Still, I remained silent, feeling braced by Clay's hand on my shoulder. After a few more seconds I turned to my buddy and flicked my head in the direction of Frat Row. As we turned, I could see them gaping, turning to each other all outraged. I don't know what they expected of me. But I do know that as I left those two in the dust, I felt the weirdest lift in my shoulders. Relief.
Chapter Sixteen
Ash
September 1st
“You're settling in okay?” Anya asked for what felt like the three-hundredth time. Mom had made it her prerogative to visit my closet of a dorm room four times already, though I'd only been at college for two weeks. I'd never seen her so hands-on about anything. My new roommate, Lotte, was demonstrably un-amused about this third addition to room 6E.
“Yes, Anya,” I repeated, as my mother fussed with a mini-fridge magnet. “Is everything okay? You really didn't need to come celebrate my first quiz in Organic Chemistry.” Especially as you didn't know until today I was taking that class, I added silently. Our relationship was one built on my independence. It felt strange to fuck with the formula.
“I know, baby, I know,” Anya said, running her fingers down the silk curtains Carson had made for me. “I'm just happy to visit, you know. It can get a little lonely in the house without you.”
Lotte sighed dramatically from her desk corner, and I took a dainty step towards my mother. We could at least talk in lower tones, if she had to talk so much.
“What do you mean, lonely? Didn't you get married a few weeks ago? How's the Pastor?”
Anya's smile was delayed on its way to her face. She'd never been an excellent liar, but I was surprised to see how much effort it seemed to take for her to approximate newlywed bliss. I set down my orgo book, sighed, and really looked at my mother.
“Everything's going okay with you two, right?” I said slowly. But mom had made a decision to play her cards close to the chest. She nodded furiously at me before getting up to hunt around the room for her purse.
“Mom? Did I say something off? You know you can always talk to me, right?” But Anya had already reached the door, and seemed married to her ruse.
She nodded tightly again, eyes wide, smile manic. “Just don't be a stranger, sugar,” she said, blowing me a kiss. “And hey, I like that. Mom.”
Unexpected Anya visits aside, college was a mixed bag so far. Lotte didn't seem too interested in exploring UT's vivacious social life, which made studying in the dorm easy, but friend-making less so. Melanie, my old pre-college study buddy, had reappeared to drag me out to a few mixers. Together, we'd made it to a few floor shin-digs, in the name of being social. I'd let a tall, Korean basketball player give me a hickey at a kegger. I'd played a game of Truth or Dare with my suitemates that resulted in my making out with Lotte's favorite teddy bear. Classes were actually challenging, more so than at any point in high school. But despite all this, I did feel like something was missing.
“It takes a while for a new place to feel like home,” Nate had told me not two nights before, over Portobello burgers at Kerbey Lane. Oh—and I'd also been spending some time with Nate. “I remember my freshman year. It took a month for me to find my people.”
“Oh, the Star Trek Fan Club was that hard to track down?” I'd grinned. He'd rolled his eyes. It was easy to talk to Nate. He and I were so similar. Ever since the wedding reception (where Dempsey had offered to foot half the dinner bill, attempted to dance with me, and ended the night with a sweet, chaste kiss), we'd been casually kicking it. I got to hear all about his incoming crop of freshman hell-raisers, and he got to give me sage advice about the “formative years.” Everything was peachy-keen.
In fact, there was a lot to like about Nate Dempsey. He was only twenty-three (“completely respectable,” in Carson's estimate), he was soft-spoken and sarcastic, and we could talk easily about books and music. On our third date, he'd introduced me to Nirvana, and I hadn't been able to take In Utero off shuffle since that day. He was as kind and considerate as step-brother Landon was cagey and erratic.
And last night, we'd finally had The Conversation. Nate had walked me up to my dorm room doors and taken off his glasses, so I could catch streaks of moonlight bouncing around his blue eyes.
“I had a really nice time tonight,” he'd murmured, bending low. I'd smiled and presented my face for our usual good-night kiss, with minimal tongue action. I’d thought we'd both been in the business of taking things slow. But then, he'd leaned just the slightest bit further, breaking some invisible barrier we'd spent the past two weeks ignoring. I'd felt something thick and hard and insistent through his jeans.
“I would really like to come up,” Mr. Dempsey had whispered, so close to my ear that his stubble scraped my cheek. His hands, meanwhile, had found purchase on my bare arms. He'd begun stroking me, in the slow, soothing way one strokes a pet. I'd waited to feel the pull. But it hadn't come.
“Lotte's cramming for her first Econ test tonight,” I'd said, instead of something sexy and invitational. I don't know why I made the decision so fast, nor why I was so...un-turned on. Dempsey was cute, he was smart, he was older. Easily the best guy who'd ever wanted to date me, in any city, at any school. I'd kicked myself as he walked off towards his bus stop. Luckily, he hadn't seemed too disappointed when I ended the evening with a few vague bumps against his nether regions and a soft, long make-out sesh. At the end, he'd wiggled his eyebrows in a way that telegraphed: next time, you're not getting out of it.
Now, I regarded my mother from the dorm window. She meandered in the direction of the parking lot, seeming to take her sweet time. It occurred to me that as Anya had never attended college, maybe the place itself contained mystery and excitement for her. Maybe that was why she visiting so often. Or maybe she was finally trying to repair our fraught relationship, and play the part of the mother who'd always been around to give a damn. But something else told me that she'd been lying before, by the curtains. Maybe her and the Pastor's honeymoon phase had reached its inevitable conclusion.
The idea of a 'honeymoon phase' prompted a freaky flash of an image in my mind's eye—there was me and Mr. Dempsey as doddering old folks, sharing the newspaper over a breakfast table. I tried to imagine kicking it with the AV teacher for any kind of long haul. Didn't they say half the world found their soul mates in college? Was this all how love worked, perhaps? A kind-enough guy met a kind-enough woman and they began a good-enough life together?
“You're not going to pass any test if you keep staring off into space like that,” Lotte said, rattling her water glass to secure my attention. I listened to the cubes clinking against the glass, and thought about the man who hadn't kissed me two nights ago.
It had been so many days since I'd seen my step-brother.
There'd been a moment.
At the wedding reception, as the bride and groom slurped spiced shrimp from the tines of one another's forks. Landon had clinked his own utensil against his girlfriend's wineglass, because he himself was drinking Johnnie Walker in a low tumbler. Everyone at the table had stopped their chewing and guffawing, like it was some insane surprise that the Best Man would make a speech.