Rm W/a Vu (2 page)

Annoyance and notes of anger course through my veins. I’m actually surprised I’m not angrier about uncovering his unfaithfulness, actually. Weird. I let my bag fall from my shoulder, catching the strap in my hand and swinging it at him. It connects with his shoulder even though he tries to shield himself from it. “You lying, cheating sack of
shit
!” I look at Delilah and point, my eyes narrowing and my nose scrunching up as my lips curl up into a snarl. “And you. You fucking bitch.”

“Juliette,” she says, holding her hands up because I’m sure she thinks I’m going to assault her with my heavy book bag next. The thought never crosses my mind, though. Strangling her? Well, that’s another story… “It’s not what you think.”

I laugh dryly, just once. “Oh, it’s not? Well, I feel pretty damn foolish, then,” I say, stepping into the room and flinging my bag on my bed. Ben seems almost relieved, like Delilah’s really been able to convince me that damn quickly. I’m sure to nip that shit in the bud immediately.

Crossing my arms, I turn to them and sneer. “So,” I say, “you like it dirty…
big boy
?” I can see Ben swallow thickly. “Yeah.
That’s
what I thought. And to think I was going to offer to…” I can’t even finish the sentence without my stomach rolling.

“Juliette…” His tone is soft, like he’s trying to appeal to some part of me that’s sympathetic. Won’t he be surprised to find that no such part exists.

Shaking my head, I walk to my dresser to grab a few things. “Save it. Honestly, I don’t even care that the two of you are…whatever you are. You made this really easy on me. You two are perfect for each other. I’m out of here. Delilah, the room’s yours. Have a nice fucking life.” The double entendre isn’t intended, but it’s more than fitting. “I’ll be back for the rest of my stuff as soon as I’ve made other arrangements. Touch any of it, and you’ll wish you hadn’t. You’ve already taken something of mine; I’d say I’ve been more than generous.”

I throw my bag back over my shoulder and stalk toward the still-open door. People are no longer walking by; they’re standing in the doorway, blocking my escape. I’m still receiving sympathetic stares, but I don’t want their sympathy; I just want to get the hell out before I break down. Though, if I’m being honest, I’m too angry to cry; I don’t even feel the sting of tears in my eyes.

Pushing my way past the gawkers in the dorm hall, I proceed to our R.A.’s room. I really hope she can move me into another room as soon as possible. It’s the middle of the semester, and I know it’ll be tough, but I’m not above hoping for a miracle.

My knuckles barely touch the wooden door before it’s yanked open. It’s almost as if she was expecting me. “Juliette, what can I do for you?” Daphne asks with a smile that brightens her green eyes.

“Daph, you have to help me out. I need to move out of my dorm. Please tell me you’ve got another room or bed available somewhere.” I flop down on her bed and let my heavy bag fall to the floor with a heavy thud.

Daphne leans against her desk, pulling her shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair into a ponytail. She looks at me, but she doesn’t speak for a minute. She’s trying to figure out what’s happened. Yes, she’s my R.A., but Daphne Robicheaux is also one of my closest friends. We met last year and started hanging out whenever we weren’t busy with our studies.

“Is Delilah’s revolving door of men still active?” she asks carefully.

I laugh, turning my head to her. “Something like that.” Daphne’s eyebrows rise, waiting for me to continue. “Her latest customer was Ben.
My
Ben.” Her eyebrows stay up, but her mouth falls open. “Yeah. That was my reaction too.”

A loud, repetitive knock on Daphne’s door fills the room. She shakes her head and pushes off the desk to answer it. It shouldn’t surprise me to hear Ben’s voice, and I refuse to get up to go talk to him when he
commands
Daphne to send me out.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you, Connely,” Daphne tells him fiercely. I can almost visualize her feral stare as she looks two feet up into his eyes, and it makes me smile.

“Don’t start with me. I want to talk to her now.” He sounds angry, which is laughable.

I push myself off the bed, walk to the door, and touch Daphne’s shoulder. Slowly, she turns and looks at me. “I’m going to go and stay with my parents. You’ll call me if something opens up?” While I know that Daphne would gladly let me crash in her dorm for a few days, I don’t want to run the risk of another run-in with Ben or Delilah. What better way to avoid that than to stay with my over-protective father?

“Juliette…” I ignore Ben as I squeeze through the very narrow space he’s left between him and the doorframe.

People are still staring, and it doesn’t help that Ben is following me through the dorm and out to my car, yelling my name the entire time. There’s a part of me that wants to turn around and tell him to screw off, but I know it will only open the lines of communication. And talking to him isn’t something I ever want to do again.

“God damn it, Juliette!”

I stop dead in my tracks, right next to my car, and turn on my heel to glare at him. “Don’t you
dare
talk to me like that, Ben. I didn’t do anything wrong. You’d do well to remember that.”

“You were never around!” he shouts, waving his arms in the air like a maniac. Our audience has followed us outside and is now watching our little soap opera play out. “You were always off doing something, and were so pre-occupied whenever we were together.”

My eyes widen, and I stare at him dumbly before I find my words. “So this is my fault? No. I don’t think so.” Shaking my head almost violently, I turn and unlock my old, green Civic before throwing my bag in. Instead of staying on the white leather seat, it falls to the floor after hitting the passenger side door. “And for your information, it’s not like I was off doing some
one
. I was studying. We are in college, you know. It’s what we do.”

Ben doesn’t seem to think he was wrong. At all. “Yeah, well, I have needs, Juliette.”

“Yup, I know.” I nod, pressing my lips together. “And it’s no longer up to me to meet them. Don’t come by my parents’ house either. My dad doesn’t take too kindly to people who cheat on his daughter.”

I hop into my car and start it up. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel the blood pulsing through my veins, can hear it in my ears. I sit there for a minute, trying to stop the shaking in my hands before I put the vehicle into drive. Driving all the way to my parents’ place isn’t something I want to do, as it’s a longer commute than I would like, but I really have no other options at this point.

Once I feel a little more in control, I put the car in gear and am just pulling away when a very large hand flattens against my window with a
BANG!
“JULIETTE!” I pretend not to hear him, pretend not to see him, and I press my foot down on the accelerator, my tires squealing against the hot pavement.

As soon as I’m out of the parking lot, I grab my phone from my pocket and dial my mom. I’m really hoping they won’t mind me intruding for a while until Daphne can find me a new dorm room.

There’s no answer, so I decide to try my luck. Mom’s probably at the bakery doing payroll or something, so I probably have a couple of hours of quiet before I’ll have to explain anything to her. I toss my phone on the seat next to me. It starts ringing, and one glance shows me that it’s Ben. It shocks me that he’s still trying to get me to understand his motivation for banging my roommate. Resisting the urge to toss it out the window, I pick the phone up and turn it off completely because I know now that he’s not going to stop. He’s always been a persistent bastard.

As I navigate the streets of Phoenix, I think about how we even got to this point. A year ago, I had been a freshman at the West campus of ASU. I hadn’t known many people because most of my friends decided to go to various colleges around the country—some even in England. I stayed close to home mainly because I loved Phoenix.

It was on my first day that my roommate, Tanis, introduced me to her older brother Ben. He was charming and always cooking up excuses to stop by our room to “check on his baby sister.” Of course, I would later find out that he knew she was in class, and it was just his excuse to come talk to me.

I hadn’t dated anyone before—not really. There was a boy in high school that was nice to me. We went out on a couple of movie dates with friends and held hands. But it was never really serious. We never even got to second. I found out after graduation that he was gay.

Talk about a blow to one’s ego; I questioned my femininity for a while after that.

When Ben and I started dating, it was obvious that he wanted a more physical relationship, but I wasn’t really interested in sex at first. My mom had me straight out of high school, and that wasn’t a life I would have chosen for myself. So I waited.

I placated Ben for a while, nervous to go further than I was ready for. I’d let him feel me up, get his hand in my pants, and eventually, when I thought I was ready, we had sex. It was all right. Like I said before, there weren’t stars or fireworks that went off like I was led to believe there would be, and, honestly? I thought it was supposed to last longer. Of course, I really had nothing to base it on; Ben seemed to enjoy himself, so I figured maybe it was just me.

We had fun in the beginning; he’d take me to all the parties, introduce me to all of his friends, and then we’d go back to his dorm and fool around. My freshman year was my party year, but when my sophomore year came around the corner, I knew I had to buckle down. So, I increased my course-load, and Ben seemed really supportive. He didn’t stop his partying ways, but he supported me and led me to believe that it was okay that I was focusing more on my studies than him.

Well, now I know it’s because Delilah was busy diddling him.

Releasing a deep sigh, I round the corner onto my parents’ street and park my car along the curb. Dad’s cruiser is in the driveway next to mom’s SUV, and I look at the clock on my newly installed CD player to see that it’s nearly dinnertime. I don’t relish telling my mom what happened, and I look even less forward to Dad hearing about it too. But I know it’s going to happen, so I take a deep breath, grab my phone and backpack, and climb out of my vehicle.

I fiddle with my keys as I ascend the steps of the front porch, trying to locate the key to the house. When I find it, I slide it into the deadbolt and turn it, pushing the door open and stepping over the threshold.

“Oh, Cam. That’s it. Oh yeah…right there.”

“OHMYGOD!” I scream, completely horrified at having walked in on them…
again.
My timing really is horrible. I’m starting to wonder if I should wear a bell or announce my presence to the world. I’ll bet my dad even has a bullhorn I can borrow for such things.

Through my periphery, I can barely see my mother fall off the couch—where I unfortunately assume my father is laying—and I slap my hand up to act as a blinder between them and me.

“What the hell is wrong with the two of you?! Jesus!” Naturally, I don’t wait around for an answer before I bolt up the stairs and slam my bedroom door.

Nothing in my room has changed since the day I moved out—just as my parents promised. My twin bed remains dressed in deep blue linens; my desk sits near the window, empty because I took my laptop with me to school; and my dresser is in the corner, topped with a mirror and various candles. I don’t give myself the opportunity to soak up the familiarity of the room before I flop down on my bed and pull my pillow over my head. There’s a brief moment of time where I wonder if I can asphyxiate myself until I pass out. Maybe the lack of oxygen to my brain will trigger amnesia.

There’s a light knock on my door, and I recognize it instantly as my mother’s.

 “Go away!” I cry into the pillow. I’m sure she doesn’t hear me, because the door creaks as she opens it and my bed dips at my knees beneath her weight.

 “I didn’t realize you were coming home,” she says as if it’s an excuse to act like a teenager. “Your father came home for—”

I yank my pillow away from my face and gawk at her. “Oh, I know what he came home for.”

Mom shakes her head with a sly smirk, her dark hair flowing freely around her face. “
Dinner
. Your father came home for dinner. He’s working the graveyard tonight.”

 “And you decided that dessert should come first.” The minute the sentence leaves my mouth, a queasy feeling rolls through my stomach, and I bring the pillow back up to my face, pressing harder than before.

Before I can successfully suffocate myself, the pillow is torn from my grasp, and my mother stares deep into my eyes. “What’s going on?”

It’s hard not to spill my guts to her because she’s just so damn easy to talk to. So I sit up, cross my legs like a pretzel in front of me, and begin to tell her what happened with Ben. She pushes my long brown hair behind my shoulders as I speak, and I’m shocked when she doesn’t seem too surprised. I really thought she’d liked him when I had introduced them. Apparently, I was wrong.

 “He’s an idiot. I always knew you could do better.” This is just one of the many things she tells me. Oddly, it comforts me.

 “Honestly, I haven’t even cried. Is that weird? I mean, I thought when someone you loved did something like that, you cried…”

Mom laughs heartily, placing her hand on my knee. “Oh, honey. I’d be willing to bet you never really loved that boy. Trust me, when you fall in love, you’ll know it.” I’m confused, so all I do is stare as she gets this wistful look in her blue eyes. “He will be your entire world. Just being away from him will feel like the end of your world, and when you’re reunited, you’ll feel a sense of total completion.”

 “Sounds a little
Jerry Maguire
to me,” I mumble.

With a one-shouldered shrug, she stands from the bed. “Maybe. But you’ll understand one of these days.”

I am quick to disagree as she pulls me to my feet and from my room for dinner. “Nope. I’m giving up on relationships. I’m going to focus on school and my career. I don’t need a man.”