Shame (Ruin #3)(38)
Author: Rachel Van Dyken

“Worried?” I walked past him and locked my door. “Why would you be worried?”

“One.” He held up a finger. “Because I heard about your break-in. Actually, I think the entire campus heard about your break-in. And two.” He held up two fingers. “One of the guys I worked with at the pizza shop totally got the shit beat out of him last night outside this dorm.”

“What?” I stopped in my tracks. “What do you mean?”

His eyebrows furrowed together as he allowed me to go into the elevator first and then followed. “I mean a guy who I worked with got his face smashed in and is in ICU.”

My ears felt like they were filled with cotton. What if the attacker was the same person breaking into my apartment? Sending me hate messages? I shivered and suddenly felt better that I had my Taser with me.

“Hey, you okay?” Jack put his arm around me, but it felt all wrong, like forced.

I don’t know how to explain it; I just didn’t like it, so I shrugged away.

His eyes flickered with a bit of irritation, and then he leaned back against the wall of the elevator.

“You know…” he said slowly. “…flirting with the professor isn’t the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

“I’m not flirting,” I lied. “And since when do you work at a pizza place? I thought you worked at Starbucks?”

“We live in Seattle.” He rolled his eyes as the elevator dinged open. “I have to have three jobs to even afford my books and enough umbrellas to get me through the day.”

I smiled. “It doesn’t rain that much.”

We stepped outside into a nice morning mist, and I’d officially forgotten my jacket.

Jack smirked and dug an umbrella from his shoulder bag, holding it over my head. “You were saying?”

“Shut up.”

“I know I’m an hour early, but what about we get something to eat at the coffee shop, and we can go over our plan for the project?”

I sighed. I really wanted to make it early to class to impress Tristan, but two hours early did seem a little overkill. I stifled a laugh; he’d probably have a stroke if I was that early. If he was even at his desk. Then again it was Tristan. I imagined he was the type that was an hour early only so he could prove a point.

“Fine,” I relented, sending a sideways glance at Jack. “But I want to be early to class.”

“Ah, so that’s how it is.” He nodded knowingly.

“What?”

“You and the professor. Keep getting in trouble, and he’s going to keep making house calls. Smart.”

“I’m not—” I shook my head. “Whatever. Let’s just talk about the project.”

“Sure.” He grinned and held the umbrella higher over me. I ducked farther under it and collided with his left hand; the umbrella teetered a bit, so I steadied it with my right, gripping his hand in the process. I felt cloth and grimaced.

A large bandage was covering his entire hand and knuckles; it was an ace bandage, and I hadn’t noticed it before.

“What happened?”

“Pizza ovens.” He shook his head then winked. “Don’t try to fight them. They fight dirty, and apparently I lost.”

I scrunched up my nose. “Sorry. Burns suck.”

“Pain sucks.” He shrugged. “But sometimes it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Except for this time,” I corrected.

He swallowed convulsively, his eyes darting back and forth before he offered a kind smile. “Except this time.”

The rest of our walk was easy. He talked about himself, and I listened while I tried desperately not to think about Tristan. I think I did a good job nodding my head and smiling. But my thoughts were consumed with the previous night, with what he’d said, how close it had hit home. How had he seen what Gabe even had trouble seeing? That just breathing in and out was hard for me, that I tried so hard to compartmentalize the person who I was, with the person I am. It was exhausting, not to mention stressful, since my past seemed to keep haunting me at every turn. I still had that stupid website to worry about. I just hoped people wouldn’t recognize me in it, though I didn’t think they would. I mean, who would imagine a normal girl like me starring in my own sex tape? Then again, you can’t really be starring in something if you aren’t aware it’s happening.

He’d ruined sex for me.

He’d made it painful.

He’d made me want to vomit every time he touched me, but the guilt had been worse than the sex, the guilt that I’d been a horrible person to him, the guilt that he would take more pills if I didn’t do what he wanted.

Tristan might be right about me trying to fight who I was, but if he truly knew how horrible I’d been, he wouldn’t be encouraging me to try to discover my true self. No, he’d be helping me bury that demon or, as he’d said last night, kill off that personality for good.

“So, anger…” Jack sat opposite me in the booth and shook the rain from his jacket. “Why don’t you write out different facial expressions while I go grab us some coffee and food?”

“Okay.” I pulled out my notebook and went to work cataloguing things I’d learned in class, like tight lips, narrowed eyes, clenched jaw — things that usually revealed a type of anger or repression. Funny, I had those memorized because Taylor was rarely happy. Anger was his companion. Then again, most of the time he was so numb I wondered if he ever truly felt anything; I wondered if he ever wanted to.

“No,” Jack said after reading my list. “Some of these are wrong.”

“Well, according to the Internet and our textbook, they’re all right.”

“Wrong.” He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Anger can be a smirk, sure… but I think the most intense anger is the type of anger that people rarely see on the surface. It boils beneath, getting hotter and hotter until finally one day—”

He slammed his hand against the table. I almost spilled my hot coffee.

“—they just explode.”

“So…” I swallowed and suddenly felt very uncomfortable that we were some of the only people in the coffee shop. “How would you describe that, then? In a nonverbal cue?”

“You can’t.” He leaned forward. “Because anger has too many faces, too many masks. This type of anger is the kind you don’t recognize until it’s too late.” His nostrils flared as he brushed hair away from his face.