College Girl (22 page)

Right now
I
wanted to stick a foot up his ass. Feeling an arm lock around my
neck, I swung back with my elbow and hit a doughy gut. Turning, I saw Mike
doubled over with Dave laughing his ass off next to him.

“Borelli, you’ve gotten fucking
soft,” I laughed at Mike.

Dave and I were in jeans and
T-shirts, McDevitt and Borelli both in suits. I slapped my hand to Dave’s.

“Been too long.”

“Yeah it has,” Peterson grinned.

“Now, can we please get the fuck
out of here?” I asked.

McDevitt got on the phone with the
limo driver, and I sighed. This was going to be a long forty-eight hours … and
if I didn’t kick McDevitt’s ass, it would be a fucking miracle. Not
surprisingly, the first destination on his list was a strip club. We got into
the limo, and he was already pouring four shots. He raised his glass.

“I can’t think of the last time I
was with the three of you assholes, so it’s high time we went out and caused
some fucking damage. Drink up, pussies!”

In my past experience, there were
four kinds of guys who frequented strip clubs. First was the guy who couldn’t
get laid but somehow thought he was going to fuck a stripper. Second was the
guy—in our case McDevitt—who might actually fuck a stripper. Third
was the guy who worked at the club who was definitely going home with a
stripper. Fourth, well that was every asshole
who
got
dragged there by the first or second guy.

Generally, I had one word for
strip clubs in: skeezy. Didn’t matter whether it was Vegas or NYC. But McDevitt
had another word for strip clubs: warm-up. Strip clubs were like anything else
to him—as in:
why the fuck not
?
My theory as to why McDevitt managed to pick up a stripper almost every time I
saw him was simple: there was always at least one stripper in every club who
didn’t care how much of a dick he was, only how much money he had. Normally
there was no way I would go into a strip club with McDevitt, but in Vegas even
he knew not to mess with the bouncers. When I turned and asked Mike about the
family business, he shrugged.

“So what happened with you and
Goldilocks?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“I got off the party bus; Gretchen
didn’t. What about you? Seeing anyone?”

Mike shook his head, and McDevitt
chortled.

“The only dumbass in this limo
aiming for monogamy is you, Bennett.” He turned to Dave. “A hundred bucks says
he’s got a picture in his wallet of his new beloved.”

“You’re just disappointed because
she thought you were a sleaze,” I said evenly.

“This chick hot?” Mike asked.

“She’s a fucking freshman,”
McDevitt said gleefully.

“You saw her?” Dave asked.

“Yeah, he showed up at my place
and fucking stalked her,” I pointed out.

“Is she hot, though?” Mike asked
again.

“A six or seven maybe,” McDevitt
said.

I shrugged but didn’t say
anything. If I did, it would only cause McDevitt to latch on like a fucking pit
bull. He was predictable like that. When the limo pulled to a stop, I got out
and looked around. Neon signs, velvet ropes, a windowless building, two bouncers
built like tanks, and a bunch of slobbering dickheads drunker than McDevitt.

Fuck, I hated Vegas.

Alex

The minute I got to my parents’
house for spring break, I felt suffocated, even though the house was way bigger
than our old house. Actually, it looked like something out of the movies. The
new neighborhood was a little too well manicured, with sprinklers on a timer,
unnaturally green grass in the Southern California desert. It was like a
foreign planet, and I couldn’t help looking at Mom and Stephen like aliens,
these bohemian hippies from my childhood.

The good part was that I had my
own room in the new house, but it was more of a guestroom. There were a couple
of pieces of furniture from home, but it was mostly new stuff. Stephie’s room
already looked like she had lived there forever, when it was actually less than
a year. But she was twelve. To her, nine months was an eternity.

The truth was I felt like I didn’t
belong … anywhere. Everything had changed since I left. Irvine was unfamiliar. My
family was busy with their own stuff. Stephie had her own little routine going.
Mom, who had stayed up north with me for a week after my accident, was now busy
with finals since she didn’t have spring break until the week after mine. And Stephen,
as usual, was off in his own world. If he wasn’t working on the syllabus for an
online course, then he was checking stock prices. On the drive from the
airport, Mom had very proudly informed me that they could afford to send me to
school mostly because of Stephen’s investing genius. That, and the extra class
she was teaching at the extension.

No thanks to my father, she had added.
Mom was kind of a pro at guilt trips.

The first day I had gotten to
Irvine, I had walked around the neighborhood twice just to get out. I had tried
going for a run at school right before the break, but moving too much made my
ribs ache every time my right foot came down. The doctor had told me that the
pain would probably be gone within the next couple of weeks, but I now had a
small scar on my forehead that probably wasn’t going to go away.

You’re a very lucky young lady
, the doctor had said.

That had been twenty minutes
before Ryan Bennett had walked out of my life with no explanation. I hadn’t
been ready for it, but then again, I hadn’t been ready for getting hit by a
fucking car, either. It was the way it was. I had known that things with Ryan were
going to end. There had just been no way of predicting that they had been about
to end so immediately.

Was I angry? Not really. For a
while I had been too numb to feel anything. And after finding out that Ryan had
told Mom that he was a
friend
of
mine, it had been easier to explain why he had never come by to see me. When
Julie had told me about him stopping by
her
room to see how I was, that had hurt. He had obviously cared enough to find out
if I was still alive, but not enough to come see me.

Julie, who referred to him as the
flaming dickhead
, had said she would
kick him in the balls if he came back. I had laughed at that—because it
was better than crying. The funny thing was that I didn’t want an explanation,
because what would have been the point? I had even told Ryan that I would end
up getting hurt, and—surprise! I had.

The only good part about having
been immobile after the accident was that I hadn’t had anything better to do
than catch up on assignments that I had missed.

By the time Mom had finally found
out that I had been dropped from Calculus, she had given me her best
you didn’t try hard enough
speech. It
was good and bad that Mom thought I could
achieve
anything I put my mind to
. It was good because at least she had faith in my
academic abilities. It was bad because it made it impossible for her to
understand that I really sucked at Calculus
and
I hated it.

I had been lying in bed half the
day working on a short story—not for class, just for me. But I was
starting to get restless, so I went downstairs and grabbed the keys to the
Civic, my old car, which I had left behind when I went to school. Even though I
didn’t have a car at school, I was still on Mom and Stephen’s insurance policy,
which was another thing I’d been paying for with any money I made over the
summer.

Getting into the driver’s seat, I
sat there and tried to think of where to go. If I had been home, I would have
driven along PCH all the way to Zuma. I hadn’t seen the ocean since the summer,
and I missed it. Finally I decided to drive to the coast anyway.

The only problem was that a trip
to the coast required getting on 405 before cutting through to Laguna Beach. I
had gone there a couple of times over the summer after the move before
discovering that Laguna Beach in the summertime was a fucking madhouse. Sitting
in traffic for an hour just to see the water hadn’t been fun. Today, though, it
was drizzling and chilly. Not exactly beach weather.

There were condo buildings and
apartments everywhere as soon as I got off the freeway. Stephen, who had grown
up in Orange County, said that everything from the freeway to the coast used to
be farmland, but I couldn’t even imagine it.

It only took a half hour to get to
Coast Highway, but I couldn’t find a good place to park, so I drove south. Then,
just as I was about to give up on a good spot to pull over, I saw a parking lot
with beach access and pulled in. The beach was pretty much devoid of life. This
wasn’t the kind of beach you visited to walk around in the rain. People came
here to get tan. Slipping off my shoes, I walked down to the water.
Pacific Ocean my ass.
The waves were choppy and rough.

Sitting down in the sand, I looked
up at the sky. The grayness from Northern California’s long winter seemed to
have followed me south. Watching the waves, I brushed away the tears that had
collected in the corners of my eyes.

After hearing nothing from Ryan, I
wanted to think that I was over it—that I was over him. But I wasn’t. If
I hadn’t gotten hit by the car, if Ryan hadn’t run out of the hospital room
that day, then today I might have been in a hotel room in San Francisco, no
longer a virgin.

It was weird to think about now.
Like the whole thing with Ryan had been a long, surreal dream that
I had woken up from after the accident.
Looking up at the sky, I
wondered how long this ache in my chest would last. Would it go away once my
ribs were completely healed? Or would I feel like this forever? My phone rang, causing
my heart to skip a beat. For one, silly second I thought it might be Ryan. Then
I looked down and saw Mom’s number.

“Hi, Mom. I’m coming home now.”

She asked me to pick up some stuff
at the grocery store on my way back, and with a sigh, I put the phone back in
my pocket and got up. I started walking back to the car and then turned back
once to look at the crashing silver water, the flat gray horizon. I would be
back here in a few months, and if I drove to this spot, it wouldn’t look the
same. The sky would be blue, the water would be turquoise, and the beach would
be crammed with people.

Things would change. I was just
worried that my heart wouldn’t. That it would stay cracked like this.

When I walked into the house an
hour later with Mom’s odd assortment of groceries, I cringed at the sound of
unfamiliar voices.
Fuck
! I hated it
when Mom did this. I hated surprises, particularly ones where she foisted
strangers on me with no notice. A little heads up would be nice for once. Then
I remembered that I was just a visitor. I didn’t belong here. Turning the corner,
I walked into the kitchen where my mom was putting together a graham crust and
talking to a woman sitting at the island. The woman looked like a stereotypical
OC housewife, way more so than Mom did. She was fully done up, with
over-the-top highlights, a bronzed tan, bubblegum lipstick, and a French
manicure that looked like it had never seen a dish.

“Alexis, honey! Come meet Lisa.
They live next door.”

I smiled.
They
? Did this woman have multiple personalities?

“Nice to meet you.”

“Your mom says you just got back from
Northern California. You should have stayed down here where it’s warm!”

I smiled blandly.

“Ooh. I should have Josh show you
around,” she cooed with no explanation.

“Lisa’s son just finished school
at San Diego State—you said last year, Lis?” Mom asked her.

I put away the milk and smiled.

“He’s working for Charles at the
firm while he applies to law schools.”

“They’re coming over for dinner,
so you’ll meet him tonight,” Mom said.

I tried to hide my horror. I would
have come up with an excuse, but if I lied and said I was driving up to see
Rachel, Mom would have totally called my bluff since I had already told her
that Rachel was in Lake Havasu with her suitemates. I racked my brain for some
other innocuous lie just to get out of dinner with the neighbors, but I
couldn’t think of one, mostly because I had absolutely no life in Irvine.

“Oh!” the woman cried. “I almost
forgot. I’ve got to meet the trainer in a half hour. We’ll be back at seven.”

“Don’t worry about bringing
dessert.”

The woman blinked, like the
thought had never occurred to her. I smiled again as she slid off the barstool
and started walking toward the front door, her sandals slapping the tile. I
turned to Mom and gave her a look.

“You could have warned me.”

“Alexis, honey. You can’t stay in
your room all break and mope.”

“What are you talking about? I
just got back from the beach!” I cried defensively.

She smirked.

“You know what I mean.”

“No, really. I don’t. Mind filling
me in?”

“Alex, I know that boy who came to
the hospital wasn’t just a friend.”

I turned bright red and bit the
inside of my cheek.

“I just hope you were being safe,”
she said, looking down at the peppers.

“Mom! We were not …”

I trailed off as I realized how
close I had actually gotten to
having
sex with Ryan Bennett.

“Well, honey. He was what?
Twenty-six?”

I shook my head, not bothering to
clarify that he was twenty-eight.

“He was too old,” she said
sternly.

“Stephen is eight years older than
you are!”

“And I’m forty-five, sweetie!”

And what if I love him
? I asked silently. When Stephie burst in the
front door, I exhaled as Mom’s eyes lit up. Technically, Stephie and I were
only half sisters, but I had never thought of her that way. She was the only
sister I had.

“Alex! Look!”

She rose up on her toes
gracefully.

“Toe shoes!” she squeaked.

I went over and gave her a
high-five.

“You are awesome!”

I hugged her before heading up to
my room. Nearly seven years younger than me, Stephie had driven me crazy all
the way through school—getting into my stuff, hiding in my closet, saying
embarrassing things in front of my friends. Then, right after I had left for
school, everything had changed. For the first time, I had seen her for the cool
little person she was. Now, I wished I could be more like her—trusting,
outgoing, a little reckless, graceful,
popular
. She
was the kid everyone wanted to hang out with.

Closing the door to my room, I
could hear her giving Mom a rundown of her ballet class. I plugged in my
headphones and started rifling through the remains of my closet to find stuff I
wanted to take back to school with me. Taking out the dress I had worn to
junior prom with Rachel, I studied it. It wasn’t anywhere near as awesome as
the one from Ryan’s sister’s shop, but if I ever found myself in need of a
dress again, I could use it. I shoved the little black heels into my bag next,
and when I was done with my salvage operation, I looked for an OC-appropriate
dinner outfit. My white shirt was a bad idea; I’d just end up with a big stain
on it, so I settled for jeans and a black sweater.

“Alex!”

I jumped up and took off my
headphones. I had almost forgotten that Stephen was home, since he was
perpetually barricaded in his office like the women of the household were going
to carry him off. I ran down the stairs and opened his door. He had my laptop
on his desk.

“I took off a bunch of the
programs you weren’t using, so it should run faster. And you hadn’t downloaded
any updates since you were here for winter break!”

I grinned sheepishly.

“That’s what you’re here for. Tech
support.”

Stephen handled the technical and
financial issues; Mom handled emotional and household issues. If Stephen ever
had to caulk the bathtub or clean a toilet, he’d be screwed. If Mom had to keep
track of the finances, panic and chaos would ensue. I was glad they had each
other. Every once in a while, I debated whether I should just give in and call
Stephen
Dad
, but it was too weird. I
had a dad, out there somewhere, even if I never heard from him.

“Can you ask your mom when she
wants me to turn on the grill?”

“Sure.”

Rain or shine, Stephen loved
grilling. It was the one semi-domestic art he was really into. Taking my
laptop, I walked back into the kitchen and asked Mom about the dinner
itinerary.

“Well, they’re coming over at
seven, so six-thirty maybe?”

She always phrased these things as
a question, like her plans might change at any second. I nodded and started
going back toward Stephen’s office.

“Alex?”

I turned around.

“You know I just worry about you
while you’re so far away.”

I smiled at her.

“Mom, I’m eighteen. And, to be
fair, you worry about everything.”

“I know, but I worry about my
first-born the most …”