Put Me Back Together(25)

“He didn’t do anything,” I said, setting my burger back down and wiping my mouth. “We just danced and there was… He thought I was Emily and then he gave me that look… And brownies and texting and putting his hand in my hair—”

“Oh, hand in the hair,” Mariella said knowingly.

“And there was a moment on that loveseat,” I added.

“Oh, loveseats are trouble,” she agreed.

“And calling me Hero and giving me a cat and then he goes and touches that blonde girl’s face!” I cried, slamming my hands down on the table.

Mariella frowned as I stared at her grumpily, my chest heaving with aggravation. “Wait, so what did he do?” she asked.

“I just told you!” I answered so loudly the people at the next table glanced over, which had literally never happened to me before in my life.

As amazing as I was at pretending and denying and avoiding, it also tended to turn me into kind of a basket case.

“There was this other girl…” I added more quietly.

“So now he’s with this other girl instead of you?” Mariella asked as she pushed her plate to the side.

“Well, I’m not really sure, he—”

“But you saw him with this other girl after he said he liked you?”

“He didn’t exactly say he liked me. And I’m not exactly sure what I saw, because—”

“What did he say when you asked him about it?”

“You see, I haven’t actually asked—”

Mariella shook her head so vehemently that I couldn’t go on. “No, girl, no,” she said. “I will not have you falling apart over something you don’t even know is real. You’ve just got to ask him straight up what the deal is. Does he like you or does he like her? I don’t want to hear another stuttering excuse about it.”

I stared down at my plate. “But what if I don’t like the answer? I want him to like me best,” I said miserably, and the words, as I heard them coming out of my mouth, stunned me to the core. I wanted Lucas. I wanted him to be mine. No, I needed him to be mine.


Oh God, I was so screwed.

Mariella put her hand on my arm. “He will,” she said. “You just have to give him a chance to get there.”

“Or maybe he’s just playing me, like Jeremy did you,” I said. (This was Jeremy of the canoe of douches.)

“Well, that’s no problem,” Mariella said with a sly grin. “Because in that case you know you’ve got your trusty friend Mariella to help you whoop his lily-white ass!”

We cackled so loudly the entire diner was looking, and I didn’t even care.



Later that day I was coming down the stairs outside the library after spending two exhausting hours researching my art history paper on Gauguin when I spotted Lucas leaning against the building. I hovered on the stairs, my arms laden with books, wondering what I should do. He was facing the other way and so hadn’t spotted me yet, his back against the bare ivy that snaked over the bricks. I could slip away unnoticed. I could escape. A week and a half ago that was exactly what I would have done. I’d made an art form of avoiding students I knew peripherally from class, or professors, or even people I knew better like Melissa or Anita. I’d once run out of a building to avoid Sally. A week and a half ago my life had been orderly and predictable, all of my actions fitting a mold I’d made myself years ago.

And then Lucas had come along.

The feelings I’d expressed to Mariella came back to me as I looked at him gazing forlornly down the road, his hands deep in his coat pockets. There was no point in trying to pretend anymore, or trying to force myself to give him up. I’d already failed at that twice. If a part of me tried to avoid him, there would always be another part of me looking for him everywhere I went, trying to find him, trying to keep him. As furious as it made me, both with him and with myself, Lucas was in my life now. I guessed I might as well get used to it.

As I walked toward him across the snow, I considered asking him Mariella’s question. I pictured myself demanding to know who it was going to be, the blonde or me, while Lucas stared at me in surprise. Even in my imagination the scene disintegrated before it was fully formed. How could I possibly ask him a question I already knew the answer to? Lucas was a flirt and he’d flirted with me just as he did every other girl. It didn’t mean anything. I had to stop giving it meaning. Silently, I gave myself the same kind of pep talk I had given to Emily in the tenth grade when she was lovestruck over Brad the Cad.

He doesn’t like you like that. You need to stop liking him like that, too. You need to try to be friends. And if you get the urge to kiss him, you need to resist. Resist!

Emily hadn’t been able to follow that last piece of advice. She’d kissed Brad at the end-of-year dance, in front of the whole school, in front of his girlfriend.

As I called out to Lucas and he turned to me, his face lighting up, I finally understood why Emily had done that. Because goddamn, it was hard to think about anything but kissing when he looked at me like that.

“Damn!” Lucas said as he took in my pile of books. “You know you can photocopy the pages you need, right? You don’t have to check out all the books in the library.”

I didn’t want to explain that photocopying meant spending even more hours in the library looking up all the appropriate passages in the books, and then standing at the photocopier for an interminable amount of time while other students stood behind you sighing and urging you to hurry. I preferred to do my research in the safety of my apartment. I would live my entire life inside my apartment if I could.