“I’m twenty seven. Well in a few months, I will be.” It was weird wanting to be older all of a sudden.
“So have we fully established that we are both consenting adults and allowed to enter university property together?”
She shrugged. No words came. Traitors, she thought.
“Shall we?” he said. “I have something I want to show you.”
Ronan led the way through the campus, not heading toward the liberal arts building, but toward the other side that housed the gym and the defunct football stadium. He stopped at the door of a small stone building marked Aldridge House.
“Have you been?” he asked.
“No, what is it?”
“Ah, let’s go in and see.”
A student sat in a chair right in the center of the small foyer, next to a tiny table with a guest book. She nodded in time to the music on her iPod. She wore the standard uniform of the bored undergraduate girl, hoodie and yoga pants with shearling boots. The student slipped out a single ear-bud. “Sign in,” she said.
Miranda could hear the music, tinny, and small. Something poppy like Katy Perry or Britney Spears.
“What is this place?” Miranda asked.
“Go in there,” Ronan said. He pointed to the black velvet curtains to their right.
“Curtains for a door? What kind of place is this?”
“Not very trusting are you?” Ronan asked.
“Past experience,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
He bent down and kissed her nose. “I like you,” he said. “A lot. Follow me.” He parted the curtains. Inside the darkly lit space stood rows of low tables with glass tops. Inside the cases, sat books opened with pinpoint lights from the ceiling shining down on them. The gold paint glowed under the light.
“It’s the Canterbury Tales. Early 1400s. The exhibition just opened. With the low lights this was one of the few places on campus suited to host it.”
“I love these,” Miranda said. “How did you know?”
“You mentioned the gap-toothed wife as an example once.”
“Once?” She looked up at him, taking stock of his face again. She didn’t understand this turn of events. No one ever paid attention to things she said. Certainly not things about Chaucer. Not even her literature students preparing for a quiz paid attention like that.
“I pay attention, Miranda. Well maybe not to everything. But to you—you have my full attention.”
This time she leaned up to kiss him, before turning to the beautiful books showcased around the room. While you could barely make out the words on the page, Miranda could tell the tales by the embellishments. She looped around the room a few times; she kept being drawn back to her favorite page with the Wife of Bath sitting astride her horse.
“You know,” Ronan said, “the Wife of Bath is the first of the marriage tales.”
“And such a view of marriage Chaucer provides.”
“It may be an economic view, but sometimes that can work,” Ronan said.
“How could that work? Oh, marry me, and I’ll be faithful because I am unattractive? And I have money? Very romantic.”
“So you believe in romance?” Ronan asked. He smiled a Cheshire grin at her.
Her face flushed. “Look at this gilt work,” she said, pointing to another page in the case. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“I could say something cliché here, like not as much as you are, but surely a poetry professor wouldn’t let that slide.”
“I might,” Miranda said, “if you meant well.”
“I mean well,” Ronan said. He stood behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pressed the length of his body against hers. He kissed her neck and whispered, “Your beauty could never compare to anything printed.”
“Is everything okay?” the student attendant asked, poking her head through the curtains.
“Quite fine,” Ronan said.
“Whatever,” the student said, “but this is a museum.”
Miranda turned and pummeled Ronan’s chest lightly, unable to suppress her laughter. “Let’s go,” she said.
Outside, she picked up her pace and took big strong strides. Ronan, however, kept up with her.
“I can’t believe I wasted three days,” he said.
“Wasted? What do you mean?”
“Not calling you. I wasted three days.”
“Two and half really.”
“No matter,” Ronan said. “I only have twenty-seven days. I leave on the first of the year.”
“I’m travelling, too,” she said. “I go to my father and stepmother’s on Christmas Eve; I stay until the first. It’s not like we can’t see each other next term. It might be better anyway. Then you won’t be my student anymore.” She tried to pick up his hand, but he pulled away, shaking his head.
“Now I feel even worse. Twenty days then. I have twenty days until you leave.”
“Don’t be strange. I’m not leaving. I’m just going to Connecticut. For a week.”
She stopped walking and looked at him. “Seriously, I’ll be back.”
“But I won’t.”
“What?”
“Student visa is up. Time to go back to Ireland.”
“Back? Back to live?”
“Pretty much. Hard to get an H-1 visa when you are a no-name poet.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Indeed,” he said. “Let’s get a drink.”
C H A P T E R
MISS MIRANDA, two calls in one week. You must have been a naughty girl,” Danielle offered in greeting.
“Having a date is not naughty. We went to a museum and looked at illuminated manuscripts. Chaucer. Then we had drinks.”
“Just drinks?”
“Well, no. But that isn’t naughty either. This isn’t the 1950s; I don’t need to save my virtue for marriage. If that were the case—”
“You would have been damned freshman year with Tommy Keenan.”
“Yes, um, Tommy.” Miranda sighed heavily. “It had to be someone.”
“That seems to be a theme with you.”
“Geesh, Dani, I called to giggle not get a lecture. What theme?”
“The ‘he’ll do’ theme. You go with whatever presents itself instead of going after what you want. Like that Scott guy. He just walks in and out, and you never do anything about it.”
“You are being blunt about this.”
“I haven’t had my coffee. And I love you. And I have to go to work, so I figured I should be quick about the dispensing of friendly advice. You don’t even know this guy.”
“I know him.”
“He was a student in your class. And you didn’t even know he was an auditor. And what about him being Irish? Like an immigrant or just his great-grandparents came over on the boat during the potato famine?”
“No, he’s from Ireland. He is going back right after the New Year. Student visa is up.”
“His visa is up, and he is romancing you all of a sudden? Red flag much?”
“What? What red flag? It’s just a thing. This is just for fun.”
“And what does Mr. Irish say about that?”
“That he’s serious.”
“And there’s my point. And seriously if I don’t go now I won’t get coffee before class, and then it will be your fault if I teach them English profanity instead of the terminology of Spring.”
“They already know how to curse in English. They have YouTube.”
“True, but still, I gotta go. Please think about what I am saying. All this really isn’t like you, and I am a bit worried. Okay, more than a bit. A lot worried.”
“Dani. Don’t. I’m fine. Really fine. I really like this. Him.”
“Just think about that, Miranda. This or him?”
Miranda hung up the phone; the second time a phone call to Danielle made her want to hide under the covers instead of laughing. What’s wrong with having some fun? Especially with a guy who has a one-way plane ticket? Isn’t that the liberated woman’s dream? Friends with
benefits? All of the fun, none of the guilt? It happened in books all the time. She didn’t want it to matter; she wanted to see what it felt like to be one of those women who just did things—consequences be damned. Danielle didn’t want a lecture when she followed Omar all the way to Turkey. And Danielle was wrong about Tommy Keenan.
Yes, a part of Miranda just wanted to lose her virginity to get it over with, and to stop Danielle from giving her the once over every time she came back home from her dates and to stop her own brain from imagining Scott Cramer’s face on every other man’s body.
It was the summer after their freshman year, and they took an apartment near the University to stay for “summer” classes and the quick drive to the beach that didn’t involve checking in with their parents each day. Miranda felt guilty about the arrangement given the ratio between how high the rent was on the apartment and how low her grades were, so she went home to make amends and help Avery with her Memorial Day party, a small affair for about one hundred people around the pool in the backyard. Miranda swore Avery only kept the pool for this very purpose, her three summer parties a year—Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. Otherwise, Avery doesn’t swim; the chlorine would damage her color-treated hair. It does, however, make the perfect backdrop to an early summer evening. After people are done swimming, she and Miranda would launch floating candles just as the jazz quintet began to play and the appetizers emerged on the wait staff’s gleaming silver trays. But that summer, a snafu involving the vegetarian quiche mixing on the same trays as the tenderloin on toast required Avery’s command of detail in the kitchen.
“Scott, you help with the lights,” she said. “I must see to this.” Avery held the offending quiche Lorraine between two well-manicured fingers.
“Yes, ma’am,” Scott said. He handed his beer to one of his friends and quickly stepped over. No one ever said no to Avery.
“Miranda, at least a hundred,” she called over her shoulder.
“Hey,” Scott said. “How’s school? I’ve been meaning to ask you all day.”
“It’s great,” she said. She fumbled with the matches.
“Here I’ll light them, you hand them to me, wicks up.”
“I’m staying at the shore for the summer session.”
“Stanton didn’t mind?”
“Why would he?”
“I don’t know. He just always struck me as the overprotective type.”
Miranda laughed. “Over-protective about what?”
“You know, parent stuff, like curfews and—”
“And what?”
“You know, boys. Men. That stuff,” Scott stammered.
She punched him lightly on the arm. “There’s nothing to worry about in that area. I haven’t been out on a single date at school.”
“Liar,” he said. “There’s no way you stay home and study on Saturday.”
“I didn’t say I stay home. I go out with the girls from my floor.”
“Oh. And men just don’t factor into this equation?”
“Sometimes the girls go home with guys after. But I don’t.”
“You don’t?” Scott looked up and caught her gaze.
“I don’t,” she repeated.
“Ouch,” he yelped. The match in his hand burned down to singe the top of his thumbnail.
Avery picked that very moment to re-appear. “Ten,” she said. “You have only launched ten?”
“We were having trouble with the matches,” Scott said. He held up his hand as evidence.
“Matches indeed,” Avery said. “Stanton, Stan—ton,” she called out across the pool. “I need your lighter. And don’t pretend you don’t have one in your upper left breast pocket next to the Cuban cigar I forbade you to smoke.”
The men in the circle around Stanton chuckled at his expense. Stanton quickly produced the lighter and handed it to Avery. “Sorry, my love,” he said.
“No sorry. Take over for these two, light one hundred. Miranda, please go put on your evening dress. Scott, please make sure Bunny has another drink.”
By the time Miranda came back down, the caterer served dinner,and only one empty chair remained,next to Avery’s cousin Phyllis from Long Island. She had six children and a fascination with pointing out what each one would and would not eat from the evening’s menu, even though the kids stayed back in Long Island that night with her mother-in-law. Miranda watched Scott seated two tables over, surrounded by the young associates of Stanton’s law firm. Their navy dinner jackets formed a solid wall around their table. Only Scott had his off. The spotlighting Avery had designed for the party highlighted the bright white of his shirt, and his smile. Miranda let the evening slip by, not touching her food once.
“Oh,” said Cousin Phyllis. “You’re like my youngest, Suzanne. She can never eat at a party. Too nervous.”
The next weekend Miranda went out with Danielle and a few other girls from their apartment complex. Toward the end of the night, she met Tommy Keenan at the bar that sold only booze, hamburgers, and fried Oreos. He walked up and asked her if she was as sweet as she looked. She held up her fingers, coated in powdered sugar from the fried Oreos. “May I?” he asked pointing to her hand. “I have a thing for sugar.”
Miranda nodded, unsure what she had just agreed to.
He bowed his head and sucked the sugar from her fingers.
She let him.
The following weekend, she told him in advance where they would be. The week after that he was driving her to the beach. Despite the finger incident, or maybe because of it, Miranda made sure that every time she and Tommy went out it was with the group or in daylight. Nothing more could happen unless they were alone after dark; at least that’s what she told herself. Not that Tommy didn’t try. He certainly tried. All June he tried. But Miranda would giggle and give in to little things, each time getting as close as she could without having to go all the way, without having to say the word condom or even think about going to the student health clinic to ask for birth control. No matter how much she wanted to get “it” over with, she couldn’t get past the idea that your first time should be something special, with someone special.
Someone like Scott.
She wanted to see Scott again. She wanted to see him before she did anything stupid, anything with anyone else.
“Childish, childish, childish,” she chided herself that Fourth of July morning, trying on her three bathing suits twelve times each to see which one flattered her enough to make an impression. Hair up or hair down? Make-up or no?
By the time she got down to the party, Scott was already in the pool playing some combination of chicken and water polo, a game Miranda typically only watched. On his shoulders was Kimberly, the newest associate at Avery’s firm. They laughed and swatted at the ball. When the action stopped, she ran her fingers through his hair and didn’t remove herself from his shoulders. He kissed her calf, making a show of licking the beads of water from her leg.
Miranda stayed until the evening’s music started, then called Tommy and met him at a beach party with his friends from work. When the couples started to pair off from around the bonfire, instead of protesting Miranda went willingly. At least the setting for her first time was romantic, but sand and condoms don’t mix. Instead of being a magical experience, it was more like a quick rubbing with some sandpaper. But Tommy seemed pleased, and he didn’t stop calling. In fact, he called more. The summer continued on with more nights on the sand, in the backseat of his car, and very quietly in her bedroom at the apartment while Danielle slept. Miranda registered for fall classes. Tommy, it turned out, didn’t take classes any more. Miranda would come home from her afternoon Classics course and find Tommy waiting for her on the front steps, a six-pack in a paper bag next to him, two or three already empty. She would let him make sloppy love to her in her room quickly before Danielle came home, then protest his offers of dinner because of her homework. After a few weeks, she started going to the library after class, and Tommy soon got the hint.
<
br /> When she next saw Scott at Thanksgiving, there was no sign of Kimberly, but Miranda didn’t really want to know anything about that. Surely, there would soon be a Caitlin or a Zoey or an Emily to take her place. Instead she hung back, watching him watch football, watching him help Avery get the bird to the table, watching him just be Scott. She learned that year that sometimes it is better to live in your head than in the real world, that it is better to let your dreams stay dreams instead of trying to make them come true.
Before she could sink too far into her reverie, the email alert on her phone went off. It was the account she used for Blocked Poet. Ambrose Q. Reed. “Call me,” he wrote, “now. I don’t care what time; I don’t sleep.”
“Well neither do I, Ambrose Q. Reed,” she said aloud. She dialed the phone number at the end of the email.
“Blocked Poet,” he said. “We must talk.”
Before she could offer any greeting in return, Ambrose started a stream of consciousness riff on SEO, product placement, link backs, and hardcover printing. “You got that,” he finished.
“No,” she said, “but I trust that you do.”
“No, no, no, that won’t do. You must understand this one basic thing. Your pieces drive traffic. People link them, like them, share them, would buy them printed on coffee cups to send to their grannies. There is potential here to completely create a brand. Will this be sustainable for three years? Yes. Five years? Maybe. Ten years? No. But there is no reason not to try. Do you have a lawyer?”
“My parents are lawyers.”
“Good, that’ll do. But what about Scotty-boy? You mentioned him. Lawyer, right? How do you know him?”
“A friend, not a lawyer anymore, he just said to contact you.”
“Then kiss him,” Ambrose Q. Reed said. “He just made you a lot of money.”
“Money?”
“Yes, dear, that is what all of this is about. Everyone mistakenly believes the Internet runs for free, but there are a lot of ways to tap into it if you know the right people. A B-lister, some Kardashian hanger-on or washed up Disney star can get upwards of a thousand dollars for the right kind of tweet. We’re talking a single tweet. But again, you have to know the right people.”
Triple Love Score Page 8
