy.

“Hi, Lenni,” he says tightly as I step onto the path in front of him.

“Can I talk to you?”

His shoulders slouch, like he’d actually convinced himself this moment wasn’t coming all along. Foolish boy, thinking his follies might slip past without consequence. He turns to the girl next to him. “Catch up with you tomorrow?”

She nods and gives him a little smile. I feel her curious stare as she moves past me, but I pretend she doesn’t exist. I take her place next to Sam and we walk.

“I know what you’re going to say, Lenni,” he starts.

“No, you don’t.”

“I broke up with her because she thinks she’s too good for me.”

I stare at him. “What? That’s crazy. She loves you, Sam. You don’t see that?”

“I know she loves me, but it’s true,” he says with a sad sense of certainty. “Since our first date, I knew what everyone saw when they looked at us. A nerdy guy with a hot-ass girl a thousand times out of his league. I just didn’t realize Jade saw it too.”

“So you broke up with her because she’s better looking than you?” But I only say this to stall for time. I know exactly what he’s saying, and I’ve got a bad feeling that I can’t honestly tell him he’s wrong. Jade’s fiery self-assuredness is magnetic, but sometimes even she can’t see past it.

“You saw it.” Sam gives me an impatient look. “In the beginning, she went wild for the flowers and the gifts and carefully planned dates. By the end, I had to do those things just to gain her approval. It was the minimum payment to be able to call her my girlfriend.”

“So she took you for granted. It happens in serious relationships,” I say as though I have any idea what I’m talking about. “That doesn’t mean she thinks she’s too good for you.”

“You’re telling me she doesn’t know she could have her pick of guys?”

“She picked you, Sam.”

He scowls and buries his hands in his pockets.

“Some people would die for what you and Jade have. Real love doesn’t just get handed out like candy to everybody.” Finally, a subject I specialize in.

He stops and faces me. “Would you take that, Lenni? If you were in love with some guy and no matter how much you did for him, you went to sleep every night worrying you’d wake up and he’d tell you that you aren’t enough anymore?”

Some guy? No, I wouldn’t take it. For Cam? Maybe I would. “I’ve never been in love, so how would I know?” I keep walking.

“I hope you wouldn’t.”

I steer the conversation back where it belongs. “Okay, so Jade believes in herself. At times a little too much, maybe,” I admit. “But I know she never meant to make you feel like you didn’t deserve her.”

“Maybe not, but that’s why I asked for time away from her. I need to sort it out on my own.”

“Did you even tell her what you’re telling me? Because she seems completely lost.”

“I tried to. Maybe I—” Sam shakes his head, frustrated. “Maybe in the heat of the moment, I wasn’t clear enough.”

“Well, she’s crushed. At least talk to her so she understands. Please?”

He doesn’t agree, but I know the grumpy look on his face well enough to know he’ll do it. Sam is one of those guys you can just tell grew up in a house full of women who got their way. When he sees my smile, he says, “Don’t even think of thanking me. Jade’s going to throw a fit, and you’re the one who has to live with her.”

I don’t thank him, but I do give him a hug. “Glad we can still conspire behind Jade’s back like old times.”

Sam gives me a look like he doesn’t like the sound of this.

“Kidding, Sam. I mean I’m glad we can still talk, like friends.” He gives me a sober nod and I turn to go.

“Hold on, Lenni.” When I stop, he closes the space between us and swallows. “It’s good to hear you say that.”

“That we’re still friends?”

He nods. “Because there’s something that I’ve been wanting to tell you. I just didn’t know—what with me and Jade—if it was appropriate.”

I lean away from him slightly. “Well, if it includes graphic details about your nights as a newly single?—”

“It’s not like that.” He doesn’t even crack a smile.

“Okay.” My mind spins with uncomfortable possibilities. “Spill.”

He hesitates, looking out across campus and then back at me. “First of all, Jade has never told me any personal details of your past, Lenni.” He fiddles with the watch on his wrist and his gaze seems to have shifted from my eyes to somewhere just beyond them. “Only that, well, you had an unfortunate experience in high school...and while I don’t pretend to know how that must feel, I couldn’t help but wonder—well, given your position on the student paper and your aspirations for making editor...”

I think I should feel embarrassed, but watching the tips of Sam’s ears turn bright pink as he sinks in his own awkwardness, I only feel sorry for him. “Sam, you’re fine,” I interrupt. “Just get to the point.”

“Right. Well, I’ve heard rumors about a nude photo of a female student circulating around campus and apparently it started with the football team. An unauthorized photo, taken without her consent.”

Dark memories claw at me, but I force them down. This isn’t about me. “Who’d you hear this from?”

“Just a kid from my study group. He knows a guy who knows a guy...that sort of thing. He says it’s easy to trace back to the football team.”

“Have you seen the photo?”

Sam blanches. “I didn’t ask for it,” he says carefully. “I deleted it from my phone as soon as I saw it.”

“And you think—” I swallow hard. “You think Cam might be involved?”

“Cam?” He cocks his head. “No, that’s not what I was implying. I thought as a journalist you might have a duty to take it to your editor and see if the story might have some teeth.”

“Oh.” Relief washes over me. “Yeah, okay. Maybe I’ll look into it.”

“It’s probably nothing, but it’s been bothering me. When I heard, I couldn’t help but think of you.”

Immediately, I think, With pity? But I let it go. “Thanks for talking.” For Jade’s sake, I wish I had it in me to be cold to Sam, but I just don’t. It’s then I realize that aside from my grandpa, he’s been the only trustworthy man in my life this past year, or ever. That’s right, my friend’s ex-boyfriend is my only male role model born within the last sixty years. I knew my life was sad, but damn.

“I’m not going to be able to make it all better, you know,” he warns.

“Just talk to her.”

He nods and walks away while my brain starts working overtime. If he won’t make it all better for Jade, then I guess it’s my job.