College Girl (31 page)

“Thanks.”

I looked back once as I walked
toward Julie.
Nick
had turned and was
smiling at me.

“Damn, girlfriend. You must have
that
I just got shagged
look about
you,” Julie grinned as I joined her.

“What? He was just being nice.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure he’s being
that nice to everybody.”

“Maybe he’s just nice to girls who
look like they got dumped on their
asses
by their much
older not-quite-boyfriends.”

Julie snorted.

“O-kay. And you owe me lunch if he
gave you his number.”

“Wait, does this mean I get a free
lunch if he
didn’t
give me his
number?”

She nodded.

“Awesome. Let’s go over to that
Italian deli on First.”

“Whoa. Hold on. Open up your bag.”

“What are you? Airport security?”

I pulled out my receipt and waved
it at her.

“He circled my return code,” I
laughed.

Julie leaned over and pulled out
the bookmark from my Psych textbook.

“
Nick Collins. Call me.
”

When she started reading off a
phone number, I snatched the bookmark from her. Looking down, I saw his name
and number scrawled on the bookmark in marker. I laughed.

“He probably hands out two hundred
an hour just to see who bites.”

“Have you always been so cynical?”

“Jules, I was born cynical.”

“Well, if you’re so jaded, then
think of it this way: the perfect opportunity for a rebound just gave you his
number.”

I shook my head vehemently against
the idea.

“I can’t.”

“That makes you a pathetic cynic.
Alex, admit it. You’re still hot for teacher man.”

We walked off campus, and I
stopped and took out a twenty from the ATM, lamenting my dwindling checking
account. At the sandwich place, I got in line while Julie took our stuff and found
a table. By the time I paid and found her in a corner booth, she was on my
phone.

“There. I texted him to see if
he’s free Friday night.”

“Julie! What the fuck?”

The guy at the next table turned
and looked and me, and I blushed bright red. Lowering my voice, I leaned toward
her.

“I just got my ass dumped by the
guy I’m epically fucking in love with.” Her eyes widened. “I can’t just go out
with the first guy I see.”

“Are you really in love with him?”
she asked seriously.

I looked down and felt my eyes
burn.

“Yeah, I am. I mean, I thought I
could do it. I thought I could just sleep with him and not get all fucked up
over it.” I shook my head. “I was an idiot.”

“There’s only one cure, then.”

“What’s that?” I asked hopefully.

“Ice cream. Then a hookup with hot
bookstore guy.”

“Ice cream, yes. Hot bookstore
guy, no.”

Julie looked mildly guilty. Then
my phone buzzed. When the guy at the counter called our number, Julie got up.
Checking my texts, I felt my stomach tighten.

Awesome! I’ll pick you up at 8. Where do you live?

Julie set my sandwich down in
front of me.

“So? What’d he say?”

I showed her the phone.

“You think he realized that I’m a
freshman?” I muttered.

“That didn’t stop your hot teacher
man,” Julie snickered.

I laughed miserably and took a
swig of my Coke.

“Oh my god! Stop calling him that!
And you owe me your pickle.”

“Like hell I do. I just got you a
date for Friday night. It’s for the best, Alex. Seriously. I don’t want to see
you moping around for the next ten weeks.”

“I won’t mope. I promise.”

“Bullshit. Text him back, or I’ll
do it for you.”

“And what if he’s a total stalker?
Then he’ll know where I live.”

“Alex, if you don’t text him, I’ll
tell Chris to set you up with his friend Scott.”

My eyes narrowed as I thought of
the guys that I had seen with Chris in the DC.

“Oh … god. He’s the one who wears
cowboy boots and skintight Wrangler jeans, isn’t he?”

“Yup.”

I shuddered.

“That’s blackmail.”

“Damn straight.”

I picked up my phone and typed in
my dorm and room number.

“Happy now?”

“Trust me. This is going to be
good for you.”

“Sure.”

I was too nervous to enjoy my
food, so I picked at my potato chips. When Julie finished, I walked to the
counter and asked for a box for my sandwich. As we were walking out to the
sidewalk, I looked up at the sky.
Cloudy, gray, dismal.

“It was perfect a couple of days
ago,” I sighed.

“Listen to the SoCal girl.”

“Oh don’t start up with that SoCal
shit. You know, us Southern Californians happen to be completely unaware of the
whole rivalry you northies have going on in your heads.”

“Northern California is da bomb.”

I shook my head and laughed.

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

“What are you going to do when we
get back?” Julie asked.

“Go for a run, try to find
something to wear on the date you just roped me into … maybe mope a little in
the privacy of my room.”

“Well, I’m going for dinner with
Chris and some of his friends. You wanna come with?”

“Sure. What are you going to do
until then … or should I ask?”

She grinned.

“Don’t ask.”

When we got back to Mercer, I
swiped my card and we walked inside. Seeing someone rise from one of the chairs
across the room, I squinted and blinked, trying to make sense of what—or
whom—I was seeing. Then my entire body went numb with shock.

“D-dad?”

Ryan

It had been nearly two weeks since
I had left Alex’s dorm room, and I was angry—in the worst possible
fucking way. Angry because there was no one to be angry with except myself.
Angry because doing the
right
thing
had cost me the one person I had truly felt something for. But the truly fucked
up part was that I
could
have held
onto Alex. Seen her on the weekends, subjected her to my family’s
drama—in effect hijacking her college experience so that I wouldn’t have
had to give her up.

The week before, in my
desperation, I had gone completely off the deep end and called a jeweler who
worked with Becca—to have her design an engagement ring. Then I had come to
my fucking senses. Alex didn’t need me to propose. She needed me to stay the
fuck out of her life.

I had already called Robertson and
the head of the Math department to request that my doctoral application be
deferred. Then I had started the process of putting the house at school up for
sale. My father was scheduled to start chemo soon, and earlier in the week, my
brother-in-law had sat down with us to explain the silver lining. The cancer my
father had responded well to chemo, or at least
better
than most lung cancers. The bad news was that the treatment would make him
sicker than he seemed now.

Our official “family” breakfast on
the morning I had left Alex’s dorm had been awkward at best, disastrous at
worst. Gretchen knock back mimosas with my mother had been more than I could
stomach. No one in my family handled emotional shit well, but while watching
Gretchen and my mother, I had finally realized why my mother couldn’t let go of
her former-future daughter-in-law. They were two of a kind—drinking when
things were at their best and drinking more when things were at their worst.
Seeing Gretchen again had driven home the fact that I had dodged a huge fucking
bullet.

Since returning, I had already
begun to take over day-to-day operations at the winery, learning to grin and
bear it when my father questioned every decision I made. Maybe it was my
punishment for going back for my doctorate. Or maybe he really had no faith in
me. Either way, the rest of my life had been put on hold, and it felt like I
was back in junior high.

At first, I had kept expecting to
have a Hallmark moment with my father where he would put his hand on my
shoulder and tell me it was all up to me now. Not a fucking chance. Richard
Bennett wasn’t going to let something like terminal cancer fuck up his track
record of emotional detachment combined with epic micromanagement. Everything
was subject for debate, and finally it occurred to me that
this
was why I had gone back for my doctorate.

Deep down I realized that the
dynamic would change at some point—when he actually seemed sick—so
I tried to enjoy the father-son time, even if it mostly involved criticism of
my every breath.

It was what it was.

On Friday night, while I was
poring over legal documents, my phone buzzed. It was a text from McDevitt. Unfortunately,
I hadn’t had the energy to explain to him that his performance with Alex had
severed any need I had to remain friends with him. But even if I had told him
to fuck off, he would have just brushed it off and called me a pussy. I opened
the text.

Your freshman already replaced you. Sad?

I looked down at the attached
picture and felt my jaw clench. It was a blurry shot of Alex standing on a
street corner looking up at some prick with a ponytail. Another text popped up
with a picture of McDevitt holding up a bottle of Jaeger and grinning. He was
in the bar on G and Third. The bastard hadn’t left town.

Small fucking world, no?

My knuckles cracked. That he was
probably crashing at my house was mildly surprising. That he was in a bar
drinking at nine o’clock on a Friday? That was practically a requirement for
him. That Alex had walked by? Town was small. That she was on a date less than
two weeks after I had held her in my arms? It fucking destroyed me. But what
had I been expecting after telling her not to wait for me? I threw the phone
down and swore.

Jesus, I was an asshole.

Correction. I was an asshole, but
McDevitt was the fucking antichrist. It was like he could sense the most fucked
up possible thing to do—and then he would try to one-up it. Had this been
random, or was he stalking Alex just to fucking mess with me? Was he that
depraved?

And, yes, for the first time since
freshman year of college, I had to admit that he really was that depraved.

The worst part was that I found
myself struggling not to pick up the phone and text Alex in hopes of ruining
her date, which meant that, really, I was no better than McDevitt. I watched
Finn get up and trot toward the dog door like he wasn’t up for my foul mood.
And my dog was right—I was being a belligerent asshole. I liked myself
better when I was with Alex, and apparently so did he.

I wanted to drive back to school
and comb the streets looking for her and then beg for forgiveness when I found
her. Barring that, I wanted to drive back to my house and kick the living shit
out of James McDevitt. Instead, I called up an all-night locksmith to have the
lock to the front door swapped out. The guy said he’d call me back with an ETA.

Taking out a bottle of the family
label and uncorking it, I poured a healthy glass. When my phone buzzed again, I
looked down and saw Gretchen’s name. I took a swig. My ex had gotten brazen
since her little bonding session with my mother, texting me multiple times a
day, and I figured that, in her mind, the wedding was back on now.

Marriage was her ticket out of
playing legal secretary at her father’s firm. She’d come back here, get married
to the heir apparent, drink, and—yeah, that was about it. The other
person in the relationship—me—wouldn’t even factor into the equation.
I was—always had been—a means to an end. In fact, if I had given up
school sooner and gotten married, I’d probably be seeing less of her than I had
in the past week and a half, considering my mother had already invited her for
dinner. Twice.

Unlocking the phone, I opened
McDevitt’s picture of Alex, trying to determine from a blurry picture if she
looked happy with the fucking asshole she was with. Were they holding hands? I
told myself that I deserved this, but that didn’t make it any better.

I looked backed at the computer. I
had meetings with my father’s accountant and lawyer next week, and there were
about fifty tabs on the spreadsheet I was staring at. Surprisingly, being back
home—apart from knowing it meant I couldn’t be with Alex—hadn’t
hurt as much as I thought. My routine for the past week and a half had been
simple: I ran at dawn, and then I worked until I was too tired to think. Well,
that was bullshit. I thought about Alex even in my sleep.

At the sound of a car door
slamming, I looked up. Then I heard the sharp click of high heels. A minute
later, there was a knock at the door. I frowned. There was no way anyone should
have been back here at this hour. All the employees had gone home, and I knew
it wasn’t my mother. Walking to the door, I didn’t bother with a shirt. I swung
it open and stared down at Gretchen.

“Are you going to let me in?” she
asked demurely.

My jaw clenched. I wasn’t up for
games.

“No.”

“Ryan, do yourself a favor and
stop pretending like coming back here ruined your fucking life. If you would have
just given up this school fantasy in the first place, we’d be married by now.”

My stomach twisted.
A truly nauseating thought.
She was right, though. Coming
back here hadn’t ruined my life. But marrying Gretchen would have. And leaving
Alex had.

“What do you want, Gretchen?”

“I want things to go back to the
way they were,” she said sulkily. “We were happy.”

I laughed bitterly.

“
Happy
? Really. You were? Because
I
was numb.”

“It will be different this time.
We’ve both grown up a lot. I think we’re more ready for marriage.”

I stared down at her impeccable
exterior in disbelief.

“You mean now that I’m not playing
the starving student?”

“You never wanted that. You were
just doing it to piss off your parents.”

So much for
better or worse
,
richer or poorer
, and all that bullshit.

“Was I?”

She nodded and came closer, not
catching the edge in my tone.

“Besides, Ryan. Our parents think
we’re great together.”

“Because that’s what really
matters.”

She glared at me.

“You’re not making this easy.”

“Making
what
easy?”

“Getting back together.”

She said this like I was
daft—like it was a given. I took a step back, wondering if she was really
that fucking crazy … or if I was having a hallucination. When she followed me
into the cottage, I seriously started to wonder if I had blacked out during
breakfast last week and woken up in an alternate fucking reality.

“Kathleen wanted to announce it at
your birthday party …”

My
party was news to me.

“And I want to have a new ring
picked out and everything.”

“Have you lost your fucking mind?”

She laid a hand on my arm.

“I know it’s a stressful time
right now, but Ryan, think about your parents. Don’t you want your father to be
at the wedding?”

Her practical tone, combined with
the fact that she had factored into her event planning my father’s apparently
imminent demise, snapped something in me.

“Get out.”

She laughed in surprise. Then she
saw I wasn’t joking. She sneered.

“I guess you haven’t changed that
much. You’re still a selfish fucking bastard.”

“And you’re still a cold bitch. We
probably do belong together.”

“Fuck you.”

I smiled and pointed toward the
door. She stalked out, and Finn, who was trotting back in the direction of the
cottage, gave her a wide berth. Shutting the door, I heard the tires of
Gretchen’s BMW screeching on the asphalt. The only thing I wanted right now was
get in the car and drive to Alex’s dorm, but I knew that it was probably the
most fucked up thing I could possibly do. I called Jess instead.

“How are you, man?” he asked in a
tone that said people in the department were wondering about my sanity.

“Been better.”

“Santiago sent out an e-mail
saying you had deferred.”

“Yeah, I should have called you.”

I went through the short version
about my father and made a vague reference to Alex.

“That little freshman you hooked
up with last term?”

I winced.

“Yeah.”

“You sound like shit.”

“It’s been a pretty fucked up
week. And to cap it off, my ex just stopped by to take a chunk out of me.”

“Nice. Makes me feel grateful for
Brenda right about now,” he laughed.

“Don’t take her for granted.”

“She wouldn’t let me.”

I laughed—and I then
pictured Jess pulling at his hair and pacing around his tiny office at the
department.

“Are you still on campus?”

He paused guiltily.

“Go home, you fucking junky.”

“Yeah. I’m going. What about you?
Are we gonna see you anytime soon?”

“When are the wedding invitations
going out?”

“I think Brenda said June, so if I
don’t see you before the big day, take care.”

“Yeah.
You, too.
Say hi to the missus for me.”

I put the phone down. Shit, it
felt like I was dismantling my life piece by piece. The question was: would
there be anything left when I was done? With the weekend yawning out before me
like a big black hole, I yanked off my jeans and grabbed a pair of shorts from
the duffle bag I had packed. Rummaging through it, I found the only remaining pair
of workout socks. I hadn’t done laundry since getting back, and I was running
low on just about everything with most of my stuff still at the house.

Jamming my feet into my running
shoes and tying the laces, I whistled for Finn and walked out the door. The sky
had cleared, and the moon was out, providing perfect visibility through the
vineyard. Taking off down the dirt path, I climbed until I reached the edge of
the vines. Hitting the hill where I used to do repeats in high school, I pushed
myself through a dozen intervals, reaching for oblivion. I tried not to think …
of anything. But the goddamn picture of Alex with the mystery douchebag kept
haunting me. Cruising back down past the cottages, I followed the driveway to
the road and then stopped and looked up at the sign.

Bennett Family Cellars

I thought about my father’s
speech.
His inevitable disappointment in me.
But I was
here now. I had come back. Still, I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I couldn’t be Reece.
Disappointment had become the major theme in my life—the people closest
to me wanting me to be someone else. Maybe that was why it had never occurred
to me that Gretchen had never wanted
me
,
but rather a cardboard cutout of me.

It wasn’t that my brother didn’t
deserve to be worshipped. In my memory, he did. When I had been eight, Reece
had just gotten the monster of all trucks—an eighteenth-birthday present
from our father. My brother could have gone out with his buddies, but instead
he had taken his little brother and driven out to a rugged, empty lot that
hadn’t been developed yet. Blasting the music, he had taken off through the
mud. I never told my parents about that day, and over the years it had become a
legend in my mind.