by Zoey Dean
"Ben, wait." She ran and caught up with him, keeping pace with him as he walked. "Thank you. For telling me, I mean."
He said nothing until the lot was in sight. "Well, better late than never, huh?"
"I know all about family secrets and putting up a perfect front. My parents are life masters at it."
"East Coast WASP version and West Coast Jewish version, huh? They're probably more alike than anyone would think." He attempted a smile and cocked his chin at a simple white Altima. "My rental. Downsizing. My mom's afraid they're going to lose the house. I don't even want to think about second semester tuition. That is, if I even do go back to Princeton this term." He pressed a button on his key chain and the car door unlocked. "Take care of yourself, Anna."
"You too."
He got into the Altima, started it, then backed out of the space. Anna's heart pounded. He was going to drive right out of her life as quickly as he'd flown into it when they'd met on the airplane. Unless she stopped him.
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She jumped in front of the car. He rolled down the window and stuck his head out, a question in his eyes.
"Park," she said.
He did and got out.
"I want to show you something." Anna took him by the hand and led him to her suite. She opened the door. They stood on the threshold.
"Anna? What?"
"This." She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. She could feel herself falling, falling into him, out of control, insane for a boy who was completely wrong for her.
"Are you sure?" he whispered into her hair.
A line from Gatsby flew into her head, something about how all human emotion becomes a commodity. And that made her think of a line from Anna Karenina , about the error mankind makes when it imagines that happiness depends on the realization of material desires. She couldn't remember either quote exactly. She was glad, because it allowed her to tell her own mind the same thing she said to Ben:
"Shut up."
Her parents would never approve: He came from new money, and his father had gambled all that new money away. His mother was in the midst of a nervous breakdown. His last name was Birnbaum.
Anna was sure of nothing, least of all the choice she was about to make. But as he carried her into the suite and kicked the door shut behind them, she didn't worry
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about who she was or who she should be or what anyone would think. She didn't think about her decision not to be involved with any boys right now. Or how she'd feel after what she was about to do.
Because at that moment all Anna wanted was Ben, and for once in her overplanned, oh-so-cautious good-girl life, she just didn't give a damn.
