The Hardest Fall

She shook her head. “I didn’t call him. I’m not sure I can say this to him.”

“Okay, you’re officially scaring me. Say what?”

“Look at me,” she hissed angrily, yanking her hands from my hold and wiping her cheeks. “I can’t even say it to you. How am I supposed to say it to other people?” Her anger disappeared in a heartbeat and her eyes stayed fixed on the table as the tears picked up speed. With my now empty right hand, I brushed off the new tears and looked around us.

Since it was Sunday, the library wasn’t filled with students as it would’ve been if it had been any other day, not to mention it was still early and the place had just opened up. There were only two more early risers like us, and they were sitting in the main room. We were tucked away in the very corner, closed in by bookshelves and four more tables. You could only spot us if you were standing at the doorway and at the right angle.

“How long have you been sitting here?” I asked when she didn’t go on. “Come on, let’s go out and get some fresh air.”

Her hand tightened in mine and she looked at me with fear-filled eyes. “No. No. We need to stay here. I don’t want to see him.”

“Keith?” I asked, frowning. I’d known he would be the reason she was upset, but…the look on her face, the way she held herself—everything about her screamed that whatever was wrong between those two was far worse than I’d imagined.

“Yes. I’m sorry, I know I’m not making any sense, but this isn’t easy to tell. It isn’t easy to… I’m sorry, Zoe. I shouldn’t have called you. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Kayla,” I whispered, and her blurry eyes tried to focus on me. “I want to help. Please…I miss my friend. Jared misses you, too. We’ve barely seen you these last few weeks. I can help. Please let me help so I can have my friend back. Tell me what happened and we’ll go from there.”

“I don’t think I can go back,” she said quietly. “Everything I have is back at the apartment, but I don’t think I can go back to pack my things.”

“That’s okay. I can do that for you. I’ll go with Jared and pack up your stuff. You can wait for us at my apartment and we’ll take care of everything, but that’s not important right now. Can you tell me what happened to make you this sad? Did he break up with you? Cheat on you? Is that why you don’t want to go back? Did something happen after I left?”

Before Kayla could answer me, there was suddenly someone else in the room with us. “Here you are! For fuck’s sake, Kayla, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Are you fucking deaf? I’ve called you thirty times.”

My head spun around and I watched Keith stride in with his usual smarmy smile on his face. I glanced back at Kayla with worry, only to see her disappear into herself.

As he rounded the desk and made it to her side, I spoke up before he could say anything else. “Keith, I don’t think this is a good time. Something is obviously going on between you two, but this isn’t the place to hash it out. Just let me talk to her.”

He stared at me with a blank expression for a full twenty seconds or so, pupils dilated to hell. Something was wrong with him, even more than usual.

Was he on something? Was he high?

“Shut up, Zoe—or better yet, get the hell out. This doesn’t concern you.”

I watched him with my mouth open. Sure, he was a dick, always had been, but I hadn’t ever seen him high or heard anything from Kayla about him using drugs. Was this what she’d been hiding from us?

He crouched down next to her, one hand on the chair, the other on the desk, boxing her in. Kayla stiffened even further and leaned her entire upper body toward me so she wouldn’t have to touch Keith.

I stood up when he opened his mouth to speak. I had no idea what I thought I’d do, but I sure as hell didn’t want him near my friend anymore.

“Keith, I don’t know what you’re on, but go get sobered up. You can’t do this here.”

“I’m sorry, babe,” he groaned, ignoring my presence. “I thought you were into it, swear to God. I didn’t hear you say no. Why didn’t you say no if you didn’t want it?”

A cold chill ran through my body, freezing the blood in my veins. I had to hold on to my chair to stay upright.

“What did you do?” I asked in a broken voice. “What did you do, Keith?”

Kayla started crying in sobs, her body shaking and shaking. Keith kept muttering to her the whole time. I couldn’t hear a single thing he was saying through the roar in my ears. It couldn’t be true…shouldn’t be.

Livid, I mentally shook myself off so I could think, or at least try to think of what to do. The best I could come up with was pushing Keith away from my beautiful friend so he would stop trying to touch her.

I tried to yell at him, tried to shout at him to get the hell away from her, but my voice wouldn’t work and all I could manage was a harsh rasp. “Don’t touch her you son of a bitch. Don’t touch her.”

He clearly wasn’t expecting me to touch him because he fell right on his ass on the black and red checkered floor when I pushed at his shoulder with all the strength I could muster. Before I could get Kayla out of her chair and away from Keith, he was on me, pushing me away from my friend. Then he kept pushing me again and again until I crashed into the chairs.

“Who do you think you are, you little bitch,” he snapped right in my face.

Shocked and enraged out of my mind, I pushed myself up, ready to go after him, but he gave me another shove and managed to knock the breath right out of me before I could do anything.

Then his fingers wrapped around my throat, and I had no choice but to still. With him so close to my face, I could smell the alcohol on his breath.

Kayla finally snapped out of wherever she had disappeared to, jumped up, and tried her best to yank him away by clawing at his arms, but to no avail.

“No, Keith! Stop. Let her go. Please!”

Starting to panic for real, I looked around and realized that the few people in the library couldn’t really hear us, and nobody could see what was going on. None of the other students had a direct view of our spot.

His hand around my neck wasn’t tight enough to cut off my air completely, but he was getting there, taking his time, enjoying the shock in my eyes. When he pressed harder, I gagged and gasped, my eyes starting to bug out. I put my hands around his wrists to pull him away, tried to kick him to get him to let go, to loosen his hold, but his eyes looked empty, dead.

He pushed his face into mine until we were nose to nose then hissed, “Don’t touch me again.”

When he was done playing his game, he shoved me away, and the back of my head bounced off the desk with a loud thud. I slid down to my hands and knees and coughed until I couldn’t anymore.

When I looked up, Kayla was covering her mouth as she cried silent tears, inconsolable. Keith was cooing to her, touching her hair, caressing her face. The closer he stood to Kayla, the harder her tears slid down her cheeks. He gripped her arm and yanked her to his body, whispering something in her ear.

Reaching for her purse where it sat on the desk, he tried to get her to move with him. I somehow picked myself up and grabbed Kayla’s other hand. The last thing I wanted was to play tug-of-war with my friend in between, but there was no way I was letting him take her anywhere.