I went totally still.
“We had sex.”
Before I knew it, my hand was striking his face. I slapped him as hard as I could. I wasn’t even thinking, I was just doing. My hand left a splotchy red imprint on his right cheek.
We stared at each other. I couldn’t believe I had hit him, and neither could he. The shock was just beginning to register on his face, and I probably had the same look on mine. I had never hit anyone before.
Rubbing his cheek, he said, “I’m so sorry.”
I cried harder. I had pictured them hooking up, making out. I hadn’t even considered sex. I was so stupid.
He said, “It didn’t mean anything. I swear to you, it didn’t.”
He tried to touch my arm, and I flinched. Wiping my cheeks, I said, “Maybe to you sex doesn’t mean anything. But it means something to me, and you knew that. You’ve ruined everything. I’ll never trust you again.”
He tried to pull me toward him, but I pushed him away. Desperately, he said, “I’m telling you, the thing with Lacie didn’t mean anything.”
“It means something to me. And it obviously meant something to her.”
“I’m not in love with her!” he cried out. “I’m in love with you!”
Jeremiah crawled over to where I was. He put his arms around my knees. “Don’t leave,” he begged. “Please don’t leave.”
I tried to shake him off, but he was strong. He clung to me like I was a raft and he was at sea.
“I love you so much,” he said, his whole body shaking. “It’s always been you, Belly.”
I wanted to keep screaming and crying and somehow find a way out of this. But I didn’t see a way. Looking down at him, I felt like I was made of stone. He had never disappointed me before. For him to do it now made it that much harder, because I hadn’t seen it coming. It was hard to believe that just a few short hours ago he’d carried me across campus on his back and I’d loved him more than ever.
“We can’t get it back,” I said, and I said it to hurt him. “What we were, it’s gone. We lost it tonight.”
Desperately, he said, “Yes, we can. I know we can.”
I shook my head. The tears had started again, but I didn’t want to cry anymore, especially not in front of him. Or with him. I didn’t want to feel sad. I didn’t want to feel anything. I wiped my face again and stood up, “I’m leaving.”
He rose to his feet unsteadily. “Wait!”
I pushed past him and grabbed my bag from his bed. Then I was out the door, running down the stairs and outside. I ran all the way to the bus stop, my bag banging against my shoulder, my heels clacking against the pavement. I almost tripped and fell, but I made it. I caught the bus just as the last person was getting on, and we drove off. I didn’t look back to see if Jeremiah had followed me.
My roommate, Jillian, had gone home for the summer earlier that day, so at least I had the room to myself and could cry alone. Jeremiah kept calling and texting, so I turned my phone off. But before I went to bed, I turned it back on again so I could see what he wrote me.
I’m so ashamed of myself.
Please talk to me.
I love you and I always will.
I cried harder.
chapter five
When we broke up in April, it really did come out of nowhere. Yes, we’d had little fights here and there, but you could hardly even call them fights.
Like, there was this time Shay was having a party at her godmother’s country house. She invited a ton of people, and she said I could bring Jeremiah, too. We were gonna get dressed up and dance outside all night long. We’d all just crash there for the weekend, Shay said—it would be a blast. I was just happy to be included. I told Jeremiah about it, and he said he had an intramural soccer game but I should go anyway. I said, “Can’t you just miss it? It’s not like it’s a real game.” It was a bitchy thing to say, but I said it, and I meant it.
That was our first fight. Not a real fight, not like yelling or anything, but he was mad and so was I.
We always hung out with his friends. In a way it made sense. He already had them, and I was still forming mine. It took time to get close to people, and with me at his frat house all the time, the girls on my hall were bonding without me. I felt like I had given something up without even realizing it. When Shay invited me, that meant a lot, and I wanted it to mean something to Jere, too.
And there were other things, too, that annoyed me. Things I’d never known about Jeremiah, things I couldn’t have known from only seeing him in the summer at the beach house. Like how obnoxious he was when he smoked weed with his suitemates and they ate pineapple-and-ham pizza and listened to “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio and they would laugh for, like, an hour.
Also his seasonal allergies. I’d never seen him in the springtime, so I didn’t know he had them.
He called me, sneezing like crazy, all stuffed up and pitiful. “Can you come over and hang out with me?” he asked, blowing his nose. “And can you bring more Kleenex? And orange juice?”
I bit my lip to keep from saying, You have allergies, not swine flu.
I’d gone over to his frat house the day before. He and his roommate played video games while I did my homework. Then we watched a Kung Fu movie and ordered Indian food, even though I didn’t really like to eat Indian food because it gave me an upset stomach after. Jeremiah said that when his allergies got really bad, Indian food was the only thing that would make him feel better. I ate naan and rice and felt pissed while Jeremiah scarfed down chicken tikka masala and watched his movie. He could be really oblivious sometimes, and I had to wonder if it was on purpose.
“I really want to come over, but I have a paper that’s due tomorrow,” I said, trying to sound conflicted about it. “So I probably shouldn’t. Sorry.”
“Well, I guess I could go there,” he said. “I’ll take a ton of Benedryl and sleep while you write. Then maybe we can order Indian food again.”
“Yeah,” I said, sourly. “We could do that.” At least I wouldn’t have to take the bus. But I would have to go to the hall bathroom and get a roll of toilet paper, because Jillian would be pissed if Jeremiah used all her Kleenex again.
I didn’t know then that all of that was setting the stage for our first real fight. We had one of those screaming and crying kind of fights, the kind I promised myself I would never have. I’d heard Jillian have them over the phone, girls on my hall, Taylor. I never thought it would be me. I thought Jeremiah and I understood each other too well, had known each other too long, for that kind of fight.
A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s a living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.
At the last minute, Jeremiah and his fraternity brothers decided to go to Cabo over spring break. They’d found some insane deal on the Internet.
I was already planning on going home over the break. My mom and I were going to go into the city and watch a ballet, and Steven would be at home too. So I wanted to be at home, I really did. But as I watched Jeremiah book his trip, I felt more and more resentful. He was supposed to be going home too. Now that Conrad was in California, Mr. Fisher was pretty much alone. Jeremiah had said he wanted to go and spend some time with him, maybe visit Susannah’s grave together. We’d also talked about going to Cousins for a couple of days. Jeremiah knew how much I wanted to go to Cousins. He knew how much it meant to me. I’d done more growing up in that house than I had in my own. And with Susannah gone, it felt even more important that we kept going back.