After several sips, she hears a voice behind her. “Don’t you want something stronger than that?” She turns to see Scott smiling at her. She smiles back, forgetting to answer the question. Scott signals for the bartender, who hands them each a shot of vodka. “It’s on me,” Scott says, waving her money away and slipping the bartender a few fifties. He takes the beer bottle from her and sets it down on the counter, then raises his shot glass. “I’m glad you came,” he tells her, his eyes traveling from her hair to her shoes and back again before settling somewhere near her collarbone. “Cheers.”
Summer raises her glass silently and gulps down the clear liquid, trying not to wince. She musters a weak smile as the alcohol burns painfully in her chest. “I’m glad I came, too,” she says.
Thirty minutes later, she is watching him singing onstage, gripping the microphone with both hands and fixing that piercing gaze at nobody and everybody. His hair is constantly falling into his eyes, and he has to brush it out of the way in between stanzas. Summer recognizes a few girls around her; she often sees them around school with books in their arms and their noses in the air. They are all staring-but-trying-not-to-stare at Scott, and she almost laughs out loud. In the light of day, these girls probably wouldn’t even take a second look at him. They would probably go out of their way to make him feel that he is nothing special—he is a student, just like the rest of them, and he shouldn’t be skipping around acting otherwise just because he has one measly hit on national radio. But right here, in this dark, noisy, crowded bar where the atmosphere is filled with tipsy chatter and cigarette smoke, while the spotlight is shining on him and his voice is seeping into their skin, these girls can allow themselves to be attracted to him. Right here and right now, as Scott croons about forbidden love and stolen chances and slow dancing underneath the stars, it is quite easy for a young girl—for any girl, really—to believe that his music is specifically for her.
Despite herself, this is precisely what Summer thought when she first heard a Violet Reaction song on the campus radio station. Scott was singing about being lonely on Valentine’s Day (so maybe on this day/ we can all be lonely together/ and maybe on this day/ because someone else is lonely/ in exactly the same way I am/ in exactly the same way you are/ it won’t be as bad/ as it is on the other 364 ones), and Summer immediately identified with him. Whoever wrote this song wrote it specifically for me, she thought. She looked up the lyrics on the band’s website, decided it was her new favorite song, and played it over and over again. Several months later, she listened to Scott perform “V-Day” live at the university’s Valentine concert—she had volunteered to man the ticket booth; it wasn’t like she had made plans with anyone for that night—and was instantly smitten with his sweet, silky voice and the way he closed his eyes and lowered his voice in the middle of the refrain, almost as if he had a secret he was reluctant to share. She was suddenly overcome with the urge to make him trust her with all his secrets, to let him discover all of hers, but she knew back then—with a certainty that made her sick to her stomach—that he was way, way out of her league.
Summer spots Roxanne a few feet away, flirting with the bartender, probably convincing him to sneak her a Rhum Coke or two on the house. She touches her neck coyly and giggles as she talks to him, and he seems fascinated with whatever it is she is telling him. Roxanne catches Summer looking in her direction and lifts her chin slightly in acknowledgement. Summer tries to smile at her, but Roxanne has already looked away.
Between sets, Scott would appear beside her, asking if she is having fun, resting a hand on her shoulder, on her arm, on the small of her back. He keeps refilling her vodka shot glass, and by the fifth time, she has to push it away and shake her head forcefully, and when this doesn’t stop him, she has to lean in to whisper in his ear, “I’m sorry, I can’t. I don’t really drink a lot. But thanks.” He smells like sweat and liquor and cigarettes and soap, and when his hand travels down to her waist and stays there, she wants to un-drink those four shots of vodka so she can think straight, or at the very least say something witty and charming and memorable. She wants him to laugh at her jokes, to find her stories interesting, to feel like he has to get to know her better.
Before Summer began packing her things for college, Ellie sat her down and gave her the alcohol-drugs-sex talk. Summer barely paid attention; she hated her first taste of beer, had no extra money to blow on drugs, and had no one who liked her enough to even consider making out with. But Ellie reminded her about Fred, an officemate she had a huge crush on for months. At a work party, he poured her red wine and fed her compliments all night long, and the next day, Ellie woke up on his bed, her clothes and shoes strewn all over the floor. They never spoke to each other again, but word got around the office, and she stopped attending parties and eventually stopped going to work, unable to handle seeing him every day. “I’ve been plastered enough for the both of us,” Ellie said. “So don’t you even bother.”
Summer can feel the vodka swimming around in her brain, clouding her judgment, and although she knows she will regret leaving Scott’s show early, she also knows she will regret it even more if she doesn’t. She wants to be aware of their conversations, to be sure that she doesn’t tell him anything weird or stupid or embarrassing. She wants him to remember her the following day, and perhaps more than anything else, she wants him to want her when it is no longer dark and noisy and crowded. So she says, “I have to go.”
“Go where?” he asks.
“Home,” she says. “Sorry.”
“Don’t you want to stay?” he asks. His hand slips off her waist, and she has to fight the needy disappointment—the panicked desire to make him want her again—away from her voice when she replies, “I want to. I really do. But it’s late.”
“It’s eleven-thirty,” he tells her matter-of-factly.
“It’s late,” she says again.
He looks like he is about to do something to stop her, but his bandmates are already back onstage, ready for the final set. He shrugs and says, “Well, if you happen to change your mind, you know where to find me.”
She realizes he never asked for her number or gave her his, and for this, she is annoyed both at herself and at him. She has no idea how to bring it up without sounding desperate, so she just nods wordlessly, hoping he can find another way to get in touch with her—there has to be a lot of other ways, even if the only thing he knows about her is her first name and her year level. But as she ducks out of the bar and into the night, she can’t seem to think of any.
Chapter 4
It is the second Monday of June, and as Summer walks towards her first class as a sophomore (General Psychology, seven-thirty AM, Social Sciences building, room 117), she reminds herself that this school year will be no different from the last. She reminds herself that she will continue eating lunch at the cafeteria alone, listening to other students making plans to go out for dinner or a movie, watching couples strolling hand-in-hand along the campus’s tree-lined streets. She reminds herself that if she expects nothing, then nothing ever has to hurt.
(She wishes she can go up to each and every wide-eyed freshman girl and tell her exactly this. She can spot them from a mile away—those innocent,
enthusiastic, overdressed sixteen-year-olds getting lost around campus and wearing too much lip gloss and perfume. She can see them trying to be nonchalant as they check out the hot upperclassman jocks and the young, hip, handsome professors. She can see them trying to appear cool, calm, and collected, fighting back the wave of anxiety as they navigate the unfamiliar corridors swarming with unfamiliar faces. She can sense their nerves and their fear, and yet she can also sense their tragic compulsion to please everyone and their even more tragic tendency to believe that this feat is possible if they only try their very best. She believed the very same thing a year ago, and now she can’t help but wish someone had approached her at that time to convince her otherwise.)
When Summer arrives at her classroom, it is barely one-four
th full, which means she gets dibs on where she wants to sit for the entire semester. She chooses the seat at the far end of the room, right beside the window, in the second to the last row. She takes out her notebook and pens, makes sure her phone is on silent mode, puts her bag under her chair, and waits for her classmates. They traipse in mostly by pairs, sometimes in groups of three, all fresh from the break, talking about their family vacations in San Francisco or New Jersey or Sydney or France. Their stories spill out of their mouths eagerly: a Boracay trip that went wild, an internship at a snazzy company, a hot summer fling, and hey, did you hear who hooked up with whom last month? The guys wear flashy sneakers and a clean shave; the girls fluff their newly-colored, expertly-trimmed hair and flaunt their updated wardrobe. The first day of school is always reserved for making a statement; everyone shows up with the sole purpose of showing off.
Summer observes as her classmates discreetly size each other up—they have come from different blocks, and although they recognize each other’s faces, run in the same circles, or know each other’s cousin or prom date or ex-boyfriend, they are not yet friends. Summer has to admit she likes this idea and how it levels the playing field for someone like her, who sits at the far end of the room in the second to the last row.
Just before the bell rings, someone takes the seat beside her. Her new seatmate is a lanky guy with bushy eyebrows and a mass of curly hair. His mustard and maroon striped sweater hangs loosely, awkwardly from his skinny shoulders, and he brushes imaginary lint off it. Summer notices how his fingers are smeared with dirt and how his oddly-shaped nose is too big for his face, and immediately feels bad for him. He looks like the kind of guy whose head always got flushed down the toilet by six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound high school bullies, and whose heart always got stomped on by careless girlfriends. He sees her looking at him and gives her a forced smile that makes her think of spoiled leftovers and sour milk.
Summer feels like she’s met him before, and she racks her brain for an answer. “Hello, I’m Zachary,” he says, enunciating carefully and holding out his hand formally. He establishes eye contact and maintains it for more than the required two seconds, which is creepy. Then she remembers—Zachary is Fleece Hat Guy from report card distribution. She resists the urge to roll her eyes at him; instead, she shakes his hand for as briefly as she can get away with, and says curtly, “Summer.”
“Nice to meet you,” he says, and she wants to retort, “That’s funny, because I didn’t have a nice time meeting you last March.”
The teacher stands in front of the class and introduces herself as Miss Diaz. She begins the roll call, and in between “Bartolome” and “Bernardo,” heads swivel towards the door, through which Scott Carlton makes a grand entrance. The stubble on his jaw from the last time she saw him has grown into a full-on beard, and he now wears his dark hair in a tiny ponytail. His chest and arms seem to have filled out nicely over the break, and he looks cheerful and well-rested. He waves at a few girls, nods at a few guys, and takes the empty seat in the middle of the room. Miss Diaz says in a stern voice, “Should we be honored you can join us today, Mr. Carlton?” but the corners of her mouth are pulling upwards, and Scott’s apology is accompanied by a cocky, unapologetic grin. Zachary mutters, “What a giant douchebag,” and starts brushing imaginary lint off his sweater again. Summer turns her face away from the middle of the room and fervently wishes she could fast forward to the end of the class, to the end of the day, right to the end of the entire semester.
Still, when Scott calls her name after class (she’d tried to rush out the door before he could spot her but some stocky guy with a mohawk was conveniently blocking the way) and asks her what’s up and if she wants to grab a snack, she manages a casual, friendly smile and a noncommittal response. She won’t—she can’t—lash out at him for pretending the last two months didn’t happen. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t get in touch with her sooner, and anyway, who the hell was she to demand he did?
“So?” he says expectantly. “Burgers and fries? I didn’t have time for breakfast.”
“Can’t,” she says, opening her clear case and pretending to study a printout of her schedule. “I have a class.”
“No, you don’t,” he says, grabbing her schedule from her—yesterday, she had labored over a color-coded Excel spreadsheet, obsessing over the margins and fonts and whether the subjects and room numbers should be underlined or bold—and squinting at it. “Your next class isn’t until, let’s see here… one-thirty.”
“I just had a burger last night,” she tells him. She doesn’t even know why she’s being so difficult. She wants to go and grab a snack with him, of course she does.
He says, “So you’ll have another one today,” like it was the simplest thing in the world. And maybe it was. “Come on, it’s just a burger,” he tells her. And then, “I tried to find you on Facebook, you know. But I didn’t have your last name.” She wonders if he rehearses his lines, the way a theater actor would. She wonders what his success rate is, how many girls he’s said it to versus how many positive responses he’s gotten so far. When he gives back her schedule, his hand lingers on hers for much longer than it should. She knows he did it on purpose. She knows he knows what effect he has on her; cute guys often do. She knows he knows it takes very little to make her say yes.
“Okay,” she says, snapping her clear case shut. “Let’s go.”
He puts an arm around her shoulder—a few girls passing by actually pause and stare—and says, “Great. I’m starving.” As they walk towards the parking lot (Scott insists on taking his car, probably to impress her with his fancy dashboard and leather seats and the fact that when he turns on the stereo, it is his own syrupy voice that comes blasting out of the speakers), Summer can feel all those expectations inching towards her, ready to pounce. For as long as she could remember, this has been her problem: A guy does something as inconsequential as smiling at her, and visions of diamond engagement rings and wedding receptions and adorable little kids and a big house with a pool and three Golden
Retrievers start swimming around feverishly in her head. She wonders if this is normal, how she has taken the concept of every guy she has ever exchanged a few sentences with and tried to see how he would fit into her life, into the grander scheme of things—will Ellie and Ken and her baby nephew Nick like him? If her parents were alive, what would they think of him? When they graduate, will they work in the same company, or will they be better off pursuing separate careers? There were also her shallow concerns, trivial thoughts that kept popping up at random moments: Will he be absolutely disgusted when he hears the way she snores, or sees the scar on her upper right thigh from that time she fell out of a tree when she was six? Does she have to shave her legs every day and brush her teeth before she kisses him in the morning, and is she not supposed to wear her ratty clothes anymore, even when they’re just watching TV at home? Summer wishes she could switch off the part of her brain that gets overly,
prematurely excited at the slightest prodding and the tiniest flicker of attraction, the part of her brain that morphs every single guy she meets into a prospect, a candidate for First Boyfriend and True Love.
Summer reminds herself, for the second time today, that if she expects nothing, then nothing ever has to hurt. She reminds herself to keep her hopes at bay—tell them to take a seat and settle down the way a teacher would to a classroom full of students clamoring for attention. But when Scott’s arm stays around her shoulder until they reach his car, she can feel her resolve melting. He opens the car door for her, and she thinks, aware that it sounds a bit silly, Ken doesn’t even do this for Ellie, and he’s already a pretty decent guy. Scott takes her hand as he pulls out of the parking lot, and Summer can’t help believing that maybe it’s okay to let him. Maybe it’s okay to be hopeful, just this once. Maybe it’s okay to expect something after all.
Chapter 5
A week later, Scott shows up at her doorstep, surprising her with a take-out bowl of pump
kin soup and a large plastic bottle of grapefruit juice. “You said you weren’t feeling well,” he says, stepping into her room and glancing at Meg’s and Roxanne’s empty beds.
“How did you get in here?” Summer hisses. She is thrilled that he is inside her dorm, inside her room, where he shouldn’t be. She is glad she has decided to change out of her pajamas, brush her teeth, and wash her face this morning, even with her head pounding from a bad cold and her throat prickly and sore.
“I have my ways,” he says, obviously pleased with himself.
Summer scrambles to clear some space on the small couch in between her corner and Roxanne’s—the clothes and bags and folders and text books are all dumped onto the floor to make room for him. When Scott sits down and looks around like he is evaluating the world she lives in, she is suddenly
self-conscious, and she wishes she had done more than change out of her pajamas, brush her teeth, and wash her face. She wants to cover up her tacky bed spread, the damp, faded towel hanging over her desk chair, the muddy sneakers beside her closet, the fingerprint-stained full-length mirror she has yet to clean. The paper she wrote for her Psychology class rests on the coffee table in front of the couch, and Scott picks it up and leafs through it.
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