The Love Trap by Nicole French
16
2009
“Jane? Are you all right? It’s not like you to miss class, and you weren’t in class this morn—oh!”
Skylar stopped short in the doorway of the bathroom when she found me standing in front of the mirror with a pair of scissors like a serial killer.
It had been not quite two full days since the snowball fight with Eric. I had spent most of Sunday drowning my anger and sorrow in cheap tequila—the last of which I’d chased with some orange juice this morning instead of going to classes. Hey, hey, hey. It’s kind of a breakfast, all right? And this was my first honest-to-God broken heart. It wasn’t the easiest thing to bear without a little help from Señor Cuervo.
Skylar’s big eyes flew all around the bathroom, taking in the abandoned green bathrobe on the toilet, Eric’s shredded t-shirt in the waste bin, the empty bottle of tequila perched on the sink. Okay, so maybe I had a lot of help from my Mexican friend.
That might have been alarming enough, but I was pretty sure it was the bright purple hair clippings scattered all over the bathroom like feathers that really evoked concern. In my drunken grief, I had gone full GI Jane.
Skylar dropped her bag like she was preparing for battle. “Had a weekend, did we? Is your, ah, makeover why you missed classes?”
“No,” I said as I snipped. “The makeover is just for fun. I missed class today because I decided I’m dropping out.” I cut just a few more strands, then dropped the scissors in the sink with a clatter. That was the best I could do without a mirror behind me. Or, you know, a professional hairstylist.
I eyed my reflection carefully. I really wouldn’t be able to put any black in there for another few weeks—not unless I wanted my heavily bleached hair to fall out from stress. But I wasn’t really feeling the pixie look. I looked too much like an anime figure. Like a little girl.
Maybe I just needed to buzz it all off.
Skylar, to her credit, didn’t leave. She just raised one wry red brow. “Oh, really?”
“I don’t belong here,” I said as I turned to the box of hair supplies on the toilet. “Look at our class. Everyone there is named Lindsay or Someone the Third. Or…”
“Crosby?”
I stood back up with the clippers. “You know what I mean.”
Skylar rolled her eyes. “I think you are overstating things a little bit. Obviously Harvard has a legacy problem, but our class is the most diverse in HLS history. It’s not perfect. But you aren’t exactly Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a hall filled with men. What really happened?”
I swallowed as I turned toward the mirror. “Does anyone else in our class look like me?” I wasn’t talking about my ethnicity. I was talking about the whole package.
Skylar didn’t answer for a long time, so I plugged in the clippers and brought them to my temple, ready to push them through the hair on the right side of my head. The buzz filled the bathroom, but just as I was about to start, Skylar reached over and turned them off again.
“Hey!” I protested.
She took the shredded t-shirt out of the trash. “Is this about Eric?”
I scowled. “You mean that human golden retriever picked out of a VD awareness pamphlet?”
“Oh good, we’re back to that again.” She dropped the shirt back in the trash.
“Why? Did he say something?”
“Well, he didn’t look so great in class. Very…tired. I’m guessing something happened between you two.”
“Oh, something happened all right. Our fake-haloed lab experiment decided he needed to expand his sample size on Friday. He was probably tired because he was out collecting specimens too late last night.”
Skylar’s mouth dropped. “Did he really say he wanted to see other people?”
I was about to say yes, but realized I couldn’t. Because even though I was angry, I didn’t want to lie. Unlike him. So instead of answering, I turned on the buzzers again.
Skylar promptly turned them off.
“Sky!”
“Jane!” She stood like a tiny Peter Pan, her hands on her hips. “You’re not doing this. I’m not letting you throw your life away because of whatever Eric did or didn’t do. He looked really upset, I’m telling you. I don’t know what happened, but maybe you two just need to—”
“Skylar, stop,” I interrupted. “This is on him. He came over this weekend, laid on his charm sooooo thick for my birthday, and then dropped me just as soon as I let my guard down. He couldn’t have been plain enough about it. His exact words were: ‘I can’t do this.’” I crossed my arms. “And then he fucking left. That was it.”
Skylar’s jaw dropped along with her hands off her hips. “Wow,” she said. “I’m—wow, I really wasn’t expecting that. And that’s…well, when I approached him, that’s not exactly what he said.”
“Oh, really? And what was that?”
She blinked sadly. “Just that it had been a rough weekend. And that he knew you deserved better.” She toed her shoe on the tile floor. “He sounded very sorry. Maybe it was just a moment of weakness, you know? Some guys get kind of awful when they’re overwhelmed with emotion.”
“Is that how you know Patrick loves you?” I snapped.
Skylar didn’t say anything.
I sighed. “I’m sorry. That was low.”
“It was,” she agreed. “But you get a pass because you’re drunk and in pain. To make it up to me, you can talk to Eric. I think he’s hurting. I think he misses you.”
“Well, then we’re both idiots,” I said, a little too harshly as I turned back to the mirror. “The only difference is that I’m learning from my mistakes. I’m not spending the next three years being laughed at. Absolutely not.”
Skylar watched me carefully as I turned on the clippers, and this time I managed to push them through one solid patch of purple just above my ear. It fell to the floor with the rest, leaving a plowed stripe of black-brown fuzz in its stead. I snorted. It might seem ridiculous now, but this was going to look badass when I was finished.
“Jane,” Skylar said a little louder. “You realize they will laugh if you leave too.”
I paused, mid-stripe, then kept going. “Who cares? I won’t have to see them.” Him, I should have said. I won’t have to see him.
The look on Skylar’s face told me she was thinking the same thing.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said once I was finished buzzing the rest of that side of my head, leaving myself with an asymmetrical bob that was half dark growth close to my scalp, the wild remnants of my bright purple waves cut to my chin.
I turned the clippers off and put them on the sink’s edge. “What’s that?”
“I help you clean up this disaster, and you come with me to class this afternoon. And then, if you really want to quit, I’ll help you write the petition for tuition reimbursement myself.”
I put my glasses back on, dizzied for a moment by the way the entire room suddenly came into sharp focus. Fuck, she was right. I was still kind of drunk. Well, whatever. Might as well take the new do out for a spin.
“Fine,” I said as I started to clean up the clippings. “But I’m holding you to that.”
I squatted down to start sweeping the fallen remnants of my hair into a pile. Skylar watched for a moment before she helped too.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, rubbing my shoulder. “But I’m here for you. We’ll get through it together, Janey. It’s going to be all right.”
* * *
Present
“Is she going to be all right?”
“Mr. de Vries, she is stable. That is all we can promise for now.”
“Stable? Stable? She’s in a coma, for Christ’s sake!”
“She lost a lot of blood, Mr. de Vries. We are sorry, but your wife has a very rare blood type, B-negative. Less than one percent of Koreans have this blood type. O-negative, universal, is also rare here. We have put a request in with some other hospitals, but these things take time.”
“You need blood? I’m O-neg. Where’s the fucking needle?”
“Mr. de Vries, we cannot just accept blood from a stranger—”
“I’m not a stranger. She’s my wife. I’m not going to lose her. Do whatever tests on me you like, but do them fast. She’s—fuck, I can’t lose her—”
“Mr. de Vries…”
* * *
2009
“Mr. de Vries? Mr. de Vries!”
The entire class was staring at Eric while the professor tapped irritably on her podium.
Skylar and I had taken seats near the back today, and so it was with some delight that I enjoyed watching Eric in the front, casting his eyes from side to side, looking for something. Was it me? Probably just seeking out his next prey, but a part of me liked the idea that maybe I was the reason the Rising Star of Torts wasn’t paying attention for shit.
Still, he’d managed to answer the occasional Socratic question until now. When he had spotted me. Idiot. How hard was it to see the bright purple beacon in a sea of black and beige?
“Ground control to Major Tom,” remarked the professor one last time, to the general uproar of the class. “Will you come back to us?”
Eric shook his head, then broke our gaze and turned to the front. “Sorry, Professor,” he said, then cleared his throat.
Before he could answer the question, however, the class ended.
“Come on,” I said to Skylar. “I just want to go back home.”
“What about study group?” she asked as we put on our winter wear.
“Please.” I shook my head. “Do I seem like I’ll be in any condition to sit across from that jackass for an extra hour? I just want to be alone. I’ll study by myself better anyway.”
Skylar sighed, then wrapped her scarf around her neck. “All right. I’ll get your share of the readings for you.”
I nodded, then dashed out, still buttoning my jacket and looking for my yellow beanie in my bag. Now I was the idiot. Because, of course, in my hurry to leave, I didn’t look up. And instead plowed right into the one person I was trying to avoid.
“Whoa there.”
I jumped back. “Do I look like a horse to you?”
But Eric, apparently, had no comebacks. “I waited for you outside your Contracts class,” he said. “Where were you?”
“I was at the law offices of it’s none of your fucking business,” I snapped. “What’s with the third degree? Can’t quite get your hooks out now that you’ve decided to catch and release?”
Eric just looked me over, like he was checking for bruises. “You cut your hair.”
I swallowed, putting a hand up to my shorn mane. “Observant, aren’t you?”
Lord, my mother was going to freak when I came home for the holidays. Dad, of course, would just take it in stride. I could hear him already. Nice do, kiddo. Starting a punk band? But Yu-na would probably just complain about how I needed to wear a hat now wherever I went. She’d probably resent the fact that the winter would require it anyway.
“Why?”
My eyes flashed. “Because I felt like it. When I decide to do something, I actually fucking do it.”
Eric’s expression, however, didn’t waver. I hated it. I hated the pity I saw there. The concern. What right did he have to look at me that way when he had caused the whole fucking problem?
“Did it…did it have anything to do with me?” he asked.
“Are you serious right now?”
Eric toed the ground nervously, but he didn’t look away, even as our classmates exited the building, eyeing us curiously. “Look, Jane, about the other night. Let’s go somewhere and talk. There are things about me that—”
“You know what?” I broke in. “No. Whatever bullshit you’re going to use to pathologize your behavior, I don’t want to hear it. You made your choice when you walked out.”
“Jane—”
“What are you expecting here?” I continued forcefully. “Do you think your cock is a magic wand? All you have to do is wave it over my head, and I’ll come like a rocket and forget your emotional abuse? That only works in male fantasies, Petri dish. Bad romance novels and Judd Apatow movies. In real life, it’s different. Like it or not, you are completely replaceable.”
He searched my face for a long time, clearly disbelieving. But for the first time in my life, I was able to keep my bravado firmly in place.
When I had arrived at Harvard, I knew I was different. That in this world of legacy and entitlement, I’d likely get stomped if I didn’t protect myself. But over the last month, this man had convinced me it didn’t have to be like that. Somehow he had found the cracks in my armor and broken them down, one piece at a time. He made me admit that some people were worth letting in. Maybe one person. Maybe him.
Right before he’d run over all of it like one of the snowplows moving up and down Comm. Ave.
Still, silver linings. In the last forty-eight hours, I’d done something I’d tried to do my entire life and failed. I’d built a wall without cracks. A wall no one, not even this asshole, could breach.
“For what it’s worth, I like it,” Eric said. “I liked it before too, but they both look good.”
“Do you really think I give a good goddamn what you think of my hair, Petri dish?”
All at once, the mask I’d seen from the first day I met him slid back into place. He was still friendly. Still easygoing. Affable. Easy.
But now that easiness seemed ice cold. The Eric I knew was gone.
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t imagine you do.”
I met his gaze head-on, and not one bit of me wavered.
And this time Eric was the one to back down. I was the one to stay strong.
* * *
Present
“Stay strong.”
A squeeze of my hand. The hum of a machine. The mutter of a distant voice.
“Don’t give up, gorgeous. Please, Jane. Come back to me.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was the heart rate monitor, with its recognizable flicker jumping rhythmically across the screen. Still blurry. Everything was blurry.
The second thing I saw was Eric.
“You’re back,” he whispered.
“Am I?” I asked. I still wasn’t sure.
“Hold on.”
A pair of glasses slid onto my face. And then, finally, the world came into focus.
Eric lay next to me on the bed, offering warmth where I couldn’t get it, body vibrating against my cheek. It wasn’t until I managed to look up again that I realized he was crying—terrible, silent tears that dripped down his haggard face. They weren’t the first; his eyes were red-rimmed with stress and exhaustion.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “Oh, thank fucking God. You’re back.” He pressed kisses across my brow again and again. I leaned into them. Each one seemed to blast through the fuzzy halo I was wearing.
“You’re here.” I blinked, my eyes opening wider. “How—how are you here?”
Eric swallowed—was that a chuckle through those watery gray eyes? “I—the trial was thrown out. My attorneys did their jobs and figured out that the prosecutor was being bribed by Carson. So the judge reassigned the case to the Brooklyn DA, who promptly declined to prosecute.”
“Oh.” Right. Thank you, Matthew Zola. I didn’t have to say it, though. We owed the young prosecutor for more than either of us could count.
“I came to find you,” Eric murmured. “Jane, why the fuck did you leave? Why didn’t you just wait for me?”
My throat felt tight, like someone was squeezing it. I didn’t have a new answer for him. He knew every one I had to offer.
“The—the—the baby,” I managed to get out. My throat was on fire. “How—”
“I—we—oh, fuck.” Eric could barely get his words out either as he clasped my head between his broad palms and touched his forehead to mine.
“We lost her, didn’t we?” My heart picked up. Pieces of the last few days were coming back to me. All a haze, but I remembered the blood. I remembered the pain.
Eric’s tears streamed. “Ah, fuck.” His voice was pained as he swiped them away. “They…yeah, Jane. We…we lost her.”
“M-miscarriage?”
But against my forehead, Eric slowly shook his head. “They took her. Jane—shit, I’m so sorry, but he—Carson—he had the Russian, the one called Anton.” He shook his head, like the name meant something very specific to him. “They forced an abortion. They sedated you and did it, and then you got an infection. They gave you too much of one of the drugs, and then they were forced to call a medic, who was there when we arrived. But f-fuck, Jane, you almost died.”
By the end of the statement, his words were bouncing over themselves like they were tripping over cobblestones.
So strange, I thought. Normally I was the one with all of the emotion. The one who spouted off, who wore every thought and feeling I had right on my sleeve. Eric had always carried us both, and yet here he was, breaking down like a child.
How long had I been out?
How long had I been in danger?
What had he gone through during that period?
“Sh-shhhh,” I said, managing to pull a fragile arm from under the hospital blankets and wrap it around his waist. “It’s going to be all right.”
The words felt hollow. Somewhere in the back of my still-addled mind, a voice of reason cautioned: Don’t worry, pumpkin, it will hit you. You’d better be ready when it does. If you push against a tidal wave, it will only knock you over.
Dad? Was that the voice of my dad, chiming from the grave again?
As if on cue, I heard his familiar, belly-jiggling chuckle. Don’t tell your mother, peanut. She doesn’t like it when I tell her what to think.
My mother.
“Eomma,” I said suddenly, pushing Eric’s arms away.
He sat up, swiping at the remaining tears.
“Where is she?” I demanded. “Is she all right?”
The realization that I had been in the same room as my mother for several days and hadn’t done a thing to help her lanced through me like a sword. After all, what in the hell had I been here for in the first place?
“Relax,” Eric said, stroking my hair. “She’s going to be all right. She was severely dehydrated and malnourished after two weeks at that house, but she’s on the mend in another room. They had to detox her from the sedative, but she’s almost through it. She was on it for much longer than you.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m sure she’ll come to see you as soon as she can.”
“What about Carson?” I asked, my eyes widening. “Jude? He was there too. The Anton guy? What happened to the medic?”
I hoped beyond hope that it hadn’t all been for nothing. That Eric wouldn’t have flown here just to rescue me. I wanted, more than anything else, for this nightmare to be over.
But instead, Eric just shook his head with clear regret. “The police took the medic into custody, and they’ve been questioning him, or so Cho says. But Jude and Anton left just before we arrived—they likely saw us on security footage, but your condition made it impossible to use you like the bait they intended. There has been no sign of Carson or anyone else since.”
I wilted with defeat. “Then it was all for nothing. I ruined it all, didn’t I?”
Eric said nothing. Even under the layer of haze, my heart ached.
“I—I—” I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even think straight. Sorry, I wanted to say, but the word wasn’t even close to adequate. What was?
“What is it?” Eric asked, scooting closer. He cupped my face, and his thumb stroked my cheek. “What do you need, gorgeous? Anything.”
I closed my eyes and leaned into his hand. I needed a lot of things. The enormity of what I’d been through was beginning to dawn on me, but I was pretty sure it would get worse once the sedatives wore off completely. Food. Water. Shelter. Eric. I needed them all. But right now, I wanted more sleep. And I wanted one other thing.
“Home,” I whispered. “I just want to go home.”
