Love Story

by Jennifer Echols

  I stood there staring at the bay windows for a moment. Normally next I would close the shades on the windows. Slowly I reached for the pull on the first shade. But even after I’d closed them all, knowing Hunter was on the other side of my door while I changed, I felt as warm and exposed as if they had been wide open.

  I hung my belly-dancing outfit on a hook in my room, rather than on the outside of the door where it usually stayed. That would be a painfully obvious ploy for Hunter’s attention. I made myself a gourmet dinner by opening a pack of peanut butter crackers, and I settled on my bed to study.

  Listened for Hunter in the outer room.

  Waited for him to burst in.

  Of course he didn’t. It bothered me that he didn’t come in to bother me, and he knew this. However, I had vowed to close my heart to him, and I meant it this time. I tried my best to throw myself into my history reading.

  But come on, it was history. Versus Hunter.

  After half an hour of torture, I peeked around my door. I would feel foolish if I’d focused on Hunter and wasted half an hour of precious homework time when he wasn’t even there.

  He was asleep.

  Not quite believing what I was seeing, I tiptoed across the room for a closer look. The overhead light and the lamps on either side of Jørdis’s bed shone on him like a specimen in an operating theater, but he was dead to the world. He had curled his big body on the end of Jørdis’s bed. His eyelids did not flutter when I stood over him. His long blond lashes cast severe shadows down his soft cheek. His expensive T-shirt had pulled away from his waistband to reveal his tight, muscular side and the long white scar.

  His late-night visits to the blonde must have worn him out.

  Angry as I was, I empathized with him. If I’d been able to take a catnap in another dorm room or the library, I wouldn’t have wanted to be woken. So I only slid the scissors very carefully off the ends of his fingers, away from his eye, and set them on the bedside table.

  Then I went back to my room. But it wasn’t long before Summer bounced onto the end of my bed, and she seemed a lot more excited than I was about Hunter’s presence. “His poor scar is showing,” she whispered. She stuck out her bottom lip in sympathy. “You should go rub his back or stroke his hair or something.”

  “He’s not a puppy,” I whispered back. “And I doubt he’d appreciate it. He’s not here for me.”

  “He is here for you!” she insisted.

  “He’s cutting faces for Jørdis,” I corrected her. “Everybody in the dorm has cut faces for Jørdis at one time or another.”

  “Yes, but most of them don’t come back for more.”

  She had a point. And, truth be told, I did think Hunter was there for me. I just didn’t know why. I huffed out a sigh and hissed, “He’s already got my tuition and my inheritance and a career at my farm. He has no reason to flirt with me, sometimes, and sometimes insult me and try to make me feel awful about breaking away from my grandmother.”

  “He likes you,” Summer whispered. “More than likes. He’s interested in you romantically.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then why did he feel up that blonde at the party in the bathroom?”

  “He was trying to make you jealous,” Summer said with exaggerated patience, “just like in his story. He is giving you obvious hints, and you are choosing not to take them.”

  “That’s so unlike him. If he wants me, why doesn’t he come out and tell me?”

  She shrugged. “You’re so defensive. You’ve got a Kentucky-size chip on your shoulder, and the stable-boy story incident didn’t help. I’m not saying I blame you for any of that. I’d be defensive, too. I’m saying it’s an obstacle, he’s trying to get around it, and you keep blocking his way.”

  I wanted to believe her, but it seemed too simple. “Do you know why he’s asleep right now?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s going out at eleven thirty and coming back at four thirty, three or four nights a week.” At her strange look I hurried on, “I am not spying on him. I wake up when he comes down the stairwell that late, and I watch him walk down the sidewalk. Later I watch him come back.” I gestured toward my bay window.

  “Maybe he has a job,” she said.

  “He doesn’t need a job. He has my grandmother. He wouldn’t jeopardize his perfect grades for extra pocket money. And there’s no pattern to his days. I always work from five to eleven Monday through Thursday. The only reason my weekend schedule is irregular is that it’s our busiest time and my boss wants me to make as few bad lattes as possible to reduce the damage.” I felt my nostrils flare as I said, “Hunter’s visiting that blonde.”

  Summer gave me a stern look. “You have made that up.”

  Had I? He’d dated a lot in high school, but the girls he went out with talked about him as if he was the perfect gentleman. They were only sad and confused that he hadn’t asked them out again. He wasn’t the type to sleep around. He definitely wasn’t the type to sleep around and then write a tell-all story about it for a college class.

  Then again, what did I really know about Hunter? I felt such a strong connection with him because our lives for the past six years had been intertwined. But we weren’t friends. And this connection I felt with him … maybe I’d made that up, too. After all, I was a novelist.

  “He’s going to see that fortune-teller from his second story,” I suggested. This I really didn’t believe. I wanted Summer to reassure me.

  She rolled her eyes. “Hunter Allen is not having sex with a fortune-teller. He is entertaining the men in the class, fascinating the women, and egging you on. Do you hear yourself and how you have been egged on? You are thoroughly eggy right now. You’re like a freaking omelet.” She bounced up from my bed and went back into her room.

  A few minutes passed in which I did not get any homework done at all. I could hear her paging quietly through a book. Finally I heard the mattress creek on Jørdis’s side of the room. A pillow thudded to the floor. Then I could hear Hunter and Summer talking.

  Summer: “Wake up, sleepyhead.”

  Hunter: “Jesus. Sorry.”

  Summer: “You shouldn’t cut out faces for Jørdis when you’re so tired. You left way too thick a border around them. She’s going to get you.”

  Hunter, after a yawn: “She needs a thicker border so she can overlap them when she glues them to the canvas. She hasn’t thought this through.”

  Summer: “I’m just warning you.”

  Hunter: “Thanks for the warning.”

  The conversation ended, and after several moments of silence I realized I was straining my ears to hear them through the wall instead of reading history. I bent my head to my book.

  “Hey,” Hunter said, looming over me.

  I let out some kind of strangled squeal, and my book and laptop went flying in different directions.

  “Sorry, sorry,” he soothed me, holding both hands up to calm me down. “I forgot how easily you startle.”

  “What’s the matter?” Summer stuck her head through the door. “What’d you do to her?”

  “She startles easily.” Hunter sounded the tiniest bit miffed. “It was an accident.”

  Summer gave me an uneasy look, then winked at me and disappeared.

  I took deep breaths and winced at my hard, fast heartbeat. Accepting the laptop Hunter retrieved from the floor for me, and then the history book, I managed, “I didn’t hear you cross the room. What are you, a ninja?”

  “Maybe.” As he sat on the foot of my bed, his rakish smile made me suspect his next story for Gabe’s class would be a ninja hook-up. But it was so hard to stay defensive when he paired the smile with sleepy blue eyes. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep out there. I thought you would come out and talk to me in your belly-dancing costume.” He nodded to the sad pool of green gauze that had fallen from its hook in the corner.

  I thought what he meant by this was, I put my hands all over that girl in the shower and then wrote a story about doing her. I also wrote a
story about doing a fortune-teller. So I don’t see why in the world you did not come into Jørdis’s room and flirt with me. This seemed to be what he was implying, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “I have a lot of homework,” I said.

  “And I have a proposition.”

  “’Kay,” I said warily. I tried to keep my tone flat, but I was dying to know what it was.

  “I promised you I wouldn’t tell Gabe about the …” He opened his hand on his thigh. This meant embarrassing stable-boy story. He went on, “But I told you I couldn’t vouch for Brian or Manohar.”

  “Oh, no,” I whispered.

  “Listen.” He put his hand on my ankle. “Brian won’t say anything. He likes you, and he likes Summer, and Summer has worked hard on him. But Manohar needs a favor.”

  I nodded for him to go on, hoping I would be able to hear him over the blood throbbing in my ears. Being startled had only half the effect on my pulse of Hunter’s hand on my ankle.

  “Manohar’s rushing a fraternity,” Hunter said. “Some of the older and very influential brothers have a trip to Belmont Park planned for tomorrow. It would help Manohar get in their good graces if he brought along a horse-racing insider.”

  I frowned at him. “You want me to handicap the races for them? Aren’t you going? You could do it.”

  “Not like you can,” he said. “I was interested in the training side, and I liked to predict which colts would train well, but during the races I wasn’t watching. I was in the stable, currycombing.” He squeezed my ankle hard, and I wondered whether this was unconscious. “You were the one in the stands, taking notes on the big picture.”

  I could have argued with him. He knew as well as I did that horse racing was unpredictable. Even though I could probably make educated guesses about winning horses better than most people, I’d never imagined using my knowledge to place bets at Belmont Park through a partner of legal age. If I’d thought I could make any money that way, I wouldn’t have been working at the coffee shop.

  But if I argued this point, I’d be arguing myself out of a promise of silence from Manohar. So I said, “Great!”

  “One of the guys is borrowing a limo from his dad’s business,” Hunter said. “He’ll pick us up in front of the dorm at noon.” He looked at his hand on my ankle as if he hadn’t realized it was there. He jerked it away and stood.

  I almost forgot to ask, “Can I bring Summer?”

  “Of course,” he said in a tone that told me he’d been expecting this question.

  Summer popped her head into the room again. “Where are we going?”

  “Hunter!” Jørdis boomed from her bedroom. “What have you been doing with these borders? I told you not to cut so large a border!”

  Hunter gave me a conspiratorial smile that said we both understood Jørdis and her tendency to overexcitement about cutting. I did not share the smile with him, but I didn’t have to. Hunter could make me feel that camaraderie with him even when I didn’t want to.

  “Sweet dreams, Erin.” He went out to placate Jørdis.

  AT NOON THE NEXT DAY, SUMMER and I walked down the stairs in front of the dorm and into a gaggle of six boys. Several of them said, “Nice hat.”

  I wore a wide-brimmed velvet hat my grandmother had bought me for the fall meet at Churchill Downs last year. I needed it this cool, bright afternoon. I didn’t need any more freckles. And, okay, maybe I wanted to flaunt to Hunter that I still had an iota of fashion sense. I’d dressed in a heathered green cashmere sweater and a tan suede skirt to go with the hat. I made the boys look like servants in comparison—except, of course, Hunter, who had anticipated that I would dress up for a horse race, even in New York. He wore khakis and a blazer. With his blond hair styled just so and mussed a little by the breeze, he looked like his father owned the country club.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Nice car.” NIEWIAROWSKI & SONS FUNERAL HOME—GO OUT IN STYLE was painted on the door of the limo in careful gold cursive.

  “Hey,” said the guy who’d been bartending at the party in the bathroom. “You’re lucky we didn’t bring the hearse.”

  “Fuggedaboudit,” I wanted to say in response to his accent. But I was playing nice and shutting Manohar up for good, so I only smiled sweetly at Summer’s horrified expression as the boys opened the door of the limo and handed us inside. I slid all the way over to the opposite door. Summer huddled next to me. She must have been a little creeped out by the idea of riding in the funeral home limo. She bent over and looked under the seat.

  The boys shut the door behind us. They seemed to be conferring quietly. I thought they might be cooking up something. Sure enough, when the door opened, Hunter sat on the seat facing us and slid all the way to the opposite door, directly across from me. Manohar sat next to him, across from Summer. He was glad she had come even if he was too stubborn to say so. Two more boys piled in beside us, and the other two climbed in up front.

  Hunter watched me, so light and bright in front of me with his blond hair and blue eyes in the black limo, but we were spared an awkward convo because the other boys had grown loud again. They were boisterous and adorable if you had a taste for honors program nerds. The boys in the back with us shouted movie quotes through a little window to the boys in the front. Underneath the noise, Summer and Manohar had started a halting convo of their own.

  I’d expected a short ride through Manhattan, but the boys were willing to go blocks out of our way to avoid the Midtown Tunnel toll. I looked out the window and watched the city go by. New York was vast, yet all I saw on a daily basis was the same college buildings and town houses. Sixth Avenue was a different world. We passed Fortieth Street. Two blocks later Manohar said we should look down the street for a glimpse of Times Square, but I was still leaning toward Hunter and looking back over my shoulder toward the Kensington Books building, wondering whether, if I worked there, I would eat my lunch and take my writing break in the big park nearby. A few minutes later Summer ooohed as Manohar pointed at Rockefeller Center. I was looking in the other direction, at the strangely stark Simon & Schuster building, like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie about people in the Depression fearing the future. At the beginning of the semester, when we visited MoMA, I’d dragged Summer with me to stare longingly at the HarperCollins building, a modern black-and-white-striped monstrosity. But I peered up at it again, picturing myself as a publishing intern walking through those glass doors. I never took my eyes off it when Summer exclaimed, “And look, there’s the LOVE sculpture!” I was still watching the skyscraper through the back window of the limo when we hung a hard right at Central Park, throwing Summer into my lap.

  In the ensuing commotion, which involved Hunter looking outraged as Manohar and another guy extricated themselves from his own lap, Summer whispered to me, “These city boys can’t drive.”

  I nodded. “Hunter will use that.”

  Her eyes widened. “For what?”

  “He can’t stand being a passenger because he’s not in charge. I guarantee you he’ll find a way to drive us home.”

  “Drink, ladies?” The bartender, who was driving, handed a bottle of Kentucky bourbon through the little window. The boys in the back with us produced tumblers from a secret compartment in the back of the driver’s seat—the limo was used for drunken wakes, apparently—and handed the bourbon around. Hunter put up his hand in an understated gesture of refusal. Just as I’d thought. After everyone else got drunk, he could drive the limo home because he would be the last one standing.

  “Drink?” Hunter prompted me. One of the boys was trying to hand me a tumbler across the limo.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  When the boys’ volume escalated again, he asked me quietly, “More history homework tonight?”

  “Calculus,” I said. “I can’t do it tomorrow. I’m working twelve hours.”

  I’d been careful not to use a snippy tone. Still, I hoped the words themselves would shut him up. No such luck. He said, “You’re really tired.”<
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  “I’m not tired.” I watched him suspiciously. “How can you tell I’m tired?” Maybe I’d been too stingy with the remnants of my miracle cream, and I needed to use a little more under my eyes.

  “When you’re tired, you hold your chin up.” He demonstrated, lifting his nose into the air. “You look haughtier than usual.”

  “Oh, nice,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” He spread even farther in his seat, arm along the windowsill, one ankle on the other knee, taking up more than his share of space, as always. Then he gave me a cocky grin. “I like you haughty.”

  I did not know what to say to that. He was flirting with me again. I tried not to be flattered. He had flirted with me at the beach party right after putting his hands all over that blonde. Flirting meant nothing to him. I said noncommittally, “I think it’s the hat.”

  “What?” Summer yelled across the car at Manohar. “I can hardly hear you.” She turned to the other boys. “Simmer down! It’s like freaking Boy Scout camp in here.” Then she turned to Hunter. “Trade places with me.”

  Without protest, Hunter crouched and allowed Summer to slip past him and collapse between the door and Manohar. Hunter turned, sat down beside me, and proceeded to put his ankle on the opposite knee and his arm along the back of the seat behind me.

  Summer was attempting to explain the Southern phenomenon of mud riding to Manohar, and Manohar was expressing disbelief. But between sentences and over her glass of bourbon, she took time to give me a sly smile.

  I tried to ignore the tingles along my neck and shoulders where Hunter’s arm accidentally touched them. I looked out the window.

  AT THE TRACK, THE GUYS WANTED to buy drinks—this would be a long process involving many drink stands because six people were drinking and only two of them were twenty-one—and find a place in the stands. They didn’t understand that betting on horses with any aplomb took some work. While the rest of them laughed amid the crowd under autumn trees, Hunter and I grabbed tip sheets and stood at the paddock fence, watching the grooms parade the thoroughbreds that would run in the first race.