by Shelia Grace
“Now you tell me.”
“What? You knew it. That girl wanted a fucking fairy tale; she didn’t want you.”
“Damn. You really know how to damage a man.”
“Yes, I do,” she smiled.
I stood up and retrieved our drinks. When I got back to the table, she patted the garment bag and shoebox sitting on the chair next to her.
“Size seven shoes, right?”
I nodded.
“Please tell me you did better this time with the new girl,” she said dryly.
“Or worse depending on how you look at it.”
“Well, if she’s not a drug addict, it will be an improvement.”
I studied my sister for a long moment.
“How long did you know about Gretchen?”
“Long enough. I was waiting for you to come to grips with it.”
“Good to know.”
“And this new one?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t have anything to prove to the parents.”
“So Mom’s going to shit a brick when you show up next Saturday? Let me guess. She’s got piercings? Full-sleeve tats?”
“Mom passed judgment on me a long time back.”
Becca snorted.
“You, Ryan, are Mom’s favorite.” She paused. “Believe me. I don’t envy you that honor. Mom doesn’t give a shit what I do. It’s liberating. Now, are you going to fucking tell me something about your little date?”
I smiled.
“She’s five-four.”
Becca laughed.
“She’s a first-year—”
“In the math program?”
“English.”
“You and a tiny English doctoral student?” my sister choked.
“She’s not a doctoral student.”
“Master’s?”
I shook my head.
“She’s an undergrad? Gretchen must have really fucked your shit up.”
“She’s not a kindergartener, Bec. You’d like her. She has a fucking foul mouth, just like my big sister. Besides, how old is Mason? He’s turning forty-five this year?”
“Forty-two.”
“And you’re thirty …” I trailed off.
“Four. Yeah. Shut up, young one.”
“Her name’s Alex, and I expect at least one member of our family to be well-behaved next weekend, got it?”
“And you think it’s going to be me?”
I smiled.
“It’s not going to be Mom.”
“You must really like this girl if you’re willing to expose her to the family.”
“I like her more than I should.”
“That sounds ominous. All right. I’ve gotta get back. I’ll see you next weekend. Can’t wait to meet your freshman.”
Smirking, I watched her walk out before checking my watch. If I pushed the speed limit, I could make it back to campus, take a run with Finn, and squeeze in a shower before heading over to 1500. When I got to the curb, I unlocked the Audi and hung the dress in the backseat. I hadn’t even bothered to look at it, but I trusted Becca.
By the time I got on the bike and rode over to campus, it was colder than it had been, which made me think of what Alex had said about being cold all the time. I still couldn’t imagine her in Southern California. Stopping by the department, I picked up Robertson’s laptop and reassured him that I would have it set up before class. The lecture hall was still empty when I got there, and after setting up the presentation, I sat in the front row and waited for Alex to show up.
When she walked in and saw me, her cheeks turned pink and she gave me a half smile. It felt like fucking forever since I had seen her on Tuesday night, and I realized that I wanted to see her every night, which scared the living shit out of me. Maybe Becca had been right. Maybe Gretchen really had fucked me up. If that was the case, then I had no right to foist my fucked up shit on this girl. Watching Alex sit down, I thought: Fuck that. Gretchen and I had been over a long time before I saw Alex. The only one holding on to anything between Gretchen and me was my mother. Walking over to where Alex was sitting, I handed her the assignments—the one from Tuesday and the one I hadn’t given her from last week.
“You suck at math,” I said.
She turned red.
“No shit. I told you that. I’m just trying to pass this fucking class so I don’t have to retake it.”
“I could tutor you.”
She laughed.
“Uh huh. Right. You’re a math teacher. You try tutoring me, and we’ll fucking hate each other. Just let me fail in peace.”
“All right. Well, I have something for you. Can you come back to the house with me after class?”
Alex frowned.
“Another late night trip to your house? Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Can I bring it by your dorm, then? Safe enough?”
She nodded.
“Tomorrow. I’ll be back from class around four-thirty. I’m usually around on Friday nights unless my friend shows up and drags me out.” She smiled. “I guess I’m getting a head start on grad school.”
I turned as Robertson walked in and then paused and looked back at her.
“Walking back to Mercer by yourself again?” I asked more hopefully than I should have.
She shook her head and waved at a chubby kid who had just walked in. The little punk looked like he was ready to do a back flip at the sight of Alex waving in his direction, and I heard the crack of my knuckles.
“Tony lives down the hall from me. He offered to walk back to the dorm together.”
“I’m sure he did,” I muttered before returning to the front of the classroom.
Jesus. This was bad. Was I actually feeling jealous of an eighteen-year-old boy who bore an uncanny resemblance to a teddy bear? Alex had been right. I had no right to ask her back to my house tonight. I was out of control. To take stock, in the past week, I had: come way too close to fucking an undergrad student of my advisor, broken the nose of her stalker, and asked my friend’s fiancée to commit computer fraud. I had more or less become a stalker myself.
Sad. That was what this was. I couldn’t remember caring this much when Gretchen had admitted to a drunken fling with her personal trainer. Of course, her goal in cheating had been to get back at me after I had ruined her life by going back to school. She had probably expected me to become overwhelmed with jealousy. And sure. I could have gone over to her gym and kicked the shit out of the guy. Instead, I had wanted to hand the guy a fucking medal for giving me an easy out.
I glanced over to the front row where Alex sat wedged between her roommate, who was even worse at math than Alex, and the pudgy-faced little fool who was probably trying to figure out if his little act of pseudo-chivalry was going to get him to second base. A furious wave of regret kicked me in the gut. I should have made her come that night. Who’d have thought that my fucking conscience would win in an all out war with my dick? I had done the ethical thing by backing off that night, but why should some inexperienced little prick get there first?
By the end of lecture, I was ready for the punching bag, not theorems. When Alex walked up and held out her homework assignment, she smiled but didn’t say anything. I looked back and saw her roommate, who stuck out her tongue, complete with a stud.
I flipped back to Alex’s homework assignment and saw a note scrawled at the top. See you tomorrow. I looked for her, but she was almost to the door. Fuck! I wanted to beat her back to Mercer and wait at her dorm room, which—again—made me a stalker asshole. The thought of waiting until tomorrow night to see her was excruciating. And I was out of my goddamned mind.
After the last student left 1500, I went straight to the Rec Center and spent thirty minutes destroying my fists on the bag. Good thing was that the only people in the basement with me looked like they were punishing themselves, too. Remembering my bribe to Brenda, I wondered how the two of them were going to get through two cases of wine. Neither of them was a big drinker.
But it was great wine—and free. Occasionally I felt bad that I couldn’t tell Jess my real name, but it was easier going by Matthews.
I got back to the house and took Finn for a spin around the block before opening up a bottle and killing it within the hour. Luckily, Bennetts didn’t get hangovers. Correction: Bennetts were immune to red wine.
Vodka was another thing. But someone who willingly drank that fucking poison deserved what he got. Besides, the way I saw it, any guy who claimed that red wine was for pussies didn’t actually like pussy, and he certainly couldn’t make a woman come if his life depended on it.
I loved red wine.
###
Friday was never-ending. I worked all morning and then met with Robertson before riding out to the family estate—unbeknownst to Richard Bennett, patriarch of the Bennett clan. I was here because of Massimo Baldacci, the man who had managed my parents’ vineyard since I was six years old.
Massimo was old school. His grandfather had grown grapes in Tuscany, and he and my father didn’t always see eye to eye. Meaning every so often he got sick of my father’s my way or the highway method of winemaking. When I had first gotten out of school, Massimo and I started discussing the finer points of our trade. He was, in many ways, a second father to me. He was the man who had told me to fight for what I wanted and walk away from what I didn’t. I trusted him. I respected him. I hoped to one day be one-tenth of the winemaker he was. That said, I always knew I’d end up going back to wine. But that didn’t mean I wanted to give up everything else.
“Your father, he is very stubborn,” Massimo said gravely when I met him.
“I thought you were going to tell me something I didn’t know,” I smiled.
His steel-blue eyes crinkled, and he laughed.
“One day, these decisions will be yours, and you, boy, are not here enough.”
“Now you sound like my old man, Massimo.”
We walked toward the vines.
“Your father is looking at the best crop of a decade, and he won’t listen to reason.”
“Again, nothing new. Massimo, you run the vineyard. My father knows that. I’ve never understood why you didn’t start up on your own.”
He looked up at the gray skies as it started raining down on us.
“Because I wanted to be here.”
I didn’t argue with him. I just followed him and listened like I had when I was a kid. Hell, to him, I still was a kid. By the time we finished, we were both soaked, and I told him what I had always believed: when it came to the grapes, he knew what was best, and my father should listen to him, not the other way around.
It was almost five by the time I finally left. And it was an hour back to school. Then I had to shower and change, which meant I was going to be late showing up at Alex’s dorm. And unfortunately, by the time I pulled up at the house, I knew things were about to get worse. Finn was sitting on the front porch, and a familiar white BMW was parked in the driveway.
Gretchen. She had the worst fucking timing.
The front door swung open, and that’s when I realized that she still had a key to the house. She walked out holding a glass of white, looking like she was shooting an advertisement for a lifestyle magazine. The difference between my ex and Alex was startling, even more so than the difference between Alex and my sister. Alex and Becca were both real—unlike Gretchen, who resembled a carefully put together product. Gretchen had been what I thought I wanted when I hadn’t known what I wanted. Even from the street, I could see her perfect blonde highlights, her French manicure as she tapped her nails on the wine glass, and her perfectly applied makeup.
Finn ran off the porch and stopped in front of me, wagging his tail. Gretchen had never liked my dog.
“You look good,” I said diplomatically as I approached her.
“That’s the best you can come up with?” she sneered. “I look better than good.”
I felt my knuckles crack of their own accord. She was already drunk. I walked up the stairs, straight past her, and into the house. I looked around for damage, grateful that I had left my work in the safe. There was a mostly empty bottle of wine on the table, and hearing the door thump closed behind me, I turned and looked at her. Now that I was up close, I could see her smudged lipstick and the vicious look in her eyes.
“What are you doing here, Gretchen?”
“You didn’t return my call.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re just going to throw away everything we had together? That’s your plan?”
No, just not going to throw away a lifetime on you, I thought. I didn’t say this, though. I wasn’t crazy.
“Where are your keys, Gretch?”
“Fuck you!”
The wine sloshed out of the glass as she gestured, and I was relieved that she preferred whites.
“Gretchen,” I said calmly. “You’re going to sober up, and then you’re going to get out of my house.”
I glanced at the clock. It was a quarter past six. Alex’s class had ended almost two hours ago, and I was seriously regretting not getting her number. I looked down at my phone to see if she had texted me during the ride back. Nothing. Gretchen slammed her wine glass down on the table and marched past me into the living room, reappearing thirty seconds later holding the garment bag from Becca and the picture of Alex I had left on my nightstand.
“So? Who’s the little bitch?”
I was in front of her in an instant, snatching the picture and the dress out of her hands. I leaned toward her, and even drunk, Gretchen had the sense to step back.
“I don’t owe you a goddamned thing, Gretchen. And stop calling my mother and playing the good little future daughter-in-law. We’re over. We have been for a long time.”
I straightened up, got the keys from her ugly, oversized designer purse, and walked into the bedroom, calling Finn in after me. I wasn’t about to leave my dog alone with this crazy bitch. Hearing the crash of glass, I stalked back into the kitchen and found red wine flowing over the floor like blood, broken glass everywhere. Going back to her purse, I took out her phone and scrolled to her friend Natalia’s number, curious as to how deep the bonds of sorority sisterhood went.
“Are we partying tonight?” the voice asked.
“Natalia, it’s Ryan.”
The line was silent for a few seconds.
“Why the fuck do you have Gretchen’s phone?”
“Because she’s at my place wasted out of her mind again. Now, if you don’t want me leaving her outside on a leash ’til she sobers up, then come pick her up.”
“Fuck you, Bennett.”
Music blasted from the speakers in the living room.
“Be here in an hour.”
I ended the call and walked into the living room. The first time I had seen Gretchen like this, it had fucked me up. Now I just didn’t care.
“Natalia’s coming to get you. Break anything else, and I’m sending your father the bill so he can send you back to rehab.”
Gretchen’s eyes narrowed, and I walked out, picking up some rags from the pantry to mop up the red wine and broken glass.
Chapter 9
Alex
After class, I waited for Ryan, but he never showed. So I went by the DC and had dinner with Julie. Then I showered. Bored and restless, I finished half my homework, but as usual, the latest Calculus assignment was fucking impossible. Just as I was about to bang my head on the desk, Julie came by and invited me to walk with her and a bunch of other people from our floor to a frat party right off campus. I shook my head.
“Come on,” Julie moaned. “They’re not checking IDs.”
“How do you know?”
“Megan told me.”
“Oh, that’s comforting. But are they checking the drinks for roofies?”
Julie snorted.
“Come on. Safety in numbers.”
I shook my head again. I had already decided what I was going to do tonight. I kept telling myself over and over what a st
upid idea it was to show up at Ryan’s house unannounced, but I couldn’t help it. I had already gotten a bus schedule from the corkboard by the elevator and found the route back to Ryan’s house. But
I wasn’t about to tell Julie my crazy plan to show up at Ryan Bennett’s house, mostly because it sounded a little too stalkerish.
“All right,” Julie said, shaking her head. “But if you change your mind, text me. It’s the red and white house.”
I nodded. I had seen that frat before. I called it the Meat Head House. It was across from the parking structure by the student union, and there were always a couple of guys out front throwing a football or sitting in lawn chairs and harassing any girls who happened to walk by.
I looked down at my phone. The next bus would leave in fifteen minutes. I grabbed my jacket and rushed downstairs. It occurred to me several times as I walked to the bus stop that I totally shouldn’t have been doing this. But then I decided that I needed to do something I really wanted to do for once, and right now I really wanted to see Ryan. Lately I was starting to think that I had forgotten how to really want something. There was always this layer of doubt beneath my decisions. Like how part of me felt like I’d be a bad daughter if I finally just told my mom that this whole pre-med thing was completely psychotic.
I wanted Ryan Bennett, though. In a way I knew was totally unsafe. He had stopped—both times—when we had been alone. But I wasn’t stupid. He wanted more. I did, too. The problem was that our versions of more had to be seriously different. For one, I didn’t even know what the bases stood for. Was first base kissing? I had a feeling that we had gone way past first base the night at his house—and now here I was taking the bus right to his doorstep.
As I got on the bus, a bolt of regret shot through me. What the hell did I think I was doing? He hadn’t shown up at my dorm, which meant he had probably forgotten all about what he had said yesterday about coming by. For all I knew, he was out on a date with someone more age-appropriate. I thought about getting off the bus at the next stop, but I didn’t. Looking out the window, I realized there was something surreal about seeing this part of town again, like last Thursday had been a strange dream.
