The Campus Bully Hounded Me Out of My Seat, Then I Told Him I Was Pregnant novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Dock

In the dark on the boathouse dock Thea refuses to say why she came, kisses him in anger, and then sets the first terms: her room, her door, her say.

The flashlight did not move off my face.

"Stand up," Aksel said.

"No."

"Stand up, Solheim."

"You know my name," I said.

"I know everything in your file."

I stayed where I was, with my boots over the black water.

He came down the dock one board at a time until the beam dropped to my chest, then to the planks beside me.

He switched it off.

The dark closed in, and I could see him only as a shape against the lamps on the bluff.

"You walked out on me," he said.

"I closed a cage," I said.

"I'm allowed to close it."

"People don't do that," he said.

"Someone should have."

He was quiet for a long moment.

Below us the river made small sounds against the pilings.

"Why did you come to Halden?" he asked.

"For school."

"You came from a two-year ag college in the Dakotas, on a transfer scholarship nobody at this college awarded."

That was news to me, and I held my face still.

"Somebody paid my tuition," I said.

"I got a letter, and I didn't ask who."

"Why not?" he said.

"Because I'd worked for a feed co-op since I was fifteen, and when someone offers you a way out of that, you take it."

He turned his head.

I could see the line of his jaw in the lamplight, and I could see that he was thinking about it.

"My aunt says people like you come here to take something," he said.

I stood up.

In my boots I was nearly as tall as he was, and he was closer than I had thought.

"Your aunt doesn't know me."

"She knows your mother's name."

My whole body went cold.

"Don't," I said.

"Maren Solheim," he said, quite gently, and there was nothing gentle in it.

"I'm going to find out what she left behind, and what you want from this college."

"You don't get to say my mother's name," I said.

"I'll say what I like."

I shoved him.

I put both hands flat on his chest, and he took a step back on the planks and caught himself, surprised.

Nobody had put hands on him in years.

I could tell from how he stood.

"She's dead," I said.

"She died in April.

"You can look up the rest in your file."

The air went out of the dock.

For a moment he said nothing, and I heard him breathe in once through his nose.

"I didn't know that," Aksel said.

"It isn't in the file."

"Then your file is wrong," I said.

"Maybe."

I was shaking.

I did not want him to see it, so I stepped up into his space, and he did not step back this time.

His breath was warm on my forehead, and he smelled of cold wool and river water.

I thought, he has no idea.

I thought, I could tell him right now.

I had a plastic stick in my pocket and a scar in front of me, and I could say the bluff, the hood, the hand, and watch his face.

I did not say it.

I took hold of the front of his team jacket in both fists and kissed him.

It was not a kind kiss.

I put all five days into it, the hallway silence and the table and the cage and my mother's name in his mouth.

He made a sound low in his throat, surprised and furious, and then his hand came up into my braid and he kissed me back so hard my head tipped.

He tasted like coffee and cold.

His mouth was hot and he knew what he was doing, and I remembered that from the bluff, from the hood, from the dark.

I put my back against the boathouse doors and pulled him in by the jacket.

His other hand came down my side and gripped my hip through the coat.

He pressed me into the wood, long and hard against me, and I felt exactly how hard.

"Solheim," he said into my mouth.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Then why?"

"Because you made me angry," I said.

"And you're the only person at this college who isn't scared of me."

"I'm not scared of you either."

"Prove it," I said.

His hand slid up under my coat.

It was warm and certain on my ribs, and I felt the scar on the back of it spread over my side, a hard little line through the cotton.

My breath caught.

I knew that ridge.

My whole body knew it.

Something in me went soft and loud at once, and I thought that if he kept touching me I would say it.

I did not want to say it on a dock in the dark, with his aunt's file in his head.

I put my palm flat against his chest and pushed.

"Stop."

He stopped.

His hands came off me at once, and that startled me more than anything.

He stood there with them held open at his sides, breathing hard, looking at me as if I had hit him again.

"That was not a yes," I said.

"I know."

"If you touch me again, it's my door and my room.

"Room 14, Barn Hall, second floor.

"You knock, and I say if I open it."

His throat moved.

"You're giving me terms," Aksel said.

"Yes."

"I don't take terms."

"Then don't knock," I said.

I did up my coat.

My fingers weren't steady, and I was sure he saw it.

I left him on the dock with his flashlight dark in his hand.

At the top of the stairs I turned around.

He was still standing at the end of the planks, looking at his own left hand as if he were checking it for something.

"I'll see you in class, Kvale," I said.

He didn't answer.

He was still looking at the scar when I lost sight of him.

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