Deeper

NOVEMBER Caroline

When I think of the bakery, I think of all of it together.

The crunch of fall leaves piled up on the threshold of the back door where they’d blown down the alley and stuck.

The gleam of the mixing bowls and countertops underneath the banked fluorescents when West finished cleaning and locked up.

The smell of baking bread, the crumbling clay of live yeast between my fingers, West’s voice behind my ear as he leaned over my shoulder and watched me drop it into the bowl, saying, “Just like that. Exactly.”

The way he moved his arm in short, sure strokes when he sliced open the tops of the loaves right before he pushed the rack of trays into the oven.

Winter came late. October turned into November, and I spent a long, crisp autumn of flour-strewn countertops and rising dough, sticky fingers and loud music and West working with his ball cap turned backward, an apron tied around his waist, and that smart-ass grin on his face.

West is the bakery. I can’t imagine the point of it without him in it, and I can’t imagine him—the best version of him, the one he rarely lets people see—without that kitchen as the backdrop for his movements.

West bending down to measure out a scoop of grain.

West nudging the oven door closed with his shoulder, setting the timer.

West kneading with both hands, flour dusted all the way up to his elbows, moving to the easy rhythm of some cheesy club music Krish had picked out.

There, in the bakery, while the rest of the world was sleeping, time buckled and we found something outside it. We became us in that kitchen. Long before he kissed me, I passed a whole lifetime with West, bathed in yellow light, baptized in lukewarm tap water, consecrated at sunrise when we broke a loaf open and looked. Dug our hands into it. Tasted what we’d made.

It wasn’t perfect, what we made. One night I forgot the salt. Another time, the water I put in was too hot, and I killed the yeast. There were nights when West forgot to tell me some vital thing and nights when he decided not to remind me, just to see if I’d remember.

He held himself back, and I wasn’t always brave enough. I didn’t trust myself.

We failed as often as we succeeded, West and me.

But I think about what would have happened if he hadn’t come out to get me.

I think I might have stayed in my car forever. I might have made only right turns.

I might never have learned how to stop being afraid, and those men would have kept chasing me around, always.

I can’t be anything but glad that’s not the way things went.

Instead, West came out, and I went in.

After that, I rarely wanted to be anywhere else.

“You’re buzzing again.”

I’m in my nook, a little area on the bakery floor between the sink and the long table against the wall where West lines up his mixing bowls. I like it here because I can only usually see a slice of him at a time.

I watch his boots, his pant legs from the knees down, his apron.

During this part of the night, when he’s mixing, he’s always moving. Rocking from one foot to the other if he’s feeding and stirring the sourdough starter. Pacing from the sink to the mixer to the refrigerator to the storage room, back to the mixer, back to the sink, over to the counter to pick up a tool he’s forgotten.

The way he moves is almost more than I can take. His lazy grace. His competence.

His arms come into view as he lifts one bowl off the stand and puts the next one on. He bends over, and I see his hat and his neck, his face in profile, his jeans tight over his bent leg, the shape of his calf.

I can handle him in pieces. They’re all nice pieces, but they don’t make me break out in a nervous sweat, like I did last night when it was time to head home and he walked me to the back door, propped his hand up on the jamb, and said something that made him smile down at me and lean in. I don’t know what it was. I couldn’t hear him, because the way he had his arm braced made his shirt sleeve ride up to reveal his whole biceps, a defined curve of taut muscle engaged against the doorframe. I fell into a biceps wormhole, and then I made the grave error of looking at his mouth, the shape of his lips and his cheekbones, his chin and his eyes. I forgot to listen to him.

I forgot to breathe or exist outside of West’s face.

Yeah. That’s a thing that can happen, apparently, and when it happens, it’s really bad. He had to snap his fingers in front of my nose to wake me up. It made me startle, and I stepped backward and nearly fell down. West just smiled kind of indulgently.

“Text me when you get home,” he said, and I said something that sounded like gnugh.

I guess he’s used to me being hopeless around him. We both just pretend I’m not. It sort of works.

West and I are like that. We sort of work.

I’ve been coming to the bakery two or three nights a week—almost every shift he’s on, I’m here. Insomnia has made me her bitch, but it doesn’t matter so much when I can hang out with West and study in my little nook. I nap after class. I’m turning into a creature of the night. It’s all right, though. I guess I’d rather be Bella Swan hanging out at the Cullen place than, you know, school Bella—all pissy and defensive, clomping around Forks High, convinced everyone hates her.

The men in my head are quiet when I’m at the bakery. I think if they called me names, West would glower at them and tell them to shut the fuck up. If they were real, I mean. Which they’re not.

West’s phone is still buzzing, vibrating itself partway off the edge of the tabletop. I poke out a finger and push it back to safety. “Dough boy,” I say, loud, because it’s hard to hear with the mixer going. “Your phone.”

“What?”

“Your phone.”

I point, and he finally understands. He walks over and picks it up off the metal countertop right beside me.

I made the mistake of grabbing it once, thinking I would hand it to him. The look on his face—he has this way of shutting down his whole expression so it looks like there’s no feeling in him at all.

He’s hilariously funny when he wants to be, wickedly smart, open and teasing—and then suddenly I step over some invisible line and he’s a robot. Or too intense, complaining about how something is bullshit, like he did that first night I came here.

He takes his phone into the front of the store, where I won’t be able to hear him talking.

I go back to my Latin, though it’s hard to concentrate, knowing, as I do, that in ten or fifteen minutes someone will show up at the alley door. West will meet him there, positioning his body so I can’t see who he’s talking to, mumbling in this low voice that makes him sound like just another dude, a slacker. His shoulders will slouch. His hands will dip in and out of his pockets, propelled along by his soothing, nonthreatening voice.

I try not to see. It’s better if I stick to the slices. That’s the only way we can be friends—or not-friends, I guess.

And I need to be not-friends with West. He’s the only person in my whole life who doesn’t treat me like nothing happened but who also doesn’t treat me like everything happened. He says, “How’s it going?” when I walk in the door, and I tell him the truth, but afterward that’s that. We’re done talking about it.

Tucked in my nook at the bakery, for a few hours two or three nights a week, I feel like myself.

When he comes back, he hops up on the nearest table opposite me and says, “What’s that, Latin?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a quiz tomorrow.”

“Need help with your verbs?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Are you staying long enough for me to teach you all the finer points of muffin glazing?”

“Probably not. I’ve got to write a response paper for Con Law, and I didn’t bring my laptop.”

“You should’ve. I like it when you write here.”

I do, too. He’s quiet when I need him to be quiet, and when I want a break he’ll teach me some bread thing. If I read him my draft out loud, he’ll suggest some change that sounds small but always ends up making the paper more concise, the argument stronger.

West is smart. Crazy smart. I had no idea—the one time I had a class with him, he didn’t talk.

It is possible he’s actually smarter than I am.

“Next week, then,” he says. “Tuesday you will learn the secrets of the glaze.”

I smile. I think he likes teaching me stuff nearly as much as he liked learning it in the first place. He’s almost insatiably curious. No matter what homework I’m doing, he’ll end up asking me fifty questions about it.

“Sounds good. Are you on at the restaurant this weekend?”

“Yeah. What about you, you got plans?”

I want to hang out with you. Come over Sunday, and we’ll watch bad TV.

Let’s go to the bar.

Let’s go out to dinner in Iowa City.

Sometimes I invent a life in which my being more than not-friends with West is a possibility. A life where we get to hang out somewhere other than a kitchen at midnight.

Then I mentally pinch myself, because, no, I want less scandal, not more.

“Bridget is trying to get me to go to that party tomorrow night.”

“Where’s that?”

“A bunch of the soccer players.”

“Oh, at Bourbon House?”

“Yeah, are you going?”

“I’ll be at work.”

“After you get off?”

He smiles. “Nah. You should go, though.”

When Bridget suggested it, the idea filled me with panic. A crush of bodies, all those faces I would have to study for signs of judgment, pity, disgust. I can’t have fun when I’m so busy monitoring my behavior, choosing the right clothes, plastering a just-so smile on my face and watching, watching, while the men in my head tell me I look like a whore and I should pick somebody already. Take him upstairs and let him suck my tits, because that’s all a slut like me is good for.

Bridget thinks I need to get out more, pick my life back up where I left it. Otherwise, Nate wins.

I see her point. But I can’t make myself want to.

I look at the corrugated soles of West’s boots, swinging a few feet from my face. At the way his knuckles look, folded around the edge of the table. The seam at his elbows.

If West were going to the party, I would want to.

“I might.”

“Do you some good,” he says. “Get shit-faced, dance a little. Maybe you’d even meet somebody worth keeping you busy nights so you’re not hanging around here harassing me all the time.”

He grins when he says it. Just kidding, Caro, that grin says. We both know you’re too fucked in the head to be hooking up with anybody.

Before I’ve even caught my breath, he’s hopped down and moved toward the sink, where he fills a bucket with soapy water so he can wipe down his countertops.

I look at my Latin book, which really is verbs, and I blink away the sting in my eyes.

Video, videre, vidi, visus. To see.

Cognosco, cognoscere, cognovi, cognotus. To understand.

Maneo, manere, mansi, mansurus. To remain.

I see what he’s doing. Every now and then, West throws some half-teasing comment out to remind me I’m not his girlfriend. He smiles as he tells me something that means, You’re not important to me. We’re not friends.

He pulls me closer with one hand and smashes an imaginary fist into my face with the other.

I know why he does it. He doesn’t want me to get close.

I don’t know why.

But I see. I understand.

I remain.

We’re a mess, West and me.

He cleans the tables off, his movements abrupt and jerky. Agitated. When he switches to dishes, he’s slamming the pans around instead of stacking them. He’s so caught up with the noise he’s making that when a figure appears at the back door, West doesn’t notice.

I do, though. I look up and see Josh there. He used to be my friend, before. Now I see him around with Nate. I think he’s going out with Sierra. He’s standing with his wallet in his hand, looking awkward.

“Hey, Caroline,” he says.

“Hey.”

West turns toward me, follows my eyes to the doorway. He frowns deeply and stalks toward the door. Josh lifts the wallet, and West kind of shoves it down and aside as he moves out into the alley, forcing Josh to step back. “Put your fucking money away,” I hear him say as the door swings closed. “Jesus Christ.”

Then the kitchen is empty—just me and the white noise of the mixer, the water running in the sink.

When he comes back in, he’s alone, his hand pushing something down deep in his pocket. “You didn’t see that,” he says.

Which is dumb.

I guess he thinks he’s protecting me. If I can’t see him dealing, I’m not an accessory. I’m the oblivious girl in the corner, unable to put two and two together and get four.

“Yes, I did.”

He levels this look at me. Don’t push it.

I haven’t seen that look since the library. It makes me dump my book on the floor and stand up, and when I’m standing I can feel it more—how my chest is still aching from the hurt of what he said a few minutes ago. How my heart pounds, because he hurt me on purpose, and I’m angry about it.

I’m angry.

He turns his back on me and starts to wash a bowl.

“What kind of profit do you make, anyway?” I ask. “On a sale like that, is it even worth it? Because I looked it up—it’s a felony to sell. You’d do jail time if you got arrested. There’s a mandatory minimum five-year sentence.”

He keeps cleaning the bowl, but his shoulders are tight. The tension in the room is thick as smoke, and I don’t know why I’m baiting him when I’m close to choking on it.

He’s right to try to protect me. My dad would have kittens if he found out I was here, with West dealing out the back door, selling weed with the muffins. He would ask me if I’d lost my mind, and what would I say to him? It’s only weed? I don’t think West even smokes it?

Excuses. My dad hates excuses.

The truth is that I don’t make any excuses for it. I turn myself into an accessory every time I come here and sit on the floor by West, and I don’t care. I really don’t. I used to. Last year I was scandalized by the pot.

Now I’m too busy being fascinated by West.

And then there’s the money. I think about the money. I wonder how much he has. I know his tuition is paid, because he told me, and that he caddies at a golf course in the summer, because I asked why he had such stark tan lines.

I imagine he’s paying his own rent, paying for his food, but as far as I can tell he doesn’t have any hobbies or vices. I can’t figure out why he works so many jobs and deals pot, too, if he doesn’t need all that money just to get by. And he must not, right? He must have more than he needs if he’s buying weed in large quantities and making loans.

“Drop it,” West says.

I can’t drop it. Not tonight. Not when the pain in my chest has turned to this burning, angry insistence. I’m too pissed at him, and at myself. “I’ll have to ask Josh,” I muse. “Or Krish. I bet he would tell me. I bet when people show up at your apartment, you don’t turn your back on Krish and make him sit alone while you deal outside on the fire escape.”

I’ve never been to his apartment. I only know about the fire escape because I drove by.

I’m possibly a little bit stalking him.

West drops the bowl in the sink and rounds on me. “What are you in a snit about? You want me to deal in front of you?”

Do I?

For a moment I’m not sure. I look down at the floor, at the spill of flour by the row of mixing bowls.

I remember the first night I came in here and the first thing that’s happened every night since.

How’s it going, Caroline?

“It’s bullshit,” I say.

His eyes narrow.

“It’s bullshit for you to pretend not to be dealing drugs out the back door, like you’re going to protect me from knowing the truth about you. It’s not fair that I’m supposed to come in here and bare my soul to you, and you don’t even want me to touch your stupid cell phone.”

West crosses his arms. His jaw has gone hard.

“You’re a drug dealer.” It’s the first time I’ve ever said it out loud. The first time I’ve ever even mentally put it in those words. “So what? You have some dried-up plants in a plastic bag in your pocket, and you give them to people for money. Whoop-de-do.”

He stares at me. Not for just a moment, which would be normal.

He stares at me for ages.

For the entire span of my life, he looks right in my eyes, and I suck in shallow breaths through my mouth, my chest full of pressure, my ears ringing as the mixer grinds and grinds and grinds around.

Then the corner of his mouth tips up a fraction. “Whoop-de-do?”

“Shut up.” I’m not in the mood to be teased.

“You could’ve at least thrown a fuck in there. Whoop-de-fucking-do.”

“I don’t need your advice on how to swear.”

“You sure? I’m a fuck of a lot better at it than you.”

I turn away and pick up my bag and my Latin book off the floor. I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t want to be around him if he’s going to hurt me, bullshit me, and tease me. That’s not what I come here for, and I hate how the pressure from the way he stared at me has built up in my face, prickling behind the bridge of my nose, sticking in my throat.

“Caro,” he says.

“Leave me alone.”

“Caro, I made forty bucks. Okay? That’s what you want me to say?”

I stop packing my bag and just stand there, looking at it.

He made forty bucks.

“How much did you charge?”

“Sixty-five.”

“For how much?”

“An eighth of an ounce.”

I turn around. “Is that a lot?”

“A lot of money, or a lot of weed?”

“Um, either.”

He smiles for real now and shakes his head. “It’s a little more than anybody else is charging, but the weed is better. It’s the smallest amount I’ll bother to sell. Why are we talking about this?”

And that’s when I lose my nerve. I shrug. I look past his left ear.

I don’t want to ask him.

Before this year, I never gave money a lot of thought. My dad is pretty well off. I grew up in a nice house in a safe neighborhood in Ankeny, outside Des Moines, and even though Putnam isn’t cheap, I didn’t have to worry about tuition. I always knew my dad would pay it, whatever it was.

But that was before the pictures, and it was before I figured out that, no matter what I do, I can’t make them go away. Not by myself.

I need fifteen hundred dollars—maybe more—to hire the company that will push my name down in the search rankings and scrub my reputation online. The guy I talked to when I called said that cases like mine can be more involved, which means a higher fee.

I don’t have a job. I had one in high school, but Dad says I’m better off concentrating on my schoolwork now. I have a hundred thousand dollars in a savings account—my share of the life-insurance settlement when my mom died from cancer when I was a baby—but until I’m twenty-one, I can’t touch it.

With no income and no credit history, I can’t get fifteen hundred dollars on a credit card without my dad cosigning on the application. I tried.

“Caroline?” West asks.

“What?”

He steps closer. “What’s this really about?”

And I blurt out the stupidest thing. “You don’t have to protect me.”

Because I’m sick of it. Of being protected. Of needing to be.

“I’m not.”

His eyes, though. When I meet his eyes, they’re blazing with the truth.

He is. He wants to.

“You know what the worst thing is?” I ask. “It’s knowing I was always stupid and sheltered and just … just useless. Everyone telling me I’m smart, like that’s so great and important. Going to a good college—oh, Caroline, how fantastic. But one bad thing happens to me, and I can’t even …”

I trail off, because I think I’m going to cry, and I’m too angry to give in to it.

West takes another step closer, and then he’s rubbing my arm. The flat of his palm lands against the back of my neck, over my hair, and he’s tipping me forward until my forehead rests against his chest.

“You’re not useless.”

“No, seriously, I can’t—I need you to hear this, okay? Because the thing is—”

“Caroline, shut up.”

The way he says it, though—it’s definitely the nicest anyone’s ever shut me up. And his rubbing hand comes around my back and presses me into him, and that’s nice, too. I can feel him breathing. I can smell his skin, feel my hair catching on the stubble underneath his chin.

It’s better here. I like it.

I like it too much. So much that I spend the longest possible span of time I can get away with savoring the heat of him, the weight of his hand on the back of my neck, the way his boot looks stuck between my flats. But then I have to ask. I have to.

“West?”

He makes a noise like hunh.

“Do you have a lot of money?”

I lift my forehead to ask him, which puts me in startlingly close range of his face. I’m close enough to see the frown begin at the downturned tips of his eyebrows and spread across his forehead.

Close enough to see his eyes go baffled. Then angry. Then blank.

His hand drops away from my neck. “Why are you asking me that?”

It’s too late not to say, but the butterflies in my stomach have turned to lead ingots, and I know this is all wrong. I know it is. But I don’t know why or how to get out of it. “I, uh … I need a loan.”

He steps back. “What for?”

“Remember when I told you about that company that can clean up my reputation online?”

“You said it was expensive, so you’d have to tell your dad.”

“Yeah.”

I wait a beat.

“You didn’t tell your dad.”

“I can’t, West. I thought about it, but I … What if he sees?”

It could happen any time. My dad could be sitting at his desk and type my name into a search engine, just because. Or somebody he works with could point him in that direction. A friend. One of my sisters. Anybody.

I close my eyes, because the humiliation of it, the shame of asking West to help me fix this thing—I can’t.

I can’t look at him at all.

“How much do you need?”

“Fifteen hundred dollars. I heard you … I heard sometimes you do that.”

He sighs. “You have any income at all?”

“I get an allowance.”

I open my eyes, but I can’t lift them above my shoes. My black flats are dusted with flour. It’s worked its way down into the buckle, and I doubt I would be able to clean it out, even if I wanted to.

“How long would it take you to pay me back?”

“I could pay you a hundred fifty a month.” If I never buy anything or eat outside the dining hall.

West kicks my toe with his boot. Waits for me to look up. His eyes are still dead.

“I’m charging you interest.”

“I would expect you to.”

“I’ll have it on Tuesday.”

And then there’s nothing left to say. He’s gone, empty, and I’m too full—like there aren’t any edges to me. It’s just pain and disappointment, all the way through.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m … I’m going to head out. I have to write that paper.”

He just grunts at me and weighs out dough. A thousand miles away.

I don’t see West on Friday, because he’s working at the restaurant, and we’re not friends.

I don’t go to the soccer party. Bridget just about breaks something trying to sell me on the idea, but I can’t. I tell her I have to study, and then I hide in the library and replay my conversation with West over and over again. I should never have asked him for the money. I don’t know who I should have asked, but not him. The look on his face … I can’t stop thinking about it.

I don’t see West on Saturday, because he’s working at the restaurant, and we’re not friends.

The next week is more of the same thing. On Tuesday he gives me the money, and he teaches me how to make lemon glaze for the muffins. Everything’s like normal, but there’s this thin coating of awkwardness ladled over our conversations, and when I’m not around him, it hardens and turns opaque.

I convert West’s cash into a money order and send it off to the Internet-reputation people, but I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d never opened my mouth.

The next weekend I eat dinner with Bridget, and we walk to the Dairy Queen in town afterward, leaves crunching under our feet. I eat a hot-fudge brownie sundae so big that I have to lie down on the red lacquered bench afterward and unbutton the top of my jeans. Upside down, I look out the front window and down the street. I can just make out the chalkboard easel outside the Gilded Pear.

Nate took me to dinner there last year before the spring formal. West was our waiter. Every time he came to the table, it was more awkward than the last. By the time he brought the check, his conversation with Nate was so thickly laced with irony that I felt like they were performing a scene in a play.

The kind of play with sword fighting.

I didn’t break up with Nate because of West. Honestly.

But I probably broke up with Nate because of the possibility of someone like West.

“Did you finish your paper last night?” Bridget asks, and because I’m distracted by the memory of West in his waiter uniform—black slacks and a white dress shirt—I say, “Mmm-hmm.”

“And your reading for Con Law?”

“Yeah.”

He had his sleeves rolled up. His deep tan against crisp white cotton.

“So you have no excuse not to go to the Alliance party with me.”

“What? No.”

I sit up. Bridget is smiling her worst, most evil smile. “Yes.”

“I really don’t want to.”

“You really have no choice. You don’t need to study, it’s time for you to get back out there, and this is the easiest, best party, because at least half the people there will be gay. Possibly two-thirds, if you count the bis and the people who are ‘experimenting.’” She does the air quotes with her fingers. “Plus, we had so much fun last year. Please.”

Two hours later, I’ve got a beer in one hand and Bridget tugging at the elbow of my other arm, pulling me toward the dance floor.

The Queer Alliance party is in the Minnehan Center, which is the campus building designated for large-scale fun. It’s got the movie theater and this room, which is a huge, high-ceilinged hall with a stage, a disco ball, and a little cubby on one wall where the party’s hosts push an endless parade of Solo cups across the counter to the crowd of students.

You can’t get in to parties at the Minnehan Center without a student ID, but once you’re in, there’s no such thing as getting carded. The student worker who hands out wristbands performs a cursory ID check that miraculously results in everyone at the party being legal.

The beer is always free. The music is always loud.

The Alliance party has a soundtrack that brings out the inner ABBA in everybody—and also a lot of exhibitionist streaks. As far as I can tell, I’m the only person in the room in jeans and a T-shirt. Bridget’s got on a gold sequined tube top and tight black pants that flare out over platform shoes. She’s a disco queen.

She picks a spot at the edge of the dance floor just as “It’s Raining Men” comes on. Arms raised, jumping up and down, she hoots along with a hundred other people. “Dance with me!” she shouts.

I shake my head.

Then I drink the beer, downing it quickly so I can get away from her disappointment and grab another.

By the time we’ve cycled through half the soundtrack to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and all the good Gaga, the dance floor is roiling, and I’m relaxed enough to join in, bumping hips and slapping hands with Bridget. I smile to see Krishna come up behind her. He grinds on her, and she rolls her eyes, but she likes it. He pulls us into the group he’s dancing with—some people I don’t know, although I’m pretty sure one of the girls is named Quinn.

I recognize her because she hung out in Krishna and West’s room last year. She’s blond and big—a good four or five inches taller than me, with broad hips and a generous chest and a smile that seems to include a lot more teeth than it ought to. She keeps grabbing my hand to spin me, and I get sweaty and a little dizzy. Krishna fetches us another round of beers, and we drink them quick, licking the foam off our lips. He pulls out his phone. The screen lights up his face in the dark room, making him look mischievous and almost enchanted. He glances at me, grins, and types something.

“What are you doing?”

“Texting West.” He lifts the phone, and before I can stop him, he takes my picture.

I grab his arm, blinded by the flash and by my panic. “Don’t send that.” The sudden brightness sent me reeling back to my memory of that night with Nate. The surprise of the flash. His hand on my head, dick in my mouth, choking me so I had to concentrate to keep from gagging. “Krish, don’t.”

But he’s not listening. He’s grinning, jabbing at the screen, and I’m trying to wrest the phone out of his hand when I hear a little whoosh that means it’s sent.

“Damn it!” I punch him in the shoulder, frustrated and upset, frustrated with myself for being upset. It’s just a picture. It doesn’t matter.

Except that I’m crying.

“What’d I do?”

Quinn reaches out for me, but I’m already gone. I rush toward the door, pushing through bodies, the music and the lights pounding too loud. I had more to drink than I should have. I let my guard down, feeling safe, feeling okay, but there’s nothing okay about me.

Frozen on the screen of Krishna’s phone with my hair falling all around my face, my T-shirt scooped too low, askew, sweat shining on all that exposed skin—I look like a mistake waiting to happen.

Then I see Nate, and I remember I’m a mistake that’s already happened.

He’s between me and the door. By the time I realize it, he’s looking at me, and there’s nowhere to escape to. I can’t dance now. I have to get out. So I keep going, chin up, hoping my mascara isn’t streaky and pretending the men in my head aren’t shouting at full volume.

Let’s see that dirty pussy, baby. I want to eat it out. I’m going to rail the living fuck out of you.

“Caroline!” Nate props his hand in the doorway so I can’t get past. He smiles his drunk smile. “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

I think of West, leaning in the doorway at the bakery as he walked me out. Telling me to text him when I was home safe.

I look at Nate, blocking my exit. His eyes crawling down my shirt.

Was he always this way?

He’s got a beer in his other hand, and his sandy-brown hair is a little long, curling around his ears. He wears a polo that brings out the blue of his eyes over these horrible navy pants with tiny green whales on them that he loves to put on for parties. He insists he wears them ironically, but I always used to tell him it’s not possible to wear pants with irony. You put on whale pants, you’re wearing whale pants.

Douche, West says in my head.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?”

“You haven’t been around much.”

“I’ve been busy.” I try to look like West when he’s gone blank. Like I could give a fuck about Nate.

“Josh said he saw you with that sketchy guy from across the hall last year. The dealer.”

“So?”

“So I’m worried about you, Caroline. First those pictures, and now you’re hanging out with him. … What’s going on with you?”

I’m speechless. I mean, literally, I can’t make words. There are so many, they jam up at the back of my tongue, and I don’t know which ones I’d say even if I could shake them loose.

The nerve of him. The nerve.

He hitches his arm up higher and takes a sip of his beer, as though we’re going to be here awhile, shooting the breeze. “We’re still friends,” he says. “We’ll always be friends, you know that. I just don’t want to see you getting hurt.”

That’s the thing that unlocks my throat. We’re still friends.

He betrayed me. He broke my life, then pretended I was the one who did it. He lied, because he’s a douchebag, and douchebags lie. And now he’s standing here, blocking my exit, telling me we’re still friends.

“You know what, Nate? Fuck you.”

I duck underneath his arm, half expecting him to hip-check me and pin me in place. Half certain that he really hates me enough, wants to hurt me enough, that he’d do that.

He doesn’t, though. I get past him, run down the hall to the bathroom, lock myself in a stall, and climb up on the lid of one of the toilets, feet on the seat so I can drop my head down between my knees.

I keep it there until I can breathe.

I keep it there until I figure out that the low humming sound I hear isn’t inside my head. It’s my phone. In my pocket.

When I pull it out, there’s a message from West. Are you ok?

I’m not okay. Not at all. But seeing West’s name on my phone—seeing that he’s asking, when he’s never texted me before except to type out one- or two-word replies to my home-safe messages—it helps.

I’m fine, I type.

Well, actually I type, im gun3. But somehow the miracle of autocorrect sorts it out.

Where are you?

Minnehan party.

I know. K sent me your pic. Where at M’han?

Bathroom.

There’s a pause. Then, K’s a fucking idiot.

I overreacted.

It’s ok. Everybody has an off night.

Why is it that when other people tell you things you already know, it’s soothing?

Why is it that when West tells me I’m okay, I believe him? Not that he can make me okay, but just to have that touchstone.

I want to tell him about Nate, but I want forget it happened even more.

Are you still at work?

No. Just got off. A pause. That sounded dirty.

I smile at the phone.

You should go back in there. K said you’re helping him pull chicks. Another pause. But they’re all dykes.

Homophobe!

Not me. Quinn will tell you—all those girls call themselves that.

They call themselves women, I type, but that’s not what I meant to say.

Womyn, I try a second time, but it autocorrects to Women.

I give it a third shot. W-o-m-y-n. Fucking autocrochet.

There’s a pause, and then West writes, Autocrochet? I’m dying.

I blink at the screen. Oh. Yeah, it seems I typed that. Glad I can amuse you.

I take a deep breath. It takes my fingers three tries to make the words Come dance?

A longer pause.

Need to sleep.

I’m sure it’s true. He only sleeps about four hours a night during the week. He told me he uses the weekends to catch up.

OK. Sleep tight.

Another pause, and I’m starting to think we’re done, that I should leave the bathroom, go home, and go to bed, when another bubble pops up. Caroline?

Yeah?

Tuesday is cookie day.

Tuesday, back at the bakery. I don’t want to wait that long to see him, but that’s the way it is. Right. See you then.

By the way.

Nothing for several seconds.

You look fucking hot.

No tooth gap in sight.

Those words—what they do to me. My heart is so light, I think it might be made of air. It might float up and escape through the gap between my front teeth.

I take a screenshot and put the phone away.

Still smiling, I climb down and wash my hands, listening to the thumping bass beat from down the hall. My toes move back and forth on the floor, one foot’s tiny acknowledgment of the rhythm.

My eyes are like that, too. Sparkling with their own tiny acknowledgment.

It’s the second time he’s told me that.

When I come out of the bathroom, Bridget is making her way toward me with Quinn.

Or, more specifically, Bridget is weaving down the hall, and Quinn is watching her like a hawk, moving in to steady her every time it looks like Bridget might hit the deck.

The sad thing is, Bridget only had two beers. She has no alcohol tolerance whatsoever.

“Caroline!” she shouts.

“Bridget!” I shout back.

“I saw Nate.”

“So did I.”

“And I kicked Krish in the nuts for taking your picture. I mean, not really, but metaphorically I did.”

“She chewed him out like you wouldn’t believe,” Quinn says.

“Did Nate make you cry?”

“No. I’m okay.”

“Do you want to go home? Or we could get you some more ice cream.”

I consider it. But I recognize the song that’s on, and I don’t want to go back to the room and hide. “No, I want to dance.”

“Really?” Bridget peers at me, blinking blearily.

“Kind of. I mean, mostly I want to kick Nate in the nuts. Or smash his perfect nose in.”

“Your boy already did that,” Bridget says. I widen my eyes at her in the universal signal for oh my God, shut up, you idiot. I am hoping against all hope that Quinn didn’t hear or won’t understand.

“Your boy?” Quinn asks.

She’s got one eyebrow up. That eyebrow knows everything.

“Bridget is a little drunk,” I say apologetically. “And we have this kind of running joke about West—”

“Which is … ?”

I try to think of a diplomatic way of putting it, but Bridget beats me to the punch with: “That she wants to climb into his pants.”

Yes. Those words actually come out of her mouth.

“I am going to kill you,” I whisper.

I can’t look at Quinn. I might possibly never look at Quinn again.

She clears her throat. Taps her foot.

God. I have no choice. I look.

She’s still got that eyebrow up. There is no tiring her eyebrow. It is an endurance athlete.

“Do you?”

I don’t know how to answer the question. I mean, yes. Yes, of course I want to climb into his pants.

And no. No, no, no, I don’t want her to know it, or for West to, or for anyone alive to, basically, up to and including Bridget.

I say something that comes out a lot like Hnnn?

She grins. “I’ll be sure to tell him that.”

“I will hurt you if you do.”

“Man, you are all over the threats. First that guy Nate—oh, shit, is he the one who published your naked pictures?”

She says it straight out, without any sense of shame or the least hint that it’s a thing we’re not supposed to talk about.

It shocks me so much, I just say, “Yeah.”

“No wonder you’re so full of rage. You know what you should do? You should play rugby. Are you fast?”

“Um, no?”

Bridget says, “She is so fast.”

Quinn is smiling. “You can tackle people to the ground. It’s awesome.”

“That sounds awesome.” Bridget again.

“We practice on Sundays at eleven. You want to come, too? We could use a new hooker.”

“Thanks, but I have to save my athletic awesomeness for track.”

“Oh, right. I’ll settle for the blow-job queen here, then.” Quinn says this completely without malice. She rubs her hands together. “Now, are we dancing or are we going to stand out here jerking off for the rest of the night? Because you know if we don’t get back in there inside of two minutes, Krishna’s going to have his tongue down some poor girl’s throat.”

Bridget wrinkles her nose. “He is. And I want him to dance with. He’s so pretty. Like a Christmas decoration.”

“He would make the world’s most beautiful gay boy,” Quinn agrees. “Let’s go reclaim him.”

I’m not really done with the rugby conversation, but Quinn sticks out her elbows, so we link arms and kind of half-run, half-skip down the hallway like drunken Musketeers. We wave our wristbands at the security guy, who is so, so bored with his job and utterly unfazed by us.

By the time we get back on the dance floor, I’ve got another beer in my hand, and I’m laughing, thinking of Quinn and Bridget and Krishna.

Thinking of my phone in my back pocket and that screenshot I took.

I don’t have one thought to spare for Nate.

“I brought you a present.”

West looks up from the floor scale, where he’s dumping big scoops of flour into the largest mixing bowl. “Yeah?”

I shake the white plastic bag I’m holding. “Corn nuts, Mounds bar, two Monsters.”

“You know the way to my heart.”

“I know the way to keep you from turning into a little bitch on Wednesday nights.”

West smiles and takes the bag. He cracks an energy drink right away, closing his eyes as he takes a swig from the can.

He looks tired. Wednesdays are his worst, because he’s got lab in the afternoon. Most days he naps after class, but on Wednesdays he has to get through all his classes on four hours of sleep, then go to lab, work his library shift, and head straight to the bakery again.

“What are you mixing, the French?”

“Yeah. You want to start the dill?”

“Sure.”

I check the clipboard hanging by the sink to see how many loaves Bob needs. West comes right up behind me, flattens one hand against the cabinet where the clipboard is hanging, and rests his cold drink against my neck.

“Aaagh! Don’t!”

He exhales a laugh and moves it away, but he doesn’t stop caging me in.

If I shifted over a few inches. If I pressed into him. His whole body, solid against mine.

“You have a good day?” he murmurs.

Gah. What is he doing to me? I don’t even think West needs to check the clipboard. It’s all in his head already.

He’s wearing this red plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned. The sleeves are turned up, cuffs loose, and they flap when he uses his hands. I think about running my palm up his forearm. Feeling the soft fuzz of hair, the satiny skin underneath.

I think about turning around to face him.

But I just breathe in. Breathe out. Keep my voice normal when I answer, “Yeah, not bad. I ran into Quinn at lunch, and me and Bridget ended up sitting with her and Krish.”

“Second time this week you had company at lunch.”

I get up the nerve to turn around and smile as though I don’t want anything from him, expect anything from him, need anything from him. “I know. I’m practically a social butterfly, right?”

West is sort of almost smiling. I feel like I’m an experiment he’s running. What will she do if I do this? “You get any sleep before you came here?”

“A few hours. And I took a loooooong nap after class, too. See, look.” I turn my cheek to show him the imprint from the throw pillow. “I was trying to read for English, but I fell asleep on the couch and permanently branded corduroy into my face.”

He steps even closer to see the faint lines that remain all these hours later. He lays his fingers lightly along my jaw, using them to tip my face up toward him.

This is how he’d kiss me. Just like this, with a drink in one hand and a casual half smile, competent fingers putting my lips where he wanted them.

I inhale. Don’t get too excited, Caroline. He’s just looking because you told him to.

“Nice,” he says. “I’m jealous.”

“Of my nap?”

“Of your pillow.”

I stand there with heat crawling up my cheeks, breathing through my open mouth, trying to convince myself he didn’t mean it.

Yeast, idiot. Dill and onion flakes and poppy seeds. Focus on the work.

I can’t, though, because it’s impossible to look away from his eyes. They’re gray-blue today, storm clouds and tiny sparkling flashes of lightning.

What do you want from me? Take it. Whatever it is. Please.

He swigs the rest of his Monster drink, and I watch the column of his throat. He’s all stubbly, like he always is on Wednesday nights. No time to shave. With his head tipped back, his eyes closed, I notice how blue and bruised the skin beneath them looks. I notice how the brim of his black ball cap presses into the back of his neck, how his dark hair’s longer than it was last month, curling behind his ears and up into the fabric of his hat. He looks weary and … I don’t know. Precious. I wish I could give him something other than snack food I picked up at the Kum and Go on my way here.

I wish I could give him rest. Ease.

I wish he’d stop torturing me like this, where I’m so tuned in to him I feel like I might explode, and he’s so mellow I can’t even tell if he’s doing it on purpose.

His forearm tenses when he takes the drink away from his mouth, then contracts when he crushes the can. My attention catches on what looks like a black leather cuff on his wrist.

“What’s that?”

He looks where I’m looking. “Bracelet.”

“I know, doofus. Is it new?”

“Yeah.”

Abruptly, he turns, tosses the can across the room into the recycling bin, and goes back to measuring out ingredients.

I don’t even think. I just walk to where he is and grab his hand while he’s got the honey container tipped upside down over the bowl. “Careful!”

I don’t think he’s warning me about the honey.

“I want to see.”

It’s the kind of bracelet you can buy at a booth at the county fair—a stiff strip of leather, with an embossed pattern of a few red and blue roses, and his name pressed into it and painted white. The black dye has turned his wrist slightly blue.

“Fancy.”

He tugs against my grip, and I look up into his eyes. I want him to tell me where he got it, because someone must have given it to him. It’s new. He’s wearing it to work, even though it’s kind of cheap and tacky, so it must mean something to him. But I can’t just come right out and say all that, and I feel like I shouldn’t have to.

“My sister sent it.” He pulls his wrist away.

Even though there isn’t really room between us, he squats down, forcing me to take a step back so he’s got enough space to pull the bowl off the scale and carry it over to the mixer. I can’t even lift those bowls when they’re full, but West makes it look easy. He turns the mixer on. The dough hook starts its banging, rattling song.

He has a sister.

“How old is she?”

“She’s nine. Ten in the spring.”

“What’s her name?”

“Frankie.”

“Frankie like Frank?”

“Frankie like Francine.”

“Oh.”

When he looks up from the machine, his eyes are full of warning. “You got any other questions?”

I shouldn’t. I know better. The more I ask him right now, the faster he’ll shut down.

“Why didn’t you ever say?”

“You didn’t ask.”

“If I’d asked, would you have told me?”

West shrugs, but he’s scowling. “Sure. Why not?”

“I don’t believe you.”

He shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything more. I watch as he goes over to the shelf, flips the top bread recipe to the bottom of the pile, and starts working on whatever is next on his list. His lips move in a whisper, words he’s making only for himself. He could be repeating the ingredients on the list, except it’s just like the clipboard—I know for a fact he already has those recipes memorized.

I go back to the dill bread, furious and hot, my heart aching.

He has a sister called Frankie. He’s wearing her love for him on his wrist, and I’m glad for him. I’m glad there’s someone else in the world who cares about him enough to press the letters of his name into leather, word into flesh, an act of memory.

I do it sometimes, in the dark. Lie in my bed, staring at the crosshatched pattern of springs supporting Bridget’s mattress above my head and drawing the letters of West’s name on my body.

W-E-S-T across my stomach, around the side. I use my fingernail, only my fingernail, and bring up goose bumps.

W-E-S-T along my sternum. Over my collarbone and down the swell of my breast, tripping and catching on my nipple.

His name feels like a secret, and now he’s wearing it on his wrist. I want to know all about this girl who put it there. What she looks like. If she’s got freckles, fair hair or dark, like his. If she’s scrappy or ethereal, funny or serious, scrape-kneed or ladylike.

I know that she loves him, so I want to know everything else.

But West doesn’t want to share her with me.

I shouldn’t keep trying to scale these walls he puts up. I’m a terrible climber.

I don’t like arguing, and he doesn’t owe me a thing.

“Get down on your hands and knees,” Quinn says, pointing. “And put your arm over Gwen’s back.”

The grass is cold. Dampness soaks through the knees of my sweatpants more or less immediately, but I have a feeling it’s not the worst thing that’s going to happen to me in the next few minutes. I’m tacking myself on to what Quinn calls the “scrum”—a word that sounds enough like scrotum to make me uncomfortable.

But not as uncomfortable as I feel slinging my arm around a stranger’s back.

We are a tightly formed cluster of three rows of women, hands clutching shirts, shoulders into shoulders, and hips into hips. Quinn says that in a minute our eight people are going to shove against their eight people, and then the ball will get rolled down the middle and … something. She briefed me on a lot of these rules on the way over, but when she said I’d be tackling people, she failed to mention the largeness of the people I’m meant to tackle.

Behind me, another player puts her head down and jams her shoulders into the two second-row players I’m flanking. She grasps a fistful of my T-shirt with one hand.

“All set?” Quinn asks.

“Um, no?”

She gives me a sunny smile. “You’ll figure it out.” She starts jogging backward to the sidelines, where she grabs a ball. “All right, let’s do this thing!”

Seconds later she’s rolling it between the two halves of the scrum, and my whole side of the formation is lurching forward. I have to scramble to hold on to Gwen as the grass tries to slip out from beneath my shoes. There’s grunting and shoving, another rapid forward lurch, and someone shouts, “Ball’s out.” The whole thing kind of collapses and dissolves at the same time, and I just stand there, dazed, as everyone else on the field runs away.

“It’s your ball, Caroline!” Quinn shouts. “Follow it!”

I spend the next half hour feeling like a very dumb kid sister, trailing after the older girls and shouting, Hey, wait up!

Since I have two older sisters, this is, at least, a role I’m familiar with.

Whenever I get the ball, I get rid of it as fast as possible. I am, it turns out, deeply terrified of the idea of getting tackled. Tackling also scares me. One time the opposing team’s ball carrier runs right at me, and I tell myself I’m going to take her down, but then when the moment comes, I just grab ineffectually at her shirt. Because I suck.

Still, it’s kind of fun. Right up until the parking lot beside the playing field begins to fill with cars and a van that says Carson College on the side.

Carson is a school about twenty-five miles from Putnam.

The van is full of college women in black rugby jerseys and matching shorts.

It occurs to me that perhaps Quinn made me wear a blue shirt for a reason.

And that Quinn is, in fact, a lying liar who lies, and she’s manipulated me into a rugby game, not a practice.

The Carson girls who pile out of the van are so much bigger than our girls. Sooooo much bigger.

Also, they have a coach—a real, honest-to-goodness, grown-up faculty-member coach. Putnam Women’s Rugby doesn’t even have proper shirts. It’s just a club whose membership seems to consist mostly of Quinn’s friends, many of whom were complaining a few minutes ago of being hungover.

Whereas the members of the Carson team look like they ate rare beefsteak for breakfast. The coach has a male assistant, who appears to be our age but has a whistle and a clipboard and therefore looks far more official.

I am in way over my head. I start trying to think of a good reason to beg off.

I have to study.

Lame.

I sprained an ankle.

When?

I need to do … things. Elsewhere.

Right.

I lace my fingers behind my head and look at the sky, searching for inspiration.

But I find something else there instead.

I find that it’s a perfect November day in Iowa.

The sky is so blue, it hurts.

The wind feels good on my face. The Carson players are chattering with our players, Quinn’s talking to their coach, and everyone seems so happy.

I have nowhere else I’m supposed to be today, and I realize suddenly that there’s nowhere else I want to be.

I like this.

I try to remember the last time I did something completely new and scary—something I liked—and I think of West at the bakery, his backward black hat and his white apron.

I’d like to send him a text that says, I’m playing rugby with Quinn, but instead I turn around and jog toward her so I can ask her to give me a better idea of what on earth it is I’m supposed to be doing.

Shit is about to get real.

Half an hour later, Quinn is muddy and smiling, and she yells, “Isn’t this great?” from across the field. We are getting our asses kicked by the Carson team. I have no idea what I’m doing at least 80 percent of the time.

“It’s awesome!” I yell back.

Because it is. It is awesome. I’m high on how awesome it is—how good it feels to run, how solid the ball is when I catch it, how firm beneath my arm.

It is awesome until the instant I get hit by a truck.

Okay, fine, the truck is a person. But she feels like a truck, and she knocks all the air out of my lungs. I lie on my back, blinking at the sky, trying to breathe with these air bags that completely refuse to work. I bend my knees and lift my hips up for reasons that are unclear to me. Probably I look like I’m trying to mate with the sky, but it doesn’t matter, because down at the other end of the field something exciting happens, and no one’s paying attention to my death.

A dark shape blocks my view of the sky. A male voice says, “You got the wind knocked out of you.”

I’m not dying. This is excellent news.

I’m so grateful, I could kiss him.

I still can’t breathe, though.

“Turn over on your side,” he tells me, and his hands urge my hip toward him. I turn, because he has a soothing voice, and I like his whistle. I stare at his hairy calves and his black socks and his shoes that look like they might actually be specifically for rugby, with cleats on them and everything.

I experiment with breathing again. Nothing happens. My eyes are starting to feel like they might pop.

“Don’t panic. Your diaphragm is having a spasm, but it’ll relax soon. Just take it easy. Close your eyes.”

I do as I’m told. After a few seconds, the constriction in my chest eases and I’m able to inhale.

“Good.”

I breathe. I open my eyes. The grass is blurry. I blink at it, but it doesn’t come into focus.

“I can’t see.”

He hunkers down and squints at my face. “Do you wear contacts?”

Oh. “Yes.”

I blink again, and now I recognize this. This is what the world looks like with one contact in.

The guy is kind of blurry, too, but in a nice way. He has really short brown hair in tight curls and a dimple in his chin.

“You think one got knocked out?”

“I do. Was that woman made of bricks?”

He smiles. Dimples there, too. Dimples all over the place. “She probably outweighs you by a hundred pounds. That was pretty hard-core. You want a hand getting up?”

I take his hand, thinking, I got hit so hard I lost a contact.

“I’m Scott,” he says.

I’m so distracted, I barely hear him. I’m too busy thinking, Oh my God, I got tackled and I’m not dead. I’m totally hard-core.

“Caroline,” I say, but I guess I must have mumbled, because he spends the next five minutes calling me Carrie while he fetches me some water from the Carson Athletic Department cooler and insists I use his folding chair.

I watch the game and try to figure out more of the rules. I ask Scott to explain the tricky bits. He does, and when he dimples at me, I go ahead and smile back at him.

What can it hurt? He doesn’t know my name.

The whistle goes off a few minutes later. Quinn looks at me with that eyebrow up. I nod my head and jog back onto the field.

Afterward, I learn that all rugby games end at a bar. This is, it seems, nonnegotiable. The Carson team’s coach shakes Quinn’s hand and drives away, and the rest of us form one huge mass of muddy, bruised womanhood—plus Scott—and walk along the railroad tracks that bisect Putnam’s campus. We pass the science center and the phallic sculpture that reminds me of West’s rubber chicken. One of the Carson girls tries to climb it.

By the time we burst through the door of the bar, most of the players are singing a song so filthy it makes me blush. Scott is beside me, somehow, at this exact most inopportune moment. “Not going to sing?” he asks.

“I don’t know the words.”

He smiles. “You really are new at this, aren’t you?”

“I never touched a rugby ball before today.”

My vision’s a little blurry with just one contact in, but I can still see all his dimples deepen. There are two in his left cheek, one in his right, plus the one in his chin. Quadruple dimples. When he steps up to the bar with one of the women on his team to order the first pitchers in an endless stream of beer, I close one eye so I can appreciate how broad his shoulders are, the chiseled shape of his calf muscles.

The Putnam players start shoving tables together in the main part of the bar. It’s only two o’clock, so we rugby women have the place to ourselves. I grab a seat and am gratified, a few minutes later, when Scott sits by me and not by any of the Carson College players.

When he throws an arm over the back of my chair, I’m threaded through with excitement and wariness in a combination I’m not sure what to do with.

He’s flirting with you. He likes you.

He looks nice, but how nice is anybody, really? What does he look at when he jerks off?

Maybe he’s seen my pictures, and that’s why he’s being so friendly. He thinks I’m an easy mark. He’s imagining my mouth on him. Calling me a slut inside his head.

“So, Carrie.” He’s half smiling, his body loose, everything about him relaxed and easy. “What brings you to the game of rugby today?”

I remind myself that just because my pictures are online doesn’t mean every man alive has seen them. I’d never even heard of these gross porn picture sites before August, and while I know guys look at a lot more porn than girls do, I don’t think that means they’re all scouring the Internet for crotch shots in every second of their free time.

It’s possible that Scott is just a guy who thinks my name is Carrie and wants to get to know me better.

More than possible. Likely.

So I take a deep breath. I smell yeasty beer and dirt and perspiration. I look around the table and think, I’m safe here. These women have got my back. And if they trust Scott—if they like him, which they obviously do—then it’s okay for me to trust him, too. At least a little bit.

“Quinn strong-armed me into it.”

“Really?” His eyes kind of flick over me, but not in a perverted way. Just in the normal way that a guy looks at a girl when he’s about to say, “You don’t strike me as someone who’s easily strong-armed.”

“Well, I was kind of drunk at the time.”

“Ah. I know how that goes.”

One of the Carson girls is standing on a chair, pint glass in the air. Everyone is shouting and happy, and I can’t concentrate on more than snatches of conversation.

“Blow jobs.” “Six tries.” “The best rucker in the universe.” “World Cup.”

Quinn grinning her widest grin, wiggling her fingers, saying, “Some of us don’t need a cock to get off.”

Gwen pours and pushes a glass in my direction. “Drink!”

When she turns away, I tell Scott, “Just so you know, I’m not drinking this whole thing. I have a quiz tomorrow.”

“That’s fine. I’m not drinking, either.” I look at his glass and see that he’s got water instead of beer. I hadn’t noticed. “I’m the designated driver.”

“Is this, like, your job?” I ask.

“No, I get paid to assist the coach during the games, but now I’m just here because a bunch of these girls are my friends, and I don’t want them to get themselves killed on the way home.”

“That’s good.”

He smiles. “It’s not like it’s a hardship. You want me to get you some water?”

“No, thanks. I’m good.”

He lifts his own glass and clinks it into mine. “To your first game of rugby. Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

“Wait, whose first game?” one of the Carson players asks.

Scott points at me. “Carrie’s. She never played before today.”

“Ladies, we’ve got a virgin in the house!”

Before I know what’s even going on, I’m standing on top of a table, and forty women are singing to me.

Oh, rugby women are the biggest and the best

And we never give it up

And we never give it a rest

And we build a better ruck

And we give a better fuck

And no matter who we play, we can never get enough

Out in the field! Down in the scrum! Rugby women will make you come!

My throat is so hot, but I’m smiling.

It is impossible not to smile. I feel strong and fast, bruised and shaken, surrounded by affectionate solidarity.

I feel normal again, like I used to, before everything went off the rails.

In Massachusetts, there’s an office building where it’s someone’s job to erase Caroline Piasecki’s vulva from the Internet. If it works, in a year, that girl won’t exist anymore. She’ll be dead, and part of me will be dead along with her.

Maybe in the meantime what I’m supposed to do is grow into someone new. Find something green in me, feed it, watch it shoot up toward the sun. Turn into a girl who plays rugby and dances at parties and flirts with boys who are sunny and open and who don’t deal drugs or avoid discussing even the smallest details of their personal lives.

Rugby is awesome.

I’m so flipping hard-core, I can’t even stand it.

The first time I see the inside of West’s apartment, he’s not home.

I feel weird about it, but it’s not as though I snuck in. Me and Bridget ran into Krishna at the student center, and he invited us over with him and Quinn to watch bad TV and drink “even worse” alcohol. None of us could resist the allure of the mysterious “even worse.”

So here we are, sprawled out on a big leather sectional couch, sharing a bottle of butterscotch schnapps that Krishna produced from the depths of the coat closet, and watching reruns of What Not To Wear, which Krish has stored up on his DVR in numbers that kind of frighten me.

West is working at the library, but he should be done soon. I text him, Are you off yet?

Yeah, he replies. I’m walking home. You?

I’m in ur apartment, poking all ur things.

This isn’t true, but it gets his attention. DID YOU BREAK IN?

Yes. I keep a set of lock picks in my cheek.

Houdini used to do that. I find the idea repulsive, but I also sort of love it.

Very tricky. Are you really there?

Yes, K invited me. I like what you’ve done with the decor.

This is a joke, of course. It’s obvious what happened here: Krishna bought all the stuff he thought was important—the couch, the TV, the alcohol, a king-size bed I can see through the open door to his bedroom—and then he and West purchased everything else in the place for two bucks at a rummage sale. Probably they got their dishes in big paper bags marked 25 cents, because I’m drinking butterscotch schnapps out of a Flintstones jelly glass. I’ve propped up my sock-clad feet on a coffee table made of plywood and cinder blocks.

I put a lot of creative effort into it, West says.

I can see that.

If you find my collection of Pound Puppies, DON’T MOVE ANY.

Are they in the bedroom?

You could go in & find out. Look up.

Why?

I keep my stuffies in a hammock.

Smiling, I glance at the closed door to his room.

I could go in. I could sit on West’s bed. Touch the bedspread, whatever color it is. See what he’s put on his walls, what books are on his shelves, how much laundry there is in the basket.

I want to.

Are you in my room, Caro?

The question makes my throat hot—as hot as if he’d asked me what I’m wearing. As hot as if we’re cybering, which we’re not. Not even close. So why is it that when I take a sip from my jelly glass, the schnapps goes down wrong and I start to cough uncontrollably?

“What are you doing over there?” Quinn asks.

“Texting West,” Bridget says. “You can tell because she’s biting her lip and kind of hunching over the phone, like possibly Skittles are going to come out of it, or a rainbow, and—”

“I know that,” Quinn interrupts. “I just want to know what he said to make her choke.”

“Nothing,” I croak.

“Ooh, what?” Bridget asks.

“You two need to fuck and get it over with,” Krishna says.

“Shut up.” I am a genius with the witty retorts.

The door opens, and West walks in. Seeing me on the couch, he smiles. “Thought I was going to find you in my bed.”

I burst into flame.

Not really, but I might as well. It would be a better way to dispel heat than sitting here, flaming red.

“Not with those ears,” I say.

West snorts and drops his bag by the door. “Hey, Quinnie. Bridget. What’s Krish got you drinking?”

“Butterscotch schnapps,” Quinn says.

“Gross.”

“It is some broke-ass shit,” she agrees.

“I was just saying to Caroline about how the two of you need to fuck,” Krishna says.

“Again? You’re way too obsessed with who I’m fucking.”

“I’m not obsessed. I’m concerned. You’re a twenty-year-old guy with too many jobs and a permanent James Dean loner frown. If you don’t start using it to get laid, you’ll probably die of repression. And here’s Caroline—”

“Could you guys maybe stop talking about me like I’m not in the room?”

“And stop saying ‘fucking,’” Bridget suggests. “It’s degrading. And I think—”

“See, that’s your whole problem,” Krishna tells her. “You think fucking is degrading.”

“Like I’m the one with the problem. This from the campus manwhore who—”

“You are the one with the problem! You never have any fun.”

“I’m here, aren’t I? This is fun, right?”

Quinn groans. “Only for you two.”

West comes up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders. I tip my head back to look at him upside down, worried how he’s taking this, but his mouth is soft, his eyes amused. “Caro and I aren’t like that.”

I smile at him, because his denial sounds like a confirmation, and because his hands on my shoulders are smoothing back and forth. His thumbs find a spot to rest and press on the back of my neck, which makes my breasts feel full and heavy and the pit of my stomach go molten.

I’m ridiculously pleased with Krishna’s implication that West is in the middle of what sounds like a long dry spell. Although, considering the source, Krishna could just mean West hasn’t had sex in a week.

I don’t like thinking about West having sex. At all.

“So what are you two like?” Krishna asks.

“They’re friends,” Bridget says.

“No, we’re not,” West says.

Bridget looks confused.

I understand. It’s kind of confusing. “Can we not talk about this?”

But Krishna is way too invested now. “No, I need to figure this out. Every time I go to the bakery the past few weeks, there you are. Seems like West’s always texting you all of a sudden. He just came through the door smiling at you like the sun rises and sets on your ass, and now he’s got his hands all over you.”

Quinn chimes in, “He’s always got his hands all over you.”

“That’s not true.”

But, actually, is it? His hands on my shoulders are familiar. At the bakery, he often touches me like this. Casually—tapping my kneecap on the way past, dropping a hand on top of my head when I’m about to leave, rubbing my shoulders in an idle moment when we’re both chatting with Krishna.

He’s a physical person. It doesn’t mean anything to him.

I’m the one whose heart stops, every time.

“It’s nobody’s business but ours,” West says.

Any normal person would be dissuaded by how forbidding West looks right now, but Krishna isn’t normal. “If you’re not going to fuck, we should start thinking about hooking Caroline up. It’s about time she got back in the game, don’t you think?”

Bridget punches him in the arm. “It’s not a game.”

Krishna pitches his voice in a spot-on imitation of Bridget. “It’s not a game, it’s not fun, she’s not a piece of ass.” Then, in his normal voice, “Swear to God, woman, it’s like you’re allergic to everything in the world that might accidentally make you feel good.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“Don’t be a prude.”

She sticks her tongue out at him, and Quinn mutters something that sounds like “Talk about two people who need to fuck.”

“What?” Bridget screeches. “What are you implying?! Because if you’re trying to say—”

“Never mind.”

I expect Krishna to be all over that comment, but he surprises me by getting up off the couch and disappearing into the kitchen. He comes back with a beer, even though he already has a drink. He pops the top and takes a long swallow. He doesn’t look at Bridget at all, and we just watch him, fascinated.

Or, I have to confine myself to glances, actually, because West has dug his thumbs deeper into my neck muscles, forcing my head forward. My hair hangs down in my face. His thumbs are branding irons, blunt and hot, searing parallel lines into my skin from my hairline to the low-dipping collar of my shirt. Again. Again. His fingers wrap around my shoulders, gripping like he owns me, and I’m melting.

I’m liquid.

I’m his.

“Let’s not get distracted from the point,” Krishna says. “The point is, Caroline needs a rebound lay.”

“Oh, do I?”

I sound drugged.

I am drugged.

Bridget protests for me. “She does not.”

“Seriously, Krish, you’re being a jackass,” Quinn says.

“We’ve got to find her a hookup. After Thanksgiving, I’m going to make it my personal goal in life to get Caroline some action.”

“Caroline can get her own action,” Bridget says. “I mean, if she even wanted to, which—”

“Which I don’t.”

“Because you’re traumatized,” Quinn says.

“I’m not traumatized.”

I’m flustered and hot. I’m hoping, rather desperately, that the prickling in my nipples doesn’t mean the headlights are on and everyone in the room can see what West is doing to me, right in front of them.

“It’s all right,” Quinn says. “Nobody’s judging you. This is your safe zone.”

“Caroline doesn’t need a safe zone,” Bridget says. “She’s doing great. Tell them about—”

She sees my face and stops, but it’s too late.

“What?” Krishna asks.

“Nothing.”

“Doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“It’s nothing. Really.” I reach forward for my drink, breaking contact with West because things are about to turn ugly. I can feel it. The air has gotten heavy. My arousal has fled like a rabbit startled back into its hole.

I knock back a big gulp of butterscotch schnapps and start to choke again, which is a tactical error, because while I’m debilitated, Krishna goes after Bridget.

“Tell me what you were going to say,” he demands. I tip sideways on the couch, coughing so hard that I have to pull my knees up. West rubs my back.

“Breathe,” he says in a low murmur.

Even that’s sexy. I’m choking to death, racked with guilt over what Bridget almost revealed, and I still have a corner of my brain devoted to fainting at the hotness of West. I’m a hopeless case.

Bridget crosses her arms, squared off against Krishna. “I’m not telling.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me—”

“Oh, all right. I was just going to say about this guy she met.”

“There’s a guy?” Quinn asks.

I’m barely capable of inhaling. When I say, “There’s no guy,” I drool a little on the leather, and I have to wipe it off with the palm of my hand.

I can’t look at West.

“It’s too late to deny it,” Krishna says. “Bridget already spilled. Who’s the guy?”

I don’t see any way out of telling them. I sit up. “You remember Scott?” I ask Quinn.

“Rugby Scott?”

“Yeah.”

“He asked you out?”

“No! No. It’s nothing. It’s just … I just mentioned to Bridget that I might try to find out his last name. From you. In case.”

“So you can call him?”

“Maybe?”

“He was into you,” she says. “You should definitely call him.”

“You think?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Who’s rugby Scott?” Krishna asks.

“He goes to Carson,” Quinn says. “You wouldn’t know him. And he’s really nice. And hot. Well done, Caroline.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

She chucks me on the shoulder. “Sure, but you should. Get back out there, you know?”

I duck my head. Sidelong, I glance at West.

He’s gone blank.

Krishna is looking at him, too, and I can’t make out whether he pushed West into that blank face on purpose or if he’s oblivious. That’s the thing with Krishna—I can never figure out if he’s an asshole or if he’s pretending to be an asshole.

Either way.

He drops to the couch beside Bridget, chugs the rest of his beer, and says, “Maybe we should find something else to watch.”

West opens his bedroom door. “I’ve got to study.”

He closes it, and then there’s just the sound of the TV and Bridget shifting uncomfortably on her end of the couch.

“I didn’t do anything,” I say. “I don’t even know his last name.”

But I’m not sure who I’m talking to.

No one replies.

“So when are you heading home?” West asks.

“Tomorrow.”

It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving—or Wednesday, I guess, since it’s three in the morning. Campus has been a ghost town since lunchtime, and West has been at the bakery all day. He had to come in early. He’ll stay late. He has an insane amount of baking to do to help Bob get the holiday orders filled.

It doesn’t matter, he told me. He’s got the whole rest of break to sleep.

“Early?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

“Can you go vent the oven for me?”

I walk over to the oven—which is more like a metal closet with glass in the door—and push the button to vent the steam so the loaves will start to dry out during the last few minutes of baking.

“Thanks.”

I hop up on the counter and study the room. Since October, it’s become almost as familiar to me as my dorm room, and I’ve stopped noticing how crowded it is. How the vented steam smells of moist dough, raw and wet. How West’s hands are always busy, the floor is always dirty, and I’m always safe, even if I’m not always comfortable.

Officially we’re on break, and I should be at home.

Home has become an increasingly difficult concept. I still talk to my dad once a week, but I’ve come to dread our conversations. I’ve been a daddy’s girl my whole life, and now I don’t know what to say to him. He asks me how Con Law is going, if the class is as tough as I feared. He reminds me that I should look into summer internships at the career center, because I ought to have some experience before I start applying to law schools in a few years.

He tells me he loves me and reminds me to be safe.

I hang up the phone with a piercing pain in my stomach. I feel like a liar, but I haven’t told him a single lie.

For the first time since I got to Putnam, I don’t want to go home for break. Dad gets into the whole turkey thing, and I’m in charge of stuffing. My sister Janelle and her fiancé do cranberry sauce and rolls. Alison, my other sister, is in Lesotho with the Peace Corps, but if she were home she would do pumpkin pie.

I guess I should take over pie duty.

I’m supposed to get fitted for a bridesmaid’s dress for Janelle’s wedding, which is coming up in the summer. She emails me details about the venues they’re looking at, the colors she likes, the save-the-date cards they’re having made on Etsy. I know I’m supposed to be excited, so I act that way, but I can’t drum up any enthusiasm.

“You ever call that guy?” West asks.

It’s been two days since he shut himself up in his room. This is the first time either of us has mentioned that conversation.

“Scott,” I say.

“I didn’t forget.”

“No. I didn’t call him yet.”

His phone buzzes. West checks it and taps out a message to someone. He’s been glued to it all night, distracted. He hasn’t told me who he’s talking to. It could be his sister, his mother, some girlfriend back home he’s never mentioned.

He doesn’t tell me anything.

Tonight he has nothing to teach me. All these weeks of glazing and proofing, I feel as though we’ve never talked about what it is I’m actually supposed to be learning.

I never asked him to be my teacher. It’s not what I want from him.

But on the other hand, I’ve found proof of West’s lessons scattered all over my life. Proof that what Nate did to me isn’t the only thing about me worth talking about. Proof that just as I could have walked in to the bakery any night, I can also walk in to a party or out onto a rugby field.

I’m still here. I’m basically okay. I don’t require coddling, and I’m not going to buy into any more bullshit.

I am overproofed, utterly sick of pretense. Because the other thing I’ve figured out since October is that West tells me nothing, and if there is nothing I can teach him, we’ll never be more than we are in this room.

He’s staying here over the break. It costs too much and takes too long to fly to Oregon for the paltry few days off we get, and, anyway, Bob needs his help.

West told me all that.

What he didn’t tell me is that he wants to go home—but I know he does, even though I’m not sure where home is, what town he’s from, what’s there for him. I don’t know because he doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell me why his attention is so riveted on his phone, why he’s distracted all the time lately, what he’s worrying about.

I know he’s worrying. I know something about him isn’t right. But I also know he’s never going to look up from the bread and say to me, Caro, can I tell you something?

An awkward sort of finality has settled between us tonight, and I think it must be because of that conversation at the apartment.

Maybe I’m wrong, though. Maybe it happened when he handed me the envelope full of money. The money changed something.

If West shared his own weed with friends, he’d be a guy who was fun to party with. Since he sells it to them, he’s a felon. That’s because of the money.

I’m supposed to be rich. He’s supposed to be poor. He gave me fifteen hundred dollars, and now something is different between us, but he won’t tell me what, and I won’t ask.

I’m not brave enough to push him, but I wish he would tell me. I wish he would need me. Because I’m not sure how much longer I can stand to be the only one in this kitchen who will admit to being vulnerable. And I’m not sure, either, how much longer I’m going to need this—these late-night drives to the bakery, these hours with West working and the mixers going.

There is so much more we could be saying to each other, and aren’t.

Tonight the mixer’s rattling song sounds like a dirge, and I feel nothing but grief. I woke up from a nightmare to come here—a dream where I was out on the rugby field in a nightgown, wading through a thick fog, and I couldn’t find something I needed, couldn’t hear anyone calling for me. I felt irrevocably lost.

This night—this moment—this is the end of something, and we’ve failed at it.

“I’m going to miss you,” I tell him.

He’s got his back to me. Without responding or even acknowledging that I spoke, he turns up the mixer to high. It bangs around so loudly, I can’t hear the music. I cover my ears and listen to the beating of my heart with my eyes closed. When I open them, it’s because his hand is on my thigh, and he’s standing right in front of me, filling my whole field of vision.

His eyes are silvery-blue, cast into shadow by his indrawn eyebrows, startling and intense.

Krishna and Quinn are right—West is always touching me.

I always feel it.

His hand on my thigh makes me throb. Between my legs. My heart. My throat.

Everywhere.

Stupid girl.

When he moves his hand, I clutch at it. I overlap our fingers, mine on top of his, and press down, hard.

West looks at our hands, and he sighs. “What am I supposed to do about you? I think you’d better tell me, Caro, because I don’t have a fucking clue.”

I gaze at the knob of his wristbone. At the dark hair on his forearms, the divot of his throat, the patch beneath his lip where he missed a few hairs when he shaved.

His mouth. His eyes. His mouth.

Always his mouth, wide and smart-alecky, generous and withholding.

I wait for West’s mouth to make words I’m never going to hear.

I’ll miss you.

I care about you.

I don’t want you going out with that guy, because I want you with me. I want us to be more than this.

I want to say, Tell me everything, West. Please.

But in the morning I’m going to drive home and see my father. Whatever it is West might have to say, tonight isn’t the right night for him to say it, and I’m not the right person for him to say it to.

It’s not just him. It’s me. I’m not brave enough.

My fingertips skate over the shapes of his face. The arch of his eyebrow and the scar that bisects it. The curve of his ear. The lush fullness of his mouth.

I want to breathe in when he exhales, rest against his body, wrap my legs around his waist, and take him inside me.

I don’t know how to get rid of this.

I don’t know how to give him up.

The oven timer beeps. West steps away from me and turns it off. Opens the door. Takes out the bread.

The whole rest of the night, he keeps his distance.

In the morning, I get in my car and put sixty miles between us, but it’s not far enough.

I don’t know how far I’d have to go for it to be far enough.