Harder (Caroline & West #2)(30)

She shakes her head. “It’s like …”

A chill runs up my spine. I’ve known Bridget for over two years. I’ve never seen her at a loss for words. “Bridge—”

“I can’t describe it,” she says with a shrug. “But it’s good enough to be worth all this other crap, apparently, which I can’t even tell you the epic amounts of crap I’ve been dealing with. What he just did, walking out of the room like that? That’s nothing compared to what he’s been dishing out every time he gets spooked, which is f*cking constantly, and if we weren’t—”

“Constantly f*cking?” I interrupt.

She hides her face behind her hands. “Yes. God.”

“Go on.”

“If we weren’t constantly f*cking, I would have so many bad things to say about him.”

“You can say the bad things and also f*ck him constantly.”

“I know, but it feels so disloyal. I like him.”

“You maybe love him?”

She hides her face against my shoulder. “Don’t say it. It’s too stupid.”

“I have the market cornered on stupid.”

When she looks at me again, her eyes are bright with tears, but she’s smiling. “You know what I used to think? It’s awful. You’re going to think I’m awful.”

“Probably not.”

“I used to think only stupid people made mistakes. Like, people who were too stupid to know what the right thing to do was, so they did the wrong thing, and I was smart enough to see all that stupidity coming, so I would never be like them. I thought my mom was stupid for not knowing my dad was having an affair, and my dad was stupid for having one. And, God, I’m sorry that I’m saying this, but I thought, after what Nate did—”

“You thought I was stupid?” I blurt out.

“Kind of? I mean, not across the board, but about that one thing, yeah. Like, I thought I’d never let a guy do that to me, and I couldn’t see why you had unless you’d just sort of stumbled into a pit of stupidity temporarily, and then stumbled back out.”

“I can’t believe you thought that.”

“I know. But what I’m starting to figure out with Krishna …”

“… is that it’s possible to be smart and still do really stupid things?”

“And know you’re doing them the whole time,” she says. “That’s the worst part.”

“It is,” I say, nodding. “I’ve had this exact same thought. Oh my God, I am being so f*cking stupid. I should be arrested for containing this much stupidity in one person. And then, like, God, he’s hot, I love him, I am totally going to do this anyway.”

“It sucks,” she says.

“Donkey balls.”

“Ginormous donkey balls.”

“It sucks ginormous hairy donkey scrotums,” I confirm.

“Hoovers them up.”

“Deep-throats them.”

“While they take pictures and post them on the Internet,” Bridget says.

“And go down on other women to drive you away.”

“And tell you about all the women they’ve f*cked while they’re taking off your pants.”

“He did not.”

“He did too.”

“What a vile excuse for a human being,” I say. “You should totally ditch him.”

And then we’re laughing, leaning into each other, holding on tight, and I’m glad I saw her with Krish, even if it was kind of gross.

I’m glad I see West all over Putnam, even if he’s living in his little bubble of isolation.

It would be great if I had godlike powers to make the world less cruel. I could change everything. I could bend West’s life toward mine instead of away from it, make everything different so he never would have chosen to do what he did, never could have chosen it.

I bet Bridget feels the same way—like she’d change whatever went wrong in Krishna’s life to f*ck him up, and then he’ll stop jerking her around and admit they have something. But who would Krishna be if he weren’t … well, Krishna? And who would West be if I changed his whole life to make it so he never disappointed me? Not West.

I don’t want anyone but West.

I’d rather f*ck up and have something—some messy undefinable not-quite-relationship that feels awful but also transcendent, electric, important—than keep away from him and have nothing at all.

I’m going to figure out a way to get him back. Everyone can think I’m stupid if they want to, and tell me I shouldn’t, and say I’ll regret it. Everyone can believe it’s a bad idea—even me.

Maybe it is a bad idea.

I don’t care. I’m doing it anyway.


My phone rings at the library that same afternoon, drawing nasty looks. It’s four o’clock, a quiet time for serious study, and I forgot to set it on vibrate.

I fumble in my bag until I find it way down in the pocket where I don’t usually put it, and by then it’s been ringing so long I’m hot with embarrassment. I decline the call, a local number I don’t recognize, and go back to my response paper.

A minute later, the phone starts to vibrate in my pocket, and I feel … I don’t know. Weird.