Winter Jacket: New Beginnings (18 page)

“Of course!” was Troian’s response. “I can’t wait to drag you around this city. I hope you can handle it, old lady.”

I
’d recently booked my flight to go to California for a week, my first visit to see Troian and Nikole since they’d moved to Los Angeles. It would also be the first time Hunter and I would be apart for any extended length since we’d started dating. Although I wanted her to be able to come on the trip, she couldn’t take the time off. Because she’d just started working at the hospital as a paid employee, no longer a student intern, she hadn’t yet accumulated any vacation time.

I slipped my phone into the junk drawer
so I wouldn’t be tempted to be on my phone all night. I was sure Hunter would be disappointed if she caught me on my phone instead of trying to bond with her overly loud, overly drunk nurse friends.

The ringleader seemed to be a gregarious girl named Cheryl. She actually put off a gay vibe
, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her on the dance floor at Peggy’s. She was short and sturdily built with cropped brown hair, dark eyes, and a laugh too big for the galley kitchen where Hunter and her friends were lining up shots of apple pucker. I didn’t know if they were all of legal age, but I didn’t ask. It would have added more unease to an already uncomfortable situation.

Building on my discomfort, Loryssa came home close to midnight when the party was well underway.
She waved at Hunter on her way through the kitchen and disappeared into her bedroom. It put me slightly at ease to think that maybe she was going to spend the rest of the night in her room. After our talk, there had been no unusual interactions in or outside of class between the two of us, but I didn’t know if that would translate back to the apartment as well.

A low rasp was close to my ear. “How long until they’
re doing body shots?”

I jerked to attention. I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts I hadn’t noticed Loryssa’s return.

I gave her a strained smile and self-consciously clutched my beer. “I don’t think it’s
that
kind of party, is it?”

She grabbed a plastic cup and made herself a
n unmeasured drink of vodka and orange juice. “You haven’t met her friends before, have you?” She chuckled at an unspoken joke.

I shook my head and too
k a nervous pull from my beer. “No. This is my first time.”

Her l
ips curled into a queer smile. “I might be wrong, but half of them are in love with your girlfriend.”

“Really?”

Her eyebrows raised as she took a long drink from her cup. “You know how it goes, I’m sure,” she said, coming up for air. “It’s almost graduation, they want to experiment before their time in college is over, and Hunter is the only lesbian they know.”

I
did
know; too well in fact. I’d gone to a similarly small school as an undergrad and, being one of the only Out people on campus, I’d been cornered and propositioned quite a few times by bi-curious women in the final semester of school. It surprised me that Loryssa was privy to that kind of information though.

“
What year are you?” I asked.

“I’m a J
unior, but I didn’t go to college right away. I took a few years off after high school to pursue modeling full-time.”

“Wow,” I openly admired. “That’s brave.”

She shrugged and took another long drink. “I had done some work for a local agency in the Twin Cities, and I thought I was going to be the Next Big Thing. I moved to Chicago with a pathetic portfolio and found out it wasn’t that easy.”

“Why’d you choose this school?”

“They gave me a scholarship,” she admitted. “I’d basically spent all my savings when I was trying to make it as a model, so I couldn’t be too picky.”

“Do you still model?” I asked.

“I don’t entertain ideas of grandeur anymore if that’s what you’re asking,” she lightly laughed. “But I’ve done a few photo shoots and runway work to make some extra cash for rent and ramen noodles.”

“I’
m sorry if I was short with you before.” I blurted out. I felt the need to apologize.

“
No, no. The fault was mine.” She shook her hands in front of her. “I need to learn to respect barriers better. It was totally out of line for me to be so flippant with you in class that day. But you have to agree, this is a pretty unusual situation.”

I allowed myself a laugh. “That’s an understatement.”

“You’re different than you are in class.” I felt her curious gaze regard me. It made me feel like an insect under a magnifying glass in the hot summer sun. “You seem so, I don’t know…proper all the time. I was honestly surprised when Hunt said you were coming.”

“If I seem stiff, it’s just me
trying to maintain boundaries. I’ve gotten mistaken for a student so many times, it’s given me a complex.”

“And the Hunter thing can’t make things any easier, huh.”

“Another understatement.” I felt myself sag. “But once Hunter graduates, things will get much easier.” It was a mantra that was the only thing getting me through this semester from hell.

“Less boundaries to maintain,”
Loryssa mused.

I happened to look in Hunter’s direction at that moment. Her friend Cheryl was laughing and unabashedly hanging around her neck. I bristled at the view; it didn’t sit well with me.

“Speaking of boundaries…I think I need to go rescue my girlfriend,” I said out loud, more to myself. I turned briefly to Loryssa. “I’m glad we got to talk.”

Loryssa raised her plastic cup to me. “
Go mark your territory, Professor,” she chuckled.

Hun
ter wasn’t drunk, but Cheryl clearly was.

“Okay, someone is cut off,” I said, grimacing as I peeled the sloppy co-ed off my girlfriend.
“I think Cheryl’s met her limit,” I murmured in Hunter’s ear.

She nodded, agreeing.

“Let me have some of that, Cher,” Hunter said, coaxing the red plastic cup out of her friend’s hand. She surrendered her drink willingly, which didn’t surprise me, especially if she had a crush on Hunter as I suspected.

Instead of waiting to see if Hunter would return her drink, Cheryl reached for a half-filled bottle of vodka. Her hand-eye coordination was off, however, and she only managed to knock the bottle off the kitchen counter. We could only watch helplessly as it plummeted and shattered on the linoleum.

“Oh no!” Cheryl cried out. She reached for the broken glass, but Hunter stopped her just in time before she could slice her hand on the jagged shards.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Cher,” Hunter said gently. “Don’t worry about this mess. I’ve got it.”

I grabbed a broom and dustpan to take care of the broken glass and a pile of paper towels to start mopping up the wasted alcohol.

“
What are we going to do with this one?” I asked, nodding in Cheryl’s direction. She now sat on one of the kitchen chairs, slumped forward and moments away from passing out.

Hunter’
s face scrunched. “What are we going to do with
all
of them?”

Tha
t’s when I noticed that somewhere between my texting with Troian and my conversation with Loryssa the party had taken a turn for the worse – or at least a turn for the drunk.

The kitchen counter where the alcohol had sat was in disarray, hard liquor bottles empty or nearly so.
The music was conspicuously louder than when things had started for the evening, and the party-goers, Hunter’s friends from school, were in various stages of undress. One more bottle of Malibu and a pillow fight would break out, or there’d be projectile vomiting. I could see it going either way.

“I’m in Hell,”
I muttered.

Hunter’s sensible voice brought me back. “They’
ll just have to sleep it off here.”

She strode over to her la
ptop and turned the music down. The action was met with a chorus of boos, and if I wasn’t so annoyed by the prospect of babysitting half a dozen drunk co-eds, it would have made me laugh.

If Hunter had
started to let the alcohol she’d consumed chisel away at her pragmatism, all traces of that disappeared once Cheryl had knocked the vodka bottle onto the floor. She methodically began to put away the remaining alcohol and replace it with glasses of water.

Loryssa hovered close. “What can I do?”

Hunter brushed some hair out of her eyes. “You don’t have to stick around. I’ve got this. They’re
my
sloppy friends, so I’m responsible for cleaning up after them.”

“What about me?” I half-teased. “I didn’t sign up for this either.”
I had just finished cleaning up the mess from the broken vodka bottle. I threw the broken glass in the nearly overflowing kitchen garbage bag and put the broom and dustpan back in their closet.

Hunt
er gave me a reproachful look. “I need you to grab some extra pillows and blankets from the linen closet. And then take all this trash down out back to the dumpsters and recycling.”

I mock saluted her,
and she stuck her tongue out at me.

When I returned
from my assigned duties, Hunter’s friends were sprawled out on the living room furniture and floor with extra pillows and blankets. Some brainless reality television show was on the TV and the few who hadn’t already passed out were quietly watching and rehydrating.

I found Hunter in her bed.
I stripped out of my jeans and pulled on a pair of her sleep shorts that I found on the floor.

“You did a nice job out there,”
I approved, snuggling into her side. “Everyone looks like they’ll survive the night, and no one’s puked yet. I’d call that a win.”

“I’
m good at taking charge,” she murmured. Her hand rested of my stomach. “You just never give me the chance.”

“
Well, maybe I should take a backseat more often then,” I replied unthinking.

Her gaze inspected m
e in the darkness of her room. “You might actually like it, you know.”

Somehow the conversation had come back to Switching.
I closed my eyes instead of rehashing the discussion. Something told me I might like it
too much
.

“Is it weird between you and
Loryssa because of me?” I asked her.

I
still felt guilty about potentially souring her relationship with her long-time friend and former roommate, Sara. I didn’t want the same thing to happen with her new roommate.

“No. I really don’t see much of her
,” Hunter said. She slipped her hand under her head like a pillow. “She keeps strange hours – out all night, gets up late. She’s apparently a model, so when she’s not at school she’s at a photo shoot or something.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“You’re not supposed to say that.” Hunter’s lips twisted. “I might get jealous.”

“Speaking of jealous, what’s the story with that Cheryl girl?”

“Story? Jealous?” Hunter echoed.

“She’s totally gay, right?” I posed.

“Not that I know of.” Hunter sounded confused.

“Oh, c’mon, Hunt,” I goaded. “I know you’re new to this, but she doesn’t ping your gaydar even just a little bit?”

“Be nice; she’s the reason you and I are together.”

My eyebrows rose to my hairline. This was a story I needed to know.

“The night I saw you at Peggy’s wasn’t the first time I’d been to the bar; but it was the first time I’d actually stayed.”

“What does that mean?” I rolled onto my side to face her.

She stared at the ceiling. “I tried to go a few other times before, but I chickened out when I got inside. This one time I tried to buy a beer, but a woman at the bar said to me ‘who are you trying to fool?’ I didn’t know if she was talking about me not being 21 yet, or if I didn’t look gay enough. I ran right out of there, totally embarrassed, and I vowed never to go back.”

“But Cheryl made you go back?”

“She wanted to go dancing,” Hunter explained. “And Peggy’s is like the only place you can go dancing if you’re under 21 in this town. I figured if I was going to try out Peggy’s again, that was the time to do it, surrounded by friends.”

“And that was the night I was there.”

I made a mental note to thank this Cheryl person.

“Enough talking for the night.
Come here and cuddle like you mean it,” Hunter instructed sternly.

I wiggled closer; we were nearly the same height and size, she a little smaller in frame and me broader in the shoulders, but she fit perfectly with her backside snuggled up to my front.
I draped my arm over her waist and she grabbed onto my wrist and pulled so that my forearm was practically nestled between her bra-less breasts. I pressed my lips against her bare shoulder blade.

“
I love you,” I whispered into her skin.

The hand still wrapped around my w
rist tightened affectionately. “I love you, too, baby.”

+++++

Today was an anniversary of sorts – it had been exactly one year ago when I’d summoned my courage and had talked to Hunter at the English Department’s end-of-the-year party. I’d caught her digging around in my home office, after Sylvia had scattered student papers all over the floor. Thinking back on it though, Hunter had been the truly brave one for showing up at the party in the first place. It was intended for faculty and staff, graduating seniors, and English majors – all of which she was not.

Hunter
was making herself scarce this evening, however. As a graduating senior, she would have probably known some of the students who would be in attendance, but I could understand her reluctance to come. I already felt on display on campus even when Hunter was nowhere in sight. Also, she probably sensed my increased anxiety about the prospect of Dean Merlot being in my house. The English faculty always came to the party, but very often administration showed up as well. Dean Krauss had been at last year’s party, and I was nervously anticipating that Dean Merlot would take the opportunity to throw her weight around on my turf.

The cheese and cracker plates were set out and the wine bottles opened, but I had largely ignored my hostess responsibilities tonight to spend the majority of the evening talking to my colleagues, Thad and Emily. Sucking up to the Dinosaurs was less pressing now that I didn’t have an impending tenure review. I used to avoid Thad
at all costs because he frequently found a way to flirt with me. That bad habit had somewhat faded now that he knew I wasn’t interested in men. Sometimes it only encouraged men, but Thad was a smart guy.

I might have been paranoid, but it seemed like there weren’t as many faculty members in attendance as there usually was. The student numbers were the same though – all crowded around the food tables and giving sideway glances to the open wine bottles set out on the dining room buffet.

A woman I didn’t recognize had cornered Bob, the Chair of my Department. He looked ill at ease despite his surroundings. I wondered if he got tongue-tied around attractive women, too. The woman’s hair was long – chestnut brown with honey blonde highlights – and curled into loose corkscrews that framed a tan, heart-shaped face. She wore a sharply tailored suit, pencil skirt, and blouse. It was similar to something I might teach in, but I would have foregone the formal jacket. Her legs were long, trim, and tan like the rest of her.

“
Do you know who that is?” I asked my friends. I gestured to the corner of the living room as unobtrusively as possible.

Thad peered over the top of his glasses that I was convinced he really didn’t need. “That’s the
new Dean.”

“
That’s
Merlot?” I nearly choked on my tongue.