Reckless Secrets (7 page)

If anyone ever asks why I texted you, tell them work stuff.

Sorry Karen interrupted at the office. You're right. We have a lot to talk about. Your lifetime to catch up on. Let's meet soon. Does Tuesday morning work for you? Say ten at The College Grind? I could "bump" into my student worker and buy her a cup of coffee. Pretty innocuous.

Sorry, too, that I couldn't act like a real dad and go to the game with my oldest daughter. Great game, though, huh?

Dad

Suddenly I had a catch in my throat and my eyes started to tear up.
Dad.
I had a dad and he was acting like James Bond.

At the bottom of the email was a picture of Jason holding Mia, who was smiling and waving at the camera.

I had a family. A real family. If only a clandestine one. Seeing the picture and reading Jason's message made me feel marginally better about all the lies we were about to tell and the secrets we were keeping. Maybe I had one decent parent. Maybe there was a chance we could have it all.

Chapter Four

I texted Jason back that Tuesday was good for me. I was having a hard time thinking of him as "Dad." Maybe that would come. Or maybe it was better, easier to keep up our cover, if I just kept thinking of him as Jason for now.

My stomach growled. Since I didn't have anything better to do, I grabbed my laptop and headed to the dining hall to get something to eat and read my lecture notes. My friend Taylor worked in the dining hall. But she'd gotten the weekend off to spend it with her dad. Her dining-hall crush guy was working the burrito line.

I wasn't in the mood for a burrito so I went to the sandwich shop and ordered a grilled cheese. Reading the note from Jason had made me so inexplicably happy that I flirted with the guy who waited on me in hopes of scoring a heart-shaped grilled cheese, even though he wasn't all that attractive. It was a game Taylor, Nicole, Bre, and I played. If the dining hall guys thought you were hot, or if they were just in a generous mood, they flipped the two cut halves of your sandwich on the plate so it made a heart. Given the ups and downs of my day, I could have used a heart.
 

I had to wait while he grilled it. When he handed my sandwich to me, he was smiling flirtatiously. He'd cut and flipped it to make a heart. Yes! Success. I wanted to do a happy dance. Scoring a heart-shaped sandwich was so rare it was a treasure.

"No dad here, either, huh?" he asked.

Little did he know I had a dad here
every
day.
 

"Yeah." I glanced at my plate and back at him, beaming. "You just made my day." I gave him an air kiss as thanks, and went through the line to pay for my sandwich and pop. I found a quiet booth and settled in to study so I didn't make an even bigger liar of myself.

But I was easily distracted, and as I munched my heart-shaped sandwich, I found myself on the university website staring at pictures and bios of the regents. There was Amber, smiling and gorgeous, looking like she should have been in a fashion magazine, not a university webpage. Amber Ranklin, to be exact. Her bio said she was an executive in a Seattle-based financial management firm. Yes, well, of course she was, wasn't she? Probably had family money to begin with. And now on top of beauty, she had the Midas touch with money.

I had not missed my guess. She was, indeed, a Double Deltsie. In fact, she'd been chapter president of Delta Delta Psi during her time as a student. Other than that, there was nothing incriminating in her bio. But there was
something
between her and Logan. I knew there was. And I didn't like it. Not one bit.

Which got me thinking about Thanksgiving again—what was Logan hiding from me? Was he having second thoughts about us? I tried to tell myself I was just being paranoid. He was probably right—he'd been dazed.
 

Then, just for fun, I looked up the staff of the university college of computer science and scoped out all the profs, trying to determine which one was Lyssa's former fiancé. None of them were as handsome as Jason. Most of them were either old or nerdy, which made me wonder about Lyssa's tastes, particularly in men. Though I played the guessing game with myself for a good twenty minutes, reading about and doing a little more snooping on each one, I couldn't make up my mind. Lyssa was pretty, funny, and smart. Maybe I was missing something, like one of these guys had a great personality, but I couldn't see her with any of them.

Bored with that, I browsed the Facebook university missed-connections page, looking for something sweet and romantic. Maybe a mention of me or one of my friends. Hey, I was on a roll. I'd gotten a heart-shaped grilled cheese, hadn't I? Maybe I'd get the prestige and thrill of being mentioned on missed connections, too.
 

Among all the typical kinds of messages, like the girl looking to meet the hot guy she sees every Friday studying at the corner table at the SUB cafeteria, I found this:

Gorgeous chem student—you come to me for chem help every Tuesday and bring me cookies. You're sweet and nice. I'm really into you. But outside of chem lab, I don't think you know I exist. Now that the threat is over, will you still come?
 

Oh
, I thought. And felt like the world's biggest jerk. Every Tuesday since the start of the semester I'd gone to Byron, my chem TA, for help with the evil Dr. Rogers' class. Now that she'd been arrested, would I need to go? Would I forget Byron and all the help he'd given me?

I baked him cookies and even spent the semester bringing him my failures as I tried to replicate the dining hall's prized cobblestone bars. At first, I was bribing him with baked goods in exchange for preferential chemistry help. But eventually I had seen him as a friend.
Just
a friend. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this missed connection wasn't about me. Or maybe I was simply fooling myself. Again.

I was studying in my room when the comedy show got out and the bars closed and the girls in my dorm came stumbling home with their dads, disrupting the normal late-night din. My room was directly above the front door. I heard all the fights and lovers' quarrels, all the passion, all the gossip. Anything that was spoken loudly enough to get past the single-pane glass in my window.

After a few minutes, I became immune to the sounds of the dorm front door opening and closing. Then I heard yelling.

"You drunken bastard! I hate you! Hate, hate, hate you! Why did you come here? Just to embarrass me in front of my friends?"

I froze, recognizing the voice as Kay's, the girl from across the hall.
 

"You little bitch! I'm paying for your college. Shut up! Shut the fuck up." Her dad's voice was deep and slurred from too much imbibing.

"I will not shut up. I do hate you! You were hitting on my sorority sister. You cheated on Mom. I hate you."

I didn't like Kay, but in that moment I sympathized with her. Until she hurled the next stream of insults at her dad. Then I felt kind of sorry for him, too. They were both hammered.

Their voices were muffled as they came inside. A moment later they echoed up the stairwell toward the second floor. And then they were on my floor in the hall right in front of my room, screaming and lobbing accusations and insults like they were waging nuclear war—nuclear family war.

"Say that one more time and I'm not paying another dime for your schooling. Not one. You can go to your bitch of a mother and make her pay."

"I hate you!" Kay strung the last word out for emphasis.

A door slammed. I heard a lock turn. And then pounding.

"That's it. I'm cutting you off. I'm done. Hear me? Done."

The pounding went on for another few minutes, sounding like he was going to break the door down. Just as I was about to call the RA or security or something because I was actually worried about Kay's safety if he decided to kick the door down, he cursed and quieted down. I closed my laptop and got ready for bed. I had a sink in my room. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, but I had to go down the hall to use the bathroom.
 

When I opened my door, Kay's dad was passed out in front of her door. As I stared at him, my RA came down the hall.

"Not another one," she said, shaking her head like she was the parent. "I'll be glad when this weekend is over. It's madness. Dads gone wild." Still shaking her head, she called campus security.
 

In that moment, I was glad for the secret dad I had. Things could be a lot worse.

When I got up on Sunday, Kay's dad was gone and the hall smelled like stale beer and male sweat. Like they'd coordinated it, at noon the dads got up. They hogged the showers and clogged the halls. I trundled downstairs to the dining hall, which was filled to capacity with brunching dads who looked hung over and were drinking coffee by the gallon. Tay was working, overworking. She looked stressed and tired. Her face was pink from the heat behind the counter where she worked as a barista, making coffee drinks and handing out pastries.

I shot her a sympathetic look as I came through her line. "Is your dad gone?"

"I had to work so he left early. He pulled out of town around eight."

"Smart man."

"I heard rumors of Logan and a fight. I want to hear everything."

That was a faint hope. I couldn't tell her much. "We'll catch up later. My usual?"

"Extra whip?" she asked, and made my drink.

By two the dads drove out of town in a steady stream like a trail of ants leaving a picnic. I needed to talk to Logan. I kept waiting for him to text me. Finally, insecure, I texted him
Has your dad left?
 

Yeah. Finally.

I felt a sense of relief—Harlan was gone. I almost swore he left town in a puff of smoke. I thought I could still smell the sulfur.

Want to get together?
I really needed, wanted, to see him. We had a lot to talk about.
 

My phone rang with the ringtone I'd set up for Logan. "Hi."

"Hey, El," he said. He sounded sleepy, hung over. "I never noticed before. Say 'hey, El' fast and you get 'hell.'" He laughed. "Ouch."

"Real funny. Thanks for that."

"Thought you'd appreciate it," Logan said. "My eye and my head feel like shit."

"That bad?"

"Worse."
 

I could hear the wince in his voice. "So—want me to come over and nurse you back to health? I'll find Nic and ask her to drop me by. I'll bring coffee." I put an enticing singsong in my voice, like coffee was simply irresistible.
 

There was a pause on his end. "Sorry, El. I want to, but I'm wasted. Dead tired. I need to get some sleep, get rid of this damn headache, and then hit the homework. I'm up to my black eyeball in homework and projects. I didn't get a thing done while my old man was here. A word to the wise: getting hammered on top of getting smacked in the head—not wise."

"Oh." I swallowed hard. I tried to cover my disappointment. "I see how it goes. The weekend's over so now you drop your fake girlfriend just like that?" I tried to sound teasing, hoping my hurt feelings didn't show through.

"Yeah, I'm dropping the fake girlfriend for the real thing. Come on, El. You know I wouldn't turn down the chance to spend time with you unless I
absolutely
had to."

My heart skipped a beat—was I now really his girlfriend?

"I'd never pick homework or headaches over anything, especially you."

Even though I found myself smiling, I was still feeling insecure, too. Leave it to me to be self-doubting and happy at the same time. "Okay, you're off the hook. Put some ice on that eye."

"The eye doesn't look that bad," he said. "Your friend doesn't pack as much power as that vicious pool ball did."

I laughed, slightly mollified and relieved. "Good. No offense, but you're hotter without the black eye. Less dangerous looking, but hotter."

"I'm hot, am I?"

"Don't get too full of yourself. Go get some sleep."

"I'll see you tomorrow, El. Dinner after work?"

"Sure." We worked the same shift for Jason in the IT department on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It had become our habit to grab a bite to eat together afterward at the SUB when we had the opportunity. Logan was a field tech, so he was often out of the office and it didn't always work out.