Greek: Double Date (12 page)

“Well, you did. Pretty much by saying what you said. So I’ve moved on. To someone else.”

“Yeah, that’s worked out in the past.”

“This is not all about me!” she cried.

“You seem to think it is.”

“No, I mean, this is about you. And me. And not us. Because we, for some reason we both cannot explain, are not a couple.”

And there it was. That was the sum of it, and neither of them could say it. Or anything. Crickets were audible in the silence.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” Casey said. “Can we not do this?”

“Okay. Truce. But I’m adding the words
Rob
and
stalker
to the list of words that are banned per the conditions of said truce,” he replied. “And…also a gesture of goodwill might be finding somewhere that has Tylenol. Or something stronger than Tylenol. Very soon.”

That was it. She melted before a confused, hurting Cappie, even if he was still lucid enough to make a speech. “Truce.”

Casey and Cappie did their best to put their fight—
not their first, and likely not their last—behind them and focus on their quest to find a decent painkiller. Fortunately the campus drugstore was still open, with minimal offerings of aspirin and no ice, but a cold soda can worked just fine when wrapped in Cappie’s tie and pressed against his eye. To her surprise, he was not willing to return to KT, but intended to keep his promise to see his buddy Dale perform at the engineering after-party—where she was, coincidentally, also going.

“Isn’t KT having that medical-themed party?”

“While women in tight nurses’ uniforms might distract me from the throbbing in my skull, they can’t truly be appreciated with one eye covered by a diet soda can,” he said. “And I promised Dale.”

“So did I.”

“Good, you can be my guide…lady? Woman of great esteem?”

“You were going to say ‘dog.’”

“But I stopped myself!” He cracked a smile. “I blame Dean Bowman.”

“For the black eye and possible brain damage?”

“No, just in general, but also that.”

She laughed and helped him find his way to the party. It was a little surreal, to go from fighting to pain to laughter so quickly, but it was what made Cappie Cappie, and it was what made her love him. Just, not right now. Maybe.

Rob. She had to focus on Rob. Just not mention him in front of Cappie, as per their agreement. But she had to think about him, a lot, even though he was probably back in his dorm or whatever and she was going to the engineering after-party.

Which, it turned out, was quite a party. Far more typical of college life, it was filled with drunken students, some pretty buzzed from last call at the actual ceremony and the others trying to catch up. Darwin Lied, despite the name of the band, was well received. The science-minded students were either too drunk to care or probably thought it was meant to be ironic.

“I forgot—engineers are like overenthusiastic pledges who’ve never seen a girl before when they have an ounce of alcohol in them,” Cappie said, taking a seat as soon as he found one. He removed the soda can, which was now warm, to reveal a thoroughly blackened eye. At least he was using his eye again, and it wasn’t swollen shut. “They completely trashed the house—even by KT’s illustrious standards—when we rented it to them. Destroyed Vesuvius and a lot of furniture. The former loss was worse. People cried.”

“Egyptian Joe?” Egyptian Joe had created Vesuvius as his freshman project for KT, nearly a decade ago.

“He cried over the phone,” Cappie replied, shouting a bit to be heard over the music. “Couldn’t make the funeral.”

“He still doesn’t have a driver’s license?”

“He has a driver’s license. He just doesn’t know how to drive.”

“I think that’s what I meant. You know, licenses can be used for something other than an over-twenty-one ID.”

“Right. My powers of reasoning are…somewhat reduced.” But that didn’t stop him from grabbing a beer from the passing tray.

“Are you really okay?”

“I am really okay.” He was lying, but that was okay. She wasn’t going to get into an argument to talk Cappie into going home, having done that only an hour ago with her brother. Not yet, anyway. “Are you okay? I like repeating things. Possibly a sign of head trauma.”

“I’m fine.” She also accepted a beer. She needed a drink—desperately. She waved to Dale, who smiled but didn’t stop playing. If anything, he played a little bit harder. Dale could be frustrating, but at least he wasn’t complicated—unlike her current apparent charge, a wounded Cappie, looking adorably lost. “I think you should really consider the emergency room.”

“No way,” he responded. “If they have beer there, they are totally going to overcharge for it.”

She sighed. At least one person out of two was willing to do the right thing.

“Go to bed.”

“No.”

“You’re sick.”

“Carrots can’t kill me.”

“You’re home. Nothing’s stopping you.”

“You’re stopping me,” Rusty said, stumbling to his feet to properly face Jordan instead of remaining on the futon. His face was not as swollen, and the redness was decreasing, but there were bags under his eyes from an exhausted body. “I wanted this night to be romantic.”

“I went to the All-Greek Formal with a bunch of scheming, gossipy pledges. How romantic is that?”

He looked sad, like a puppy who’d been bad and knew it. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you.”

“Rusty, it’s a formal. It’s pretentious and the dresses cost way too much. Who cares? We have other nights to be together. Not everything has to go to your ultraromantic plans.”

“You don’t like my romantic plans?”

“Sure…but spontaneity is good, too.” She put a hand on his shoulder, mostly to force him back down, not show affection, even though she was showing affection by taking care of him.

“Allergy attacks are pretty spontaneous.”

“You don’t have to go that far in that direction, either,” she said. “Although, it did remind me of our early days, when we both had an allergic reaction to those flowers and ended up in the hospital… But you don’t have to try so hard. I like you for who you are. Sweeping romantic gestures are…well, not necessary all the time. Like when we have other obligations and you’ve been shot up with three different people’s EpiPens.”

“How not shocking was it that everyone seemed to have one?” he said, and she laughed. “You should have seen it. It was like a horde. A horde of highly allergic people.”

“I would prefer to see you not involved in any EpiPen-related horde. I would prefer to see you in bed.”

“Is that an offer?”

“Okay, now you’re not being romantic
enough
.” But they both knew exactly what she meant. Rusty needed to lie down and sleep for a very long time. Unfortunately, he refused to. “What is it with you?”

He actually stood, on two feet, without any help. “I’m getting a second wind. Hold on.”

“What now?”

“I have to make it up to you. Missing the formal.” He turned on his MP3 player and the stereo set it was attached to.

“You are way more obsessed with me missing the formal than I am.”

“It’s not about the formal.” He finally found what he was looking for, and the music came on. It was soft—and romantic. “It’s that magic moment of the last slow dance with your girlfriend.”

She sighed. He had such an enticing smile. “And after this, you’ll rest?”

“The last dance does signal the end of the night. That’s why it’s special.”

“So, yes.”

He grinned and took her hand, and they danced the remaining night away in the living room. There was no dance floor, or drunken antics of bored people behind them, or other couples around them. But there was music, there was dancing, and they had each other. For the last dance, it was more than enough.

Casey Cartwright remembered three previous dances, dances that hadn’t ended halfway into the cocktail hour.

Freshman year she’d taken Cappie to a mixer. They were both pledges, and Evan and Cappie were nominally still friends.
That relationship would slowly disintegrate—mainly over her—but Casey didn’t know that yet. She didn’t know what the future held for her, only that it was college, and if she made it through rushing, it was going to be awesome. She had an adorable boyfriend and a bid at the coolest sorority on campus. Any freshman jitters were behind her, at least finals. She had even avoided the freshman fifteen despite all the late-night pledge snack-related study breaks. Cappie had told her he had never seen her look more beautiful, and she believed him.

Sophomore year, she’d moved beyond her freshman mistakes—taking the wrong classes, making the wrong friends and dating the wrong guy. Seeing Cappie still hurt, just a little, but it was easily forgotten when she was beside Evan, whose presence was near constant. Now that she was no longer a pledge, her responsibilities at ZBZ were exactly where she wanted them, and she had a guy in a more suitably matching fraternity than Kappa Tau. Zeta Beta Zeta and Omega Chi were the prom king and queen of campus, to use such adolescent, high-school terms, and Evan made her feel like a queen all on her own.

Casey remembered the dancing at a mixer junior year. It was tense, Evan’s arms twitching slightly when he held her, almost too tightly, because he didn’t want to lose her. And he was close. The only reason she was still with him after he slept with Rebecca was because Frannie had talked her into it, or so she told herself. In his worst moments Evan would remind Casey that she’d had her revenge by sleeping with Cappie again, essentially making them even. She’d never felt they were even. Evan had cheated on her, even if it was with only one person. He claimed to have had no feelings for Rebecca, but the sex had obviously thrilled him, or so it looked on the grainy video
Jen K. had sent to Casey’s cell phone. Casey and Cappie just…fell in together, almost as if they needed to jog their memories of a better moment from their freshman year. Evan was right and wrong; it evened the score, but it didn’t fix the problem. Soon after the formal, their relationship was over, and her future seemingly down the drain. Her life was no longer planned to be alongside Evan’s in every way, from studying law together to marrying him. But at the formal itself, when they danced, the problems had gone away, if only for the length of the five-minute song.

And then there was Max, and last year’s ZBZ formal, which might have made up for the disaster with Evan. At the time, it felt as though it did. She was in love with Max. She was convinced of it, but as it turned out, he was far more convinced of it than she was, to obsessive levels she couldn’t handle. Or could she have tried harder? He’d treated her so well, but he hadn’t made her smile like Cappie always did. He was reasonable in his expectations—he was a graduate student and she was a senior. It made sense to be looking forward, which was why he’d lavaliered her, even if it wasn’t his tradition as an engineering grad, only to have her hand it back to him, as she’d handed one back to Evan not long before. The item that was supposed to be endowed with so much meaning now held little for her, except when it came to having her heart broken, often by her own doing. In other words, she was a walking romantic disaster. That wasn’t Max’s fault, and he hadn’t deserved it. That was why she’d let him go.

“Why the long face?”

Here she was, her senior year, having abandoned the All-Greek Formal and the possibility of romance for reasons she didn’t fully understand. Was it her promise to Dale? The fact
that Rob had brought it up? The prospect of financial considerations? Sympathy for her brother, lost without his Jordan for a single evening? And she hadn’t fled at the sight of Cappie, either. She wasn’t afraid of him. She could handle him. She could be around him on the night of the formal and not immediately think of freshman year.

It occurred to her that she had to answer him. “Oh, just thinking about…memories. You know, formals. From the past three and a half years.”

Cappie nodded. “I hear you.” He paused, then added, “Actually I can’t—this music is really loud.”

“Head trauma.”

“Yeah, I’m hearing that a lot tonight,” he said. “But I think they’re playing a slow song next.”

“They have slow songs?”

“It was on his CD. Something about Jesus.”

“Jesus likes slow songs?”

They were shouting to hear each other. “No, it’s called something else. Definitely slow, though. Like a love song but with ‘Jesus’ instead of ‘baby.’ Maybe he stole the lyrics.”

“I can’t imagine Dale
stealing
anything.”

“Good point.” And just like that, the music level went down as Darwin Lied transitioned into their next song.

“This song is dedicated to some good people who raised themselves above their sinning brethren to be with me tonight,” Dale said, “saved by the Grace of God. And epinephrine.”

No doubt that got far fewer cheers than Dale wanted, but he was probably used to the college crowd by now.

“Still a decent band. A little weird, but decent.” Cappie stood up and offered his hand. “Dance?”

“What?”

“I’m assuming you’re familiar with the term,” he said. “And you had to miss your special formal slow dance because of various people you are not dating, a bad selection for the main course and, let’s face it, the opportunity to see a dean get a punch off on me.”

“I think it was more like his elbow. In your face. Eye.” But she did take his hand and follow him out to the dance floor. She was still in her formal dress, though her lipstick was long gone, and she was barefoot, and no attempt could be made to salvage her hairdo. Cappie was in a similar state of undress, his tie stuffed in his pocket and his shirt and jacket stained from being knocked around—she had seen him look better, but she had seen him worse.

And it was the last dance.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m having a little trouble imagining anything but the various implements that feel like they’re being drilled into my eye. Why do you ask?” Before she could answer, he said, “What are you thinking about?”

She had to admit it. It was so hard to lie to Cappie. At least while they were slow dancing. “Freshman year.”

“Wow. That is way beyond my cognitive abilities right now. Although, I am remembering attempting to pull off a bow tie.”

“Yeah. It was purple.”

“Did that make it worse or better?”

“It blended better, but I still don’t recommend it.”

“I remember…you saying that you liked it.”

“I was neutral,” she admitted, “but I wanted to say something nice. And I liked that you didn’t look like everyone else. Tuxedos make guys kind of…clone-y.”

“I thought it made us look like James Bond.”

“You are way too shaggy to be James Bond. Which is fine. He’s kind of a womanizer when you think about it. I wouldn’t want to go out with him.”

“But you’d sleep with him?”

She rolled her eyes. “He’d have to save me from something involving sharks or laser beams from space before I would commit.”

“I can get goldfish. They die pretty quickly under my care, though. So I can get you dead goldfish, easy. Just give it a day. The laser rays may take more time. Do they
have
to be from space or can they be from a laser pointer?”