‘Hey, Gwen. A couple of Americanos. And I don’t think you’ve met Jacqueline.’

Like an owl, Gwen swivelled her head to eye Jacqueline. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, her teeth clamped.

Jacqueline smiled back, as if my usually sweet coworker wasn’t bristling with frostiness. ‘Nice to meet you, Gwen. I love your manicure – so cute!’

Gwen’s nails were painted like wrapped, multicoloured Christmas gifts. They looked kind of hideous to me. But she turned her large, dark eyes to Jacqueline, enhancing the owl likeness. ‘Oh. Thanks. I did ’em myself.’

‘You did?’ Jacqueline held out a palm and Gwen put her left hand in Jacqueline’s for closer inspection while ringing up our order and swiping my card with her right. ‘I’m so jealous! I can’t paint even one colour on mine without making a mess. Plus, I play the bass, so I have to keep my nails too short to do anything fun with them.’

Thank God, I thought.

‘Aww, that sucks!’ Gwen said, won over. I was impressed. I was also glad Eve wasn’t working, because she distrusted compliments to the point that she regarded them as an attack.

Once seated at a table in the corner, Jacqueline brought up the fact that I wear glasses, prompting a legion of inappropriate musings, courtesy of my cruel, vividly detailed memory of the reasons I’d flung those glasses away.

I don’t want you to stop.

‘I could sketch you now,’ I said, and grabbed my sketchpad from my backpack as if it was a life preserver, meant to save me from drowning. I slid the pencil from behind my ear, balancing the pad on my crossed knee, and leaned back to look at her. She flushed like she could read my thoughts.

Read this, Jacqueline. My pencil swept across the page, and I envisioned my fingers sliding across her skin. I watched her chest rise and fall, as I had last night. She stared at my hands as they interpreted the curves of her body and converted them to lines and shadows on paper.

I imagined stretching her out on my bed, crossing her wrists above her head, as she was in the drawing on my wall. I would run my fingertips over her, applying no pressure. Light strokes only, raising the tiny invisible hairs, training her body to recognize my touch. To rise to it. She would hum deep in her throat, as she had last night, restless, especially when my fingers grazed over her thighs, starting at her knees and moving up.

Hell. Sketching her was a terrible idea.

‘What are you thinking about?’ I asked, in an attempt to distract myself.

‘High school,’ she answered.

Okay. That worked. She might as well have tossed her coffee at me. I assumed she was thinking about Moore until she said, ‘I wasn’t thinking about him.’

She asked what high school was like for me, and I saw those years in a series of flashes – Boyce’s unexpected friendship, Melody’s dismissal, the ache of losing my grandfather, Dad and his silence, the fights, the faceless girls, and Arianna, transforming my scars and skin into a narrative of loss. I’d changed my name when I left home, but I couldn’t disconnect from who I’d been so easily.

‘A lot different than it was for you, I imagine,’ I said. She asked how, and I told her the first thing that popped into my head – I’d never had a girlfriend. She seemed sceptical, but she couldn’t understand the boy I’d been. The partying and detached hook-ups, the hopelessness. In a few sentences, I told her about Amber, and that last fight – when rage hijacked my brain and my fists, and I blacked out. I told her about the arrest. I told her about Charles, and the way out he offered.

‘He’s like a guardian angel for you.’

‘You don’t even know,’ I said.

I sent Jacqueline the review two days before I would be giving it out in my session, after debating whether doing so crossed yet another ethical line. It was blatant favouritism. But what good was embracing my bad-boy side if I couldn’t play favourites?

She wrote me back and said it felt weird to get economics email from me, as if Landon and I were still two different people. She admitted that she’d almost recommended Landon as a tutor to Lucas – who seemed like a total slacker, never paying attention in class and skipping quizzes. I was glad she didn’t tell me this in person, because I laughed out loud.

She and Mindi had gone to the police station to file reports and press charges against Buck – legal name: Theodore Boucker III, which I found out when I was contacted by the detective. I gave my story of his assault on Jacqueline and our fight. Buck had informed his whole frat and anyone else who’d listen that he had consensual sex with Jacqueline in her truck, and was jumped by ‘homeless thugs’ after she drove away – though he failed to file an assault report with campus or city police.

Tomorrow was my last class with Jacqueline. Her econ final was next week, and the dorms would shut down for winter break the week after that.

She texted: After the final next Wednesday, then what?

I clicked the screen on and off. Then what? Didn’t she know how the bad-boy thing worked? There was no then what. I’d proven as much with too many girls to remember. Make out and then done, or head and then done, or f**k and then done.

Unlike everyone before and everyone after, I would worship and savour Jacqueline Wallace when she came to my bed. A first, then, for me. Make love and then done.

Finally, I texted back: Winter break. There are things you don’t know about me. I told myself I won’t lie to you again, but I’m not ready to put everything out there. I don’t know if I can. I’m sorry.

I didn’t expect an answer. I didn’t get one.

22

Landon

I woke to the smell of coffee. Weird, because Dad was almost always gone by the time I woke up. I couldn’t imagine he’d cancelled scheduled excursions to discuss my arrest – he never backed out on his clients.

I emerged to find Charles Heller sitting at the kitchen table, no Dad in sight. He had a legal pad in front of him, along with his laptop and a local phone directory. He sat back and glanced up at me as I walked out into the kitchen.

‘Landon – I’d like to talk to you, if you’re willing. I brought toasted bagels, and I just started a fresh pot of coffee. I’ll give you a few minutes to wake up, and then we’ll chat. All right?’

Frowning, I nodded and went to the bathroom, digging some OTC pain meds from the cabinet over the sink. I could barely get the childproof lid off. My hand was so swollen it looked like it belonged to a cartoon character, and it hurt like hell. Everything was awkward without the use of it, from brushing my teeth to getting clothes off or on. I pulled on a tank and board shorts – which I gave up and left untied.