Blonde Date

The Ivy Years novella

Sarina Bowen

Rennie Road Books

Contents

Part 1

1. Andy

2. Katie

3. Andy

4. Katie

5. Andy

6. Katie

7. Andy

Part 2

8. Andy

9. Katie

10. Andy

11. Katie

12. Andy

13. Katie

14. Andy

15. Katie

16. Andy

17. Katie

18. Andy

19. Katie

20. Andy

Epilogue

Thank You!

Also by Sarina Bowen

The Year We Fell Down

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Copyright

Part I

1

Andy

With a growing sense of panic, I pawed through the clothes in my narrow little dorm room closet. For five long minutes I’d stood there inspecting my shirts, tossing them one by one on the bed. That was four more minutes than I’d ever spent before trying to decide what to wear. But I still didn’t have a freaking clue.

It was time to call in the big guns.

Luckily, my older sister answered on the first ring. “I need a consult,” I said. Delia was in med school, and you got further with her if you spoke in medical terms.

“Where does it hurt?” she asked.

“I have a date, and I don’t know what to wear.”

Her laughter was so loud that I had to hold the phone away from my ear. “How old are you?”

“Old enough to ask for help when I need it.”

“Fair enough. What’s the occasion?”

“That’s the tricky part. First there’s a charity bit, where I’m helping a bunch of sorority girls with their community project. Setting up a Christmas tree, or something.”

Delia laughed again. “What do you know from setting up a Christmas tree, Jew boy?”

“How hard could it be? But there’s also a tree lighting, and, like, cocktails.”

“Hmm,” my sister mused. “And where does this event take place?”

“In their preppy white sorority house with the big columns on the front.”

“Well… This really could go either way. Casual or dressy.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. How should I play it?”

“Who’s the girl? Anyone special?”

Why yes. But I wasn’t going to tell my sister that just hearing this girl’s name gave me a thrill. Katie Vickery. When she’d called to invite me to this thing, she’d opened with “you don’t know me…”

But she’d been wrong. Very wrong. I knew exactly who she was.

In the first place, if you were a lonely junior at Harkness, noticing the frosh girls was like your job. And she made my job easy. I’d picked out those long legs the very first time they’d walked into my art history lecture. And — lucky me — summer’s warmth had held on an extra week or two this year, treating me to a steady parade of Katie’s short skirts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.

The most attractive thing about her, though, was her laugh. It was deeper and huskier than you’d expect from someone so slight and fair. I loved the sound of it. Whenever I heard her laugh, my brain took a short trip around the block.

God, she was hot. But she also had unattainable practically stamped on her forehead. Because Katie was the sort of girl that everyone noticed. And I wasn’t even a little bit surprised when she started sitting with the football crew during lectures.

I didn’t dwell on this. Girls like Katie Vickery were out of my league, and I didn’t bother to sit around wondering why. Some things just were.

As the fall semester wore on, Bridger, my next-door neighbor, started spending a lot of time with Katie’s roommate, Scarlet. So I sometimes overheard updates about Katie. Scarlet mentioned that they sometimes went jogging together. After that, Katie’s long legs began loping through my dreams in spandex shorts.

But that wasn’t a premonition, or anything. It was just the work of a shy guy’s subconscious. In a million years, I’d never thought I’d be standing here, dressing for a date with her. And if she hadn’t invited me out of sheer desperation, I wouldn’t be.

“Um, earth to Andy!” my sister prompted. “I asked you a question. Is the girl anyone special?”

“We don’t really know each other,” I admitted. “She dumped her football player boyfriend a few weeks ago and needed a date for this thing. Enter me.”

“So this is a date of necessity. But how did you get the nod? She must not know your track record with women. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” My sister snickered.

“Come on, now, D. If I wanted to be mocked, I would have called my other sister.” Our younger sis was kind of a bitch. “You remember Bridger?”

“Who could forget him?” Delia asked. My neighbor was kind of a stud with the ladies.

“Well, this whole thing was his girlfriend’s idea.”

“I knew I liked that guy,” Delia said. But of course she did. All the women did. “And his girlfriend has good taste, too.”

“In me? Or in Bridger?” I teased.

“Both. And this sorority girl is going to love you. You’re pretty cute for a skinny guy.”

I didn’t have time to argue with her. But even if it was true, pretty cute for a skinny guy probably wasn’t going to be enough to win me Katie’s undying affection. I’d been invited on this junket because the newly single Katie was apparently done with football players. “And jerks of all stripes,” Scarlet had explained. “I told her, ‘Andy is absolutely not a jerk.’”

For a second I’d felt awesome about that. But then I’d realized that being absolutely not a jerk also wasn’t enough of an endorsement to fill the utter void that was my love life.

Oh, well.

“Are you going to help me or what?” I prodded.

“Of course. So you want to impress her, but you don’t want to look like you’re trying too hard,” my sister said.

“Exactly. So tell me what to wear. While I’m young, if possible.”

“Well, when the Jew boy goes to the Christmas tree lighting at the WASPy sorority house, he should always wear nice pants. You have some wool trousers, right?”

I looked at the three pairs I’d draped over my desk chair. “Won’t that be too dressy?”

“Not if they’re khaki-colored. How about the ones you wore when we saw that show in Boston?”

How did she even remember that shit? If Delia asked me to name three items of clothing that she’d ever owned in her lifetime, I couldn’t do it.

I lifted the pants off their hanger. “All right. What else?”

“The shirt should be a dark color. Dark blue, maybe? With the collar open. Whatever you do, don’t button that sucker all the way up. Wear a t-shirt underneath, and it’s okay if the t-shirt is visible at the collar. That takes you one notch back toward casual. And no tie.”

See? This was why a guy called his sister. I hopped into the pants using one hand. “And the shirt is tucked in, right?”

“Tuck it in! Absolutely. Unless you really don’t want to get laid.”

I laughed and had to grab the phone to keep it from hitting the floor. “That’s not happening.”

“Are you saying that because you’re talking to your sister? Or because you really believe it?”

“Uh, why? Are you doing a psych rotation at school, or something?” I pulled a clean t-shirt over my head.

“I was only teasing about your record with girls. You know that right? You’re a catch, Andy. As long as you tuck your shirt in.”

“That must be what I’ve been doing wrong.”

My sister laughed. “Your only real problem is confidence.”

I stuffed my feet into a pair of shoes. “Am I wearing a jacket, too? Or just my coat?”

“Your plain black sport jacket. It still fits, right? God, I hope your arms aren’t getting any longer. Because you’re already kind of like an orangutan.”

“And you wonder why I don’t have any confidence,” I mumbled.

“Kidding! But seriously, if the jacket sleeves are too short, then skip it. And you need to shine your shoes.”

“I don’t have time.”

“What? When is this date?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Andrew Isaac Baschnagel! Did you shower and shave?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Hang up and go meet your girl. Crap. I wanted you to send a picture before you left. In case you need tweaking.”

“No time for tweaking. Bye, Delia! Thanks.”

“Bye, orangutan.” Then she clicked off. Delia loved getting the last word.

But never mind. I put on exactly what she’d told me to. I hung up the pants that hadn’t made the cut. Then, shoving my keys and my wallet into a pocket, I ran out the door and down the entryway stairs. Checking my phone, I saw that I had plenty of time. It was a two-minute walk to Katie’s dorm, and I had twice that.

My phone buzzed with a text from Delia. Good luck with the WASPs, string bean.

Holding up my phone and grinning like a dork, I took a selfie and sent it to her.

The clothes look great. But UR hopeless, she replied.

That was probably true. And I’d never admit it to my sister, but she wasn’t totally off base with her remark about my confidence. Some guys just had a kind of swagger that worked for them. My neighbor Bridger? All he had to do was walk into a room, and the girls hurled themselves at him, like moths at a window screen on a summer night.

But what was swagger, really? It came from the belief that hot girls wanted to take you to bed. So, to acquire it, you’d need at least a little evidence that this was true.

Yeah. I didn’t have that. All I had was evidence that a hot girl needed a date for a party. But that was better than nothing, right? And I’d have a couple of hours in the company of the lovely Katie Vickery.

Life could really be worse.

Apparently Delia wasn’t done with me, though. When my phone buzzed again, she’d written: Ask her out on your way home 2nite. Don’t chicken out.

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. But my sister was a smart girl. Okay. If things go well, I’ll do it, I replied.

If U do, I’ll buy you a sundae at Lou’s. If U chicken out, I win a sundae.

That seemed like a perfectly good incentive to do something that I already wanted to do. Deal, I replied.

2

Katie

After much deliberation with myself, I’d straightened my hair until it hung in golden sheets around my shoulders. It was a kick-ass look on me. Straightened hair said: I’m here to shine, and I will go that extra mile. So don’t you dare mess with me.

Actually, it probably only said: I am handy with the straightening iron. But whatevs. Either way, it gave me confidence, and confidence was in short supply this week.

Unstraightened hair, on the other hand, made a different statement. It said: I am an effortless beauty, and you’ll just have to take me as I am. But nothing felt effortless lately. And “effortless” was just a little too close to “careless” for my comfort. And tonight I could not appear careless. So I’d spent an hour on my hair, and now it was straight enough to be featured on somebody’s geometry exam.

I pushed the hair off my bare shoulders and assessed my outfit. “What do you think?” I asked my reflection in the mirror. “Is the neckline too much?”

My reflection didn’t answer. But my suitemate Katie did. “There’s no such thing as too much. You look hot in that dress.”

“Thanks, K2.”

“Any time,” she said, plopping down on my bed and making herself comfortable.

During the first week of school, a smokin’ hot lacrosse player had nicknamed us K1 and K2 because we were both named Katie. “But why does she get to be K1?” the other Katie had asked at the time, employing the flirtiest pout in the world.

“Sweetheart, K2 is an awesome nickname,” the LAX guy said. “Because K2 is a big mountain. And, well…” he broke off on a chuckle, his eyes right on her ample cleavage.

The other Katie had grinned, then hitched up her bra. “I guess I can wear that name with pride.”

“You wear it well,” the guy had said, leaning in to kiss her cheek. About fifteen minutes later, they were lip-locked against a tree in the back yard of the frat house. And I, in my A-cup bra, was totally envious.

And that LAX player wasn’t the only one who thought of us as a pair. Our roommate Scarlet called us Blonde Katie (that’s me) and Ponytail Katie. Others simply referred to us as The Katies. Together, we’d hit the party scene hard these past three months. I’d begun the year with a kind of I-am-freshwoman-hear-me-roar attitude. I loved college, and it loved me back.

I’d thought so, anyway.

But seven nights ago I’d hit a sour note, and his name was Dash McGibb. Even though I was a generally upbeat person, my bad experience with Dash had left me feeling uncertain about everything — my choices, the company I kept.

This dress.

I fiddled with the silky, draping neckline, wondering if I should change. I probably wouldn’t, though. I’d already tried on everything in my closet. Selecting a pink lipstick, I pursed my lips for the mirror.

“I can’t believe you’re going to this party with a basketball player,” K2 scoffed from my bed. “The team record so far this season is one for four.”

The lipstick prevented me from answering her immediately, which was a good thing. It gave me time to reconsider my snarky reply, which would have been to ask Katie how her basketball game was looking this year. (She and I ran three miles exactly once per week. Neither of us was athletic. We only jogged on Sundays as penance for our chocolate chip cookie addiction.)

“Is it?” I asked instead. “Then losing is something that Andy and I will have in common. Because my dating record this year is zero for two.”

She rolled back onto my bed, her skinny knees pointing the ceiling. “Just because both of your boyfriends turned out to be duds is no reason to sell yourself cheaply.”

“Jeez, Katie. I’m not a horse up for auction.” Her words ricocheted inside my brain. Especially one of them. Cheaply. My stomach gave a little lurch at that word. My mother used it a lot. Cheap was not how the Vickery women were supposed to behave. But I hadn’t heeded this guidance, and now I was paying the price.

K2 gave me a wounded look. “It’s just an expression.”

“I know. Sorry.” I tried to change the subject. “Have you seen my Stila eyeshadow?”

“Um, whoops.” She got up and ran off to her own room in our little suite.

The first week of school, I was positive that Katie and I, with our matching names and our matching Prada suitcases, were primed to take over the world. We’d both ruled our high schools. We were also in agreement on exactly which sort of guys we wanted to date — athletes, of course. We were here to party with whoever did it best, and whoever was the best looking.

In contrast, our third roommate, the tight-lipped Scarlet, had seemed a lot less fun. I’m not proud of it, but I’ll admit that I’d kind of written her off by the third week of the semester. But recently I’d learned that she’d had damned good reasons to be cautious and quiet. And tonight I found myself wishing that it was Scarlet who was home with me. The attack of insecurity I faced right now was bigger than a fashion crisis. I needed the support of a friend who knew about life, and not just what to wear for it.

I hadn’t told a soul yet about the crappy little thing that had happened to me last week. And now that I was primping to go to a party where I’d probably end up face-to-face with the jerks who’d embarrassed me, I could have used a pep talk.

K2 came back into my room with my eyeshadow. And when my phone rang, she grabbed it off my dresser to look at the screen. “It’s your mom.”

“Crap.”

“So don’t pick up.” She did another belly flop onto my bed.

“But I’ve been ducking her.” I took the phone from Katie and answered it. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hello, sweetie. Getting ready for your date?”

“I am.” And if you knew that, why would you call me now?

“I’ve been making plans for the holidays. We’re having the Iversons visit for the weekend before New Year’s. And then I thought we could pop into the city to see a play,” my mother said.

“Mmm hmm,” I said. “Sounds fine.” But my attention was still on the full-length mirror I’d installed on the back of our closet door. Specifically, I was trying to decide if the pearl earrings I’d put on made my dress look less slutty. Or had I only managed to convert the look into “slut with pearls”?

“Have fun tonight,” my mother said. “Are you wearing something pretty? The girls of Tri Psi knew how to throw a good party in my day.”

“Thank you, I will have fun,” I said, ignoring the question about my outfit. One had to wonder what my mother’s idea of a good college party had been. Surely alcohol didn’t enter the picture, at least not for the girls. And my mother would never sanction any activity that might rumple a girl’s twin set. Mom was a first-class Good Girl. And in spite of massive evidence to the contrary, she assumed that I was one too.

“Is this boy who’s taking you to the party a gentleman?”

“Of course he is,” I said. And it might even be true. Though gentlemanliness had never been high on my list of important qualifications for a date.

And last week I’d finally paid the price.

“Good,” Mom said.

“Yeah,” I said, distracted.

“Say yes, darling,” my mother corrected. “Yeah sounds cheap.”

“Yes, Mother,” I intoned. “I should go. He’ll be here in a minute.” At least I hoped he would. It would stink to be stood up tonight of all nights. But after all that had gone wrong this week, I probably wouldn’t even be surprised.

I hung up the phone and spun around. “Okay. Last call, here. Are you sure this dress doesn’t look slutty?” My fingers worried the fabric between my breasts.

Gently, Katie swatted my hand away. “First of all, we don’t use the word ‘slutty’ when referring to ourselves. And that dress looks sexy as all hell. In the best possible way. I hope your basketball player brought a hankie to wipe up his own drool.” She got up off the bed and turned me around by the shoulders, so that I was facing the mirror again. “The dress is navy blue, K1. It’s an anti-slut color. And the contrast with your hair is just awesome. Use your eyes, babe.”

“Thanks,” I whispered, trying to see things her way. The dress I’d chosen was cut in a halter style. Until tonight, I hadn’t ever stopped to wonder why we were dressing up for this weeknight party, where charity work was supposed to happen, too. But sorority girls, I’d discovered, were always looking for an excuse to get dolled up.

Yet when guys were around (which was always) we were supposed to be grateful if they’d worn khakis instead of sweats, and a button-down instead of a faded Harkness t-shirt. In fact, if they wore their baseball caps frontwards instead of backwards, that was dressy.

Double standard, much?

I dabbed the eyeshadow applicator into the silver shadow and skimmed it across one eyelid and then the other.

Once more I squinted critically at the girl in the mirror. The dress showed a lot of shoulder. But it wasn’t too short, which was important. I needed to be able to bend over tonight without giving anyone a show. And the halter top had just enough coverage that I wouldn’t expose my cleavage if I leaned forward.

“You look great. Now go,” Katie prompted, swatting me on the rear. She gave me a smile in the mirror and slipped out of my room.

I slipped my feet into my most authoritative shoes — black suede Prada pumps with a three-inch heel. Then I took one last look in the mirror. Katie had been right. This dress was perfect. It was sexy without showing off. And my hair looked fabulous, and the jewelry was subtle.

Fine. I looked fine. Not slutty. I stood there a little longer, willing myself to believe it.

Usually I didn’t think so hard about these things. I liked to look sexy. And, to be perfectly blunt, I liked sex. A lot. I’d never been afraid to admit that to myself. Not until last week, anyway.

For the most part, coming to Harkness — and getting out from under my conservative parents’ roof — had been liberating in all the best ways. In high school, sex had to be sneaky. It’s hard to get your freak on when you’re listening for footsteps outside your bedroom door. Or — God forbid — in the backseat of your boyfriend’s little BMW convertible.

At Harkness, sexy times weren’t so fraught. And although I’d had to train my roommate Scarlet to watch out for the bandanna on the doorknob of our room, the logistics were a lot easier.

For the first two months of the semester, I’d had a blast. In September, I’d dated a freshman tight end. He had an eight-pack like you read about and gorgeous, muscular thighs. But he wasn’t much of a conversationalist, so I’d had to let him go. Then there was Dash, who I should probably start calling The Fullback Who Shall Not be Named. He was another freshman with lickable abs. But I broke up with him in November, because he wasn’t very nice to me when we had our clothes on.

I’d meant to take a break from football players after that. After all, it was hockey season now. And in the spring there would be lean, muscular lacrosse players to cheer for and party with.

But then a week ago I’d run into Dash again. And I’d done something so incredibly stupid that the humiliation was going to follow me to my grave. A few stupid hours had turned me into someone who second-guessed her wardrobe, her makeup, her life choices…

My phone buzzed with a text. Evening! I’m downstairs in your courtyard. Andy B.

Be right down, I replied. It was sort of cute that he’d added his last initial, as if I might have forgotten who I’d invited to this little party. Andy Baschnagel was a basketball player. I didn’t, as a rule, do basketball players. The sport just wasn’t sexy to me. Those long baggy shorts and even longer arms? Eh. Maybe if I went to Duke or Michigan, I’d understand the appeal.

Anyway, I hadn’t invited Andy B. to this party because he was a basketball player. I’d done it because he wasn’t an asshole (I hoped). And because I’d pledged Tri Psi and could not show up at one of their events without a date. And for extra points, he had to be A) an athlete and B) an upperclassman. With Andy, I could check both of those boxes.

No matter that I was suddenly having trouble remembering why I cared about checking those boxes. It was too late to wonder about that now. I had a party to survive, and a guy waiting downstairs. It wasn’t his fault that I would rather hide under the bed than face the people at this party. And I’d absorbed at least some of the ladylike manners my very proper mother had taught me.

It was time to march down there and make the best of it.

When I reached the courtyard, Andy was standing there texting someone, a smile on his face.

He looked friendly enough. And he was pretty cute for a skinny guy. But still, all that attention to his phone was not an auspicious sign. I was sick of guys who spent the whole evening texting their buddies, calculating everyone’s odds of getting some action later.

“Hi,” I said carefully. He still hadn’t noticed me.

His head jerked up, his face guilty. “Sorry. Hi.” He offered me his hand to shake. “I’m Andy.”

For a second, I didn’t step forward. I mean… what guy under forty shakes hands like that? Recovering myself, I took his hand, which was warm even on this cold night. “Hi. I’m Katie.”

“I know,” he smiled. Then he shoved his phone into his pocket even though it chimed with an incoming text.

“Don’t you have to get that?” I asked. It was a little bitchy of me, honestly. But I needed to know what I was going to be dealing with.

“Nah,” he said. “She can stuff it.”

“Who can?” I couldn’t help but ask, even as his phone rang in his pocket.

He grinned. “My sister. Sorry. Let me get rid of her.” He jerked the phone out and swiped to answer. “Delia. Go dissect a cadaver or something. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” There was a pause. “I love you too, even though you’re bossy like Hitler. G’night.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “I think you got the last word.”

“It’s only a temporary victory. She always wins eventually. But that’s okay, because she’s already doing me a big favor.”

“What kind of favor?” Together we walked out of the Fresh Court gate, heading down College Street, toward Fraternity Row. I kept our pace slow, and it wasn’t even because of my three-inch heels. I was dreading this party.

“Well, Delia is going to med school. Every Jewish family needs a doctor, see. And now the pressure is off me.”

I laughed again. That was, like, twice in two minutes. “Really? Are your parents doctors?”

“Nope. Dad is an accountant, Mom is a librarian. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a cultural thing. The deli by our house even has a platter on their catering menu called the ‘My Son is a Doctor’ plate.”

“But they won’t be ordering it for you?”

“No. I might go to law school, though. That’s second best.”

“Interesting. My mom doesn’t care what I do, just as long as I look pretty doing it.” I shouldn’t have said that. It was really too much sharing for the first ten minutes of a blind date.

“Well…” he cleared his throat. “At least one of us is a shoo-in for meeting the parental expectations.”

My face burned a little then, because I’d made it sound like I was fishing for compliments. “That’s nice of you,” I said quietly. “Do you have just the one sister?”

“Nope” he said cheerfully, giving me another smile. When Andy smiled, his angular face softened up, taking him from ordinary to pretty damned attractive in one leap. It was kind of spellbinding, really. “I have another sister, too. Spent my whole life getting henpecked and waiting for the bathroom. I thought I came to Harkness to get away from them. But then I couldn’t figure out why my freshman bathroom was so gross and smelly all the time.”

“See, girls aren’t so bad,” I said.

“True dat.”

We were within a hundred yards of the Tri Psi house now, and I had slowed our pace practically to a crawl.

“Do your feet hurt?” Andy asked, looking down.

That made me smile, because it was so obvious that Andy did have sisters. “My feet are fine. I’m just having second thoughts about tonight, that’s all.” I stopped walking altogether.

Andy stopped too, folding his arms. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. (Even though “yeah” sounded cheap. Sorry, Mom.)

He stood very still, studying me. “Look,” he said, tugging on an ear. “Is it me? I mean, if you changed your mind…”

“What?” Oh, hell. I reached out to put a hand on his arm, giving it a squeeze. “Jeez, no. You are not the problem. This is all on me.”

But he was still frowning, and his brown eyes were filled with concern. “Then what’s the matter?”

“Well…” my eyes drifted toward the big white house on the corner. I’d always had fun there. But tonight I didn’t want to set foot in the place. “I’m pledging the sorority. And we just spent a whole lot of hours setting up a holiday toy drive. The party for the kids is tomorrow. And tonight we’re supposed to wrap the gifts, which should be fun, right?”

“Sure?”

“But the Beta Rho guys are setting up our tree on the sun porch. And I really don’t feel like seeing them tonight, that’s all.”

“Is one of them your ex, or something?”

I let out a big old sigh. “Yes. But also his friends… There are several guys that I don’t want to see.”

Andy looked toward the house, and then down at me. “Do you mind if I ask why? I mean… are they scaring you?”

I shook my head. “It’s not like that. It’s just…” The moment stretched out, because there was no way I could actually tell him why. It was deeply embarrassing to me, and if he knew what I’d done, he’d stop looking at me the way he was looking at me now. His eyes were soft, and he’d given me his complete attention. He looked at me as if I were important. And I didn’t want to see how that expression would change if he heard the stupid thing that I’d done.

But he was waiting for an answer. And I owed him one, because I was the idiot who had us standing out here in the cold.

“Okay,” I tried. “My mother has a saying that you shouldn’t do anything you don’t want reported on the front page of the New York Times. And I’ve never been very good at following that rule, although I wish I were. Because my ex and his pals weren’t very nice about… a recent embarrassing episode.”

Again, Andy’s brown eyes darted over to the sorority house and then back. But his frown lost some of its depth. With what I’d just told him, he would probably assume that I’d gotten drunk and puked all over the place, or something. “Well, okay. Going in or not is your call. We could always just go for ice cream at Scoops instead. I saw on Facebook that they made a new batch of salted caramel today. That’s my favorite flavor.”

I reached across to give his arm another squeeze. “I like your style, Andy. And it’s tempting. But then they win, right?”

Andy shrugged. “You could look at it that way. Or you could just say that life is too short to spend even ten minutes with assholes.”

Aw. This guy! I liked him already. “You are a very smart man. But I spent a lot of time on this charity thing, and if I don’t see it to completion, I’m going to feel bad about that, too. So tonight I’m going to put on my big girl panties and give it a shot.”

“Fine.” His face lit up then with another winning smile. “But if you change your mind, what’s the word? Give me a code so I’ll know when to help you bail out.”

“How about ‘scoop’? As in ice cream.”

“Deal. If you say ‘what’s the scoop?’ we’re outie.” Then he held out his arm in that formal way, as if escorting a lady to dinner inside the pages of a Jane Austen novel. That was even weirder than shaking my hand. But so what? I took his arm, and in we went.

3

Andy

Together, we climbed a set of wide steps, passing a perfect row of rocking chairs on the porch. Until tonight, I’d never been inside of a sorority house. To me, they were mythical places, where the toilet seat was always down and the air smelled of flowers instead of feet. I opened the door, then stood aside for Katie.

And then we were inside, and the place did not disappoint. Like so many of the buildings at Harkness, Tri Psi had been built about a hundred years ago. The big front room had high, beamed ceilings. On one wall rose an oversized stone fireplace, where orange flames licked the air behind an iron metal grate.

All around the room, shiny-haired girls buzzed like bees. It was just the sort of estrogen-fueled chaos that reminded me a lot of my sisters.

Katie tagged one of the girls on the elbow as she flitted by. “Amy?”

She turned to look over her shoulder, smiling at us. “Hey! You look gorgeous. And have I met your date?”

I was introduced to Amy, who seemed to be in charge. She rattled off a bunch of instructions to Katie at warp speed — there were tables to set up and rolls of paper to find and toys to wrap. Katie nodded along at this barrage of details. But when Amy moved on, Katie turned to me with a smile. “First things first.” She sidled up to a table bearing a metal tub full of ice, with dozens of bottles of beer nested inside. This was obviously not a keg-and-red-plastic-cup affair.

“Thanks,” I said when she handed me a cold beer. “What’s next? You can put me to work.” Honestly, I was thrilled that this party had a mission other than small talk or — God forbid — dancing.

In high school, I was the scrawny nerd who never got invited to parties. Even though I’d grown into my long legs and stopped getting shoved into lockers years ago, I had never mastered small talk. And we won’t even talk about what kind of a dancer I was. Because that way lies the abyss.

College had been much more fun for me than high school. Except for my nonexistent love life, I was happy at Harkness. Although our basketball team kind of sucked, my teammates were happy to have me. And on a basketball court I always knew what to do. I knew to always be ready to catch the pass. To find an opening and go for it.

But at a party? It was like I’d never received the playbook that everyone else got at birth. A party with Katie Vickery was double trouble, because her hotness made me into more of a bumbler than usual. A job was just what I needed.

Katie shifted her weight from one long leg to the other. “Well… most of the guys will be in that room,” she tilted her head toward an arched doorway at the side. “They’re putting up the tree. But if you wanted to stay here with me, you could help with the wrapping.”

For a second I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to be underfoot. But there was something hesitant in in Katie’s expression. As if perhaps she could use a little backup. “I’d just as soon help you, if that’s okay,” I said.

I knew I’d made the right choice, because the most beautiful smile lit her face. “Awesome. Then will you help me set up a folding table? Last time, mine fell down on one end, like a wounded camel. And all the Halloween pumpkins went rolling off.”

Well, okay then.

There was a stack of collapsed folding tables leaning against one wall. I grabbed one and let Katie show me where to set it up, which took about sixty seconds. Then I drank my beer while she went running off for wrapping paper and tape. The beehive was in full swing around me. There were girls on the old wooden staircase, wrapping strands of Christmas lights around the banister, and girls toting boxes of Christmas cookies through the front door.

Katie returned with three enormous rolls of wrapping paper. “I’ll just grab the first stack of gifts,” she said.

“Are you sure I can’t help with that?” I asked.

She waved me off. “It’s mayhem back there. I’ll be right back.” True to her word, she soon reappeared with a stack of boxes. They were rainbow looms — those things that little kids used to make bracelets out of rubber bands.

Measuring the boxes, I began cutting pieces of Santa Claus paper to size. Functioning as an assembly line, Katie and I became a wrapping machine. I cut. She folded and taped. Working side by side made it easy for me to admire Katie. As she moved, her silky hair fell over her shoulder like a curtain. It made me want to sift my fingers through it, to see if it was as soft as it looked. And the way her dress skimmed her hips was making me a little bit crazy. In a perfect world, I would have loved to fit my hands around her waist.

Down, boy. I lowered my head and cut another rectangle of wrapping paper instead.

When every box was wrapped, Katie disappeared for a minute into a closet, returning with a towering stack of… basketballs! Some of them were ordinary basketballs, and pretty good quality. Others were meant for little kids, with cartoon pictures drawn all over them.

“Now we’re talking,” I said. “Those are some lucky kids if they’re getting these.”

“Glad you think so,” she said. “But they’re not going to be easy to wrap.”

I saw what she meant. The balls were in half-boxes, which meant that one side would cave in a bit when we taped it. “It will work,” I told her. “This is just karmic payback for all those years my mother had to figure out how to wrap basketballs for me in blue and white Hanukkah paper.”

Katie gave me a killer smile. Then she unrolled a long span of wrapping paper, this one in plain green. Then she grabbed a ball — there were bears on this one — and set its oddly shaped carton onto the paper.

“Hold up…” I gave her the hand signal for time-out. “We can’t wrap the kiddie balls in that plain paper, unless you’re putting name tags on each of these. The paper should signal what’s inside, right? A guy who chooses the green wrap can’t end up with Disney characters on his basketball. He’s going to get his ass kicked.”

Katie’s hands stilled. Then she and Amy, who was wrapping stacks of teddy bears nearby, both began to laugh. “Omigod, so true!” Katie said. She swapped the ball for a plain one. “The bigger question is, did I screw this up? Should I have not bought the decorated ones at all?”

I shook my head. “Those are good for little kids, because the bigger kids won’t steal them. No cool dude is going to bring a ball with pandas on it to his pickup game.”

“These are all good points,” Amy remarked. “And now I’m thinking that we should put age ranges on everything. We could write, ‘a sporty gift for up to age six.’ Would that work?” She raised her eyes to me.

“Well, sure.”

While Katie’s sorority sister ran off to find some paper to make the tags, Katie touched the cuff of my shirt. “You are really good at this. Thank you for helping.”

I shrugged. “I had lots of experience getting my ass kicked. I know all the scenarios.”

Giggling, she touched a warm hand to my back for a second as she reached for the tape. Every time she put one of those slim hands on me, I felt it everywhere. And she smelled incredible. Like strawberries. I don’t know what it was — a lotion? A fruity shampoo? Whatever it was, it was making me crazy.

“I really wasn’t sure what to buy for the boys,” she said, leaning over the next gift. “I hope these have a shot at making someone happy. There were trendier toys at the store, like action figures. But I went with sturdier things, and I hope it was the right call. These kids don’t get to make a list and choose.”

I cut the next piece of wrapping paper, thinking about that. “Even when you get to choose, gift-giving is never perfect, right? I asked for a lot of stuff as a kid only to find out it wasn’t as good as it looked on TV.”

“Ha! That is so true. My EZ Chef Oven never baked the cakes all the way through. I just hope that something here makes somebody’s day, you know?”

“It has to,” I told her. “There’s something a little magical about getting a wrapped gift, especially if it’s unexpected. The experience is bigger than the thing that’s inside.”

She didn’t answer for a second, and I didn’t quite know why. But then she spoke, and her voice was quiet. “You’re a smart guy, Andy B.,” she said, catching another piece of tape on her slender forefinger. “And we’ve been here an hour, and so far I haven’t had to use the secret code word.”

Her eyes flicked toward the arched doorway then. The sound of male voices had been coming from that room for a while now. She didn’t look happy about it.

“That offer still stands, though,” I whispered.

“And I do appreciate it,” she breathed.

Eventually, we got everything wrapped except for one basketball — a pink one, with ducks on it. This last ball had a torn box around it and a black ink mark on its surface. “What do we do about this one?” I asked. “Ditch the box? Tape it up?”

Katie regarded it with a frown. “This one they gave me at the store, because it’s damaged and because all our purchases were for charity. But I don’t think I want any kid to get a damaged gift. That’s just not right.”

“Without it, do you have enough toys?”

“We do.”

“Fair enough.” I tore the ball from its box and tossed the cardboard onto our recycling pile. Then I spun it on my fingertip. Holding a basketball — even a pink one with ducks — always made my head feel clearer.

The Christmas tree setup next door must have been almost finished, because the sound of male laughter grew louder, and guys began to wander in, beers in hand. Their new role seemed to be smirking and drinking. Katie kept her eyes glued to the gift-wrapped packages which she was busy tagging. But I noticed that her body drifted a few inches closer to me.

And I didn’t mind one bit. I was flattered, honestly. If my job tonight was to provide some kind of cover, I could do that.

Now, nice guys usually got friend-zoned. That wasn’t only true in movies. I was living proof. And there were days when that got depressing. But tonight I was just where I wanted to be. I didn’t mind being needed by this fabulous creature. Because, what a view! And these girls had good taste in beer.

Really, things could be worse.

With her laser focus, Katie leaned over another gift tag, that silky hair cascading off her shoulder and into her work, where I saw the ends begin to adhere to the tape in its dispenser. “Hang on,” I said, hooking the pale strands with my thumb. “You don’t want to tape yourself to that present.” Gently, I released her hair from the adhesive. And then there was nothing left to do but sweep the whole bunch of her hair back and over her shoulder, where I smoothed it down where it belonged.

Her eyes locked on mine. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“No problem,” I said, but my voice was thick. Because touching her had made my brain take a day trip to Atlantic City.

I gathered up a stack of wrapping paper scraps and went looking for the recycling bin.

4

Katie

So far, so good.

The gift wrapping had gone even faster than I’d hoped. And Andy was good company. I didn’t feel like I had to be on script with him. There was a social dance I’d learned at my mother’s heel. “Ask his opinion,” Mom had taught me. “A man wants someone to validate his worldview.”

Even at frat parties, between games of beer pong and funnels, I’d stuck to a version of the script. Flirt and dodge. Toss the hair. I knew how to listen in a way which expressed interest without giving too much away.

It was exhausting, really. And tonight, I didn’t have it in me. But it seemed not to matter. Andy’s quiet companionship didn’t demand anything of me. That was all for the best, because I was too freaked out by the sounds of laughter bleeding in our direction.

Some of that laughter was almost certainly directed at me.

Since the gifts were wrapped and tagged now, the next step was stacking them beside the Christmas tree in preparation for the kids’ party tomorrow. But I didn’t do my share, because I was putting off going into the next room. Instead, I grabbed another beer for Andy, and then planted myself right next to him. I looked up into his big brown eyes and just let him ground me. “Are you ready for the exam in European Paintings?” I asked. The test was in three days.

“Not yet,” he said. “I think the baroque art is going to be the hardest to memorize,” he said. “All those dark canvases. They’re blending together on me.”

“True,” I agreed. “I’m so far behind, too. I didn’t make it to the last two lectures, when he reviewed the final list of artworks. I’m probably going to memorize the wrong ones.”

Andy shrugged. “I copied down the entire list in my notebook. I’ll make you a copy if you want.”

My heart gave a little bounce. “Could you?” This guy was going to save me twice this week — once from being dateless, and once from being clueless.

“No problem.”

Across the room, one of the brothers stood on a chair, banging a spoon against a beer bottle. It was a beefy guy that they called Whittaker up there, looking for attention. “Ladies and not-so-gentlemen!” There was laughter all around me, but I did not laugh. Neither did Andy, actually. Even as the chuckles died down, I glanced upward, over my shoulder. He met my gaze with the world’s most discreet eye roll.

“…The girls of Tri Psi ought to know that this year’s tree was a three case effort. That’s right. It took seventy-two beers to cut this sucker down and stand it back up on your porch.”

There was another smattering of laughter, but I still wasn’t feeling the love. Nothing was as light and funny as it would have been a week ago. To my new, jaded eyes, the peculiar mating ritual where a bunch of big strong boys put up a tree for the sorority princesses just hit me wrong. I mean, why couldn’t we put up our own freaking tree? How hard could it be? And what were we supposed to owe these bros in exchange for their labor?

Gah. I was thinking too hard again.

“…So come on in, ladies, and let us light her up for you.” He hopped off the chair and lumbered into the porch room. The sisters began to follow him.

But I did not. Because I hadn’t seen Dash yet tonight, though I was sure I’d heard his rasping chuckle more than once. Rationally, I knew that I was going to have to face him down at some point. I had seven semesters left at Harkness. And pledging this sorority meant that I’d encounter him frequently. I needed to just get past it.

Yet something stuck my Prada heels to the floorboards. I just couldn’t make myself go in there. And a full-body shiver started in my shoulders and worked its way down.

A warm hand landed lightly on my back. “Katie, are you okay?”

Yes?

No.

God.

I spun around and looked up (way up — he must be 6’-4”) into his chocolate eyes. “I think I’d like to go outside for a minute.”

He blinked once. Then, without a word, he turned toward the front door.

Like a fool, I’d run out onto the porch without my coat. So immediately I broke out in goosebumps. But the cold air felt good in my lungs. I needed to calm down. Like right now.

“Should I get your coat?” Andy asked. “Do you want to go?”

I shook my head. As stupid as I probably looked right now, I wasn’t quite ready to bail. Jeez. If I let myself get this freaked out about seeing all those jerks from Beta Rho, what a long year it was going to be. “Crap,” I swore. Get it together, girl.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” As Andy said that, he draped his sport coat over my bare shoulders.

“Thanks,” I stammered. “I’m not usually such a drama queen.”

His eyebrows arched. “Well, maybe you have a good reason.”

There was curiosity in his eyes. But it wasn’t judgmental. “I don’t like the way they look at me,” I blurted, before I could think better of it.

“Why?”

Right. The reason was much too embarrassing for polite conversation. So instead of answering, I just looked down at my shoes.

“Let’s just go, then?” he suggested. “You look a little… traumatized, actually.”

That’s when I let out a big sigh. Because there were people in the world who had good reason to feel traumatized. But I wasn’t one of them. I hadn’t been raped, or injured, or abused in any way. I’d just been stupid. Very, very stupid. “Ugh,” I said. “If I leave, I’m giving him too much power.”

“Maybe not,” Andy challenged. “What did he do?” After asking, Andy immediately clapped a hand over his own mouth. “Sorry. It’s none of my business. But you have me imagining the worst, here.”

Ouch. Now a nice guy was worried about me, and I didn’t even deserve it. “That’s the stupid thing! Everything that went down…” Gah! I cringed at my unfortunate choice of words, “…between Dash and me was voluntary. I wasn’t even drunk. Not very, anyway.”

This explanation did not seem to appease Andy. When I looked up, his face was still full of concern. I hadn’t meant to talk about this tonight, or maybe ever. And certainly not with him. And now he’d know that he was on a date with someone who was crazypants.

I took one more deep breath of cold air, which helped. A little. “Okay, I broke up with him because he didn’t seem all that interested in me as a person. All he wanted to do was play video games with the brothers, but I was supposed to just hang around and watch until bedtime. Like a good little woman.”

“Charming.”

“I know, right? In my defense, I realized pretty quickly that he wasn’t worth the effort, and I told him we were through.” What I might have added was the fact that Dash didn’t seem very broken up about losing me. And that should have been a big clue. But I’d missed it.

The story should have ended there. Because my instinct about him had been dead on. But it didn’t end there. And that’s why I’d been hearing a chant playing inside my head all week. And the mantra was: Stupid… stupid… stupid…

Andy was watching me with patient eyes, waiting for an explanation. It was silent there on the porch. And somehow I kept talking. “So, last week I went over to the Beta Rho house for a few minutes, just to drop off a bin of Christmas decorations for tonight. It was quiet there that night — the usual video games but no party.” I’d been telling this part of the story to my shoes, but now I looked up to find Andy watching me. God, this was going to be embarrassing. “That night, for the first time, he made a big effort to talk to me. You know, the full court press.”

Andy smiled at my basketball reference, but he didn’t say a word.

“He got me a glass of wine and asked me a lot of questions about my classes, and pledging Tri Psi, and…” I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. I just sort of fell under the spell. He was so sweet and patient, telling me how much he missed me…”

“So far, so good.” Andy pressed. “What went wrong?”

Yikes. I hadn’t told a soul about this, not even my roommates. And tomorrow, I would probably regret telling Andy. I really didn’t need even more people to know this story. But I was angry. And I wanted someone to know what pigs they were.

“Okay, he played me like a hand of poker,” I sighed. “After my second glass of wine on an empty stomach, and two hours of heavy flattery, he wanted me to come upstairs with him. Fool that I am, I went.” I looked down at the porch floorboards again. “He took me into one of the brothers’ rooms. And we…” I cleared my throat. “We fooled around a little bit.”

Andy dropped his voice. “But you didn’t want to?”

He was about to get the wrong idea. “That’s not it. See, I didn’t mind at the time. I didn’t start feeling bad about it until two days later. But that night I heard some voices in the hall. I heard a couple of the brothers laughing. But the door was shut, and I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Oh, shit,” Andy whispered.

I looked up quickly, catching a wince on his face. “What?”

He closed his eyes for a long moment. And when he opened them, he said, “please tell me that this was not a hole-in-the-door situation.”

My stomach dropped. Was I the only one on the planet who didn’t know any better than to fall for Beta Rho’s pledge ritual? Slowly, I nodded.

Andy’s face sagged. “I’d always just assumed that was a myth.”

“Apparently, it’s not.” I tried to say this with nonchalance. But I don’t think I pulled it off. Because my eyes began to sting. And that was no good, because, you know, mascara. Carefully I pressed my fingertips against my tear ducts. “I wouldn’t have even known, except that I overheard a couple of them talking about it. I was studying at one of those carrels in the stacks. Have you been up there?”

Andy nodded. There were twelve floors of books, and each floor had a row of old oak study desks with little walls attached. When you really needed to study — as opposed to picking somewhere with good people-watching — the stacks were the place to go.

“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 two 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 already 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.

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 then. 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.

“I’m winning this thing,” she said.

“You’re tying this thing. The score is 1–1, smack-talker.”

With a fiery look at me — one which I felt in some very inappropriate places — she marched off again.

6

Katie

The room was more crowded tonight than I’d anticipated. Everyone was taking this last opportunity to have a beer with friends before we all hunkered down for exams. As I waded back into the thick of things, I was halted by the sight of a girl’s limbs wrapped around Dash.

That was fast.

Peeking through the boughs of the Christmas tree, I snuck a closer look. When the girl shifted her face from one side of him to the other, I recognized her. Debbie Dunn. She wore an unhealthy amount of eye makeup. And was staring up into Dash’s face, and practically rubbing her boobs on his oxford shirt.

My first thought was: Ew. My second was: Have I ever done that? And did it cause someone else to say ‘ew’? My third thought was: Do I care? Am I actually slut-shaming Debbie Dunn because she’s wearing gloppy mascara?

My fourth thought was: When did I start over-thinking absolutely everything? And how can I stop?

Abruptly, I moved around the Christmas tree, looking for someone else to talk animals with. Andy had been right about one thing. It was hard to second-guess yourself to death when you were trying to come up with a reason for your neighborhood frat boy to say hedgehog. Or platypus.

For now, I steered a wide path around Dash. Later, maybe I would try to get him to say octopus. Because that’s what Debbie reminded me of.

Gah! Catty, much? There I went again, worrying about the wrong things. Because, hell, the girl was actually doing me a favor. If Dash was busy allowing Debbie to slither up his body like a sea creature, he couldn’t exactly make any crude comments about me (or my recent performance) to his pals.

I should thank her. I should buy her flowers. (Because Dash never would. That was for damned sure. He wasn’t a fan of “romantic shit,” he’d said once.)

And anyway, a few yards from where I stood, Andy was busy talking to Dash’s pledge mate, the one they called Ralph. “You’re from Chicago?” I heard Andy say. “How do you like your football team this year?”

Crap!

“The Bears look pretty good going into the playoffs,” Ralph said.

Andy’s eyes flicked over to me, and I saw a corner of his mouth turn up in satisfaction. Then, after he and Ralph exchanged a few more words, Andy actually moonwalked backwards a few paces, as if in victory. Now, someone as tall as he was really couldn’t moonwalk without making a spectacle of himself. And I saw a few eyebrows lift in his direction. But Andy seemed not to care, and that made me smile.

Once upon a time, I’d felt that way, too. In high school, I’d found it easy to be the silly one. I had a lot of good friends, and a solid standing in the social group of my choice. And were I to have moonwalked (not that I’d ever wanted to) through a party, nobody would have cared.

Somehow I’d taken a wrong turn these past few months. I cared too much about the opinions of people who cared too little about me. That was something I was definitely going to mull over later. But right now, I had work to do. Because Andy was a point ahead of me in our weird little game.

And there was never going to be a better time to face the music. So I marched up to stand among the group of fraternity boys which included Dash, and also Whittaker.

“Evening, Katie,” Whittaker said. A little smile played on his lips, making me almost certain that he’d been in on Dash’s stupid little prank.

Just breathe.

“Evening, Whittaker,” I said. “Are you ready for the art history exam?” He was one of Dash’s football cronies in that class. I used to sit beside them every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I’d felt smug about that, too. As if one seat in that lecture hall was better than another one. It seemed quite ridiculous now. Some other stupid girl could have that seat. Debbie, or a whole team of Debbies. I was done with it.

“Still have to memorize all those paintings,” Whittaker said.

“Yeah,” Andy put in. He slid in behind me and put a hand on my bare shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’m taking that course, too. And some of those paintings are a little gruesome. You know, those Renaissance scenes? Especially that one from right after the hunt?”

Crap again! I knew where Andy was going with this. The hunt painting had a very dead wild boar in the foreground. But no way was he going to win this thing by getting Whittaker to say “boar.” It had to be pig. No substitutions. I leaned my shoulders back against him as a silent message. Don’t think this will work for you, pal.

He gave my shoulder another squeeze, as if to say: don’t you wish you’d thought of this?

Whittaker scratched his head. “I don’t think I know that one yet.”

“Bummer,” Andy said. “Add that one to your study list, then.” I tipped my head back on his shoulder so I could see his face. He winked at me, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from giggling.

When I faced forward again, I found Dash watching us, and Whittaker, too. Maybe they were wondering why Andy and I kept giving each other significant glances. Or maybe they were remembering exactly how ridiculous I looked during what was supposed to be a private moment. God, I hoped it was the first thing, and not the second thing. Weirdly enough, though, I didn’t care quite so much as much as I had about an hour ago.

So that’s something.

“Anybody have any good plans for winter vacation?” Andy asked.

“Sailing in Fiji,” Dash bragged. God, he was such a tool. I can’t believe I ever thought he was a catch.

“Doing some skiing,” Whittaker said.

“Yeah?” Andy perked up. “What’s your favorite mountain?”

“We’re heading to Utah,” Whittaker answered. “Gonna hit Alta and Snowbird.”

“I love Snowbird,” Andy agreed, giving my shoulder yet another squeeze.

He would. Because now I was down by two points. The party would breaking up soon, too. My chance for victory would soon be over. I looked around the room, wondering how we were going to fit fifty kids in here tomorrow. “I’m glad it’s not my job to set this place up in the morning. It’s going to be mayhem, right?” There was another committee for that. (Sororities loved committees.) I wasn’t due to help out until the party started at eleven.

Dash shrugged. “I don’t think I’m going to make it over here. You girls seem to have it covered. Amy had a checklist, and shit.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and not because of Dash’s dismissal of a party for fifty indigent children. But because I had my Hail Mary idea. “It must be really hard to plan parties,” I said in a wistful tone. “I mean… where is Amy going to find all the tables and chairs that we need? Does anyone, like, deliver those things?”

I felt Andy stop breathing. Because he saw where I was going with this.

Dash gave another indifferent shrug. “She probably just called a party rental company.”

“Huh,” I said slowly. “Like that one with those trucks I see around campus sometimes? Those bright ones with…” Take the bait, I prayed. This is for all the marbles.

“Yeah,” he drained his beer. “With the pink pigs on ‘em.”

Andy’s hand closed firmly around my elbow, as if to say, I can’t believe you pulled that off. And I gave him a subtle bump with my hip. Take that, tall guy. I felt rather than saw the smile that he ducked his head to conceal. When he let out a nearly silent chuff of laughter, his nose grazed my hair, and his breath at the back of my neck gave me goose bumps. In a good way.

And through it all, Dash just stood there in front of me, looking half bored and half uncomfortable, worrying the label on his beer bottle. And then Debbie slithered up to him again, plastering herself against his side. She shot me an ornery look.

“Welp!” I said, turning toward Andy. “I think I’m done here. After I duck into the ladies’ room, do you mind if we head out?”

“Not at all,” he said, spinning the pink basketball on one finger.

“Back in a jiff,” I promised. I crossed the room, which was already beginning to thin out. It was still early, but exam week wasn’t the best time to party, even for this crew. And tomorrow the sorority was hosting fifty kids. A hangover would not be welcome in the morning.

I crossed through the parlor to the big old bathroom. Like so many buildings at Harkness, it was a blend of old-world grandeur (the marble tiles) and awkward 1970s renovations (the creaky metal doors on the toilets).

After I took care of business, I emerged from the stall to find Debbie in front of the single tiny mirror, refreshing her lipstick. Washing my hands, I began to feel philosophical. “That spot where you’re standing,” I said to Debbie, “is where we usually have elbow-jousting matches. Primping is practically a blood sport around here.”

“If I had your face, I wouldn’t bother primping,” Debbie said in a low voice.

I stared down at the paper towel in my hands. On the one hand, I really didn’t understand why she’d say that. But we girls put ourselves down often enough, even if we don’t usually do it for people who aren’t already our friends. I didn’t know what to say.

But while I struggled to figure it out, Debbie spoke again. “I don’t know why he broke up with you, either. If you lasted a month, I’ll probably last a week.”

“Whoa. Hey now,” I said, hands on my hips. “Don’t you dare give him all that power. Maybe he doesn’t get to decide.”

She gave me a sullen glance. “Of course he does. They already have the power.”

“Debbie.”

She turned to me, her eyes dark.

“He isn’t worth it, okay? Go out with him if you want. Or not. But treat yourself right. Because he’s not going to look out for you.”

She gave me a little eye roll. “Everybody gets dumped, Katie. Even you.”

“But I didn’t. I broke up with him.”

“Sure you did,” she said immediately. Her words had dismissed me, but her eyes were interested.

“I did. And then he decided to teach me a little lesson.”

“How?” she whispered, unable to hide her curiosity.

“I was stupid. I fooled around with him one more time…” God, I didn’t want to say this next part out loud. But she deserved to know what she was getting herself into. “Without my knowledge, he let some people watch.”

Her eyebrows shot straight up, disappearing into her bangs. “Like, through a hole in the door?”

Kill me now. I really was the only naive idiot left on this campus, wasn’t I? Slowly, I nodded.

“That is so wrong,” she hissed.

“You think?”

She stuffed makeup products back into her clutch purse. “You know, fuck it. I’m just going to sneak out and go home. He’s been giving me a not-so-nice vibe all night. And that is just too much.” She jammed the bag under her arm. “Good night.”

Without another word, she stormed out of the bathroom.

Then it was just me alone with the little mirror. And I felt an instinctual pull to go over to it and check my makeup. Because you never know when your eyeliner has smeared…

No, I coached myself. Andy’s waiting. And he doesn’t care about your stupid makeup.

I pushed open the bathroom door and went to find him.

7

Andy

When Katie departed for the bathroom, it left me standing there with Dash and his thick-necked pals. I’d had enough to drink. So instead of reaching for another beer, I began to noodle around with the outrageous pink basketball I’d been carrying around. I rolled it up the back of my hand and along my arm. Then I dribbled it a couple of times on the old wooden floor beneath me.

“Nice ball you’ve got there,” Dash muttered. “Is your team switching teams this season?”

A gay joke from a frat guy? Shocker. “You know, it’s not nice to make fun of a guy’s balls,” I quipped. Nothing he could say right now could ruin my mood. I still wouldn’t have minded landing a punch right in the middle of his smirk. But I wasn’t going to do it. Because fighting Dash and his crew was a pretty bad idea, one which would surely mess up the plan I had to walk Katie home and ask her out.

Eyes on the prize, and all.

Ignoring Dash, I toyed with the ball, spinning it on my finger and dribbling through my legs. This always relaxed me. Whenever I was stressed out about something, I took the ball in my hands and began to calm down.

Still, I could feel him watching me. Maybe he thought I was showing off, but it wasn’t really like that. If I wanted to show off, I’d do these tricks twice as fast. I was just taking things nice and easy, letting the ball slide off my palms, feeling the satisfying bounce of rubber against wood and then skin.

“Pass,” Dash said.

Really, dude? You have to get competitive? Maybe he didn’t enjoy the fact that I was friendly with his ex-girlfriend. What a tool.

I passed him the ball. He palmed it, then bent his knees to execute a couple behind-the-back bounces. Then once under the knee. And then he bounced it back to me.

You want to show off? Fine. For the next fifteen seconds, I gave it to him: bang-bang under one leg, followed by a scissor cross, a few strokes of walking the dog, and then a quick bounce back to him.

He fumbled it, which made me irrationally happy. Then he did a little handiwork with a triangle dribble around his right leg (and I’d bet money he couldn’t do his left) before a fake and a snap back to me.

The fake and the snap were exactly what I thought he’d do. So I took that ball as if I’d been waiting for it all my life. Slowing it down, I dribbled around my body a few times, spinning it on a fingertip after that. “Stay ready,” I warned him.

He lifted a brow, irritated that I’d warn him like that. As if he were a bumbler. (Even if he was.)

I dropped the ball low in front of me, pounding the dribble for four or five strokes. Then I let go. The ball ricocheted up… and straight into Dash’s crotch.

Three-pointer! So to speak.

“URMMFFF!” the guy groaned, catching the ball and bending over in the time-honored position of a guy whose eggs had just been scrambled.

It took all my effort not to laugh. “Ouch,” I said.

“You ass,” Dash muttered. And when he straightened up, his face was red with anger.

My heart rate kicked up a couple of points, but I held his gaze. “That hurts, right? When you think you’ve signed up for a simple game of one-on-one, but then it turns out that someone else had different plans for you?”

His face did something interesting then. It locked up tight in surprise. And then guilt crossed his features. His mouth sagged, and his eyes looked away from me. He swallowed uncomfortably.

“You can call me an ass if it makes you feel better,” I said in a low voice. “But you leave Katie alone.”

Dash didn’t acknowledge me. He just set the ridiculous pink basketball down on a wicker chair, and then picked up a sport coat that had been lying over the back of it.

“You get me?” I pressed. That’s when I heard the sound of high heels tapping toward me. “Hey!” Katie said, skidding up to me. “Sorry about that. I got caught up chatting in the bathroom.”

“No problem.” I turned to give her my full attention and was basically walloped all over again by how attractive she was. Her silky hair slid over her bare shoulders as she moved. And those kissable lips gave me a little smile. “Are you ready to head out?” I asked, hoping the answer was yes.

“Sure! We can grab my coat on the way.”

A frat brother nudged Dash, whose face was still red and ornery. “Let’s hit it, bro,” he said.

Dash cleared his throat. “I was waiting for Debbie. She might still be in the bathroom.”

Katie paused, her hand grabbing mine. “She left,” she told Dash.

“What?”

Katie’s grin took on a devilish glint. “She said she had more important places to be. Or something like that. G’night.” She gave my hand a little tug, and we left the room together.

Part II

8

Andy

When Katie had put her coat on, she’d had to drop my hand. Now that we were walking along the sidewalk together, I wanted it back. Your only real problem is confidence, my sister had said. What would a confident guy do in this situation?

As casually as I could, I reached over and took Katie’s smooth hand in mine. She laced her fingers in mine, just like that.

Huh. Thank you, Delia.

“Your game saved me tonight,” Katie said. “But what on earth inspired it?”

“Ah,” I said, as my thumb skimmed her palm. “During the summer, I work at a boys’ sleep-away camp in the White Mountains. And we’re always having to think up games to keep them from fighting with each other before dinnertime.”

“So you counseled me, like one of your nine-year-old campers?” She was smiling again, which I loved.

“Well, they’re twelve. But, yeah.” Maybe I was a sap, but tonight I felt truly connected to someone for the first time in a long while. Katie might not remember this night except as a blip on her way toward feeling better about the shitty thing that happened to her. But I wasn’t going to forget it any time soon.

“So, you know my tale of woe,” she said. “What’s your story? No girlfriend, I guess?”

“Not at the moment,” I said, because it sounded smoother than my dry spell is as vast as the Sahara. “I’ve dated two girls at Harkness. One my frosh year, and one last year. But, um…” I chuckled, because my tale of woe was more funny than sad. “Turns out I wasn’t a good match for either girl.”

“Bad breakups?” she guessed.

“Nope. I’m still friends with both of them, actually.”

“But you got your heart broken?”

“Not exactly. There wasn’t a whole lot of spark there in the first place. That was the problem. Both of my ex-girlfriends decided — right after dating me — that they would rather be with women.”

I watched Katie’s face as she took that in, waiting for the inevitable reaction. Her eyes flicked toward mine, and she bit her lip, trying to fight off her amusement. Those pretty eyes were sparkling now. “Go ahead,” I told her. “You can laugh. Everyone else does.”

“Oh, Andy,” she giggled. “Both of them?”

“Yep.”

Her giggle became an unruly belly laugh, and we had to stop on the sidewalk while she pulled herself together. She took a deep, gasping breath and wiped her eyes. “You know that had nothing to do with you, right?” she said eventually. “You didn’t turn those girls gay.”

“Yeah, I know it. But my friends are pretty amused anyway.”

“Both girls,” she tittered.

“Yep!”

We had almost arrived at Fresh Court, and the inevitable end of the night. This was the moment when I had to screw up my courage and ask her if we could go out again some time. But how to phrase it? Some guys were smooth and could ask for anything.

I was not one of them.

“Wait.” Katie tugged on my hand just as we were about to walk underneath the Fresh Court gate. “Are you going to copy the art history notes for me?”

I paused. Did she mean tonight? “Any time. My printer makes copies.”

“Can I get them now? The test is only three days away.”

“Well, sure.” I changed direction, steering us toward Beaumont. Katie’s fingers gave mine a squeeze, which I returned. That little exchange made me ridiculously, irrationally happy. I walked on, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world to have Katie Vickery stop by my room. But inside, I was dancing a jig.

Calm down, idiot, I chided myself. The girl is just very serious about her art history exam.

Even at the pace of someone walking on high heels, the trip from the gate to my entryway only took a few minutes. But that was plenty of time to fret about the condition of my room. For once I’d made the bed. Yes! I’d straightened it out, anyway, because I needed a surface on which to lay the evidence of my not-very-masculine fashion crisis.

Wait — I’d picked all those clothes up afterwards, right?

Uh, oh. This was going to be bad.

But it was too late to worry, because we were already arriving at my entryway stairs. Katie followed me up to the second floor, where I unlocked the door. Peering into the room, I gave a split second prayer that either things weren’t as bad as I remembered, or else elves had come by to tidy up while I was gone.

No such luck. The bed was covered with my clothes. Stepping into my room behind me, my date laughed. “Looks just like my room.”

“I was in kind of a hurry,” I said, lamely.

“See? That’s what I tell Scarlet when she complains about the mess. But apparently I’m always in a hurry.”

Embarrassed, I went over to the desk to find my History of Art notebook. Flipping through the pages, I said, “The review lecture took me six pages. But it will only take a couple of minutes to copy.”

“No rush,” she said, sitting down in my desk chair, which was mercifully clean.

No rush, my brain repeated, listening for clues.

Stop, I ordered myself. Don’t fuck this up. Give the girl her notes, walk her home, ask her out and count your blessings.

9

Katie

I watched Andy fumble with his printer. While it warmed up, he moved over to the bed and grabbed an armload of clothes. Most of them were shirts, still on their hangers. These he ferried to the closet, jamming them onto the bar and shutting the door. If another guy did that, I would assume that he was trying to clear off the bed, in order to steer me onto it. But Andy didn’t give off that hey-baby-come-upstairs-to-see-my-trophies vibe. And it was refreshing. I was so done with guys who had big expectations and very little gratitude.

In contrast, Andy reminded me a bit of a chocolate lab puppy — cute and clumsy. He even had big puppy feet.

As I watched him frowning over his art history notebook, I found myself wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Tonight it had dawned on me that I’d approached the dating scene at Harkness all wrong. Someone like Andy, who didn’t carry himself like God’s natural gift to women, probably had a whole lot of untapped passion.

Now, conventional wisdom said that confidence was a turn-on. And that was true, but only up to a point. Because confidence implied experience. And I was learning that experience wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Both my football players had plenty of experience. But neither one had ever made me feel as if our moments together were truly special.

Except for that last night with Dash. That was the only time he ever convinced me that I made a difference. And that had turned out to be a big fat lie.

Ugh.

It’s just sex, I reminded myself. But I liked sex, and I’d often enjoyed it with him. Both of my football players had had beautiful bodies and plentiful stamina. In fact, if someone had asked me to draw a picture of the kind of guy I thought I wanted, I would have ended up with a likeness of them.

But it hadn’t been enough, had it?

Andy handed me the first page of notes, still warm from the printer. “Have a look at this, and tell me if any of the handwriting is inscrutable,” he said.

I scanned the page. Each painting’s title was listed carefully, along with its artist, approximate date of creation, and sometimes the materials used.

He leaned over my shoulder, and for a weird moment I wondered if he was looking down my dress. And I kind of hoped he was. Judge me if you will.

But no. His long fingers touched the page in front of me. “Wherever I didn’t write down the materials, that’s because it was oil on canvas,” he said. “There are a lot of those. And I may have misspelled Caravaggio. That’s kind of embarrassing.”

“No, that’s right,” I said. “One R and two Gs.”

He flashed me a smile that said “friendly” more than it said “do me.” Then he went over to flip the notebook around in the printer. “Good thing.”

When I received the second sheet, I found a little drawing in the corner. “What’s this?”

Andy sat down on the bed and folded his long arms onto his knees. “That is an X-wing fighter. Don’t judge.”

Aw. “I would never!”

His warm brown eyes smiled back at me again. “Good. Because there may be some rebel ships on the next page. I had to amuse myself while that blowhard in the Knicks hat asked seventeen questions.”

I knew exactly which student he meant. And the guy really was a blowhard. But I teased Andy anyway. “Now, now. Do you hate him because he always wants to talk about Cubism? Or because he wears a Knicks hat?”

Andy gave me a full-on smile this time, and it was really pretty hot. “Both.”

“Who’s your team?” Not for nothing had I learned how to talk sports, even when I didn’t give a damn. But boys? They loved it.

“I’m a Celtics fan. Not that it’s easy.”

“They’re not a good team?”

He put a hand to his chest in mock distress. “Katie, they’re the best team. It’s just that they lose most of the time.”

“How is that possible?”

Andy blinked at me with wide eyes. Then he leaned over the printer to copy the last two pages of notes. “Aren’t we surrounded by evidence that the people who win are not always deserving?”

Interesting. I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about basketball anymore. “Thanks for your notes,” I said softly. “It’s going to make a huge difference.”

“Don’t mention it.” He stapled the sheets together and handed them to me. And that was the moment when I no longer had a reason to stay there, chatting with the nicest guy I’d met in forever.

We’d reached that moment. The one which concluded the predictable chapter of our evening. Now a page would be turned. And we might find “THE END” stamped there. But I found that I wasn’t really ready to hear those words. I’d taken a big gamble telling Andy my uncomfortable little story. And trusting him with it had been the smartest thing I’d done all week. He’d let me get mad, and he didn’t think I was an idiot. I’d know it if he did. Those big eyes were just too expressive to hide it.

I wanted a little more of Andy. Truly I did. I stood up, then, and turned to him.

Unfortunately, he didn’t catch the look of intent I was trying to give him. “I’ll walk you back,” he said quickly. He grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on.

Andy was truly adorable. And lovably uncalculating. Even gentlemanly. (Look, Mom! I found one.) But that would simply not do.

Not at all.

10

Andy

Katie moved slowly over to the door of my room, but she didn’t open it. “Thank you for the notes. And for taking me to that wacky party. And for inventing a game that distracted me from feeling like a moron.”

I smiled at her. In fact, I’d been grinning like a mental patient all night, probably. But she had that effect on me. “You’re welcome. For all of it. Best sorority party I’ve ever been to.”

She gave me a teasing eye roll. “Very funny. You told me earlier that it was the only sorority party you’d ever been to.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

For a second, I got lost in the happy look on her face. Also, I expected her to move away from the door. But she didn’t. Katie put her back against the door instead. Raising her chin, she looked up at me with soft eyes.

Hold up. Those weren’t just soft eyes. They were eyes that asked for something.

Whoa. Time out.

I’d heard Bridger use the phrase “fuck me eyes,” before. But it was a safe bet that I wasn’t getting “fuck me eyes” from anyone. Like, ever. And I wouldn’t know them even if I saw them. These, however, seemed to be “kiss me eyes.”

I was pretty sure, anyway.

Oh, hell.

A couple more precious seconds were wasted while I did the math one more time, just to be confident I wasn’t about to make a terrible mistake. Girl steps in front of door, so you can’t leave without pushing her out of the way. Girl stops, head against your door, mouth tilted up toward yours…

Okay. Not too many ways to read that.

I stepped closer. Then, stalling, I lifted a hand to smooth that silky hair away from her face. She leaned into my hand slightly, and that tiny gesture gave me the courage to tip my face down to hers. Even then, I almost chickened out. I’d wanted to kiss this girl since the first time I saw her. This couldn’t possibly be happening.

But it was.

Our lips met softly. My heart was a freight train in my chest, urging me on. But I fought the impulse to rush. Because Katie deserved better than that. I kissed her slowly. Teasingly, even. Once. Twice.

It was glorious.

She made a sweet little noise of approval, and the sound shot through me like a sonic boom. Feeling bold, I deepened the kiss. I scooped one hand into the silky hair at the back of her neck. And when she opened for me, the first slow slide of my tongue against hers sent my brain on a week-long sailing trip around the Caribbean.

Leaning in, I lost myself in Katie’s sweet mouth. She tasted like wine and honey. Her hands slipped around to my back, and I practically died of happiness.

Still, after the most amazing ninety seconds of my life, I made myself pull back. Because all my blood had departed the thinking regions of my body to run south. And I needed my brain to come back online, before I somehow found a way to wreck this perfect evening. “Katie,” I said, my forehead resting against hers. “Thank you for this awesome night. You are excellent company. I hope we can do it again sometime.”

God, I hoped that was the right thing to say.

She was quiet for a moment. “Andy?”

“Yeah?” I whispered, my voice thick.

“Can we do it again right now?”

11

Katie

I saw Andy take a long, slow blink. For a second there, he looked like he was trying to remember a formula for his physics exam. But then he gave me the cutest smile. And there was more warmth in his face right then than I’d ever seen in my jerkface ex’s expression. For a moment I worried that he was going to be a gentleman and beg off. But once again, Andy proved that he wasn’t a stupid man. His hands came up to cup my jaw, and then his mouth slanted over mine again.

This time, his kiss was filled with the most delicious tension. There was plenty of hunger in that kiss. When our tongues met, he made an achy little sound. But wrapped around his obvious need was a sweet layer of restraint. He wanted this. I could taste how much. But he wasn’t going to lunge at me. He did not grab me or press me against the door.

That left us taking kiss after long, slow kiss. Each one felt a little harder to control than the last. The big hands which were so gently cradling my jaw were actually trembling.

Hottest. Thing. Ever.

If I’d been a good girl, like my mother had hoped, I wouldn’t have taken this as a challenge.

I was not, however, a good girl.

I reached for him again, my palms grazing his ribs, venturing down to his waist. The feel of all that solid boy flesh under my hands was divine. He wasn’t bulky like The Fullback Who Shall Not Be Named. Instead, he was taught and firm in all the right places. And as I explored his upper body, his breathing kicked up a couple of notches.

Because I’ve never been good about backing off, I reached around, cupping his ass. With a tug, I pulled him against me. And gabardine doesn’t hide much. His belt buckle was not the only thing suddenly stabbing me in the belly.

The feel of him just lit me up. This smart, kind boy knew all the dumbest things about me. He’d received my ugliest secret without judgment. And now I was kissing the stuffing right out of him.

And he was really into it.

He broke our kiss with a groan. His lips wandered down my jaw next, and onto my neck, dropping kisses in their wake. When he moved, the part of him which was currently straining inside his pants brushed against the silk of my dress. And the result was a single and wholly unsatisfying drag of friction between my legs.

I didn’t bother to hold back my moan of frustration.

At the sound of it, Andy’s lips ceased their travel down my neck, and his body went completely still. Carefully, he rose up to his full height again, pulling me into a gentle hug against his chest. Into my ear, he whispered, “Katie, you are making me completely crazy. That’s why I think it’s time to walk you home.”

In the silence which followed, I could hear only two beating hearts. “Just tell me this,” I said finally. “Do you really want me to go home?”

He gave a strangled chuckle. “What I want is for you to wake up tomorrow and say, ‘I had an unexpectedly great time last night. In fact, I want to see that skinny guy again.’”

“Unexpectedly great?” I whispered.

“Well, yeah. Or good. I could work with good, too.”

I smiled into his neck. “Mmm.” I had no trouble thinking up a few things that would feel unexpectedly great. His skin against my skin, for example. Sex had just always made sense to me. I treasured that communion, whether it was slow and sweet, or hot and wild.

The guys I’d dated weren’t really fond of showing much emotion. So getting them naked had always been my go-to method for getting a glimpse of their unguarded selves. Andy wasn’t like the others, though. He didn’t mind sharing how he felt. But that only made me hungrier for him. All evening he’d been funny and generous. Without clothes, I imagined more of the same. Only much more intense.

That sounded delicious.

Still… I felt myself hesitate, and it wasn’t a sensation that I was used to. Perhaps second-guessing myself was going to be a new habit. I nuzzled into his collar, where I could feel Andy’s pulse ticking against my nose. I took a deep breath. He smelled like clean laundry and strong, steady boy. At that moment, I could swear that I’d known him for years.

“See,” I said to his collarbone. “The last time I did something impulsive with a guy, it was a total disaster. I’ve spent the last week telling myself that I’m a big idiot.”

His arms tightened protectively around me then, and I loved him for it.

“But I don’t want to be embarrassed anymore. And I don’t want to feel guilty about wanting you right now.”

He took a deep, slow breath, and then let it out the same way. “I want you, too. But I’m willing to wait.”

“I know.” It came out as a husky whisper. “But that’s why you don’t have to.” Reaching up, I undid the first button on his shirt. Teasing the collar apart, I stood on my tiptoes and began kissing his neck. This brought my body closer to his, and I did not waste the chance to brush against the bulge in his trousers.

Andy let out a groan that could probably be heard the next town over.

Suddenly we were lip-locked again, and simultaneously stumbling out of our shoes. Without my heels on, I was a lot shorter than him. Andy had to lean down fairly far to kiss me. So I gave him a little shove toward the bed. He took a couple of awkward steps back, until the bed collided with his legs.

Down he went, bringing me with him. Reacting fast, he tucked my head under his chin as we landed with a mutual “oof.”

“Are you okay?” he laughed.

Scrambling into his lap, I said, “Yes.” Kiss. “I.” Kiss “Am. And I’d be even better if we could lose some of these clothes.”

Andy’s eyes squeezed shut. “That’s… um…”

Uh oh. “Don’t you want to?” I whispered. A little wave of insecurity splashed over me then. Although Andy had the flushed, lusty look of a turned-on guy. And I loved that look. The face that said: You have my complete and undivided attention. So I didn’t really know why he’d hesitate.

He flopped backward on the bed. Instead of looking me in the eye, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I just spent the evening hoping you could recover your appreciation for the male species. So it seems wrong to pounce on you the minute you’re feeling okay again.”

I leaned onto one elbow, looking down on him at close range. “The male gender. You are not a different species,” I teased him. “Even if you all act like it sometimes.”

But he did not smile. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Not thinking too straight right now. I just don’t want you to hate me tomorrow. Because it wouldn’t be worth it.” He reached for one of my hands, taking it between his two, kissing my palm.

I admired his long fingers. There was affection in his touch. I’d been basking in it all evening, whether I’d realized it or not. “I’m never hating you tomorrow,” I told him.

In answer, he pulled me closer, until my head came to rest on his chest. His long fingers skimmed my hair. I had only an oblique view of his face, and he seemed to be thinking hard. Maybe too hard.

“You said something tonight about receiving a gift,” I prompted him. “That there was something a little magic about receiving something from another person. That it was bigger than the thing itself.”

He chuckled. “Sounds like something I might say to a pretty girl I was trying to impress.”

I picked my head up. “I think it worked. And if I tell you one more time that you’re thinking too much, will you believe me?” I hiked myself up farther onto his chest, looking down into his face. And then I waited to hear his answer.

12

Andy

I opened my eyes and looked up into Katie’s stunning face. Her smile wasn’t naughty like it had been before. It was happy. Somehow, on this bonkers night, I’d made her happy. And no matter what happened next, that felt like a big victory. I tugged her head back down on my chest. Her silky hair brushed my chin, and her sweet, fruity scent was doing a number on my self-control. “I’ve been told that before,” I said.

“What?”

“That I think too much.”

“There are worse complaints.”

“Mmm,” I said, kissing the top of her head. We were basically living out part of my fantasy life right now. Katie Vickery was lying on my bed. My desk lamp cast a yellow glow onto the wood paneling. From where I lay, it felt as if we were the only two people in the world. Seriously, Katie lying in my bed didn’t make sense under any other construction of reality.

She sat up a little bit and finished unbuttoning my shirt. Then she kissed my neck, just below my ear. “You know better than to argue with a girl who’s undressing you, right?”

“Yep,” I said immediately. Because I am not an idiot. Ask anyone. I was going to let this happen. Because if I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. And everyone in this bed was there willingly, and nobody was drunk. Check and check.

“This dark blue is a great color for you, by the way.”

“Thanks.” And thank you, Delia. I grinned, wondering what I would find to say when she called tomorrow to ask how my date went.

“…And your smile is hot,” Katie said, finishing the buttons.

“Your everything is hot,” I said, sitting up. I ditched the shirt. And what the hell. I ditched the t-shirt beneath it, too.

Katie’s eyes flared. And then she lowered her head, and began kissing all the recently exposed skin that she could reach.

“Arrraaahhhrrrgh,” I gasped. Because I’m sexy like that. And because she’d begun working open my belt. And just the proximity of her hands to my groin had me throbbing.

I reached for her, finally allowing myself to run my fingers down the sides of her satiny dress, past her waist, which fit entirely into my two hands. I stopped when her hips slid into my grip. Yesss. She felt amazing. And then she yanked on my pants, and my boxers, too. I lifted my hips and let it all fall away.

Oh hell, pinch me. I was naked with Katie Vickery. Except for my dress socks. Because dress socks looked great on a naked guy.

Fail.

Quickly, I ditched my socks, and then wrapped Katie into a kiss that was probably going to last until New Year’s. And then she wrapped her hand… Oh, God. Okay. Nothing was going to last until New Year’s. Or even five minutes, unless I got a hold of myself.

So I shifted away from her ambitious fingers and carefully lifted her dress over her head. But that only made me hotter. Because now I had a full-on view of the sexiest bra that had ever made an appearance in my (real) life. It was lacy and black, and my eyes were probably bugging out just looking at it.

Katie wiggled out of a pair of stockings, revealing the smallest lace panties ever manufactured. Seriously, the physics lab up on Science Hill could attempt to split them like an atom in the particle accelerator.

I think I stopped breathing.

My brain took a sabbatical to Tahiti.

13

Katie

Okay, who knew I’d become a basketball fan tonight?

After his big hands scooped my dress up over my head, Andy stretched, elongating that powerful torso as he reached over his head. I was almost too busy drooling over his tight chest to notice that he’d taken care to lay my dress over the chair.

I reclined on the bed, and Andy propped himself up on his elbows over my body. Dropping his head, he began to trace the outline of my strapless it-fits-under-every-dress bra with his tongue.

My modest cleavage had never been my best attribute. But as he kissed me, Andy made the kind of low, happy noise of a man who had just been given exactly what he craved. And as if that wasn’t sexy enough, he raised his eyes to mine, his expression burning hot. I didn’t know if he was asking for permission or merely trying to torture me. But I’d never felt quite like the center of someone’s universe before. The slow slide of his lips coupled with that heated gaze had me tingling. Everywhere.

His lips skimmed lower, and then lower still. He began dropping soft, open-mouthed kisses just at the top of my panties. He lifted those eyes again, and the coal-dark stare was back, its intensity redoubled. I began to practically squirm with desire. In a second, I was probably going to start begging. At last, he dropped his mouth onto the lace between my legs and kissed me gently. All without breaking eye contact.

I was almost too turned on to care that there was only enough friction to make promises, not to deliver. The sight of his lean, muscular shoulders and biceps framing my legs was something I won’t soon forget. I panted while he teased me with the barest touch. And when he pressed his lips against my body and groaned, I thought I would die.

Okay, enough with the teasing.

I plunged my fingers into his hair, then gave his head a little tug. He came willingly, all that firm skin and muscle covering me like I wanted it to. And then we were kissing again, so deeply that I tasted more of Andy than of myself.

The heavy beat of a dance tune began to pulse on the other side of Andy’s wall. For a second I was under the illusion that the sound was my own heartbeat, amplified. Because I was throbbing. Everywhere. And then — hallelujah — he hooked the bikini strap of my panties with one thumb and dragged them down.

We made out with incredible urgency, as if a meteor were about to obliterate the earth. Our two bodies moved together, the hot beat of his neighbor’s music urging us on.

“Katie,” Andy breathed between kisses. “Should I find a…”

I gave him one more hard kiss, and then a shove on the shoulder to encourage him. “Go. Hurry.”

He was up like a shot and rifling through his top dresser drawer. But after ten seconds of fervent scraping around, I began to get nervous. It was all well and good to be with the sweet sort of guy who didn’t expect you to put out. But when push was ready to come to shove, having the necessary equipment was awfully important.

Luckily, he found what he was looking for.

A half second later, Andy was back on the bed and sheathing himself with hands so eager that they shook. I saw him take a deep breath and gather himself together. Instead of climbing on top of me, though, he gave me a little nudge and lay down beside me, pulling me into his arms. He inhaled deeply again and let it out slowly.

I trailed my hand down his chest. “Second thoughts?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t say yes.

He shook his head. “No way. You?”

“Not a chance.” But even as I said it, I had the first quiver of uncertainty I’d ever experienced just before sex. A little voice in my head said: Really, Katie? Shouldn’t you feel shame for this? Other girls would.

This stopped me for perhaps two seconds.

Oh, shut up! I ordered that voice. Those other girls didn’t know what they were missing. I was not going to let The Football Player Who Shall Not Be Named ruin this moment for me.

Andy shifted into position over me again. But he didn’t make it happen yet. Instead, he lifted his long hand to cup my face, and he kissed my forehead tenderly. “I’ve had a thing for you since the first art history lecture,” he said.

“What?” With all his warm skin over me, it was hard to track any conversation.

“You sat in front of me with a friend,” he whispered, kissing my nose. “You told her you’d always wanted to visit the Louvre and the Prado. But you were happy to take the course first. You were wearing a pink t-shirt and a denim skirt. Your friend was looking at Facebook for the whole lecture. But not you. You took notes. Your hair was held back in a pink scrunchie, and I wanted to pull that out and let your hair fall down loose.”

Somewhere in the middle of that little speech I’d stopped breathing. “Wow,” I gasped. I was blown away. Gone.

Above me, Andy just smiled. “But no pressure, right?”

Looking up at him, I giggled suddenly. And all the tensions of the evening fizzed up, shaking my stomach with laughter. For a second I thought that I was going to totally lose it, the way that laughter sometimes grabs a hold of you and won’t let go. It was entirely possible that I was about to become hysterical.

But Andy just smiled wider. Then he lowered his grin to my jaw and kissed me there. And then he kissed the sensitive spot under my ear. And my neck. And my collarbone.

The laughter died in my throat, and I relaxed onto the bed.

“Is this okay?” he whispered, bringing his body close to mine.

“Yesss…” I breathed.

As he fitted us together, Andy groaned like a man in pain. But he moved like a man in love.

I wrapped my arms around him, drinking in his kisses.

“Katie…” he whispered, his breath catching. And the sound of it was the same sound you’d make if you’d just unwrapped an unexpected gift and found just what you’d wanted inside.

14

Andy

Oh Jesus. Pinch me. Seriously.

This couldn’t really be happening. Not to me. In fact, any minute now I was going to wake up in some library somewhere, face down in a puddle of my own drool. With my physics notes pasted to my face. And when they peeled off, I’d have equations tattooed all over my cheek in blue ink.

A good dream was the only plausible explanation for this moment.

And why the fuck was I thinking about physics notes right now? I needed to memorize this moment. Because if it was really happening, then the world was probably ending. Maybe there was a rip in the space-time continuum. Which meant that the polarity of the earth was in jeopardy. And… um…

Ohhh…

Wow.

Ohhh…

Wow.

Jeez…

Wow.

This.

This is…

So much wow.

15

Katie

Beautiful creature

A single bead of sweat at your neck

Your agonized huff of breath

As you try to hold yourself back

We have brought each other here

To this place of slicked skin against skin

Torturing each other so perfectly

“More,” I beg you, because I can’t help myself

And you close your eyes with gratitude

For this pretty moment

16

Andy

Oh.

Oh yeah. Oh boy.

Yesyesyesyesyes.

More? Rawr…

Wow. Good. Too good. Red zone, here.

DANGER.

Quick! Picture Mrs. Dunlop’s neck. Warty 5th grade teacher to the rescue!

Okay. I’ve got this. Except… Oh my God. Oh… wow. Just… so sexy. So sexy. I’ve never made anyone moan before. Oh, that sound. Oh, hell. It’s coming, and it’s going to be good.

But is she going to…? I need her to…

Oh God, please let her just…

Time for a Hail Mary maneuver. Maybe if I reach down and touch her there. Wait… how do guys do this? My arm is stuck. I can’t get out of my own way. Wait. Okay. Right there.

Winning! Yeah!

Almost.

C’mon, Seabiscuit!

But… ahhhgghhmmm. Feels incredible for me, too.

Mayday! This train is pulling out of the station.

Can’t. Hold. Out. Much. Longer.

17

Katie

The look on your face

Sweet and intense

Shreds my heart

Now I’m tilting fast

And spinning hard

All of me

Is lost to you

18

Andy

COMPLETE LOSS OF BRAIN FUNCTION

Please stand by…

19

Katie

For a few minutes we just lay there, breathing hard, while dance music continued to vibrate the bedroom wall. Andy’s face was stuffed half into the pillow, half into my hair. I could feel the rapid rise and fall of his chest against mine.

But eventually the music stopped, and the silence seemed to bring the two of us back into focus. It was quiet enough to talk now, only I didn’t know what I wanted to say.

Even for someone like me, who really liked sex, the part afterward was a little awkward. There was always that uncomfortable moment when your brain came back online and reminded you that you should probably untangle yourself from this sweaty boy and go on with your life.

The realization that special moments didn’t last was always a disappointment. And the more special they were, the bigger the letdown.

This one was kind of a doozy.

Andy had gotten his breathing back under control, and was now playing with a lock of my hair. “Can I ask you something?” His voice was muffled.

“Yeah.” Or yes. (Sorry, Mother. Though, come to think of it, after what I’d just done — stripping this boy naked and practically leaping on him — the use of “yes” versus “yeah” was a moot point. Right, Mom?)

“What I need to know is…” he hesitated. “Do you feel a sudden compulsion to begin dating women?”

What?

“Oh!” I began to laugh.

“Be honest,” he said, turning his head to show me his smiling eyes. “Do you have an urgent desire to run out for a copy of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition?”

Laughing, I realized that this boy was just going to keep on surprising me. “Well, now that you mention it… I do find myself wondering whether I should date someone who shares my taste in lipstick.”

First, he gave my ass a pinch. Then he pulled me close, and I snuggled into his neck. For a few minutes, his hands gently skimmed my back. But eventually, he smoothed my hair down and sighed. “I really don’t want to move. But I have to get up and get rid of this, um…”

Condom. Right. I released him, though I didn’t want to.

Rolling off the bed, he grabbed a tissue from the box on his desk, then stood in front of the wastepaper basket, his back to me. I used the moment to marvel at how long his legs were. And the fact that he had a really nice butt for someone so slim. Go figure.

“I should really go,” I said.

When Andy turned around, he was frowning. “Oh, no you don’t,” he said, giving his head a little shake. “Not so fast.” He came back toward me, and I tried not to stare at his nakedness. There was something really sexy about that long, lean body. He was built as if only the best, most essential parts had been added to his frame. As if any extra would just be a distraction.

On his way over, he snagged his boxers off the floor and stepped into them.

I’d pulled the sheet up to cover myself, and now he gave me a little nudge to move over for him. Dorm beds were pretty narrow. But I scooted toward the wall, and he slid into the bed, rolling onto his side to face me. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi.” I clutched the sheet against my chest. I was feeling very naked all of a sudden.

“I thought if I trapped you in here, you wouldn’t go.”

“You’ll want me to, eventually,” I pointed out. “If I’m still here a week from now, that would just be weird.”

“Well,” he cleared his throat. “If you say so. But we could probably compromise on tomorrow morning, no?” Beneath the sheets, his toes wandered over to be with mine. He trapped the arch of my foot between both of his and gave it a squeeze.

I didn’t know what to say. My football player boyfriends had always complained that they couldn’t possibly spend eight hours crammed into a tiny bed with me. “You won’t sleep well. And there are exams to study for.”

He gave his head a shake. “That’s not the point. I want the whole package. We’re supposed to have that tricky night’s sleep, where I’m trying not to give you a black eye when I roll over. And I believe I’m entitled to some awkward conversation in the morning.”

“Seriously?” I fought off a grin.

“Seriously.” He leaned over to kiss my eyebrow, and then had to turn away so he could yawn.

It was catching, so I yawned too. “The problem is that I only have a dress to wear. Walking home tomorrow morning…” I let the sentence trail off. Because he’d understand what I meant. Anyone who saw me would know I was doing the Walk of Shame.

It was called that for a reason.

Andy frowned. “I have sweats you could borrow.”

I pointed across the room at my spike heels, lying on the floor where I’d shed them so hastily a little while ago.

He chewed on his lip for a second. “Okay. I’ll walk you home right now, if that’s what makes you the most comfortable,” he said. “Otherwise, I can set my alarm for seven. But we’ll probably wake up then anyway, after elbowing each other all night.” He gave me a shy smile. “And we could walk you home before anyone else even thinks about waking up. Then I could wait at the coffee shop while you shower and change. And then we’ll get the earliest possible start on memorizing two hundred European paintings.”

“Hmm,” I said, as my heart gave a little flutter. That all sounded too good to be true.

“There won’t be a soul outside at seven in the morning. Especially during exams,” he pointed out.

“You really want me to stay?” He was probably just being nice.

He gathered me up in his long arms. “I really, really do.”

20

Andy

I found a t-shirt for Katie to wear. Actually, I picked out my favorite one, which had an X-wing fighter on the front of it. And that made her laugh. And I loved her laugh, because it sounded a little bit out of control. Here was a girl who usually matched her hair band to her sweater. She looked pristine and put-together every time I saw her. But the sound of her giggle gave her away. It was riotous.

And man, my X-wing t-shirt had never looked so good as it did with her long legs sticking out from under the hem. I found her an extra toothbrush, too. And then I checked to see if the bathroom was empty, and it was. So Katie did the mini Walk of Shame into the bathroom to brush.

“Do you want the inside or the outside?” I asked when she returned, pointing at the bed.

“You first,” she said.

I shut the lamp off and then climbed in, scooting all the way over to the wall. She got into bed then, gingerly. First, I pulled the covers up. Then I put my hands on her hips and pulled her closer to me. “Let me show you how this works best,” I said, angling the pillow just so. I positioned Katie’s back against me so that her head was level with my sternum. That way we both had some breathing room.

“Mmm,” she lazed against me. “Okay. I think I get it.”

Luckily it was dark, and she was facing the other way. So she couldn’t see how big my dorky smile was just then. Seriously, you could probably see my teeth from space. Because I’d never been happier than I was right then. I had the girl of my dreams in my bed, curled up against me. I was optimistic that maybe this would become a thing. But that was probably getting ahead of myself, right?

I wasn’t going to lie here and worry about it, though. No matter what happened tomorrow, I would always have this night.

“So,” I prompted. “Which European paintings are we going to memorize first?”

“The medieval ones,” she said immediately. “There aren’t as many of those as in the Renaissance section.”

“Good point,” I whispered, smoothing my hand down her hair.

“I’m a little worried about the modern stuff,” she confessed. “He covered it really fast. The Russians… I don’t remember what any of those paintings look like.”

“Like… The Knife Grinder? We can tackle those,” I said. “You know that little sofa in the back of the coffee shop? I’ll park my butt on that puppy while you’re changing. We can sit there and flip through the paintings on my laptop.”

There was a pause, and I hoped she wasn’t about to tell me that she’d rather study alone. “We are going to rock that test,” she said instead. “We are going to kick its ass.”

Again, I grinned in the dark. “We are going to send it home, crying for its mama.” Katie giggled again, and I felt it in my chest.

Then it got quiet for a little while, and I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to fall asleep. Because I didn’t want to miss a moment of being with her.

“Andy?” she asked suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“Have you ever had a one-night stand before?”

Now there was a tricky question. “Well… I’m not sure I can say.”

She turned to peek at me over her shoulder. “Never mind. That was a really personal question.”

I dropped my arm around her waist and gave her a squeeze. “That’s not the problem. It’s just that I’m not sure. The answer is no. Unless I’m having one right now, and I was really hoping that wasn’t the case.”

After I said it, my heart nearly failed. Was that too much, too soon?

“You’re definitely safe,” Katie whispered.

Whew. I dropped my nose into her hair and took a deep breath of her. “Good to know,” I said.

Her slim fingers gently stroked my wrist for a few minutes. And then she began to breathe deeply. I lay there smiling in the dark for awhile longer, until I fell asleep too.

And I had very, very good dreams.

Epilogue

Dash McGibb had a way of flipping his pen up in the air and catching it again. He did this while sitting in one of the old wooden lecture hall seats, waiting for the exam to begin. He flipped the pen a dozen times. Flip. Catch. Flip. Catch. It helped take his mind off of two uncomfortable things.

The exam was one of them. He’d taken this course because it had sounded easy. Looking at paintings — how hard could that be? And football season had ended only two weeks ago. That had taken up most of his time.

This test? It might go badly.

Also, there was the matter of the empty seat next to his. Until a week ago, that seat was always occupied by the most attractive girl in the freshman class. But Katie Vickery had not appeared in class for the last two lectures. And Dash guessed that he was the reason why.

The other night at the party, she had seemed okay. She’d even spoken to him a little bit. (Something about party planning trucks with pigs on them?) He’d hardly been able to concentrate on their discussion, because he’d been freaking out.

Because she knew.

Somehow, she’d figured out the ridiculous prank they’d made him pull. He’d seen the knowledge of it on her face the moment she appeared beside the Christmas tree. Even though his frat brothers had told him that the girls never found out. They’d promised that it would be a secret, and that there wouldn’t be a shred of evidence.

At least that last part held true. He sure didn’t want pictures floating around campus of him getting…

Shit. It was such a stupid thing that he’d done. So colossally stupid.

And for what good reason?

She must have figured it out immediately. Because Katie wasn’t the sort of girl who would skip the last two lectures. All he could do about it now was watch the door, hoping that Katie didn’t blow off the final exam just because he’d been the world’s biggest asshole. He didn’t want that on his conscience.

There was plenty on it already.

The minutes ticked by, and he waited. At the front of the room, the teaching assistants set up a projector. They would show sixty paintings, pausing thirty seconds on each one. There had to be a few easy ones in there, right? He was hoping to see the Mona Lisa’s odd smile, or maybe The Last Supper.

At last, Katie hurried through the door, her gaze sweeping the crowd. He lifted a hand to wave to her, to let her know that he’d welcome having her as his seatmate. Even though she probably hated him.

Her gaze slid right on past.

Dash watched as Katie scanned the room, a ripple of uncertainty on her face. Then that ripple broke into a shy little smile, which she directed at a lanky boy two rows up. Wait — he was the basketball player. Her date from the other night.

The guy sat up straighter as she approached. Katie had that effect on people. They wanted to be just a little bit more of whatever they were when she was around. Dash had felt the same way. It’s just that he’d never figured out what to do about it. Katie scared the shit out of him most of the time. That’s how he always ended up slipping into the lowbrow humor of his frat buddies. He knew it wasn’t the right way to talk to her. It’s just that he’d never figured out what to say instead.

Looked like he’d never get that chance, now.

She scooted into the row where the basketball player sat. Following exam day rules, she didn’t take the seat next to his, but left an empty one between them. Still looking a little awkward — maybe even sheepish — Katie lowered her bag onto the empty chair, then turned to face him.

The basketball player reached a long arm behind the empty chair to give her ponytail a playful tug. And Dash saw Katie’s smile melt into something warmer and less self-conscious than it had been a few seconds before.

“I wanted to ask you to lunch,” the guy said. “But my bossy sister is going to be waiting for me in her car after the exam. She’s my ride to New Hampshire.”

“We’ll go for lunch after the break,” Katie said. “Three weeks from now.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But that sounds like a long wait to me.”

Her face got soft then. And Dash didn’t recognize that expression. He wondered if she’d never shown it to him, or if maybe he hadn’t recognized it when he’d had the chance.

“I almost forgot,” her date said, reaching to the floor for what turned out to be a tiny little gift bag. “This is a good luck present. For the exam.”

Her eyes sparkled as she took the gift in two hands. Reaching inside, she removed two long, thin objects. “They’re… a lightsaber pen and pencil?”

“Those are really good luck.”

Katie giggled. “Because the force is with me?”

“Now you’re getting it. There’s one more thing in that bag.”

Katie reached inside one more time, removing a little green thing, which she balanced on her palm. “It’s Yoda.”

“He’s wise. And he also erases,” the basketball player said.

She laughed. “That’s… they’re perfect. Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” was his reply. But obviously that wasn’t true. Because Katie arranged those funny things on the little wooden writing arm of the lecture hall seat, then smiled at them as if she’d been given a set of crown jewels.

Dash flipped his very ordinary pen up into the air again, puzzling over what he’d just seen. He knew that girls liked flowers, which he’d never really understood. Flowers were expensive and they looked really sad when they began to wilt. But a Star Wars pen? What the everloving fuck?

It was almost exam time, though. A graduate student had passed a stack of test booklets down the aisle. Dash took one and passed the rest of the stack onwards.

“Quick,” Katie said. She handed the basketball a bulging gift bag.

From inside, he pulled… that awful pink basketball he’d been playing with the other night. Then he put a hand over his mouth and laughed.

Katie beamed at him. “It made me think of you. Sorry. There’s something else in the bottom of the bag.”

He pulled out a large bar of gourmet chocolate. “Hey… salted caramel!”

“Because we didn’t make it to the ice cream shop.” After she said that, her ears began to turn pink.

“Right,” he chuckled. “I was really broken up about that.”

“I’ll bet,” she said, looking toward the proctor, who was passing out the actual test now.

“Thank you, Katie,” the basketball player said. He put his gifts on the floor and smoothed the test down onto the tiny desk in front of him. “And good luck.”

“May the force be with you,” she replied.

Dash looked down at the test he’d just been handed. It was time to stop worrying about Katie, and start worrying about European art. The painting identifications were tough, but probably not a total disaster. The essay question he chose took a long time, though. And by the time he’d finished comparing the Baroque period to Renaissance painting, he was one of the last people left in the room.

Tired now, Dash gathered up his things and turned in his exam booklet. He shook out his cramped writing hand and headed for the door.

He had managed not to think about Katie for ninety minutes. But that streak ended when he exited the building.

The basketball player was just tossing a duffel bag into the back of a car. Then he chucked the pink basketball inside too. Turning to Katie, he opened his arms.

With a sweet smile, she stepped in close and hugged him.

Looking away, Dash punched the traffic button to activate the crosswalk. (And did those buttons really do anything, anyway? Or were they just a way of asking for your patience while cars kept rolling by?)

Out of the corner of his eye, Dash could still see Katie and the tall guy. They were kissing now. But “kissing” didn’t even do it justice. They were kissing each other as if they’d just invented it. She’d risen up onto tiptoes to reach him. And his arms encircled hers as if he were holding a rare and precious thing.

The look of pure absorption on the guy’s face did something to Dash’s gut. He’d once held five feet and four inches worth of perfection in his arms, and he hadn’t tried even half as hard to hold on to it.

Now that seemed like an error. A big one.

The car that the happy couple leaned against gave a loud and impatient blast of its horn. They broke off their lip-lock, laughing. “I’ll call you,” the guy said.

“I hope you will,” was Katie’s answer. “Now go, before you get in trouble.”

“I’m already in trouble,” he said, opening the passenger door. He winked, folded himself into the car and closed the door. Katie gave him one more wave.

Dash glared up at the traffic light, willing it to change. Finally, it did. But he hesitated for a second anyway as Katie closed the distance to the corner.

I’m sorry. The words formed themselves on the tip of his tongue as she approached. He could say that, right? That was the thing he really needed to do.

Pedestrians moved forward, stepping off the curb. Including Katie. So Dash followed her, readying himself to speak to her once they’d crossed the busy street.

“Katie?” he said.

But she didn’t turn around. She hadn’t heard him. And now the trill of a cell phone rang out. Katie pulled her phone from her pocket, answering even as she walked down College Street. “Hi there.” He could hear a smile in her voice. “I didn’t think you meant you’d call right away,” she giggled. Without a backward glance, she kept right on moving, her long strides carrying her up the street. Away from Dash.

He watched her until she well and truly disappeared.

Thank You!

Thanks for reading Blonde Date (An Ivy Years Novella) I hope you enjoyed it!

Reviews help other readers find books. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.

Also by Sarina Bowen

THE IVY YEARS

The Year We Fell Down #1

The Year We Hid Away #2

The Understatement of the Year #3

The Shameless Hour #4

The Fifteenth Minute #5

GRAVITY

Coming In From the Cold

Falling From the Sky

Shooting for the Stars

The Year We Fell Down

The sport she loves is out of reach. The boy she loves has someone else. What now?

She expected to start Harkness College as a varsity ice hockey player. But a serious accident means that Corey Callahan will start school in a wheelchair instead.

Across the hall, in the other handicapped-accessible dorm room, lives the too-delicious-to-be real Adam Hartley, another would-be hockey star with his leg broken in two places. He’s way out of Corey’s league.

Also, he’s taken.

Nevertheless, an unlikely alliance blooms between Corey and Hartley in the “gimp ghetto” of McHerrin Hall. Over tequila, perilously balanced dining hall trays, and video games, the two cope with disappointments that nobody else understands.

They’re just friends, of course, until one night when things fall apart. Or fall together. All Corey knows is that she’s falling. Hard.

But will Hartley set aside his trophy girl to love someone as broken as Corey? If he won’t, she will need to find the courage to make a life for herself at Harkness — one which does not revolve around the sport she can no longer play, or the brown-eyed boy who’s afraid to love her back.

1

“Hope” is the thing with feathers —

That perches in the soul —

And sings the tune without the words —

And never stops — at all —

EMILY DICKINSON

“This looks promising,” my mother said, eyeing the dormitory’s ivy-covered facade. I could hear the anticipation in her voice. “Try your key card, Corey.”

It was move-in day at Harkness College, and parents of the new frosh were oohing and ahhing all around campus. As the official tour guides will tell you, three of the last six presidents held at least one degree from the 300-year-old college. And twice a day, students from the Carillon Guild climb 144 steps into Beaumont Tower to serenade the campus on bells weighing upwards of a ton each.

Unfortunately, my mother’s interest in the dorm was neither historical nor architectural. It was the wheelchair ramp that captivated her.

I rolled up to wave my shiny new Harkness ID in front of the card reader. Then I pushed the blue button with the wheelchair on it. I held my breath until the pretty arched door began to swing slowly open.

After everything I’d been through in the past year, it was hard to believe that this was really happening for me. I was in.

Wheeling up the ramp and into the narrow building, I counted two dorm rooms, one on my left and one on my right. Both had wide doors — the telltale sign of a handicapped-accessible room. Straight ahead, there was a stairway with a pretty oaken banister. Like most of the old dorms at Harkness University, the building had no elevator. I wouldn’t be visiting any of the upstairs rooms in my chair.

“The floor is very level,” my mother observed, approvingly. “When they told us the building was eighty years old, I had my doubts.”

That was putting it mildly.

The fact that my parents had begged me not to come to Harkness was just the latest bitter irony in a long string of bitter ironies. While other new Harkness parents were practically throwing confetti for their offspring today, mine were having two heart attacks apiece, because their baby girl had chosen a college a thousand miles from home, where they couldn’t check up on her every half hour.

Thank goodness.

After the accident, my parents had pleaded with me to defer for a year. But who could take another year of hovering, with nothing better to fill the time than extra physical therapy sessions? When I’d put my proverbial foot down about heading off to college, my parents had changed tactics. They tried to convince me to stay in Wisconsin. I’d been subjected to a number of anxious lectures entitled “Why Connecticut?” And “You Don’t Have to Prove Anything.”

But I wanted this. I wanted the chance to attend the same elite school that my brother had. I wanted the independence, I wanted a change in scenery, and I really wanted to get the taste of last year out of my mouth.

The door on my left opened suddenly, and a pretty girl with dark curly hair stuck her head out. “Corey!” she beamed. “I’m Dana!”

When my rooming assignment had arrived in our Wisconsin mailbox, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Dana. But during the past month we’d traded several emails. She was originally from California, but went to high school in Tokyo, where her father was a businessman. I’d already filled her in on my physical quirks. I’d explained that I couldn’t feel my right foot, or any of my left leg. I’d warned her that I was in a wheelchair most of the time. Although, with a set of cumbersome leg braces and forearm crutches, I sometimes did a very poor imitation of walking.

And I’d already apologized for her odd rooming assignment — living with the cripple in a different dorm than the rest of the First Years. When Dana had quickly replied that she didn’t mind, a little specter of hope had alighted on my shoulder. And this feathered, winged thing had been buzzing around for weeks, whispering encouragements in my ear.

Now, facing her in the flesh for the first time, my little hope fairy did a cartwheel on my shoulder. I spread my arms, indicating the chair. “How ever did you recognize me?”

Her eyes sparkled, and then she said exactly the right thing. “Facebook. Duh!” She swung the door wide open, and I rolled inside.

“Our room is fabulous,” Dana said for the third time. “We have at least twice as much space as everyone else. This will be great for parties.”

It was good to know that Dana was a beer-keg-is-half-full kind of roommate.

And in truth, ours was a beautiful room. The door opened into what Harkness students called a “common room,” but the rest of the world would call a living room. Off the common room were two separate bedrooms, each one large enough to turn a wheelchair around in. For furnishings, we each had a desk and — this was surprising — a double bed.

“I brought twin sheets,” I said, puzzled.

“So did I,” Dana laughed. “Maybe accessible rooms have double beds? We’ll just have to go shopping. Oh, the hardship!” Her eyes twinkled.

My mom, huffing under the weight of one of my suitcases, came into the room. “Shopping for what?”

“Sheets,” I said. “We have double beds.”

She clapped her hands together. “We’ll drive you girls to Target before we leave.”

I would have rather gotten rid of my parents, but Dana took her up on it.

“First, let me have a look around,” my mother said. “Maybe there are other things you need.” She traipsed into our private bathroom. It was amply proportioned, with a handicapped accessible shower. “This is perfect,” she said. “Let’s put a few of your things away, and make sure you have somewhere to dry your catheters.”

“Mother,” I hissed. I really did not want to discuss my freakish rituals in front of my roommate.

“If we’re going to Target,” Dana said from the common room, “we should look at the rugs. It echoes in here.”

My mother hurried out of the bathroom to humiliate me further. “Oh, Corey can’t have an area rug while she’s still working on walking. She could trip. But where do you girls want Hank to install the television?” my mom asked, turning about.

I jumped on the change of topic. “My father is hooking us up with a flat-screen, and a cable subscription,” I said to Dana. “If that’s okay with you. Not everybody wants a TV.”

Dana put a thoughtful hand to her chin. “I’m not much of a TV watcher myself…” Her eyes flashed. “But there may be um, certain sorts of people who will want to gather in our room, say, when sporting events are on?”

My mother laughed. “What sort of people?”

“Well, have you met our neighbor yet? He’s a junior.” My new roommate’s eyes darted towards the hallway.

“Across the hall?” I asked. “In the other accessible room?” It wasn’t the first place I’d look for a hot guy.

She nodded. “You’ll see. Just wait.”

Our shopping trip took far longer than I’d hoped. My mother insisted on paying for Dana’s new bedding, with the argument that the peculiar accessible beds were all our fault. Dana chose a comforter with a giant red flower on it. I chose polka dots.

“Very cheery,” my mother said approvingly. My mom had always liked the cheery look. But after the year we’d just had, she clung to cheery like a life raft. “Let’s get the matching shams, ladies. And…” she went into the next aisle. “An extra pillow for each of you. Those beds won’t look right otherwise.”

“She doesn’t have to do this,” Dana whispered.

“Just go with it,” I said. “Wait…” I beckoned, and Dana leaned down so I could add something privately. “Take a peek at the rugs. If you see anything good, we’ll come back another time.”

She frowned at me. “But I thought…”

I gave her an eye roll. “She’s insane.”

With a wink, Dana ducked into the rug aisle.

When we got back, my father was standing in the center of our empty room, flipping channels on the TV he’d mounted on our wall. “Success!” he called out.

“Thanks, Dad.”

His smile was tired. “No problem.”

As irritating as I’d found my mother this past year, things were even trickier with my father. He and I used to talk about ice hockey all day long. It was our shared passion, as well as his livelihood. But now an uncomfortable silence hung between us. The fact that I couldn’t skate anymore just killed him. He’d aged about ten years since my accident. I hoped that with me out of the house, he would be able to get back into his groove.

It was time to ease my parents into hallway, and send them on their way. “Guys? There’s a barbecue for First Years on the lawn. And Dana and I are going to it. Soon.”

My mother wrung her hands. “Hold up. I forgot to install your night-light.” She darted into my bedroom, while I bit back an angry complaint. Seriously? I hadn’t had a night-light since I was seven. And when my brother went off to Harkness four years ago, there wasn’t any handholding for him. Damien got only a plane ticket and a clap on the shoulder.

“She can’t help herself,” my father said, reading my face. He picked his tool kit up off the floor and made his way toward the door.

“I’m going to be fine, you know,” I said, wheeling after him.

“I know you are, Corey.” He put one hand on my head, and then took it away again.

“Hey, Dad? I hope you have a great season.”

His eyes looked heavy. “Thanks, honey.” Under other circumstances, he’d be wishing the same for me. He would have inspected my safety pads, and we would have found a corner of the room to accommodate my hockey bag. He would have booked plane tickets to come out and watch one of my games.

But none of that was going to happen.

Instead, we went into the hallway together in silence. But there, my reverie was broken by the sight of a guy hanging up a white board on the wall outside of his door. My first glimpse was of a very tight backside and muscled arms. He was attempting to tap a nail into the wall without letting his crutches fall to the ground. “Damn,” he said under his breath as one of them toppled anyway.

And when he turned around, it was as if the sun had come out after a rainy day.

For starters, his face was movie-star handsome, with sparkling brown eyes and thick lashes. His wavy brown hair was a bit unkempt, as if he’d just run his fingers through it. He was tall and strong-looking, but not beefy, exactly. It wasn’t a linebacker’s body, but he was definitely an athlete.

Definitely.

Wow.

“Hi there,” he said, revealing a dimple.

Well hello, hottie, my brain answered. Unfortunately, my mouth said nothing. And after a beat I realized I was staring at his beautiful mouth, frozen like Bambi in the forest. “Hi,” I squeaked, with great effort.

My father leaned over to fetch the crutch this handsome creature had dropped. “That’s some cast you have there, son.”

I looked, and felt my face flush. Because looking at the cast meant allowing my eyes to travel down his body. The end of my slow scan revealed one very muscular leg. The other was encased in white plaster.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” His voice had a masculine roughness which put a quiver in my chest. “I broke it in two places.” He extended a hand to my father. “I’m Adam Hartley.”

“Ouch, Mr. Hartley,” my father said, shaking his hand. “Frank Callahan.”

Adam Hartley looked down at his own leg. “Well, Mr. Callahan, you should see the other guy.” My father’s face stiffened. But then my new neighbor’s face broke into another giant grin. “Don’t worry, sir. Your daughter isn’t living next door to a brawler. Actually, I fell.”

The look of relief on my dad’s face was so priceless that it broke my drooly spell, and I laughed. My gorgeous new neighbor extended a hand to me, which I had to roll forward to shake. “Well played,” I said. “I’m Corey Callahan.”

“Nice to meet you,” he began, his large hand gripping mine. His light brown eyes loomed in front of me, and I noticed that their irises had a darker ring around each one. The way he leaned down to shake my hand made me feel self-conscious. And was it hot in here?

Then the moment was broken by a shrill female voice erupting from inside his room. “Hartleeeey! I need you to hang this photograph, so you won’t forget me while I’m in France. But I can’t decide which wall!”

Hartley rolled his eyes just a little bit. “So make three more of them, baby,” he called. “Then you’ll have it covered.”

My father grinned, handing Hartley his crutch.

“Honey?” came the voice again. “Have you seen my mascara?”

“You don’t need it, gorgeous!” he called, tucking both crutches under his arms.

“Hartley! Help me look.”

“Yeah, that never works,” he said with a wink. Then he tipped his head toward the open door to his room. “Good to meet you. I have to solve the great makeup crisis.”

He disappeared as my mother emerged from my room, her face a tight line. “Are you sure there’s nothing else we can do for you?” she asked, fear in her eyes.

Be nice, I coached myself. The baby-proofing is finally over. “Thanks for all your help,” I said. “But I think I’m all set.”

My mother’s eyes misted. “Take good care of yourself, baby,” she said, her voice scratchy. She leaned over and hugged me, crushing my head to her chest.

“I will, Mom,” I said, the words muffled.

With a deep breath, she seemed to pull herself together. “Call if you need us.” She pushed open the dormitory’s outside door.

“…But if you don’t call for a few days, we won’t panic,” my father added. Then he gave me a quick salute before the door fell closed behind him. And then they were gone.

My sigh was nothing but relief.

A half-hour later, Dana and I set off for the barbecue. She bounced across the street, and I wheeled along beside her. At Harkness College, students were split into twelve Houses. It was just like Hogwarts, only bigger, and without the sorting hat. Dana and I were assigned to Beaumont House, where we would live from sophomore year on. But all First Years lived together in the buildings ringing the enormous Freshman Court.

All the First Years except for us.

At least our dormitory was just across the street. My brother had told me that McHerrin was used for a jumble of purposes — it housed students whose houses were undergoing renovation, or foreign students visiting just for a term.

And apparently, McHerrin was where they put gimps like me.

Dana and I passed through a set of marble gates and headed toward the scent of barbecued chicken. This was Freshman Court, where each building was more elegant and antique than the last. They all sported steep stone steps stretching up to carved wooden doors. I couldn’t help but ogle their ornate facades like a tourist. This was Harkness College — the stone gargoyles, the three centuries of history. It was gorgeous, if not handicapped-accessible.

“I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry that we’re not living in Fresh Court with the rest of our class,” I said, using my brother’s slang for the first year dorms. “It’s kind of unfair that you’re stuck in McHerrin with me.”

“Corey, stop apologizing!” Dana insisted. “We’re going to meet lots of people. And we have such a great room. I’m not worried.”

Together, we approached the center of the lawn, where a tent was set up. The strains of someone’s guitar floated on the warm September air, while the smell of charcoal wafted past our noses.

I never dreamed I’d show up for college in a wheelchair. Some people say that after a life-threatening event, they learn to enjoy life more. That they stop taking everything for granted.

Sometimes I felt like punching those people.

But today I understood. The September sun was warm, and my roommate was as friendly in person as she was over email. And I was breathing. So I had better learn to appreciate it.

2

The next morning was the first day of classes. Armed with my special copy of the The Harkness Accessible Campus Map, I rolled through the sunshine toward the math department. As advertised, the building had a perfectly adequate wheelchair ramp and wide doors on its western side.

So Calculus 105 was accessible, if not exciting.

After that, it was off to Economics 101, a class my father had suggested. “I always wished I knew more about money,” he’d confessed, in a rare moment of regret. “I asked your brother to give econ a try, and he liked it. I’d like you to give it a try, too.” This was a powerful negotiating tactic, seeing as I’d played the Big Brother card for my own selfish purposes. My knockout punch in the fraught discussion of where I should go to college this year had been: “Damien went to Harkness, I’m going too.” Neither of my parents had been able to look their disabled daughter in the eye and argue with that.

They’d caved, and so to please my father, I signed up for a semester’s worth of microeconomics. Whatever that was. The upshot was that my Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings — with Calculus and then econ — were going to be awfully dull.

The economics lecture hall was big and old, with ancient oak seats in tight rows. There was no obvious wheelchair parking spot, so I reversed myself into position against the back wall, next to a couple of old mismatched chairs.

A minute later, someone dropped heavily into the chair next to me. A glance to my right revealed a tanned, muscular forearm stowing a pair of wooden crutches.

It seemed that my hot neighbor had arrived.

My little feathered hope fairy woke up and whispered into my ear. Economics just got better.

With a groan, Hartley kicked his backpack out in front of him on the wood floor, and then wrestled the heel of his broken leg on top of it. Then he tipped his head back against the paneled wall behind us and said, “Shoot me, Callahan. Why did I sign up for a class so far away from McHerrin?”

“You could always call the gimpmobile,” I suggested.

Turning his chin, those chocolaty brown eyes caught me in their tractor beam. “Sorry?”

For a second there, I almost forgot what I’d been saying. The gimpmobile. Right. “There’s a van.” I handed him my accessible map. “You call this number ahead of time, and they’ll pick you up for class.”

“Who knew?” Hartley frowned at the map. “Is that what you do?”

“Honestly? I’d rather paste a bright red L to my forehead than call the van.” I made the universal sign for “loser” with my fingers, and Hartley snorted with laughter. His dimple appeared, and I had to fight off the urge to reach over and put my thumb over it.

Just then, a skinny girl with straight dark hair and giant glasses slid into the seat on the other side of Hartley.

“Excuse me,” he said, turning to her. “This section is reserved for gimps.”

She looked up at him, eyes huge, and then bolted from her chair like a frightened rabbit. I watched her run down the aisle and slide into another seat.

“Well, I knew you were kidding,” I said.

“Right?” Hartley gave me another smile so warm and devilish that I could not look away. Then he slapped a notebook onto his lap just as a professor began tapping the microphone on the lectern.

Professor Rumpel looked to be about 109 years old, give or take a decade. “Class,” he began. “It really is true what they say about economics. The answer to any test question is ‘supply and demand.’” The old man let out a breathy gust of air into the microphone.

Hartley leaned closer to me and whispered, “I think that was supposed to be a joke.”

The proximity made my face feel hot. “We are in serious trouble,” I whispered back.

But really, I was referring to me.

Hartley’s cell phone rang as class ended, so I gave him a friendly wave and rolled out of the lecture hall alone. Then, after consulting my trusty gimp map, I headed toward the biggest dining hall on campus. Harkness Commons had been built in the 1930s to accommodate the entire college at once. Slowly, I wheeled into the crowded, cavernous space. Before me stretched over one hundred wooden tables. After swiping my ID at the door, I had to watch the flow of bodies inside to determine where to go next.

Students flowed past me toward one wall of the room. So I wound my wheelchair through the tables toward what looked like a line. Drifting forward while trying to read a chalkboard, I accidentally bumped the person in line in front of me. She spun around quickly, a look of irritation on her face until she looked down and realized what had hit her. “Sorry!” she said quickly.

I felt my face flush. “I’m sorry,” I echoed. And why was she sorry, anyway? I’m the dope who ran into her.

This was one of the strange truths about driving a wheelchair. Nine out of ten times, anyone I bumped — or maybe even flattened — would apologize. It made no sense at all, and somehow it also pissed me off.

I found the end of the line. But then I noticed that everyone else in line had collected a tray already, and silverware. So I steered myself out of line, found the trays and cutlery, and then added myself to the end again. Waiting in line in my chair put me at eye-level with other people’s rear ends. It was the same way the world had looked when I was seven years old.

I swear to God, the guy who made my sandwich could not have moved slower if he had both wrists tied together. I stood there, my ankle throbbing, my good leg shaking. It didn’t help that I’d skipped breakfast. By the time he handed the plate over, I thought I might pass out.

“Thanks,” I said. I took the plate in my right hand, and then jammed my right crutch under my armpit. I tried to walk away like that, without gripping the crutch handle. My balance off, I swayed, and then had to lean against the service counter just to stay vertical. My crutch fell to the floor with a bang.

Fail. The only saving grace was that the sandwich didn’t jump ship, too.

“Hey gimp!” a voice called from behind me.

I turned around, but it took me a minute to find Corey, because I was looking for someone my own height. After an awkward second, I looked down and spotted her. “Callahan,” I said. “Did you see that suave maneuver?”

With a smile, she took the plate out of my hand and set it on her tray. “Don’t kill yourself in the name of a…” she looked at the plate. “Turkey club. I’ll carry it for you if you can give me a second.”

“Thanks,” I sighed. I hopped aside, and waited while the same under-motivated sandwich guy made her lunch.

Several hours later (I might be exaggerating), our tray contained two sandwiches, chips, cookies, my glasses of milk and her diet soda. “I think I see a free table over there, in the next zip code,” I muttered, crutching forward. Corey wheeled our booty to the table, where I yanked one of the heavy wooden chairs out of the way to make a parking spot for her.

Then I collapsed into a chair. “Jesus, Mary and mother of God.” I rested my forehead against the heels of my hands. “That only took about seven times as long as it’s supposed to.”

Corey handed me my plate. “It’s a new injury, isn’t it?” she asked, picking up her sandwich.

“Is it that obvious? I did it a week ago at hockey preseason training camp.”

“Hockey, huh?” A strange look crossed her face.

“Sort of. See, I didn’t break it playing hockey, because that would at least make sense. I broke the leg falling off a climbing wall.”

Her jaw dropped. “Did the ropes break?”

Not exactly. “There may not have been ropes. Also, it may have been two in the morning.” I winced, because it’s no fun telling a pretty girl how big an idiot you are. “Also, I may have been drunk.”

“Ouch. So you can’t even tell people that you’re the victim of a poke check gone wrong?”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you a hockey fan, Callahan?”

“Kind of.” She fidgeted with a potato chip. “My father is a high-school hockey coach,” she said. “And my brother Damien was the senior wing on your team last year.”

“No shit! You’re Callahan’s little sister?”

She smiled, which made her blue eyes glitter. She had a kick-ass smile, and rosy coloring, as if she’d just run a 5K race. “That’s right.”

“See, I knew you were cool.” I took a gulp of milk.

“So,” she picked up her sandwich. “If your break is only a week old, you must be in a lot of pain.”

I shrugged while chewing on a bite. “The pain I can handle. But it’s just so fucking awkward. Getting dressed takes a half hour. And taking a shower is ridiculous.”

“At least temporarily.”

I froze mid-bite, dismayed by my own stupidity. “Shit, Callahan. Listen to me bitching about twelve weeks in a cast…” I put down my sandwich. “I’m kind of an asshole.”

She flushed. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I swear. Because if you can’t complain a little bit, then neither can I.”

“Why not?” I think I’d just proved that she had every right to bitch. Especially with assholes like me running around.

Corey toyed with her napkin. “Well, after my accident, my parents sent me to a support group for people with spinal cord injuries, which is how I ended up…” she waved her hands over her lap. “Anyway, the room was full of people who can’t move a whole lot more body parts than I can’t move. Many of them can’t feel their arms. They can’t feed themselves, or turn over in bed. They couldn’t even get out of a burning building, or send an email, or hug someone.”

I rested my face in my hand. “Well that’s uplifting.”

“Tell me about it. Those people scared the crap out of me, and I never went back. And if I can whine — and trust me, I do — you might as well gripe about hopping around like a flamingo.” She picked up her sandwich again.

“So…” I didn’t have any idea whether this was too personal a question. “When was this?”

“When was what?” Her eyes evaded me.

“The accident.”

“January fifteenth.”

“Wait…this January fifteenth? Like, eight months ago?” She gave me a tiny nod. “So…last week you said, ‘fuck it, it’s September. I’d better move across the country and get on with it?’”

Corey pounded her soda, quite possibly to escape my scrutiny. “Well…more or less. But seriously, what is the proper mourning period over the use of one’s legs?” She looked me full in the face then, one eyebrow raised.

Fuck. This girl probably just cured me from whining for the rest of my life, right there. “You are hardcore, Corey Callahan.”

She gave me a little shrug. “The college offered me a year’s deferral, but I didn’t take it. You met my parents. I didn’t want to sit home and watch them wring their hands.”

My phone rang, and I had to give Corey the universal signal for “just a second” while I picked up Stacia. “Hi, hottie,” I answered. “I’m sitting at a table against the back wall. Love you too.” I stashed the phone. “Okay…wait. So a little tender loving care drove you into a different time zone?”

“The three of us were half insane last year. This was best for everyone.”

That hadn’t occurred to me, but it should have. When you have an accident, it doesn’t just happen to you. “I can almost see it. My mom drove me batshit crazy last week. But I probably deserved it.”

“Your mom was pissed about your broken leg?”

“Sure she was. It’s not like I broke it saving babies from a burning building. My mom missed a couple days of work taking care of me, and now there’s a whopping E.R. bill, too.”

“Your coach must be spitting fire,” Corey pointed out.

“You got it. I’ve heard the ‘You Let Everyone Down’ lecture several times already.” I began to watch the door for Stacia. A couple of minutes and a half a sandwich later, a gorgeous girl appeared in the archway. As she stood there, scanning the tables, I couldn’t look away. Stacia had it all. She was tall, and yet somehow curvy, with flowing yellow hair and the bearing of a princess. When she spotted me, her big hazel eyes lit up. Then she pointed those long legs in my direction. And the first thing she did when she arrived beside me was to kiss me full on the mouth.

We’d been dating for most of a year, and it still shocked me every time she did that.

“Stacia,” I said after she released my lips. “This is my new neighbor Callahan. She and her roommate Dana are in Beaumont House, too.”

“Nice to meet you,” Stacia said quickly, with the barest glance at Corey. “Hartley, are you ready to go?”

I laughed. “Babe, you don’t know how hard we had to work for this food,” I said. “So give me a few minutes to finish it.” I pulled out a chair for her.

Stacia sat down, but didn’t bother to conceal her irritation. She stabbed at her phone while I took my time with my cookies and milk.

Corey had gone quiet, but that was okay, because Stacia was always ready to fill dead air with another of her first-world problems. “My hairdresser says she can’t fit me in tomorrow. That’s so wrong,” my girlfriend complained.

“I’m pretty sure they have salons in Paris,” I said, not that she’d listen. Stacia was the pickiest girl on the planet. The food in the dining halls didn’t meet her standards — so she bought most of her meals off campus. Her shampoo was mail-ordered, because none of the fifty brands at the drugstore would do. She wasn’t exactly warm to new people, either.

And yet Stacia looked at me the same way she looked at a shopping bag from Prada. The fancy girl from Greenwich, Connecticut wanted this guy. This guy right here, the one in the Bruins cap and the Gold’s Gym T-shirt.

I could tell you it didn’t make me feel a foot taller, but I’d be lying.

Corey drained her soda, and then began to stack our stuff back on her tray.

“Hey, Stacia?” I put my hand on my girlfriend’s wrist to get her attention. “Will you do us a solid and bus this?”

She looked up from her phone, surprised. Then she glanced from the tray to the back of the dining hall, as if calculating the effort. For a long moment, she hesitated. I could tell that Corey was just on the verge of offering to do it when Stacia rose suddenly, grabbed the tray and stomped off.

I shook my head, aiming a sheepish smile at my new neighbor. “At her house, the staff does that sort of thing.”

I could tell by the look on Corey’s face that she had no idea whether I was joking or not. Actually, I wasn’t.

See, Stacia was a piece of work. But she was my piece of work.

3

“So how was the first day?” Dana asked when I arrived home that afternoon. She was perched on our window seat, painting her fingernails.

“Good,” I said. “I found all three of my classes on the first try. You?”

“Yeah! And I really like my history of art professor.”

“Is he hot?” I made a comical wiggle with my eyebrows.

“He is if you’re into seventy-five year olds.”

“Who says I’m not?” I did a wheelie in my chair, because there was really no furniture in my way. Dana’s desk was against one wall, her trunk shoved up next to it. Our room still echoed.

“Whoa! Isn’t that dangerous?” she asked.

“Nope.” I did it again, popping back onto two wheels and then spinning in a circle. “But it does make me dizzy.”

“Isn’t there such a thing as wheelchair basketball?” Dana asked, blowing on her nails.

“Probably,” I dodged. Given my sporty history, more than a dozen people had asked me the same question already. But before my accident, I’d never been interested in hoops. And I was doubly uninterested in some kind of adaptive bullshit. Why did people think that sounded like fun? Why must all gimps love basketball?

Dana capped her nail polish. “So…I’m going to the jam tonight. Do you want to come?”

“What’s a jam?”

“It’s a concert, a showcase for the a cappella singing groups. Are you going to rush?”

I shook my head. “I gave up choir in the eighth grade because it conflicted with hockey.”

“You don’t have to be crazy good,” Dana argued. “There are ten groups, and it’s social as much as musical.”

“Let’s go to the jam, then,” I said. “We’ll check it out.”

“Awesome! It’s right after dinner. I’ll find this auditorium…” She hopped up to dig a campus map out of her bag.

“Nice TV, ladies,” a sexy voice said from the open doorway.

I looked up to see Hartley leaning against our doorjamb. “Thanks,” I said, my heart rate kicking up a notch.

“What you really need is a sofa right here,” he pointed to the empty wall just inside the door. “They’re selling used ones on Fresh Court.”

“We saw them,” Dana said. “But we don’t know how to summon a furniture genie to carry it for us.”

Hartley scraped a hand along his gorgeous jaw. “I guess two gimps and a chick won’t cut it. I’ll work on it at dinner.” He looked at his watch. “…Which starts now. Takers?”

“Sure,” Dana said. “I haven’t been to the Beaumont dining hall yet.”

“So let’s go,” Hartley said, turning his crutches toward the outside door.

Dana and I followed Hartley out of McHerrin and down the street. Beaumont House, in all its Gothic glory, had big iron gates. Dana swept her ID in front of the reader and the gate clicked open. She held the door for Hartley and then for me.

The gimp parade was slow going, with Hartley on crutches, and me driving cautiously. The flagstone pathway was uneven, and I didn’t want to catch my wheels on one of the cracks and do a face plant. It was hard enough being The Girl in the Wheelchair. I didn’t need to be The Girl Who Ejected From Her Wheelchair.

We made our way through one small stone courtyard and into the larger one, which was on every official Harkness tour. My brother Damien had once complained about dodging tourists and their cameras when he was on the way to class. But if that was the price of living in an historic granite and marble castle, so be it.

On the far side of the courtyard, Hartley stopped our progress. “Shit,” he said, looking up at the building. “The dining hall is on the second floor. I forgot about the stairs.”

“You know, Beaumont dining hall isn’t on the accessible map,” I said. “I think I’ll try another dining hall.” Commons wasn’t open for dinner, but I’d already memorized which houses had first-floor dining rooms.

Hartley leaned over the handles of his crutches and shook his head. “I’m not climbing it, either. But…how does the food get up there? I bet they don’t carry it up the stairs.” He frowned up at the building. “I can’t believe I’ve eaten here for two years and never wondered about that.” He turned toward another gate leading out onto the street. “Dana, we’ll meet you inside. There must be a service entrance. This way, Callahan.”

My face pink, I followed Hartley out onto Pine Alley, which backed up to both Beaumont and Turner House.

“That will be it,” Hartley grinned. He limped toward a gray metal door with an intercom beside it. He pushed the button.

“Yeah!” came a voice.

He looked at me, his dimple showing. “Delivery!”

A moment later, the gray door slid open to reveal a dimly lit elevator carriage, which was not even full height. “Classy,” Hartley said. “Well, let’s do this.” There was a slight lip, which almost tripped him up. But he ducked inside, holding the door while I rolled myself backwards into the car. The door slid shut with a grinding sound that scared me. Was this going to become one of those moments — the kind you look back on later and wonder why you followed a hot guy into a shaky, unmarked elevator? But Hartley only chuckled as the car seemed to tremble around us. “I hope you have good lungs, in case we need to yell for help.”

The car rose so slowly that I didn’t relax until the door finally wheezed open. When we emerged into a brightly lit kitchen, a guy in a chef’s hat frowned at us, and several busy people in white aprons turned to stare. “Don’t tell me you lost our reservation?” Hartley scoffed, looking around. “This way, Callahan.” I followed him across a tile floor, around a glass-faced serving bay, and into the melee of students waiting with trays in hand.

“There you are!” Dana said, making room for us. “How’d you get up here?”

“In the service elevator,” Hartley said. “It worked like a charm. Dana, can you grab us one more tray?”

“Sure, take this one.” She darted off, returning with another tray and two more sets of cutlery.

The line snaked forward, and eventually we were up next. “Can you see over?” Hartley asked.

No, as usual. “What looks good?” I asked.

“Meatball sub. Fish looks a little scary.”

“Easy decision, then.”

“Two subs, please,” Hartley said.

“Can I help you guys carry anything?” Dana asked.

Hartley answered, “Callahan and I have a system.”

When he looked away, Dana gave me a meaningful eyebrow twist. I bit back a grin.

Purchase The Year We Fell Down

BLONDE DATE

by Sarina Bowen

Copyright © 2014 Sarina Bowen, all rights reserved

Cover image: P e t a r D j o r d j e v i c / Shutterstock

Cover design: Tina Anderson

eISBN 978-0-9910680-4-3

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Blonde Date is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously.

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