For Authentication Purposes (17 page)

“When were you a professor?” Gary asked.

My shoulders slumped, and I looked at him in disbelief.

“You were the student.”

Dawn.

I turned my face toward her, and nodded once in agreement.

“Holy shit,” she said quietly, settling back against the couch cushion. “I mean, it makes sense, I guess. Walter Grant is Warner Green?”

“Look, the school paid me off to cover up the ‘transgression’ and I had to leave. It was bad enough that I was her student, but it started when I was seventeen and that was a huge issue. That’s why I came back home, because we got caught and called out by a TA. It went in front of the board and everything. But the point is that Mandie,
the teacher
, wasn’t supposed to say anything about it and now there’s a book out that’s getting major press, and I just wanted to be honest with you, okay? Before the truth becomes public, if anyone figures out it was me. I don’t know how it’s going to affect my settlement and whether or not I can sue.” The weight of my reality hit me like a freight train, and I slumped down onto an empty chair to catch my breath.

Declan sat back against the couch again as Jemma leaned forward, cradling her chin in her hand. “So she was, like, old?” Everyone shifted to look at her. “What? Like that’s not what the rest of you were thinking?”

Dawn looked down at her fingernails and then back up at me. “That’s the long relationship, then. Two years with an older woman.”

It sounded so bad coming from her mouth.

“She was a friend of my mom’s. You don’t know my mom and the people she’s friends with. If you did, this wouldn’t be a surprise at all,” I explained quietly. The rest of the group nodded a little because they had known her before.

“Well, that’s just messed up.” Dawn rubbed her face with her hands and snorted. “I don’t know whether to thank her or mail her anthrax in an envelope.”

“Anthrax. Definitely anthrax. I know a guy.” There was no doubt in my mind Gary was being serious.
 

Dawn held up a hand to stop him. Glancing at me again, she smiled a little. “No wonder you were all kinds of upset about me reading the book.”

“I didn’t want you to figure it out on your own and think I was keeping things from you.” It seemed like this conversation was the first legitimate one we had taken part in since, well, ever.

She looked thoughtful. “Gary? Do you have a computer I can use for a few minutes?”

He stood up slowly and pointed toward the room he had made into an office. “Yeah. Just let me move some stuff.”

“I don’t care how much weed you have in there. I just need Internet access.”

They moved into the other room, and Declan stared after them before addressing me. “Bunny’s a lot cooler than she was the last time she was here.”

I sighed. “Multiple orgasms will do that for a girl.”

Jemma shifted closer to me, her face still frozen in confusion. “Seriously. How old was this woman? Because I’m picturing you giving it to one of the Golden Girls right now.”

“Please. I had a hard-on for a couple of them back in the day.” I snorted. “But Mandie can burn in Hell.”

“So . . . forty-ish?” Jemma waved her hand back and forth. “Come on. I’m fascinated. Fifty?
Sixty
?”

I stood up and wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. “I think I’ve fucked this up. Big time.” Motioning toward the room Dawn was in, I set my jaw. If only that night at prom I hadn’t lost my nerve to ask her to be my girlfriend. My entire life could have been different. I’d gone outside to smoke and gather my courage, but she thought I was ignoring her and went about being a bitch for the rest of the night, making cartoon-eyes at that Lucas douche she had a crush on. I knew all about it, but still thought for just one second I’d have a chance with her.

Now that chance had come, and I was screwing up all over again.

Gary stepped out of the room and gave me the once-over before sliding by me in the hallway. “That’s a cool-ass chick you’ve got in there.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked and lowered my voice a little.

He snickered. “She’s getting online to ask some friends of hers to give her legal advice for you.”

“Are you serious?’

“Hell yeah.” He coughed into his elbow and then raised his fist to bump. “Better give that girl something good tonight.”

Distracted, I bumped his fist and moved to the door leading to Dawn. “I’d already planned on it.”

She was hunched over the screen on Gary’s laptop when I entered, and she looked up just for a moment to offer me a smile. “Hey, don’t get upset or anything. I’m not gonna use your name. But I have some friends here who might be able to help figure out your situation.” She logged in to an account and groaned into her hand. “Oh my God. I haven’t checked my email in a week. I have seven thousand e-mails.”

“Yeah, right.”

She turned the laptop to face me and my mouth went slack. “You’re serious.” I dropped to a squat next to her and tried not to think about how close she was in the small confines of the room. “So who are these people?”

“Friends. Readers. Other writers. All kinds of people from the community.” She tapped a few keys and a Facebook page filled the screen.

“That’s not even your face in your profile picture. And that’s not your name either. Did you name yourself Paige T. Urner?” I pointed to her page.

She slapped my hand away. “Yes, that’s my pen name. I don’t want my parents to know I write this stuff. You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to. And don’t make fun of the people who are about to save your ass.” She gave me a pointed look.

I watched as she filled her status update asking for legal advice. Within seconds, replies were coming through and her in-box started lighting up with PMs. “Holy. Shit.” I looked up at her face, and she was smiling.

“You make fun of these women for reading my awful stories, but you’d be surprised who is on the other side of the computer screen.” She shifted and leaned forward to look in my eyes. “You think they’re all bored housewives sitting at home with bad marriages, right?”

I just shrugged, unable to reply.

She pointed to the screen. “You see what that says? That says I have a ton of friends on this one page. And they’re actual friends. Some of them are people I talk to on the phone. Meet for dinner. We exchange stuff in the mail. I get presents or an ear to listen when I’ve had a particularly shitty day.” Her eyes were wide and soft. “They’re teachers, lawyers, doctors, artists. Some do stay at home, but a lot of them are full-time in the military or working from behind a desk making a hundred thousand a year. We contribute to charities and send baby gifts, stuff like that. So when you say shit like you did about me writing terrible fiction for women to get off to, you’re a little right. But you’re mostly wrong.”

I slid up on my knees, looked at the screen, and took a closer look. “There are thousands of women in these groups and shit?”

She nodded and gave a chuckle. “Unfiltered. All day. Every day.”

I had to focus and get it off my chest. “Listen, Dawn, I didn’t mean for any of this to come out how it did.”

Dawn laid a hand on my shoulder and shook her head. I was confused by the sympathetic look in her eyes and the smile on her lips. “No one should have to put up with what you are going through right now, Warner. If I got mad at you, it wouldn’t do any good. It happened. And she’s a bitch for putting it out there.”

I looked into her eyes as she said that and felt something shift in the relationship between us. “Why are you being so understanding?”

She smiled again, leaning her forehead to mine. “Because I care about you, Wardo. More than our agreement.”

I listened. She didn’t say that she cared about me as a friend. She didn’t say she cared about me as Candace’s brother. She only said she cared about
me
.

It was all I had been waiting for.

Now it was time. She was ready. I was ready. And, of course, my dick was more ready than either of us.

Dawn

After telling my closest friend why I had been MIA for a week, then signing off my account, I made my way back into the living room where Warner was sitting watching Declan and Jemma as they leaned in to listen to Gary.

“My ex’s name was . . .” Gary thought, settling back into the couch. “I don’t remember what it was. I do remember she liked it when I sucked her toes.”

“You can’t remember her name?” Jemma was in disbelief.

“I can remember her name. It was Katrina.” Declan nodded and crossed his arms.

Jemma reached across Gary’s chest and gripped hold of Declan’s nipple, squeezing until he howled and wrestled the sensitive skin out of her fingers. “Katrina was
your
ex- girlfriend’s name.”

Gary ducked and scooted away as Warner covered his mouth to hide his laughter.

I perched on the edge of the couch next to Warner and shook my head. The entire exchange was just too interesting. “Gary?”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta ask you a question.”

“The answer is no,” he said, drawing the last word out.
 

I was confused. “What?”

“No. I do not have a minute for you to talk to me about your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

I stared at him, open mouthed, blinking repeatedly. “Not what I was going to say at all. I was just going to ask how the hell you could forget your ex-girlfriend’s name.”

Every eye in the room was staring at me. Gary cleared his throat, and his gaze flicked from me to Warner for a moment before he shrugged. “Well, it’s not like she was my first love or anything.”

I felt Warner shift at my side, and I looked down to see his gaze fixed across the room. He seemed to be holding his breath for a ten count before he glanced back over at Gary. “I think we should head back to my apartment. Get some lunch and whatever.”

It was the whatever that made my stomach tense up a little. Whatever was between Warner and me had changed so much over twenty-four hours, and I wasn’t very sure about our agreement anymore. I mean, let’s face it. I would be doing the exact same thing that bitch Mandie had done to him if I used his sexual prowess to write a book. If it ever became public knowledge he allowed me to get away with using him for research purposes, yet fought against the release of 
An Early Education
, I could just imagine his life would be royally screwed. Pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind, I said goodbye to the gang and climbed into Warner’s car, contemplating what I should do for the entire ride back to his place. Perhaps the best thing would be to just order some food and then say goodbye so that I could get some space between us. That way I could figure out what I was going to do in the long run. I liked Warner. I liked what he could do to me way too much to be able to act like any of this was just casual between us anymore.

But most of all, I wanted him to be okay.

I thought about telling him I needed to go home instead of staying for the weekend. My conscience was getting the better of me because I felt like maybe I wasn’t any better than this woman was. On the ride over I tried to think of a way to explain that maybe he and I should take a break from all this so I could get concrete answers for him. I had friends who were looking into it, but they wouldn’t have information to me for a few more days. I owed him those answers. A solution to his problem. I could walk out now so we could figure everything out and I’d stop feeling like I was a user, too.

But then I thought about going days without seeing him or talking to him. It would be too awkward to see him at school and not touch him or say hello because he was bound to be mad if I walked out after he laid his heart on the line.
 

I’d see him in class, and we wouldn’t speak or he’d just hand in his papers and we’d avoid one another, all because I was going to wait and have answers for him. Would he see me in the parking lot and walk in the opposite direction? Would I want to call him to try and hear his voice and have him make me laugh because I’d gotten so used to him and the idea of us?
 

Us?

That thought hit me harder than anything else, and I battled an internal war in that car on the drive back. It was enough to drive me insane.

We walked into his apartment, and I steeled myself to tell him I was just going to leave, but before I could say anything he was at the freezer, pulling out a frozen pizza and preheating the oven.

I mean, it would be rude to leave before eating.

I leaned against the counter and watched him open the cardboard box with ease. His fingers slid against the perforation and popped the container open in one fell swoop. My fists were tugging at my sweater again, and I shifted a little to look out the living room window.

“Listen, if this is going to make things awkward, I can just go home. I don’t want you to feel weird.” I sighed, feeling lame as he put the pizza in the oven.

“Why would I feel weird?”

I shrugged. “It’s been a long day already, and you’re dealing with a lot right now, which I wasn’t aware of, and I just don’t want you to feel obligated to have me around if you need space or time to think and get your shit together.”