SO FAR, so good.
The gift wrapping had gone even faster than I’d hoped. And Andy was good company. I didn’t feel like I had to be on script with him. There was a social dance I’d learned at my mother’s heel. “Ask his opinion,” Mom had taught me. “A man wants someone to validate his worldview.”
Even at frat parties, between games of beer pong and funnels, I’d stuck to a version of the script. Flirt and dodge. Toss the hair. I knew how to listen in a way which expressed interest without giving too much away.
It was exhausting, really. And tonight, I didn’t have it in me. But it seemed not to matter. Andy’s quiet companionship didn’t demand anything of me. That was all for the best, because I was too freaked out by the sounds of laughter bleeding in our direction.
Some of that laughter was almost certainly directed at me.
Since the gifts were wrapped and tagged now, the next step was stacking them beside the Christmas tree in preparation for the kids’ party tomorrow. But I didn’t do my share, because I was putting off going into the next room. Instead, I grabbed another beer for Andy, and then planted myself right next to him. I looked up into his big brown eyes and just let him ground me. “Are you ready for the exam in European Paintings?” I asked. The test was in three days.
“Not yet,” he said. “I think the baroque art is going to be the hardest to memorize,” he said. “All those dark canvases. They’re blending together on me.”
“True,” I agreed. “I’m so far behind, too. I didn’t make it to the last two lectures, when he reviewed the final list of artworks. I’m probably going to memorize the wrong ones.”
Andy shrugged. “I copied down the entire list in my notebook. I’ll make you a copy if you want.”
My heart gave a little bounce. “Could you?” This guy was going to save me twice this week — once from being dateless, and once from being clueless.
“No problem.”
Across the room, one of the brothers stood on a chair, banging a spoon against a beer bottle. It was a beefy guy that they called Whittaker up there, looking for attention. “Ladies and not-so-gentlemen!” There was laughter all around me, but I did not laugh. Neither did Andy, actually. Even as the chuckles died down, I glanced upward, over my shoulder. He met my gaze with the world’s most discreet eye roll.
“…The girls of Tri Psi ought to know that this year’s tree was a three case effort. That’s right. It took seventy-two beers to cut this sucker down and stand it back up on your porch.”
There was another smattering of laughter, but I still wasn’t feeling the love. Nothing was as light and funny as it would have been a week ago. To my new, jaded eyes, the peculiar mating ritual where a bunch of big strong boys put up a tree for the sorority princesses just hit me wrong. I mean, why couldn’t we put up our own freaking tree? How hard could it be? And what were we supposed to owe these bros in exchange for their labor?
Gah. I was thinking too hard again.
“…So come on in, ladies, and let us light her up for you.” He hopped off the chair and lumbered into the porch room. The sisters began to follow him.
But I did not. Because I hadn’t seen Dash yet tonight, though I was sure I’d heard his rasping chuckle more than once. Rationally, I knew that I was going to have to face him down at some point. I had seven semesters left at Harkness. And pledging this sorority meant that I’d encounter him frequently. I needed to just get past it.
Yet something stuck my Prada heels to the floorboards. I just couldn’t make myself go in there. And a full-body shiver started in my shoulders and worked its way down.
A warm hand landed lightly on my back. “Katie, are you okay?”
Yes?
No.
God.
I spun around and looked up (way up — he must be 6’-4”) into his chocolate eyes. “I think I’d like to go outside for a minute.”
He blinked once. Then, without a word, he turned toward the front door.
Like a fool, I’d run out onto the porch without my coat. So immediately I broke out in goosebumps. But the cold air felt good in my lungs. I needed to calm down. Like right now.
“Should I get your coat?” Andy asked. “Do you want to go?”
I shook my head. As stupid as I probably looked right now, I wasn’t quite ready to bail. Jeez. If I let myself get this freaked out about seeing all those jerks from Beta Rho, what a long year it was going to be. “Crap,” I swore. Get it together, girl.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” As Andy said that, he draped his sport coat over my bare shoulders.
“Thanks,” I stammered. “I’m not usually such a drama queen.”
His eyebrows arched. “Well, maybe you have a good reason.”
There was curiosity in his eyes. But it wasn’t judgmental. “I don’t like the way they look at me,” I blurted, before I could think better of it.
“Why?”
Right. The reason was much too embarrassing for polite conversation. So instead of answering, I just looked down at my shoes.
“Let’s just go, then?” he suggested. “You look a little… traumatized, actually.”
That’s when I let out a big sigh. Because there were people in the world who had good reason to feel traumatized. But I wasn’t one of them. I hadn’t been raped, or injured, or abused in any way. I’d just been stupid. Very, very stupid. “Ugh,” I said. “If I leave, I’m giving him too much power.”
“Maybe not,” Andy challenged. “What did he do?” After asking, Andy immediately clapped a hand over his own mouth. “Sorry. It’s none of my business. But you have me imagining the worst, here.”
Ouch. Now a nice guy was worried about me, and I didn’t even deserve it. “That’s the stupid thing! Everything that went down…” Gah! I cringed at my unfortunate choice of words, “…between Dash and me was voluntary. I wasn’t even drunk. Not very, anyway.”
This explanation did not seem to appease Andy. When I looked up, his face was still full of concern. I hadn’t meant to talk about this tonight, or maybe ever. And certainly not with him. And now he’d know that he was on a date with someone who was crazypants.
I took one more deep breath of cold air, which helped. A little. “Okay, I broke up with him because he didn’t seem all that interested in me as a person. All he wanted to do was play video games with the brothers, but I was supposed to just hang around and watch until bedtime. Like a good little woman.”
“Charming.”
“I know, right? In my defense, I realized pretty quickly that he wasn’t worth the effort, and I told him we were through.” What I might have added was the fact that Dash didn’t seem very broken up about losing me. And that should have been a big clue. But I’d missed it.
The story should have ended there. Because my instinct about him had been dead on. But it didn’t end there. And that’s why I’d been hearing a chant playing inside my head all week. And the mantra was: Stupid… stupid… stupid…
Andy was watching me with patient eyes, waiting for an explanation. It was silent there on the porch. And somehow I kept talking. “So, last week I went over to the Beta Rho house for a few minutes, just to drop off a bin of Christmas decorations for tonight. It was quiet there that night — the usual video games but no party.” I’d been telling this part of the story to my shoes, but now I looked up to find Andy watching me. God, this was going to be embarrassing. “That night, for the first time, he made a big effort to talk to me. You know, the full court press.”
Andy smiled at my basketball reference, but he didn’t say a word.
“He got me a glass of wine and asked me a lot of questions about my classes, and pledging Tri Psi, and…” I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. I just sort of fell under the spell. He was so sweet and patient, telling me how much he missed me…”
“So far, so good.” Andy pressed. “What went wrong?”
Yikes. I hadn’t told a soul about this, not even my roommates. And tomorrow, I would probably regret telling Andy. I really didn’t need even more people to know this story. But I was angry. And I wanted someone to know what pigs they were.
“Okay, he played me like a hand of poker,” I sighed. “After my second glass of wine on an empty stomach, and two hours of heavy flattery, he wanted me to come upstairs with him. Fool that I am, I went.” I looked down at the porch floorboards again. “He took me into one of the brothers’ rooms. And we…” I cleared my throat. “We fooled around a little bit.”
Andy dropped his voice. “But you didn’t want to?”
He was about to get the wrong idea. “That’s not it. See, I didn’t mind at the time. I didn’t start feeling bad about it until two days later. But that night I heard some voices in the hall. I heard a couple of the brothers laughing. But the door was shut, and I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Oh, shit,” Andy whispered.
I looked up quickly, catching a wince on his face. “What?”
He closed his eyes for a long moment. And when he opened them, he said, “please tell me that this was not a hole-in-the-door situation.”
My stomach dropped. Was I the only one on the planet who didn’t know any better than to fall for Beta Rho’s pledge ritual? Slowly, I nodded.
Andy’s face sagged. “I’d always just assumed that was a myth.”
“Apparently, it’s not.” I tried to say this with nonchalance. But I don’t think I pulled it off. Because my eyes began to sting. And that was no good, because, you know, mascara. Carefully I pressed my fingertips against my tear ducts. “I wouldn’t have even known, except that I overheard a couple of them talking about it. I was studying at one of those carrels in the stacks. Have you been up there?”
Andy nodded. There were twelve floors of books, and each floor had a row of old oak study desks with little walls attached. When you really needed to study — as opposed to picking somewhere with good people-watching — the stacks were the place to go.
“I heard these two guys carrying on, and I was going to walk over there and complain. But then I heard them say his name.” I swallowed then, and my throat was thick. “So I listened. And one of them had been in the hallway that night. He was telling the other one exactly what he’d seen…” I had to stop there. Not only did I not want to speak about the details, I didn’t want to think about them, either. When you’re getting busy with somebody, you do not want to spend your time wondering what the expression on your face looks like when you’re giving a…
God. Just shoot me.
I cleared my throat. “So, thanks to me, Dash’s place in the pledge class is secure.” I’d come to the end of being able to talk about this nightmare.
Andy pressed the fingertips of both hands against his brow, as if he had a sudden pain there. “He earned pledge points for letting the other guys watch.” He let out an angry noise. “That’s disgusting.”
When he said that, the weight of my outrage grew a tiny bit lighter. All week, I’d been carrying this embarrassing secret around. And it was awfully heavy. The sound of Andy’s displeasure made me feel as if I’d just handed off a portion of my anger, letting someone else carry it for a moment instead.
“I’m still an idiot,” I said, because it was true.
“No! Shit, no. That is the lowest of the low. That is…” Andy took a deep, slow breath and let it out again. “You know all those brochures about consent that the college passed out during the first week of school?”
“Sure.” They were pretty funny, actually. My roommates and I had a few giggles reading the flyers out loud to one another. Some genius had written out a script for hookups that was supposed to guarantee that both parties had consent for every sexual act. So the bullet points read like a porn film. Do you want me to put my hand here? Does it feel good when I do this? Can I touch you here?
As funny as that was, it didn’t really apply. “But… I, uh. I consented.”
Andy shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Because if you had, you wouldn’t feel afraid to go in there right now.” He jabbed a finger toward the door.
I had absolutely no response to that. Except that the pressure in my chest loosened another percentage point or two.
Andy didn’t wait for a reaction from me, though. He was on a roll. “I mean… forget common decency. Don’t any of them have sisters? God.”
“At least there wasn’t any evidence,” I said quietly. “When I was eavesdropping, I actually heard the brother who wasn’t there ask if there were pictures. And the other one said no, because that would make it into a code violation.”
“How thoughtful of them to avoid violating the code,” Andy spat. “Are you going to report it anyway?”
That was something I’d thought about all week. “It’s not like I don’t feel the urge. But as far as I can tell, they didn’t break any rules, let alone laws. So it would be a waste of time. Not to mention that everyone would know how stupid I was.”
Andy moved fast, then. He stepped forward to wrap his arms around me, giving me a quick, fierce hug. “You weren’t stupid. Trusting, maybe. But that’s supposed to be a good thing to be.”
I was too shaken up to decide whether or not he was right. But I did notice that Andy gave first-rate hugs. Those long arms were good for something besides dunking basketballs, I guess. Come to think of it, he was probably only hugging me for warmth. We’d been out here awhile, and I had his jacket on. “I’m sorry to dump this on you,” I said into his shoulder.
He released me, stepping back. “Sorry it happened to you. Want to go home? You don’t owe it to him to be civil.”
“But I can’t avoid him for four years! And it’s not just him! I don’t know who was standing on the other side of that door. So I don’t even know who to avoid. I’m lucky it’s not on the front page of the New York Times. Mom was right.”
Andy stuffed his hands into his pockets, and began pacing the porch. “She wasn’t, though. I don’t think your mom has thought that through.”
“What do you mean?”
He stopped walking and turned to me. “We all do things that we don’t want to see in a newspaper. I mean, she probably has sex with your father, right?”
“Ew.”
He grinned. “Sorry, but you get my point. She doesn’t want that pictured in the Times, even though there’s nothing wrong with it. And you didn’t do anything remotely wrong, either. At the risk of sounding very pre-law, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you follow a guy into his room to…” he broke off the sentence, and there was an awkward pause.
“…Put some lipstick on his dipstick?” I supplied. And then I laughed. I actually laughed about my nightmare. Because now that I was breathing just a little bit easier, I could see just how fricking ridiculous the whole thing was. And humiliating. But still… funny in a way.
God, I was probably losing my mind.
But I’d made Andy’s lips twitch too with my crude description of what had happened. He was trying not to laugh now, but sometimes holding it back only makes it worse.
“Go on,” I told him. “We might as well laugh about it. It’s either that or crying.”
He let a chuckle escape. “You want me to punch him for you? I’ve never won a fight in my life, but this seems like a good cause.”
“Well, okay,” I teased. “So long as you think a trip to jail is a good use of the rest of your night.”
He grinned. “With my luck, it would be a trip to the hospital, and then a trip to jail. But seriously, I have two sisters. The thought of someone doing that to you makes me want to deck him.”
“That’s really…” I swallowed hard. “Thank you. I needed to hear someone say that. I’ve spent the week telling myself, ‘hey, it’s just sex, right? No big deal.’ But I’m embarrassed. And it’s not the same as if we were fooling around and somebody walked in by accident.”
“Of course it’s not the same. Intentions are everything.” As he said this, I saw him shiver.
“Come on,” I said suddenly. Here I’d been struggling to find a reason to go back inside the house, but there was a perfectly good one standing right in front of me. I opened the door. “You’re going to freeze, and catch pneumonia, and miss our art history exam. And then I won’t have anyone friendly to sit next to. So we’re going back in.”
“If you’re ready,” he said.
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” I took Andy’s cold hand in mine and pulled him inside. There was nobody in the parlor anymore. Keeping hold of Andy’s hand, I tugged him through the room and into the big old sunroom.
In front of us rose a giant Christmas tree with about a million white lights on it. And now I understood why the girls put the tree in here. Those million lights were reflected in the many windowpanes which circled the room. Lifting my chin, I gazed up at it, unblinking. I’d done this ever since I was a child — I’d stare at the lit Christmas tree until my vision went slightly askew and the lights blurred before my eyes. The tree was even more beautiful when you didn’t focus on each pinprick of light, but saw the whole thing at once.
“Nice,” Andy whispered beside me. “The kids at your party tomorrow will love it.”
“I hope so. Otherwise those three cases of our beer that the Betas drank went to waste.”
My date snorted, and I squeezed his hand a little tighter.
Of course, I couldn’t stare at the tree forever. Or cling to Andy. Eventually, I had to look around, and even make eye contact. And it wasn’t going to get any easier if I put it off.
The brave thing to do would be to just say hello to Dash and his stupid friends, as if nothing had happened. They’d forget about the little show I’d put on eventually, right?
Gah. Okay. Deep breaths.
“Let’s get you another drink,” I suggested. “I know I could use one.” Still clutching Andy’s hand like a security blanket, I steered the two of us over to a table against the wall. I had to let him go to pop the tops off of two bottles of Moosehead Lager.
“I like this beer,” Andy said, taking his. “Thanks.”
I took a swig of mine. Maybe a beer or ten was the right way to go. Tonight I couldn’t exactly get wasted to dull the pain. And not because I’d worry that Andy would take advantage of me. It was just the opposite — poor Andy had already shored me up once tonight. He didn’t need the trouble of escorting a drunk girl home, even if I did feel like getting numb.
Now, at close range, I heard a familiar chuckle.
Steeling myself, I turned. And there he was, a beer in hand, grinning at his pledge brothers. Dash’s eyes slid in my direction. They seemed to lock on me for a nanosecond, then jump to Andy. Then, just as quickly, they slid away.
Okay, that wasn’t so bad. I was just about to exhale when the guy beside Dash elbowed him, a knowing smirk on his face. Lowering his beefy head to Dash’s ear, he said something which made my ex-boyfriend grin.
My pulse kicked up, and I felt hot all over. Maybe I couldn’t do this after all. Maybe I should duck out of a party for the first time in my entire freaking life, and then transfer to another college. On another continent.
That sounded like a plan.
Turning my back, I squeezed past Andy and out through the door we’d come in not five minutes ago. I trotted across the parlor, skidding to a stop in front of the fireplace. Meanwhile, my heart bounded along inside my chest like a cartoon rabbit.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself.
I heard footsteps, and a few seconds later Andy appeared at my elbow. “Forget something?” he teased. But I saw worry in his face.
Looking down into the fireplace embers, I tried to think. “They’re probably laughing at me right now.”
“They’re not,” he said. “I overheard them talking about hockey, actually.”
“Figures. That’s all they live for. Games. They made my life into one of their crude little games.”
Andy made an irritated noise. “They did. And that sucks.”
“He acted like a pig,” I said.
“He is a pig. But what would make you feel better? An apology?”
I considered that idea. “I want him to wear a t-shirt every day for a week that reads: I am a pig.”
Andy laughed. “You should consider law school, Katie. You’d make an interesting judge.”
I looked up at him then, and his warm brown eyes were smiling at me again. “That’s just the sorority girl solution, Andy. Haven’t you heard the joke? How many sorority girls does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
He cocked his head like a puppy. “How many?”
“Six. One to change the lightbulb and five to make the t-shirts.”
He touched his empty beer bottle to mine. “Good one, sister. Is there a frat version of that joke?”
“Sure. It takes eleven frat boys to screw in a lightbulb. One to hold the bulb, and ten to drink enough that the room starts spinning.”
He gave me the hot smile again. “You are a total hoot when you’re stressed out.”
“Why, thank you. I’m almost as fun when I’m not stressed out.” But of course he wouldn’t know that, because tonight he was keeping company with a total head case. “I have to walk back into that room. The only alternative is transferring to a school in South America. Or Europe. I hear Spain is nice this time of year.”
Andy winced. “They made your visit to their house into a game, but it was a game you didn’t know you were playing. And now you’re supposed to go in there and be social, and pretend like it never happened. Another game.”
“And not knee him in the balls, or throw up, yes.”
He set his empty beer down on the mantelpiece, which is probably exactly what that space had been used for since the beginning of time. “So maybe what you need to get through the next half hour is one more game. A harmless one, though. You and I can play a game with them, only they won’t know they’re playing.”
Now I was lost. “What game?”
“Well…” he tapped a finger on the mantel. “We’ll try get each guy to say the name of an animal in conversation.”
“An animal?”
“Sure. That’s what you called him. And if you’re focused on that, you won’t stop to worry whether they’re looking at you funny.”
“Andy, they will be looking at me funny. Because I’m going to have to have some pretty weird conversations to get an animal name out of them.”
He just grinned. “Who cares? I’ll be doing it, too. For points. Whoever gets the most animals wins. And no repeats.”
It was the most ridiculous idea I’d ever heard. And maybe the most brilliant. “So, this is competitive?”
“Unless you’re afraid to take me on.”
I giggled. “Please. Sorority girls are made for this game. I’m a Division One small talk champion. Bring it, basketball dude. And maybe I can get Dash to say the word ‘pig.’ Since he is one.”
His eyebrows shot up. “That’s a good twist, honestly. It’s like a trump card. A trump animal.”
“Right! If I get Dash to say ‘pig,’ I win automatically.”
“He doesn’t have, like, a pet pig that I don’t know about? Am I being gamed, missy?”
I shook my head. “If either one of us can get anybody to say ‘pig,’ we win. So it’s a little like catching the golden snitch.”
“Okay. I’m in. But they have to say ‘pig,’ and not some similar word. Because how hard would it be to get a frat boy to talk about how much he likes bacon?”
“Good rule. Should we shake on it?”
With a smile, Andy offered me his hand. When I took it, we shook. Then he pulled me in for one more quick hug, which lasted only a fraction of a second. “Remember, ‘scoop’ is still the escape word.”
“Oh, I remember,” I told him. “But now I want to win this thing.”
He gave me a gentle shove toward the porch. “Lead on, then. But you should know that I won’t let you win. You’re going to have to earn it.”
“Do you always talk smack before a game?” I asked him. Now I was actually flirting with him. If you’d asked me two hours ago if I’d find the energy to flirt tonight, I would have said you were crazy.
“Basketball is at least fifty percent smack talk. The way my team plays, anyway.”
He gave me one more of his killer smiles, and together we headed back in there.
