Target on Our Backs
Page 8

I can only imagine what it means for whatever sort of relationship the two of them were starting to form again.
Is there any coming back from this?
"Earth to Karissa!" Fingers snap right in my face, startling me. "Are you having an episode?"
I flinch, my eyes meeting Melody's across the small, round table. "What?"
"Jesus, I thought you were having a psychotic break or something," she says, shaking her head as she regards me. "I've been talking to you for like, thirty goddamn minutes, and you haven't acknowledged the fact that I'm even here."
Ignoring the fact that we've been here for only ten minutes, tops, I lean back in my chair, gripping my drink with both hands, giving her my undivided attention. "What were you saying?"
"I don't even know anymore." She groans, her head dropping down right onto the open book on the table, her words muffled as she mumbles into the pages. "Why do I keep doing this to myself?"
"Maybe you're a masochist," I suggest. "You need a good sadist in your life."
That earns me a slightly raised head and one hell of a glare. Laughing, I shrug. Who knows? I never, in a million years, thought I'd be an exhibitionist, but Naz swears I might be, and I'm not going to deny the thrill I get at the idea of being watched. "Hey, you never know. We've all got our kinks."
"I'm an idiot," she counters, ignoring my suggestion. "I'm one-hundred percent a fucking dumbass. There's no other explanation. I'll never learn my lesson."
She dramatically bangs her head against the brand new textbook a few times before sitting back up. Another philosophy class, her fourth so far. This time it's Philosophy of Mind, whatever that means. I don't even know the difference.
Isn't all philosophy, you know, from the mind?
She's passed every single one of the classes, her grades just getting better and better, but that doesn't stop her from complaining every time.
Me? I gave up with the second one.
Philosophy is just not for me.
Melody, on the other hand, had the bright idea to make it her major.
A degree in philosophy… what does one do with that?
"Don't be so hard on yourself," I say. "It's all just opinions, remember?"
That earns me yet another glare.
Man, I'm on fire today.
"Whatever," she says. "This is it. I'm not doing it any more. I'm drawing the line."
She literally uses her finger to draw a line across the table, her red-painted acrylic scraping against the whatever-the-hell-the-table-is-made-out-of.
"Yeah, right," I say, reaching over and snatching her book from her. She protests and tries to snatch it back, standing up like she's about to pounce and attack me over the damn thing, but I push her off as I look at it. Functionalism. I read the definition at the top of the chapter twice, but it's nothing but gibberish to me. "Whoa, is this even English?"
She rolls her eyes, once again trying to take the book, but I thwart her attempt as I flip pages. A few chapters in I run into a stack of papers—notes. I'm about to hand it back to her, not wanting to mess up whatever kind of chaotic system she has with the thing, when my eyes gloss over the top paper. It's a stream of definitions, notes written around them in the margins, but up top, front and center, is a little scribble, a boy's name is a lopsided heart.
Leo
"Leo?" I squeak. I fucking squeak. "Who the hell is Leo?"
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, she forcefully removes the book from my hands, closing it and shoving it right into her backpack, like she hadn't needed to study in the first place. Functionalism be damned. I stare at her incredulously as her cheeks flush, turning bright red.
She's blushing.
Melody Carmichael, ever confident and controlling, is blushing.
Holy shit.
"Who is he?" I ask. "Oh my God, Melody, you better spill it right now, or I'm going to think you've got a thing for DiCaprio."
She shrugs. "He's not so bad."
"No, not Titanic DiCaprio," I tell her. "Not Romeo and Juliet DiCaprio. Not even Wolf of Wall Street DiCaprio. I'm talking real DiCaprio. On his yacht DiCaprio. Full beard DiCaprio."
Melody makes a face of horror, shuddering as she turns to me. "No way."
I cock an eyebrow at her. "You got a thing for dad-bod's?"
Laughing, she throws a balled up napkin across the table at me. "Oh, God, shut up!"
"Who is he?" I ask, grabbing the napkin and throwing it back. "Tell me!"
"Okay, okay!" She holds her hands up. "He's just… he's nobody, really."
"Nobody? You're drawing his name in hearts and he's nobody?"
"He's just a guy I met," she says. "We've been out for coffee a few times."
"Coffee?" I gasp, grabbing my chest in mock horror. "But coffee is our thing!"
She continues to blush. I'm absolutely baffled. First, Naz rolls his eyes, and now Melody is blushing. I woke up in the Twilight Zone yesterday, and I don't know how the hell to get out of it. I don't know if I even want to.
"It's not serious or anything," she explains. "I don't even know if that's something he's looking for."
"But you hope."
"But I hope," she admits, sighing as she leans closer to the table, smiling giddily. "He's just… wow. He's perfect in every way. Absolutely perfect."
Uh-oh. I've heard this before.
I heard this about Paul.
"Perfection isn't real," I point out.
"Puh-lease," she says, waving me off. "You married perfection, did you not?"
A sharp bark of laughter escapes me at that. "Hardly. Naz is… he's great. Naz is what I want in life. But perfect? No way."
I'm sure he'd agree with that.
"But he's perfect for you. You're both, you know…" She waves toward me, like that's supposed to make sense of it all. "In the words of Meredith Grey, you're dark and twisty, okay? He's all intense and you're all complex and you're frankly weird, okay? You both are. But it's a good weird; you know… it's a mutual weird. Sometimes he scares the hell out of me and sometimes you confuse the hell out of me, and together the two of you just… you make sense."
I stare at her as she finishes babbling. "We make sense."
"You do," she says. "And Leo… I don't even know how to explain it. He makes me feel like I'm the only other person in the world, like nothing matters more than me in the moment. He listens to me… really listens. And it's crazy, I know, because after what happened with Paul, I didn't think I'd ever feel this way again, but I do." She sighs. "I do."
I don't even know what to say. I'm happy for her, of course, but it worries me at the same time. Paul was the first guy she'd ever kept around for a while, and well, we all know how that turned out.
Well, I know how that turned out.
To most, he's just missing, vanished into thin air. They still hope he might someday come back.
I know better.
Another one of those bite-me-in-the-ass questions I asked Naz.