Unexpected Page 7

  I walked to my closet and handed him my extra. He lay down on the floor, and I dropped down next to him. We’d have to share the extra pillow. He kissed my forehead and closed his eyes. A minute later Maven was out cold. I blinked. Really? Had he traveled across campus just to sleep on my floor?

  I picked up my phone. This was almost perfect. Goodnight, Chance.

  Night, Vonni.

  My first class wasn’t until noon. I watched the sun move into the room. Surprisingly, my eyes felt heavy. I closed my lids. I was really so lucky. I didn’t know what I’d done to earn these guys. I hoped it could always be this way.

  Chapter 6

  “I go to bed with you in my arms and wake up to find you on the floor with this fool?” The laugh in Banyan’s voice was always a boon to my soul. I shook my head. Always? I hadn’t known him long enough to be always-ing anything.

  Maven snorted. He hadn’t opened his eyes yet. “You literally snoozed and lost.” He lifted his lids. “She couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. I came over. Check your phone. You have the whole exchange.”

  Banyan flopped down on the ground next to us. “Hi.”

  I grinned at him. “Hi.”

  It was almost eleven, way later than I usually slept, and I had to get up for class. “I need to move. I don’t want to. But I have to. Class then work. And I told Chance I’d come by and see him today.” That was going to mean heading back into their frat house. I really didn’t want to, but somehow I was going to have to get over that.

  Maven leaned on his elbow. “You mean we’re not on vacation anymore?”

  Not even close. As the math notebook on my desk taunted me with its very existence I was keenly aware of how un-vacation this was.

  “Didn’t go well convincing the deans to let you help.” Banyan didn’t phrase his statement as a question, but Maven shook his head, answering silently. Banyan paused before responding again. “At least you tried.”

  And that was when it dawned on me why Banyan hadn’t said anything to stop Maven in the first place. Maven had to try. That was just who he was. There was something beautiful about that, and as I watched Banyan stare at the ceiling, saying nothing, I realized Banyan knew that.

  How well did the artist next to me see all of us? What did he know that he that didn’t share?

  My day was long, but I looked forward to my job. Kay was a character. She whistled to herself, spoke to the customers like they were long lost friends, and if I believed in such things, I’d think she was psychic. In any case, she seemed to think that she was.

  Connie, by contrast, handled the storeroom. She side-eyed me about mid-way through the afternoon. “My sister used to be the head costumer for a major movie studio in Hollywood. But she gave it all up for love. She was happily married for thirty years.”

  I hadn’t asked, but I wasn’t disinterested at the same time. “So that explains some of the more… vintage, exciting dresses on the walls.”

  Connie nodded. “I was also married for thirty years.” She looked away. “I tell you this just so you understand that while Kay can seem flaky, she’s actually really with it. I know we’re not everyone’s cup of tea.”

  Kay took that moment to practically float into the back. “Oh yes we are. At the very least, we are absolutely going to be Giovanna’s cup of tea. She’s going to love us like family. Forever.” I was? Her smile was contagious, so I returned it. “Tell me about the young men in your life.”

  I cleared my throat. Kay’s arrival distracted me from the fact that they’d both lost their husbands of thirty years, which was tremendously sad. At least they had each other. What had she said? Oh yes. She’d said men, plural. But I was sure that was just her being facetious—as though I automatically should have more than one and not that I was in this unique situation even I wasn’t sure how to define.

  “I don’t have a boyfriend. I have some guys that are my friends. It’s not serious.” Except it was for me; it was for Chance. Maven and Banyan acted like it was. What were any of us supposed to do?

  Kay sighed. “When you come in tomorrow, I’ll have what you need.”

  “What I need?”

  Connie put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you drive her out the door. I like her. She works really hard. And she’s smart. That being said, Giovanna, my sister does tend to know what people need.”

  I picked up a shirt and started to fold it. “I’m afraid I’m not yet budgeted to buy clothes.”

  I wasn’t really budgeted for anything just yet. Ramen noodles and potato chips, maybe.

  “Oh, this is not for you to buy.” She touched my hair gently. “This is for me to give you.” Her face fell. “Before everything burns.”

  I gasped and Connie sighed. “Oh don’t bother the girl. They’re all terrified at that school about the fires as it is. Very upsetting stuff. I heard they’re putting video monitors all over the school. Going to take some time but soon you won’t be able to spit on the street without someone seeing it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for safety, but what about liberty?”

  I wasn’t listening. I stared at Kay. There was something about her that could make me believe that she knew the future, that she saw things that I couldn’t or somehow knew what would be. I snapped myself out of that thinking. That’s where I ran into trouble. My very, very active imagination.

  I smiled at both of them before I walked over to the rack of expensive black ball gowns. One of them caught my eye. It was scooped neck and too small for me but lovely. The sequins on the bottom must have made it look like it would swish when the person walked.

  I checked the label. Sometimes there were indications about where the clothes had come from. Nothing on this. I couldn’t help but imagine it nonetheless. Someone would wear this on a train. I could almost see her. She’s running from something. High heels on her feet and they pinch. Why is she running…

  No, I couldn’t do that right now. I had to fold and sort. Still, I imagined that black dress the rest of the afternoon.

  I stepped outside. The sun shone, the temperature was slightly up from the day before, and Chance leaned against his car, waiting for me.

  “What are you doing here?” Joy radiated through me at seeing him, and I rushed over, throwing my arms around him. I’d loved having Banyan and Maven with me, but Chance’s absence had been palpable. We’d been like a little unit in New York. He was a missing piece.

  He sighed, hugging me tightly before leaning over to kiss me, hard. Two passersby on the street walked into my vision, but I didn’t care. He tasted like coffee and I pressed into him. Nothing had changed about my monthly visitor, but I still got a thrill.

  “I had the time, so I thought I’d wait and see if I could drive you.”

  That was so nice. “Thank you. I have to go study.”

  “Really? It’s the second day of school.”

  I was probably going to have to explain this all the time. “I’m going to fail math.”

  “Stop. You will not.” He waved his hand. “You’re going to do great. Eat first?”

  At least he wasn’t arguing that I had to study. The problem with the fact that they were all so smart was that it was hard to explain how hard I had to work to do what came naturally to them. “Sure. Fast dinner.”

  “Great.”

  I got in his car and soon realized where he was taking me. The diner where I’d shocked him the first time we’d gone out by confessing that I was sexually interested in him.

  He squeezed my hand when we pulled in the driveway but was really quiet when we sat at the table. That was usually my role. “Are you okay?”

  “Did Banyan or Maven talk to you about the next little bit of time?”

  They hadn’t. “No. Something going on?”

  He tapped his sugar packets on the edge of the coffee cup the waiter had set in front of him. “So I can’t really talk about it.” That meant it was a frat thing. We were only back days and I was already sick of the frat things. “But we do kind of a push
toward the end. The pledges have to be made brothers and we really like that to happen right after spring break. That way they go to the formal in the spring as full-fledged brothers. We can’t force it. They’re not ready until they’re ready, but the goal is always that.”

  I digested that information. “What you’re telling me is that you’re going to be busy.”

  His gaze pleaded with mine for something. “I will be very busy. And Maven and Banyan will be, too, in a little bit. I don’t want to lose you because I have these responsibilities.”

  “You won’t.” I didn’t understand. “Is this because of last night?”

  “Partly. Yes. I… I hated that Maven just got to take off and come over. I want you to know that I wanted to be there, too, and I’m going to figure out time for us. With them and alone.”

  I held his hand across the table. “Look, we agreed, there’s only now. Who knows what will happen? I’m not going anywhere. I have work, and I have to study. My parents have vanished. They might be shot with poison darts.” He snorted, but I was only half kidding. “We’ll be okay, Chance.”

  I hoped.

  He sipped his coffee. “Good. I wanted to just get that out there. Don’t tell the pledges what I said about the timing.”

  “No chance of that. I have no intention of seeing your pledges.”

  He raised his dark eyebrows. “You could. Come to the next party. That’s pretty much when non-brothers will be allowed in the house. Otherwise we close ranks. Your face right now when I said that. It’s… clear you don’t like that idea.”

  Had I made a face? “I felt a little bit like I walked into another planet where I couldn’t quite breathe the air. Like the gravity was wrong and I wasn’t right.”

  He blinked and then gave me a sideways smile. “Well, when you put it like that.” He used the phrase I had used on him.

  I laughed and so did he. The waiter set down our order, my grilled cheese sandwich and his pot roast. I looked up from my food. “So, it’s not a good time of the month, but I’m wearing the green.”

  Chance choked before he raised his own eyes to grin at me. “Their brotherhood can’t come fast enough.”

  I sat in the library, my eyes on the math textbook again. A lot of dyslexics hated to read. But books had been my constant companions. Whatever coping mechanisms I’d picked up over the years learning to read, I handled that material just fine. I’d blown through the Shakespeare and the Wilke Collins in two hours. I was officially ahead by a month, which was good since the math and science was going to kill me.

  Or maybe I was being dramatic.

  Girl drowned in math textbook. I could see the headline now. I’d be the first case of it.

  What was I thinking, taking a night class? The text came through from Banyan and I grinned. He was texting in the classroom? He feared no teachers. I shook my head.

  You were thinking it was your major and you love your art classes.

  I set down my phone. Okay. What was I doing? Oh, yes. Thinking about… equations. I…

  “Which one do you think she’s fucking?”

  “Why would they do that?

  Two people were talking.

  It was that word that caught my attention. The f word. There was nothing inherently wrong with it. I’d certainly used it myself on occasion, particularly when I wanted to express that I was truly unhappy. But the way she said it. Fucking, the emphasis on it, made it sound dirty, like the person doing the act was in the wrong somehow.

  I looked up from my book to find they were both staring at me. I blinked. Had I done something to get their attention? I stared back at my work.

  I didn’t know those girls. They both had brown hair of different shades and pretty faces, but most of the girls here were beautiful, at least on the outside. Most of the student body had the time to spend thinking about their physical looks. Gym memberships, trips to cosmetic counters, and facials were a regularly scheduled part of the program for most of their lives.

  But those two didn’t stand out to me as anyone I knew. Maybe they were underclassmen or seniors. Or they could be my year. I knew so few people. I looked back down. Who were they talking about? Who was fucking who?

  The girls moved but not far. They must be looking for something specific in the stacks. There were librarians to help if they needed it.

  “I heard both Maven and Banyan came out of her room.”

  I stopped breathing. The second girl spoke answered her. “And I heard she was kissing Chance on the street.”

  “Do you think she’s sleeping with the whole house?”

  There was a pause. “Whatever. The frat whores come and go. Her roommate might have managed to not be Greek and land a brother but what’s her name over there isn’t pretty enough to do it. Don’t worry. Maven will be back on the market before graduation. Then you can, you know, move in there and land him. She’s nothing. You should see what they’re saying about her on the website.”

  My body went numb. It was such an odd feeling, and I sort of felt like I left myself to experience it. Funny. Something was happening and I was both passively and actively having the event at the same time. I shook my head.

  Okay. So they were talking about me. Maven and Banyan and Chance and me…

  People had seen us. That was bound to happen. Maven had made a point when this started to point out that my reputation had to be unsullied so they weren’t going to tell people. I was sure they hadn’t, but we’d all been really dumb about this if secrecy was what we were going for.

  I rubbed at my face. The numbness faded, and in its place my body tingled but not in a good way. No, this was more like painful goosebumps.

  I was just going to have to not care. This was what women had been fighting for since the beginning of time. Or at least in recent history. It was our right to express ourselves as we saw fit and with whom we saw fit, sometimes sexually. I looked over my shoulder one more time, but the two women I didn’t know had moved on. Maybe they’d wanted me to hear them. In fact, I was sure they had.

  Why did women do that to one another? I wasn’t some kind of threat. If Maven wanted one of them he’d have made sure that happened. He’d chased me onto the street and we weren’t even dating. He wasn’t someone who held back from trying to have what he desired. My being with him in these unusual circumstances was not why that girl wasn’t.

  I collected my stuff. My hands were shaking. If I was going to convince myself I was okay with them saying whatever they were saying about me—and if some sort of gossip was going around, who knew if they were the only two talking—then I was going to have to do a better job of faking it. I took another deep breath.

  I really didn’t care what strangers said. The truth was, I didn’t want it getting to the administration because they could tell my parents, and then things would just be worse with them and our relationship. Or maybe some voice I hated in the back of my head reminded me, they wouldn’t care at all and that would be its own kind of special pain.

  I also didn’t want the guys to hear it, which was weird but true. The last thing I needed was for anyone to feel guilt when they looked at me. It might change things. There was no way to defend against gossip except to ignore it until it passed and the next person was the topic of the month.

  At least that was how it seemed from the outside. I’d never actually been the topic of anyone’s gossip before.

  Website? They had said something about a website. Oh, that was right. There was the Greek Gossip website. I’d never looked at it. Molly had told me about it over text during vacation. She suggested there were things on there about my new friends I’d want to know. I didn’t like engaging in that kind of nonsense, and I’d never looked.

  Still, I scanned through her old texts now, forcing myself to sit back down. I wasn’t going anywhere until I did this. I had to have all the information I could collect and then deal with this logically.

  I found the web address and pulled it up. I needed to make an account, which
seemed ridiculous, but there was no verification to follow up, so I made up a name and went with that. Darling Doughtery would be my name on the site. I’d used it once before to review books, not because I didn’t want people to know I’d read them but because in that case it had just seemed fun to have a fake name. This wasn’t fun.

  There were links to click on to see the various frats. The one for the Pie house that had burned over break was very active. The latest link said something mean. It seemed those guys had really been unpopular. I didn’t click on it. I was here for one purpose and it wasn’t to see why everyone didn’t like the Pie house and weren’t upset it had been torched. How sick in the head were my classmates? How mean?

  I clicked on SPiI and waited for it to pull up. Sure enough, someone had posted a new link and there were no short of a thousand replies. A thousand?

  My stomach clenched, and I had to push back the feeling of nausea rising up my throat. Okay. Okay. Okay. What did it say?

  New girl sleeping with how many of the guys?

  I clicked on it and scanned through. Sure enough I’d been spotted. Over and over. Anger replaced my anxiety. Why were we so on display? We’d only been back days. Didn’t these people have anything better to do with their time than go around reporting on each other? What. In. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck.

  I slammed my books into the bag, put my headphones on my ears, blasted something random, and then stormed from the library. Over a thousand people took time out of their day to stop and comment about something that was none of their business?

  I kept my head down. It was cowardly. I should be looking everyone straight in the eye and challenging them to meet my gaze. But that wasn’t what I was and I’d never been that person. I liked being in my own space, with my own few people, living separate from the rest of the world. I didn’t want or need invasive gazes on me.

  This wasn’t the guys’ fault. This was the world. Or something messed up like that.

  By the time I got back to my dorm I was running and out of breath. The cold air hurt my lungs and reminded me of when I was young and asthmatic. I’d outgrown it by the time I was seven and that time hardly passed my mind, ever. Still, this was like that. I couldn’t quite catch my breath.