4
OLD HABITS
The sound of Eric’s voice faded in Tessa’s ears as the song came to an end. With a sigh, she lifted her finger to hit Replay.
She’d developed a habit lately of listening to the same song three or four times in a row—so different from the way she used to consume music in the past. Before this summer, her playlists always contained hundreds of songs by different artists, all set to random shuffle. It was only since returning home from New Orleans that she’d fallen into this new pattern, listening and re-listening, over and over. It put her in a kind of trance. She could let her mind drift free from any thoughts of her own life and picture Eric Thorn singing the familiar words for her ears alone.
Now she lay with her head at the foot of the bed, gazing up at her concert poster. She imagined herself pressed against the railing at the edge of a stage, watching the whole show live. Someday, she vowed. Someday, somehow, she would find a way to attend an Eric Thorn concert for real…
Tessa closed her eyes and hummed along with his clear, smooth tenor voice. She remained completely still except for the gentle rhythm of her heels against the mattress. Her tank top hitched up to expose her bare midriff, and she didn’t bother to fix it. She didn’t hear the scrape of the bedroom door behind her or the soft footsteps creeping toward the bed. She had no inkling of any other presence in the room until a shadow fell over her shoulder and a hand from out of nowhere grasped her on the knee.
Tessa’s eyes flew open. Her head snapped up so hard that she bit her tongue. Her daydream of Eric vanished, replaced by the sound of her own pulse pounding in her ears. She yanked out her headphones with a gasp.
Scott, her boyfriend since sophomore year of high school, loomed above her.
“Hey, hot stuff. Whatcha doing?”
Tessa stared at him blankly. His hand rested heavily on her leg, and his eyes were glued to the exposed portion of her stomach. Tessa jerked her disheveled tank top back in place.
Scott, she told herself, forcing a deep breath. Just Scott.
It didn’t help that he’d changed his appearance lately—no longer the baby-faced teenager that she’d first grown to know and love. He’d cut off his mop of curly, brown hair, opting instead for a close-cropped buzz cut, and he kept his jawline shadowed with a fringe of dark stubble. Tessa knew he was going for a more mature look in honor of high school graduation, but she wasn’t sure she liked the change. His face looked more masculine but also more unfamiliar. She couldn’t help but find the stranger who stood before her vaguely sinister.
Scott smirked, completely oblivious to her discomfort. His eyes wandered down the length of her legs. “Busy, huh? Don’t tell me I missed visiting hours again.”
“You scared me!” Tessa tucked her feet beneath her. She clenched a fist and pressed it to her chest. “Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
“Sorry. I knocked. I wasn’t sure you were in here.”
She frowned at him. Not in here? Was that supposed to be a joke? And how many times did she have to tell him not to sneak up on her? Every time he did it, she had nightmares for days.
“Just listening to music,” she said. With her hands still trembling, she flicked the music app closed. She didn’t want him to see whose song she’d been playing.
He nodded, his gaze now moving restlessly around the cramped room. He sounded distracted as he spoke. “Honestly, Tess. I don’t know how you stay cooped up in here all day. I would lose my friggin’ mind.”
Tessa’s mouth fell open. Had he really said that to her? Was he even trying to understand what she was going through? No wonder she spent all her time fantasizing about a celebrity. Eric Thorn didn’t even know she existed, and yet he showed more consideration for her feelings than the guy who supposedly loved her.
Wow, Scott, she wanted to say. And the award for world’s most insensitive boyfriend goes to…
But she swallowed the words. She shouldn’t snap at Scott. At least he still came to see her. She couldn’t afford to alienate him—one of three people in the universe that she trusted inside her bedroom door. Aside from her mother and her therapist, Scott was the only person Tessa had spoken to since June.
She knew it couldn’t be much fun for him either, having a girlfriend with severe agoraphobia. His life kept moving forward the whole time she remained locked up in her room. He was about to enter his freshman year of college, with a whole new set of friends that Tessa would probably never meet. She knew some of them would be female. Some of them would be cute. He could easily leave her behind for greener pastures, but so far he’d remained by her side throughout the whole ordeal. She needed to remember that.
He grinned at her and kicked off his shoes. Tessa forced herself to smile in return as he came to sit beside her on the bed. She set her phone back on the nightstand, facedown—any new notifications for @TessaHeartsEric safely out of her boyfriend’s line of sight. Then she rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his waist.
Scott gave her shoulders a friendly squeeze. “Seriously, Tess. It’s got to be a hundred degrees in here. Let me crack a window or something—”
“No!” She felt his weight shift beside her, and she grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” she stammered. “Don’t open anything. I like it this way.”
He turned toward the double window on the wall beside her bookcase. Tessa used to keep it flung wide open all summer long to let in the cool cross breeze. Even in the wintertime, she rarely closed the blinds. The window overlooked a sprawl of undeveloped scrubland, with a few massive sycamore trees scattered along the dusty gravel lane. The next house down the road looked like a mere speck from her window. It would probably have taken a telescope to catch sight of any neighbors.
Her boyfriend pursed his lips at the ugly horizontal slats, shut tight to block out the late-summer sunshine. They both knew that Tessa hadn’t opened the window in weeks. Scott ran a hand across his forehead to wipe away the beading sweat, but he let the subject drop. “Whatever, babe. So what are you up to today? Anything exciting?”
“Not really.” Tessa let go of his wrist and drew in her legs, hugging her knees. “Eat. Sleep. Therapy exercises. Maybe listen to some music.”
“That’s it? All day?”
“I might do some writing later.”
His eyebrows lifted a fraction of an inch. “Really? What are you writing?”
Tessa scrunched her nose, mentally smacking herself on the forehead. She hadn’t confided in him about her account on the story-sharing website. She couldn’t tell her boyfriend how she spent her days dreaming up fanfics about Eric Thorn. “Nothing,” she said. “I just meant that I write in my thought journal. You know, therapy stuff.”
“Can I read it?”
She shook her head sharply, and Scott pulled away. He got up off the bed and jammed his feet back into his well-worn canvas sneakers.
Was he leaving? Already? “I’m sorry, Scott! It’s like asking to read my diary. I only show it to my therapist.”
“Is it even helping, Tessa? All this therapy?”
“Of course it is! Dr. Regan is really happy with my progress.” Tessa scrambled onto her knees and crawled after him toward the edge of the bed. She cast about for something she could say to undo the damage—any kind of encouraging detail from her therapy session, even if it meant she had to stretch the truth a tad. “She thinks I might be ready to leave the house. Soon.”
“Really? That’s awesome.” Scott sat back down beside her, and Tessa touched his arm to anchor him in place.
“I know. I’m excited.” She smiled at him softly. “I can’t wait till I can go visit you at your dorm. Then we can be alone. We won’t have to worry about my mom walking in on us all the time.”
Scott inched a little closer, matching her smile with a playful look of his own. “Your mom’s not here right now.”
“She’ll be home any sec.”
Now that was a bald-faced lie. Her mother wasn’t due back from work for hours. Why did she just do that? Why did she feel this flicker of anxiety whenever Scott even suggested the possibility of physical contact?
Scott must’ve known she was lying, but he didn’t press the issue. Instead, he turned his face away and slipped his phone out of his pocket. “I gotta get going soon anyway,” he muttered, distracted by a text message.
“What? Why? You just got here. Scott, please just give me a little more time…”
Tessa’s voice trailed off. He didn’t seem to be listening in any case. His full attention was directed at his phone. It pinged with another incoming text, and the corners of his mouth quivered as he read it. “Gimme a sec, babe,” he said without looking up.
Tessa gazed longingly at her own phone out of the corner of her eye. If he could check his messages, why shouldn’t she? Was she missing anything important? Probably another follow spree, knowing her luck.
She didn’t dare look. Not in front of Scott. Her time with him was way more important than Twitter anyway. This was real life. Her boyfriend. There had to be some way to salvage this pathetic excuse for a visit. “Scott, don’t go yet,” she said. “What time is it? Did you eat breakfast yet? We have some leftover sausage in the fridge if you want—”
“Nah, I’m meeting people for brunch.” He stuffed his phone back in his pocket and looked over at her hesitantly. “Listen, Tessa. I actually came here today to ask you something. Are you serious about leaving the house soon?”
“Yeah! Really, really soon.”
“Perfect.” He nodded enthusiastically, and Tessa felt a tightness in her throat. What was he about to ask? Maybe she shouldn’t have sounded quite so optimistic…
“Because there’s this thing I’m going to in a couple weeks. It’s a freshman rush event for Kappa Sigma. We’re supposed to bring a date. So I was kind of hoping, maybe—”
She cut him off with a sharp intake of breath. “Scott, what are you talking about?”
“I told you, I decided to rush a fraternity.”
“You want me to go?”
“Well, I told all those guys that I have a girlfriend. I don’t want them to think I just made you up or something.” His eyes left her face and drifted back down to her clingy tank top. “Anyway, I want to impress them. I was kind of hoping I could show you off.”
Tessa stared back at him, speechless.
“Come on, Tessa. I really need this. And you just said you’re basically ready.”
“I said soon! Not two weeks from now!”
“So by soon you meant more like two months? Two years?” His face darkened, and Tessa bent her arms protectively across her chest. She knew what she was in for next. Scott’s epic tantrums could put most toddlers to shame. He’d be red as an overripe tomato soon.
“Scott, it’s not like I’m doing this on purpose,” she said, still hoping to nip it in the bud. “I have a disorder. You understand that, right?”
“I know, I know. And I’ve been extremely patient about the whole thing. You can’t tell me I haven’t been patient, Tessa.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. They both knew he was talking about more than leaving the house. There’d been nothing between them all summer beyond a few chaste pecks on the lips. “I just need you to put in an appearance, so they see you really exist. That’s it. Is that really so much to ask?”
She shook her head. “Scott, I’m sorry. I wish I could.”
He glowered, and the mattress bounced beneath him as he stood. “Isn’t that what a relationship is supposed to be about? I’m here for you. I’m sitting here sweating my ass off in this slow cooker of a bedroom—and you’re supposed to be there for me too! Right? Or is that not how this works?”
“Scott, wait!” she called after him. “Don’t be like that. I’m trying. I’m making progress. Dr. Regan says—”
“Whatever, Tessa.” He waved a hand to silence her. “Forget it. Forget the whole thing.”
“Scott…”
“I’ll see you later. I need to get some air.” He headed for the door.
She lurched after him, but she stumbled. Her foot had fallen asleep from the hours of inactivity. “You’re coming back, right?”
“Of course I’m coming back,” he snapped. “I always come back!”
“Wait!” She reached out in his direction, hopping awkwardly. “Come here. Can I have a hug at least?”
Instead, he pulled out his phone to check his messages as he paused in the threshold. Tessa felt a twinge of irritation mingled with relief. She knew he was ignoring her, but she might just prefer his neglect to the usual drawn-out fight.
“Later,” he mumbled over his shoulder, typing a new text as he went. “I’ll see you later. I gotta go.”