A glimmer of light pours through the curtains and rouses me just enough to let me know I've got one hell of a power headache pumping through my skull.
I let Ally talk me into hanging out with her at the party last night, well after Lauren disappeared with Cal. Turns out, no matter how hard I tried to bring him to his so-called cheating knees, he held onto his resolve and, apparently, his relationship. Lauren burst out of the closet and the rest was make-up sex history.
Of course, I'll have to confess everything to Cruise since it's his friend from the gym, or things are bound to get really weird the next time Cal's around.
I pull my hair into a ponytail and head to the kitchen. There's a plate on the table loaded with eggs and bacon, two slices of my favorite kind of toast, and my heart melts. The way Cruise loves me is indescribable. It feels like heaven to be cared for like this.
There's a note set to the side.
Going for a walk, be right back.
I don't hesitate slipping on my boots and coat before heading out the door. I need to collect my morning kiss. It's practically a necessary vitamin to kick-start the day.
The air outside is crisp. The wind picks up and wraps itself around my bare neck like a scarf made of icicles. If it weren't for Cruise, I'd literally be freezing to death and homeless. I guess I should be thankful Pennington didn't have the foresight to get me keyed in with the housing department - thankful for his beer bong emergency that cropped up at the last minute. It's so strange how it all worked out. It's as if destiny stepped in and arranged every coincidence to work in our favor.
If ever there were a couple that was meant to be, it's Cruise and me.
Voices buzz through the shrubbery, and I follow the sound over to a dirt trail.
"But I don't love her anymore." Cruise's voice resonates loud and clear through the thicket, it reverberates through my skull like some horrible gong. Who doesn't he love?
I lean into the fat trunk of a pine - my heart already blistering from his words. Surely, they weren't meant for me. I peer over at him, seated next to his father.
"I regret every last thing," he continues. "Honestly, I don't know what I ever saw in her. I don't even think she's pretty." His voice escalates as if he just woke up from a long hibernation and wasn't satisfied with what he found lying in his bed. "She's totally screwed up on the inside. I'm sure she'll blame it on daddy issues, and now she's got her mother all over my back. If I regret one thing, it's ever asking her to marry me."
My heart pulsates through me like a series of grenades. It thumps through my ears until the world warps to the deafening sound of a jungle drum.
I stagger backward and trip over a root. The ground jolts, the entire universe spins on its axis as I gather what strength I have left and head back to the house.
Tears pour like rain for the first twenty minutes, as an entire cyclone of emotion rips through me. I hadn't seen the storm on the horizon. There was no time to batten down the hatches. Cruise doesn't love me anymore, and now he's sorry he ever put this ring on my finger.
I'm numb inside, a shell of who I was just an hour ago. I segue into the hiccupping, slap-cheek red phase of the ugly cry, but I need to pull it together.
I sent a text to Ally. She said I could crash with her for a while. There's no way I'm staying in the bed and breakfast with his family, even if Mom, herself, has already taken up residency there. I'll fill her in on my trauma some other day. Besides, I don't think I could get the words to vomit from my throat, not with this boulder of pain Cruise lodged in it.
The door jiggles, and everything in me freezes. I wipe down my face with my T-shirt and brace myself for what I have to do next.
Cruise walks in and beams a sad smile while taking off his jacket. He looks resplendent, divine. How I ever thought someone as godlike as Cruise Elton could love me, want me, just shows how hard I've fallen.
"Look who's up?" If I didn't know better I'd think he was hurt, but it seems like I'm the only one hurting in this equation. He does a double take at my suitcase, packed and ready to roll by my side. "What's going on?" His features transform with genuine surprise, and I'm almost sold on the fact he's aching to see me stay, but I know better.
"Just heading to Ally's." I shrug, running my fingers through the back of my hair as if he didn't just cut my heart out with the knife of his tongue and unwittingly serve it to me for breakfast. "You know, just getting out of your way. Rumor has it your ex is interested in patching things up."
"That's what I hear." He rides his eyes up my body, slow, suspicious.
"So, I guess that means you're still into her." My heart sinks - you could tie it to my neck and throw me into the sea with the millstone it's become in such a short time.
His brows dip as if to protest the idea. "Are you into other guys, Kenny?" His strangled gaze remains unmovable.
I take a breath and hold it.
What's happening? This is, Cruise. A few short hours ago, I would have bet my life that we were Garrison's next power couple, and now here we are, frying each other on the skillet, searing our hatred over one another for the hell of it.
Those hurtful words I overheard this morning waft through my mind like the stench from a rotting corpse.
"Maybe I am into other guys," I say it low. "That's how this whole mess started, remember?"
His chest lurches as if he were going to laugh - cry, but he aborts the effort. "I guess I trained you well."
"Guess you did." I glance down at his grandmother's ring still gracing my finger and gently pluck it off. He doesn't stop me or beg me not to do it with some impassioned plea, which only solidifies what I heard him say.
This right here - this stabbing rejection is real. Cruise and all his love for me was just another illusion. I jumped into love believing it was a battleship that would withstand the test of time when all it turned out to be was a paper boat that dissolved to nothing beneath my feet.
"I suppose this was just a test," I say, holding up the platinum band a moment before placing it on the table. "I guess I failed because a player never commits."
Cruise closes his eyes an inordinate amount of time and takes a breath that goes on for miles. "Look, I get it. You're not ready. You're in college - you're young. You want to see what's out there."
His lips tremble, and for a minute I think he's going to tell me this is all some joke, that he still loves me, that I should put that ring back on right this fucking minute, but he doesn't. Cruise is somehow trying to pass all this off on me because he's too chicken shit to admit the fact he's over us - that he never thought I was pretty - that I'm prone to blame everything on my screwed up fatherless childhood.
"Maybe in the future." He takes a step forward, and I retract. "Maybe we can see where things lead."
My heart implodes. This is it. The big kiss off. Cruise Elton has the balls to look me straight in the eye and offer me "someday" while hacking down any fantasy I might have had about forever.
"Fuck off, Cruise." I wheel my luggage past him at breakneck speed and open the door to the icy world waiting to comfort me with its barbed wire embrace.
Tears bubble to the surface, and I refuse to do him the honor by letting them fall.
"Kenny, wait," he pleads.
My feet somehow find the strength to carry me over the threshold one last time. I glance back at him - his gorgeous frame stains itself like a bookmark in my mind. I never want to forget how bad falling in love can hurt - how quick the jagged granite comes up after you dive from the cliff.
"My name is Kendall," I stammer. "But don't worry. You won't have to use it. I won't be hanging around too much longer."
I toss my shit in the car and speed the hell away from the Elton Bed and Breakfast where hearts are stolen and returned mutilated on a whim.
I drive down several miles until I come upon a sign that reads, Now leavening Carrington. Please visit us again!
Carrington was beautiful, but its lessons were harsh. It watched with eager anticipation as its prized son cut out my heart with a rusted razor for the hell of it. The world tried to warn me, but I wouldn't listen. I wanted the fairytale, the fantasy of it all. I wanted to be the princess that Cruise told me I was. I bought the lie, and my heart was thrown back in my face. I came to Carrington with a heart of glass, and Cruise crushed it under his heel. But today, as I leave Cruise and Carrington behind for good, I trade that heart of glass for a heart of stone.
No one will ever hurt me again.
I'll make damn sure of it.
I pull off behind a row of Junipers and sob my eyes out for the next several hours.
My maxim comes back like a haunting refrain - love never works out in the end.
I hate that I was right.
Cruise
What the fuck just happened?
I stagger over to the door and stare at the empty space where her car sat a moment ago. A plume of dust rises over the hill from the direction she sped off in. I step back into the house, panting - my heart threatening to evict itself from my chest. I should have fought for her. I should have laid down my pride and dropped to my knees, begged her to have me - hell, pencil me in on Tuesdays if she wanted.
Who was that imposter? It couldn't have been Kenny. Maybe she's got a twin, and she's punking me.
Then I see it. Neatly laid out over the sofa is the wool coat I gave her. Her boots sit on the hearth as if she were suggesting I use them for fuel.
A hard roll of nausea cycles through me. How could I have let this happen? Then again, how could I not? I'm Catastrophe Cruise, and fucking up relationships seems to be my specialty. Although it wasn't me who cheated with Blair, and it wasn't me who cheated with Kenny. But I would tolerate just about anything Kenny dished out just to be a part of her life. I'd take the leftovers of her love on every day that ends in Y if she let me. That's how far I've drifted from the person who built his life around ideals, when high standards and morals were the order of the day.
The baseball bat I keep in the corner catches my eye. I speed over and choke the shit out of it like my life depended on it - hell, my sanity. I blow out every fucking window in this psychotic love shack of ours - shatter them to millions of pieces just like Kenny shattered my heart.
True to her word, Kenny doesn't show for class that week or the following week after that. She doesn't return my calls, and her mother manages to give me to the cold shoulder each time I've bumped into her.
I've been holing up in the bowels of the bed and breakfast, going over the books, as if I weren't depressed enough already. Just as I suspected, Mom has let a few bills go unpaid, and now the creditors are breathing down our necks. I assured her I'd take over. There's no point in delaying the inevitable. The only question is, how am I going to handle school and running a fulltime business.
On Wednesday there's a note on my desk, and for a moment my adrenaline skyrockets.
Mandatory meeting. My office 3:30. Dr. Barney.
For sure not the note I was hoping for. I was looking forward to something a little more erotic in nature with a big fat heart and a giant K gracing the bottom of the page. I've been fantasizing all week how she'd sneak into my room - that this had all been some great ploy to initiate the world's greatest make-up sex.
At 3:30 on the button, I stroll into Dr. Barney's office and try to forget about the constant ache gnawing at me ever since Kenny rolled her suitcase out of my life. I press out a manufactured smile and nod into the tired looking man who holds my fellowship in his hands. I must be early because the rest of the seats are suspiciously empty. Either that or this is a private pow-wow. He probably wants to tell me how proud he is of me, handling Bradshaw's class with one hand tied behind my scholastic back.
"Mr. Elton." Dr. Barney raises his chin and expertly peers down his nose at me. He's plumped up a bit, and his age spots have spread evenly over his face giving him a tanned complexion. "I'm most devastated by some news that's recently come to my attention."
"Shit." I hiss it out low. "Is Bradshaw all right?" What the hell am I saying? Obviously, Bradshaw is not all right.
"Professor Bradshaw is in remission." He pulls back his lips, and his double chin quivers with anger. "Cruise, this news involves you, and, unfortunately, not you alone."
He slides an enlarged photo across the table and my blood runs cold with just one look.
It's Kenny and me that day back in my classroom. Her sweater dips past her bottom, her legs curve around my back, perfectly pale. My face is buried in her neck, and I can still feel the pleasure coursing through my veins as if I were reliving it.
He slides another shot my way. The tower stares back at me with its long, erect neck, the bony structure of the globe. Then a zoomed shot. You can't see Kenny, just my coat as I help her into the center of the steel-caged world.
"And this." He slips me another picture of the tower, this time a close up of my face lost in ecstasy - Kenny's long mane whipping over my neck. "Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"
I stare down at them - Kenny and I in these compromising positions - her beautiful hair, her feathered skin, those lips I'd die to cover with mine just one last time.
What I'd really like to say is, can I have these? I'd like to spread them over my bed - lay over them naked, frame them, replicate them, and wallpaper my new crappy room with a dizzying pattern of who we once were - all of our adventures surrounding me like an erotic kaleidoscope.
"Now that I've rendered you speechless" - he rasps his knuckles over his desk - "I've one other thing to show you."
This time it's a simple sheet of paper he slides over - the revised syllabus I made just for her.
Fuck.
"How did you get this?"
"A young lady dropped them by, early this afternoon."
Kenny? But how would she take the pictures? Most likely Blair and I wouldn't put it past her to riffle through Kenny's things and steal what she needed. I hold up the syllabus as exhibit A.
"Cruise, I'm sorry to have to do this, but your brief teaching career has come to a rather ignoble demise. Not only that, but I've had to report my findings to the board. We've unanimously agreed - your fellowship has been revoked. You've been expelled from Garrison."
His words come to me in snatches. The room warps in and out, and I'm ready to bang my head over the table in the most literal fucking sense because all of my bad luck has managed to come crashing around me at once. The funny thing is, none of this bullshit matters.
"I'm sorry I've disappointed you, Dr. Barney." I rise to my feet and take a breath.
"You don't seem too broken up about it."
"I'm not." I press it out in a fit of honesty. "I lost the most important thing in my life last week - this is just a superficial wound in comparison." The brevity of truth gives me pause. "I'm sorry if I've insulted you."
"She asked me to give you this." He hands me a small folded note.
I unravel it to find the words, Consider yourself played.
Friday afternoon, I manage to crawl out from under my mother's watchful eye and head to the gym with the intention of tormenting every muscle in my body. I let her know I'm taking back the bed and breakfast. I'm ratcheting up the marketing to a whole new level and even suggested she air out those rooms because she can damn well expect more than a few guests. I plan on getting the financial cogs moving again. Maybe if I had more monetary stability in my life. Maybe then...
I wish I could I say I was over Kenny - nose to the wind, I'll catch another bus and all that good to go bullshit, but she branded herself over my heart, my mind. She haunts my dreams, my waking hours. Kenny is the ghost, the one that got away. I have a feeling I'll be wanting her, yearning for her long into my golden years until I take that eternal nap, and even then, I won't be put out of my misery.
I get a text from Pen as I stroll into the gym.
It's on like Donkey Kong. Alpha Sigma Phi tonight. See U there.
My stomach does a revolution.
Alpha Sigma Phi. That's where it all started for Kenny and me.
Cal spots me as I walk into the weight room and heads over with a spring in his step. I bet he's got a blowjob story I'm not going to believe.
"Long time no see," he chirps.
"It's on my calendar to beat the shit out of you," I say, taking a seat on the Frankensteined workout equipment. I'm not really in the mood to confront him about what I saw that night at Delta.
"What the hell for?" He pops a foot up on the wheel and begins tying his shoe - his fucking shoe like it's no big deal. It makes me feel like shoving mine right up his ass. "So, I got some news - Lauren says I passed the test." He hikes his brows like this should mean something.
"What test?" I down my water bottle to keep from socking him in the nuts.
He ticks his head as though this were big news. "The ambush hookup, the lover's limbo - how low can you go?" He holds his hands out like he's about to fly away, and I wish he would. "You know, relationship test."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Not that I care. It's not like I'm passing any relationship test anytime soon.
"Lauren. She sicced that hot girlfriend of yours on me, then watched me sweat it out. I turned her down flat, and Lauren jumped out of the fucking closet like a psychotic P.I. But it was cute. It means she loves me."
My insides pinch to life. My face fills with heat as a surge of excitement races through my veins.
"Kenny said Lauren asked her to do her a favor," I say it mostly to myself. "You think that was it?" My entire body feels light as a feather, and my heart detonates in me like a rapid-fire assault weapon.
"Probably." He bobs his head like this were just another conversation - as if my entire existence didn't just point right back to Kendall Jordan, the great love of my life. "So, it looks like I'll be joining you on that unfortunate walk down the aisle, buddy." He slaps me over the back, solid and secure, without any notion there was something amiss with our relationship this past week. "I nearly fell off the mattress when she asked, but who the hell am I to let a good thing go to waste?"
I look up at him startled.
"Congratulations." I smile for the first time since Kenny left, and my heart soars from the effort. I bet she didn't write that note either. "I gotta run." I spike to my feet. "Do me a favor - ask Lauren to bring Kenny to Sigma Phi tonight. And whatever you do, don't tell Kenny I'll be there." My feet fly to the door. I'm walking on air.
"Where you going?" Cal shouts with a wild look on his face.
"I've got to call someone about getting some windows fixed."