Yours Cruelly (Paper Cuts #2), page 11
“Ah.”
As I start to close the door, I expect he’ll argue. Because don’t we always argue?
But he simply says, “All right, Stassi. Goodnight.”
Guilt sinks its teeth into me as I shut the door. I feel terrible. He gave me this thoughtful gift and I was abrupt. Also, a jerk. As I lean my back against the wall, I hear him go to his place and close the door. Immediately I begin thinking of all the ways I could’ve played that better—starting with a wardrobe choice that doesn’t make me look like a bag lady.
“You know, you’re making it worse,” Mad says.
I look over to see her staring at me, shaking her head with disapproval.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I just know guys,” she says as I go to the couch and collapse next to her, carefully placing his gift on the coffee table.
I stare at her, waiting for the punch line. “Oh, you do? How did I not know you were the wise Knower of Men? Before Joe, you used to say that you were going to be a crazy spinster lady.”
Before Joe, we had a lot more in common. She and I used to agree that guys, as a whole, sucked, and that one should always proceed with caution around them. But apparently, Prince Charming Joe has completely changed her mind.
“Well, I’ll still be crazy. Anyway, I thought you were going to bed?”
“No. I just told him that so he’d leave. I’m going to read another chapter of my wonderful D book and eat all your noodles,” I declare as if it’s an edict handed down from on high, opening up my book with great flourish. But something she said gnaws at me, and I can’t stop thinking of the way he’d looked at me, those emerald greens piercing me deep. “What did you mean by I’m making it worse?”
She shrugs. “He’s going to chase you even more because you’re playing hard to get.”
I snort and glare at Doctor Zhivago. I don’t know if I’ve ever disliked a book more, but I have to hand it to him—it’s one hell of a gesture.
“He can chase me all he wants,” I say, “but he’s never going to catch me.”
14
Alec
Well, that was pointless.
As I step into my cold, empty apartment, I curse myself. I’m out $350, and for what? Did I really think Stassi would be so overwhelmed with gratitude she’d jump into bed with me for Round Two? Over a book?
Truthfully, deep down, I wasn’t expecting much more. Stassi’s too complicated to be wooed by a thing like that. That’s why I stopped by the liquor store on the way home and got a six-pack to keep me company tonight—I knew Stassi wouldn’t be.
I go to the kitchen and crack open a Sea Dog, taking a long, thirsty gulp.
Dread starts to seep in as I imagine spending tonight the way I’ve spent the last eight: alone.
Growing up, I was always the life of the party. The one people gravitated to. The fun didn’t start until I arrived, and it ended as soon as I left. I had a steady stream of girlfriends all through high school. I was never good at being by myself. But these past few weeks before I moved back, that’s exactly what I’ve been, and it’s gnawing at me.
The dark, seventies-paneled walls that surround me feel like they’re closing in.
Beer in hand, I escape to the balcony in the back, overlooking the quad. No one goes out here, especially since it’s winter and single-digits. People use their outdoor spaces as storage for their snow-covered grills and bicycles and whatever other shit doesn’t fit inside their place. All I have out here is a shaky lawn chair left behind by the previous tenant. I brush off the snow and sink into it.
I should’ve known one night of fun and a signed book wouldn’t be enough for Stassi to change her mind about me. They say actions speak louder than words, but those emails and notes I gave her all those years ago have done a hell of a lot of damage.
Despite all the shit I gave her back then, I wasn’t always awful.
Once, I’d noticed her in the computer lab, typing away while I was on the way to a hockey game. She was a studious freshman and this was before the whole Yours Cruelly thing started. I’d tapped on the glass to get her attention, but that didn’t work. So I came up behind her and gave her a little goose, and she jumped sky high.
“What are you doing?” I’d asked, teasing, like we always did with her.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” she’d snapped and went right back to work.
I’d been a little taken aback, since she never used that tone with me, but then I figured she was just in a mood.
So I’d watched her for a little while, remembering the times she used to tag along after us, always wanting to be in our shadow. We’d called her Static Cling. I thought I’d be nice. I said, “I’m going to the game. It’s the last home one before the championship. You want to come with? I’ll drive you to the rink and then you can get a ride home with your brothers.”
I swear she looked at me like I had horns sprouting from my head. “Now why would I ever do that? With you?”
I can’t remember when it changed, when she stopped wanting to be with us all the time and decided to go her own way. But she looked at me like I was a piece of shit on her shoe. I hadn’t been able to change her mind then when she was fifteen—and I sure as hell am not now that she’s a full-grown woman.
Getting her into bed with me a couple weeks ago wasn’t about changing her mind. She did what she wanted to. Always. And who knows why she did it. The woman has always been an unsolvable riddle.
Maybe she fucked me as an FU to her brothers.
Maybe she fucked me to show me what I couldn’t have, ever again because she hates me.
A signed book isn’t going to change that.
It’s cold, my breath puffing out in a white cloud, but the beer warms me. I tilt my head, looking toward her balcony. There’s an old cruiser bicycle there, with a big basket—like the one Stassi used to ride around the neighborhood, up and down the cul-de-sac that ended at the ocean. We used to hum the Wicked Witch of the West theme music whenever she pedaled by.
God, we were assholes.
I have to wonder if things would be different had I taken an alternate approach to her. I could’ve been the wholesome boy next door, the kid who held open doors for her, saved a seat in the cafeteria for her, and treated her like a princess. But Cooper and Aidan wouldn’t have allowed me to be that guy. On the surface, I might have looked like their ringleader, but that was because I knew how they wanted me to act to her. Plenty of guys at school had tried to be sweet to Stassi, and they always got their asses kicked in return. It’s not that they wanted guys to be assholes to her, though—they just wanted to be the only ones who had any contact with her, good or bad. And I was honored to be admitted into their inner circle—I was one of the select few allowed to give Stassi Hutton shit, so I wore that badge with pride, taking advantage as often as possible.
Until Jonathan.
That lucky bastard prick didn’t know how good he had it.
As much as I loathed the guy, I could see what Stassi saw in him. He was good-looking, generally well-liked, and had a way of wrapping people around his finger—teachers, coaches, girls. Two years younger than the Hutton boys and me, he was a naturally talented athlete. He was varsity from freshman year and probably could’ve been NHL if he’d wanted it enough. The kid was smart, too—he was a shoo-in for valedictorian his graduating year. Cooper and Aidan had taken a shine to him right away, brought him under their wings.
In a lot of ways, he was a lot like me.
But what I’ve never been able to understand was how he was able to convince Aidan and Cooper he was good enough for Stassi.
Maybe because he was a fake piece of shit.
I even tried to tell them that, but it was like talking to two brick walls. They didn’t want to hear it. They were too blinded by his charms to be able to see him clearly. I tried to point out all his red flags until I was blue in the face, then I stopped wasting my breath.
Shortly after that, Jonathan ratcheted things up a notch—at times, I’m certain, to spite me.
He knew I was onto him.
Which is why he had zero problems snorting coke in front of me in the locker room or bragging about sending dick pics to random girls on his phone. He knew if I ever opened my mouth, no one would believe me anyway. But everything took a turn for the worse the night that I found him getting head from Tori Meltz behind the bushes at a hockey house party. And when I asked him what the fuck he thought he was doing?
Jonathan laughed at me.
He told me I was a pussy, a third-rate hockey player, a nobody.
He told me I was jealous of what he had, that I was so green, it was all over my face.
The worst part? He was goddamn right.
Because to this day, I know it should’ve been me.
And if it had been, things would’ve been different.
It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but Jonathan Cole was a fuckhead—a fuckhead who managed to maintain his phony mirage for almost three years until the drowning accident that took his life.
After that, it didn’t feel right to tell Stassi what I knew.
Especially after what happened that night.
He might have been a fuckhead, but he didn’t deserve to die.
15
Stassi
I wake with a stomachache the next morning.
Part of it’s the noodles. I ate way too many of them. But part of it is also my insufferable neighbor.
I roll over in bed and look over at the copy of Doctor Zhivago. I’d wanted to throw it straight in the trash, but the book nerd in me couldn’t do that.
It’s a first edition! Signed!
I bet anything Alec knew that. He knew that I’d have to hold it dear. He wanted to plant a reminder of him, front and center in my life so that while I may be able to close the blinds and ignore him whenever he walks outside, I can’t ignore what’s right in front of my face.
Grabbing the book, I shove it deep under my bed.
But damned if it doesn’t start to feel like the beating heart in that Edgar Allen Poe story.
Maybe I can give it to someone? Return it to the bookstore and give him his money back?
It’d be the right thing to do. But until I can get to Portland, I need to keep it somewhere.
Pulling it out, I stalk around the house, looking for someplace to keep it. Eventually, I settle on the unused cabinet above the refrigerator. It’s not used because neither of us can reach in there. I have to drag a chair over to the fridge in order to access it. Then I shove the book in there and wipe my hands together.
Done.
As I’m standing at the coffee machine, congratulating myself for having disposed of the Doctor Zhivago threat for the time being, I look over at the front door and notice a white triangle sticking out from under the front door.
I hop from the chair, contemplating it like a foe I need to take down. As I get closer, it looks more and more like the thing I feared it was.
A note. I can see the lines on the paper. It’s folded in half, and whoever wrote it pushed too hard because I can see the imprint of the words inside. A single word is written on the outside.
Stassi.
Oh no.
I do as I usually do when I receive an Alec note. I freeze. My fingers shake.
Then I grab it and tell myself I will not care, no matter what he says. He does not matter to me. I am rubber. Whatever he says will bounce right off me.
Roses are red, violets are blue
I can’t stop thinking of the other night, up for round two?
Yours Cruelly,
Alec
PS—My number is 555-262-8825
Contrary to what I’d hoped, the words do not bounce off me. I absorb them fully, like a sponge, unable to keep the heat from creeping into my cheeks and … other places.
Crumpling the letter in my palm, I toss it in the trash and go to grab my coffee.
“What was that?” Mad says, sweeping into the kitchen in her bathrobe, hair wrapped in a towel.
“What was what?” I say casually.
“You were killing that paper. And you’re all red,” she says, marching over to the trash and lifting the lid. “Let me guess. It’s from McDreamy or McSteamy or whatever he calls himself?”
Before I can argue, she fishes it out and reads it. “Wait. Round two?”
I wince.
“Round two implies there was a round one. You slept with him, and you never told me?” She’s pouting now, horrified that I’ve broken the best friend code. “What’s wrong with you? Was he that bad?”
“No. He was that good.” I slump into a chair at the kitchen table, wanting to cry. Because now I’m thinking about it. And up until now, I’d been doing pretty well at moving past it. Now, it’s right there in my face.
“What? Then what’s the problem?” she shouts at me. “You’re crazy for not wanting to have some fun with him! Why wouldn’t you? Because Dangerous Lesions is so much better?”
I stare into my coffee. Mad was never much of a reader. “Liaisons.”
“Whatever! You know what you are? Boring.”
I look up. “Harsh.”
“Yes, but it’s no way to live life, always playing it safe. You’re not willing to take a risk, because you know what I think? You’re afraid of happiness.”
She’s right about that. I won’t take risks, but not because I’m afraid of happiness. I’m pretty much convinced happiness just won’t happen, for me no matter what I do. Look at Jonathan. Look at my last ex, Mason. With each of them, I thought I’d found true, everlasting happiness.
I was wrong.
And odds are Alec Mansfield isn’t going to be the one to break the chain. He’s already put new dings in my poor heart, a heart already so fragile from being broken and patched up again. If I let him get any closer, it’ll never recover.
“You don’t understand. Having fun with this guy is like playing with fire.” I push away from the table and stand. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this anymore and I have to shower.”
Mad looks up at the clock. “I thought you said you’re working the afternoon shift. You don’t have to go into work for three hours.”
“I know, I need a cold shower.”
As I stomp off, I try not to think of that round two. But of course, it’s all I think about. More delicious hate sex with Alec. Kissing and biting and sucking and having orgasm after amazing orgasm with that hot piece of man flesh. A total risk. He knows too much about me, and he knows my weaknesses. He knows when I have my guard down.
A memory floods in as I run the water, trying to get it hot. My first few months at Sapphire Shores High were the worst. I didn’t fit in with anyone outside of Tenley and Campbell. My parents had suggested that Cooper and Aidan show me around and try to help me fit in, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t interested in being friends with anyone in their circle. When I wasn’t with my two best friends, I spent most of my time buried in the computer lab, working. Grades felt like the one thing I could control. It wasn’t long after that, though, that I’d started getting all these terrible anonymous messages from Yours Cruelly, starting with, Roses are red, violets are blue, your glasses make you look like you’re 82.
It was the lowest point in my life.
And then a text message pinged my cell.
It was something innocuous at first. Hi, I think.
And the sender had a local area code, but it wasn’t programmed in my phone.
I remember looking around, wondering who’d sent it. But I’d been alone in the room. The person send a second message after that, something like, How are you doing?
I know, I was silly. But I was alone. Hardly anyone spoke to me. They thought I was nerdy. And I guess I was. So this anonymous person, paying attention to me, excited me. That person seemed to care about me more than anyone else in my life. They asked me questions about who I was, what I liked. They cared about me. I was naïve, never thinking the person could hurt me.
Eventually I started to think of that person as my friend. My only friend. I even told them about Yours Cruelly.
They told me that people were just jealous because they saw something in me that they didn’t have. They told me I was beautiful. They told me they stayed anonymous because they were afraid of rejection. As if I, the major reject, had the capacity to reject anyone?
And then they asked me to the homecoming dance.
By then, we’d been chatting for weeks, telling each other the intimate details of our lives. According to him, he went to school with me, saw me in the halls. He played sports, but wasn’t really jazzed by any of them. He felt like he was in a prison, bound by peoples’ expectations of him, so he couldn’t reveal himself to me. I felt like we understood each other. I’d never been in love before, but that felt like it. Butterflies and all.
So I said yes, that I would love to go to the dance with him. I even turned down Rob Conrad, who cornered me in the cafeteria after months of sneaking looks my way. He was cute and I’d have said yes if I hadn’t already committed to someone else. Rob seemed crushed, but I was so excited about finally meeting my mystery guy I didn’t have time to worry about it.
But the next day, my mystery guy went silent.
I texted him, over and over again, thinking I’d done something wrong.
The dance came and went. I even dressed up for it in case he showed up and I sat on the stoop outside, hoping as hard as I could as my brothers, Alec, and their dates took pictures in the front yard.
Months later, I finally pieced it all together. I figured out who that anonymous person was.
I also realized I had done something wrong: I’d been born into his best friends’ family.
I’d always had the suspicion that Alec was Yours Cruelly—cold, evil, unfeeling. But he was also my anonymous texter, too—sweet, understanding. Bound by peoples’ expectations of him. I knew how his parents rode his back about academics. Played several sports, but not really jazzed by any of them. Alec was captain, but he was always self-deprecating. He always gave more credit to my brothers, said they were better.
