by Sarina Bowen
“I heard these two guys carrying on, and I was going to walk over there and complain. But then I heard them say his name.” I swallowed then, and my throat was thick. “So I listened. And one of them had been in the hallway that night. He was telling the other one exactly what he’d seen…” I had to stop there. Not only did I not want to speak about the details, I didn’t want to think about them, either. When you’re getting busy with somebody, you do not want to spend your time wondering what the expression on your face looks like when you’re giving a…
God. Just shoot me.
I cleared my throat. “So, thanks to me, Dash’s place in the pledge class is secure.” I’d come to the end of being able to talk about this nightmare.
Andy pressed the fingertips of both hands against his brow, as if he had a sudden pain there. “He earned pledge points for letting the other guys watch.” He let out an angry noise. “That’s disgusting.”
When he said that, the weight of my outrage grew a tiny bit lighter. All week, I’d been carrying this embarrassing secret around. And it was awfully heavy. The sound of Andy’s displeasure made me feel as if I’d just handed off a portion of my anger, letting someone else carry it for a moment instead.
“I’m still an idiot,” I said, because it was true.
“No! Shit, no. That is the lowest of the low. That is…” Andy took a deep, slow breath and let it out again. “You know all those brochures about consent that the college passed out during the first week of school?”
“Sure.” They were pretty funny, actually. My roommates and I had a few giggles reading the flyers out loud to one another. Some genius had written out a script for hookups that was supposed to guarantee that both parties had consent for every sexual act. So the bullet points read like a porn film. Do you want me to put my hand here? Does it feel good when I do this? Can I touch you here?
As funny as that was, it didn’t really apply. “But… I, uh. I consented.”
Andy shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Because if you had, you wouldn’t feel afraid to go in there right now.” He jabbed a finger toward the door.
I had absolutely no response to that. Except that the pressure in my chest loosened another percentage point or two.
Andy didn’t wait for a reaction from me, though. He was on a roll. “I mean… forget common decency. Don’t any of them have sisters? God.”
“At least there wasn’t any evidence,” I said quietly. “When I was eavesdropping, I actually heard the brother who wasn’t there ask if there were pictures. And the other one said no, because that would make it into a code violation.”
“How thoughtful of them to avoid violating the code,” Andy spat. “Are you going to report it anyway?”
That was something I’d thought about all week. “It’s not like I don’t feel the urge. But as far as I can tell, they didn’t break any rules, let alone laws. So it would be a waste of time. Not to mention that everyone would know how stupid I was.”
Andy moved fast, then. He stepped forward to wrap his arms around me, giving me a quick, fierce hug. “You weren’t stupid. Trusting, maybe. But that’s supposed to be a good thing to be.”
I was too shaken up to decide whether or not he was right. But I did notice that Andy gave first-rate hugs. Those long arms were good for something besides dunking basketballs, I guess. Come to think of it, he was probably only hugging me for warmth. We’d been out here awhile, and I had his jacket on. “I’m sorry to dump this on you,” I said into his shoulder.
He released me, stepping back. “Sorry it happened to you. Want to go home? You don’t owe it to him to be civil.”
“But I can’t avoid him for four years! And it’s not just him! I don’t know who was standing on the other side of that door. So I don’t even know who to avoid. I’m lucky it’s not on the front page of the New York Times. Mom was right.”
Andy stuffed his hands into his pockets, and began pacing the porch. “She wasn’t, though. I don’t think your mom has thought that through.”
“What do you mean?”
He stopped walking and turned to me. “We all do things that we don’t want to see in a newspaper. I mean, she probably has sex with your father, right?”
“Ew.”
He grinned. “Sorry, but you get my point. She doesn’t want that pictured in the Times, even though there’s nothing wrong with it. And you didn’t do anything remotely wrong, either. At the risk of sounding very pre-law, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy if you follow a guy into his room to…” he broke off the sentence, and there was an awkward pause.
“…Put some lipstick on his dipstick?” I supplied. And then I laughed. I actually laughed about my nightmare. Because now that I was breathing just a little bit easier, I could see just how fricking ridiculous the whole thing was. And humiliating. But still… funny in a way.
God, I was probably losing my mind.
But I’d made Andy’s lips twitch too with my crude description of what had happened. He was trying not to laugh now, but sometimes holding it back only makes it worse.
“Go on,” I told him. “We might as well laugh about it. It’s either that or crying.”
He let a chuckle escape. “You want me to punch him for you? I’ve never won a fight in my life, but this seems like a good cause.”
“Well, okay,” I teased. “So long as you think a trip to jail is a good use of the rest of your night.”
He grinned. “With my luck, it would be a trip to the hospital, and then a trip to jail. But seriously, I have two sisters. The thought of someone doing that to you makes me want to deck him.”
“That’s really…” I swallowed hard. “Thank you. I needed to hear someone say that. I’ve spent the week telling myself, ‘hey, it’s just sex, right? No big deal.’ But I’m embarrassed. And it’s not the same as if we were fooling around and somebody walked in by accident.”
“Of course it’s not the same. Intentions are everything.” As he said this, I saw him shiver.
“Come on,” I said suddenly. Here I’d been struggling to find a reason to go back inside the house, but there was a perfectly good one standing right in front of me. I opened the door. “You’re going to freeze, and catch pneumonia, and miss our art history exam. And then I won’t have anyone friendly to sit next to. So we’re going back in.”
“If you’re ready,” he said.
“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” I took Andy’s cold hand in mine and pulled him inside. There was nobody in the parlor anymore. Keeping hold of Andy’s hand, I tugged him through the room and into the big old sunroom.
In front of us rose a giant Christmas tree with about a million white lights on it. And now I understood why the girls put the tree in here. Those million lights were reflected in the many windowpanes which circled the room. Lifting my chin, I gazed up at it, unblinking. I’d done this ever since I was a child — I’d stare at the lit Christmas tree until my vision went slightly askew and the lights blurred before my eyes. The tree was even more beautiful when you didn’t focus on each pinprick of light, but saw the whole thing at once.
“Nice,” Andy whispered beside me. “The kids at your party tomorrow will love it.”
“I hope so. Otherwise those three cases of our beer that the Betas drank went to waste.”
My date snorted, and I squeezed his hand a little tighter.
Of course, I couldn’t stare at the tree forever. Or cling to Andy. Eventually, I had to look around, and even make eye contact. And it wasn’t going to get any easier if I put it off.
The brave thing to do would be to just say hello to Dash and his stupid friends, as if nothing had happened. They’d forget about the little show I’d put on eventually, right?
Gah. Okay. Deep breaths.
“Let’s get you another drink,” I suggested. “I know I could use one.” Still clutching Andy’s hand like a security blanket, I steered the two of us over to a table against the wall. I had to let him go to pop the tops off of tw
o bottles of Moosehead Lager.
“I like this beer,” Andy said, taking his. “Thanks.”
I took a swig of mine. Maybe a beer or ten was the right way to go. Tonight I couldn’t exactly get wasted to dull the pain. And not because I’d worry that Andy would take advantage of me. It was just the opposite — poor Andy had already shored me up once tonight. He didn’t need the trouble of escorting a drunk girl home, even if I did feel like getting numb.
Now, at close range, I heard a familiar chuckle.
Steeling myself, I turned. And there he was, a beer in hand, grinning at his pledge brothers. Dash’s eyes slid in my direction. They seemed to lock on me for a nanosecond, then jump to Andy. Then, just as quickly, they slid away.
Okay, that wasn’t so bad. I was just about to exhale when the guy beside Dash elbowed him, a knowing smirk on his face. Lowering his beefy head to Dash’s ear, he said something which made my ex-boyfriend grin.
My pulse kicked up, and I felt hot all over. Maybe I couldn’t do this after all. Maybe I should duck out of a party for the first time in my entire freaking life, and then transfer to another college. On another continent.
That sounded like a plan.
Turning my back, I squeezed past Andy and out through the door we’d come in not five minutes ago. I trotted across the parlor, skidding to a stop in front of the fireplace. Meanwhile, my heart bounded along inside my chest like a cartoon rabbit.
“Shit,” I whispered to myself.
I heard footsteps, and a few seconds later Andy appeared at my elbow. “Forget something?” he teased. But I saw worry in his face.
Looking down into the fireplace embers, I tried to think. “They’re probably laughing at me right now.”
“They’re not,” he said. “I overheard them talking about hockey, actually.”
“Figures. That’s all they live for. Games. They made my life into one of their crude little games.”
Andy made an irritated noise. “They did. And that sucks.”
“He acted like a pig,” I said.
“He is a pig. But what would make you feel better? An apology?”
I considered that idea. “I want him to wear a t-shirt every day for a week that reads: I am a pig.”
Andy laughed. “You should consider law school, Katie. You’d make an interesting judge.”
I looked up at him then, and his warm brown eyes were smiling at me again. “That’s just the sorority girl solution, Andy. Haven’t you heard the joke? How many sorority girls does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
He cocked his head like a puppy. “How many?”
“Six. One to change the lightbulb and five to make the t-shirts.”
He touched his empty beer bottle to mine. “Good one, sister. Is there a frat version of that joke?”
“Sure. It takes eleven frat boys to screw in a lightbulb. One to hold the bulb, and ten to drink enough that the room starts spinning.”
He gave me the hot smile again. “You are a total hoot when you’re stressed out.”
“Why, thank you. I’m almost as fun when I’m not stressed out.” But of course he wouldn’t know that, because tonight he was keeping company with a total head case. “I have to walk back into that room. The only alternative is transferring to a school in South America. Or Europe. I hear Spain is nice this time of year.”
Andy winced. “They made your visit to their house into a game, but it was a game you didn’t know you were playing. And now you’re supposed to go in there and be social, and pretend like it never happened. Another game.”
“And not knee him in the balls, or throw up, yes.”
He set his empty beer down on the mantelpiece, which is probably exactly what that space had been used for since the beginning of time. “So maybe what you need to get through the next half hour is one more game. A harmless one, though. You and I can play a game with them, only they won’t know they’re playing.”
Now I was lost. “What game?”
“Well…” he tapped a finger on the mantel. “We’ll try get each guy to say the name of an animal in conversation.”
“An animal?”
“Sure. That’s what you called him. And if you’re focused on that, you won’t stop to worry whether they’re looking at you funny.”
“Andy, they will be looking at me funny. Because I’m going to have to have some pretty weird conversations to get an animal name out of them.”
He just grinned. “Who cares? I’ll be doing it, too. For points. Whoever gets the most animals wins. And no repeats.”
It was the most ridiculous idea I’d ever heard. And maybe the most brilliant. “So, this is competitive?”
“Unless you’re afraid to take me on.”
I giggled. “Please. Sorority girls are made for this game. I’m a Division One small talk champion. Bring it, basketball dude. And maybe I can get Dash to say the word ‘pig.’ Since he is one.”
His eyebrows shot up. “That’s a good twist, honestly. It’s like a trump card. A trump animal.”
“Right! If I get Dash to say ‘pig,’ I win automatically.”
“He doesn’t have, like, a pet pig that I don’t know about? Am I being gamed, missy?”
I shook my head. “If either one of us can get anybody to say ‘pig,’ we win. So it’s a little like catching the golden snitch.”
“Okay. I’m in. But they have to say ‘pig,’ and not some similar word. Because how hard would it be to get a frat boy to talk about how much he likes bacon?”
“Good rule. Should we shake on it?”
With a smile, Andy offered me his hand. When I took it, we shook. Then he pulled me in for one more quick hug, which lasted only a fraction of a second. “Remember, ‘scoop’ is still the escape word.”
“Oh, I remember,” I told him. “But now I want to win this thing.”
He gave me a gentle shove toward the porch. “Lead on, then. But you should know that I won’t let you win. You’re going to have to earn it.”
“Do you always talk smack before a game?” I asked him. Now I was actually flirting with him. If you’d asked me two hours ago if I’d find the energy to flirt tonight, I would have said you were crazy.
“Basketball is at least fifty percent smack talk. The way my team plays, anyway.”
He gave me one more of his killer smiles, and together we headed back in there.
Chapter 5
Andy
Katie’s step had a new swagger as she marched back into the party. She stopped to shed my sport coat, handing it over without a word. Then she squared her bare shoulders as if going into battle. (A really sexy battle.)
I shrugged the jacket on, then stooped to pick up the pink basketball I’d been playing with earlier. It had been abandoned in a corner. Tucking it under my arm, I followed Katie into the party, where one of the Beta Rho brothers was standing in front of the drinks table opening beers. Katie asked him to pop one open for me.
“Sure thing, cutie,” he said.
“That would be Katie,” my date corrected, her voice frosty.
“Right. Just like I said.” The guy opened another bottle of beer and handed it to me.
“I like this lager,” I said, holding up my bottle. “I don’t think I’ve had it before.”
“It’s all right,” he said with half a shrug. “I think we started buying Moosehead because our treasurer is Canadian.”
“Ah,” I said, reaching over to give Katie’s elbow a meaningful squeeze. The game wasn’t even a minute old, and I’d already scored a point with “moose.”
Katie’s eyebrows shot upward. Then she grabbed my hand and tugged me over to her side. Standing on tiptoe, she admonished me in a low voice. “That was clever, tall man, but it was low-hanging fruit. Don’t get too used to winning.”
I took the risk of putting a hand onto one of her deliciously bare shoulders and leaned down toward her ear. “You talk a big game, lady. But I don’t see any action.”
Her eyes flared the
n. And she stood up a little straighter and stalked toward her friend Amy, who was chatting with two fraternity brothers beside the tree.
Katie was a smart girl. She’d picked a target rich environment. I followed, dodging a few people. The party was in full swing now. All the work had stopped, and guys and girls stood around in twos and threes, drinking beer and munching Christmas cookies.
Katie’s eyes were darting around the room, as if she were looking for something. But what? I’d already clocked Dash, her ex — and who calls himself “Dash” anyway? — about ten feet from Katie. Then I saw her swoop down and gather something up. When she stood up again, there was a sparkle in her eye. And a cat in her arms.
She gave me a victorious glance, then tossed all that gleaming hair over her shoulders. I maneuvered closer to her, so that I could hear whatever went down.
Katie waited for a pause in Amy’s conversation with the two beefy guys before her. “Careful,” Amy said, turning to Katie. “Mr. Whiskers is going to scratch your dress.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” Katie said. “Cats like me.” With an innocent face, she looked up at one of the guys in front of her. “How do you feel about cats?”
“I’m more of a dog person,” he said, swigging his beer.
“Are you now?” Katie said, throwing a meaningful glance over her shoulder at me. She bent her knees to release the cat. Mr. Whiskers disappeared under the Christmas tree. Then Katie gave a big sneeze. “Excuse me a moment,” she said.
I followed as Katie made a beeline for a box of tissues on a side table. “I’m allergic to cats,” she said, blowing her nose. “But that was totally worth it.”
“So you threw yourself on the sword for that point?”
“I did,” she agreed, blowing her nose.
“Well, as Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.’” God, I was such a dork. But Katie was still smiling, so it didn’t really matter.
