Again Page 15

  I laughed it off, but it was. Especially considering I was pretty sure I’d bombed it.

  “How do you think you did?” I asked before Parker could give us the first answer. I scanned her test. Her answer to number one was different than mine, which meant one or both of us were completely wrong.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” she replied.

  I fixated on my pen and Kate’s test as Professor Parker took us through grading them.

  Question 1 Kate: Correct, Me: Very Incorrect

  Question 2 Kate: Correct, Me: Blank

  Question 3 Kate: Incorrect, Me: Correct— fucking finally.

  Question 4 Kate: Correct, Me: Correct

  Question 5 Kate: Correct, Me: Incorrect

  Verdict: Kate was the student and I was the truant. Three years older than her and supposedly ready for law school and I’d gotten my ass handed to me by a freshman who’d just transferred here.

  I may have been calculating like Kate had said, but when it came to facts would I really make a good lawyer?

  All I’d focused on for years was getting the hell out of here; not having to put into practice what I’d learned when I left.

  I started out studying the law because of my father. Not that I necessarily wanted to be a lawyer like he said I had to be, but maybe I wasn’t good enough to even make the choice.

  “Pass them forward,” Professor Parker said, gesturing toward himself.

  “So,” Kate said sitting back and cracking her knuckles, an echo to my cockiness earlier, “maybe you want to study with me.” Her smile was devious, beautiful.

  “Please,” I replied.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Kate

  I headed to Professor Parker’s office for my weekly advisory meeting. At least he wouldn’t give me crap about my quiz score, but for some weird reason it did seem like he would give me crap about Carter. There was something about the way he looked at us when we were sitting next to each other in class.

  Or maybe it had been about me, seeing me next to someone who was clearly supposed to be so much older than I was and realizing something wasn’t right.

  I was doing my best to ignore the gnawing anxiety, but it was only a matter of time before someone realized something was very wrong.

  Professor Parker took off his glasses as I walked in and gave me his full attention, his brown eyes suctioned to me. “Ah, Kate, how’s the week been?”

  “Great,” I lied, settling in the seat across from him, laying my bag at my side. Yes, just great. I’m falling for a guy I could have babysat for who has no idea I’m totally lying to him, and I have two crazy sorority girls, who were too crazy to even be in a sorority, gunning for me.

  Even if I had made it more than a full week sober, this was not an ideal place to be sitting three weeks into college-take-two.

  “Your quiz was impressive,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I replied, feeling positive at first, but I gritted my teeth, willing him to not ask me how I’d done it.

  I’d only had the answers because of my time at Franklin Law. I couldn’t help filling in the blanks before I even finished reading the question. I hoped I hadn’t done better than everyone in class. That my pride wouldn’t come back to screw me when Professor Parker realized no one knew the answers but me. Not even someone who had taken the class before.

  Hopefully he was the kind of conceited egomaniac who would think I had read ahead to show off for him.

  “It was so remarkable I checked into your background a bit.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked abruptly, on the verge of fainting, my heartbeat stinging. Our routine meeting was switching into something very different. Maybe this was it. I was busted.

  “Your transcripts and SATs,” he said, his gaze seemingly frozen in place from the cold chill I was giving off.

  “Yes?” My mind erupted with anxiety.

  “Calm down, you’re a student, Kate, not a defendant.”

  Yet, I thought.

  “Anyway,” he continued, sitting back in his chair, “I’m not sure why you left Syracuse University, but if you keep getting grades like your quiz, I don’t see the same happening here.”

  My fingers started to twitch so much I shoved one of them in my mouth and started biting my nail.

  “You seemed concerned that I looked at your file.”

  My file, a manila folder of lies—photoshopped lies anyone on the faculty could casually peruse. I only hoped he didn’t know anyone who taught at Syracuse.

  It was where I had really gone my first semester. Of course, my transcripts read as last year, not eleven years ago, and my grades had been altered to A’s.

  “No,” I said, trying to gather myself. For now I was safe. He’d seen my doctored transcripts, my real recent SAT scores, my application filled with lies, but he still believed me. Even with me shaking like there was a seismic fault down the center of my body that had ruptured he still believed I was just any other student.

  “I’m sorry if you feel like I overstepped, but you were one of the highest scores in the class,” he said. “I guess I couldn’t help myself.”

  I knew all about that. Regardless of my rules, I couldn’t help sampling every temptation put in front of me in college-take-two.

  “Your RA Carter wasn’t so lucky,” he said, leaning forward, his hands clasped on top of his desk.

  “I know,” I replied, exhaling, relieved for the moment the subject had been changed.

  “I guess even he learned there are just things you can’t anticipate.”

  He said it in such a way I couldn’t help but wonder if the chapter he chose to quiz us on had an awful lot to do with Carter.

  Did Professor Parker hate failure that much? Or was it something about Carter? Why did it seem like everyone had something against him?

  “We’re going to start studying together,” I said, though I’m not sure why. Maybe I wanted him to tell me it was a bad idea.

  It was. Everything concerning Carter was. Even if it felt like I was exactly who I should be when I was with him, he had no idea who I really was. He never could if I stayed at Hudson. Even if I finally decided to tell him when he graduated, I would have been lying to him for months.

  How did you come back from that?

  “Study partners are great,” Professor Parker said, sitting back in his chair, “but you want to make sure you know what you’re getting into.”

  What the hell did that mean? I guess it meant Professor Parker also knew about Carter’s past. The thing was, no matter what Professor Parker thought of Carter, it wouldn’t have made him nearly as bad as I actually was. I knew exactly what I was getting into. It was Carter who didn’t.

  Carter was harmless, like one of the kittens from the SPCA. I was the Lion.

  “The one thing you should have learned from my class is you can’t predict anything,” Professor Parker said.

  Considering what had happened since I’d been here, I’d more than learned this maxim.

  I’d also learned that as wrong as being with Carter should have been, it was the only thing that made sense anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Carter

  “You’re not, like, embarrassed to kiss me because I did better on the quiz than you or something, right?” Kate asked, stopping on the quad, her cheeks pink and her eyes shining in the overhead lights, her breath warm in the cold.

  We’d met at the library to study the past two nights. All we had done those nights was study and all I had done was stare at her lips, wishing we weren’t in the library. Wishing we weren’t studying, wishing the campus wasn’t around us, holding me back from her, stronger than any two arms.

  “No,” I laughed. I couldn’t help but glance around. The quad was quiet on a weeknight at eleven o’clock p.m. There were people out but not the steady stream of only a few hours earlier.

  “So what are you waiting for?” she asked in the direct way I had grown to admire.

  “There’s no schedu
le,” I said, buying time.

  What the hell was I waiting for?

  I’m not sure why I hadn’t yet. I’d wanted to. It was my only thought when she spoke to me, when I watched her lips move. The whole room fell away except those lips, like my own personal viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, her perfect pink lips, the color of new tulips, the shape of two hearts against black.

  “It feels like there is, like you’re pausing or something.”

  Clearly she sensed my hesitation, too bad I couldn’t explain it had nothing to do with her. When it came to her all I felt was yes, never maybe, but we were back on campus and kissing her was something I didn’t think I had the right to do here.

  At least I hadn’t until she’d brought it up.

  “I want to kiss you, there is pretty much nothing I’ve ever wanted more,” I said, pulling my bag higher on my shoulder, needing to keep my hands there for now, because if I would have just touched her, kissed her, I might have knocked her over.

  “Okay.” Amusement flickered across her face, “Just remember, I’m patient, but I’m not dead.”

  A current pulsed between us, even more evident because of the cold. Or maybe it had been building since that weekend. Each moment we spent with each other another spark ignited on the track of a roller coaster only going up. “You’re one of the most alive people I’ve ever met,” I said.

  She moved closer to me, the tips of her boots touching mine. “You say there isn’t a schedule, but you should consider following one. It might make this whole thing easier.”

  “So what would tonight be?”

  “Counting the night we met…” She considered. “…Our fifth date.”

  “What do people do on their fifth dates?” I asked, leaning toward her.

  “They don’t have to ask for someone to kiss them, for starters,” she said, licking her lips so they sparkled in the night.

  Urgency hummed inside me, a throb, a scream for more. “What do they ask for?”

  “Are you going to make me beg?” she laughed.

  I reached out for her, gripped the small of her back, startling her laugh into a gasp. I stroked her cheek, making the anticipation last. Letting the before build like the flood I felt when I was around her. I ran my thumb against her top lip, her bottom lip, her chin, forcing it to be too much, something I couldn’t keep myself from drowning in.

  “Beg,” I said. Our lips were millimeters away.

  Her heartbeat drummed through her coat, her breath smelled of sweet coffee, her pulse beat behind her cheeks.

  “On my knees?” she asked, her eyes blazing. The flood was filling her, too.

  I wiped away a snowflake from her cheek, shiny like a tear.

  “On my back?” she whispered, thrusting her body closer.

  The flood was at my chin. Soon it would be at my lips and kissing hers would be the only way I could breathe. The only way I could save us, the only thing that might ever save me.

  “What do you suggest?” I asked, sliding my hands lower on her waist.

  “You could beg,” she said, an arresting smile dazzling on her lips.

  I studied her, her open brown eyes, her delicate chin, and her wild hair. I wished I could bury my nose in it, smell her, a sweetness mixed with something burned like sugar cookies baking.

  “Once I kiss you, I’ll want to do more, a lot more,” I admitted, the words shaking between us.

  “More is okay,” she said. “Sometimes,” she breathed, “more is suggested.”

  I couldn’t keep the flood down anymore. I hurled my mouth on top of hers right there in the center of the quad—nothing to hide behind and nothing more to say.

  People walked around us, path lights blazed, buildings stood, the campus stirred, but we were still, together, planted in our moment.

  We kept kissing feverishly as the snow came down as soft as feathers, her lips so hot they could melt everything. Her hands were tight on my back, so tight I could tell she was drowning like I was. We were all we could hold onto in this whole world.

  I was strong enough to hold her and she seemed strong enough to hold me right back.

  Maybe I didn’t have to be afraid of what other people would say to her, maybe she was all I needed. Maybe she was all that mattered.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Kate

  I’d convinced Dawn to come with me to the SPCA volunteer day on Saturday. It only took half an hour of showing her the pictures on my phone of the super cute kittens and puppies I’d met when I got stuck there with Carter. Like any good Goth, good straight edge, she was a vegan too. A vegan could only see animals in cages for so long before she would eventually agree to anything.

  It was like my own version of adorable animal picture-boarding

  I was fine with Carter one on one, but we’d never hung out with other people around. Not that Dawn was the kind of person who seemed like she’d do better in a group.

  She sat in the backseat of Carter’s Jeep next to me, wearing her usual abnormal level of black. She could have used the pavement we drove over as camouflage. Carter’s friend Tristan rode shotgun.

  I could tell Carter wanted me in front with him. We did that weird where should I sit dance when we first got to the car, but there was no way I would put anyone in the backseat with Dawn.

  I was scared enough to be back there myself.

  “We’re seriously the only people who signed up?” she asked, clearly unimpressed when Carter explained no one else was coming from school.

  I knew what she meant. The dorm, hell, the campus, was a very big place with thousands of students and only four of us had signed up?

  Were people that selfish, or was there something I was missing?

  Of course, I never would have signed up to do something like this my real freshman year.

  I never would have signed up for something like this if it wasn’t for Carter.

  “It’s double the turnout from Hudson we got last year,” Tristan said.

  “Glad we could help,” I said, smiling so hard at Dawn it hurt.

  It was odd, like a lot of things involving Carter, but I certainly didn’t have a right to judge.

  “There will be people there from the community, too,” Carter said, sending the same smile over to Tristan I’d laid on Dawn.

  Obviously there was a hell of a lot more in the car going unsaid rather than uttered. We rode on in silence, realizing that competing with the unspoken was futile.

  Dawn put on her headphones and I leaned against the window, blowing condensation in a circle.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Carter and I would have been talking if we were alone, if we would have tried to compete with everything left unspoken between us. Everything we felt for each other that we still hadn’t completely consummated.

  It was probably good Dawn and Tristan were there. At least then we could avoid talking about us—because us was a whole thing.

  We’d started sneaking kisses. It had become a part of our routine, but there was something hasty about them, something hidden. It wasn’t like Carter walked me to my door, or even to the door of the dorm. We would kiss good-bye in the shadows before we arrived. I would go in the front door and he would take the stairs—ten whole flights just to avoid going in with me.

  He said it was because he was my RA, but that excuse was wearing thin.

  Whatever—if he was really hiding what was going on between us he wouldn’t have asked me to come with him today.

  Ugh, what was the difference? It wasn’t like we could have a future or anything. No matter how much I kept fooling myself into believing it.

  The sun was shining when we parked in front of the SPCA. There were bright balloons flying on both sides of the porch announcing the specialness of this day. It was what balloons did best, staying useful only for the amount of time your celebration lasted, physical symbols of that blast of happy and deflating when real life came back.

  “Oh goody,” Dawn sneered. “Balloons are my f
avorite.”

  I wasn’t surprised. She wouldn’t show that any of this appealed to her. Balloons, kittens, and puppies would be something she would have claimed to have on a list to make a potion from rather than something she would celebrate. But I also knew her better now; she played a part, like I did.

  “You can bring one back to the dorm,” Carter sneered back. “I’ll save you a pink one.”

  “No,” Tristan bleated, “the pink ones are for me.”

  “So predictable,” Carter laughed.

  I liked seeing Carter this way. He was comfortable, so in his element with Tristan.

  I also liked seeing Dawn this way. She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was suppressing a laugh.

  We walked into a house transformed since the night Carter and I had been stuck here. A phone bank sat in front of the cat cages, a table with donuts and coffee banked along the side of the room, and people were everywhere, answering phones, helping visitors with adoptions, passing out water bottles and visitor passes.

  We waited by the coffee while Carter went and talked to the person in charge.

  “Balloons and holes,” Tristan said, pointing at the donuts, “I feel like I’m at a gay pride parade.”

  “You’re seriously hilarious,” I said. I was glad I wasn’t drinking coffee because it would have come out my nose.

  “If you can’t laugh at yourself,” he said.

  “Someone else will,” I replied.

  He nodded.

  “Hopefully today will be better than last year,” I said.

  “Definitely more interesting,” he said. I waited for him to look at Dawn but he kept his eyes trained on me. I couldn’t help but blush.

  “I love animals,” I said as explanation for a question he wasn’t asking.

  He smiled for the response he didn’t need to give.

  Dawn grabbed a cup of coffee.

  “Make yourself at home why don’t you,” Tristan said.

  “I would never live somewhere with cat-piss-scented air freshener,” Dawn replied.

  “I guess you’d do better in a place with a moat,” Tristan said.

  “Only if you can’t swim,” Dawn said.