[The Forever 01.0] Forever Innocent Read online

  “Wait. You didn’t finish in New Mexico?”

  “How did you know where I went?” Corabelle stood straight as a crowbar.

  “I assumed. I planned to find you.”

  “But you didn’t.” Her brown eyes flashed with little sparks of light, like they always did when she got mad. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever known, something I’d taken for granted when I was a numbskull teen.

  “It was too late by then,” I said. Too late on all counts, even the ones she didn’t know about.

  Her hand shook a little as she gripped the metal slats of the railing. “Probably so.”

  I wanted to ask what happened at NMSU, but she had changed from upset to fear, as if she had something to hide. She never did have much of a poker face.

  I didn’t want to be the cause of any more distress for her. “I’ll drop the class. Hell, I’m on the ten-year plan already. It won’t matter.”

  “Why aren’t YOU finished yet?” she asked.

  “Work. I have to pay every dollar for school myself.”

  “I didn’t think you’d be here,” she said. “I thought you’d be done with college.”

  “Yeah, well, when you ditch the school that was giving you a free ride, it’s hard to convince another one to cough up any dough.”

  She nodded, and I figured something similar had happened to her. At least she was calm again.

  “Can I walk you somewhere?” I didn’t really want to leave her alone after all this.

  “No, I need to figure things out.” Corabelle squeezed the bridge of her nose, a little gesture I had forgotten, something she did when she was stressed.

  “I’m serious. I’ll drop the course,” I said.

  “Don’t you need it? What’s your major?”

  “Geology.”

  “Rocks? Seriously? What happened to teaching?”

  I didn’t answer, and she looked away. She knew why. Kids were not my thing, not now, not anymore.

  She twisted at her ponytail. “I switched to literature. I plan to teach college instead of elementary.”

  That made sense to me. “Professor suits you.”

  “Maybe. I’d hoped to be a TA by now. This is just an elective. I can pick another.”

  “So can I.”

  She sighed. “I’ll go talk to my counselor, see what I can get into.”

  I squeezed her shoulder, relieved when she didn’t flinch. “You were always doing that.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Inconveniencing yourself for others. You always took care of everyone else first.”

  She brushed a chunk of hair out of her eye. “Old habits die hard.”

  “Let me do it this time.”

  Corabelle gave me a hard look. “I have to make sure it happens. So I’m going to do it.”

  She didn’t trust me. But then, I hadn’t given her much reason to. “All right.”

  “I have to stay here. I can’t transfer again, lose more credits, another year. But it’s a big campus, right?”

  I nodded. “Plenty big enough for two undergrads to get lost in.”

  She went around me and descended the last few stairs. I thought she might look back again, like she had earlier, but this time she pushed through the exit door and was gone.

  I sat back down. Hell, I was more wound up than I’d been in a long time. Corabelle was mine. She’d always been mine. Going without her had been easy when she was out of sight, but thinking about crossing campus and spotting her, or worse, running into her on a date with some other jerk undergrad —

  I smashed my fist into the metal rail. She hated me enough to avoid me at all costs. I had to get out of here. Had to make sure we didn’t cross paths. I’d just drop out this quarter. Or more. Let her finish the year, and then I could come back.

  I reconciled myself to losing the fees I had paid, and the damn textbooks. I’d have to just sell these back and take the loss.

  I jumped to my feet. It took me months to save up for each class, and now it’d be lost. More hours at the garage. My life was eternally screwed.

  I pushed the exit door too hard and it flew open, startling a couple girls just inside the hall. I yanked my hat from the side pocket of my backpack and pulled it low over my eyes, ignoring their interested expressions. Young and stupid, thinking I was someone they should tangle with. They had no idea what life could deal you. What I could deal them. What I’d been dealt.

  The quad seemed full of color, green diamonds of grass cut by white stripes of sidewalk. I knew if I could see past the buildings, the big blue of the Pacific would spread wide like the giant crayoned pictures Corabelle and I used to tack to the wall when we set up our pretend school. Growing up with unrelenting New Mexico dry spells, most kids got into fantasies about the sea.

  In high school, we discovered San Diego had a college that overlooked the ocean and decided to apply there. Marriage was a long way off, with miles of growing up to do in between. But we wanted to stay together as long as it made sense.

  Then came the baby, and disaster after disaster.

  But now she was here and wanted nothing to do with me. Just as well. If she knew what all I’d done since leaving that funeral, she’d hate me even more.

  Chapter 4: Gavin

  My boss never missed a thing.

  “Roll all the tires out to recycling,” Bud said. “They’re filling up the back.”

  I stuck my punch card in the sleeve dangling beneath the clock. “You hatin’ on me today?”

  “You look like you need a chore that won’t cost me money if you screw it up.” Bud coughed into his elbow. “Class that tough?”

  I tossed my backpack beneath a scuffed-up desk by the door. “You have no idea.”

  “Don’t need no degree to hold a socket wrench.” Bud wiped his hands on his overalls, leaving a long black smear.

  I forced a laugh. “And that’s a good thing, since I’ll be sixty-five before I graduate.”

  “You got your schedule? I’ll figure up your hours.”

  “Nah. I’m dropping out.”

  Bud pulled off his hat and wiped his head with a red rag. “That’s bull.”

  “Nope. Not feeling it this year.”

  Bud’s meaty hand gripped my shoulder in a vise. “I know I just said you don’t need a degree. But you’re not cut out for this work long-term. I like you, and you’ve got a job here as long as you need one, but I’m not going to stand by and let you quit school.”

  I turned away, shrugging off his hand. “Then fire me.”

  He spun me back around. “Get out there and roll tires until you change your mind.”

  “Not enough tires out there for that.”

  “You ain’t been back there in a while.”

  Fine. I stormed through the bays where Randy and Carl were changing oil on a couple SUVs. Mario had the guts of a 1997 Camaro spread on a tarp, shaking his head over a gunked-up intake manifold.

  I stopped short, seeing the car. Why would this car be in the shop at this very moment?

  Mario lifted a gasket and peered through the hole. “People don’t treat their babies right.”

  I ran my hand along the roof, shiny and clean. “They kept it waxed and purty on the outside.”

  Mario grunted. “The engine is beyond gone. These people should be lined up and executed.”

  I thumbed the door handle, unable to resist a look inside. I had saved up and bought a very similar Camaro when I turned eighteen. Corabelle and I had broken it in pretty fast, and just looking at the slope of the passenger seat brought up visions of her, sweaty hair sticking to her forehead, looking down on me as she straddled my lap.

  I slammed the door closed.

  “Easy, friend. Everything’s loose and hanging.” Mario reached for a rag. “You don’t like the car?”

  “I used to have one.”

  “Ah, a woman. Always a woman.”

  “How did you get from the car to a girl?”

  “A man slams a door, it�
�s always about a woman.” He grinned.

  I had to be wearing my damn past on my shoulders. First Bud, now Mario. “I got to go roll tires.”

  Mario laughed. “You piss off the boss man again?”

  “Apparently I’ve pissed off the world.”

  Mario chortled as I walked on through to the back, where the old and new tires were stored. Some we repaired and resold as used. The ones too far gone were rolled behind the shop and heaved into a short dumpster that would be picked up by a recycler when it got full. It was a backbreaking chore, tumbling the flat and sometimes shredded tires and tossing them over the side wall.

  I tugged the first tire off the stack and braced it on my shoulder. It was too thrashed to wheel out, and I knew from experience to take these first, as once you got worn down, you wanted to be rolling, not lugging.

  A girl with long black hair stepped out of a car on the side lot as I pushed through the back door. I stared so hard that I stumbled off the curb, sure it was Corabelle, and my heart nearly thumped right out of my skin.

  But when she looked my way, I realized she was just some other girl. She peered up at the sign to Bud’s Garage and headed toward the front door. I wondered if Corabelle had already gone to see her counselor and dropped out of astronomy. I picked the class because of the star parties, like most undergrads. I didn’t really need more science electives, as my geology courses were plenty, but it seemed a good balance, the earth and the heavens, staying grounded but looking up to the infinite.

  I tossed the tire into the bin. Damn, I hadn’t waxed all poetic like this in years. Life had been practical for a long time. Work. Class. Beer. Studies. Occasional women, when I could afford one. I didn’t have much of a clue what I’d actually do with a degree in geology. But rocks were solid. They didn’t change, not easily. If they got worn down, it took time.

  Then there were geodes. My grandpa, way back when I was a kid, had bought me one once. He cracked it sharply on the step in front of our house, and the dull smooth exterior revealed something fantastic inside, a sparkling burst of colored crystal — the opposite of what it had once appeared to be. I immediately ran to Corabelle’s to give her half, leaving my grandpa behind to laugh at my surprise.

  Life had turned out exactly the opposite of that rock. What once had been so bright and full of promise had gotten buried in the dull grays of the daily grind. I still had that geode, though, and it had inspired me to get my high school diploma squared away and take up geology at UCSD. Pick a new dream, as far from my old life as possible.

  I wiped the sweat off my neck, glad for a hat as the sun was more like summer than fall. Honest work, my mother would have said. I should call her. I hadn’t spoken to her, hell, since Christmas. I yanked open the back door, feeling guilt but pushing it back. I knew why I didn’t call. Dad would jerk the phone from her hand, start yelling about when I was going to pay him back for that semester he covered when I took off. Four years and he wouldn’t let it go. He never let anything go.

  I decided to roll the next tire, and chose one so bald it showed the tread ghosts. Still, I wasn’t seeing the rubber or the stack, but Corabelle’s face, not the features of a girl any longer, but sharper and more defined. I’d looked into that face more than anyone’s, even my mother’s, from the time we could walk. We lived back to back across an alley, and the path from my house to hers was one I could do in the pitch black, the driving rain of a monsoon, sick, angry, lost, or desperate.

  I smashed through the door, already tired of rolling. Corabelle had been my whole life for eighteen years. The last four without her had been nothing. I hadn’t seen it until I looked up from that piece of paper listing her name, and there she was.

  Right now, it was her choice to reject me and that had to feel good to her. She was getting me back for leaving and for all the things she didn’t even know.

  Maybe I shouldn’t quit. Maybe I should keep letting her throw punches at me. If she gave a good hard shove that truly and finally hurt, maybe I’d finally stop wanting her back.

  Chapter 5: Corabelle

  The strap to my backpack was going to break clean off if I jerked on it any more. I sat across from my counselor, who looked frazzled from dealing with first-day mishaps. Folders and loose pages covered her enormous desk. The office was small and hot, and a rivulet of sweat trickled from her hairline down her temple as she typed.

  “Corabelle, you have three choices. Pick a different time slot for a class. Drop below a full load for the quarter.” She glanced up at me. “Or stay in astronomy.”

  My fingers tightened on the strap again. “I have to ask my manager if I can change my hours. He has to work around all our schedules.”

  “Well, I can’t help you if I don’t know any other times. There’s nothing else useful to you on Mondays at 9 a.m. unless you want another PE-type credit. I can get you into interpretive dance or weight lifting.”

  I groaned.

  “Enrollment is way up this year and classes have started. Pickings are slim.” She tapped more keys. “I’ve got seven students hoping you’ll drop astronomy. It’s a popular class.”

  “How long is the waiting list for the speech class, or what was the other?”

  “Ancient Rome. Too long. Those are small classes and I don’t think enough could possibly drop.” She swiveled in her chair. “Corabelle, if you want to graduate on time, you should just take this class. I don’t understand why you’re suddenly so opposed.”

  I couldn’t tell her it was about a boy. “It’s got too much extra work for an elective.”

  “The star parties are what make the class. You knew that going in.”

  I swallowed. “I have to get out.”

  She pushed a folder aside. “Let me pull up your actual records rather than this printed overview. We can take a good hard look at your transfer history and see if maybe we can wiggle some class over to cover this one.”

  I slammed my hand on the desk. “No!”

  She looked up, startled.

  I forced myself to relax. “I mean, no, it’s fine.”

  She turned from the keyboard to study me. “I’m just trying to see where you might switch something around. Maybe there’s an online course.”

  My face burned. I’d gone this far without anyone finding out what happened in New Mexico. I couldn’t risk the consequences if that professor had saved any note in the system. “I’ll stay in astronomy.”

  The woman nodded. “That’s a good choice. You’ll find the star parties fantastic.” She closed my folder full of official printouts I painstakingly kept, all bearing seals and formal letters, anything I could do to avoid people digging too deeply into my electronic past. So far, I had been able to count on people being busy or lazy.

  “Thank you. Sorry for wasting your time.”

  She waved me away. “It’s all right. See you at the end of the quarter so we can establish your final coursework.”

  I slung the backpack over my shoulder and opened the door, stepping over the line of students sitting along the wall, waiting to get in.

  My head buzzed as I stormed through the building. Maybe I could switch TAs. Yes, if I told them I had a permanent conflict with Thursdays, it would make more sense to switch study groups now than to constantly do makeups. Gavin would be in the classroom, but I could avoid him. As long as we were at different star parties, it would be okay.

  The day was still bright and colorful outside, making it difficult to stay upset with a world full of birdsong and eucalyptus. I was back on track, in school again, and the last thing I needed was to let Gavin Mays derail my life a second time.

  Jenny caught up with me at the quad, her pink ponytail as vivid as a blossom. “You ran out of class. And that hunkalicious man-meat followed you. What was that all about?”

  “Someone I used to know.”

  “Ahhhh! Someone you used to bang!” She grabbed my arm and stopped me from walking. “Is this the boy who chilled off Frozen Latte? Tell! Tell! Tell!”
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  “He’s from my hometown.”

  “And…”

  “We dated.”

  “And…”

  “I just can’t be in his study group.”

  Jenny plunked down in the grass, setting her messenger bag beside her. “I can get that. I don’t have a single ex I want to see again unless it’s in a body bag.”

  I sat next to her. “I tried to drop just now, but the counselor couldn’t get me anything but interpretive dance.”

  “Really?” Jenny jumped back up and held out her arms in a ballet pose, spinning neatly in a circle. Just as I wondered what the heck she was doing, she dramatically dropped her head and shoulders, like a puppet whose strings had just broken.

  “What are you doing?”

  She peered up at me. “What, you don’t like my interpretation of a flower in the rain?”

  “Seriously? You took dance?”

  She plopped back into the grass, lying down with her head on her bag and her black leggings crossed at the knee. “The teacher was so freaking hot.”

  I had an idea. “Hey, you wanted lumberjack boy, right? The other TA?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She tugged on her orange miniskirt and straightened the crop top, like she was arranging herself for display. Jenny always looked like she had stepped out of the shop window of a trendy store.

  “Why don’t we switch? Then you could do the star parties with lumberjack boy, and I wouldn’t have to be in the same group as Gavin.”

  She lifted her sunglasses to peer at me. “Gavin. Is that hunk boy?”

  Surely she wouldn’t go for him. The thought of her fawning on Gavin made me feel sick.

  “Don’t look all distressed.” She took my hand and crossed an “x” on my palm. “Girlfriends don’t date girlfriends’ exes. Period.”

  I swallowed, pushing against the pain of picturing Gavin with any other girl. He’d been my first and only, and I had been his. But no telling how many he’d been with since then.

  “Hey! Cora! I’m serious!” Jenny sat up and waved her hand in front of my face. “I can see how upset you are. Girl, you’ve got to learn to keep that face in check.”