Heartland

by Sarina Bowen

  “Well…” Ellie looks into her cup. It’s made of paper, and it’s compostable. “I’m not done with this one. I’m good.”

  I also shake my head. The beer is warm and kind of awful. I’m confused about how people accidentally get drunk on this.

  “Snacks?” he asks me. “They’re gluten-free. And I didn’t catch your names.”

  “I’m Chastity,” I say, offering my hand. “And this is Ellie.”

  “I’m Alfalfa,” he says. “That’s my, uh, pledge name. My real name is Angus.”

  “Huh,” Ellie says, and I can practically see her filing away the idea of pledge names for later. “Let’s dance, Alf.” She actually hooks one of his skinny arms in hers and points toward where a bunch of people are already gyrating under the light of a disco ball.

  Alf’s face lights up, as if he’s won something wonderful. Then he leads Ellie toward the dancers, taking care to stash his cup on a ledge along the wall.

  Ellie does the same. “C’mon, Chastity,” she hollers over her shoulder. “Please?”

  I follow them, even though I don’t feel like dancing. But I’m here. I’m wearing mascara and everything. And I want Ellie to have the full experience.

  Also? Dancing isn’t allowed on the compound. So even though I don’t really know how to dance, I’m going to do it just on principle. And it goes well enough, I guess. I swing my hips and raise my arms and smile at Ellie, who beams back at me, causing sparkly light to bounce off her braces.

  Alf keeps making eye contact with Ellie, and I can’t help but find them adorable. Before long, another guy kind of sidles up next to me. He gives me a friendly smile and starts to dance.

  He’s cute. Cuteish, anyway. But he’s no Dylan Shipley.

  Nobody is, though. I’ve spent a lot of my time this week wishing I could rewind my life. I want to take back everything I said and did after eating pizza in my room.

  No—I’d go back further. I’d undo the lie I told Dylan about Leah’s weekend availability. And maybe he’d still be dating Kaitlyn, and I’d still be mooning over him privately.

  Everything is so much worse now. Even when I manage to forget about him for an hour or two, Kaitlyn usually reappears, giving me smug looks as she passes our bathroom. Or she’s leaning over to whisper to one of her friends when I pass her in the dining hall.

  The first time I kissed a boy, I was beaten for it. Now I administer my own beatings. I feel achy and sad, and I don’t know how to stop.

  Eventually, another guy taps my dancing partner on the arm and tells him there’s some problem with the composting toilets. He makes a face, gives me an apologetic wave, and goes off to deal with it.

  It’s just as well, though, because a slow song comes on, and I don’t really want to put my arms around a stranger. So I edge toward the wall and reclaim my warm beer off the ledge. And I try to look very busy drinking it.

  Ellie is slow-dancing with Alf, which she seems to enjoy. He leans in and gives her a very polite kiss. And then another one, a little less hesitantly this time.

  I look away, because I don’t want to be creepy. But I keep myself planted here because I’m not willing to leave her alone with him, either.

  And now I feel lonely, damn it. I wonder where Dylan is. Even if he’s hanging out with his twin sister, they’re probably at a bar full of cute girls that he could take home to bed.

  I abandon my warm beer onto the ledge again, because it’s not helping.

  The reason I can’t face Dylan is because I feel like I forced myself on him. He had two years to kiss me, and he never did. Not until I snuck up on him in an outdoor shower. And my clothes didn’t come off until I talked him into it.

  You said she wasn’t your type. You even said she wasn’t attractive. Those words are still bouncing around in my chest, and they probably always will.

  The music picks up again, and I glance up, looking around for Ellie. Cue my panic when I can’t seem to spot her. But there are more people dancing now, so she’s probably in there somewhere.

  I decide to count to a hundred, and if I still can’t see her, then I’ll really go looking. I’m in the eighties when I spy her frizzy head bouncing to the beat. I take a step to the side, so I can see her clearly.

  She and Alf are half-dancing, half-talking now. He leans in and says something right into her ear. She looks up at him with no small amount of surprise. After a few more beats, she rises to her toes and makes her reply.

  Then, a few beats later, she gives his skinny arm a squeeze and leaves the dance floor, coming back to me. She takes her warm beer off the ledge and takes a gulp.

  “A boy kissed me!” she yells, and her face is ecstatic.

  “Awesome!” I say. “You checked that box.”

  “Then he offered to take me upstairs to his room!” she says, her cheeks flushed. “I just turned down sex with a vegan.”

  “There will be other vegans. Was he nice about it?”

  “Totally!” she yells over the music. “He was really nice. But I wasn't really attracted to him, to be honest. And it’s not the vegan thing. It’s just…” She gets a faraway look in her eye. “There was no magic.”

  I know all about magic. And I’m relieved that she didn’t abandon me here. Although I wouldn’t have blamed her, if there had been magic.

  “Unfortunately, we kind of have to leave the party now because I turned him down, and now I have to avoid him.” She winces. “I’m sorry I dragged you here, and now I want to bail. We didn’t even get to try Cider Pong.”

  “It’s fine!” I shout over the music. “Let’s go.”

  We make our way toward the stairs, collect our coats from a pile beside the overmatched coat rack, and then head out into the night.

  “My ears are ringing,” I complain.

  “What?” She laughs. “Just kidding. Mine, too. Let’s not go home right away.”

  “Where would we go? You already checked off a few boxes.”

  She twirls around happily, arms outstretched. “I’m just not ready to go home yet.”

  “Fine by me.” We walk down fraternity row, where each house is lit from within, like a series of fat yellow pumpkins.

  “Omigod!” Ellie squeals when we reach the corner. “There’s Hot Farm Boy!”

  My stomach swoops and dives immediately. “Where?” I look around, but the only other people in view are a pack of women crossing the street.

  “Right there. On that poster!”

  Sure enough, Dylan is looking out at me from a tacked-up flyer. In the photo, he and Keith have an arm around each other’s shoulders. Keith’s guitar is strapped to his body, and Dylan’s holding his fiddle in his free hand. The sign advertises THE HARDWICK DUO at something called Guerrilla Night at a bar nearby.

  “The Hardwick Duo!” Ellie cackles. “That sounds dirty.”

  “It’s a town. I think Keith grew up there.”

  “Well, let’s go! This concert is tonight.” Ellie pulls out her phone to check the time. “They’re on right now!” She grabs my hand and tugs me down the sidewalk.

  “I’m avoiding him,” I remind her several times as we head for the bar. “Tonight was supposed to be about other things.”

  “Let’s just see,” she says as we cross the street toward the brightly lit place. “Can you honestly resist Hot Farm Boy playing music on a stage?”

  No, I guess I can’t.

  Ellie leaps onto the curb, steps up to the bar’s entrance, and, holding the door open, beckons me inside.

  Because I’m me, I spot Dylan immediately. Not like it’s hard. He’s up on a small raised stage, playing a fast-paced fiddle tune, wearing his usual white tee and flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up on his muscular forearms.

  And he’s glorious. Swaying with the beat, the orange lighting glinting off his wavy hair. The music flows from inside him in an unselfconscious way. He looks relaxed and happier than he’s looked in weeks.

  Gulp. I knew it would be difficult to see him again. But this is
so much worse than I even predicted. The crowd leans forward, because they can feel the pull, too. It’s a hundred or so really attractive… I blink. Men.

  I’d expected to see women throwing themselves at Dylan. But it’s a bunch of dudes, with very few women mixed in. Most are same-sex couples, drinking and dancing with each other.

  Holy crap. Dylan is so hot and lovely that everyone in Vermont wants a piece of him. Not just the women. Every gender.

  “Sorry, my dear. I’ll have to ask you to leave. It’s twenty-one and over only.”

  I tear my attention off Dylan to focus on the bearded guy who’s shaking his head at Ellie, crushing her hopes.

  “But he’s a friend of ours,” she says.

  Big Beard shakes his head again. “I can’t break the law, though.”

  Of course he can’t. “It’s okay,” I say, my hand already on the door. “Come on.” I don’t have cash for a ticket, anyway. That guy is also collecting ten bucks from everyone who walks in.

  Ellie groans unhappily. Seconds later, we’re back outside in the cold.

  I can still see Dylan through the window. Let’s face it, this is how I’ll always see Dylan—at a distance greater than I wish for.

  “Look, you should stay,” Ellie says. “You’re twenty-one. Here—I have money for your cover charge!” She digs into her pocket for her wallet.

  “No way,” I say quickly. “This was girls’ night.” I never want to be that kind of friend—the kind who abandons her buddy to chase after a boy. Especially a boy who doesn’t really want her.

  I give Dylan one more wistful glance. That’s when I spot two familiar faces in the crowd. There are two women right in front of the stage, standing close together. I almost missed them, mistaking them for a couple.

  The taller girl is Daphne Shipley. And the other one? Kaitlyn.

  My stomach drops hard and fast.

  “What is it?” Ellie asks.

  “Nothing,” I say, shaking my head to clear it. I turn away from the window. “Dylan’s ex is in there.”

  “What?” Ellie shrieks, pushing past me to peer through the window. “Who is she? Wait…” She rises onto her tippy toes. “The one with the fancy red scarf, right? She looks like the evil queen in Snow White.”

  I laugh, because it’s not a horrible comparison. Personality-wise, anyway. “She’s smug, isn’t she?” I hate that she’s here, even though I can’t imagine that Dylan invited her. But either way, Kaitlyn outgunned me in a game of wits I’d never wanted to play.

  “Fuck her,” Ellie says with surprising ferocity. “Let’s go. New plan. I’m buying us something to drink. But you have to flash your ID at the liquor store.”

  I laugh as she grabs my hand. “Okay. What do you want? I think there’s cheap wine that comes in a box.”

  “Cider,” she says firmly. “You choose the kind.”

  Cider reminds me of Shipley Farm. I can’t sit around mooning about Dylan, drinking out of a bottle with his name on it. That’s too loser, even for me. So when we reach the store I choose a four-pack of Citizen Cider, a Shipley competitor.

  Take that, Dylan.

  “I’m still not ready to go home,” Ellie says. “Let’s go contemplate life from that weird sculpture in the quad.”

  “Okay, sure,” I say. It’s cold out, but partying with Ellie is a heck of a lot more fun than moping at home.

  Forty minutes later, I’ve forgotten to be cold. The cider has warmed up my insides, and Ellie can’t stop giggling.

  “What do you think this sculpture is supposed to be?” I ask, leaning back against its granite base. I raise my chin and squint up at the odd twisting shapes corkscrewing toward the sky.

  “No idea what the artist was thinking!” Ellie shouts. “But I have a theory. A dirty theory.”

  “Really?” I eye the sculpture again. It’s easily twenty feet high, but even my dirty mind can’t see anything sexual there. “What do you mean?”

  She pulls out her phone and unlocks it. Then she hands it to me. “Google ‘duck penis.’” She burps.

  “Did you say ‘duck penis’?”

  She pushes the phone into my hands. “Go on. I dare you.”

  I never could turn down a dare. So I search that term and—

  “Oh. My. God. We’re sitting under a giant duck penis.”

  “Three of them!” Ellie shouts.

  “How does this even work?” I squint at the phone.

  “The duck vagina is very strange,” Ellie says with a sniff.

  “And you somehow know the shape of the duck penis and vagina?” I have to ask.

  “Apparently.”

  “That’s pretty kinky for a virgin, Ellie.”

  She hoots with laughter. “This is the only penis we’re seeing tonight.”

  “Apparently.” Now we both giggle like idiots.

  “I think it’s time to go home,” Ellie says.

  “Are you cold?” The hand that’s holding my cider is freezing.

  “No but…” She makes a gulping sound.

  “Ellie?”

  She stands up quickly. Then she doubles over and vomits.

  “Oh, shit.” I stand up, too. “Are you okay?”

  She heaves again. “Yeah.”

  I dig into my coat pocket for a tissue, and thankfully there is one. I pass it to her, and she wipes her mouth. “Let’s get you home.”

  When I look up, there are two men approaching. Police officers.

  “Ladies, is that an open container?” one of them asks. He shines his flashlight right on my freezing-cold hand.

  “Um…” I say helplessly. Of course it’s an open container. “Is that a problem?”

  “It’s against the law,” Ellie says. She giggles.

  “Let’s see some ID, miss,” the cop says. “I hope you’re both over twenty-one.”

  “Uh-oh,” Ellie says slowly. And then she bends over and heaves again.

  Twenty-Four

  Dylan

  “How do I know I’m doing this right?” Rickie asks from the stove. “You didn’t put the thermometer thingie in yet.”

  “Just keep stirring,” I say over my shoulder while measuring out sugar into a bowl for another batch. “It takes a long time. When it starts to look like caramel, then we’ll need the thermometer.”

  “It smells good already,” Keith says.

  “Yup. Keep buttering those pans. Are the other bottles of milk defrosted yet?”

  He peers into the giant sink where we’ve set the milk bottles into tepid water. “Halfway, maybe? How long do you have this kitchen for, anyway?” Keith asks. “We’re not going to get busted for breaking and entering, right?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “A girl I know manages this place. It’s where the college makes catered meals for alumni events.”

  “How do you know this girl?” Keith asks with a chuckle.

  “The usual way,” I admit, and he laughs. Jeanine is someone I hooked up with a couple of times last year. I totally sidestep his question about how long we’re going to be here. Because caramel takes time.

  It’s almost eleven, and my friends would rather be out drinking. I have the kitchen until six in the morning, but I keep that to myself. Hopefully, we’ll be done hours before then.

  Hopefully.

  I’m in a very optimistic mood right now, honestly. Keith was right—that gig was a blast. We played every tune we know, and then we had to repeat a few. But the crowd was great, and he and I were on fire tonight.

  Now I’m making caramels for Chastity, who’s bound to appreciate it. I tried calling her to let her know what I was up to, but she’s not answering. And everything came together at the last minute. Daphne swung by our farm to get the frozen goat’s milk, and I was able to reach Jeanine with my outrageous request.

  “Am I getting sexual favors for this?” she’d asked, only half joking.

  “Sadly, no,” I’d replied. A hookup is the last thing I need right now. “But you can have my undying gratitu
de and two boxes of fancy caramels.”

  That had done the trick.

  “Coffee delivery!” calls a female voice from the doorway.

  It’s Kaitlyn. She’s basically the last person I would have asked to help me tonight. In fact, I didn’t ask. But she tagged along with us after the concert, sucking up to my sister, who doesn’t know I’m pissed off at Kaitlyn.

  “Thanks,” I say a little stiffly.

  “I got a grande for everyone, and I bought a quart of milk, because I think goat’s milk in coffee sounds a little weird.”

  She would think that. Honestly, how did I ever convince myself to be her boyfriend?

  At least the coffee smells good. “Just…put it anywhere.” There are piles of sugar, vanilla, butter and waxed paper everywhere. It’s going to be a long night. “Where’s my sister, anyway?” The two of them had gone off together.

  “Right here!” Daphne says, walking in. “And I brought doughnuts.”

  “Aw, yes!” Keith hollers. “I knew you were the nicer twin.”

  Rickie laughs and turns around to greet my sister. His eyes widen in surprise.

  Daphne notices him and frowns thoughtfully.

  “You two know each other?” I have to ask.

  “No,” my sister says. “At least I don’t think so? I’m Daphne.”

  “I know,” my roommate says with a snort. “I’m Rickie.”

  Her face still looks blank. “Have we met?” she asks.

  “Yup.” He turns around, leaving it there.

  “Where?” she counters.

  “You’ll figure it out eventually,” Rickie says, back still turned.

  My sister slowly shakes her head. “Okay. Well, here are all the apple cider donuts you can buy at ten thirty on a Friday night in Burlington.”

  “Can I stop stirring long enough to eat a donut?” Rickie asks.

  “Yeah, but if any crumbs fall into that pot I will cut you. Daphne, the hairnets are on the end of that counter. You’ll need one.”

  “Yessir!” she says, saluting me.

  “What about me?” Kaitlyn asks, coming closer. “Put me to work.”

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. “Thanks, but we’ve got it. Thanks for making that coffee run.”