In My Dreams I Hold a Knife(23)

He caught my arm. “What… We’re not going to talk about it?”

A chill ran the length of my body. His hand was warm, the fall air cold. He was so close. I opened my mouth to speak, but he shook his head.

“Don’t you dare say talk about what.”

I didn’t move. “I don’t think there’s anything to say. It’s been a year.”

He clenched his jaw. “Can we have an honest conversation for once in our goddamn lives?”

I laughed—I couldn’t help it. “Having an honest conversation is what ruined things in the first place.”

A light sparked in his eyes. His fingers flexed on my arm. “I thought you said you were drunk at the engagement party.”

A memory: my heart, shattered into pieces. My body, unsure how to function without it. Unable to put one foot in front of the other, swimming in pain. The beautiful brass bar, the bottles of red wine, Caro, resplendent in white. The desperate thought: I have to tell him.

We were crossing into dangerous territory. I could feel the ghosts starting to stir. “I was,” I said carefully. “Very drunk.”

“Well, which was it? Were you being honest, or were you drunk?” The look in his eyes was too serious. Jesus Christ, Coop. He always wanted so much.

It all rushed back. Caro and Coop’s engagement party. Everyone there—families, all our college friends, except Mint and Courtney, of course, off on some glamorous vacation. At first, the news that Coop was dating Caro had been a slash to my heart. As Caro’s friend, I had to hear every excruciating detail about how they’d reconnected. How Caro—who checked in on her old friends, no matter how much time had passed, because she was that kind of person—gave Coop a call one day out of the blue.

And apparently it was perfect timing. Coop, struggling with law school and full-time work, but also haunted by something—Caro had whispered it, like a secret between us, haunted. He’d needed a friend, and there she was. I’d acted puzzled, kept my voice light over the phone, even as my heart hammered, even as I wanted to scream that I knew what haunted him, and it had its hold on me, too.

I’d borne their relationship silently, because I had to. Waited for the wound to heal, or for them to break up, which I told myself was inevitable.

But then the opposite happened. Caro said she was moving to Greenville to live with him. Then, too quick, the call came, the one where Caro was shrieking, and my knees were buckling. They were engaged. And something inside me crumbled, something important that had been there for years, holding me up, although I’d never realized it. I’d tried all my usual tricks to dull the pain, but the only thing that worked reliably was wine.

“Jess, I need you to be honest.” Coop tugged my arm, pulling me closer. “It’s been years since I could read you.”

Was I being honest, that night at the engagement party? Clutching him in the darkest corner of the bar, begging, Don’t marry her. You’re supposed to love me. Love me, love me, love me. Like an incantation, powerful if said enough times. Grabbing his hand. Leave with me right now, let’s go. Let’s run away and never come back.

His hands on my shoulders. You’re drunk, Jess. You don’t mean what you’re saying. His face stony. I know you don’t mean it. Because if you did, it would be the cruelest thing you’ve ever done. Stepping away, putting distance between us. And Caro is your friend.

Honest, or drunk?

I looked at Coop’s hand on my arm, his strong, graceful fingers. I followed the hard curves of his biceps, visible through his sweater, skimming the elegant swoop of his neck to his full lips, long lashes, shock of dark hair. Every inch of him familiar, beautiful, infuriating.

I felt alive in a way I hadn’t for a full year, maybe longer, and the feeling made the decision for me. I couldn’t let him disappear from my life again. From this moment on, I would play by the rules, take no risks, stick to friends only. Even if all I ever got was a sliver of Coop—a few friendly words, a hand on my arm—I would make do. No matter how much it hurt.

“I was drunk,” I whispered, the words like a door closing. “Of course.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, dark and burning. “Coward.”





Chapter 8


March, junior year

No matter what I did, the bills found me. If I avoided my mailbox in the student center, they were delivered to my door. If I buried them under books and papers on my desk, somehow they unearthed themselves, knocked over accidentally by Caro or Heather and scattered across the floor.

The same day I opened the red envelope and discovered, as a college junior, I was ten thousand dollars in debt—bolded words threatening legal action for continued nonpayment—Heather’s parents surprised her with a brand-new BMW. It was the first day of Parents’ Weekend, which always turned campus into a cheery, buttoned-up version of itself. My own parents never came. Surely, they’d received the invitation from the school, gold-foiled and thick-weighted, but they’d never once mentioned it.

When I opened the door to our suite, bill in hand, I found not only Heather and Caro, but Heather’s and Caro’s parents, squealing and popping champagne in our tiny kitchen. Clinking slender, fizzy glasses, they made a beautiful, if confusing, tableau.

I stopped in the doorway. “What’s going on?”