The Year We Fell Down (3 page)

“No shit! You’re Callahan’s little sister?”

She smiled, which made her blue eyes glitter. She had a kick-ass smile, and rosy coloring, as if she’d just run a 5K race. “That’s right.”

“See, I knew you were cool.” I took a gulp of milk.

“So,” she picked up her sandwich. “If your break is only a week old, you must be in a lot of pain.”

I shrugged while chewing on a bite. “The pain I can handle. But it’s just so fucking awkward. Getting dressed takes a half hour. And taking a shower is ridiculous.”

“At least temporarily.”

I froze mid-bite, dismayed by my own stupidity. “Shit, Callahan. Listen to me bitching about twelve weeks in a cast…” I put down my sandwich. “I’m kind of an asshole.”

She flushed. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I swear. Because if you can’t complain a little bit, then neither can I.”

“Why not?” I think I’d just proved that she had every right to bitch. Especially with assholes like me running around.

Corey toyed with her napkin. “Well, after my accident, my parents sent me to a support group for people with spinal cord injuries, which is how I ended up…” she waved her hands over her lap. “Anyway, the room was full of people who can’t move a whole lot more body parts than I can’t move. Many of them can’t feel their arms. They can’t feed themselves, or turn over in bed. They couldn’t even get out of a burning building, or send an email, or hug someone.”

I rested my face in my hand. “Well that’s uplifting.”

“Tell me about it. Those people scared the crap out of me, and I never went back. And if
I
can whine — and trust me, I do — you might as well gripe about hopping around like a flamingo.” She picked up her sandwich again.

“So…” I didn’t have any idea whether this was too personal a question. “When was this?”

“When was what?” Her eyes evaded me.

“The accident.”

“January fifteenth.”

“Wait…
this
January fifteenth? Like, eight months ago?” She gave me a tiny nod. “So…last week you said, ‘fuck it, it’s September. I’d better move across the country and get on with it?’”

Corey pounded her soda, quite possibly to escape my scrutiny. “Well…more or less. But seriously, what
is
the proper mourning period over the use of one’s legs?” She looked me full in the face then, one eyebrow raised.

Fuck
. This girl probably just cured me from whining for the rest of my life, right there. “You are hardcore, Corey Callahan.”

She gave me a little shrug. “The college offered me a year’s deferral, but I didn’t take it. You met my parents. I didn’t want to sit home and watch them wring their hands.”

My phone rang, and I had to give Corey the universal signal for “just a second” while I picked up Stacia. “Hi, hottie,” I answered. “I’m sitting at a table against the back wall. Love you too.” I stashed the phone. “Okay…wait. So a little tender loving care drove you into a different time zone?”

“The three of us were half insane last year. This was best for everyone.”

That hadn’t occurred to me, but it should have. When you have an accident, it doesn’t just happen to you. “I can almost see it. My mom drove me batshit crazy last week. But I probably deserved it.”

“Your mom was pissed about your broken leg?”

“Sure she was. It’s not like I broke it saving babies from a burning building. My mom missed a couple days of work taking care of me, and now there’s a whopping E.R. bill, too.”

“Your coach must be spitting fire,” Corey pointed out.

“You got it. I’ve heard the ‘You Let Everyone Down’ lecture several times already.” I began to watch the door for Stacia. A couple of minutes and a half a sandwich later, a gorgeous girl appeared in the archway. As she stood there, scanning the tables, I couldn’t look away. Stacia had it all. She was tall, and yet somehow curvy, with flowing yellow hair and the bearing of a princess. When she spotted me, her big hazel eyes lit up. Then she pointed those long legs in my direction. And the first thing she did when she arrived beside me was to kiss me full on the mouth.

We’d been dating for most of a year, and it still shocked me every time she did that.

“Stacia,” I said after she released my lips. “This is my new neighbor Callahan. She and her roommate Dana are in Beaumont House, too.”

“Nice to meet you,” Stacia said quickly, with the barest glance at Corey. “Hartley, are you ready to go?”

I laughed. “Babe, you don’t
know
how hard we had to work for this food,” I said. “So give me a few minutes to finish it.” I pulled out a chair for her.

Stacia sat down, but didn’t bother to conceal her irritation. She stabbed at her phone while I took my time with my cookies and milk.

Corey had gone quiet, but that was okay, because Stacia was always ready to fill dead air with another of her first-world problems. “My hairdresser says she can’t fit me in tomorrow. That’s so wrong,” my girlfriend complained.

“I’m pretty sure they have salons in Paris,” I said, not that she’d listen. Stacia was the pickiest girl on the planet. The food in the dining halls didn’t meet her standards — so she bought most of her meals off campus. Her shampoo was mail-ordered, because none of the fifty brands at the drugstore would do. She wasn’t exactly warm to new people, either.

And yet Stacia looked at
me
the same way she looked at a shopping bag from Prada. The fancy girl from Greenwich, Connecticut wanted
this
guy. This guy right here, the one in the Bruins cap and the Gold’s Gym T-shirt.

I could tell you it didn’t make me feel a foot taller, but I’d be lying.

Corey drained her soda, and then began to stack our stuff back on her tray.

“Hey, Stacia?” I put my hand on my girlfriend’s wrist to get her attention. “Will you do us a solid and bus this?”

She looked up from her phone, surprised. Then she glanced from the tray to the back of the dining hall, as if calculating the effort. For a long moment, she hesitated. I could tell that Corey was just on the verge of offering to do it when Stacia rose suddenly, grabbed the tray and stomped off.

I shook my head, aiming a sheepish smile at my new neighbor. “At her house, the staff does that sort of thing.”

I could tell by the look on Corey’s face that she had no idea whether I was joking or not. Actually, I wasn’t.

See, Stacia was a piece of work. But she was
my
piece of work.

Chapter Three:
The Furniture Genie

—
Corey

“So how was the first day?” Dana asked when I arrived home that afternoon. She was perched on our window seat, painting her fingernails.

“Good,” I said. “I found all three of my classes on the first try. You?”

“Yeah! And I really like my history of art professor.”

“Is he hot?” I made a comical wiggle with my eyebrows.

“He is if you’re into seventy-five year olds.”

“Who says I’m not?” I did a wheelie in my chair, because there was really no furniture in my way. Dana’s desk was against one wall, her trunk shoved up next to it. Our room still echoed.

“Whoa! Isn’t that dangerous?” she asked.

“Nope.” I did it again, popping back onto two wheels and then spinning in a circle. “But it does make me dizzy.”

“Isn’t there such a thing as wheelchair basketball?” Dana asked, blowing on her nails.

“Probably,” I dodged. Given my sporty history, more than a dozen people had asked me the same question already. But before my accident, I’d never been interested in hoops. And I was doubly uninterested in some kind of adaptive bullshit. Why did people think that sounded like fun? Why must all gimps love basketball?

Dana capped her nail polish. “So…I’m going to the jam tonight. Do you want to come?”

“What’s a jam?”

“It’s a concert, a showcase for the a cappella singing groups. Are you going to rush?”

I shook my head. “I gave up choir in the eighth grade because it conflicted with hockey.”

“You don’t have to be crazy good,” Dana argued. “There are ten groups, and it’s social as much as musical.”

“Let’s go to the jam, then,” I said. “We’ll check it out.”

“Awesome! It’s right after dinner. I’ll find this auditorium…” She hopped up to dig a campus map out of her bag.

“Nice TV, ladies,” a sexy voice said from the open doorway.

I looked up to see Hartley leaning against our doorjamb. “Thanks,” I said, my heart rate kicking up a notch.

“What you really need is a sofa right here,” he pointed to the empty wall just inside the door. “They’re selling used ones on Fresh Court.”

“We saw them,” Dana said. “But we don’t know how to summon a furniture genie to carry it for us.”

Hartley scraped a hand along his gorgeous jaw. “I guess two gimps and a chick won’t cut it. I’ll work on it at dinner.” He looked at his watch. “…Which starts now. Takers?”

“Sure,” Dana said. “I haven’t been to the Beaumont dining hall yet.”

“So let’s go,” Hartley said, turning his crutches toward the outside door.

Dana and I followed Hartley out of McHerrin and down the street. Beaumont House, in all its Gothic glory, had big iron gates. Dana swept her ID in front of the reader and the gate clicked open. She held the door for Hartley and then for me.

The gimp parade was slow going, with Hartley on crutches, and me driving cautiously. The flagstone pathway was uneven, and I didn’t want to catch my wheels on one of the cracks and do a face plant. It was hard enough being The Girl in the Wheelchair. I didn’t need to be The Girl Who Ejected From Her Wheelchair.

We made our way through one small stone courtyard and into the larger one, which was on every official Harkness tour. My brother Damien had once complained about dodging tourists and their cameras when he was on the way to class. But if that was the price of living in an historic granite and marble castle, so be it.

On the far side of the courtyard, Hartley stopped our progress. “Shit,” he said, looking up at the building. “The dining hall is on the second floor. I forgot about the stairs.”

“You know, Beaumont dining hall isn’t on the accessible map,” I said. “I think I’ll try another dining hall.” Commons wasn’t open for dinner, but I’d already memorized which houses had first-floor dining rooms.

Hartley leaned over the handles of his crutches and shook his head. “I’m not climbing it, either. But…how does the food get up there? I bet they don’t carry it up the stairs.” He frowned up at the building. “I can’t believe I’ve eaten here for two years and never wondered about that.” He turned toward another gate leading out onto the street. “Dana, we’ll meet you inside. There must be a service entrance. This way, Callahan.”

My face pink, I followed Hartley out onto Pine Alley, which backed up to both Beaumont and Turner House.

“That will be it,” Hartley grinned. He limped toward a gray metal door with an intercom beside it. He pushed the button.

“Yeah!” came a voice.

He looked at me, his dimple showing. “Delivery!”

A moment later, the gray door slid open to reveal a dimly lit elevator carriage, which was not even full height. “Classy,” Hartley said. “Well, let’s do this.” There was a slight lip, which almost tripped him up. But he ducked inside, holding the door while I rolled myself backwards into the car. The door slid shut with a grinding sound that scared me. Was this going to become one of
those
moments — the kind you look back on later and wonder why you followed a hot guy into a shaky, unmarked elevator? But Hartley only chuckled as the car seemed to tremble around us. “I hope you have good lungs, in case we need to yell for help.”

The car rose so slowly that I didn’t relax until the door finally wheezed open. When we emerged into a brightly lit kitchen, a guy in a chef’s hat frowned at us, and several busy people in white aprons turned to stare. “Don’t tell me you lost our reservation?” Hartley scoffed, looking around. “This way, Callahan.” I followed him across a tile floor, around a glass-faced serving bay, and into the melee of students waiting with trays in hand.

“There you are!” Dana said, making room for us. “How’d you get up here?”

“In the service elevator,” Hartley said. “It worked like a charm. Dana, can you grab us one more tray?”

“Sure, take this one.” She darted off, returning with another tray and two more sets of cutlery.

The line snaked forward, and eventually we were up next. “Can you see over?” Hartley asked.

No, as usual
. “What looks good?” I asked.

“Meatball sub. Fish looks a little scary.”

“Easy decision, then.”

“Two subs, please,” Hartley said.

“Can I help you guys carry anything?” Dana asked.

Hartley answered, “Callahan and I have a system.”

When he looked away, Dana gave me a meaningful eyebrow twist. I bit back a grin.

When we had our food, Hartley pointed a crutch toward a half-filled table in the middle of the room. “Over there, ladies.”