by Sarina Bowen
“Bridge,” I gasped, tasting bile in my throat. I was still stunned to see him. If only the world would slow down for a few minutes so I could catch up with everything that had just happened.
The sound of my voice seemed to change his focus. He wheeled away from Spunky and stood before me. Bridger took my hands in his, inspecting my wrists. He pulled me into a hug. “Did he hurt you? Jesus, I’ll kill him.”
That’s when the tears began running down my face, and Bridger wiped them away with his thumbs. But I wasn’t really afraid, just overwrought. About everything. And Bridger had no idea. Angry, I pushed him away. “No. Don’t touch me.”
He stepped back, shock on his face. “Christ, Scarlet. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“You,” I squealed. “Why are you here? Why were you there, in that bar? With who? I’m just your Tuesday and Thursday girl…”
I broke off, gasping now. Even as my sobs gathered steam, I knew I was making an ass of myself. But I was too drunk to reign it in. I stood there, right on Elm Street, having an ugly cry.
“Where is it, Scarlet?”
Bridger was trying to ask me a question, but I was too busy sobbing to hear him. I wiped my nose on my sleeve.
He wrapped an arm around my back, and I let him. I allowed it, because crying while very drunk wasn’t as easy as you’d think. The ground beneath my feet had begun to sway in unpredictable ways. But Bridger held me tight, and it felt so freaking good. And that only made me cry harder. Damn. It. All.
“Your phone, Scarlet. Did you lose it?”
“At home,” I gulped. “Why?”
“Because I’ve been calling you for hours,” he sighed. “I got an unexpected free pass tonight. So I started calling you before seven, right up until the minute I saw you in that bar. Go look at your phone. You’ll see.”
“Ohhhh,” I moaned, the word long and shuddery.
Bridger pulled me to his side and started to lead me down the sidewalk. “How did you get into such a state? Do you always get wasted on Friday nights?”
I shook my head violently. “Never. Which is why I feel so… urgh.”
“Let’s get you home, then,” he said, steering me across the street. “You have your key card?”
I nodded with my whole drunken body. The way a horse nods.
“Okay,” he chuckled. “Come on.”
We’d almost made it home when a war broke out in my stomach. As we walked across Freshman Court, the schnapps began fighting the popcorn, and I couldn’t tell who was winning. But I, for one, was losing. “Bridger, I think… ugh.” I swerved away from him, took two staggered steps, and managed to aim my vomit into the shrubbery. “Oh,” I wailed, as much from the humiliation as from the discomfort.
Bridger gathered my hair together and held it for me. “You’ll be okay,” he said, with actual humor in his voice. “We’ve all been there.”
“Not me,” I said. “I don’t do this.”
Behind me, he let out another enormous sight. “Okay, you know what? We’re going to write off this entire night.”
“Are we?” I stood up again, fishing through my pockets for a tissue. No such luck. The best I could come up with was a receipt for a cup of coffee I’d bought. So that’s what I used to wipe my mouth.
Sexy.
“Henceforth,” he said, “we shall refer to this as The Most Pointless Night Ever. It’s just one more example of my good luck. Getting this one night’s reprieve…”
“And me not answering the phone,” I mumbled. “It’s all my fault.”
“Not at all,” he sighed. “I should have known about tonight before, but I didn’t read the… never mind. Let’s get you upstairs before that happens again.”
“Again?” I whimpered.
“Probably.”
Since the Katies were still at the bar, my room was dark and quiet. Bridger walked me into my bedroom. “Where are your PJs?” he asked.
Not willing to act helpless, I grabbed my sweats from a drawer. Bridger turned around to give me privacy, and I couldn’t decide whether or not I appreciated the gesture. In my recent fantasies, he was less of a gentleman. Maybe I was such a repulsive drunk that he didn’t want to look.
Getting out of my jeans was proving very difficult for some reason.
“Scarlet,” Bridger said as I flailed in the dark, “you should probably take off your shoes first.”
Right. That would help, wouldn’t it?
“Okay, all set,” I was finally able to say. “Now I want to brush my teeth.”
“I’ll bet you do.” He picked up my bathroom caddy and pointed at the door.
The fluorescent lights of the bathroom were an assault on my eyes. “Ouch.”
“Ouch,” Bridger agreed, handing me my toothbrush. There was toothpaste on it already.
“Thank you,” I sighed.
“Now, hop in there,” he said a few minutes later, pointing at my bed. Bridger had filled a cup of water, which he set on my nightstand.
“Only if you’ll stay for a minute,” I whined. Even as I said it, an ache began to creep across my temples.
He tossed his coat onto Katie’s bed and kicked off his shoes. Then he actually dropped himself over my prone body and into the space between me and the wall. He put his nose in my hair and his arm around my waist.
“Nice,” I said.
He kissed the back of my head in reply.
It was dark, and Bridger was in my bed. In spite of my foul stomach and the beginnings of a nasty headache, I craved his touch. Wiggling in the tight space, I flopped onto my back and then turned to face him. His chest was warm and firm under my hands. I stroked the scruff of his whiskers, then pulled his head towards mine.
He gave me the gentlest of kisses, and then pulled back.
Unsatisfied, I hoisted my floppy body onto an elbow, leaned forward and planted one on him, square on the lips. If only to defend himself from my assault, his big hand landed on my ribcage, his thumb grazing my breast. This time, Bridger gave in and kissed me back.
The dark, his warm body, and a drunken lack of inhibition all crested at once. When our tongues met, a jolt of desire shot through me. The moan I let out was probably not very ladylike, but it had the intended effect. Bridger deepened our kiss.
Suddenly, it was no longer okay with me that I was trapped under the comforter and he was not. I slid out of the bed and then dropped back on top of it again, climbing onto Bridger as he rolled onto his back. Kissing him, I settled onto his hips. His big hands cupped my bottom, pulling me in tight. Spread out over his warm body, each point of contact made me tingle. I could feel him under my breasts, my knees, my thighs. My… everywhere.
And he felt it too. Never mind that he was still kissing me in a way that was more polite than I wished. His body gave him away. As unfamiliar as I was with male desire, there was no mistaking the solid form of him, pressing against the fly of his jeans, lying just between my legs. My hips, acting without my conscious consent, rolled closer to him. My body wanted contact, right now.
Bridger groaned deep in his throat. Then he rolled me off of him, putting some space between us. Panting, he said, “let’s stop.”
“Don’t want to,” I said. The room was spinning. But I managed to find the fly of his jeans with two hands.
“Oh no you don’t,” he sighed, catching my hands in his own. “Not tonight, Scarlet. Not when we’re both drunk.”
“You’re drunk? I can’t tell.”
He laughed. “I’m better at it than you. But seriously, we can’t.”
“Why?” I’m pretty sure it came out as a whine.
He pushed my hair away from my face, and the gesture was so sweet that I felt my eyes tear up. “Because,” he whispered. “When we do, if we ever get to, I want you to remember it the next day.”
“Don’t say if,” I cried, the tears falling.
“Sorry, Scarlet. But in my life there’s a big fat gap between what I want and what I can actually have. And I don’t see how that�
��s going to change any time soon.”
“It just sucks,” I shuddered.
“It does,” he agreed. “It absolutely and totally sucks.”
Bridger left soon after that. And, coming down off my adrenaline rush, I felt ill again and ran to the toilet. Eventually, I took the two Advil he’d left out for me, and slept about ten hours, only to wake to the most crushing headache I’d ever experienced.
When I finally turned on my phone, around noon, it was to find that Bridger had peppered me with texts and calls for three hours. Just like he’d said he had done.
Disgusted with myself, I tossed the phone aside. Then buried my aching head in my hands.
— Bridger
Sunday morning I woke up halfway when Lucy began to wiggle on her mattress, which lay on the floor beside my bed. Keeping my eyes slammed shut, I rolled into my pillow. We’d been sharing a room for more than three months now, so the week had a rhythm to it. On the weekends, my sister woke up at seven, which was just the same time she woke up on school days. So while I ignored her, she would get up to putter around, sneaking extra time for cartoons on my computer while I pretended not to notice.
I was just dozing off again when her little voice quavered up to me. “Bridge…?”
“Hrrmff,” I said.
“I don’t feel so good.”
My consciousness buzzed to life in a hurry then. Because Lucy was not a complainer. I opened my eyes, startled to realize that it was still dark in our little room. It wasn’t even morning.
“Bridge…”
And then I heard a telltale gurgle, and was on my feet even before my brain caught up. In the dark, I jumped over the corner of Lucy’s mattress to grab the wastebasket from under my desk. But Lulu had also taken action, lurching toward the door. She made it as far as the door handle before bending over to hurl on the floorboards.
Diving forward, I caught the second heave in the trashcan. Lucy began to cry before she even stopped puking.
“Aw, buddy,” I sighed, pulling her hair out of her face. “You’re okay. It sucks, but it’ll stop.” This was the second time in forty-eight hours that I’d comforted a puking female. Go figure.
“I… threw… up… on your shoe,” she sobbed.
Christ, she did. Fuck my life.
“It’s okay.” I kicked the offending shoe aside and opened the door. “Quiet, all right?” I whispered. Not that anyone else was going to be awake at five o-fucking-clock on a Sunday to hear us. I steered her into the bathroom. “Rinse out your mouth, but spit, okay? Don’t drink the water, even if you’re thirsty.”
“Why?”
“Because your tummy is pissed off right now. Trust me.”
“You said a swear.” Her voice was small.
I turned on the tap for her. “You can say one, too. Anyone who’s throwing up gets a free swear.”
“Shit,” Lucy said.
“Good one.” I cleaned out the trashcan, which took a few minutes. But now I had to see to the floor inside my room. “Lucy, stay here for a minute, would you? Just in case it happens again.”
Obediently, she slid down the tile wall until her little butt hit the floor.
“Be right back.” I reeled several long sheets of the coarse brown paper towel out of the dispenser on the wall and went to take care of some business. To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t that bad. When you’d drunk as much as I had the past two years, a little puke wasn’t that big of a deal.
When I came back into the bathroom, Lucy was leaning over the bowl, hands on the toilet seat, her little body heaving. There were tear tracks down her face. But her crying was silent.
Even puking her guts out in the predawn hours, Lucy knew the rules. She was supposed to stay quiet. Because children weren’t allowed to live here.
“Rinse one more time,” I said when it finally stopped. “And let’s wash your hands.” Seeing her hands on a toilet seat shared by four guys gave me the willies.
Afterwards, I steered her back into the room. Fishing one of my clean t-shirts out of my dresser drawer, I said, “strip.” She yanked her P.J. top off, and I dropped the men’s size large over her little shoulders. The shirt hung past her knees.
“Lulu, the trash can is going to be right here, okay?” I set it beside her mattress. “Let’s try to get a little more sleep. Your stomach might leave you alone now.” Weary, I stretched out onto my bed.
Lucy sunk down onto her mattress and wrestled her covers. “Bridge?” Her voice was shaky.
I sat up quickly. “Do you need the bucket?”
In the dark, she swung her head from side to side. And then her small shoulders hunched over and I could hear her crying again.
“Come here.”
About one point five seconds later, she was in my bed, her skinny arms latched around my neck. I tucked her head under my chin, and began to think uncharitable thoughts. Namely: For the love of God, don’t let me catch this flu. Because we will be so very screwed.
As if we weren’t already.
“Shh,” I said. Because that’s what you say to a crying child when there’s no other comfort you can give. Her tears were beginning to soak through my t-shirt.
And then she opened her mouth and cut me in half. “I want Mama.”
Lucy hadn’t mentioned Mom for weeks. She was a smart little girl, who had followed me out of the only home she’d ever lived in without a backward glance. And I’d thought she was okay with it. But didn’t that just prove that I was an insensitive ass? She was eight. She wanted Mommy to hold her when she was ill. “Of course you do,” I whispered against the tightening of my throat.
Because you can’t help what your heart wants.
“We should tell her I’m sick,” Lucy muttered into my chest.
I waited for the familiar surge of anger I always felt when I thought about Mom. But instead of an anger tsunami, all I got was a sad little ripple. “It’s the middle of the night,” I explained, congratulating myself for providing a semi-logical excuse. Because I couldn’t tell Lucy the truth. That her mother was a drugged up bitch who didn’t give two shits about us.
The panicky, ill Lucy wanted to believe that Mom would somehow wake from her self-induced nightmare and pull herself together on account of a virus. But I knew she wouldn’t. And in the morning, Lucy would probably know it, too.
My sister fell asleep without saying anything more. But I just lay there, watching as the gray light crept in through the leaded windows. This year was just so fucking hard. And it wasn’t going to get any easier.
Being with Lucy wasn’t the hard part. I was thirteen years old when she was born — a surprise to my parents. But things were going well for my father’s plumbing business, and so we moved out of our apartment and into the little house on the outskirts of Harkness.
Because of Lucy, I’ve always been good with kids. I was the fifteen year old holding the toddler in the grocery store while my mother shopped. Lucy let my father teach her to tie her shoes, but she wanted me when it was time to take the training wheels off her bike. Her preschool graduation was on the same day as my high school graduation. There’s a picture somewhere of the two of us, both wearing caps and gowns.
She was easy company. Even at her worst — sick in the night — she wasn’t any trouble. But money was tight. Time was tight. And hiding her from everyone else was fucking killing me.
The stress monkeys began climbing around inside my head, swinging from problem to problem. Luckily, Lucy slept.
Chapter Seven: The Monkey Nutter
— Scarlet
When I saw Bridger again on Tuesday, he was pale and quiet. “Are you okay?” I asked him during Calculus.
“I feel off,” he said. “Though it might be nothing.”
But then, after music theory, he was still looking peaked. “I don’t think I can do lunch,” he said. “My head is killing me.”
“I have ibuprofen in my room,” I offered. “Do you want a couple?”
He sighed. “You know,
that would be great.”
Bridger climbed the Vanderberg stairs at half his usual speed. He sat on my bed, and I brought him a cup of water and two pills. “You look exhausted,” I said as he swallowed them. “If you put your head down for a few minutes, I promise not to jump you.”
His smile was weak. “I shouldn’t be here, Scarlet. There’s a 24-hour bug going around. I wouldn’t want you to catch it. Christ…” his eyes closed. Even as I watched, he grew paler. “Fuck a duck,” he said. Then he stood up and strode purposely out of the room. I heard the bathroom door open and shut. He didn’t return right away, although I heard the plumbing groan as he flushed the toilet a couple of times.
Eventually, he walked slowly back into the room, his face a gray color.
“You poor thing,” I said. “Is there anything I can get you?”
He shook his head. “I have to go.”
“Okay,” I said. “But you don’t look like somebody who’s ready to dash out of here. Give yourself a minute.”
He nodded, miserable. “I’ll just rest for a sec.” He slumped onto my bed, his head at the wrong end, his knees tucked up as if someone had punched him in the gut. He was the picture of misery.
“I’ll be out here if you need anything,” I said, taking my laptop into the common room.
Our suite was quiet that afternoon. So when Bridger began to snore, I could hear him. I lost myself in some research for my history paper until his watch began to beep. But unlike every other time, he didn’t shut it off. I got up and tiptoed to the threshold of the bedroom. He lay there asleep, his strong chest rising and falling while the timer complained.
There was no way that boy was going to make it to work — not in that state. I just couldn’t make myself wake him. And as I stood there hesitating, the alarm gave up too, silencing itself.
I went back to my homework. But thirty minutes later there was a groan from the bedroom. I heard a rustle, and then Bridger sprinted through the common room and into the bathroom again. Once more came the probable sounds of abdominal dismay, the flushing and washing and spitting. When he came back in, I opened my mouth to ask him if there was anything I could do. But that’s when he looked at his watch. “Shit!” he cursed. He stumbled back into my bedroom and fumbled with his backpack.