by Daniels, Viv
Well, at least Hannah was lucky enough to be spared the stereotypical parent “why can’t you be more like your sister” lectures.
“And what did you say, Mom? That it was due to your superior parenting skills and maybe he’d married the wrong woman?”
She smiled. “Should have said that, you’re right.” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you really think that? I always thought I just got lucky. You certainly didn’t get your ambition from my genes. I was never the scholar you are, and I couldn’t have cared less about science in school.”
“But you never dissuaded me from trying to achieve the most I could,” I replied. Unlike my father.
“Oh, sweetie, I don’t think I could have. You always go after what you want.”
I bit my lip. “Not always, Mom.” I’d walked away from Dylan once, and I was trying my hardest to do it again.
***
At the first planning session with Dylan, in the Photonics lab after class the following week, I decided that Sylvia had the right idea. Before I spent the next few months fretting about secrets when I should be formulating equations, I should just find out from Dylan what he’d said to Hannah about me.
“Before we get too far into this,” I said, tapping my pencil a bit too hard against the page, “I have to ask you something.”
“Oh…kay,” Dylan said slowly, looking a bit worried.
It came out in a blurt. “Did you tell Hannah about us?”
“About how I was doing this project with you?”
“No,” I said. “About…us.”
“Oh.”
“Because it usually comes up,” I rambled on. “With girlfriends. And…histories.”
“It does?”
I looked up, not even realizing until that moment that I’d somehow become fascinated with my notebook. “Doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Tess,” he teased. “You’re the one who made that claim. I assumed you had data to back up your hypothesis.”
“Well, you’re the one with all the experience!” I shot back. “‘Lots of girls,’ remember?”
He laughed. “Right. I did say that.”
My mouth dropped open. “It’s not true?”
“Well…” He rolled his shoulders. “‘Lots’ isn’t an exact number, Madam Scientist. What is the precise definition of ‘lots’?”
I straightened and looked him in the eye. “Ten.”
He blinked. It was a guilty blink.
I threw my pencil at him. “I knew it!”
He ducked. “What did you want me to say, Tess? I’m standing there, minding my own business, and a girl I hadn’t spoken to in two years suddenly appears across the cheese tray like some sort of hallucination in a gray miniskirt.”
“It was a dress.”
“It was a shock, is what it was.” He folded his arms. “Okay, fine. Three. Not including Hannah.”
I didn’t say anything, partially because three changed my perception of the situation a lot, and partially because the “not including Hannah” part made me cringe a bit on the inside.
He was staring at me, and when he spoke again, his voice was much softer. “And now you know a lot more about my sexual history than my girlfriend does. Does that answer your question?”
I nodded wordlessly, because I couldn’t trust my voice not to say all the things whirling around in my brain, especially the biggest—why? Why hadn’t he told Hannah about me, if we were so firmly and forever in the past?
“Now you tell me if what you said over the cheese tray about dating girls was true. Because I think it would help my ego a lot to learn that your real issue was that you had decided guys weren’t your thing.”
Okay. So I hadn’t exactly told him the truth, either. I took a deep breath. “No. No girls.”
“Well, there goes that fantasy. And my whole prepared speech about how, as a friend, I think you can do way better than Elaine Sun.”
I forced a smile. “Not into girls, Dylan.”
He said nothing, but I heard the question anyway. I saw it in his deep, blue eyes. And I knew I owed him an answer, after all these years.
“I…wasn’t ready for a relationship,” I admitted. “Truthfully? I was kind of scared of where we were going. I was only eighteen, and… I just wasn’t ready.”
He seemed to mull this over for a bit. “Yeah. I get it,” he said at last. “Well…it all worked out for the best.”
“Yes!” I agreed, relieved. “Now we’ll be partners and friends, and it’s perfect.”
“Yeah.”
We were such liars.
EIGHT
It started simply enough. Since my shifts at Verde ran Thursday and Friday nights, and all day Saturday and Sunday, Dylan and I planned Monday through Wednesday evenings to work on our project.
On Monday, we worked from five until nine, when he said he had to go meet Hannah.
On Tuesday, we worked from five until ten. He’d been saying he had to go meet Hannah for a full hour before he finally left the lab.
On Wednesday, we looked up from our work to discover it was eleven-thirty. Dylan pulled out his phone. “Three missed calls.”
“Hannah?”
He nodded. “I should have told her I couldn’t meet tonight.”
Now it was my turn to nod. That was the rule. I’d learned it from years of living with my mother. When your married lover starts complaining to you about some issue with his wife or real family, you simply nod and don’t make eye contact.
Except Dylan wasn’t married. And he wasn’t my lover—not anymore. But that didn’t stop me from mimicking my mother so perfectly I shocked myself.
“I should go,” he said now.
I nodded again, not even looking up from my laptop this time.
“Tess?”
I raised my head. He was looking at me, an unreadable expression on his face. “Yeah?”
“Do you want me to go?”
His words scooped something out of my chest, leaving behind a hollow, sucking place. “Sure,” I said lightly as the ache spread from my heart to my stomach. “I’m ready to crash myself. I’ll have those notes to you tomorrow morning.”
He stared at me, saying nothing, and for a moment I could almost imagine that he knew exactly what it cost me to act as if I didn’t care. That I didn’t even give a second thought to the fact that he was going to leave me here and go back to his apartment and be with her.
And just like that, the images were back. The ones where Dylan was with her. Hannah. My sister. He’d walk into his apartment. She’d wait for him on the tangled blue sheets of his futon bed. He’d pull off his shirt, revealing muscles that had only been hinted at back when I knew him, back when he’d been mine, but were now fully formed…and fantastic. She’d run her hand across his chest, through his hair. Her perfect, manicured hand, glinting with rings, especially the big, fat diamond one on her left hand.
I squeezed my eyes shut. What the hell was wrong with me? I was not my mother. I’d had two years in which I could have gone after Dylan if I’d wanted to. I was not going to pine over what was lost to me now that he’d found someone else, as if the only reason I could possibly be attracted to him was that he was unavailable…
His hand covered mine, then swept up my sleeve, softly stroking my arm. “Tess? Are you all right?”
I opened my eyes, feeling stupid. “Sorry. My head hurts a bit.”
“You’re overtired. I shouldn’t have kept you out this late. And you have your shift at the restaurant tomorrow…” He frowned. “You okay to drive home?”
“Fine.” I snapped down the lid of my laptop, annoyed he was calling my bluff.
“I don’t like the idea of you driving.”
“I don’t like the idea of sleeping under the lab table.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “You can stay at my place.”
I gaped at him. Was he serious? Was he stupid? Was he just so clueless as to what was going on here that he could invite me back to h
is campus studio apartment to sleep?
Or was he inviting me to something entirely different?
“I can stay with Hannah,” he finished.
Oh. Oh. The visions started up again, only this time, he was taking his shirt off in what I imagined would be Hannah’s immaculately maintained and lavishly furnished condo. No simple dorm room or townie commute from her parents’ mansion for the precious Hannah Swift. I was quite sure of that.
“No,” I said quickly. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t stay with Hannah.” The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. His eyes widened. “I mean…don’t bother her. At this hour.” His stare was molten. “I’m fine. I can drive myself home.”
I was already stuffing my things in my bag, already looking away. I threw a rushed goodbye back at him and fairly ran from the lab. This was wrong, I thought as I took the stairs two at a time. This was not part of the rules, I thought as I hurried across the parking lot to my beat-up old car. Girls like me didn’t give orders to boys about whether or not they should go home to their girlfriends.
And the second I thought it, I wanted to throw up.
Instead, I got in my car, jammed the key in the ignition and drove home, trying the whole time to ignore the drumbeat in my head.
Girls like me.
Girls like me.
Girls like me.
***
I’d never skipped a class in my life, but I was deeply tempted to skip Biotransport on Thursday. As soon as I walked into the class, I realized the challenges existed beyond just facing Dylan again after my cowardly dash from the lab the previous evening. From what Dylan had told me, competition for the symposium prize was pretty cutthroat. If I chose to sit somewhere other than the desk we’d staked out as ours for every class thus far, what would it look like to everyone else?
I sat down in the usual seat.
I felt rather than saw Dylan sit beside me, since I kept my nose buried in my notebook. He said nothing. I slid his textbook over to him. He took it without a word. I died a little inside.
Class began, and I found I missed his nudges, his whispered asides. How was I going to get through a whole semester like this? No, forget about that. How was I going to get through a weekend of not seeing him, wondering what he was thinking? I couldn’t even bear to wonder what he was thinking now. I stole a glance.
His focus was completely on our professor as his fingers moved across his laptop keyboard.
Across the room, Elaine Sun was sitting with another female student, sharing notes and pointing out things in the open textbook on the table in front of them. I tapped my pen against the edge of my notebook, thinking. It flew out of my hand and rolled off the desk, and I reached down to get it at the same time as Dylan.
Our hands met under the table, each of us with our own end of my pen. I raised my gaze to his face and saw, for the first time, that he was wearing his glasses today.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi.”
Time stopped. It was two years ago at Cornell, glasses and all. I could have happily lived under that table, half-bent over, with Dylan’s face an inch away. But the professor probably would have noticed. The other teams definitely would have. He straightened, and after a second, I did too, back up into the harsh, fluorescent light of the classroom, where there was schoolwork and students and Dylan had a girlfriend and I wasn’t interested anyway.
He angled his laptop screen at me and tapped my notebook. I looked over and there, between the equations and lecture notes, was a single line of text, all on its own.
Don’t run away from me.
I caught my breath. Then, I bent my head over my paper, my dark hair falling forward as I scribbled my own secret note.
I’m right here.
I looked over at his screen.
If there’s something wrong, I want you to tell me. We’re not 18 anymore. If you can’t do this, tell me now. It’s better to quit now than get into it and risk our chances at the end.
Well, that stung. Humiliated, I felt a flush stealing up from my collar toward my cheeks. So now Dylan thought I was the girl who couldn’t keep her hormones under wraps long enough to do a project with him. I bent my head over my notebook once more, the strokes of my pen strong and black.
I can do it. And YOU can stop inviting me to spend the night in your bed.
I sat back and tapped the paper, and then when I was sure he’d read it, I drew a thick black line across the words, scribbling them out. I didn’t need that kind of note in my records. I looked up at him. He was staring at me, his expression impossible to divine underneath the glint of his glasses. I gave him a smug little smirk and returned my attention to the professor. Round to Tess McMann. I might have acted like a scorned ex last night, but he’d started it. “Friends” was one thing, but we weren’t so buddy-buddy that I could just sleep at his place.
When class ended, I started gathering up my things without looking at him.
“Are you working all weekend?” Dylan asked, his tone as casual as if nothing at all had transpired.
“Pretty much,” I said. “But if you want to find a time to meet and do work, I can probably arrange something.”
“No need,” he said. “I was actually just making conversation. Wondered if you had any big plans.”
I tossed my hair out of my face and turned to him. “Nope. Working. You?”
“I was going to go to the football game with some friends this weekend.”
Oh right. Canton Football, where you didn’t have to fight for your tickets months in advance the way you did at State. “Sounds fun.”
“We may tailgate.” He let the words hang there a minute. “Hannah’s not coming.”
I nodded. “Well, have fun. Think of me when you’re out there and I’m stuck chopping lemons.”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll think of you.”
***
“Hannah’s not coming”? Sylvia repeated, incredulous. “He actually said that to you?”
“Yep,” I said, blowing a strand of brown hair out of my face. We were doing prep work behind the bar at Verde before things got busy. Because so many students didn’t have class on Fridays, Thursday nights in a college town could get just as wild as the weekend. “It’s sketchy, right?”
She raised an eyebrow at me. A single eyebrow. I didn’t know anyone who could do that except Sylvia, and she’d practiced for ages to get it right. She’d even put it on her audition sheets under “talents,” along with crying on cue.
And I was glad she agreed with me that it was suspicious. First Dylan had invited me to stay at his place and now he was inviting me to social events when he knew his girlfriend wouldn’t be there? I knew this game. I was born because of this game.
I just never suspected Dylan would be anything like my father.
“It’s definitely sketchy,” she said. “Especially after him exaggerating his sexual history and what that other girl in your class said about him going after fresh meat…”
Annabel, on waitress duty, swung by the bar with a drink order. “What’s up, ladies?”
While Sylvia got started on Annabel’s martinis, I filled her in on the latest with Dylan.
“I don’t know,” she said when I finished. “I wouldn’t be so quick to condemn him.”
“You’re a softie,” said Sylvia, stringing olives on toothpicks.
“Let’s just analyze what’s going on here before we jump to any conclusions,” Annabel said. “You know this guy, and he’s never been a jerk before, right?”
“She knew him,” Sylvia corrected, popping the lid on her shaker. “Two years ago. And now he’s all Hottie McHotHot. That changes a guy.”
Well, I’d always kind of thought he was Hottie McHotHot. Or at least Cutie McCuteCute.
Annabel ignored her sister and starting ticking off her arguments on her fingers. “He thought you were ill and he offered to give up his room, not share it with
you. There’s a difference. Maybe he was just sincerely worried about you driving home by yourself. Also, he knows that you’re new at Canton and might not have made a lot of friends yet. So he invited you to a group tailgate. Group.” She glared at Sylvia. “I think he’s just trying to be nice.”
“Then why would he stress that his girlfriend wouldn’t be present?” Sylvia pointed out.
“Well, he already knows that Tess feels uncomfortable around her because of that whole ‘they once slept together’ thing. Maybe it was just his way of saying, ‘Come hang out with my friends. You won’t even have to deal with the girlfriend weirdness.’”
Sylvia poured the martinis into Annabel’s waiting glasses. “Maybe it was his way of saying, ‘Come give me a little somethin’ somethin’ on the side.’”
Annabel rolled her eyes and went off to deliver the drinks. But she’d given me a lot to think about. The Warren sisters didn’t know it, but I was all too familiar with the ways and habits of wandering men. My dad never invited my mother out with his usual social circle. They did have “friends” they saw when they went on trips together, other men and their mistresses who all had as much to lose if they weren’t discreet about their secret lives. She never went to dinner with him in this town. Too much chance of being discovered.
“I honestly don’t know how she does it,” Sylvia grumbled beside me as I poured glasses of pinot grigio for a group of girls at the end of the bar. “I don’t know anyone who’s been screwed over as thoroughly by men as Annabel, and yet she always wants to think the best of them.”
“Maybe because of Milo,” I suggested. “He’s going to be a man someday and she wants to make sure he’s one of the good ones.”
“He’d better be, or I’ll wring his neck.”
I smiled at my friend. “Well, at least you’re admitting there is such a thing as a good man.”
“Milo isn’t a man yet,” she said. “We’ll see in ten years.”
Annabel had indeed been screwed over. Her first boyfriend, Mark, had been a thief and a thug and probably some other things I wasn’t entirely sure about yet. He was in jail now, thank goodness, but back in the day he’d managed to hurt Annabel quite a bit, both before and after getting her pregnant. When she’d refused to abort the pregnancy, her parents had kicked her out of the house. When she’d asked Mark’s dad for help, he’d called her a lying whore and insisted she take a paternity test before she “ruined” his son’s life. That was rich. When Milo was about six months old, Mark had gotten arrested after breaking into his neighbor’s house and, after he’d gone to jail, the whole question of him paying child support had become moot, anyway. I thought Milo was better off without his father in his life. If there was one man I’d prefer not to influence any future generations, it was Mark.
