Misunderstandings (Woodfalls Girls 2)

“Selfish bitch,” he greeted me with venom dripping from each word as he punched the button for the fifty-second floor with the side of his fist.

I cringed as the elevator walls began to close in on me. I knew he hated me. He had all but shouted it in my face the very last time we’d been in the same vicinity. His eyes and words had cut me like razor blades. Every syllable had traveled across the quad until all the students who had been lounging around had turned to stare at us with morbid fascination.

Justin was the love of my life.

2.

October 2010

I met Justin on a drizzly October day during my sophomore year at UW. I disliked him on sight. He was covered in equal amounts of tattoos and girls who giggled at every word that dripped from his lush lips. Everything about him screamed bad boy, from his ripped jeans and pierced eyebrow to his painted-on white T-shirt. This, combined with his smoking a cigarette, pretty much sealed the deal for me. I’d lost my grandma to lung cancer a year ago. Ironically, she’d never smoked a day in her life, but my grandpa had smoked like a chimney before he passed away when I was five. Turns out all that crap they say about secondhand smoke isn’t some mystical fairy tale. That shit really does kill.

I ignored Justin and his admirers as I ordered a strawberry Danish and a coffee before setting myself up at a table under a large umbrella. I had a paper due the next day in my Teaching in Diverse Populations class. Usually, I preferred the café here to the library because it was closer to the dorms. Besides, my dorm room that morning had proved to be more of a distraction than an actual study haven. My roommate, Melissa, was a total sweetheart, but her constant interruptions made getting anything written nearly impossible. She was buzzing about some big Halloween party at Alpha Delta Phi the following week and freaking out about what kind of costume she should wear as she frantically searched the Web for something original that would catch the eye of some guy. I told her to go as a Victoria’s Secret angel and she’d be all set. “You know, sexy panties and bra—add in a pair of wings and you’ll have all the attention you want.”

“I don’t want to attract that kind of attention,” she wailed, glaring at me.

“Hey, you said you wanted to snag a hunk. Your words, not mine,” I pointed out dryly as I closed my MacBook. I lifted my backpack from the floor and stowed away my laptop and books.

“What about this one?” she asked, whipping her computer around to reveal a person covered in purple balloons.

“You want to go as an atom?” I asked, slinging my backpack over my shoulder.

“They’re grapes, not an atom, smart-ass.”

“So wear the bra and panties underneath and then you can pop the balloons at an opportune time.”

“Shut it,” she snorted, throwing a pillow at me. “Wait, where are you going?” she asked as I headed for the door.

“Look, I love you despite the fact that you’re a total spaz, but seriously, you make studying damn near impossible,” I answered, throwing her a kiss.

“Do you want me to order you purple balloons?” I heard her call through the door as I headed down the hall.

I shook my head. She was a mess, but surprisingly, we’d really hit it off after a few initial speed bumps last year. Melissa’s vibrant and enthusiastic personality reminded me of my friend Tressa. Every emotion she was feeling was always on display for the world to see, like she was throwing up the Bat-Signal or something. Everything was a big deal whether it was good or bad. I was the polar opposite, not wanting the whole world to know every little detail about me. On our first night as roommates, I’d watched her with morbid fascination as she had buzzed around our room chattering nonstop about the great year we were going to have, and how we would be the best of friends. After hours of endless chatter, she had finally fallen asleep in the middle of regaling me with stories of all the parties and hot guys we would be exposed to now that we were in college. While she snored loudly in the bed next to mine, I vowed that first thing in the morning, I would do everything in my power to switch roommates, but by the time the next morning had dawned bright and early, she didn’t seem nearly as bad. Of course, that was probably because she woke me with a steaming cup of coffee from the small kiosk near our dorm. Anyone who recognized the importance of a morning hit of caffeine couldn’t be all that bad. I won’t lie, though; during the next few weeks I did question the sanity of that decision. Now, a year later, I was glad I didn’t follow through with my initial plan. Sure, there were still times she wore on me, but she was pretty terrific all the other times. Even if she did act like a hyped-up Red Bull junkie most of the time.

/>

Present Day

11:02 AM

The rain was coming down in steady sheets as I stepped from the yellow taxi that had deposited me in front of Columbia Center in Seattle. “Keep the change,” I said to the driver as I reached back inside the taxi to pay my fare. I stood momentarily with the rain pelting my face, tilting my head back to see the top of the tallest building in the state of Washington—all seventy-six floors of it. I knew that fact because I looked it up on the Internet. I needed to get an idea of what I would be dealing with. Not that my friend Rob, who I was here to see, worked on the top floor, but it was close. His office was on the fifty-second floor, which meant a long torturous elevator ride. Something I wasn’t looking forward to at all. Back home in Woodfalls, Maine, the tallest building was the three-story Wells Fargo bank they had built across from Smith’s General Store a few years back. I was attending college at the University of Washington at the time, but back in Woodfalls it was big news. My mom, the town’s resident busybody, made sure I received daily updates about the construction. Now, as I stood here, the building in front of me made our little bank back home look like a dollhouse.

The rain was beginning to find its way down the generic yellow raincoat I had purchased from the Seattle airport just that morning. The pilot had gleefully informed us before landing that Seattle was having its rainiest September in years. The irony that the rainiest state in the country was having its rainiest year in history was not lost on me. Why wouldn’t it be cold, rainy, and miserable? It matched the way I felt about this place. Of course, that wasn’t always the case. When I first arrived in Seattle three years ago, I was a greenhorn from my podunk hometown. That was why I had chosen UW. It was as far away from Woodfalls as I could possibly get without applying to the University of Hawaii. Three years ago, I had decided that nine months of rainy weather was a fair trade-off to finally be surrounded by civilization. That and it was hundreds of miles away from my often annoying but well-intentioned mother. The endless array of restaurants, museums, and stores and the music scene had tantalized me, making me vividly realize just how lacking and uncultured Woodfalls was. Everything about Seattle intrigued me, making me never want to leave, but Puget Sound was by far my favorite thing about being there. On the weekends I would haul my laptop and textbooks down to one of the cafés on the waterfront. I would spend hours drinking coffee and working on schoolwork. That is, when people-watching didn’t distract me. That trait is something I had obviously inherited from my mom. Still, everything had been going along just the way I had imagined it would. It was liberating to be out from under my mom’s thumb and the prying eyes of everyone back home. Here I could be my own person, with my own life. Then everything went to hell. I met Justin Avery—the whirlwind hurricane who left my head spinning and my stomach dropping to my knees like I was on a roller coaster.

My thoughts were broken when a wave of water splashed up from the road, soaking my pants from the knees down. “Terrific,” I grumbled, looking down at the ruined pair of strappy sandals I had just bought. This was what I got for abandoning my typical attire of jeans and Converse shoes.

Stepping away from the offending curb before another rogue wave of nasty puddle water could finish the job, I focused on making it into the building without busting my ass, or, worse yet, breaking my neck. The fake leather that had seemed so smooth and comfortable when I bought the sandals was now doing a great impersonation of a roller skate. My toes were also threatening mutiny from the cold, only adding insult to injury. This was the gajillionth reason why I had vowed never to return to Seattle. The city and I had bad blood between us.

The only reason I was standing here now was for Melissa and Rob, my two best friends from college who had demanded that I be here for their engagement party. I’d tried every feasible excuse I could come up with—“I’m sick,” “I’m out of the country,” “I can’t get off work.” No excuse seemed to stand up to Melissa’s bullshit meter.

“You’re one of our best friends. You have to be here,” Melissa insisted.

“No. I hate you. I’m not your friend. I never was your friend,” I said.

“I wish you could see the world’s smallest violin I’m playing for you right now. Come on. Pull on your big-girl panties and stop hiding.”

An uncomfortable silence interrupted the conversation before Melissa finally spoke up again. “I’m sorry, Brittni. I’m a bitch for even saying that. I just mean you can’t let what happened dictate your life forever,” Melissa had reasoned. “Besides, you’re my maid of honor. I need you. Just think of this trip as a test, like dipping your toes in water. Chances are you’ll hardly see him, and if you do, it’s not like you guys even have to talk.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later.”