Fault Line Page 12

  It was past eleven o’clock by the time I got there. I walked in and scanned the crowd. It was packed mostly with people I knew, which was good. There was a sweaty mass of too-close couples moving on the dance floor. It was a bakery with all the bodies inside. Dim lights and loud music. But still I found Ani within three minutes of entering. She had on a short skirt and strappy top. My heart stuttered. She stood by the keg with a cup in her hand, talking to a group of people. Kevin had his arm wrapped tightly around her.

  I made a beeline toward them and pulled her to the side.

  “Ben,” she said, and jumped into my arms. The contents of her cup sloshed down my back.

  “I thought you weren’t going to drink,” I said, and tried to set her down. She clung tighter.

  “It’s water,” she said, and drank what was left in the cup before tossing it aside. She moved her mouth onto mine and I tasted the cool cleanness of the water.

  Kevin sauntered over to us.

  “See? Perfectly safe. I told you I’d look out for her, dude.”

  I wanted to wipe the smug smile off his face, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of Ani. She hadn’t taken my beating up the asshole in the hall at school very well and I didn’t think she’d appreciate me going off on Kevin and the previous placement of his hand on her hip.

  She unwrapped one of her arms from my neck and hooked it around Kevin so she was sandwiched between us. I tried to pull her away but she held tight.

  “He totally kept his eyes on me the whole time. He was like a stand-in boyfriend.”

  “Nice,” I grumbled, and gave him my ass-kicking stare.

  “He’s been very accommodating, watching out for me when he could have been trolling for girls. I think I should reward him,” she continued without even noticing my reaction.

  I tugged at her some more, but she released me and wrapped both her arms around Kevin. I saw his eyes bug out for half a second before her mouth was on his and her leg snaked up and pulled him toward her.

  What. The. Fuck.

  “Ani!” I shouted, and grabbed her shoulder so hard she stumbled away from Kevin.

  She turned on me and crossed her arms, pillowing up her boobs so I could almost see the nipples popping out of her tiny shirt.

  “What?” she snapped.

  I took a breath and looked at Kevin. His hand covered his mouth and he stared at me in panic. He shook his head at my accusatory face and I zeroed in on Ani.

  “Can I talk to you outside?” I asked in a low voice. I didn’t want a big showdown in front of everyone. Ani already had a reputation at parties and I didn’t want to make things worse for her. But my brain was reeling.

  I seethed and pointed to the deck door. She raised her chin and stomped out in front of me. When I had closed the door behind me, I turned my anger on her.

  “Is this your way of breaking up with me?” I spat.

  Her eyes got buzzy again and she shook her head. “I’m not breaking up with you. Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because you started making out with my best friend in front of me.”

  “I was saying thank you for keeping me safe,” she snapped back.

  “By kissing him?”

  “Yes, Beezus, in case you haven’t heard from the entire school, that’s what I do.”

  I scrubbed my hand over my face and massaged my temples. She moved her hands over her shoulders, trying to keep warm in the cold night air. I looked at her outfit again and cringed at the amount of skin she had on display.

  “Why are you being this way? You’re killing me here. I want to help you, but you’re making it so hard for me.”

  “I didn’t ask for your help.”

  “Ani,” I said, and rubbed my hands across her shoulders.

  “I didn’t even want you at the hospital.” Her words stung me like tiny razors across my skin.

  I bit the inside of my cheek and remembered the things Beth had said.

  “It’s your choice. All of this. It’s your choice. Do you still want to be with me?”

  “I never said I didn’t,” she said, taking a small step closer.

  “Then be with me. Don’t screw around with Kevin. I don’t want to share you. I’m not that guy. You know I’m not.”

  She stood on her toes and kissed the top of my head. She moved down my cheek to my neck and sucked on it like she wanted to give me a hickey. Her arms hooked around me and she lifted herself up so I had to hold her beneath her thighs. I could feel the goose bumps on the backs of her legs.

  “Poor, poor Beezus. Don’t you realize? You already have shared me.”

  She kissed me on the mouth then, deep and long. I wanted to break away, talk to her more, try to work out what had happened, but she clung to me so desperately, I couldn’t stop. I moved her off the deck and into the darkness on the side of the house. She pulled frantically at my clothes and I quickly unzipped my jeans and rolled a condom on while she slipped her panties off. What the hell was I doing?

  I almost retreated but her voice pleaded and I didn’t know what to do. Was this what Beth meant by empowering Ani? Because all I could see was a whole lot of screwed-up.

  20

  I got home from practice the next Monday afternoon and my brother was in front of the TV playing Xbox.

  “Hey, shrimp,” I said, dropping down next to him. “How was rehearsal?”

  “Okay,” he mumbled, maneuvering his hand over the controls without looking at me.

  “Mom at class?”

  He nodded again. The loud explosions from the game made me flinch.

  “Michael,” I said, “put down the frickin’ controller. Mom’s told you a hundred times, it’s rude to keep playing when people are talking to you.”

  He paused the game and stared at the screen.

  “What’s up? What’s wrong with you?”

  He slowly turned his head. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  He barked a laugh and picked up his controller again. I grabbed it from him and sat on it.

  “What the heck? Give it back.”

  “What’s your problem?” I asked.

  His face flashed hurt. “You used to talk to us. Now you’re always in your room. Or with Ani.”

  It was Michael’s attempt at a verbal slap, and somehow it cut so much deeper than any of the lectures Mom poured out.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t act like I’m dumb. You used to talk to us and you don’t anymore. Not about anything real. I don’t know what happened or what’s wrong, but you don’t talk to us anymore.”

  A coil of guilt wove its way into my stomach. Michael was worried about me. Mom and Dad were worried about me. I felt like a piece of crap. And still, I couldn’t say anything. Not to my parents. Definitely not to Michael. This wasn’t their problem.

  “I have no idea what you mean. Everything is fine.”

  Michael shrugged. Had he picked up that indifference from me? “If that’s how you wanna be, go ahead and lie. I thought we were brothers. I thought we could tell each other anything.”

  I searched Michael’s face. His chin trembled. It made me want to cry seeing how hard he was trying to keep it together.

  “Sometimes it’s better to do things on your own. I still love you guys. But this is my shit, not yours, to deal with,” I said finally.

  A small smile crossed his face. “I get that. Sort of. It’s like how I didn’t want to tell Mom I’m not really playing soccer, just sitting on the sides. But you could tell me if you wanted to.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but then decided against it. I was a disappointment as a brother and I didn’t have any right to screw up his happiness with my own shitstorm. I mentally kicked myself. If Michael guessed something was wron
g, I was doing a crap job of holding things together.

  I considered again talking to my dad. Coming clean about things. But as the echo of Ani’s pleas against telling her mom circled through my mind, I realized I couldn’t say anything to him about what happened at the party. About what was happening with us now. Because as soon as my dad found out, any chance of Ani and me ever being normal again would be tossed out the window.

  “Sorry I can’t get into it with you, shrimp,” I said at last. I gave him his Xbox controller and picked up the other one, then settled deeper into the couch next to him, waiting for him to respond. He didn’t say anything.

  •••

  The Sunday after Thanksgiving, I was finally ungrounded. It was a seventy-five-degree day and my mom announced over breakfast she couldn’t stand seeing me inside moping any longer. I bolted to my room and texted Ani.

  We went for ice cream to celebrate and I was determined not to make our date end in sex. It’s not that I minded, but it seemed it was the only way Ani and I had connected since the party and I missed just hanging out with her. Every time we started talking about anything remotely real, she withdrew or jumped me. I was starting to get kind of messed up about it.

  I held her hand as we walked through town and told her stories about times my friends and I had done stupid shit when we were young. She smiled and patted my arm but looked in front of her without any other response.

  “Hey, what’s a cow’s favorite movie?” I asked when we sat on a bench in front of Peterson’s Ice Cream.

  She looked at me with a real smile and light in her eyes. My breath stopped. God, she was beautiful.

  “The Sound of Moosic,” I finished.

  “Oh my God, you’re such a dork. I heard that joke in the third grade.”

  “Okay, how about this one?” I asked, hanging on to the familiarity between us. “What do you call a cow on a pogo stick?”

  She snorted and my heart sped up.

  “A milk shake!” she said, and laughed. “Seriously, Beez, you need to stop getting your material from the elementary school playground.”

  I nudged her shoulder and tugged on one of her braids. If I hadn’t been watching closely, I might’ve missed when she closed up again. But I saw it in her face and I hated her for not being able to hold on to our laughter. And I hated myself for being angry about it.

  “Is something bothering you?” I finally asked after too much silence.

  “No.”

  “You got quiet all of a sudden,” I said hesitantly.

  “You have some strawberry on the corner of your mouth,” she said, and before I could wipe it away, her tongue darted out of her mouth to lick it. She tried to linger on my lips, but I pulled away.

  “Is something bothering you?” she asked, pouting.

  “No. I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “Why?” She leaned away from me and gave me a suspicious look. I pulled her back into my side.

  “ ’Cause things have been kind of different with us. We used to talk more. I’m not trying to be judgmental or whatever, but I’ve noticed.”

  “Beezus, don’t you know I can put my mouth to way better use than talking?” She batted her eyelashes, which might have been cute if they weren’t framing dead eyes.

  I got up and tossed my ice cream in the garbage can. My hands clenched at my sides.

  “Why do you say shit like that? Huh? Do you say that kind of thing to other people?”

  “Are you jealous?” she asked. I wanted to smack the mean out of her. It wasn’t her fault, but I didn’t care. She couldn’t hold on to old Ani and it pissed me off.

  “Not jealous. Tired of it. You’re more than this. Better than this. Don’t you get it?”

  Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away. She tossed her ice cream toward the garbage can, but it fell short and landed in a lump of pistachio on the sidewalk.

  “You know what? We’re done. I can’t do this with you anymore. It’s too exhausting,” she said, turning away from me.

  “What? What’s so goddamn exhausting?” I yelled, and kicked the garbage can.

  “You are. We are. I can’t be with you. It takes too much out of me.”

  A hole the size of a missile formed in my stomach.

  “You’re breaking up with me?”

  “Yes,” she answered, and dropped her head.

  I took a step toward her. I pulled on a piece of hair that had fallen from her braid.

  “No. You’re not.” I lifted her chin.

  “You can’t say no. If someone wants to break up, you have to let them.” Her voice shook.

  “I can say no. I’m saying it. No. You’re not leaving me. I’m not leaving you.” I hadn’t gone through all this shit to have her walk away from me.

  “You’re tired of me. You said you were,” she protested, but her eyes didn’t have any fight in them.

  “I didn’t say that. I said I was tired of you putting yourself down, acting like all you are is some sex object.”

  She curled into me and buried her face in my chest. I felt the wetness of tears through my T-shirt. I hushed her and stroked her hair. Nothing I did stopped her crying. After several minutes, I heard her take a deep breath. She pulled back and faced me.

  “Okay, if you won’t let me break up with you, you have to stop judging me.”

  “I’m not judging you, Ani,” I argued.

  “Yes, you are. Everyone’s judging me. It’s like they’re all waiting to see what I’ll do next. They’re waiting for me to fall.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “You have no idea what it’s like. I walk into a room and people stop talking. I walk down the hall and all I hear are whispers of ‘Firecrotch’ and ‘Manhole.’ And the worst part is, I can’t say shit to defend myself. I’ve got nothing but a giant fricking void about that night and a bunch of people telling me what I said and did.”

  “It was one night. You can’t let it define you.”

  Silence sat between us.

  “What am I going to do, Ben?” she finally asked.

  I almost broke in two hearing her sound so defeated. I wished I could make it all go away. I’d never wanted anything so much. But it took all this energy to hold the pieces of her together. It would cost us both something. It already had.

  Her face started to crumple and I gripped her tighter. “I’ll make this better, baby. I’ll make you better. I promise.”

  She gave me a sad smile and the air between us shifted. I had no idea how to keep the promise. We both knew it. The fault lay on me and the reality of her actually “getting better” inched further away. If only I could really fix things.

  We went back to my car and had sex because I didn’t know what else to do when she slipped her pants off and straddled me. It was like I was outside of myself. Watching. Seeing how things really were with us. But I couldn’t stop it from happening. We didn’t even kiss when we were doing it. Ani fake moaned and panted. And I let her. Her eyes stared past me to the back window. Glazed and vacant. I came and pulled the condom off quickly. My stomach heaved and I swallowed the bile in my throat. My hands shook in self-disgust. I was exactly like all those guys. I had just fucked the Manhole.

  21

  I wouldn’t be with Ani alone for the next three weeks. I couldn’t. I made up excuses about why I couldn’t come over and pretended not to see the hurt expression on her face. I swam before and after school and still couldn’t get back to my record times. Coach looked at his stopwatch and mumbled to himself, but thankfully didn’t say anything.

  I went to lunch with Ani, Kate, and Kevin. I made sure I always sat across from Ani. Sometimes other people sat with us. We acted like nothing was wrong, but Kevin met my eyes in question several times. I shook my head and didn’t say anything about what was happening with her. What was happening
with us.

  One lunch, Ani didn’t show up. I went looking for her but couldn’t find her. When I finally did, she was coming out of the handicap bathroom on the second floor. She got a weird look when she saw me and started tugging on her shirt. When I asked her where she’d been, she turned away and didn’t say anything.

  I took her hand and walked back to the cafeteria with her. A guy followed us in and brushed too long against Ani as he passed. I started to say something to him, but Ani stopped me with an openmouthed kiss and her hands on my ass. I pulled away and ducked my head so I wouldn’t have to see the stares of the entire cafeteria. Ani dropped her hands and moved slowly toward the lunch line.

  I tumbled into bed every night sore from practice, from swimming wrong, sitting wrong, moving wrong. My body didn’t seem to fit me anymore. I wasn’t aware of how I moved in the way I used to be. Instead, my mind pushed me from place to place.

  Ani’s recovery meant everything and nothing all at the same time. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, seeing the vacancy on her face as she stared out the car window, but I couldn’t cross the bridge between us. I was just a guy. Nothing I did or said made any difference. And for as much as I wanted to be there for her, I couldn’t ignore the resentment taking up residence in my stomach.

  •••

  The Friday before winter break, I saw Ani in the hall surrounded by guys. The haze that had been clouding me for weeks vanished into red-hot fury. I stalked toward them, afraid they were saying shit to her, but she stood smiling and laughing.

  “What’s up?” I asked as I approached.

  “Hey, Beez,” she said in a phony high voice. She batted her glassy eyes at me. Fake interest like how Morgan used to look at me. “We were all just making plans for winter break.”

  “All of you?” I scanned the faces of the guys. Big guys. Bigger than me. Most of them stared at me smugly. What the hell had Ani done?

  “Well, you’ve been so busy . . .” Ani looked at me pointedly. Shit. These were my choices? Pretend everything was okay between us or let her hang out with a bunch of guys over break doing God knows what?