Page 74 of Damnation
“I–I’m not planning anything. I–I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Logan tries to say, his hands pushing against Thomas’s wrist in a futile attempt to free himself.
“Thomas, enough, please, just leave him alone.” I shove my way between the two of them and try to separate them, but Thomas won’t let me.
“You know. You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he insists, sneering in such a malevolent way that it makes my skin crawl. Then Thomas steps back and, never taking his eyes off of Logan, allows him to go with a promise contained in his menacing stare:You are a dead man.
Logan staggers away from us. His breathing is shallow, and he’sstifling a cough as he rubs his neck with one hand. His face is purple, twisted with fear. I stare helplessly at him, completely desolate.
Once we’re alone, Thomas rests his hand on the trunk but otherwise remains still. He doesn’t speak and neither do I. I watch his chest rhythmically rising and falling as I wring my hands and chew on my bottom lip. Finally, I get up the courage to speak. “You shouldn’t have done that. He only came here to apologize…” I point out, aware of the risk I’m running. But there is no way I’m going to just excuse his violence.
Thomas takes a cigarette out of his pack, lights it, and inhales greedily. “You’re right,” he says. “I should have done much worse.”
Without another word, he starts off for a low wall, far from the chaos that surrounds us. I follow him unthinkingly. He sits down, breathing in cigarette smoke and flicking the ash between his feet. “I only asked you for one thing. Just one. To stay away from him.” He looks up at me. “How is that so difficult for you?” His voice is thick with anger.
I take a cautious step closer to him. “I did stay away from him. And you know that. But this morning, when I was offered a tutoring position, I didn’t know that he was the student. If I knew—”
“What would you have done?” he interrupts me brusquely. “Would you have said no?”
“Of course I would have!”
“Then do it now.” He shrugs irritably. “Say no.”
I give him a bewildered look. Is he seriously asking me to give up an academic project just because he can’t control his jealousy? That’s wrong! Inevitably, that conversation I had with Logan before the game pops into my head. Is what he suggested about us true? Does Thomas really get the final say in all my decisions? And am I going to let him? I don’t want it to be that way between us. He has no right to make choices about my life; I’m his girlfriend, not his property.
“I need the extracurricular,” I answer decisively, crossing my arms over my chest and not even trying to hide my irritation.
“Get it some other way,” he orders with the determination of someone who is not willing to hear any objections.
My eyebrows arch in amazement. “And how exactly shall I do that? Overload myself with more activities? What about my job, Thomas? Did you perhaps forget about that? I don’t have the time! Tutoring is the best alternative right now.”
“Okay, then change students!” he exclaims, throwing his arms out wide in frustration.
“I can’t! Professor Scott assigned Logan to me because he trusts me, and I gave him my word that I’d work with him. How is it going to look if I back out now? What am I supposed to tell him?Hello, Professor. You know what? I’ve changed my mind about your offer; I can’t do it anymore because my boyfriend disapproves?” I burst out. But my reaction only fires him up further.
He leaps off the wall in one movement, using his height to loom over me. His jaw is tight. His brow is furrowed. For the first time, I’m almost afraid of him, but I stand firm. “After everything that went down, are you really still trying to convince me that he’s okay?”
I neither confirm nor deny this.
Faced with my silence, Thomas just snorts and stares mercilessly at me. “Christ, I can’t believe this.” He shakes his head, eyes lowered. “I am trying every way I can think of to keep my cool around you. But you’re making it so fucking hard for me!” he shouts, punching the wall next to us. I gasp, staring horrified at his damaged hand, the knuckles skinned. He’s completely out of control. I feel exhausted and empty. Drained of all energy. But also disappointed. And angry; Thomas isn’t making the slightest effort to put himself in my shoes. He’s being selfish and he has no faith in me or my judgment.
“What am I supposed to do? Huh? Do I have to give up this assignment because you don’t like Logan?”
“Fuck off, Ness! It’s not like you’re giving up the presidency; you’re taking a pass on a fucking tutoring gig!”
“But at the moment, that’s how I need to play the game!” I make an agitated gesture.
The veins in his neck are getting larger as Thomas sinks his teeth into his lower lip and exhales through his nose. “You know what? Ifyou want to do, then do it,” he pronounces, an inch away from my face. “But just know that you’re being a hypocrite. You threw a fit when you found Shana and me in the same club, but now I’m supposed to be cool with this?”
My eyes open wide. “Are you seriously equating Shana with Logan? I only went out with him a few times, and we never even went further than a dumb kiss. You and Shana were fucking up until the other day!” I shout.
“Yeah, and maybe I should go back to doing that. At least when I was fucking her, things were easy!”
I stagger back, as though I’ve just been pierced through the heart by a bullet. I stare at him, frozen in the face of such cruelty. He’s impassive. He tosses his cigarette to the ground and grinds it out with the toe of his shoe. He gives me the kind of contemptuous look he usually reserves for those who dare to challenge him. And I feel a profound emptiness in my stomach. In my heart. I feel so cold and so far away from my Thomas. It hurts so bad, it feels like dying.
My vision blurs as I watch him turn his back on me and walk away. I’m too stunned to do anything. My heart urges me to run after him, to cling to him with all my might and beg him to stay. But my head won’t let me. My head is loudly telling me not to follow him because I don’t deserve this spiteful treatment.
My throat tightens into a knot when I hear the wheels of his motorcycle on the asphalt. Probably because, right up until that moment, a small part of me was hoping he wouldn’t get on it. Hoped he would stop right before and come back to me. I sink down to the earth, destroyed, and lean back against the wall where, until recently, Thomas was. The smell of him still lingers: vetiver, trees, soap. Mixed, inevitably, with the scent of tobacco.
I cradle my face in my hands as hot tears roll down my cheeks. Right now, I want nothing more than to rewind time and go back to when we were sitting in the kitchen, laughing and playing, so close to one another.
