Page 80 of Forget About Me

“No.” I take her hand, needing the connection. She starts to pull away, but I hang on tight, begging her to listen with my eyes and my touch. “I needed to see you. I was missing you so much. I didn’t want to date anybody else, and I didn’t want you to either.”

Blinking slowly, she opens her mouth and starts to say something but then presses her lips together firmly.

“So, when Tony came by and asked if I wanted to come along to pick you up from UMass, it seemed like I was being given this opportunity. To see you, but also to go public about us. He probably just wanted us to hang out. We did, at first. It was a beautiful fall day. It should’ve been a perfect day.”

I can still picture every detail. Crisp, cool air. Bluest sky, fluffy white clouds. “I put the last mixtape you made me in his car stereo. The Rolling Stones, The Police, The Cars. I wanted to listen to it when I told him.”

“What happened?”

The impatience in her voice cuts across the gulf between us. I have to get her back on my side.

“I was gearing up to tell him when we hit some bad traffic on the Mass Pike. Tony got irritated, decided to get off the highway, take 20 instead. I argued it would take just as long. He started razzing me. Like he always did. But this time it had an edge. I don’t know why. He was poking me, saying I was so skinny, what was I doing studying theater, was I a fag or something?”

My free hand fists in the bedsheet. “That pissed me off. So much, that instead of telling him the truth—instead of telling him straight out that I was in love with you—I said something really stupid like, no, I wasn’t a fag and he should ask you because I’d been fucking you all summer.”

A sharp intake of breath, a flash in her eyes and she jerks her hand from mine.

“I’m sorry. That’s not at all how I felt—feel—about that summer. Or you. He started me up, and I set him off. Suddenly we were screaming at each other. I don’t even know what we were saying. And then—and then, there was a horrible sound and we were flying through the air.”

Drowning in memory, I don’t quite register a shift in the room until Lucy’s halfway to the bathroom.

Heart pounding in my ears, I scramble out of the bed, shove on my boxers, muttering to myself, “Fuck. Fuck. You are such a fucking idiot asshole.”

The toilet flushes. The door flies open and I stumble forward telling her that I’m sorry over and over. She shoves me back, eyes blazing. She’s naked but she doesn’t seem to notice. She shoves me again.

“You want to hear about my day? That “perfect” day? First off, I was having a really good time at school. I missed you, I didn’t want to date anybody else either and I was homesick. But I loved my classes. Loved going to parties. Loved being on my own.”

She pauses and shakes her head slowly. When she looks up again, there’s an ugly sneer on her face. “Thing was, I wasn’t really on my own, was I? I was still a spoiled little princess. I didn’t want to have to take the bus home for Thanksgiving break, even though I knew it was a busy season for my dad and my mom was working her ass off to make a perfect Thanksgiving dinner.” She mimes crying, twisting her fists in front of her eyes. “Why couldn’t somebody just pick me up? So Tony, because he was a good big brother, said he’d do it, even though I’m sure he’d have been happier doing just about anything else.”

I step closer. “That’s not—he wanted to?—?”

I freeze when her hand makes a stop sign in the air between us. “I listened to you, now you listen to me.” Her finger jabs in my direction with each pointed word, so sharply I can feel it behind my sternum even though she’s still halfway across the room.

A shiver goes through her, and she skirts around me to grab the blanket from the end of the bed. Throwing it over her shoulders, she paces around the room as she continues.

“I thought he’d be there at four, so I went downstairs to wait. Watched people leave, getting on the bus, in their parents’ cars. No Tony. Finally I go upstairs and find a note on my door, stuck there by whoever answered the hall pay phone. My mom saying he’d left a bit late but he’d be there by around five. So I go back downstairs. Six o’clock, he’s still not there. I go back up, but there’s no message. I call my house, but no one answers. I start wandering the halls. Find a room with a bunch of international students who have nowhere to go. They’re drinking. I’m pissed off, so I decide to get drunk with them. We’re doing shots. Playing stupid games.

“At some point there’s a knock on the door, a voice saying it’s security. Everyone’s scrambling to hide shit. This man in a uniform says my name, says I need to come with him. I push past him, run to the bathroom. I throw up for a long time. When I come out, the other students are gone. The officer walks me to my room, and I get my bag. He drives me to their office, offers me coffee, food. I can’t even talk to him. And then—I don’t know how long it was—my parents show up. They tell me Tony’s dead. I tell them it must be a mistake. They tell me it was a car accident. They don’t say it, but it’s clear they think it’s my fault. I tell them I’m sorry, but they won’t listen to me. They just bundle me into the car.”

She stops moving and stares at me, eyes cold. “On the way home, I vow never to ask anyone to do anything for me again.”

“Lucy, you can’t think?—?”

“Fuck you, Ben. And fuck Tony, too. I’ve been wasting my life mourning the losses of both of you, but the thing is,neitherof you trusted me. He didn’t trust me to decide who I could love. And you still don’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.”

She drops the blanket and wrestles into her clothes, hands and voice shaking as she struggles with buttons and zippers. “All this time I’ve been doing penance for what I did wrong, and what good has it done? None. It’s done nobody any good, least of all me.”

She pushes past me and out of my room. “I’m gonna get my own place where I can have my own dog and play music and dance and eat what I want when I want it, and the rest of you who want to tell me how to live my life can just fuck off.”

On her heels, I try to stop her. “Lucy, please. Let’s?—?”

Her hand knocks mine away. “You want to know what it felt like when you left? I’ll show you.”

Without looking at me, she stuffs her feet into her shoes, grabs her bag and coat, and slams out the door.

Puck runs to the door, barks once, then looks back at me.

I drop to the floor, and he crawls into my lap with a whine. “Yeah buddy, I know. I fucked that up big time.”

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