Testing Kate (4 page)

“What’s your name?” Lexi asked flirtatiously. She tipped her head to one side and narrowed her eyes.

“Scott,” he said.

Lexi smiled creamily. I watched her, realizing for the first time that Lexi was the sort of woman who reveled in male attention. The type had always made me wary.

“I remember. Mr. Brown, right? Professor Legrande called on you in Contracts yesterday,” Lexi said.

“That’s right,” he said, grinning at her.

I remembered him too. Scott Brown had remained poised while handling a line of questions. He’d flubbed one of the answers but ended up deflecting it with a joke that amused the class and Professor Legrande. I had no doubt Mr. Brown was headed toward a career in a courtroom—I could already picture him in a dark suit and red tie, charming the jury with his sugary Southern accent.

“You’re in my section?” Scott asked.

“We all are,” Jen said. “I’m Jen, this is Lexi, and that’s Kate.”

“Kate, right. Man, that was harsh the way Hoffman called on you. The entire time you were standing there, I was just cringing,” he continued.

“Me too,” I muttered.

“Hey, Berk, come here,” Scott called out. A tall, heavyset guy with shaggy blond hair and hangdog brown eyes left the group still standing by the front door and walked over. “This is Pete Berkus. He’s a One-L too, but he’s in a different section. Berk, this is that chick I was telling you about, the one that Hoffman demolished.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re the one who cried in class, right?” Berk asked.

“I didn’t cry!”

“He made her stand up while he grilled her. Man, it was painful,” Scott said. He hooted with laughter.

“Gee, thanks,” I said. My face flushed a hot red.

“Just ignore him,” Jen said, patting my leg soothingly.

“Aw, I’m just teasin’. It could have happened to any of us. Hey, I got called on yesterday,” Scott said.

“Yeah, but you did great,” Lexi said, slanting her eyes toward him. She tossed her dark hair back over her shoulder.

“I’m so glad I didn’t get stuck in your section. I’ve heard that Hoffman is a prick,” Berk said. “All of my professors seem okay so far.”

“Lucky you,” I said.

Chapter Four

M
y parents were married on New Year’s Eve. My mom claimed that they chose the date so they’d always be able to celebrate each passing year of marriage with a big blowout of a party. My dad, the more pragmatic of the two, disagreed; he said my mom just wanted to make sure he’d never forget their anniversary.

Even so, the New Year’s Eve/anniversary party became a family tradition, going back as long as I could remember. My parents’ friends—and, later, my friends too—would come over to our house every year to celebrate. My mom always served fondue, a nut-encrusted cheese ball, and meatballs that were basted in grape jelly and chili sauce and then kept warm in a Crock-Pot. My dad would pull out his old Dave Brubeck and Bill Evans Trio records. Everyone drank too much and got a little loopy.

Their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary fell in the middle of my sophomore year of college, and my mom was planning to go all out for the party. This year, there would be a caterer and a bartender and waiters circulating with trays of chicken saté skewers and sea scallops wrapped in bacon. A pianist in a tuxedo and tails would play jazzy show tunes. The engraved invitations would request that everyone dress in formal wear. It would be, my mother proclaimed, an Event.

“Guess what?” Mom said one night. It was midway through the fall semester at Cornell, and she’d called me at my dorm, interrupting my Modern American History homework.

“What?” I asked, only half listening as I scanned the reading assignment on the Civil Rights Movement.

“I ordered new furniture for the living room,” Mom announced. Her voice was breathy, as if she’d been running laps around the house before she called. “It got here today. Oh, Kate, it’s gorgeous. The sofa is sage green chenille, and there’s an armchair and ottoman, both of which are covered with the most beautiful striped fabric that coordinates with the sofa. I can’t wait until you see it.”

“That sounds nice,” I said without much enthusiasm. “I didn’t know you were redecorating.”

“It’s for the party.”

“You got new furniture just for a party?” I asked.

“I want the house to look nice. And we needed new living-room furniture anyway. I thought this was a good time to do it,” Mom said.

“Oh,” I said. And as I lay on my narrow bed, looking up at a poster of Monet’s
Water Lilies
stuck to the puce cinder-block wall opposite me, I silently promised myself that I would never be as boring and suburban as my mother.

The party was a huge hit. Everyone had a great time drinking too much (including the pianist, who guzzled down a bottle of bourbon and then passed out, face-first, on the piano) and dancing late into the night. My mom wore a sparkly black sequined cocktail dress and had her hair and makeup professionally done. Just before midnight, my parents hooked their elbows together as they drank a champagne toast. I snapped a picture just as they lifted the flutes to their lips, but it didn’t come out well; in it, both of my parents have sallow yellow skin and glowing red eyes.

Five weeks later, on a chilly February night, a young doctor left his bachelor party after downing an untold number of martinis and lost control of his BMW when he hit a patch of black ice. The car went careening into the oncoming lane. My parents were on their way home from the movies, and though my father had likely seen the car coming, the investigating officer told me there probably hadn’t been time for him to swerve out of the way.

“It would have happened very quickly,” the assistant medical examiner later told me. “They wouldn’t have felt anything.”

I just nodded and stared down at my scuffed L.L. Bean duck boots.

How do you know what they felt?
I wanted to say as anger bubbled up through the heavy blanket of grief.
You didn’t even know them.

The Bar Review that the law school threw for us at Tipitina’s was the first chance I’d had to see what my classmates were like outside the pressure cooker of law school. The answer: They were pretty much the same.

Everyone was still posturing, still trying to impress one another. The free beer lubricated things, though, and eventually conversations moved on from who had started their class outlines (normally phrased to freak out anyone who hadn’t: “You mean you haven’t started outlining yet? Are you serious?”) and early speculation on who would make Law Review, to the more normal topics of where people had gone to college and what had brought them to Tulane.

I had a beer and spent most of the night hanging out with Jen, Nick, and Addison. We didn’t see much of Lexi; she was too busy flirting. Pete Berkus in particular seemed besotted with her and looked visibly annoyed whenever she talked to another guy.

Lexi intercepted me on my way to the bathroom.

“What are you doing after this?” she asked.

“I’m so tired, I’m just going to head home. But I think Nick and Addison, and maybe Jen, are going to check out a bar called the Maple Leaf. It’s over near campus,” I said.

“I’m going to go to the Bombay Club,” Lexi said casually.

“By yourself?” I asked, but then suddenly I remembered that the professor she was interested in was going to be there. “Oh, that’s right. Have fun. But be careful.”

“Always am,” Lexi said. She gave me a saucy wink.

When I returned from the ladies’ room, a perky blonde coed wearing a pink sparkly cutoff shirt and low-slung jeans that showed off a diamond belly ring had joined our group. She was holding on to Nick’s arm, laughing up at him.

“I think you have some competition,” Jen said.

I glanced at the giggling blonde and shook my head. “I already told you, there’s nothing going on between us,” I said.

“Nothing going on with whom?” Addison said.

“No one,” I said.

“Nick,” Jen said.

“Nick? I thought you said Kate had the hots for that Scott guy.”

I turned to Jen, my mouth open. “What?” I said.

“I didn’t say that,” Jen said, giving Addison a warning look. “I just said I thought you’d make a cute couple.”

“Jen wants to marry everyone off,” Addison said.

“I have my eye on someone for you too,” Jen said.

“Oh, yeah? Who?” Addison asked eagerly.

Jen nodded toward a tall, good-looking black guy I recognized from our section. He had wide shoulders and a shaved head and was wearing a white polo shirt.

“What…
him
? Are you kidding me?” Addison stared at her, aghast.

“You think he’s out of your league?” Jen asked sympathetically.

“I’m not gay!”

“You’re not?” Jen looked confused. She frowned. “But Lexi said…”

“Lexi told you I was
gay
?”

“Well, no, not in those exact words…”

“Because I’m not,” he said hotly.

“Okay,” Jen said.

“I’m entirely one hundred percent hetero.”

“Fine,” Jen said soothingly. She looked to me for help, but I just grinned.

“Serves you right for trying to play Cupid,” I told her.

“I just want my friends to be happy,” she said. “And you have to admit, Add, that guy is hot.”

“I admit no such thing,” Addison said. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go find a woman to hit on.”

He stalked off in the direction of the bar.

Nick drove me home in his little Mini Cooper.

“This car is so cute,” I said.

Nick shot me a dirty look. “It’s not ‘cute.’ Babies are cute. Kittens are cute. This car is cool and hip,” he said.

“And don’t forget fuel-efficient,” I said. “So, who was your girlfriend?”

“Who?”

“The blonde teenager who was dry-humping you at the bar,” I reminded him.

“Ah. Tiffy,” Nick said fondly. “She’s actually a sophomore at Loyola. She said she’s majoring in Pre-Law, but what she really wants to do is move to Las Vegas and be a showgirl.”

“It’s good to have a dream,” I said.

“She gave me her number,” Nick said. He held up his hand, where a phone number was written in black ink on the back, along with TIFFY—CALL ME!!! She’d dotted the “i” in “Tiffy” with a heart-shaped bubble. “She said she wants to get together sometime so I can tell her what law school is
really
like.”

“Jesus,” I said, rolling my eyes at the blatant come-on. “Tell her it’s like the army: First they grind you down, and then they build you back up. Only instead of soldiers, they turn us into humorless robots set to destroy mode.”

“I take it you’re not enjoying school,” Nick said.

“I don’t think anyone with a soul enjoys law school,” I said.

“So why do it?”

“It’s a means to an end,” I quipped, mostly because the truth—that I’d undergone some sort of quarter-life crisis, where I felt an inexplicable urge to Make A Change Before It Was Too Late—sounded silly and juvenile. Normal people, adult people, don’t quit their jobs, break up with their boyfriends, and move across the country, only to spend several years of their life and many thousands of dollars embarking on a career they’ve only been exposed to through movies and television shows. In fact, when I thought about it, which wasn’t often, that was what my future career felt like—something distant and vague, something that was going to happen to someone else. The only thing I was sure about was this: A law degree meant I’d always have a job, and a relatively well-paying one at that. A law degree meant safety.

“Hmmm. That’s an enigmatic response,” Nick said.

“Well…I have to believe that practicing law will be more rewarding than law school has turned out to be,” I said.

“Believe…or hope?”

“Right now, believe. And please don’t ruin it for me; it’s all I have to cling to,” I said.

He drove around Lee Circle and then up St. Charles, making a left on Third Street and a right on Magazine Street. He pulled up in front of our apartment building and shifted the car into park.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to the Maple Leaf with us?” Nick asked.

I nodded. “I have to study tomorrow. I don’t want to be up too late.”

“We all have to study. Some of us are just in denial about it,” Nick said.

I laughed and turned toward him. His face was shadowed, backlit by the streetlamps along Magazine Street and the occasional passing car, but I could tell that he was smiling at me. I was suddenly reminded of my first kiss. I was a freshman in high school and had gone to see
Uncle Buck
with John Sissal, a junior I’d had a crush on for ages. John had parked his car in my driveway, and just before he leaned over to kiss me, darkness and light had played across his face in much the same way.

And for a moment, I wondered if there
was
something there between Nick and me. A spark of interest, a sign that maybe this wasn’t just a platonic friendship after all. And then Nick leaned forward, and I thought,
He’s going to kiss me,
and excitement flared inside me.

But he didn’t kiss me. He was looking out the window past me, up at the house.

“There’s a man on our porch,” Nick said instead.

I turned, looking to see what Nick was talking about. He was right. There was a man loitering on our raised porch. He was of medium height and build and wearing tortoiseshell glasses that were too large for his narrow face.

I recognized those glasses. In fact, I recognized everything about him.

“It’s Graham,” I said faintly.

“Who?” Nick asked.

“My ex-boyfriend.”

Chapter Five

T
he Rue de la Course occupied a large storefront on Magazine Street in the Garden District. The coffee shop had dark, creaky wooden floors, tall windows, and rows of charmingly mismatched tables and chairs. Along the back of the store, there was a long coffee bar, complete with a stainless silver espresso machine and a glass counter full of decadent desserts. Two dozen ceiling fans rotated lazily above.

Lexi and Jen were already at the Rue when I arrived on Sunday afternoon. They’d pulled a few tables together so there’d be enough chairs to go around, and I sat down with them, placing my steaming white latte mug on the table in front of me.

“Hi,” I said.

They both looked at me expectantly. I quickly surmised that Nick had spread the news of my surprise visitor. It was going to be hard to keep a secret with this group.

“So…?” Jen asked. She was wearing a pink-and-green-striped rugby shirt, khaki shorts, and pink Dr. Scholl’s sandals.

“So what?” I asked innocently.

“Come on, just tell us,” Lexi said. “We know your ex made a surprise appearance last night.”

“Oh, that,” I said. I took a sip of my latte; it was so hot, it burned my tongue. “Well…”

“Graham…what are you doing here?” I’d asked, when I reached him on the porch.

“Hi, Kate,” Graham said, pulling me into an embrace. He kissed the side of my neck, his lips lingering against my skin. It was something he’d done a thousand times in the past, but that was before—before we broke up, before we moved apart.

I stepped back, moving away. Nick was still idling at the curb, waiting to make sure everything was okay. I waved at him, and he nodded and waved back and then drove off uptown.

“Who was that?” Graham asked.

“Nick. My neighbor. And you haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?”

Graham gazed at me, his green eyes intent on my face. With his high, carved cheekbones, thick eyelashes, and full mouth, Graham was handsome—extremely handsome—but in an almost feminine way, which I knew he hated. The clumsy glasses and closely cropped hair were an attempt to draw attention away from his sensually soft features.

“I came to see you. I’ve missed you,” Graham said. And then he leaned over to kiss me, his lips pressing against mine.

“Are you getting back together?” Lexi asked, after I finished.

I shrugged. It had been so late, we’d put off any serious discussion of our relationship, and Graham had spent the night on the couch—at my request.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I said.

“I suppose this means I’ll have to tell Scott that you’re not interested in him after all,” Jen said thoughtfully.

“Huh?” I said.

“I saw Scott Brown at the library this afternoon,” Jen said. “Your name came up.”

“Please tell me you didn’t try to set me up with him. Please,” I said.

“Oh, no, nothing like that. I just got the feeling he was into you,” Jen assured me. “Anyway, Lexi was filling me in on her new romance when you got here.”

“That’s right, I forgot. What happened with the professor?” I asked.

“Shhhh,” Lexi said, glancing around to make sure we weren’t overheard. The Rue was empty, except for a couple of college kids sitting at one table and a pair of young mothers camped out with their offspring at another. “No one can know. Jacob could get in trouble for dating a student.”

“So I take it things went well,” I said.

Lexi grinned, looking enormously pleased with herself. “Very,
very
well.”

“Berk is going to be brokenhearted,” I said.

“What?” Lexi looked puzzled.

“Berk. You know…Pete Berkus. The guy you were hanging out with at Tipitina’s last night. He was really into you,” I said.

Lexi shrugged this news off. “Anyway, after Jacob and I left the bar, I went over to his place, and…”

“You didn’t tell me that!” Jen exclaimed.

“I was just getting to it when Kate came in,” Lexi said.

“What happened?” Jen asked breathlessly. She was on the edge of her seat, leaning forward.

“Nothing. I mean, we kissed a little, but mostly we just talked and listened to some music. But it was still really romantic. Jacob is amazing. Smart, funny, and—unlike every guy I’ve ever dated—he’s a real grown-up.” Lexi sighed happily.

“You two are so lucky,” Jen bemoaned. “I miss romance.”

“I don’t know if having an ex-boyfriend camped out on my couch really qualifies as romance,” I said.

“Oh, yes, it does. Especially the part where he came to find you because he couldn’t bear living without you,” Jen said.

“That’s not exactly what he said,” I replied.

“Just showing up is a romantic gesture,” Jen insisted.

“Sean isn’t romantic?” Lexi asked.

“Once you get married, you never get to have a first kiss again. Or that nervous butterfly feeling in your stomach when you see someone you have a crush on. And romance…” Jen paused to snort. “Unless you find it romantic to pick your husband’s dirty clothes up off the bedroom floor for the four hundredth time—because, despite the fact that he graduated with honors from medical school, he can’t grasp the concept of a laundry hamper—you’re shit out of luck.”

“Hey, chickadees. Shit out of luck about what?” Addison asked, slinging his knapsack on the ground and sitting down at the table. He was wearing a faded black Pink Floyd concert T-shirt, gray sweat shorts, and his black-rimmed glasses.

“Nothing,” Jen said. “Just girl talk.”

“Do you want to know what I figured out today? Three hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars,” Add said.

We looked at him.

“That’s the answer. It’s like
Jeopardy!
You’re now supposed to say, ‘What is
blank,
’” Addison explained.

“I don’t know…. Is it the salary of a big-firm attorney?” Lexi guessed.

“Not an associate,” I said. “Not even Manhattan associates make that much.”

“It’s the amount I’ll end up shelling out in the thirty years it takes me to pay off my law-school loans,” Addison said.

Jen sucked in her breath.

“That much?” Lexi asked. She dropped her pen on her notebook and gave a little shiver.

“If you borrow the maximum for the entire three years that we’re here. And that’s not counting undergraduate loans,” Addison said.

“Oh, my God,” Lexi said. “That’s what I’ll owe too.”

“That’s the upside of being married. I only had to take out loans for tuition, not living expenses,” Jen said. “Which is a good thing, since Sean’s med-school loans are huge.”

The three of them looked at me, and I flushed.

“My parents…well, they had a life-insurance policy,” I said. “It wasn’t huge, but it’s enough for me to get through school.”

This was met with silence, which I understood. It wasn’t exactly as though they could respond with
Lucky you.

“Am I late?” Dana asked, scraping a chair back from the table and sitting down. Her face was flushed, and her hair was pulled back into a high curly ponytail, like Pebbles from
The Flintstones
.

“No, Nick isn’t here yet,” Lexi said. “Why didn’t he drive over with you, Kate?”

“I don’t know what happened to him. I knocked on his door before I left, and he wasn’t there. His car wasn’t in its usual spot either,” I reported.

“I didn’t see him at the library this morning,” Addison said.

“I think he hooked up last night,” Jen said. “When we were at the Maple Leaf, Nick spent the entire time playing pool with some chick. I think she was a med student. A med student with breast implants.”

“Mmmm, breast implants,” Addison said dreamily.

“Should we start without him?” Dana asked, ignoring our gossip.

Lexi looked at her, eyebrows arched. “Were you at church or something before you came here?”

Dana’s face colored. She was wearing a navy blue short-sleeve sweater over a long blue-and-yellow-floral skirt, while the rest of us were wearing jeans or shorts. I hadn’t even bothered brushing my hair that morning and instead just put on a black baseball hat.

“I was at the library,” Dana said defensively. “I like to wear real clothes when I study. It helps keep me focused.”

“What did I miss?” Nick asked, appearing beside the table. He looked like he hadn’t slept or showered—or even changed his clothes from the night before. Sporting a day’s worth of stubble and smelling strongly of smoke, he collapsed into the chair next to me.

I wrinkled my nose. “No offense, Nick, but you smell like a bar. And not in a good way.”

“Coffee…I need coffee,” he croaked.

“Kate tells us you didn’t make it home last night,” Jen said, winking at me.

“Keeping tabs on me?” Nick asked irritably.

“Don’t be so cranky. I just stopped by your apartment before I came over, and you weren’t there,” I explained.

“So…let’s have it?” Lexi asked, tipping her head coyly to one side.

Nick shook his head. “A gentleman does not kiss and tell,” he said piously. “Unless someone wants to buy my virtue with a cup of coffee.”

“I’ll go,” Addison said. “Anyone else want anything? Dana?”

“Just a glass of water, please,” Dana said. “I try to stay away from caffeine; it makes me jittery.”

Lexi pulled a face, which irked me. Dana was a little different, if for no other reason than she was younger than us, but that was no reason to be unkind to her. And to Jen’s credit, she ignored Lexi’s eye roll, and said, “Smart girl, Dana. Caffeine is poison.”

“You don’t want anything, Jen?” Addison asked.

“A large cappuccino, please,” Jen said, handing him a five-dollar bill. She shrugged. “What can I say, I’m addicted.”

Lexi and I both shook our heads when Addison looked at us questioningly, and he went off to stand in line.

“So, spill it, Nick,” Jen ordered.

“Not until I’ve had my coffee.”

“At least tell us this: Did you spend the night at the med student’s place?” Lexi asked.

Nick looked sheepish.

Jen hooted with laughter. “I knew it! I would never have guessed you were such a player.”

Nick looked affronted. “I am not a player. She forced me back to her apartment, where eventually I passed out. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t know where the hell I was. But here’s the really scary part—this chick is obsessed with Justin Timberlake. She had posters of him up all over her room. Do you have any idea how scary it is to wake up to Justin Timberlake’s face staring down at you?” Nick shuddered. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get over it.”

“Are you going to see her again?” Lexi asked.

“God, no,” Nick said. “Hopefully never again. Didn’t you hear what I said? Justin Timberlake?”

“But that’s so…” I trailed off, grasping for the right adjective.

“Piggish,” Lexi finished for me.

Jen nodded in agreement. “Disgusting,” she said.

Nick looked hurt. “I am not piggish. And besides, how do you know she wants to see me again?”

“Of course she would,” Jen said. “You’re a total fox.”

“I am?” Nick asked, looking so pleased, I rolled my eyes.

“Yup,” Jen said, ruffling his hair. “In a brotherly sort of way.”

“That’s the kiss of death,” Nick complained.

“Did she give you her phone number?” Lexi asked. Nick nodded. “Then of course she wants you to call her.”

“I thought that was just morning-after etiquette. You exchange phone numbers, make promises to call, and then hope like hell you never bump into each other ever again,” Nick said.

“What did I miss, what did I miss?” Addison asked. He handed steaming mugs of coffee to Nick and Jen, a glass of ice water to Dana, and then sat back down at the table.

“Nick hooked up last night,” Lexi said. “He was just telling us about it.”

“Way to go,” Addison said. “The hot girl you were hanging out with? Give it up, my man.”

The two guys bumped fists.

“You think she was hot?” Jen asked.

“Um, yeah,” Addison said.

“But she was so…obvious,” Jen said.

“In a good way,” Addison said. “That’s the thing women never understand about men. We
like
one-night stands. We revel in them. And you don’t want to have one with the girl next door. You want someone…dirty.”

All of the females at the table, including Dana—who up until that moment had been trying hard to ignore the conversation while she reviewed her notes—wrinkled our noses.

“Dirty?” I repeated.

“Ew,” Lexi said.

“Dirty as in diseased?” Jen asked.

“No, dirty as in twelve hours later she doesn’t even remember your name,” Addison said. He held two pens up like drumsticks and began to tap on the edge of the table with them.

“Oh. My. God,” I said.

“You are so gross,” Jen exclaimed, whacking Addison on the arm. “Both of you are.”

“Easy there, tiger. No need to get hostile,” Addison said.

“Leave me out of it,” Nick said. He slouched down in his chair.

“Coward,” Lexi said.

“Hey, I’m just telling the truth,” Addison said. He winked lasciviously.

“I thought men were supposed to like women who play hard to get,” Dana said.

Addison shrugged. “Some men might. But all guys appreciate an easy score now and again,” he said.