Crush

by Wood, Mae

“You? Pushy? Never!” she exclaimed in a soft mock gasp.

  “I know, right? Anyway, she got brave on martinis one night and she told me she didn’t want what I wanted. That marriage and kids were a big question mark for her. I wanted those things. And we split.”

  “That sucks.”

  “Yeah. Told you that much. Wanna hear the kicker?”

  “Go for it.”

  “She got married the next year. He’s an accountant. Not even a cool one. Does people’s taxes and shit. They have three—three—kids. Live in San Ramon.”

  “So, she did want it, she just didn’t want it with you?”

  And there it was. She’d cut my heart out and set it before us, plain for us both to see. “Remind me next time when I decide to bare my soul to you, to not.”

  “She’s stupid and I hate her.” The venom in her voice surprised me. I’d never heard Kenzie vicious.

  “She’s not—”

  “No, she is,” Kenzie said, stating a fact. “She’s stupid and I hate her. I hope she has a boring life in San Ramon and that she never does anything interesting and that her husband has a limp dick.”

  “And there’s Firebrand Barbie,” I said, laughing at her ridiculous and perfect curse that showed me what was important to her.

  “No,” she said. “On second thought, I probably shouldn’t hate her. I should probably send her a case of wine and tell her about the great—not good, but great—sex she’s missing out on.”

  “I’m sure we can find her address.” A smile tugged at my lips. The hurt from Olivia seemed less potent. My heart eased. This here was good and I’d take it.

  “This is weird though, right? Us?” she asked.

  “I don’t think it’s weird.”

  “So, you normally meet women through work, pretend to be sick, and then play hooky and bang them in the middle of the day?”

  “Only on Tuesdays.”

  “My lucky day, then. But really. It’s weird. It’s mainly weird that it’s not weird.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s the best way to put it. It’s weird because it’s not weird.”

  “I like not weird.”

  “I really like not weird. Kenz?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I left you hanging earlier. Do you want—”

  “What if I said that I’m really happy right now?” she asked, snuggling more deeply into me, pressing her naked warmth against mine.

  “I wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Well, I’m all sticky right now …”

  “Not a problem,” I said, sliding down her body to resume the fun I’d planned before my minor freak-out.

  A platter of assorted tacos towered on the table between us. Kenzie said they were all good, so I’d ordered one of everything plus two giant margaritas. Kenzie added chips, queso, and guacamole. There was no way we were going to down all of this, no matter how much of an appetite we’d worked up.

  “Four o’clock, four thirty is the best time for tacos,” she said. “It’s five now, so it’s on the late side because you want to eat before you can start cruising happy hours.”

  “Um, what?”

  “Everyone’s big on brunch, but brunch is for city people. Us farmers—and don’t let anyone tell you that what I do isn’t farming—we get up early. Which is why four o’clock tacos. Plus, you don’t have to worry about whether it’s too early to drink. Then it’s on to happy hours and you’re crashed out by ten and ready to work in the morning.”

  “Okay … is there a handbook on this I missed?”

  She rolled her eyes at me and stuck out her tongue.

  “How about a PowerPoint deck? Four o’clock Tacos—What You Need to Know. Slide one: Do’s and don’ts. Guacamole.” I held my hands up wide, the showy grand display of a movie producer.

  “Hold up. Doesn’t work like that. The only rule is that you must have queso.”

  “What about guacamole?” I asked, wondering again at the world I’d found myself in.

  “Real guacamole, yes. The stuff that’s mixed with mayo doesn’t count, so if you’re calling that guacamole, no. It’s not.”

  “So guac is extra?”

  She laughed. “Guac is always extra.”

  “So, there are rules,” I said.

  “Okay, Principal Royer. Rule one. Tacos. Clearly. Rule two. Queso and chips,” she said, gesturing to the bowl and basket. “Rule three. Margaritas, frozen or on the rocks.”

  “Anything goes with the margaritas?”

  “If it makes you happy,” she said, taking a drink of her mango one.

  “What’s the rule on churros versus flan?”

  “Flan is eh,” she said. “I mean, I wouldn’t turn it down, but I wouldn’t cross the street for it.”

  “Rule four, then. Churros,” I teased. “Hey,” I said, waving a half-eaten fish taco in her direction, “what are you doing next week?” I shoved the rest of the taco in my mouth and waited like an eager puppy for her answer. She was right. This taco was awesome.

  “An exam and a paper.”

  “In what?” I asked after washing down the taco with a gulp from my salt-rimmed glass.

  “Statistics exam. The paper is in atmospheric sciences. Plus, I’ve got to finish up a lab report for wine microbiology.”

  “The weather? I thought you were getting a degree in winemaking.”

  “You sound like the people who drop the program after a year when it’s not all wine tasting and snooty criticism. Winemaking is still farming. So, yeah, the weather.”

  “When’s the exam?”

  “Next Monday. The paper is due on Wednesday.”

  “I’m on vacation next week. Let’s go somewhere. Leave after your exam. Maybe the coast? You can crank out the paper before then or finish up at the beach. There’s weather at the beach.”

  “I can’t. I really have to study and there’re some graduation parties.”

  “Study there. Party with me.”

  She plucked a chip from the basket and broke thumbnail-sized pieces off, popping them into her mouth one by one. I drank more of my margarita and waited for her to return the conversational ball. Me and the beach. Sex and some studying. None of it sounded bad to me and I didn’t have a clue why this wasn’t an automatic yes from the woman who didn’t seem to say no to adventures. The chip finished, she picked up another, twirling it between her fingers before pausing and looking at me.

  “Ryan …” Her voice was soft. While most people shouted to get attention, quiet Kenzie demanded every bit of my focus.

  “Yeah,” I said in the most gentle voice I could muster, encouraging her to share with me.

  “I bet you were really good at school—I mean you went to Stanford, so yeah.” She laughed in a way that wasn’t from happiness, but from self-deprecation.

  I wasn’t joining in. “And?” I said, moving her away from that irrelevant fact.

  “I’m not. A good student.”

  “I’m sure you’re—”

  She shook her head to silence me. “I’m not. I love what I do, but I’m not good at the hard sciences. At all. It’s mainly the math. And I know that it’s such a stereotype for a blond, white girl to be all ‘math is hard’ but it’s the truth for me. At the end of my sophomore year I was on academic probation. I can see your face getting all confused, but yeah, academic probation. It’s a thing. It’s right before they kick you out of a program for failing.”

  “Kenzie,” I said, moving around the table to sit next to her, wanting to give her the comfort she’d given me when we’d been in bed together, talking about my own ugly doubts and fears.

  “Then I kinda had a big shame thing and I made it worse when I went to this vineyard in Argentina for a few months and worked and hid from my family. So, yeah, the beach sounds nice and it’s fine now, but I really have to study. For real. Statistics is do-or-die this time. I’ve got a C that I’m holding on to by my fingernails, so there’s no room for me to fuck up on the exam.”

  “Understood,
” I said, surprised at how open she’d been with me. I was a bit bummed that my off-the-cuff suggestion didn’t have legs, but I didn’t want to push her like I had Olivia, even if I was talking vacation and not marriage—especially not after the whole “failing out of school and running away to South America” confession. Kenzie knew what she needed and wanted. And I wanted what she wanted. “Let me know how I can help.”

  “Okay, but anyway, the beach, it’s no. But what about a vacation in glamorous Davis? You can stay with me. I don’t know what you do on vacation, but when was the last time you went to a frat party? There’s this awesome one next weekend after exams end. Fall of Rome in the Foam.”

  “A foam party? People still do those?”

  “Yes, people still do those.”

  “I need you to stop reminding me about the whole ‘you’re still in college’ thing. For real.”

  “I can’t not be me and I’m not asking for you to not be you.”

  She had me there, and again I was questioning who was the grown-up here. The guy who’d faked sick at work for a hookup wasn’t looking like the obvious winner. “But you’re asking me to wear a bedsheet to a foam party.”

  “Well,” she said, taking a long sip of her margarita, her tongue darting out to touch her upper lip. “Invitation stands. My bedroom es su bedroom. If you pass on the toga party, that’s fine, but I’m still going.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kenzie

  On Sunday afternoon he showed up with a suitcase and made himself at home in my bedroom. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what he was going to do.

  No one understood just how hard it is to be a legitimately bad student. Because of my grades, I had mandatory study time for two hours every day with my sorority. I had monthly meetings with my faculty advisor. One of my sorority sisters was tutoring me in statistics and it was with her help that I was holding on to a C heading into exams. Everyone was on board to get me to a diploma, but it still wasn’t easy. Add in my time in the lab, and Ryan had a lot of downtime on what was probably the worst vacation of his life. Turned out Ryan liked to drink coffee in the morning, read the news on his tablet, go for long runs, make a complicated smoothie, and basically be like every other dude I’d ever met—he watched movies and read on the sofa.

  “I feel bad that you’re not somewhere cool or at least doing something cool,” I said the third morning while we made smoothies in the kitchen.

  “Don’t,” he said, dropping two peeled bananas into the blender. “I never have downtime. This is good.”

  “I feel like you’re a few days away from a coma.”

  “You keep me plenty busy. And I guess that’s why my vacation is a week. I can’t get too deep into a coma. Don’t sweat it. I’m good. Dinner tonight?”

  “And a toga fitting.”

  “You were serious about that?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Um, yeah?”

  “It’s next week, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll be done with your exams?” he asked.

  “Thank fuck I’ll be done with college.”

  “I think I can do better than a toga party.”

  Turned out that he couldn’t do better than a toga party. To be honest, dinner at Davis’s best farm-to-table restaurant didn’t hold that much appeal when you’d grown up on what was essentially a farm. The toga party would be my last college blowout and I was all in—filmy white toga-ish dress with a slit up to my mid-thigh, gold ribbon tied around my forehead, strappy sandals.

  Ryan’s vacation was over and he’d gone back to the city, but for the last few days, he’d been having terrible, terrible headaches that he couldn’t shake. Or at least that’s what he’d been telling his boss. I’d cleaned out a corner of our dining room and made a workstation for him when he was suffering so much that he had to leave in the middle of the day and “work from home” to get some relief. He—we—generally found relief of another kind in my bed.

  My roommates were pretty cool about it, giving me shit about my kept older man. Whether he had a real job—yes. Whether he had a place to live—yes. Whether he had brothers—just the one. And most of all, where I’d found him. And I kept my mouth completely shut about that. He was Ryan. We were hanging out. It was awesome and any more questions could be directed to my nonexistent publicist.

  “Part of me wants to say you can’t leave the house like that,” Ryan said when he looked up from his laptop at my Fall of Rome in the Foam costume. I stopped my twirl in front of him and shot him a look that dared him to tell me anything. “But I know better. Have fun, Kenz.”

  “Are you sure you can’t come with me?” I shimmied a little, letting my exposed cleavage bounce a bit.

  A hard stare was my answer before he took a deep breath and growled. “Kenzie. If you want to go to that party, I need you to not talk about us coming together. Especially when I’ve got a deadline and you’re looking like—like some sort of vestal virgin.”

  “Good thing I’m not a virgin,” I said with a wink.

  “You want that land?”

  “Yeah.”

  He swept his hands toward his open laptop. “Then let me get it for you. Go have fun.”

  When I got home that night, it was late and I was tipsy. My plan was to crawl into bed with him, to see if he wanted to play deflower the vestal virgin, so I was surprised to find him on the sofa with a tearful Hallie next to him and The Golden Girls reruns playing on the TV and two large margaritas on the coffee table. Tearful-Hallie-on-the-sofa was pretty much par for the course and I knew instantly that Tucker the TA was no more.

  I watched quietly as he patted her shoulder. “He’s going to do shitty things because he’s like twenty-four,” he said to her.

  “But you don’t do shitty things to McKenzie,” she whined.

  “You’d have to ask her, but I do different shitty things now. Because I’m not twenty-four.”

  “Hey,” I said, feeling strange about hovering in the doorway.

  “See, McKenzie,” Hallie sobbed in frustration, clutching a pillow to her chest. “That’s why I want to date older guys. They’re actual grown-ups.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s a real grown-up,” I said in a light tone, untying the ribbon from around my head. I pointed to the box of cereal lying on its side next to the margaritas. “I bet you five bucks he ate all of the marshmallows.”

  “Ryan,” I sighed, rolling over and nestling my ass against his groin.

  A sleepy groan reverberated from his chest and into my body as he wrapped me up in his arms, pulling me back against his broad chest, and placed one of his hands over the back of mine, his fingers entwining with mine. Spooning in bed with him. My happy place.

  “What time is it?” he muttered, dropping a kiss on the top of my head and giving my ass a reflexive hump.

  “Seven-ish. My parents will be here by ten, so—”

  “So, we’ve got plenty of time.”

  I kissed him goodbye and started packing for real. Supposedly, I had been packing and enjoying my last few days of college before graduation. Instead, I’d spent it in my bed with Ryan. Now I was in a panic to make it look like I’d at least thought about packing before an hour ago.

  “McKenzie?”

  “Hey, Dren!”

  “You haven’t packed shit!” she said as she stepped into my room and looked around. “How am I supposed to move in here tomorrow?”

  Sometimes I was really happy my family had super-low expectations of me about anything that wasn’t related to growing grapes. I set down my can of sparkling water and pointed at a laundry basket filled with shoes. “That’s done.”

  “Your dad is going to be pissed.”

  “My dad’s the one who has the laundry-basket-shoe rule. As long as all of my shoes can fit into a laundry basket, he’ll move me. No complaints.”

  “Do I even want to know what you’ve been doing for the past few days besides Ryan? I have to be out of the dorms by the day after graduation. And now
I’ll have to disinfect it, and depending on when the Ryan thing craters, maybe a sage cleanse too—”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “It’s all good vibes we’re leaving behind—good sex vibes. And based on your current aura …”

  “Do you even have boxes?”

  “We have twenty-four hours.”

  “McKenzie?” This time it was my dad and we got to work.

  My mom wandered in at some point and started complaining about what a wreck the house was and how she couldn’t believe that girls, not boys, lived there. I blocked it all out and focused on loading my not-so-small nail polish collection in a box with other breakables.

  “McKenzie?” Sensing a theme to the morning, I turned toward Sarah, who was also graduating and frantically packing with her parents.

  Our house was a rental that had been passed down in a way between women in our sorority for over a decade, because our actual sorority house was far from palatial.

  “Ryan left a book in the living room,” she said.

  My dad reached out and grabbed it from her. “Ryan, eh? And a Bobby Orr biography? Who’s Ryan the hockey fan?”

  “Brian. And a guy. Just casual. Nothing serious.”

  “So casual he’s reading a hardback book in your living room?”

  “Yeah, well …”

  “You’re an awful liar,” Drennan whispered out of the corner of her mouth after taking the big book from my dad and putting it in a box with others by my feet.

  I looked over at my mom, wondering what she was thinking about the situation. Ah, the disapproving duck face. Pouted lips, eyes slightly squinting at me. Totally a disapproving duck.

  “We should take a lunch break,” I said, hoping to change the topic. There was this burger stand that my dad had been obsessed with since his undergrad days. He waxed poetic about the western burger and its barbecue sauce—which my mom pronounced to be mass-produced, lightly seasoned ketchup—and yet he swore it was more than that, better than that. It was always good for a distraction. “What about burgers?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said my dad, his eyes lighting up as visions of cholesterol danced in his head.