Page 70 of Beyond the Lines
She splashes water on her face, trying to clean up the damage, but it only makes things worse, spreading the black streaks across her cheeks. She grabs a paper towel and frantically dabs at her face.
“Mike would kill you,” she mutters, more to herself than to me. “And he’d never talk to me again…”
“I—”
She keeps going, cutting off any words before I can voice them. “There are reasons I shielded myself off from you after you lied to me… criticized me…”
It’s like she’s recanting a spell of her own making, her mind making all the excuses in the world to ignore something her heart is clearly feeling just as strongly as me. But right now, in this moment, she’s a force of nature.
Undeniable.
Unreasonable.
Another knock, this one so hard the door rattles in its frame.
Lea’s head snaps up, panic written across her features. “I’m coming out!”
She gives up on fixing her appearance and grabs her bag from where it fell to the floor. Her hands are visiblyshaking as she fumbles with the strap, and something in my chest twists painfully at the sight.
“Lea, wait—” I reach for her, but she slaps my hand away like it’s on fire.
“No.” Her voice is raw, tears falling freely now. “This never happened.”
Before I can respond, she unlocks the door and yanks it open. A furious senior with a blond bob and an expensive-looking sweater stands there, mouth already open to deliver what I’m sure would be a scathing tirade.
But she stops short when she sees Lea’s tear-streaked face.
Lea pushes past her without a word, leaving me alone with Blonde Bob, who’s now looking at me like I’m something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe, or someone she should call the cops on.
“What the fuck did you do to her?” she demands, her eyes narrowing to slits.
I raise my hands in surrender as I exit the bathroom. “It’s complicated.”
“Men,” she spits in disgust before entering the bathroom.
As the door slams behind her, I stand there, still reeling from the rollercoaster ride of the past twenty minutes. The echo of the slam seems to reverberate through my entire body, a physical manifestation of the abrupt way things ended with Lea.
With the way Lea reacted, I should feel ashamed or guilty. I should be worried about Mike finding out or about what Professor Lucas would say if she knew I’d just had oral sex with my project partner, and the possible impact on my enrollment in the select seminar…
But I don’t feel any of those things.
Instead, there’s a clarity I haven’t felt in months, maybeyears. Like puzzle pieces falling into place, revealing a picture I didn’t know I was trying to assemble. It’s a messy one, filled with pain and passion, anger and longing, loss and longing.
And, when I consider it, the picture screams one thing at me.
I want Lea Altman.
Not just her body, though that part was mind-blowing enough. I want her mind, her perspective, and her art. I want the way she sees the world and the way she challenges me to see it differently. I want her anger and vulnerability and every complicated, contradictory part of her.
I want to help heal the pain that’sclearlystill festering inside her, and I want her to help me navigate the Royal Rumble taking place in my head. And, more than wanting to do these things, I think wecando these things…needto do these things.
I only got a glimpse of it tonight, but it will fuel me for days.
But as I stand in the middle of the library like a doofus, I realize I’m smiling. Despite the mess, despite her tears and declarations that it was all a mistake, and despite the fact that my best friend—her brother—will probably murder me, I feel better than I have in weeks.
Because now Iknow.
I know what I want.
