“Well, get inside. Hanging out in the hall is just weird.”
Nathan and I follow orders like someone caught us doing what we might have been doing if Jay hadn’t turned off the shower at the exact moment he did. Not that I’m into cheating, nor have I ever considered it, but my body doesn’t seem to want to listen to my brain since Nathan showed up in my life. Jay stoops to check his hair in the mirror above the dresser. Maybe what I always took for indifference or obliviousness in Jay is confidence with a dose of possessiveness simmering just below the surface. I’ve never given him a reason to distrust me, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen flashes of his temper.
“Do you play any sports, Vale?” Jay asks Nathan.
“Not really,” he says. “I’ve skied before but never on a team.”
Jay seems more interested in this news. He turns to survey Nathan as if trying to decide if he could keep up on the slopes or not. “We need alternates for the ski team. Tryouts are next week after classes. I had the newbs hang posters around campus if you need the where and when.”
“Because it’s too hard to tell me yourself, you want me to look for a poster?”
“Geez, lazy much?” Jay moves his history and math book on his desk and finds a spare flyer underneath. He holds it out to Nathan. “Here. And you call me entitled.”
“Jay. Behave,” I warn.
“What are you talking about, Mer? I always behave.” Jay wanders over and wraps his arms around my waist from behind before leaning around to plant a kiss half on my mouth, half on my cheek. Instead of relaxing into his arms, I stiffen. It feels like he’s trying to remind Nathan of what is his—me. I squirm in his grasp, but it just makes Jay tighten his arms instead of letting me go.
“Let go, Jay, I’m not your property!” The words are out before I realize it’s my voice saying them. I pry his fingers apart and escape to stand by the still-open door. “I don’t need you acting all macho sexist caveman over me. It’s embarrassing.”
“Macho sexist caveman?” Jay rolls his eyes. “Please, Mer, if I acted all macho sexist caveman over you, you’d know. Since when does being happy to see my girlfriend and wanting to stand close to her make me a macho sexist caveman?”
“You know I’m not into PDA. It makes me uncomfortable.”
He crosses his arms over his chest. He’s heard what he considers a lot of excuses from me over the last two years with public and non-public displays of affection. “A lot of things make you uncomfortable, Mer.”
“Why don’t you back off, Jameson?” Nathan comes to my rescue. “She said she’s uncomfortable with how you were acting, end of story. That’s all she should need to tell you. Meredith doesn’t owe you an explanation, and you shouldn’t expect one from her. Like she said, she’s not your property, so back off.”
“Oh, this will be a real fun semester sharing a room with you,” Jay sneers. “Any more pearls of wisdom you’d like to share since you seem to think you know so much about me and my relationship, newbie?”
“Just treat her right.”
“And if I don’t?” he challenges.
“Then don’t be surprised if someone else steals her out from under your macho sexist caveman nose.”
“Someone like you?” Jay smirks. I can’t tell if he’s amused or bored. Nathan, to his credit, continues to stand up for himself.
“Yeah, someone like me.”
“Are you both through?” I do my best to make my voice icy, so they get the point that I’m not happy with their behavior. “If you’ve worked the snippy fighting out of your systems, can you two at least try to get along? I’d add ‘for me,’ but that would probably start World War III.”
“Hey, I can be mature if the newbie can.” Jay sticks out his hand to shake on it. “We only have to live together; we don’t have to like each other.”
“I think that’s the most intelligent thing you’ve said since we met.” Nathan reaches out to accept Jay’s offered hand. “We don’t have to like each other; we only have to live together.”
Once I’m back inside my dorm, I turn my school clothes into a pile of khaki and green on the floor and change into sweatpants and a t-shirt. I crawl into bed and lie staring at the ceiling. My mind replays the events of the last two days. Nathan’s accident, the weirdness in the rotunda, the even weirder-ness that Nathan and I connected so much while Nathan was in the hospital, and the heavy tension in Jay’s room.
I don’t know what it is, but ever since I met Nathan, I feel more confident in sticking up for myself and voicing my opinion. Two days won’t erase a lifetime of patterns, but I’ll start with baby steps. Jay and I have a pattern I feel stuck in. He suggests something, I agree, he’s happy, I’m not unhappy, but I’m not happy either. I don’t know how to make myself happy all the time. I feel Nathan has suggestions, if I’m willing to listen.
It might be just me, but Nathan seemed more upset about me leaving than Jay did. Before leaving their dorm, I stood around waiting for Jay or even Nathan to override my insistence I needed to study for my English Lit test. Normally, I say something, people ignore it. That is my life. When neither did, I left, but waited outside the door expecting to hear some horrific fight between them. Or one (or both) of the boys to come after me. All was quiet and the door stayed shut. I waited a minute or two before heading off down the hall to the staircase that leads to my room on the third floor.
And now I’m lying on my bed, not studying, and thinking of Nathan instead of my boyfriend. Two days. It’s not much time to know someone. I feel like I know Nathan better in two days than I know Jay after two years. Nathan and I click. I can’t think of another way to describe it. It doesn’t feel like two days. It feels like forever.
All of Nathan’s talk of trusting fate might be a defense mechanism, but maybe there’s something more to it. He was super perceptive with how things run in my life. I’m always the good daughter, the good girlfriend, but all that hides an unhappy girl under the perfect exterior. How could Nathan know that if he didn’t know me on some deep-down spiritual soul level? Maybe there is something to his talk of dreams and lessons learned (or not learned) from the past. Maybe I shouldn’t brush it aside so easily and listen—really listen—and learn.
“Do I really want to go poking around the past if it’s going to affect the present?” I ask out loud to reassure myself that I’m here in the present and not stuck on the past. “I’m Meredith, not Mercy.”
Abigail suddenly appears beside my bed. I sit up, startled. No matter how many times I’ve seen my ghost maid appear and disappear, I always jolt at the sight of someone materializing out of thin air.
“Abigail! Can’t you warn me before you do that?”
“Sorry.” She shimmers slightly. “What has Nathan told you? Does he remember?”
“Remember what?” I ask.
She opens her mouth, hesitates, then shakes her head. “I’ve said too much already. What happened to Mercy and Nate is not my story to tell.”