Keep Me If You Can (If You Can #3)

9. That Fucking Fucker

Chapter nine

That Fucking Fucker

“L ook, kiddo, the answer is no.”

“Come on , Glitch. Help a girl out.”

“Okay,” they said. “I will.”

I perked up, surprised. “Really?”

“Of course not.”

I groaned. “Was that necessary?”

“Necessary? No.” They smirked. “It was funny, though.”

“It hurt my feelings,” I said.

“Poor baby,” they replied.

“I think there’s a rule that if your TA hurts your feelings, they have to give you an extension,” I said.

“I think there’s also a rule that if a student fails to hand in an assignment in a timely manner with no justified explanation, they get a zero,” Glitch replied.

“That sounds like a stupid rule,” I grumbled. “There’s seriously nothing you can do? I need, like, an hour. An hour , Glitch. It’s not my fault I’m terrible at these.”

“Except you’re not, though.” They tapped the case study they’d handed back during class that day, which I’d set on their desk after I walked in. “This was not only the best you’ve done all semester, but I think it was the highest grade in the entire class. What was different about it?”

“I wrote it while my fuck buddy was fingering me,” I said. “But he lives in Montreal so he can’t come and do that every single week.”

Glitch rolled their eyes. “You know, if you spent more time working on your assignments instead of coming up with crazy shit like that, you wouldn’t need extensions all the time.”

I didn’t bother insisting I was telling the truth. Glitch wouldn’t have believed me anyway, and more importantly, I was a little unsettled that I’d gotten such a good grade on the case study JP had “helped” me with. Unsettled and upset, because it meant his stupid idea had worked.

Which would mean if I wanted more help, I’d have to tell him he was right. And admit that I’d tried to replicate the results myself, but I got way too distracted with my vibrator to keep working on my paper.

And that…

That wouldn’t be a good idea.

Not when I was already questioning what the hell was going on with JP.

We’d been texting every day. Every single day. Multiple times a day, even. Sometimes it was so we could do this weird sort of long-distance-mutual-masturbation thing because both of us were apparently too busy to go out and get laid in real life. And for some reason, sending pictures and texts and knowing that two hundred or so kilometers away, one of us was getting off to the idea of the other person getting off was better than erotica or porn or my own imagination.

But that was only sometimes.

Bastard

What was that podcast you were telling me about?

Me

Why am I like this

Bastard

You’d probably be better off asking Professor Sexy instead of me, but if I had to guess, I’d say the daddy issues

I’d sent him middle finger and eye roll emojis.

Me

The name of the podcast is Why Am I Like This, asshat

And for the record, I HAVE asked Ben why I’m like this

Bastard

Did he say it was daddy issues?

Me

He said it was because I have to put up with stupid questions from the bastard who grew up next door to me

Bastard

I knew it was all Marc-Andre’s fault

Me

Yes, of course. Your younger brother that I think has said less than ten words to me since he learned to talk is definitely the problem

Bastard

I’ll let him know he needs to apologize for making you a sassy little sex addict

How is Professor Sexy doing, by the way?

And that had turned into me telling him about how I hadn’t heard from Ben since he’d left, which was fine and truly didn’t bother me because it was expected, except that it meant I was stuck filling out the CCFS Labs internship application on my own. And that had turned into explaining why I had to apply for it, and why I didn’t think I’d get it, and the real story behind why I hadn’t gotten the FAI internship the previous summer.

Bastard

Seriously? He told his uncle to reject your application because you didn’t want to be his girlfriend?

And his uncle listened?

Me

Yep

Bastard

And you’re applying for it again? Why would you even want to work there?

Me

I don’t. But there are only so many places to do internships like this. It’s the only one in Ottawa

So I couldn’t tell JP his idea worked and see if he would come back to Ottawa to help me with my next case study. Because when he said he would’ve driven two hours for the chance to spend ten seconds with me, I’d rolled my eyes and assumed he was exaggerating.

But now I wasn’t so sure.

“Look, Nellie,” Glitch said after scoffing at the notion that I’d written my highest-graded case study of the year while being edged towards an insane orgasm by my best friend’s older brother. “I like you, okay?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Like, you like-me like me?”

Glitch blinked, looking startled. “What? No. I mean—”

“Because if you do, that’s cool,” I said. “But I refuse to sleep my way into good grades, so we’d have to be full-on celibate until at least Christmas, and that doesn’t work for me. You know I’m a total hoe.”

They burst out laughing. “As a person , I like you. You’re fun. You’re smart as hell. Honestly, if you ever decided forensics wasn’t for you, you’d make a great—”

“I swear to God if you say I’d be a good lawyer, I can’t be held responsible for my actions,” I interrupted.

They hesitated, lips still parted, before speaking again.

“A great, uh, consultant of some kind,” they said, then wove their fingers together and put their elbows on the table. “I want to help you. But I can’t give extensions for any reason other than the approved ones on the syllabus. So if you end up in the hospital or have a death in the family or get a university-approved education plan for additional accommodations or something, come talk to me. Otherwise, the answer is going to be no.”

“What’s an university-approved education plan?” I asked.

“Well, if you’re Autistic or dyslexic or something, you can get an education plan to allow you to use a computer for everything, for example,” they said. “I had one in my undergrad for extra time on tests because I have ADHD.”

“Oh,” I said.

“So if you have ADHD, you should talk to student services,” they said.

“I don’t, though.”

They raised their eyebrows. “Really?”

I mirrored their expression. “No, I’m lying about it even though it would get me what I want in this situation, which is an extension on my case study.”

They tilted their head in concession. “Fair, I guess. You just seem like the type.”

“I do not,” I said. “I have no problem paying attention to things.”

“That’s not… well. Never mind.” They shook their head. “Unless you’re on your deathbed, your direct family is on their deathbed, or you’ve got a case of the neurospicies, you’re not getting an extension.”

“Jeez, if you don’t want to see me in your office so often, you could just say so,” I said.

“Oh, you’re more than welcome to keep trying. I just don’t want you to hold onto hope that you’ll eventually wear me down.” They unfolded their fingers and pushed the chair back, standing up and collecting the stack of case studies from the students in the class who weren’t there pleading for an extra hour to finish. “Now get out. I need to go smoke before my meeting with Shelby.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Since when do you smoke?”

They rolled their eyes. “You’d need a joint too, if you had to meet with him three times a week.”

“Oh,” I said. “You mean weed.”

“Of course.” They smirked. “You wanna come? The strain I’ve got right now is way better than what they’ve got in the dispensaries.”

I pretended to be scandalized. “Are you offering to sell me drugs?”

“Are you offering to buy them?”

I started to laugh, but Glitch looked serious. “Wait, do you actually…?”

Instant regret flashed across their face. “It’s nothing major. I just have access to some good stuff here and there, and law school isn’t cheap, so I do what I can to make a few dollars on the side.”

“Oh.”

Their jaw twitched, eyes darting to the side before looking back at me. “Are you cool about that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s fine. I won’t say anything.”

They studied me for a moment, then sighed and sat back down. “Fine.”

“Fine what?”

“If you can promise me you’ll absolutely get it done, you can give the case study to me in an hour. I’ll tell Shelby I lost track of time before our meeting.”

I stared at them, my mouth half-open. They stared back at me, trying to cover the worry in their eyes with a hard look.

“I won’t have it done in an hour,” I said.

Glitch’s jaw twitched. “Nellie, I seriously can’t—”

“So you better get those to Shelby before you lose track of time.” I took my case study from their desk and stood.

“But—”

“If I’m not going to sleep with someone for a good grade, I’m not going to blackmail them for an extension,” I said. “At least if I’m sleeping my way into passing there’s a chance of orgasm. There’s nothing fun for me in blackmail.”

They stared at me for a moment, then nodded.

“I appreciate it,” they said.

I smiled cheerfully. “No problem. See you next class.”

And then I left.

I mean, obviously I’d thought about taking that hour to finish my case study. But I’d thought about it in the same way I thought about thousands of options I’d never take. Like sure, I’d considered impulsively throwing a raw egg on the floor while cooking or driving my car into the river instead of going to Montreal to visit my dad, but not in a way where I’d ever do it.

Glitch wasn’t hurting anyone. Weed wasn’t even illegal. And post-secondary school wasn’t cheap, let alone law school.

Considering I’d basically sold my soul for four years to get my tuition paid for, I didn’t exactly feel qualified to judge them for doing what they had to do.

“I mean, I think you could judge them a little,” Sydney said skeptically as we settled in to study at her place a few hours later. “There’s a pretty big difference between getting your dad to pay your tuition and being a literal drug dealer.”

“They’re not really a drug dealer,” I said, pulling things out of my bag to find the highlighter I knew I’d thrown in there earlier. “It’s just weed. I can buy that from a store.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Like, I’m not sure what they were so worried about. It’s not like they offered me meth.”

“If you say so,” she said, distracted.

I frowned as my arm reached the bottom of my bag with no highlighter in sight. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said in a way that made it very clear something was wrong.

“Syd, clearly something’s going on.” I peered into the bag one last time, then gave up my search and started loading everything back in. “You’ve never had an issue with weed before. You’ve smoked more of it in your life than I have.”

“That’s not it at all.” She sighed and leaned back on the couch. “I try so hard to like Reid’s girlfriends. But they always seem to have a problem with me. Hope’s been the worst of them, but Reid won’t stand up for me even though it’s so obvious she dislikes me and it’s probably because the only thing all these situations have in common is me.” A wry smile twisted her mouth. “I’m the common denominator. So I’m the problem.”

Reid had said some borderline awful stuff to Sydney in the past, but never in a way that made me think he was trying to hurt Sydney. That, though? I stared at her, my mouth half-open.

“He said that?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said. “Of course not.”

“Who said that, then?”

“Maybe I thought of it myself.”

“I don’t believe that for one second. My best friend is a badass. It’s not her fault Reid has crappy taste in women.” In the process of shaking my head, I noticed my highlighter sitting on the coffee table and grabbed it, then fidgeted with it as I looked up at Sydney. “So who said that? Was it Hope?”

She didn’t say anything.

“I see.” I put my highlighter back down. “Unrelated question. If I got arrested for running someone over with my car, do you think Glitch would give me an extension on my case studies?”

Sydney started laughing, even as she blinked rapidly like she was trying not to tear up. “I don’t think that’s on their approved list of reasons to give extensions.”

“Great. I guess I’m dropping out.”

“It’s not worth it.”

“Did you talk to Reid?”

She sighed and shook her head. “I’m just so tired of it. Of all the drama. I’m keeping my head down and avoiding them both whenever I can. No one tells you how exhausting it is to be disliked, but causing shit with her would be worse.”

I disagreed, but of course, I was going to respect what my best friend wanted. So when Hope and Reid walked in after I’d cheered Sydney up enough to work on a paper for her English class while I pretended to do my next case study but actually read transcripts of interviews with a serial killer currently on death row, I decided to get back at her in my own subtle way.

“Oh,” Hope said as the apartment door closed. “Sydney. We didn’t know you were here.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Sydney asked flatly.

“I thought you said you were hanging out with Nellie,” Reid said, followed by the two thumps of him removing his shoes and kicking them to the side. A moment later, he popped into the living room and caught sight of me. “Which you are. Hey, Nellie.”

“Hi,” I said. “You don’t mind, do you? Your apartment is cleaner than mine right now.”

Which was true, even though I’d done all that cleaning before JP showed up.

Reid gave me a strange look. “Of course I don’t mind. Why would I?”

“Because maybe we had plans to sit in the living room and watch a movie?” Hope said, her voice dry.

“Oh no,” Reid said, playful sarcasm in his voice. “We’ll have to watch it on the smaller TV in my room. And I have no seating, so we’ll have to sit on the bed. Together. With the door closed.”

“Maybe we should go to your place,” Sydney said to me. “I’ll clean your kitchen for you.”

“I’m kidding,” Reid said, plopping on the couch next to her. “We’ll wait until you’re asleep later. Right, baby?”

“Apparently,” Hope said, crossing the room to the other chair.

“Did Syd tell you I got a tattoo, Reid?” I asked.

“Oh yeah!” He shifted forward excitedly. “Let’s see it.”

I could’ve shown him a picture or carefully lifted my shirt to let him look at the dragon on my ribs. But Hope was there, she’d been an asshole to my best friend, and I hadn’t bothered putting a bra on before coming over.

So I stood up, turned to Reid, and lifted my shirt just high enough that my underboob was showing.

It wasn’t much, as far as revenge went, but it was enough that Sydney pressed her lips together to hold in a laugh. Hope looked like she was about to burst into an explosion of green powder, but Reid just looked at the dragon and nodded in approval.

“It looks great,” he said. “And it’s healing nicely. You did the Saniderm thing on it, right? The clear bandage?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She said it might be itchy but I’ve barely noticed anything, honestly.”

“Maybe I’ll check her out for my next one,” he said. “The artist I was going to moved to San Francisco and I’ve been wanting to get another tattoo done for a while.”

“I definitely recommend Tricia,” I said. “And not just because she’s hot, either.”

“Yeah, she seems good,” Reid said. “The linework on this is—”

“Maybe we could continue this conversation after Nellie puts her shirt back down,” Hope said.

“Why?” I asked. “It’s just my ribs.”

“We can see—” She cut herself off, then motioned towards me.

“You can see what?” I asked. “Me? That’s because I’m standing right here and I’m not a ghost.”

Her lips curled up into an unamused smile. “Well, I was trying to be polite so I didn’t embarrass you, but your boob is hanging out.”

Reid blinked and sat back. “Sorry, Nellie. I didn’t even notice.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Sydney said. “She has very noticeable breasts.”

“Prominent, some may even say,” I said, lowering my shirt. “I can put them on the table if you need a reminder of how great my rack is.”

“I don’t need a reminder,” he said, snickering.

“You don’t?” Hope said, her voice deceivingly light.

Reid grimaced. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it, then?” Hope asked.

Reid started to answer, but as he did, my phone started vibrating on the coffee table with Anne-Marie’s name flashing on the screen. Which wasn’t super common, since she usually texted me before calling, but it wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary. Leaving them to their awkward situation, I answered my phone.

“Hey, Annie,” I said.

And then I winced and yanked the phone away from my ear as a piercing shriek of garbled words poured out of it.

“—swear I could never have expected this to happen, not for this, but I do not think there is a way for him to get out of it!” Anne-Marie let out a gleeful, wordless squeal. “If his father has any sense, he will already know there is no buying his way out of this, not when it was so public and involved the SVP. Oh, and my mother spoke with Emile LeBlanc, who, I do not know if you know him but he said—”

“Anne-Marie!” I finally said. “What are you talking about?”

“ Chérie !” She squealed again. “How have you not heard the news?”

“I think you have to say the news for me to hear it.”

“Yes, but it’s all over the news. The actual, on television news. Here, at least. I suppose maybe in Ottawa—well.” She took a deep breath. “Clinton Thibault was arrested. He is in jail .”

My first reaction was the same kind of gleeful excitement Anne-Marie had.

My second was relief so strong I almost cried. It wasn’t like I planned to go to any of my dad’s events ever again, but now there was no way my dad would ever want to be associated with the Thibaults like that. There was no chance that I’d ever have to be Clinton’s date for anything. My dad couldn’t ever hold that over my head again.

My third reaction was less of an emotion and more of a sudden dread in my stomach, something that dropped so low that it pulled the moisture from my mouth and replaced it with a sick, horrified feeling.

Clinton was not a man who respected the word “no.”

“What’d he get arrested for?” I asked. “Did he… you know. Do something to someone?”

“No, no,” Anne-Marie said. “I mean, yes, he severely injured someone and hurt a few others, but not like the way you are thinking. Which, honestly, of all the things to take down Clinton Thibault, I would have never expected it to be crashing his Maserati into the middle of the police benefit.”

“He did what now?” I said.

She launched into another stream of words, as twisted and convoluted as ribbons in a windstorm, and even though Sydney had leaped off the couch and leaned in to listen, neither of us could make out a thing she was saying.

“Annie, you have to slow down,” I said. “You said he crashed a Maserati. Where did the Uber come from?”

She let out an aggravated noise. “I do not have time to slow down! I have so many calls to make. I will—actually, if you go to—search his name with the word ‘crash,’ I guarantee a video will come up right near the top. His parents are attempting to get it removed from the media but it’s viral. There is no chance they will get it off everything. But I will call back later after I talk to Remy again, because he said he does not think Clinton will get jail time but I think—oh, never mind. I will call later!”

And then she hung up.

“What the hell?” Reid asked, staring at me and Sydney.

“It’s this guy from Montreal,” I said, turning and plunking myself in front of my laptop so I could search for the video Anne-Marie was talking about.

“The one Nellie’s dad tried to make her go to those events with,” Sydney said.

“Ah,” Reid said. “The handsy one.”

“That’s a word for it.” I typed quickly and like Anne-Marie said, a video showed up near the top, even though it had only been posted a few hours earlier. Sydney sank to the floor beside me, kneeling so she could slide in closer to the screen. Reid lifted his legs off the floor so he could shift behind us and even Hope got caught up in the curiosity of it all.

Or at least, she pretended to so she could take Syd’s spot on the couch.

In hindsight, Anne-Marie had done a reasonable job of simplifying the story. It boiled down to Clinton being rejected by a girl at a club. Clinton, being Clinton, refused to take no for an answer after he bought her a drink, and the girl, being a girl, was nervous around him, so she and her friends tried to slip out of the bar unnoticed and go home.

Except Clinton noticed.

The women had just gotten into their Uber when Clinton stormed out of the bar—allegedly drunk, according to the news, but only because they couldn’t outright say he was without proof even though it was obvious—and like the psychopathic narcissist he was, got into his car and went after them.

The cops were called, of course, but the car chase ended before they got there, since technically, they were all there before Clinton was. One of the women in the Uber knew about the police benefit because her brother-in-law was an officer and directed them there, thinking someone would be able to arrest Clinton.

But she was wrong.

“Despite being surrounded by a selection of Montreal’s finest, it was not a SVP officer who captured the suspect,” the news anchor said. “After crashing his vehicle into the lobby of the hotel where the benefit took place, sending four people to hospital including a bellhop who was set to retire next week and an officer who is still listed as being in serious but stable condition, the suspect exited the vehicle and ran. In the chaos, it was actually the wife of an officer who brought down the suspect.”

The camera switched to an interview with, according to the bar of text at the bottom, two of the women who had been in the Uber.

“It was amazing,” said one woman in muted French so the voiceover in English was clear. “Like something from a movie. We saw him running towards us and the driver turned the vehicle back on, but before we even moved, a woman in heels and a ball gown flew into the man and tackled him to the ground.”

“There were rhinestones everywhere,” said the other woman. “But she is our hero. She came to the car and she was bleeding, you know, from her knees and elbows. Scrapes from the road. But she checked on us first.”

“That’s actually so sweet,” Sydney said.

I nodded. “I hope she was okay.”

“She must have been,” she said. “I mean, it’d be a very different story, right? If she was hurt or something? I wonder if—”

But the camera switched again and she didn’t finish her thought.

“If what?” Hope asked.

“Syd—” Reid started.

“No,” Sydney said, her voice high-pitched.

“You didn’t know,” I said, reaching for her.

“Know what ?” Hope demanded.

But Sydney had gone silent, her eyes wide and unblinking and her expression frozen as she stared at the couple on my laptop screen, a chubby woman with rosy white skin and red hair standing next to a man with curly brown hair and who was shorter in person than one would expect.

“—spoke with Officer Olivier Courbet,” the news anchor said.

“Of course I am horrified,” Olivier said to someone off-camera. “She was put in a position that she was not prepared for when there were so many others who should have been there instead of her. But that horror is nothing at all compared to how proud I am of my wife.”

“That fucker,” Reid said, his voice heated and rumbling and growly. “That fucking fucker .”

“Oh my God,” Hope said. “That’s your guy, Sydney. You’re the other woman!”

And Sydney just stared at the screen.