Chapter 8 - The Write Off

13 Years Ago

Freshman Year, Second Semester

“Bad writing day?” West leans over my shoulder.

I snap my laptop closed. No need for him to see the 54 percent I got on my last math quiz. I twist to see his hands braced on the back of the bench. A spring breeze ruffles his straight hair, and you’d never know from the seventy-degree sunshine that it snowed less than two weeks ago. “What are you doing here?”

He nods toward the English building. “Dr. B’s class just ended.” He drops his notebook next to me, sits on the back of the bench, and swings his legs over. The nails on his right hand are forest green; his left hand is bare. “You look pretty miserable considering spring break just started.”

I tip my head back to look at him but find myself squinting into the sun instead. “Not for me. I still have one midterm to go.”

“No camping trip for you?”

“Yeah, what’s the deal with that?” Amber mentioned it in passing, but I didn’t ask for details because, apparently, I’m the only loser with a midterm the Friday before spring break.

“Amber, Kyle, and the crew are driving up to Mount Lemmon in”—he checks the time—“about an hour. They have three blankets, a twelve-pack, and a dream. I give them a twenty percent chance of starting a forest fire.”

“Is that all?”

“I wore my Smokey Bear T-shirt this morning as a reminder. Hopefully the message permeated the thick layer of spring break debauchery.”

“You’re a real environmentalist, Mae West.”

He smirks, leaning ever so slightly closer. “I do what I can.”

“Does that mean you’re not going with them?”

He makes a face. “I don’t need to hear Kyle and Amber humping each other more than I already do. Unless you’re driving up?”

“As riveting as that experience sounds, I can’t think about anything except studying right now. If I fail—”

“The matrix you’re living in dematerializes, I’ve heard. Hey—should you write a story about that?”

“Sci-fi? Not really my thing. But you should write a story about that.”

He rolls his eyes. “Right.”

“Wait, what does that mean?”

He takes my computer and opens it back to my online math portal. “What that means, Mars, is that you’ve found yourself a math tutor.”

* * *

“What’d you get for C?” West drums his pen against his knee while he waits for my answer.

“I’m still working on it.” I squint at the triangle on the page. I’m sitting cross-legged on the bench, my back is starting to hurt from hunching for the last two hours, and my brain feels like it’s melting out my ears.

“Do you remember how to solve for cosine?”

“C squared equals A squared plus B squared minus two AB times the cosine of C,” I repeat numbly. Memorizing the formula has never been my problem. Making the numbers make sense within the formula is the issue. I drop my head into my hands.

“Do you want me to show you again?” West leans toward me, and as his hair falls forward, I inhale a lungful of his woodsy shampoo scent. It’s possible the nearness of him is making it hard to concentrate, but I can’t bring myself to care. Campus is dead, the sun on my shoulders feels like the first beach day of the year, and I’d rather be doing anything other than trying to make sense of trig.

“I want ice cream,” I announce. West looks up at me, a spot of blue on his lower lip. I stare at it a beat too long. “Do you want ice cream?” I force my eyes to meet his.

“I could eat ice cream,” he says. I start to smile, but he holds up an ink-stained palm. His left hand is always covered in ink from dragging it across the page as he writes. “Under one condition.”

I groan. “Fine. I’ll finish this problem first.”

“Not that. I want to read the scene you had to run off and write the other night.”

This time I can’t help my wide grin or the feeling of champagne bubbles in my chest. I’ve never been precious about my writing—I’ll happily give it to anyone who asks, but not that many people ask.

“Done. Are you sure that’s the scene you want, though? I have better ones.” I’m mentally sorting chapters in my head, weighing the funniest bits of dialogue versus my best world-building versus that clever metaphor I spent twenty minutes perfecting in chapter fourteen.

He makes a show of pretending to consider my request before shaking his head. “That scene or no deal.”

* * *

West is concentrating. He’s a living, breathing Do Not Disturb sign, from the unbroken eye contact with his phone to the plastic soft serve spoon hanging forgotten from his lips as he slowly scrolls his way through my scene. I reached the end of my ice cream a good ten minutes ago and have nothing to do but hyper-fixate on his facial expressions.

“Did you get to the part where—”

“Shh.”

“I just want to explain why—”

“Shh!”

I bite my lip and try to count to one hundred. At nine, I break. “What’s taking you so long?” This is excruciating. I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin.

“It’s too bright out here, and I hate reading on screens.”

“Should I have transcribed it by hand just for you?”

“That would have been helpful, yes. Now shhhhh!”

I inch closer and strain my neck. “Stop reading over my shoulder,” he says.

“But I—”

His phone beeps with the sound of an incoming text. The name Bethany flashes across my words. He swipes it to the side without reading it, and I feel like I’ve won a competition I didn’t even know I was in.

“Who was—”

“Mars.” He turns to me, our noses inches apart, and takes the spoon out of his mouth. His next words are achingly slow. “What can I do to make you stop talking?”

I swallow heavily. “Let me read something of yours.”

Wordlessly, he slides his notebook toward me.

“Which page?” I ask.

“Don’t care.” I open to the first page, and his hand shoots out. “Wait. Not that.” He flips ahead a few chicken-scratched pages and jabs a paragraph with his finger. “That one.”

I snatch the notebook before he can change his mind and roll away from him and onto my side. His paragraph is a description of his hometown in the summer, and I can feel the hot windburn on my cheeks and the dust between my teeth as I read. It’s spare and stark but still evocative; it makes my chest feel hollow for reasons I don’t really understand. I read it three times in a row and wish it were longer. It’s good (maybe better than the Chia Pet story), and suddenly his opinion becomes even more important. I glance at him in my peripheral and see another incoming text from Bethany. I close my eyes.

“Done,” he says.

My eyes jolt open, my heart pounding.

“Who’s Bethany?” I ask.

My open textbook rests face down on my stomach. We’re looking at shapes in the clouds. A game of Frisbee is happening perilously close to us, but we persist in our laziness. My shoulder blades have sunk into the grass in such a perfect way that it feels like the space was carved for me. The first hints of sunburn sting my forehead, and I don’t even care. I’m completely blissed-out.

“Why’d you say her name like that?” West asks.

I turn to see him gazing at me, one arm bent behind his head. “Like what?”

“With such a heavy emphasis on the first syllable. Beth-any. It felt pointed.”

“I don’t like the name Bethany.” I don’t like the thought of another girl texting you is the surprising subtext underneath my lie.

“She’s my ex-girlfriend.”

My ears perk up. “Oh? Does she go here?”

“No. We dated in high school. I think she wants to get back together.”

“Why do you think that?”

He flips over onto his stomach and avoids my eyes as he pulls out a marker and fills in his bare nails. “Her text said that she wants to get back together.”

I squirm, my shoulder blades itchy from the prickly grass. I hold my hand up to shield my eyes from the too-bright sun. “That’s a good clue.”

* * *

“You already know it’s good, I already told you it’s good, so stop fishing for compliments!” West laughs.

“But what would you say if we were in Dr. B’s class?” I hop onto the edge of the fountain and train my eyes on my feet as I walk around it.

“Why do you wanna know?” He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

“Because I care about your opinion!”

“Why?”

“Because your paragraph was good.”

He looks like he’d rather jump off a cliff than talk about himself. “There’s no plot. Nothing ever happens in my stories. Let’s change the subject.”

“West—I’m begging! If I’m going to be published before I graduate, I need feedback, and people aren’t exactly lining up to read my weirdo magic books. I read a page to Amber, and she fell asleep. With snoring! I emailed my brothers my last story, and they never replied. Even my high school English teacher had to clarify that she only had time to read my assigned essays and not the sixty pages of fiction I left on her desk.”

“Do you think Amber was faking?” West asks.

“Well, now I do!” I groan and drag my foot through the fountain.

Water splashes his hair, and he quickly smooths it with his fingers. Like the wicked witch, West and his hair. “What’s the rush to get published?” he asks.

“Why wait?”

He rolls his eyes and holds his hand up to help me down from the slippery ledge of the fountain. “Fine, don’t tell me. Need brain fuel?”

“I could eat.”

“Frog & Firkin is right there.” He nods to a popular bar a few hundred yards away. “Or Bison Witches on Fourth?”

The sandwich shop is in the funky, artsy historic district a mile away, and since I’m in the mood to procrastinate as long as possible, I choose the long route, and we make our way toward Fourth Avenue.

His elbow bumps mine while we walk, and when I look up at him, I find myself wanting to explain. “I didn’t really have friends growing up.” He tips his head, indicating that I should continue. “I was weird and introverted, and my brothers both played travel baseball. My parents dragged me all over the state every weekend, and all over the Southwest on every break from school. The number of hours I’ve clocked in the bleachers watching parents yell at umpires is enough to make anyone a little crazy. I spent all those years with my nose in a book, and then in a notebook, and finally a computer. It’s pathetic, but book characters were my only friends.”

“That sounds lonely.”

My cheeks flush, and I realize I didn’t have to tell him any of that in order to answer his question. “My brothers both went to school on baseball scholarships. Nothing crazy. Small schools with okay baseball programs but good degrees. One now works in tech in Silicon Valley; the other makes airplane parts in Seattle. My parents told me I needed to get a scholarship, too, but my grades weren’t good enough, and I can’t throw a fastball, so.”

It’s actually infuriating, as if they didn’t pour thousands into their attempts to turn my brothers into the next A-Rod.

“I needed my parents to help with my tuition, but they wanted me to study something ‘practical.’ The only way they’d agree to creative writing is if I start paying them back the day after graduation.”

“That’s why you’re in such a rush?”

I scoff. “No. I’ll be a barista, whatever. I’m in a hurry to be published because I want to show them that they’re wrong for not believing in me. It’s my spite goal.”

He looks at me sideways. “Hmm.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

“Why not?”

“I think you love books and writing, and you’re ambitious and smart, and you’re out to prove something to yourself as much as anyone.”

I cross my arms, feeling weirdly transparent. “Even if you’re right, I’ll do it with or without anyone’s help, including yours.”

“Kaia needs more internal monologue.” He reaches out to push the crosswalk button at the loud and buzzy intersection.

“What do you mean?”

“She likes this bodyguard guy—”

“Felix.”

“Yeah. She likes Felix, but I don’t know why. What’s she thinking when she sees him lie to cover for her?”

“She’s thinking that she’s shocked that he would break the rules for her, because she’s never seen him step a toe out of line, and when she confronts him and they’re arguing, she realizes that he’s the only person who has ever cared about what happens to her!”

“So put it on the page.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.

“Also, Felix licks his lips six times in one scene.”

“He does not.”

“I counted.”

Well, that’s humiliating.

West sees my expression. “I don’t actually know what I’m talking about, by the way. You get that, right? My writing is—”

“Stop.” I hold my hand up.

“Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

I pull him out of the flow of people on the sidewalk and crouch next to the window of a tattoo shop. “I need a piece of paper.”

He opens his backpack and rips out a blank page from his notebook. He hands it to me with a blue pen. I balance the paper on my knees and scribble the sentences that are appearing fully formed in my head. I don’t even have to reach for them. The characters are having a conversation, and I can barely write fast enough to keep up. It’s the best kind of writing magic.

I glance up to see West crouched over me in the fluorescent glow of the tattoo parlor’s window and admit to myself that I have a massive crush on the tall, skinny boy from my writing class.

He shakes his head in disbelief. “Someday you’re going to tell me how you do that.”

* * *

“Do you think I’d look good with a nose ring?” I ask as dinner arrives. We’re tucked in a dark corner of the noisy restaurant, sitting on opposite sides of a wooden booth.

“Yeah,” West says automatically. “Do you want one?”

I take a bite of my pickle spear. “I’m nose ring curious. I’m writing a character who is covered in piercings, so it seems like I should know what that’s all about.” I crunch another bite of pickle, and West wordlessly slides his across the table, offering it to me. “I think I’ll do it tonight.”

“What about studying?”

I wave off his question. “We’ll get around to it.”

“After dinner?” he suggests.

“Okay,” I agree.

He narrows his eyes, and I get the feeling that he’s studying me. “Why are you grinning like that?”

West wants to study after dinner? Fine with me. This is about to be the longest damn meal he’s ever had.

* * *

I brush the tip of my finger across my nose ring for the tenth time in under a minute. It hurt less than I thought it would, but my skin is tender. It took West and me two hours to eat sandwiches and chips, and when we walked out of the restaurant, I dragged us right into the tattoo and piercing shop. And now I have a ring in my nose, and we’ve spent the last couple of hours wandering all over campus, avoiding my dorm room and the library at all costs.

Tucson smells like orange blossoms and spring, and I can’t recall a time when I ever felt less lonely. A few months ago, leaving my room to hang out with Amber felt difficult, but there’s nothing easier than spending time with West.

I blink, and we find ourselves walking down Greek row, peering at frat parties from the curb, when three girls stumble down the front porch steps of one of the houses, tripping over their feet and giggling like crazy.

“They’re on another planet,” West says with a laugh.

“That could be you. You could be halfway through a twelve-pack while Amber and Kyle get freaky in the next sleeping bag.”

He pretends to dry heave. “Pass.”

“Why didn’t you go?” I press, wondering how much information I can pry out of him tonight.

“How many reasons do you want?”

“Because you don’t drink?”

“For starters.”

“Why don’t you?” I ask. He gives me extreme side-eye. “It’s rude to bring it up but not talk about it!”

“You brought it up!”

I put my hand to my chest as I flutter my eyes. “Did I?”

He throws his head back and laughs. “Those eyelashes are out of control.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“You look like Bambi.”

“You’re not changing the subject that easily.”

“You are so unsubtle.”

“I’m curious!”

“I know. That’s why I like you.” He avoids eye contact as he passes a hand over the back of his neck, and I wonder how much I should read into his last statement. “It’s a boring story, but since you’re obviously dying to hear it, my dad cheats on my mom.”

My stomach drops. “Oh god. How’d you find out?”

“Well, my half sister was a dead giveaway.”

“Are you serious?”

West nods. “He had a one-night stand with a woman on a business trip. Claims he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. Fast-forward nine months, and I had a sister. She’s seven now and lives in Boston. Gabbi. She’s cute. Sassy. Has a thick accent and already swears like a sailor.”

“How did your mom react?”

He blows out a long breath. “She stayed with him and had another kid, so…not well, in my opinion. And now he knows he can cheat and she’ll never leave.”

“West, that sucks. He sucks! I’m sorry. I—” Hot, aimless anger churns in the pit of my stomach. “That is not a boring story!” I’m worried it’s the wrong thing to say until West laughs.

“You can use it in your next book, if it’s not too much of a cliché. Don’t they all have shitty parents?”

“You’re thinking of dead parents. YA characters always have dead parents.”

“Lucky them,” he says dryly. I snort-laugh in surprise, which makes him laugh again, and he wraps his arm around my shoulder and draws me into him. It feels like he’s placing a period at the end of a conversation that he’s dying to escape, and with his body pressed against mine, every nerve ending sparks to life.

We’ve almost made it to the end of Greek row when a couple tumbles out of the bushes, straightening their clothes and smoothing their messy hair. West blushes in the streetlight and turns his face away. My stomach riots at the sight of his pink-stained cheeks.

“No judgment on your life choices, but if you’d played things differently today, you could be having a very different kind of night,” I tease.

His eyes go wide. “What does that mean?”

“You could be in the bushes somewhere with Beth-any.”

He stops us in our tracks and drops his arm from my shoulders. When we make eye contact, I feel like I’m caught in a glue trap. “If I wanted to be with Bethany, I’d be with Bethany.”

I’m suddenly aware of all the blood in my body, pulsing faster than before. “Well, what do you want?” I ask brazenly, summoning heretofore unknown bravery.

His eyes flicker across my face as he runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek, thinking. He comes to a decision, and a wry smile appears at the corner of his lips. “Library,” he says with deadly precision.

“No!” I protest. “I won’t do it! You can’t make me. It’s too late. I—”

“Library,” he says again. “It’s close.” He tangles his fingers in mine, and I jog behind him, hissing a trail of protests at the back of his head.

“I can’t study now. I’ve hit my limit,” I whisper as we step over the threshold and a gust of icy air-conditioning hits my bare skin and the scent of old paper and books fills my lungs. “It won’t work. My brain is a black hole.” I whine my way up the steps to the third floor, right until the moment West pulls me into the empty stacks and my words die in my throat.

I glance at the shelves next to us—biographies—and register the goose bumps prickling at the back of my neck. West licks his bottom lip. He looks nervous and determined all at once, and it dawns on me that he’s not thinking about trigonometry.

His fingers press into my skin as he reaches under the strap of my bag and slides it off my shoulder. It hits the floor with a spine-tingling thud. The air between us is thick with unspoken words, like the moment just before a storm. It’s heavy with something inevitable.

“Ask me again,” he says in a whisper so quiet I might have imagined it.

Because I’m focused entirely on the shrinking spaces between us, it takes a moment to remember, but when I do, I whisper back, “What do you want, West?”

The amber rings in his eyes are nearly swallowed by his pupils. “I suck at talking. Can I show you?”

I couldn’t answer even if I knew what to say. I’m trapped in his gaze, an insistent hum of want stripping me of verbal dexterity. A linguistic blank where my brain used to be.

I can only nod. He takes half a step toward me, and I take half a step back until my spine hits bookshelves. I silently curse my nerves, because now West is looking at me with an arched brow. I’m inexperienced at this and too awkward by half. Exasperated with myself, I exhale a laugh as he watches me carefully. Waiting. My tongue darts out to lick my lips, and his eyes follow the movement. I nod again, hoping he understands what the gesture means.

His expression softens in apparent understanding, and his hands come up to rest on the shelves on either side of my head, bracketing me in. He tips his head down, and his lips press lightly against mine before he pulls back. “I wanted to do that,” he says, answering a question I asked in a different lifetime. A lifetime where I had not yet been kissed by West Emerson.

He leans in again, his thumb brushing the mole above my lip before he peppers hot, openmouthed kisses against my lips. Once. Twice. Three times. He swipes his questioning tongue across my lower lip, and I realize that he is kissing me while I stand frozen. I gasp, opening my mouth for him, and when his tongue slips between my teeth, his left hand moves from the bookshelf to slide into my hair, angling my face up toward him. When he starts to pull back, an embarrassing protest comes from my mouth, and I clutch the front of his shirt and pull him toward me, chasing his tongue with my own.

He exhales a laugh, and I feel his smile under my lips. It only lasts a second before he’s kissing me again, his mouth relentless. We stay locked in this position until my fingers ache from grasping his shirt and my spine hurts from digging into the bookshelf, but I won’t be the one to break the heady contact, and I don’t know how to maneuver us into a new position. My free hand itches to touch him, to run my fingers up his chest and over his throat, but I’m not brave enough to do it, so it hangs limply by my side. I’ll give up breathing if it means we get to keep doing this, kissing until we pass out, with West’s fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of my neck and his lips firmly on mine.

He pulls back for air, too soon and nearly too late, and heaves in a jagged breath. He rests his forehead against mine as I force oxygen to return to my vital organs.

“You could have done that outside,” I murmur, bringing us back to a conversation I barely remember.

Another smile breaks across his face, and I get to see this one. It strikes like lightning, brief but brilliant. “Not the way I want to,” he whispers. This time I’m ready, and I push up to my toes to meet his mouth. My arms wrap around his neck, and his hand drops from the bookshelf. His palm flattens across my lower back, pressing us together. My chest and hips flatten against his body.

“You’re not a fan of PDA. Noted,” I say, silently marveling at the contrast: the restraint that brought us across campus to this private spot in the library and the utter dissolution of it now.

“I’m a fan of anything that involves you, Jupiter,” he breathes between kisses. “I’ll kiss you anywhere you let me.”

I feel like I’m on fire; West is singeing all my edges. It’s the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life, and that thought has me pulling away with a gasp. “I’ve been doing it all wrong.”

He narrows his eyes. “I really beg to differ.”

“Not this.” My hand is cupped on the back of his neck, and I apply pressure until my lips are against his ear. “Writing kiss scenes.”

His eyelids flutter closed as he presses his lips to my neck, and I shiver against him. He cinches me tighter in his arms and trails kisses from my earlobe down. “Happy to help,” he says, and this time, I feel his smile in the hollow of my collarbone before he chases it with a breath of hot air and a firm kiss. And another. And another. I dissolve slowly in layers, melting into him, and when the earth shifts beneath me, I feel like I’m slipping over the edge of something steep.