Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(20)

I can’t stand her being out there. I want her to go away.

I want to not have to think about her.

Of course, maybe she’s not even out there. Krishna could be yanking my chain. He’s hoping I’ll ask, and I don’t want to give him the satisfaction.

“You know anybody Vietnamese?” he says.

“What? No.”

“I need to find somebody Vietnamese to teach me how they play tic-tac-toe. I’m working on this combinatorics thing—”

“Is she out there or not?”

He grins. His teeth are blinding. The grin is at least 50 percent of the reason he gets so much tail. “Yeah, she’s out there.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“You told me to leave her alone.”

“Good.”

I put the yeast away in the fridge and look at the list of stuff I need to get finished before my shift’s over.

I glance at the clock.

Krishna’s still talking about tic-tac-toe.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, see my mom’s number, but the text sounds like Frankie.



What r u doing?

I text back. Working. Why are you awake?

Cant sleep, she writes. Sing 2 me

It’s after ten back home. She should have been asleep hours ago. She’s only nine.



Why not Mom?

Shes out.

That’s what I was afraid of.



What song do you want?

Star one

So I type out the first verse of “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” line by line. She sends me a smiley face.



Go to sleep, Frank.

Im trying

Be good.

Always

Love you.

Night west

Night peanut.

When I put my phone back in my pocket, it feels heavier.

I don’t like Frankie texting me after ten o’clock.

I don’t like that my mom’s not home or that she emailed me asking for five hundred dollars this morning but didn’t say what it was for. I tried to call Bo, mom’s boyfriend, who they live with, but he didn’t pick up and he hasn’t called back.

A couple thousand miles away from them, I can only know what they tell me, and Mom only tells me what she thinks I’ll want to hear. I’m supposed to have faith they’ll all be fine without me.

When you’ve had my life, faith is in short supply.

And God damn it, I don’t like knowing Caroline is out there in the dark, alone, awake when she needs some rest.

I’m sick of f*cking worrying about her all the time.

That’s the worst thing about Caroline—the endless nagging worry of her. It was bad enough last year, when I met her and fell for her and swore to myself I’d never touch her again, all in the same day.

It was bad enough when I started dreaming about her, waking up with my cock hard and jerking off in the sheets, thinking about her mouth on me, her legs wrapped around my waist, what her face might look like when she comes.

Bad enough, but fine. Whatever. I can ignore that kind of shit forever. I could jerk off a million times thinking about Caroline and still not need to talk to her.

The problem with Caroline isn’t that I want her. The problem is that I want to help her, want to learn her, want to fix her, and I can’t do that. I can’t get caught up with her, or she’ll distract me and I’ll wreck everything.

I’ve got too much at stake to let myself get stuck on some impossible girl.

I’m not going out there.

I look at the clock again.

Krishna sticks his head in the big industrial fridge. “You have any cookie dough in here?”

“No. It’s time for you to take off. I’ve got to start baking soon.”

He cocks his head and gives me an assessing look. He has a streak of wet gunk on one cheek and a drift of flour in his hair.

“You’re trying to make me leave because you’re gonna go talk to her, aren’t you?”

Fuck it, I am.

I am, because I can’t not do it anymore. I’ve been not going out to talk to her for weeks.

“I’ll bring you some breakfast later,” I tell him. “What do you want, a lemon poppy-seed muffin?”

“Bring me one of those ones with chocolate chips.”

“You can have all the f*cking chocolate chips. Just get out of here.” I push him toward the back door, into the alley.

“Far be it from me to get between you and your lady friend.”

“You know it’s because you say things like ‘lady friend’ that I’m making you go, right?”

“Nah, it’s because you’ve got serious privacy issues. You could be a serial killer, and nobody would know. Or, like, a secret stripper.”

“As if I have time for another job.”

“That’s true. You’d have to stop sleeping. But it might be worth it to have chicks shoving cash in your jock.”

“They do that, anyway, whenever I go out dancing.”

“Oh, yeah?” Krishna’s face lights up. “You got moves?”

I don’t dance. If I need to get drunk, I do it at the bar in town that doesn’t card.

If I need to get laid, I find somebody who doesn’t go to the college, take her home, make her happy, and clear out. Townie women don’t expect anything from me.