Faster We Burn

stairs.
     
    Katie
     
    After much begging, Lottie finally agreed to my makeover idea. I was looking forward to it until Trish started grilling me about Stryker.
    I didn’t know how much of what we were doing she knew, but from the way Lottie and Audrey talked, they’d put him in my ‘boyfriend’ box already. I didn’t tell them it wasn’t like that because, to be honest, I didn’t want them to think less of me. They were both so sweet and innocent when it came to that. I couldn’t imagine Lottie ever having a strictly physical relationship and Audrey had been engaged for Christ’s sake. Commitment wasn’t one of her problems.
    They’d been treating me with delicacy ever since the whole Zack thing. If I thought they talked about me behind my back before, that was nothing compared to after, especially when I was always going over to Stryker’s.
    So I settled on the ‘it’s complicated’ box and let them think what they wanted. They always thought the best of me, which was part of the problem. I hated that they saw the best in me, expected the best, because inevitably I would disappoint them. It always happened.
    I was having trouble sleeping, and kept waking Lottie up from nightmares about Zack. I had a voicemail from his mother saying how sorry she was for everything. I wanted to delete it, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t really her fault her son was an abusive, psychotic d-bag.
    Stryker honored my request that our relationship be ‘just sex.’ I would text him or call him, we’d meet somewhere, fuck and then one of us would leave. Sometimes we wouldn’t say a word. I liked it better that way. No talking, no music, no soul-sharing. The one thing I wished I could get him to stop doing was look at me. Those damn green eyes had this way of searing into me like a searchlight. I never felt more naked than when he was looking directly at me.
    The therapist, Dr. Sandrich, turned out to be a pretty decent guy. He didn’t push me to talk about anything I didn’t want to, so I was free to make things up and pretend I was talking about my feelings. He knew, but he just listened and after my hour was over he shook my hand and let me go. I was always waiting for him to call me on my bullshit, but he never did.
    I had to go to court to talk about what Zack did to me. It was humiliating and traumatic and all the worse because my parents were there and they both cried and all I wanted was for the courthouse to catch fire and destroy us all. The only good part was seeing Zack in handcuffs. Of course, his stepfather had bailed him out so he was free from jail for now, but on a tight leash, and he’d been kicked out of school. I took comfort in the hour of driving that separated us now.
    One way or another, Zack and I were done, period. I was moving forward, or at least taking one step forward for every two steps back, until I saw that I had a missed call from Lottie after my anthropology class one afternoon. I’d started getting involved in my classes again, and I’d come to find I actually enjoyed most of them. There was something comforting about sitting in a lecture hall, listening to someone else speak, taking notes, letting the information wash over you. I didn’t have to think about anything else. Just listen.
    “Hey, what’s up?” It wasn’t like her to call me in the middle of the day for something silly. She usually just texted me for stuff like that.
    “Hey, I just wanted to let you know what’s going on. Zack called Zan and he’s drunk and he’s in a park somewhere and Zan called the police so Zack is getting arrested. Again.” I stopped walking, causing a pileup on the sidewalk that got me nasty looks and more than a few curse words thrown at me.
    “What?”
    “Yeah, I debated about calling you, but I didn’t want you to be out of the loop. We’re going back to the dorm now. Where are you?” I heard Zan and Will talking in the background. Arguing, it sounded like.
    “I just left anthro. I’ll be there in five,” I said, picking up my pace. That guy just didn’t know when to say when, the fucker. Maybe this time they’d put him in jail and he’d stay there, where he belonged. The Zack I knew, the one who pointed out the constellations and made me all knee-watery wasn’t real. I’d probably known that all along, but it took him punching me in the face for me to really see it, once and for all.
    No wonder my parents thought I needed therapy.
    Lottie hug-attacked me the second I