FOR SEVERAL NIGHTS IN A ROW, Lianne and I plotted like Churchill and FDR. Focusing on my little revenge plot was just what I needed. Even though our Urban Studies project was due soon, Rafe and I were avoiding each other. And I was still ducking the rest of the world. But Lianne enjoyed planning with me, and I sure did appreciate it.
We’d just finished our dinner — sushi this time — when Lianne’s phone rang. “I gotta take this before we talk about transportation,” she said. Startling me, she answered the phone, “God! What do you want?” She listened for a moment, her eyes darting around like an angry pinball. “Yeah, I haven’t decided where I’m going for Thanksgiving. Bermuda sounds nice, but I might fly out to Palm Springs to be with Mom. Or I might go home with a friend.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s a he. And he lives in Massachusetts.”
I was eavesdropping like mad, of course. Lianne never said much about her life. And come to think of it, I’d never heard her phone ring before.
“Bob, I haven’t been able to make up my mind. Cross me off your guest list, if you need clarity. I’ll go elsewhere.” She smiled to herself, as if she’d scored a point in some game that only she knew how to play. “Don’t nag me okay? It’s so unattractive. Later.” She disconnected the call.
Damn. And here I’d begun the year thinking Lianne was meek.
“What?” she asked, and I realized I was staring.
“Who just got a beat-down?” I asked.
She wrinkled her world-famous nose. “My manager is a pain in the ass. And I talk tough, but somehow I always end up doing whatever he wants.”
“Do you not have plans for Thanksgiving?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “I’ll probably go to Palm Springs, where my bitch of a mother lives. But I can’t tell him in advance because then he’ll show up there. And he’ll drum up some parties or appearances or some other crap that I don’t want to do. So I need to keep him guessing.”
Ouch. “I’d vote for going home with the guy from Massachusetts. Sounds like fun.”
Lianne picked up her clipboard again. “Bella, if he were real, he’d be at the top of the list.”
“Oh.” Oops. “You were very convincing.”
She sighed. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks. Now, back to our plan. The models can take the train up from the city, and we’ll pick them up in the rental van.”
I sat down next to her and looked over her shoulder at the notes. “Don’t forget that we’re going to need an excellent parking spot — between the tailgate tent and the stadium, with quick access to the road,” I argued. “The van has to be in position well before the train comes.”
“Good point.” She scribbled a note on her clipboard.
“The girls will have to take taxis to campus. It’s better if they don’t arrive until the game is underway. I want them to attract attention, but not until go time.”
“Gotcha.”
“Hi,” said a voice behind me.
Whipping my head around, I found Rafe leaning against the frame of the bathroom door. “Where did you come from?”
He raised his eyebrows. “We still need to finish our project. You want me to go back downstairs?”
A somewhat awkward silence followed, during which Lianne looked from me to Rafe and back again.
“No,” I said slowly. “It’s just that we were plotting something, and you startled me.”
“Plotting what?” he asked, crossing his arms in front of his beautiful chest. I got a little lost for a second staring at the way his T-shirt stretched across his lickable abs. And by the fact that I knew if I stood up and went to him, he’d wrap those long arms around me.
I checked that urge, though. Because that way lay the abyss.
“What are you plotting?” he asked again.
Lianne beat me to it. “The best thing ever! I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces.”
Rafe lifted an eyebrow at me.
“Maybe we should talk,” I said.
We went into my room for a little privacy. Rafe listened to my plan with a serious expression in his dark brown eyes. “What if you get into trouble for this?” was his first question.
There was a very real chance that I’d end up in a dean’s office trying to explain myself. “I’ve thought of that. And I think I’d just come clean. I’d show them the photo on Brodacious. And…” This was not going to make Rafe happy. “I’d tell them that I was roofied that night at the Beta Rho house.”
Rafe stood up so fast that I jumped. He went over to the window. As I watched, he took a long, slow breath and then let it out. When he spoke again, his voice was tight. “Did I just hear that correctly? They drugged you?”
“I think so,” I whispered.
“Jesucristo. How did I miss that?”
“I think you were busy carrying me up the stairs. And I purposefully didn’t say anything, because I didn’t want you to go to the cops.”
“But why, Bella? That fucker should be in jail.”
“I was mortified, Rafe. I was ashamed, okay? I finally understand why girls who are sexually assaulted don’t report it.”
His fists clenched on the window frame. “Were you assaulted?”
“No sir,” I shook my head. “But I’m still ashamed.”
He dropped his head, blowing out another gust of air. “Please report him. I’m begging you.”
“First I want to do this thing at the football game. I want to make a point.”
“He’ll get the point when his ass is in jail.”
“But it’s all of them!” I yelped. “They do what they’re told! And I can prove it with two reams of colored paper and a dozen rent-a-babes. It’s poetry, Rafe. Their ugly prank begets mine. It’s just like that gravestone you showed me. ‘Killed by a log he made.’”
Rafe scrubbed a hand across his forehead. “Your plan is brilliant. You’re the cleverest girl I know. But it’s also risky.”
“All good things are risky,” I countered.
Slowly, Rafe lifted his eyes to mine. Our gazes locked. Rafe lifted an eyebrow in that maddening way he had.
Shit. All good things are risky, I’d said. And yet I wouldn’t even take a risk on him. I was such a shit.
“I don’t expect you to be there,” I said quietly. I’d been such a shitty friend.
“Oh, I will be. You don’t have a choice.”
“Why?”
His eyes practically bugged out. “You think I can just go about my Saturday business, take in a movie or whatever, all the while wondering if you and Lianne are going to end up roofied in some closet at a frat house?” In a rare fit of temper, Rafe delivered a swift kick to the foot of my desk chair. Then he put his hands on his head and stared up at the ceiling. “Sorry,” he managed.
“I promise to be careful.”
He dropped his arms, looking grumpier than I’d ever seen him. “Yeah? Well I’ll just be watching to make sure that you are.”
I wondered what Lianne would have to say about that. Rafe stood in front of me, looking ten different kinds of hot. He had a sort of maddening alpha-male scowl on his face. I wanted to launch myself at him. I could kiss that frown off his face. I could scale him like a tree until I had him muttering Spanish curses in my ear. I could strip him down, and finish what we’d started the other day. And when we were done, I could lay my head upon his chest — my boyfriend’s chest — and go to sleep.
The urge was strong. But I didn’t give in to it.
‘Do you happen to have any graph paper?’ I asked instead.
