Love Story (20 page)

He watched me, eyes serious. “Why will I feel better tomorrow?”

I shrugged. “Because your tests will be over, and you will have gotten some rest tonight.” I’d thought what I meant was obvious. Weird that I understood him perfectly, and he didn’t understand me at all.

“I will?” He leaned forward to talk into my ear again—but this time his cheek touched mine, and his stubble combed across it, dragging a tingling sensation behind. If our friends on the dance floor glanced in our direction, they would not be able to tell we were touching each other. They would think we were still leaning close to hear each other, like before. They would have no idea that every nerve in my body sparked to life and burned as he growled in my ear, “Would you like to dance?”

I gave him a small nod. He stood and held out his hand to me. I put my hand in his. He led me onto the dance floor, in a clear space in a dark corner where the strobe light did not quite reach and the pink searchlight never swept.

Pulling me close, he wrapped one arm around my waist and put his other palm to my cheek. “I’ve done this all wrong,” he whispered in my ear. “I want to start over.”

At the feel of his breath on my earlobe, my heart shivered, sending tingles across my chest. My lips parted. I moved my cheek against his hand so he stroked me softly.

“This is a slow country song,” he whispered, his voice audible over the throbbing techno beat only because his lips moved against my ear. “And we are alone.”

Then he kissed me. His lips were on mine, pressing hard and hungrily. His hands were on the back of my neck, his fingers weaving into my hair, holding me in place as he opened my mouth with his tongue. His hands moved from my neck down my back and around to my front—not far enough to cup my breasts, but far enough to tell me what he wanted. I could not see whether anyone was watching us. He did not look. His eyes were closed, fists gripping my slinky blouse, lips on mine, like he would never let me go.

My heart was beating out of my chest. I did not want to do this with Hunter when I knew he was only toying with me. I did not want to do this in front of my friends. Eventually they would find out that he was toying with me, and that I had known this and had let him.

But there was no way I would break that kiss. His warm tongue was in my mouth, tangling with my tongue, sweeping over my teeth, claiming me as his. My blood raced through my veins and seemed to throb toward him like the ocean tide pointing toward the moon. It was one of those things in life a writer needed to experience: feeling smitten, rendered helpless, being taken.

“We have to go back to the dorm,” he mumbled against my lips.

I nodded just a little, gently enough that I didn’t remove my mouth from his.

This time I was the one who led him by the hand through the crowd. I was shocked that he put up with this all the way across the flashing dance floor. He must have reasoned that if he could keep me happy long enough to bed me, I would listen to reason about my career choice, he could talk me into running back to my grandmother, and a college education would be his. He let himself be led.

Summer glanced up from her dancelike tangle with Manohar. Her eyes widened. I’d told her in the afternoon that I would fill her in on my weekend with Hunter after I finished my history paper, but I hadn’t implied—or thought—that I would be leading him by the hand out of a club later. She spoke to Manohar. He jerked his head up wearing her astonished expression. So Hunter hadn’t told Manohar about us, either. Not that there was any “us” to tell.

We hurried through the cold night scented with Italian garbage, holding hands, hardly speaking.

The dorm was Sunday-night quiet as he backed me against the outer door to my room and kissed me hard. His hands reached around my waist, found their way up to my breasts and touched them through my blouse and bra this time. I put my hands behind his head to mash him closer, but by then he’d fumbled through my purse and stuck my key in the lock. The door opened behind me.

We crossed the larger room quickly and closed ourselves in my tiny bedroom. As we embraced again, I began to understand the mistake I was making. He was in my bed, and I would never be able to sleep again without thinking of him here. He kissed me, and if I opened my eyes a sliver, I could see my makeshift bedside table, actually my filing cabinet, sporting the New York City magnet. He lay down on top of me, and past his shoulders I could see my laptop glowing. I smelled him and tasted him and now when I came here every night, I would think of him, which was exactly what I never, ever intended to happen.

17

H
alf asleep, I opened my eyes and puzzled through what I was seeing. Hunter Allen lay beside me. His bare muscular arm crossed me. He reached to my filing cabinet and touched the New York City magnet.

I
N THE BLUE GLOW FROM THE
streetlights outside, he slipped out of bed. I watched him pull on his jeans and move toward the door. He didn’t fasten his belt. Maybe he didn’t fasten the jeans, either, because they sat very low on his hips, so low that I would have turned around to watch him go if I’d passed him in the hall like that.

With his hand on the doorknob, he glanced back at me and saw me staring.

He came back and knelt on the side of the bed, leaned forward, and kissed the tip of my nose. “Go back to sleep,” he whispered.

Then he was gone, carefully opening the door without a squeak and shutting it most of the way behind him.

The outer door to the hallway closed softly. I felt this more than heard it, a little bump through the building.

Footfalls sounded in the stairwell, higher and higher in the walls.

Then silence.

I took a long breath, enjoying the last of his warmth lingering in the sheets around me. As my chest moved, the warm sheets slid against my skin as if he were still here. But it was over and he was gone.

Eventually the breath had to come out again as a sigh, and I was sobbing, coughing. I rolled over and coughed into my pillow so I wouldn’t wake Summer and Jørdis. The pillowcase smelled like him.

I was lucky I’d found out in Kentucky that I’d been fooled all this time. I’d slept with him to get him out of my system, and that plan had backfired. He had jumped up and beat a trail out the door and up to his own floor as soon as he came to his senses and realized where he was. If I had expected anything different, I was still the fool I’d been trying so hard not to be.

Footfalls sounded in the stairwell again. Descending.

It wasn’t Hunter. It couldn’t be him coming back to me. Or if it was, he simply realized he’d left his coat in my room, and his shirt … and his underwear.

The hall door bumped shut.

I held my breath.

My door opened. He would gather his things and make a hasty exit.

He closed the door softly behind him. He shed his jeans in the soft light and slid into bed beside me. Because I’d rolled over to sob into the pillow, there was less room for him now. He pressed against me until I scooted over with my back to him.

Soft clicks sounded behind my head, and then the tiniest beep. He must have retrieved his Rolex from his room. He was setting his alarm.

“You never take that thing off,” I whispered, hoping my voice didn’t sound shaky from crying. “Why didn’t you wear it tonight?”

“I didn’t want to know what time it was,” he whispered back. “I still don’t, but I’m paranoid about missing that anatomy test. I’d rather stay here with you forever.”

He said it so casually. His watch beeped a few more times. But heat spread across my chest—adrenaline from excitement, and horror. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

To double-check, I whispered, “I thought this room made you claustrophobic.”

“Not with you in it.” He set his Rolex on my filing cabinet, a hollow metallic sound. Then he spooned hot against me, draping his arm over my waist.

He kissed my hair.

My bed was a soft nest surrounded by windows onto the cold city, but I felt my arms prick with chill bumps when he kissed me. He was not acting like he had seduced me for money. He acted as if he was happy to be with me and loath to leave. If I was right this time, he was not going to like the story I’d written in anger on Thursday night, which we would be discussing in Gabe’s class tomorrow.

H
E WOKE ME BY KISSING MY
mouth in the gray morning light.

“My anatomy test is at eight,” he whispered between kisses. “My books are upstairs.” He kissed me more deeply, sighed as if I’d tempted him and he’d finally given in. He collapsed on top of my bare body. “I don’t want to go, but I’ve got to.”

He raised himself off me and looked for his clothes on the floor.

I gazed warily at him, but I supposed it was still early enough that he mistook my misgivings for sleepiness.

“I’ll see you in calculus, okay? And creative writing.” My body tingled as he leaned in and gave me one last, lingering kiss. Then he opened the door. He murmured something in the larger room. Summer giggled. The outer door closed.

I pulled on sweats and poked my head into the larger room. Jørdis, in her pajamas and thick, heavy-rimmed glasses, made dissatisfied noises in Danish as she peeled faces off her collage and flicked the curled paper into the trash. Summer stood at the mirror over her dresser, evening out her hair with a pick.

“I’m really sorry, guys,” I said as I walked in. “I should have asked your permission for Hunter to sleep over. It just sort of happened.”

“What bull.” Summer grinned.

Jørdis nodded. “Why do you think he cuts heads for me? I do not think he enjoys cutting heads.”

I was still trying to digest the fact that she thought of her art as “cutting heads,” which was disconcerting, when she went on, “I don’t mind what you do with him as long as I am not the one who has to sleep in the wee chamber.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

“It won’t?” Summer squealed, setting the pick down. “What do you mean?”

“Have you read my story for Gabe’s class?” I asked her.

She nodded. “It was different. Brutal. I meant to ask you about it. It seems like you were depressed when you wrote it, or tired.”

“Angry,” I corrected her. “It’s about the guy Hunter helped me get away from last May.”

Her eyes widened. “Has Hunter read it yet?”

“Obviously not,” I said.

“What is the matter with this story?” Jørdis asked.

“It’s incredibly dirty,” Summer said. She and Jørdis turned to me, outrage on their faces at the thought that I would treat a gentleman such as Hunter in this manner.

“Honestly, guys,” I said, “a lot has gone on between Hunter and me and our families over the years. More even than you know about. I thought he was using me last night. I was mad and I used him back. But now that it’s happened, I think there may be more between us than using each other. And if that’s true on his end, I just screwed up everything with this story.”

“Why do you keep doing that?” Summer squealed again.

“I’m writing what I know,” I murmured.

“You don’t know shit,” Jørdis said. “This boy clearly loves you. He sits here on the bed and cuts out my photos in the hope that you will walk by.”

“What do I do?” I whispered.

“Call him!” Summer forced her cell phone into my hand.

Feeling weak, I sank onto Jørdis’s bed and punched in the number I knew by heart. “Busy.” Who was he calling this early in the morning?

“Text him,” Jørdis said.

I dropped the phone into my lap. “I can’t bother him with this right now. He’s headed into a huge anatomy test.” Shaking my head, I handed the phone back to Summer. “I’ll try to talk to him in calculus class.”

But he came into calculus just as the TA was passing out the test—probably because he’d taken extra time with his anatomy test. He sat beside me and gave me the most brilliant smile. But we couldn’t talk. And while I was still struggling with imaginary numbers, he turned in his test and left. He had to be headed to the library to read my story. I couldn’t follow him because I had to go to history to turn in my paper.

That’s why I sat in the creative-writing class in the afternoon, poring over my story, reading it as Hunter would read it. The other students eyed me and whispered as they came in and sat down in their upholstered chairs. I put my hand over my mouth, anticipating the worst.

Obedience

by Erin Blackwell

“You will do as you’re told,” her grandmother said. “Your college tuition is a gift, and I am not obligated to give it to you. If you choose not to follow in my footsteps—study business, and run the family farm—I choose not to help you.”

The girl looked around her grandmother’s office, at the crystal chandelier, the silk Persian carpet, the rich leather-bound books on the walnut shelves, and considered her grandmother’s words. If she took her grandmother’s offer, she would give up her dream of becoming an artist. But how could she support herself out in the world? She would be destitute and so … low.

The girl made her decision. “You’re right,” she said, “and I’m sure I’ll thank you for this tough love when I’m older.”

“That’s the way.” Her grandmother smiled, a perfect bow of blood red lipstick. She reached out with one perfectly manicured hand and stroked the girl’s hair away from her eyes for the first time since this argument had begun several weeks before. “Now that we have that settled, you know what would make me even happier?”

The party started soon after their talk. BMWs and Mercedes and rare collector cars pulled into her grandmother’s driveway in place of the fine coaches and spirited horses of yesteryear. The girl stood at the tall front window, pulling back the silk drape, watching for her target. His family owned the neighboring farm, and her grandmother had suggested that the two of them would make an excellent couple.

And why not? The girl called a roaming waiter to her side and took her third glass of wine from his tray. He flared his nostrils in disapproval. She did not care. She was high and he was low. Right?

“Right,” said the boy, securing his own glass and taking her hand. As he pulled her toward a dark corner of the party, he whispered, “I love to see you like this.”

“Like what?” she asked. “Wasted?”

“Heirs to a fortune do not get wasted,” he corrected her. “We simply socialize. Do you want to socialize with me?” He slipped his hand inside her cardigan, unbuttoned the silk blouse underneath, and forced his fingers past her lacy bra to her breast. Gently he pinched her nipple. Electricity shot straight to her crotch.

Was this what her grandmother had in mind? She was sure her grandmother would heap praise on her for befriending the heir to the farm next door, as instructed. She was not so sure her grandmother would approve of the boy pinching her nipple in public. So she asked, “Did you bring your own car?”

“Did I ever.” He took her by the hand again. This time he led her winding among the dark bodies drinking and laughing. The light had begun to blur, but she thought she saw grins flashing at her and the boy. She and the boy were so sweet and such a perfect match! As they passed between the wall and a massive buffet table that shielded them from view, the boy put his hand up her skirt and into her panties.

The heavy front door of her grandmother’s mansion seemed to open for them like the sets moving and changing in front of the characters in a Broadway play or a romantic Depression-era movie production. As she stumbled after the boy, out of the mansion and into the vast yard, she realized she was about to lose her virginity in a sleek black Porsche, which definitely was not low. Good for her.

They collapsed inside black bucket seats of soft leather. The boy rolled toward her and coaxed, “Unbuckle my belt, Erin—”

* * *

“G
OOD AFTERNOON
.” G
ABE BEAMED AT US
as he closed the door behind him and eased himself into the upholstered chair at the head of the table.

I was glad class was starting. I’d been dreading it all day. I was half glad Hunter wasn’t there. I wondered where he was instead. I hoped he wasn’t acting out one of his sexy stories as revenge on me. And I wished I’d finished reading over my story again, picturing what he would think as he read it. I was just getting to the dirty part.

Gabe raised his white eyebrows at Hunter’s empty chair at the foot of the table. Beamed at everyone else again.

Footfalls sounded at the bottom of the staircase below us.

“Let’s start with Erin’s story today, shall we?” Gabe said. “None of us will be able to think about anything else until we get
that
out of the way.”

The class tittered. Summer looked over at me, face sympathetic.

The footsteps stomped closer in the stairwell.

“Manohar,” Gabe said, “why don’t you start—”

Hunter burst through the classroom door, waving my story in my face. Wow, he must have been really angry to take reserve materials out of the library. That was not allowed. He probably had alarm bells ringing and the campus police after him, and he must have left his student ID.

That was what I was thinking as he shouted at me, “Did you want me to watch? Did you want us all to watch? You screamed at me for not writing the right kind of story, Erin, and you have a lot of nerve. Every story you’ve written in this class, you’ve calculated to stab me and twist the knife, from casting me as your stable boy to this piece of fucking pornography.” He threw “Obedience” down on the table in front of me.

Gabe was yelling at us. Gabe who had never raised his voice in class before or shown any kind of anger at all was standing up in front of his elegant upholstered chair, red faced, shouting about how in forty years of teaching creative writing he had never encountered such insolence. He actually used the word
insolence.

I stood up, too, because as long as I sat, I was lower than Gabe and lower than Hunter. I told Hunter, “You didn’t seem to mind the fucking pornography last night.”

“We were doing it, Erin, not writing about it for everybody to read!”

“Well, just fix it, Hunter! You can fix anything with your charm!”

The front of Hunter’s shirt rose and fell with his rapid breathing, buttons glinting in the glow from the stained-glass lamps. And in his glare, I saw everything he was thinking. I had overheard what my grandmother had said to him. I had figured out that she was paying him to watch over me, and he’d faked his feelings for me for that purpose. I had slept with him anyway, and faked my feelings for him in turn.

The one thing I hadn’t counted on was that at some point during the last few months, or the last week, or the last day, his feelings for me had turned real. He thought mine were still fake.

And Hunter did not like to be taken advantage of.

Gabe was giving us a lecture. Everyone in the room gawked at me. A girl at the other end of the table whispered, “Hunter is Erin’s stable boy?”

And I started to cry.

Summer patted my hand on the table. “Go,” she said.

“Where?” I asked her. My voice broke.

“Gabe said to go wait for him outside his office,” she whispered.

Sure enough, Hunter had turned to leave, and Gabe glowered at me with his arms folded.

I’d never been to Gabe’s office. I followed Hunter’s stomping up to the third floor of the building. When I emerged from the stairwell, I spotted him at the far end of the hall, backpack slung over one shoulder, arms crossed on his chest, staring out the window onto the street. Beside him was a comfy-looking chaise longue, the only seat in the hall. I took one step toward it to wait there for Gabe, but Hunter turned and glared at me.

I backed down the stairwell, deciding it might be better to wait out class in the basement snack bar.

By the time class ended, I had scribbled twenty pages of a new story and stopped crying. Ascending the staircase again, I saw that Hunter hadn’t budged. He stared out the now dark window and shouldered his burden of books. This time I would not let him scare me away from the chaise longue. I trudged down the hall, plopped on the chaise, and opened my history book, like that would fool anybody.

“Well.” Hunter’s voice cracked as he said this. He cleared his throat. “There goes your internship.”

“Which is exactly what you and my grandmother wanted,” I said without looking up from my book. After a moment I said brightly, “Maybe I still have a shot. I seriously doubt Gabe is on the committee. He won’t give me a stellar rec from class, but I can try to sidestep him and submit my portfolio to the committee—”

“He
is
on the committee,” Hunter said.

“He’s
not
on the committee,” I insisted. At least, I
hoped
he wasn’t on the committee. I had assumed he wasn’t, but it would be like Hunter to know something I didn’t know. I stammered, “Only the bigwigs in the English department are—”

“I’m telling you,” Hunter said, “he
is
on the committee. He’s the
head
of the committee. He’s won the O. Henry and the Pulitzer.”

“Gabe?” Even as I gaped at Hunter, I realized he must be right. A university English department with this good a reputation wouldn’t hire a washed-up junior college reject to teach honors creative writing. He didn’t dress like a beach bum because he was so low on the totem pole that he could get away with it. He dressed like that because he was so high. I put my shaking hand up to my mouth, speechless for once.

Hunter sat beside me on the chaise. “You’re not the only one with something to lose. If Gabe flunks us, I can kiss med school good-bye. I’ll still be dragging my GPA out of this hole when I’m a senior.”

“You’re being a little melodramatic,” I said faintly.

“
Me?
You’re the one writing stories about—” He stopped himself. “It doesn’t matter now. Just tell me about Whitfield.” His face was white stone.

“What do you care?” I snapped. “Every single thing you have done to, for, or with me since you’ve been in New York you’ve done because my grandmother paid you. You are not my boyfriend. You are not even my real friend, and it’s none of your business.”

“You made it my business last night,” he insisted.

I looked into his intense blue gaze for a moment. “My story is fiction.”

He scowled at me. “Your name is in it.”

“What? No it isn’t. I wrote it in the third person about a nameless girl.”

“Your name is in it, Erin,” he insisted. “Freudian slip.”

Uh-oh. “I mean, it’s sort of nonfiction,” I backtracked, “but it happened a while ago. Not this weeken—”

He closed his eyes and put up his hand. “Just. Stop. Talking.”

I was about to point out to him that
he
was the one who’d started talking to
me,
when I heard quick steps toward us down the hall—too quick to be Gabe. Isabelle jogged up to us and panted, “Erin. Gabe will be here any second. I don’t know what will happen to you or whether I’ll see you again, so I thought it was important to tell you something.”

“Okay,” I said, careful not to stare accusingly at Hunter. This had to be about him.

“I love your stories,” she gushed, bending to put her hand on my forearm. “Love them. I look forward to them every two weeks. I’ve told my whole family about them.”

“Thank you,” I said instead of what I really meant, which was,
I don’t believe you. I would have believed you at the beginning of the semester, but not now. This must be a joke. Where is the camera?

“I haven’t defended you in class because Manohar seems so sure of himself,” she said. “He’s hard to argue against and I’ve felt awful that I’ve failed you. But you have inspired me. I didn’t know an English major was allowed to write a story like that.”

“Apparently we’re not. That’s why I’m in trouble.” I patted her hand. “I appreciate this, Isabelle.” Gabe’s white head appeared in the stairwell. I stage-whispered, “I’ll write you stories from prison.”

“Okay!” She laughed like I was joking and passed Gabe on her way back down the hall.

I tensed as he approached us, and I could feel Hunter’s muscles draw taut, too, even though he didn’t touch me. But Gabe was back to his friendly self. He even grinned at us as he unlocked his office door and ushered us into two chairs in front of his cluttered desk.

He grew scarier again as he wedged himself into his chair and leaned on his elbows on his desk. With a stern look at me and then at Hunter, he said, “I do not lose my cool. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Hunter said. I grimaced and nodded.

“We are going to talk this out so it never comes up in my class again.” Gabe shifted his weight back in his chair and steepled his hands. “So. Hunter. You’re Erin’s stable boy?”

Neither of us wanted to spill our guts or our family secrets to an old man who would probably flunk us both. But when I explained the impetus for my stable-boy story, Hunter had a dissenting opinion. When Hunter defended his bathroom story, I piped up that he wasn’t telling the whole truth. We went round and round like this until Gabe finally said, “I’m from California and I thought those people were screwed up, but Kentucky takes the cake, doesn’t it? You could write a story about this.” He laughed.

Hunter and I did not.

Gabe rubbed one eye. “Which brings us to Erin’s story today, and what happened over the weekend that finally broke Hunter.”

Hunter frowned. He did not like that characterization one bit.

I kicked while Hunter was down. I asked him, “What exactly was your directive from my grandmother?”

I thought he would deny it, even now. But Gabe stared at him expectantly, too, and with a slow look up at Gabe and a slow look down at his hands again, Hunter began to speak.

“I was supposed to get into some of your classes.” He glanced up at Gabe, looked away. “Try to become friends with you again. Become friends with your friends so I could keep tabs on you. Take you out to eat as often as possible so you didn’t starve. Keep you away from any no-good piece of shit who tried to get in your pants.”

“Come on now,” I said. “My grandmother said ‘piece of shit’?”

“She may have said ‘scalawag.’”

That sounded more like her. “Is that all you had to do?”

He shook his head no. “Bring you home for the Breeders’ Cup.”

“Even if that meant lying to get me there?”