When I reached to brush a finger over her ear, she removed one earbud and handed it to me. I dialled the playlist to a song I’d discovered just before I got my last tattoo – four lines now inscribed on to my side, a poem composed by my artistic mother for the analytical man who loved her. The song had triggered the memory of her words, so I’d searched the attic for her poetry notebook the next time I was home. I copied the lines and took them to Arianna, and she added the poem to the canvas of my body, two years ago.

Love is not the absence of logic

but logic examined and recalculated

heated and curved to fit

inside the contours of the heart

Our hands began to wander over each other – my fingers sliding under her shirt as I kissed her. She warned me that Erin could return any moment – apparently her roommate hadn’t left for winter break yet. Something to do with a boyfriend who was trying to win her back.

‘Why did they break up?’ I asked.

I cupped her breast, about to search for the clasp – front or back this time?

‘Over me,’ she said, and I froze. ‘Not like that. Chaz was … Buck’s best friend.’ Her entire body went rigid, just speaking his name, and I pulled her close.

Buck was supposed to be gone, and probably wouldn’t be back next semester – certainly not if Charles had anything to do with it. He knew someone on the disciplinary committee, and I was pretty sure he was going to call in every favour he could.

‘I never told you about the stairwell, did I?’ Jacqueline said then.

I went as taut as she was. ‘No.’

She swallowed. ‘About a month ago, all the washers were full on my floor, so I went down to the second floor to see if they had any machines free.’ Her voice was so subdued that I couldn’t shift positions and still hear her. ‘On the way back up, Buck caught me in the stairwell. He threatened to …’ She swallowed again, hard, and left the blank for my mind to fill. ‘So I said, “My room.” I thought if I could get him into the hallway, people would be there and they’d hear me tell him to leave and he’d have to go.’

I was holding her too tightly. I registered that, but my muscles had solidified. I couldn’t loosen my grip on her.

‘There were five people in the hall. I told him to leave. He was furious when he figured out what I’d done. He made it look like we’d done it in the stairwell. And from the looks on everyone’s faces in the hall … from the stories that circulated after … they believed him.’

He didn’t get into her room. But he put his hands on her. And he scared her. Again.

I felt the protective rage and excruciating powerlessness building and didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t want to hurt Jacqueline, or frighten her, but I didn’t know what to do with the anger bubbling up inside, threatening to spill over.

I pushed her on to her back and kissed her, pressing a knee between her legs. I felt her struggle and my brain screamed WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING. I tried to pull back – but her hands, freed from between us, stabbed into my hair and held on tight, and she opened her mouth, pulling me inside and kissing me back just as hard.

I shuddered, loving her, loving her so much I could hardly breathe. Wondering if that was how it was supposed to feel to love someone or if I was just f**ked all to hell and incapable of loving correctly, because all I felt was this insane, unfillable need, this empty black hole inside my soul. I was breaking apart in her hands, crumbling to nothing.

I had to stop. This had to stop. I’d given her what she wanted, what she needed – and I was in pieces at her feet. How could she not see? I couldn’t play this game any more. I had to save what little of me remained.

I wanted to strip her and possess her one last time. Spread her legs and adore her. Make her cry my name and shudder beneath me. I wanted to pretend, one more night, that I could belong to her. That she could be mine. I lay over her, kissing her, and knew it wouldn’t happen. Her roommate would return any minute, and it was just as well. There was no filling the space I wanted her to fill.

We slowed, lying side by side, and I began to compose my exit lines.

Then she asked about the Hellers, and my parents, and I turned on to my back and answered her questions.

And then – ‘What was your mother like?’

‘Jacqueline –’ I said, as Erin’s key hit the lock.

I got up as she entered, and Jacqueline followed. Erin tried to make like she had laundry to do, but I said, ‘I was just leaving,’ lacing my black work boots and wishing I’d worn my old Noconas so I could shove my feet in and go.

‘Tomorrow?’ Jacqueline said at the door, arms hugging herself.

I zipped my jacket and said, ‘It’s officially winter break. We should probably use it to take a break from each other as well.’

She recoiled, stunned. She asked me why, and I became all logic, no emotion – she was leaving town and I would be, too, for at least a few days Christmas week. She still had to pack, and Charles needed help getting grades posted – which was bullshit, but she had no way to verify that and I knew it.

I told her to let me know when she was back in town, and I bent to kiss her – one quick, barren kiss. Nothing like she deserved. Nothing of what I felt. I said goodbye and walked away.

24

Landon

I knew I wasn’t the only student in the school without a computer, but it felt that way. I usually logged in at the library, or during my programming lab, or at Hendrickson’s. I didn’t have lab or work hours today, though, so I was using the prehistoric computer at Wynn’s Garage.

‘Buy a cheap laptop already,’ Boyce urged. ‘You work all the f**king time so I know you’ve got the cash, and I sure as hell know you aren’t smokin’ it or shootin’ it any more.’

After pulling up the site where I hoped my SAT scores would finally materialize, I waited for the computer to wheeze its way to the login page where I tapped my password. Boyce watched for his father through the plate glass window, grimy from fingerprints, Scotch tape bits, blotches of who-knows-what and decades of no one thinking to buy glass cleaner.

‘Saving for tuition.’ I gave the excuse I used every time I refused to spend money on something. ‘And I never shot up.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ He squeezed my bicep. ‘Your big, hard, virtuous arms are reserved for tattoo needles only.’

I shrugged him off. ‘Shut up, man …’