—Corey—
There was a polite knock on my door the next morning. Dana’s voice said, “Um, Corey? Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I said, yawning. It was getting late, but I couldn’t make myself face the day.
She walked into my room, looking around as if she expected to see something different. “So…what the hell happened?”
Uh oh.
“Happened?” I asked, my face twitching into an unavoidable guilty smile.
She rolled her eyes. “Spill it, you. Because you are so busted.” Dana flounced over to my bed and sat down at the foot of it. “When I came home last night, one of Hart-throb’s crutches was on the living room floor, and now it’s gone. Was he in here?”
I put my face in my hands. “For a little while.”
Dana grabbed my hands and pulled them down. “Seriously? His girlfriend blew him off, and so he came across the hall to fool around with you? And where is he now?”
I exhaled. It all sounded so wrong coming out of her mouth. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Is there another way? Is he breaking up with her, or does he expect you to be his fuck buddy?”
“Dana! It isn’t quite as bad as that. You like Hartley.”
She looked sad. “I do like him. And I think he…” she flopped back onto my bed. “I don’t know what to think. The way he looks at you sometimes…” she shook her head. “I just don’t trust him. It’s like there’s a good Hartley and an evil one, and they’re always at war. I don’t want you to get caught in the crossfire.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But there’s a layer to the story that you don’t know.”
She sat up quickly. “What?”
“Well,” I swallowed. “I confessed something to him a few weeks ago, and…”
She stared at me, her dark eyes searching mine. “What is it?”
I took a deep breath, and I told her. Most of it, anyway.
“So…” she rubbed her temples. “That’s the weirdest, most romantic story I’ve ever heard. He talked you into fooling around, so you could find out if you can…?”
I nodded.
“…and it worked?”
My face was getting hot. “Did it ever.”
Dana hooted with laughter. “Oh my God. And then what?”
I took a deep breath. “Then he teared up. And then he left.”
Her eyes were the size of saucers. “I don’t even know what to make of that. But I do know you’re in trouble.”
“Why?” I whined, although I already knew the answer.
“Because you’ve just exchanged one heartache for another. Now you know how good it can be, but you want it with him. Do you have any idea what will happen now?”
It was the question I’d been avoiding since I opened my eyes that morning. “I think nothing happens now. Stacia will come back, and Hartley and I will pretend it never happened.” I swallowed. “It’s going to be awful, isn’t it?”
Dana nodded. “A hundred kinds of awful.” She looked at the ceiling. “You know, his mother asked me about you two.”
“Seriously?” I leaned forward. “What did she say?”
“We were doing a few dishes, and she wanted to know if you two were,” Dana made her fingers into quotation marks, “‘a couple.’ When I said no, she looked really disappointed. Then she said, ‘for a smart boy, he can be such an idiot.’ It’s not just me who thinks there’s something there.”
I shook my head. “His mother really hates Stacia, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“If you say so.” Dana stood up. “Let’s go to brunch.”
“Only if you promise not to smile at Hartley. I’ll die if he thinks I spilled my guts already.”
“It will not be easy. But for you, I will try.”
Nervously, I followed Dana to the Beaumont dining hall forty minutes later. I’d stalled, hoping that he wouldn’t still be there. So we got there quite late, and Dana grumbled when she learned that there wasn’t any more smoked salmon for our bagels.
Wouldn’t you know, I spotted Hartley right away. Only one of the big tables was still occupied, and it was packed with hockey players, Hartley at the center of it all. Before I could look away, he gave me a quick wink.
“I saw that,” Dana whispered.
“Stop,” I muttered. “Let’s sit over by the window.”
Dana slid our tray onto a banquet, and I set down the newspaper crossword I’d been smart enough to bring with me. “One across is ‘half pint,’” I said. “I’d say a cup, but it’s four letters.”
“I grew up with the metric system,” Dana complained. “What’s the next one?” She bit into her bagel.
“A modern resident of Elba,” I said. “Six letters.”
“Syria!” Dana announced.
“Syrian,” I corrected. “Now we’re cooking with gas.” I scribbled in the clue. When I looked up at Dana, I could tell that she was eavesdropping. “What?” I whispered.
She shook her head. “I wonder what he told all of them?” she nudged her chin toward Hartley’s table. “When they asked how his birthday night was? You don’t think he’d tell them about…”
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t brag.”
Dana nodded slowly. “You’re right. I don’t quite understand what it is between you two, but I can’t see him gossiping like that.” She sipped her coffee. “He cares too much.”
Not necessarily, I thought, picturing the way he’d snuck out. “Dana,” I dropped my voice. “He won’t tell because nobody brags about hooking up with the girl in the wheelchair.”
She set down her mug. “Corey! You don’t really mean that.”
Of course I meant it, one hundred percent. Guys bragged about bedding trophy girls. Girls like Stacia. Even as I formed this thought, Stacia’s face appeared under the arched doorway to the hall. The dismay must have shown in my expression, because Dana turned around to look over her shoulder.
If possible, the girl was even more stunning than I’d remembered her. Her long, honey-colored hair fell in curtains down her shoulders. Her model-perfect face was made up in a way that was just not seen in the dining hall on a Saturday morning during finals. She wore a clingy black turtleneck sweater over a plaid wool skirt cut to mid thigh. Her high-heeled black suede boots reached way up, over her knees. Between the boots and the skirt stretched a good six inches of smooth, creamy leg.
Her perfect fucking legs.
The moment that Stacia found Hartley, her face lit up, and she began to prance across the dining hall toward him. His table fell silent, and I couldn’t look away. Beaming, she walked around behind his chair. “Well, give us a kiss, Hartley,” she said in an affected voice, which proved she knew she was the center of attention.
Into the silence, Hartley mimicked, “Give us a kiss, Hartley. What, there’s more than one of you to service now?” His friends laughed.
Then, as everyone watched, he pushed back his chair and stood. Stacia took his face in her hands and kissed him full on the mouth.
And he kissed her back.
While his friends hooted, he cupped his hands on her face and closed his eyes. It went on and on.
The world went a little fuzzy at the edges until Dana pinched my hand. “Corey,” she said, her voice low. “Breathe.”
But it was difficult, because I felt as if a vice was squeezing my chest.
“Should we just go?” she asked me.
I forced myself to look only at Dana. “No.” It would be too obvious if I got up and bolted from the room. I wished I could sink into the floor instead.
Dana took the newspaper and studied it. “We need an eight letter word for a boat trip. Starts with a C.”
“Um,” I forced a deep breath into my lungs. “Cruise. Cruising? No — crossing.”
“That’s it,” she said. “And the G at the end starts a Greek food.”
“Gyros,” I said automatically.
“You’re on a roll.”
I gripped my coffee cup. “I didn’t think.” What I meant was, I didn’t think it would hurt this much.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said. “Deep breaths.”
Over at Hartley’s table, they’d found Stacia a chair. I could hear her whiny voice. “But Hartley, you said you’d take me to the Christmas Ball.”
“And you said you were coming on my birthday,” he returned, humor in his voice.
“Interesting choice of words,” Bridger put in.
“You don’t have to dance,” she said. “You are only there to look good in a suit.”
“Well, in that case,” he said, his voice humming out the same patient, half-amused smirk I’d heard on move-in day as he dealt with her. He spoke to her the way an indulgent father speaks to his little girl.
It was not at all the way he sounded talking to me.
“So where were you, anyway?” he asked her.
“I would have come up from New York,” she said, “but Marco had theater tickets.”
“Who did?” Bridger cut in.
“My ride.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Hartley said. “But you know, they’ve invented these things called trains…”
“I thought of that,” she sighed. “But I had so much luggage.”
“Now that I believe,” Hartley chuckled.
Across from me, Dana just shook her head. “The evil one wins.”
“Okay,” I said, pressing my palms against the ancient wood of the table. “I’m ready to go now.”
