Girl Code Page 9

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Leo bellowed as he threw the chairs aside.

  I looked down at my hand and saw that I was bleeding. A piece of glass was lodged in the meaty part of my palm. I had forgotten all about the shattered glass of whiskey. Leo closed the distance between us in one large step and took a hold of my wrist.

  “Damn it, Tabitha,” he sighed heavily as he looked at my hand. Without any warning, he plucked the piece of glass out and threw it to the floor with the rest of the mess. “You’re so stupid,” he said as he began to guide me out of the room.

  “Don’t call me stupid!” I bristled.

  “You are stupid,” Leo snapped as he pulled me into the powder room. “You fell backward out of a chair into glass to avoid having that conversation. And to think, I’m the one who isn’t sober.”

  He had a point, so I remained silent as he did for me what I had done for him after the Rico Incident. Silently, he cleaned off the blood, plucked out a few more pieces of glass, and then bandaged my hand. When he finished, he stepped out of the bathroom and I followed. I stopped in the living room as he walked back into the kitchen. He reappeared a moment later with my car keys.

  “Your car is in perfect running order,” he said, suddenly appearing very sober. He dropped the keys into my uninjured hand.

  “Thank you.” My voice was so soft, I could barely hear it in my own ears. “How much do I owe you?”

  “I don’t want your money,” he said bitterly as his eyes met mine. He was angry and hurt and I was so damn sad that I did that to him. “I did it because you are my friend and I love…” he didn’t finish the sentence. He looked away from me.

  I looked at the keys in my hand to blink back tears. “You know why…” I whispered. “Leslie…”

  “The same reason why you couldn’t go to Homecoming with Seth,” Leo said scathingly, looking at me again. “Because he kissed Leslie in what…sixth grade? Right? The same reason you didn’t go out with Darren when he clearly liked you and you clearly liked him. Because he and Leslie went roller skating a few times during our first breakup.” Leo said the next few words slowly, loudly, and brutally. “Your stupid girl code is fucking bullshit. I thought that you were strong and brave, but you’re obviously not strong or brave enough to love me in spite of that fucked-up code that Leslie uses against you, to keep you right where the fuck she wants you. “

  I blinked rapidly to keep the tears away, but they came anyway. Embarrassed, angry, and hurt, I closed my hand over the keys and turned away from him. Leo did not stop me when I opened the front door and walked out, nor did he stop me from getting in my car and driving away. I was thankful for that.

  And disappointed.

  I lay in bed for hours that night, desperate for sleep to come so I could shut off my brain and stop feeling. I chewed on the end of my thumb until it started to hurt and then I just switched hands.

  God, was Leslie really just using the code against me? I had wanted to go with Seth to Homecoming my junior year. He was a fun guy, cute, and smart. We had a lot in common, who knew where it could have gone from there, but when I told Leslie about it, she had shaken her head and sang out “girl code, Tabby. No sloppy seconds!” I skipped the whole dance.

  I was into Darren at the end of the summer before our senior year started. Maybe part of it was because I was trying to forget what happened between me and Leo, but I knew that I liked Darren just because he was Darren. He made me laugh and he even went all old school on me and walked me to my classes—most of which we shared—and carried my backpack for me. Leslie actually pulled me aside during school once to ask me what the hell I was doing with Darren, and didn’t I remember that they had gone out a few times in tenth grade. Yeah, I remembered them going out a few times, but I didn’t remember those times being actual dates as much as they were just hanging out, but she seemed so put off by my activity with Darren that I shut him down later that day.

  So maybe those times I should have challenged the code and told Leslie how ludicrous she was being, but I wouldn’t dare challenge it this time. The first time Leo and I kissed, they were together; they were a couple. The last time they weren’t together, but they were high school sweethearts. I didn’t initiate the kisses, but I sure as hell didn’t beat Leo away. I didn’t need our ancient code to dictate to me how wrong it was. And what did he mean about being strong or brave enough? I couldn’t, at that time, understand what he meant by that. As it turned out, it took me many years to understand what Leo meant by that.

  I closed my eyes and soon drifted off into a restless sleep. I dreamed of Leo’s warm, electrifying kiss. When I woke up, I questioned the code, I questioned Leslie, and I questioned myself. I questioned everything but found no answers.

  Chapter Seven

  Valentine’s Day. I had a love/hate relationship with it. I loved the idea of roses, candies, and candlelit dinners, but the work to get those things was definitely the part I hated. Every year since I was sixteen, I scrounged around for a date. Sometimes I got one, sometimes not. Sometimes it was a decent date, sometimes it ended in a fistfight with a jealous ex-girlfriend—true story.

  For the V-Day in my second year of college, I didn’t try to get a date. School and work were taking me to a new level of weariness and I didn’t feel like doing the work. Instead, I decided to go with my roommate, Michelle, to a party at a frat house. I wasn’t really the partying type, but it was better than sitting in my room watching romantic movies and daydreaming about actors that will never come sweep me off of my feet.

  “Who is that?” Michelle asked me, nudging my elbow.

  “I don’t know,” I said absently, not even looking to where she pointed. I was looking at the guys of the fraternity. They were all dressed up as cupid, right down to the adult diaper and fake wings that actually looked like they were meant for a little girl’s fairy costume. Sexy.

  They also carried bows and arrows. From what I understood, if a guy gave a girl an arrow, it was an invitation for sex. I had two arrows in my hand. Not too shabby.

  “He keeps looking over here,” Michelle said, tapping my arm.

  Michelle was boy crazy. If I looked at every guy she pointed to in a day, I’d have to see a chiropractor to realign my neck, but I finally looked to where she indicated across the room at a cluster of people. At first, I didn’t see anyone looking our way and an accusation sat on the tip of my tongue, but then I saw what she had seen. He did look our way, and when our eyes met, I could not stop the surprised smile that sprung on my lips before hastily turning away.

  “Did you see?” Michelle asked, studying my face.

  “Yeah, I did,” I answered, hoping that the smile was completely gone.

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah, I know him.” And because I didn’t feel like elaborating, I left her standing there and drifted into another room.

  I wondered how he came to be there, on my campus. The last time I saw him was just before he left for Italy a year and a half earlier. He had come over to say goodbye after days of silence between us. Neither of us mentioned the second kiss or the argument we had, but our conversation had been short and stiff, and I remembered feeling like a piece of me had died when he left. We spoke on the phone a handful of times, and he sent me postcards from various places in Europe, but we hadn’t had a real Leo and Tabs conversation since that night at his house. I had not spoken to Leslie much, either. We met up a few times in Virginia, the halfway point for us, for long weekends, and if she happened to go home for a holiday or at all during the summer, she came to see me, but those times were becoming less and less.

  After about fifteen minutes, the familiar scents of the sea, leather, and citrus wrapped around me pleasantly, and a thin current of electricity zipped up my spine. I turned my head to him just as he stepped up beside me. He had gotten taller, broader, and more muscular. He looked like a budding Roman god—like if I gave him a little bit more time, he would be a full-fledged deistic hottie. I wasn’t the
only one who noticed how good-looking he was, judging by the rumored amount of women he’d slept with back in Jersey since returning from Europe a few months earlier.

  Leo didn’t even speak before he looked down at the arrows in my hand with his brow pinched together. He took them from me and dropped them in the cup of a frat kid-cupid as he passed by. The kid stopped and stared at his drink before glancing worriedly back at Leo.

  “You’re really cute in your diaper and all,” Leo said to the guy, “but you’re not my type, or hers. Make sure your friends know that none of you are her type.”

  The kid looked at me with a stupid-looking opened mouth for a moment. He was one of the guys that gave me an arrow. Leo smoothly shifted partially in front of me, making the poor kid gulp and run off.

  “You totally just blew my chances of taking home a baby man for the night,” I said dramatically.

  Leo’s smile was lopsided and sexy and inviting. “How about just a man, dolcezza?”

  I swallowed back my girlish giggle after seeing that searing hot smile and hearing him call me sweetheart in Italian. I shrugged and said, “As soon as you spot one, let me know.”

  “Oh, ha ha.” He laughed unappreciatively. Then the jokes were over and he was wrapping his arms around me and I was hanging on to him tightly, making sure that he was real.

  “I’ve missed the hell out of you,” he said against my hair.

  “I’ve missed the hell out of you, too.” I smiled. “What are you doing here?” I asked when we pulled apart.

  “My cousin is a student here,” he said, pointing to an olive skinned cherub across the room.

  “That asshole is your cousin?”

  Leo laughed. “Yeah, that’s Bobby.”

  “So, you came to visit Bobby?”

  “Not exactly,” he said with a small smile. “I am on my way to Florida and really, I’m just using Bobby as an excuse to be here to see you.”

  “You don’t need an excuse,” I said as quietly as I could in the loud house. “Especially an Asshole Bobby excuse. You could have just asked to come.”

  “Just so you could turn me down?” Leo snorted. “I don’t think so. I’m a sensitive guy, you know? I don’t handle rejection well.”

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that,” I said with a trace of bitterness.

  Leo sighed and looked around the room before setting his eyes on me again. “Look, can we just…get out of here? Go somewhere and talk?”

  “I came with my roommate,” I said. “I can’t just leave her here with all of these stupid, horny frat guys.”

  He seemed to understand that because he nodded twice. “Okay. I’ll hang out with you until you guys are ready to go. Then can we talk?”

  I toed a spot on the hardwood floor. “Talk about what?”

  “Just…talk. I want to catch up, see what you’ve been up to, tell you about my travels. I miss you. Despite everything else, I was still your second best friend.”

  I laughed softly and then met his smiling eyes. “Okay, sure.”

  He leaned forward and placed a lingering kiss on my forehead. “Thanks.”

  By the time Michelle was ready to leave, no less than eight girls had waltzed right up to Leo with their toothy smiles, fluttering eyelashes, and horny purring as if I wasn’t standing right next to him. They had no shame. I wasn’t dressed in slut gear and I was pretty plain looking in comparison, but how did they know I wasn’t his girlfriend? Leo sent them away disappointed every time, though, and whenever a guy so much as glanced my way, he would possessively wrap an arm around me.

  “You know, if you hang around too long, I’ll never ever have a date again,” I said to him as the three of us walked to his car. “Your scowling face along with the rumors about you being in the mafia that somehow spread in the last hour, will have men running away from me for the rest of my time here.”

  He grinned. “Perfect.”

  I socked him in the arm.

  After we got back to the apartment, I left Leo in the living room with Michelle while I showered off the stench of Frat Party eau de toilette—body odor, cheap cologne, beer, smoke, and idiocy. When I came out of the bathroom, the living room was empty and dark except for a sliver of light coming from a small night light plugged in that saved us from disaster during late night trips to the bathroom. A surge of panic leapt into my chest as I wondered if Leo had followed Michelle into her bedroom, but when I opened my own bedroom door, I found him lounging on my bed. His head was tilted back and his eyes were closed. He had kicked his shoes off and hung his coat over my desk chair. I was relieved and a bit nervous, but I stepped inside and quietly closed the door behind me.

  One of Leo’s eyes popped open for a moment before closing again.

  “Your roommate was putting the moves on me, so I changed venues.”

  I picked up a hairbrush and then sat on the edge of the bed, on the opposite side of Leo.

  “She does think you’re hot,” I said as I began to brush the tangles out of my damp hair. “I’m surprised you’re not in her bedroom. I heard about your track record back home. You’re breaking hearts all over the Tri-State Area.”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear, sweetheart,” Leo said with a smirk.

  “So, you’re not screwing around?”

  “Are you jealous?” he asked in a tone that made me think of a purring lion. “Because you can always take a ride on my—ow!”

  I whacked his arm with my brush.

  “Damn, Tacky,” Leo laughed, rubbing his arm. “All I was trying to say is that if you want a piece of the Pesciano Pastrami—damn it! Stop hitting me with that thing! You’re just upset because you’re not naked yet.”

  I raised my hand to hit him again, but he put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Don’t beat me.”

  “You’re still a pain in the ass,” I said, moving to sit beside him. I left as much space as possible between us without falling off of the bed.

  “You still love me, though.”

  “And that is still debatable. Tell me about Europe. You were only going to Italy for a couple of weeks and then you ended up being gone for a year.”

  Leo relaxed against the headboard again and folded his hands over his firm stomach.

  “I loved it there,” he said, smiling faintly. “It was so damn beautiful, more than I could have ever imagined. I loved the people and the culture, too. I think I would have been okay to stay just a couple of weeks if I had something to come home to, but I didn’t.”

  I didn’t miss how loaded that statement was, but I didn’t comment on it, either.

  I listened intently as Leo told me about his trek across Italy with his cousin Matteo. I laughed at the antics the boys got into, and gasped at the parts where they had clearly been in some kind of danger, even as Leo laughed. By the time he got to the part when he and Matteo had decided to go to France, I had braided my hair in one thick braid and burrowed myself under my blankets. Absently, as Leo sleepily continued his story, his fingers toyed with the end of my braid and I felt…content.

  I’m not sure what he was talking about or even if he was still awake when I fell asleep. I vaguely remembered feeling a warm body draping over mine, protectively and possessively.

  When I woke in the morning, Leo was behind me, one leg thrown over mine, a hand in my hair, and an arm banded over my waist. His face was in that small space between the curve of my shoulder and neck. His steady, even breaths were warm on my skin and I could feel his chest against my back, rising and falling. My body, as usual when I was close to Leo, hummed with energy.

  I wanted nothing more than to stay in that bed, wrapped in Leo for the rest of my day, but it was wrong. It was just as wrong as kissing him, regardless of how it made the butterflies awaken in my stomach, and despite the warmth and comfort his body brought to me. Besides, I had to get up and get to class.

  “Where you going?” Leo mumbled as I tried to disentangle myself from his body.

  “I hav
e two classes this morning, then work and then another class,” I said, getting to my feet.

  “So, what time will you be home tonight? I’m not finished with you yet, little girl. You have to still hear about the French whore house.”

  I looked at him over my shoulder. My expression must have been one of disdain because Leo laughed.

  “How long are you staying in L.S.D.?” I asked, pulling a sweater out of my closet.

  “I’ll be in Lower Slower Delaware until I’m ready to leave. I’m not on any timetable. I’ll come by tonight when you’re done with class.”

  “I’ll be tired,” I said, finding a pair of pants.

  “I’ll take whatever time you can give me.” He gave me a warm, sleepy smile.

  “What are you going to do all day while I’m gone?”

  “I’ll meet up with Bobby this afternoon.” He shrugged a shoulder. “I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Great, now get out of my bed,” I said before exiting the room.

  After I changed my clothes and grabbed a Pop Tart out of the kitchen, I went back into my room to finish getting ready. Leo didn’t get out of my bed. In fact, he had curled up with the pillow I had occupied all night and he was already asleep again. When my mind started to imagine crawling back into bed with him, I shook my head of the thought and got myself together.

  “I wish I had a life of leisure and could sleep all day,” I muttered to myself.

  Just for kicks, I set my alarm clock on the most obnoxious setting and put it on the bed just behind Leo’s back. I giggled to myself as I headed out the door, imagining Leo’s violent reaction to the blaring alarm clock that was due to go off in a matter of minutes.